Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset

by Cooper, Edmund

  Big Willie and Greville conscientiously avoided crossing each other’s path. Greville realised that Big Willie was probably waiting until he ran out of ammunition. But, Greville promised himself, when that time drew close, he would remember to deal with Big Willie first.

  Perhaps the most useful and most efficient member of the small community – if it could be so described – was Miss Worrall.

  Miss Worrall lived in a derelict windmill. At least the windmill, an old tower mill, had been derelict for half a century until Miss Worrall installed herself. That was in the early days of the Radiant Suicide before normal man realised that his number was up. Miss Worrall was an ex-music teacher of indeterminate age who had developed a passion for dogs and the simple life.

  She came to Ambergreave with two Alsatians, and she adopted the derelict mill as her home. The Alsatians multiplied, and were very carefully and strictly trained. At the same time, Miss Worrall (no one ever discovered her Christian name) perhaps with a flash of insight or clairvoyance, began to renovate the windmill. The surviving villagers claimed it was impossible; there were those who could remember the 1914 war but could not remember the tower mill ever having sails. Nevertheless, Miss Worrall constructed sails, doing all the carpentering herself and only soliciting help to get the new sails into position. Then she found a mason who still retained enough skill to fashion a tolerable pair of millstones – and, lo, the windmill was a going concern once more.

  Miss Worrall began to grind corn. As the years of Omega radiation wrought havoc with the outside world, she continued to grind corn; and, for a time, her business throve as all the powered mechanical mills came to a stop. But then the farms began to disintegrate, and there was less corn to grind. Prudently, Miss Worrall allowed her pack of Alsatians to increase to eight. Once, and because it was known that she always kept a good supply of flour, the mill was attacked by a dozen or so armed, determined and hungry men. They did not get any flour; and several of them had their throats torn out by the Alsatians. Since then, Miss Worrall had lived in peace. There was still a little wheat to grind, for the surviving villagers grew patches of it here and there; and Miss Worrall never took more than a tenth of the harvest for her services. She lived alone with her dogs, an old piano and about twenty faded photographs of the same man. Greville liked her. He had good reason to; for she had once saved him when he was starving.

  So he introduced Liz to Miss Worrall, and he introduced her to the Cuthbert family – Charles Cuthbert, a large florid man with two wives and two half-grown children, was the local blacksmith and machine fixer – and to Alaric Newton, R.A., who lived in a tree house and painted in oils and had once been one of the best marksmen with a rifle in England.

  Liz got on well with Miss Worrall and would occasionally pay a social visit on her own. Presently she had almost the same degree of control over the Alsatians as their owner.

  Now and then Greville would take Liz hunting with him. It was not necessary to travel far to go hunting for, with the exception of a few small patches of land close to the villages, the countryside had reverted to a degree of wildness that was surprising in view of the fact that it was only a few years since society had relinquished its control. On these occasions Greville would arm himself with a rifle and a pistol, while Liz carried one of the shotguns. Between them, he felt, they had quite enough fire-power to deal with everything except rats … And possibly humans …

  Greville’s favourite quarry was pig, the semi-wild and surprisingly dangerous variety that had adapted so well to the new-found freedom. Of all the domesticated creatures, the pig had done best since the passing of normal man; and, in fact, the pig population of Britain now exceeded the population of transies.

  The strength of the pigs lay in their ability to eat practically everything – including, if necessary, each other. Greville was rapidly becoming an expert in pigs. He could tell the carnivorous ones at a glance. And, whenever possible, he avoided them; for there was a strong and most un-piggy flavour to their flesh. They did not make good pork and they did not make good bacon. All that they were fit for was stew – and they had to be very well cooked at that.

  One afternoon, when Greville and Liz were out hunting a few miles from Ambergreave, they witnessed an astounding sight. They were in a small patch of woodland, and it was one of those still summer days when sound carries tremendously and when it seems almost possible to shout and be heard from one end of the land to the other.

