by Perrin Briar
“She can’t do this!” Anne hissed at Jordan. “One false move…”
“I know, Anne. But what choice do we have? The mines are so close together one explosion might set them all off.”
Jessie paused, looking for her next step. She took it, but her balance was off. She waved her arms to straighten up. Anne turned away, unable to watch. Jessie regained control and took another step.
“Slowly, Jess,” Jordan said.
Jessie pulled at her foot, but it was trapped by the mud and she fell forward. Anne whimpered. Jessie’s foot fell randomly. Jordan shut his eyes.
Nothing happened.
Jessie peered around at the waterlogged ground at her feet. “I can’t see my next footprint. There’s water everywhere! I can’t see it…”
“Okay. Don’t move,” Jordan said.
“There must be another way to get her back safely,” Anne said.
“One of us could go back to Frank’s house,” Jordan said, “try to disable the mines electronically. How are your tech skills?”
“There is another way…” Stan said behind them.
His face was thin and drained, a thick film of sweat on his brow. He looked older than his sixty-two years. He stood up, clutching his arm tight. He looked deep into Jordan’s eyes. They were shimmering.
“Take care of them, Jordan.”
“Stan, what are you doing?”
Stan ran into the minefield.
“Stan?” Anne shouted, standing up. “Stan! What are you doing?”
“Anne, don’t move!” Jordan said. “Stan! Stop!”
Stan didn’t stop, or look back. He just ran hell-for-leather into the minefield. He hopped over the lumps protruding from the surface, never slowing his pace.
“Stan!” Jessie yelled. “Stop! Turn around!”
She stepped forward.
“Don’t you move!” Stan yelled. “Don’t you dare!”
Stan had covered half the distance to Jessie. He came to a bunch of mines clumped together. He moved to go around them, stepping into a narrow crevice. His foot sunk to the ankle in the soft earth. His momentum threw him forward. He landed on a mound. His eyes were clenched shut. He opened one eye, then the other. A smile crinkled his lips. He put his hands on either side of himself, preparing to push himself up.
“Stan!” Jordan said. “Don’t move! That’s a pressure switch! If your weight come off it, it’ll go off!”
Stan smiled up at Jessie. “So far as you can tell, are you away from the mines, love? Good. Cover your ears. It’s going to be a tad noisy.”
Stan pushed himself off the mine.
BOOM!
A thick wall of air knocked Jordan to the ground. Chunks of meat and bone rained down, finding their mark, creating a domino effect. The world erupted and turned white.
141.
Colour began to filter into his vision like ink soaked up by blotting paper. His ears rang with the death throes of tinnitus. Jordan sat up, his hands and arms covered by what looked like dirty dust. He peered around at the scene.
A mist hung over the area. The land was red with entrails, pockets of bloody puddles in dozens of miniature craters. Somewhere a pheasant honked and flapped its wings.
“Anne?” Jordan called. “Anne?”
There was no answer.
“Jessie? Anne?”
“Jordan…”
Jordan zeroed-in on the voice and found Anne getting to her feet a short distance away. She was covered head to foot in mud. Faint red clots had congealed on her cheek.
“Are you all right?” Jordan asked. “You’re hurt…”
“It’s not me.” Anne reached up and touched Jordan’s neck. “You’ve got red on you too.”
“We need to find Jess.”
They called out for her, careful of their footing. They found her curled up in a ball, sobbing her eyes out, every bit as dirty and beaten as they were, but uninjured.
“Why did he do that?” she mumbled between sobs. “Why would he jump on a mine like that? There must have been a better way.”
“He felt like he had no choice,” Anne said.
“If I hadn’t run away from you, dancing like that, he would still be alive.”
“No, Jessie,” Anne said, looking into her eyes. “This is not your fault. Okay? Stan chose to sacrifice himself, not you.”
Jessie nodded through tears. Anne hugged her close.
Boom!
Jordan wrapped his arms around Anne and Jessie, but the explosion had come from the middle-distance somewhere. As the dust settled, Jordan saw a small shadow lying in the middle of the field. Jordan gave Anne a look that said, Stay here.
Jordan stepped across the field and fell to his knees as he took the remains of his good friend in his arms. His upper torso was all that remained. His skin was pale as snow. An eye had swollen shut. His mouth hung open, and a thick yellow liquid hung out the corner of his mouth.
