Out of Nowhere

by Gerard Whelan

  Stephen was already on his feet, reaching for the little pistol he’d put in his back pocket. Hearing footsteps behind him, he pulled the pistol, swung round and used the gun to clout another youth who’d almost reached him. The gun hit his skull with a hollow pop. The youth gave an animal yelp and fell to the floor. Stephen swung again to face his first attacker, but he was still lying on the floor, groaning in pain, his hands making weak flapping movements. The second attacker lay on the floor, unmoving.

  Stephen turned to where he’d last seen Kirsten. She was struggling with two more youths, their faces as crazily twisted as those of the ones who’d attacked him. These too were growling in no human way. One of them stood behind Kirsten, his arm around her throat. The second was in front of her, and as Stephen watched Kirsten gave him a roundhouse kick in the stomach. Even the sight of it made Stephen wince. The youth made a sound like a punctured air-cushion and jack-knifed forward. He swivelled away and stood doubled up in front of one of the big windows, his back turned to Kirsten. Kirsten bent her leg and planted her foot square in the small of his back. She pushed.

  The boy never knew what hit him. He shot forward and smashed through the glass. The low ledge caught his legs below the knees, and then, with a squeal, he was gone.

  Kirsten and Stephen stared wide-eyed at the smashed, empty window. But the other attackers seemed hardly to notice that they’d lost a companion. Someone – one of the two youths he’d already downed – jumped on Stephen from behind, dragging him to the floor. He lay face down with the weight of his assailant on his back. A clawed hand gripped the wrist of his gun-holding hand. Another grabbed the back of his neck, grinding his face into the spiky carpet. Stephen struggled uselessly. Then a second body smashed down on top of him, knocking all his breath out. A rain of punches started falling on his head and back. Consciousness began to slip away.

  ‘Kirsten!’ he screamed, his voice muffled by the carpet. ‘Run!’

  But he had no idea whether or not she was in any position to obey.

  I’m going to die here, he thought with a strange calmness, without even knowing who I really am.

  There was a loud hollow bang. The weight on Stephen’s back suddenly shifted. There was a second bang, a sharper, cracking sound, and part of the weight went away. The hands on his wrist and neck disappeared. He started to scramble to his feet, waiting to be hit again. Only as he stood upright did he look around.

  Philip stood inside the library gate with his big black pistol raised. Wisps of shifting blue smoke curled in the still air.

  The last of Kirsten’s attackers lay sprawled on the floor by the window. Kirsten herself stood staring down at him with huge terrified eyes. When Stephen looked around he saw one of his own attackers lying deathly still. The last attacker, the one he’d originally thrown against the wall, stood snarling at Philip. The snarl showed his wicked teeth. The boy reached into his pocket and took something out. A knife’s long thin blade flicked out with a click, and he brandished it at Stephen.

  ‘Ten,’ he said, or something that sounded like it: Tern? Teln? The boy’s voice sounded as though there was something wrong with his throat.

  Stephen held up his own little gun helplessly. He knew he couldn’t use it.

  ‘Shoot!’ Philip said loudly. ‘Shoot!’

  The boy didn’t shift his gaze. He stared at Stephen with a hatred in his eyes that seemed almost personal.

  Do I know you? Stephen wondered. Do you know me? He felt a terrible longing to ask it aloud.

  With a scream the youth jumped towards him. There was another bang, the sound of Philip firing. The boy performed an impossible mid-air somersault, as though plucked at by some giant invisible hand. He was flung to the ground, limp, like a discarded piece of old rag, and lay without moving.

  Stephen still held the pistol out in front of him. He could see his hand shaking wildly. Then his whole body started shaking. He saw Philip walk over to the body. He extended his foot carefully and rolled it over. The corpse flopped onto its back. Philip stared at it. Then he turned to Stephen and raised his arm. Stephen found himself looking down the barrel of the big black pistol. He looked up at Philip’s face. It was as white as a sheet. His eyes were even more wild than they’d been back in the field. There was sweat on his forehead. He was shaking almost as much as Stephen. Stephen knew he was about to shoot him. For the second time in minutes he was sure he was going to die. He looked down again at the pistol’s muzzle. It made a third eye, looking at him, a black and wicked little eye, but still one saner than the eyes in Philip’s head.

  ‘No blood,’ Philip said in a strangled voice. ‘Three of them shot. One of them fallen twenty feet onto concrete and not a single drop of blood between them.’

  Stephen’s shaking grew wilder and wilder. He felt curiously distant from himself. His knees trembled. Then he keeled over and everything went away.

  14. Agents in Pursuit

  The second village we came to was bigger than the first. According to the map it was the biggest settlement within the exclusion zone. It had a market square in the centre, and in the square there was a body lying on the ground. My friend parked the car by a statue of a young man with a gun in his hands and we got out very carefully, our crystals drawn.

  The body was dead. Looking up, we could see a smashed window in the top floor of the building before which it lay. Taken with the drift of glass shards scattered around the sprawled figure, it explained the cause of the boy’s death. Except, of course, that it wasn’t a boy. It wasn’t one of our creatures either – it was a hunter.