  Having disposed of a light lunch, Greville and Liz were resting under a large and obviously ancient oak whose low leafy branches spread out to make a wide green and brown umbrella, obliterating the blue sky. Greville was half-dozing when suddenly he became aware of a faint and distant whisper. It seemed to be growing in volume. Greville had heard such a whisper before. He looked at Liz, but she was totally unconcerned and had probably not heard it.

  The whisper grew, and then a new sound was added – a muffled throbbing that shook the earth and that came from a different direction. The throbbing was not so easily identifiable. It could be pigs, horses or deer.

  Greville stirred uncomfortably. As the throbbing increased, the whispering seemed to disperse until it was all around them. He looked at the oak tree and then he looked at Liz.

  ‘I think it’s time to do a bit of climbing,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have visitors.’

  Liz was getting familiar with country noises. ‘It’s a pretty large herd – whatever they are. Sounds heavy enough for horses … What’s the other sound?’

  ‘If it’s what I think it is,’ retorted Greville, ‘we shall very likely wish it wasn’t. Come on, there’s no time to waste. I’ll give you a leg up.’

  Liz slung her shotgun round her shoulder and began to climb the tree. Greville hauled himself after her.

  The throbbing stopped, then started again, then stopped and started once more. Horses, pigs or deer – they were drawing closer. But the whispering, now much louder, seemed to be everywhere.

  Greville and Liz were perched on each side of a thick forked branch about fifteen feet above the ground. Greville wedged himself into a reasonably good shooting position. He took the shotgun from Liz and gave her the pistol. In the circumstances the shotgun seemed likely to be their best guarantee of salvation.

  From the forked branch their view of the ground below was restricted to a small irregular patch of a few square yards. This was not a great drawback, reflected Greville, for if they could not see much, neither also could they be seen.

  Presently a pig passed below him. Then another and another. Although it was high summer, they had the look of very hungry carnivorous pigs. Greville was surprised. But he was less surprised when he realised how many there were, for the grunting and snorting he heard seemed to indicate that the wood was full of them.

  But above and around all the pig-like noises there was the ubiquitous whispering. Even the pigs were scared. They milled to and fro as if trying to decide on a direction.

  Then the first wave of rats came.

  A brown tide seemed to surge over the grass and even over the squealing pigs. Suddenly there were rats everywhere. Greville had never seen so many before. At times there was the crazy illusion that the brown tide was three or four rats deep. The stench was nauseating.

  The rats, evidently, had been driving the pigs and had now managed to surround them. They were coming in for the kill.

  But, as victims, the carnivorous pigs were less than obliging. The rats leaped at their ears, snouts, legs, tails. and many of the pigs seemed at times to be totally covered in rats. But they careered about, trampling the rats in their hundreds. They rolled on them, snapping at them and even screamed at them. But still the rats came on.

  It was a contest in which neither side could claim decisive victory, for eventually the surviving pigs broke through the thinned-out cordon of their attackers. In the matter of escape, their speed proved decisive. Presently, there was nothing left below the oak tree but a couple of dead pigs covere
d totally in rats.

  Liz was sick.

  She clung to the oak tree for dear life, but the remains of her lunch fell steaming to the ground. The rats looked up. Bright beady eyes registered movement. Some of them began to desert the carcasses of the pigs and make for the tree-trunk.

  Greville waited until a dozen or so had started to climb. Then he let them have a blast from the twelve-bore shotgun. Most of the rats fell back dead or mortally wounded. The rest scampered away. But in a few seconds they were trying again.

  It cost Greville ten cartridges – more than half the shotgun ammunition he was carrying – before the rats gave up. Then he and Liz had to stay in their tree for half the afternoon while the surviving rats stripped the dead pigs. Eventually they moved away. Eventually there was silence

  ‘I think it’s safe for us to go down now,’ said Greville at length.

  ‘Oh, God!’ said Liz, white-faced and shaking. ‘Get me home quick, then I can have my hysterics in peace.’