“Stan…” Jordan said, voice cracking. “You old fool.”
He sobbed, shoulders heaving. When Jordan pulled back, Stan’s eye was open. He blinked. Jordan fell back, dropping him.
Stan stared at Jordan with as much shock and surprise as Jordan had. He tried to speak, but gurgled up a mouthful of blood instead.
“Jordan?” Anne said, approaching. “Jordan, what is it?” Anne’s hands flew to her mouth. “No! Oh God, Stan… No, no, no… He can’t still be alive… How could this happen?”
Jordan saw Jessie hugging her knees some distance away, thankfully unaware. “It must have been when we fought them earlier. One of the Lurchers must have scratched him.”
Stan’s rude voice croaked. His bottom lip was missing, and all but a handful of teeth remained. “J… Jor… Jor…”
“He’s still alive…” Anne said.
There was a gurgling sound, and Stan reached up with a pincer-like hand – the heat having fused his fingers together.
“Stan?” Jordan said. “Stan, are you-?”
“Jess… Jess, is she-?” Stan garbled.
“She’s fine.”
Stan squinted, but his remaining eye was misty and clouded over. He managed a pained smile. “P… Pill,” he said. “Ch… Chill.”
Jordan reached into his pocket. He had two left. He put one in Stan’s open hand.
“Thank you for everything, Stan,” Anne said. “Go to Mary.”
Stan smiled – just one half of his face moved – and nodded jerkily. “H…Help… Help you.”
“Rest,” Jordan said.
Stan shook his head. His mouth was dry and he had to keep moistening it with a blistered tongue. “To start a new… a new family. That… That was what Mar… Mary said to me. The last… last thing she said… to me. Start… a new… family.”
“We will,” Jordan said. “Thanks to you and Mary.”
Stan’s hand slapped himself around the mouth. When the hand came away the pill was gone.
“We love you,” Jordan said. “Sleep.”
Stan’s eye rolled back into his head. Jordan stood and left, unable to bear watching Stan’s body disintegrate into a purple puddle.
142.
The wood was thick and dark, blotting out all but the most tenacious beams of sunlight. Jordan didn’t take a step without peering around at the thigh-high grass tickling their knees.
“Can’t we go any faster?” Jessie said. “It’ll take forever to get back to the cat at this rate.”
“If we get bitten by a Crawler,” Jordan said, using a stick to bend the grass to one side, “none of us will ever get back.”
Jessie sighed and swung a stick at wild flowers, decapitating them.
Jordan paused. He peered closely at something in the grass. It looked like a series of small twigs. Jordan poked them. The twigs reacted, snapping around Jordan’s stick like a Venus flytrap. A tiny child’s head rose from the grass, mouth wide open with pointy teeth. Jordan brought the thick stump of wood in his other hand down on the creature’s head. The child lay with its tongue
hanging out.
Jordan looked over at Jessie, who shrugged. “I would have gotten him anyway,” she said.
They pressed on. The wood became thicker, the tweetling bird calls replaced by the more sinister sounds of the wood. An owl hooted and swooped down from a tree. A large brown rat hissed and them and ran into the undergrowth.
They came to a stop. The path split in two. One headed left, the other right. Both routes disappeared around sharp corners.
“Which way do you think we should go?” Anne asked.
Jordan squinted. After a moment he pointed left and said, “This way.”
“Why this way? Why not that way?”
“I don’t know. It just… feels right.”
“How does it ‘feel’ right?”
Jordan shrugged. “I don’t know. How does a pigeon know where it’s going?”
“They’re called homing pigeons. They only know where they’re going because they’ve been to the same place before.” Anne watched Jordan’s expression. “Have you been here before, Jordan?”
Jordan didn’t reply right away. He put a fist to the middle of his chest and made a motion. “It feels like I’m being pulled by something. Something is attracting me, and it’s this way.” He put his hand down. “Maybe it’s the sea. Maybe it’s calling to me.”
Anne cocked her head to one side. “Or on some level you’re remembering which way to go because you’ve been down here before.”
“What difference does it make? So long as we get back to the cat it doesn’t matter.”
“I’ve got no reason to think it’s the wrong way,” Anne said. “Let’s follow your feeling.”