  We went inside warily. The building was deserted. The room with the broken window turned out to be a library. There were three more dead hunters there. They’d all been shot. My friend and I looked at each other.

  ‘Now this,’ my friend said, ‘is a fine how d’you do.’

  ‘You think our people did it?’

  ‘They must have – although I’d swear there’d been humans here recently.’

  There were two big, black, plastic bags lying on the floor, half-filled with library books. My friend looked at them, frowning. He shook his head.

  ‘This is a puzzle,’ he said.

  ‘Could the hunters be fighting each other?’

  ‘Anything’s possible, I suppose. But what would hunters want with books? The Sug aren’t what you’d call great readers. And I’d swear I could feel humans.’

  ‘Well, it’s a human town. The place was alive with them only a couple of days ago.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said doubtfully.

  ‘We couldn’t have … overlooked some humans in the clearance, could we?’

  My friend winced.

  ‘I don’t even want to think about that,’ he said.

  I knew we’d found something significant, even if its significance eluded us.

  I ran through the possibilities in my mind. One, the hunters were fighting amongst themselves. That was very good, it would leave us less to kill. Two, our own people, or some of the others, were still capable of fighting back. That was pretty good as well. Three, there were humans around. That was definitely not good. In fact, that was terrible. For a start it meant that the hunters were so crazy they might have attacked humans. That would be very bad news for all of us, because humans, as individuals, are not very robust.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said to my friend. ‘I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I’m starting to get a very bad feeling about all this,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘I’ve had a bad feeling about it all along.’

  We got back into the car and drove out of town. We played no music now. After a while the road began to climb again, back into mountainous country. A few miles on I felt a special sort of strangeness. I looked over at my friend. He’d felt it too.

  ‘Sug,’ he said.

  ‘Only one, I think.’

  ‘The Hunt Lord most li
kely. I want to have a little chat with that idiot.’

  Somehow I didn’t think the Hunt Lord would enjoy the experience. My friend can get quite nasty when he’s in a temper.

  We saw him as we rounded a bend in the road. He was sitting on a fallen tree a little way up a slope, a big stout man in brown clothes. He showed no sign of alarm – if anything, he seemed to have been waiting for us. He rose to his feet when the car stopped. There could be no doubt that this was – in theory at least – the leader of the hunters. Although from what we’d seen it was obvious that he’d lost control of them. I felt anger rise in me, but it faded when I saw his pale drawn face approach the car. There was an odd mix of emotions competing to take control of that face. Tiredness, pain, and to my surprise something that might have been shame. Worry too. Most surprising of all was a flash, quickly suppressed, of something that looked awfully like relief.

  When he reached the car the Sug leaned down and peered in through the open window.

  ‘Am I glad to see you two!’ he said.

  That’s when I knew that things were worse than I’d ever imagined.

  15. The Phantom in the Supermarket

  Stephen opened his eyes to find himself back in his bed in the abbey. He blinked in panic at the low ceiling. For a moment he wondered whether the whole trip to town had been a nightmare. But then he felt the aches in his body where he’d been punched and kicked.

  The light in the room was dim and red. It was either dawn or evening. He raised his head. In the dimness he saw a tall thin figure sitting at the table: the abbot. The monk sat motionless, his elbow on the table, his sharp chin cupped in his hand, staring at the bed.

  ‘Abbot Paul,’ Stephen said weakly.

  The abbot came over and sat on the bed.

  ‘Relax,’ he said softly. ‘You’re safe now.’

  ‘What time is it? What day?’

  ‘Saturday. Saturday morning. Dawn.’

  Stephen blinked.

  ‘I’ve been unconscious since yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry. Your body obviously needed rest.’

  He took matches from his habit and lit the candles in the candleholder. The soft light spread. Stephen saw that the abbot’s face looked grave and tired.

  ‘Have you been here long?’ he asked.

  Paul smothered a yawn.

  ‘Since last night,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to be alone when you woke up.’

  ‘Is everybody all right?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. But I need to talk to you.’

  Stephen sat up, fully awake now. His body hurt. He felt it gingerly.

  ‘There’s nothing broken,’ the abbot said. ‘But you’re rather bruised.’

  ‘We were almost killed in that library,’ Stephen said, the memory of it making him shiver. ‘If Philip hadn’t come when he did we’d have been finished.’

  ‘Yes,’ the abbot said, ‘Philip’s arrival. That’s what I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘He was in the nick of time. Another few seconds and …’

  His voice trailed off in the face of the abbot’s steady gaze. The tall monk was staring into Stephen’s eyes as though trying to read his mind. The brown eyes locked with the boy’s for what seemed like minutes. Then the abbot nodded slowly.

  ‘You know nothing about it,’ he said regretfully. ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘What should I know about? Those people attacked us. Kirsten pushed one out of the window – I don’t think she meant to, but she did it. Then Philip came and shot the others. That’s all I know. What more is there?’

  The abbot looked at his hands and pursed his lips.

  ‘Yesterday morning,’ he said, ‘when you came downstairs, you met a young novice. His name is Thomas.’

  ‘Yes. He was scrubbing the floor. I startled him.’