  Greville climbed down first and scouted around to see if any of the rats were left. He did not find a single one – living. The pigs had been reduced almost to skeletons and so had the dead rats. The tide of destruction had passed, leaving behind it only the warm, foul and obscenely intimate smell of death.

  As they made their way hurriedly back to the lake, Greville dwelt with silent and obscure satisfaction on the fact that Liz, in a moment of stress, had used the word ‘home’.

  FIFTEEN

  Extracts from Greville’s diary:

  ‘August. Day thirty-one, I think. Hell, I’ve lost track. The stars are pursuing their appointed courses, the sun is slowly burning itself to a celestial cinder, the moon still continues to go round the earth – and humanity is lying in little bits all over the planet, like the tiny parts of a vast and horribly broken clock.

  ‘But where is the mainspring? What made us go? What was it that took us gibbering out of the trees and planted us in chromium-plated cities? What was the great sane tick-tock of civilisation all about? And why did it all explode pitifully like a home-made bomb when some fiery little pot-hole on the sun set up a ham radio station and started beaming: “Time, gentlemen, please”?

  ‘Christ, I can’t even ask questions that are worth asking. The gods have an odd sense of humour. So I’ll abolish them. There are no more gods, by order, Matthew Greville, transnormal and illiterate, hereditary custodian of one million years of evolution, great ape of the second coming …

  ‘I love Liz. The thought terrifies me. I love Liz. It’s a sickness. It’s the sickest transnormal joke that any transie could possibly play on himself. What place is there for love in this best of all possible worlds? Love only thyself, brother, for the great day of spiritual masturbation is at hand. Love only the quick screw and the sudden violence and the sleep that sometimes passeth without dreams.

  ‘But, sweet Christ, I love Liz – and it hurts like mad and it makes me afraid and sometimes it even gives me the illusion of no longer being alone.

  ‘What is she? A hot little bitch who sold her body for a meal or two a day and anybody’s bed at night. But let him that is without sin throw the first fit.

  ‘My God! There are times when she’s beautiful. She stands there in a torn shirt and a patched-up pair of jeans, skinning a rabbit and looking as if she could launch a thousand ships. And sometimes she lies down with nothing on at all and her legs wide open, and you’d think there was nothing to it but a sweet ten minutes of erection and demolition work.

  ‘But suddenly the sex doesn’t seem to matter. I look into her eyes and find that there’s something there that’s farther away than the stars and brighter than the sun. Something that sings and cries and dreams and mourns. Something that’s so close it suffocates and so remote that I’ll never touch it.

  ‘She’s a witch. No broomstick. Only nightmares about a twin sister and compulsions to find a rainbow that leads to shimmering little heaps of fool’s gold.

  ‘She ran away. Three days ago she ran away, having stolen one shotgun, ten cartridges, half a dozen cans of soup and two of Miss Worrall’s Alsatians. I wondered why she had been ingratiating herself so much with the dogs. She had been quietly planning the whole little venture.

  ‘We went to bed around midnight and made some love that was quite worth the making, and then we slept. By dawn the bitch had gone. She’d taken the boat, of course, so I had to swim ashore. Then I had to row myself back to get a few things.

  I don’t suppose I’d have found her except that I knew she’d head north. And, serve her right, the dogs gave her away. She should have realised that their occasional barking was going to be a first-class advertisement. But, thank the Lord, she didn’t. And so I came up with them a little before sunset.

  ‘She was wild enough and determined enough. She set the dogs on me, and I had to blow them both to glory – good dogs they were, too – before she’d call it a day.

  ‘I hit her. Christ, how I hit her! I’d had about twelve hours of hell, thinking I’d never see her again. So she had to pay for it. I closed one of her eyes and smashed up her lips and did things to her that must have made her wish she’d never been born. And then I cried like a child and asked her to shoot me.

  ‘How transnormal can you get? She didn’t, of course. She could hardly move, but she just took her trousers off, maybe thinking that was the remedy for everything, or maybe thinking that was all I really wanted.

  ‘I didn’t want it at all. I told her I loved her, and then she began to cry, too. It was a fine night with a large harvest moon – if anybody was bothering to gather a harvest – and we slept rough at the bottom of a big tree with a couple of dead dogs to keep us company. We didn’t make love at all. We just wanted to touch each other and know that we were alive.

  ‘In the morning we were both stiff as boards, and poor Liz looked as if she had had the beating of a lifetime. She could hardly walk, and the way back was endless. We didn’t get home till the early hours of the following morning. Then, if you please, instead of collapsing she had to have music.

  ‘So it was Rhapsody in Blue, then bacon and red wine for breakfast. Finally, we went to bed.

  ‘So here we are again, demented desert islanders, sharing a love idyll complete with black eyes, nightmares, blisters on our feet, aching loins and the knowledge that every day of joint survival, every moment of happiness (and who in his wrong mind would dare to use the word?) is stacking up the odds on the cosmic roulette wheel.

  ‘It can’t last. We know it can’t last. Who can afford such delusions of grandeur in the world in which we live now? I know it’s a sort of psychic hire-purchase – but, hell, we’re going to have to pay later, anyway.’

  SIXTEEN

  Day drifted into day, August drifted into September, and the brown and gold mantle of an Indian summer fell smokily over the land. Greville was surprised and only vaguely disturbed to find that life with Liz was evolving into a routine – or, possibly, a ritual. They went scrounging only when it was vitally necessary, when one of them needed clothes or shoes, or when the food supply began to dwindle seriously. For the most part they lived simply as ‘desert islanders’. Liz still had her nightmares, still cherished hopes of finding Jane; but she seemed willing to accept Greville’s claim upon her, and she seemed willing enough to share the dangerous illusion of love.

  Inevitably, scrounging was getting more and more difficult, more and more dangerous. The towns and cities were still the best bets; but because sheer necessity was forcing the surviving transies to organise themselves into groups of one kind or another, the chance of freelance scroungers falling into traps was increasing rapidly.

  On one occasion Greville took Liz as far afield as Ipswich. They were looking primarily for clothes. In normal times the journey by car from Ambergreave would have taken about an hour; but because of the state of the roads and the detours it was necessary to make, the trip took the best part of a day.

  The centre of Ipswich had been picked as clean
as a whistle; but the suburbs still held the promise of plunder, for, having looted the centre of the city, the town transies began to move progressively outwards. It was while Liz and Greville were exploring the possibilities of a large deserted suburban house standing in about two acres of garden jungle that they first encountered organised transnormality.

  Greville had managed to force his station wagon up the weed-choked drive and it was standing in front of the house while he and Liz explored the upper storeys. The house was a solid nineteenth-century three-decker, complete with attic and trap door leading to a tiny fenced-in roof area. While Liz was trying on some rather old-fashioned clothes (chiefly evening-gowns and cocktail dresses) that she had found, Greville amused himself by going out on to the roof.

  It was fortunate he did so, for he was able to observe the approach of about fifteen men. They did not approach haphazardly or with stealth as he would have expected ordinary transies to do. They marched three abreast behind a leader. Some of them carried shotguns, one or two had rifles and there were even a couple of spear men. The leader carried a sword and a pistol and looked for all the world like something that belonged more properly to the pages of All Quiet On The Western Front.

  The entire troop was obviously well drilled for they marched briskly in step along the tracks left by Greville’s car. Clearly they were proposing to investigate the intruders in their bailiwick.

  Greville might have considered trying to talk himself out of trouble but he was not prepared to take risks with Liz. If there was a shortage of women in the area – and even if there wasn’t – her prospects with a bunch of transnormal pseudo-soldiery would not be particularly rosy.

  Fortunately Greville was well-armed. It was suicide to go on a scrounging expedition without being well-armed. So he was carrying rifle, pistol and grenades. Liz, still no doubt trying dresses on in front of a cracked mirror in one of the bedrooms, had a pistol and a shotgun.