  ‘I know. Then you went to find Fräulein Herzenweg and Philip. In the courtyard, something happened to you.’

  Stephen tried to remember.

  ‘No. I mean yes, but nothing serious. I had a fit of weakness. I stopped by the well.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And … nothing. A little weakness, hardly surprising my first time out of bed. It passed, and I went looking for Kirsten.’

  ‘After your party left the monastery,’ the abbot said, ‘Brother Thomas came to see me. He was very frightened, because he thought he was catching whatever it is that’s wrong with the majority of our guests. He thought he was seeing things.’

  ‘Seeing things? Like what? What did he see?’

  ‘He saw … he saw you stop by the well. Then you leaned over and looked down into the water. And just then, as Thomas watched, Fräulein Herzenweg appeared beside you – literally. She didn’t walk over to you. She simply appeared, out of thin air, standing beside you and looking at you with some concern. You jumped up, obviously startled, and turned to look at her. But she was gone. She’d disappeared – like a light going out, Thomas said.’

  Stephen felt the blood drain from his face.

  ‘But that was a hallucination,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mention it to anyone. I thought I mightn’t be let go on the trip.’

  ‘So. You did see it too. And do you think Brother Thomas shared your hallucination?’

  ‘No. That’s not possible. But Kirsten simply wasn’t in the courtyard. She was with Philip.’

  ‘I know,’ Paul said. ‘So when Thomas told me his story, I reassured him that he wasn’t going mad and I told him to rest. The youngster is overwrought – we all are – and people see things when they’re frightened. The mind under stress does peculiar things. But when I spoke to Philip yesterday before you left, he mentioned that Fräulein Herzenweg had a moment’s faintness just before you came along. Perhaps she had, after all, gone outside to clear her head. Philip hadn’t mentioned it, but then he didn’t say that she didn’t go out.’

  Stephen could see that this latest mystery was cause for concern. Was there really some contagious form of madness loose in the world? What was it – an experimental weapon of some kind? But that would suggest that some terrible war really had broken out.

  ‘You think the madness might be spreading?’ he asked the abbot in a hushed voice.

  Paul sighed.

  ‘I haven’t finished my story,’ he said. ‘I sent Thomas to rest, but of course I didn’t dismiss his story – one can’t dismiss any oddity in this situation. I just thought I’d check with you when you returned.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Fräulein Herzenweg was with Philip when you and Thomas saw her, there’s no doubt about that. But she did report an odd passing weakness just before you came in. She described it as a strange pulling sensation in her head. She couldn’t recall ever having such a feeling before – of course, that means nothing in the circumstances.’

  Stephen frowned. ‘But you’re not taking seriously the notion that …’

  He stopped. What, if anything, was the abbot suggesting?

  ‘When your party came back,’ Paul continued gently, ‘it was obvious that something very bad had happened. Philip said he had to talk to me immediately.’

  He seemed unsure how to go on. He leaned forward and stared into Stephen’s eyes again.

  ‘I’m certain you’re telling me the truth as you know it,’ he said. ‘And I’m equally sure about Fräulein Herzenweg. Tell me, the weakness you felt in the courtyard, did it feel in any way odd?’

  ‘Odd? No. It was just a weakness.’

  ‘And later? In the library? Did you have any peculiar feelings then?’

  Stephen was getting angry. He wanted to retort that he’d had several peculiar feelings, mainly the certainty that he was going to be murdered. But then he thought of what Paul had just said about Kirsten’s description of her weakness, a “strange pulling sensation in her head”. He suddenly remembered the moment in the library when he’d heard Kirsten’s scream, and the weird twisting sensation he’d felt in his own mind.

  It had been a very odd feelin
g, but in the later excitement he’d forgotten it. Was the abbot suggesting that it was connected with that morning’s hallucinations? Had something like that happened again – had someone else seen Kirsten? But the abbot seemed almost surprised when Stephen asked him that question.

  ‘You’re missing the point,’ he said softly. ‘Not Fräulein Herzenweg. Nobody saw her.’

  And then Stephen realised what he was implying.

  ‘Me?’ he asked, almost choking on the word. ‘Someone saw me?’

  ‘After he left you, Philip went into a hardware shop. While he was there, he sensed someone behind him. When he turned, he saw you. You looked exactly as you had when he’d last seen you a couple of minutes before. He was annoyed that you’d managed to come up behind him without his noticing you. But he was worried because you were alone. You said nothing, but you gestured, beckoning him. He was looking right at you, and he saw what happened next.’

  Stephen didn’t want to say the words, but he was certain he knew what they were and he didn’t want Paul to say them either.

  ‘I disappeared?’ he said in a small voice.

  ‘You disappeared. Into thin air. Like a light going out. Philip overcame his shock and ran to the library. As he reached the square he saw one of your attackers come out through the library window. He ran upstairs. You saw the rest yourself.’

  Stephen hung his head.

  ‘You, of course,’ Paul said, ‘had never left the library.’

  ‘No,’ Stephen said. ‘I hadn’t.’ He looked into the abbot’s brown eyes. ‘Paul, I knew nothing of this. I swear.’

  The abbot nodded wearily.