143.
“Should be close now,” Jordan said for about the hundredth time, his voice barely a croak.
But each time he had said it, the road stretched farther out before them, seemingly without end. The lane bobbed and weaved, giving onto flat pastures of dwindling woods like sprigs of holly. Somehow they had managed to lose the ocean.
A hill reared up ahead.
“Do we have to go over it, Jordan?” Anne asked. “Can’t we go around it?”
“The hill will give us a good vantage point. Make sure we’re going the right way.”
Anne bit down her desire to say, “I thought you knew where we were going?”
Weak and weary, they began to climb. Half-way up the hill, panting like an old work horse, Anne heard something. She looked around to identify where the sound came from. She saw it floating above them, wings spread out wide, floating on invisible strings, beak pointing arrow-like toward the hill’s crest.
“It’s a seagull,” Anne said.
They shared a smile.
As they got to the top of the hill, the smell of salt weighed heavy on the air.
They crested the hill. Anne unshouldered her backpack and fell to her knees. She took in the fuzzy blue-white mass in front of her.
“We’re home,” she said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “We’re finally home.”
144.
Barry’s Bikes was a small bicycle rental shop – little more than a shed, really – that perched atop the hill. Inside, the smell of rubber was over-powering. Row upon row of shiny new bikes stood to attention. They broke open the vending machines and gorged themselves on salty snacks and sweet beverages. Afterwards, they each picked a bike, checking the tyres and brakes. Jordan tucked a puncture repair kit into his backpack.
The sun had just begun its free fall toward the horizon when Jordan consulted a public route map in a plastic frame. He trailed his finger over the route they would take. “We’ll head north, along the coast and head back up to Great Yarmouth.”
“How long do you think it’ll take?” Anne asked.
“About four hours to the coast. We’ll find somewhere to sleep tonight, then arrive there tomorrow morning.”
Anne grinned. “We’re really that close?”
Jordan smiled. “I said we were, didn’t I?”
Anne looked down the steep slope with some trepidation. Jessie went first. She squealed as the bike picked up speed. Jordan went second, with a ‘Woo hoo!’ Anne edged the bike forward, the wheel balanced on the edge. She whispered a prayer and moved forward. Anne watched the ocean sink behind the thick green foliage of beech trees and giant laurels. The wind whipped her hair across her face as she picked up speed.
She hit the bottom of the hill in no time and flew halfway back up the next mound before she had to start peddling.
The waves tormented the sandy seashore, roaring with delight in blue-white spray. They followed the jagged trail as it wound its way round sharp corners, long bends, and precipitous drops.
Just as the sun kissed the horizon, they came to a stop. Before them, nestled between the ocean and rolling green hills was a lone beach house. The entire building had been pushed over at a thirty-degree angle, the wooden beams cracked in half. Even from that distance, Anne could see the windows had been smashed, the white exterior dirtied and chipped. But it was the first house they’d seen – possibly the only house they would see – before they hit the city.
Anne noticed Jordan was looking at the house with a peculiar expression on his face – thoughtful, with a hint of sadness.
“We’d best head down, don’t you think?” she said.
Jordan, eyes distant, nodded.
145.
They wound their way down the steep winding path using just their brakes. At the bottom, Anne took off her shoes and socks and made fists with her feet in the hard gritty sand. She leaned her bicycle against the peeling porch of the house, shrugged the backpack from her shoulders and ran along the beach to the sea. Jessie overtook her and, squealing from the ice-cold temperature, dived below the surface. Anne did likewise, washing away the dirt, grime and mental scars of the past week. Anne straightened. The sea came up to her waist. She looked up toward the house.
Jordan stood there, still holding his bike firmly by the handlebars, as if mesmerised by the building.
Anne drew up beside him. “Jordan? Are you all right?”
He started from his reverie and nodded.
“You ought to take a swim. It feels great.” She beamed.
The semi-circular window in the attic was so dirty nothing could be discerned through it, though Jordan seemed intent on trying.
“Come on,” Anne said. “Let’s get inside.”
Their footsteps echoed on the bare wooden floors. With the windows broken, the outside had found its way inside. The once-vibrant colours had become drained and pale, with puddles cupped in warped floorboards. Animal turds decorated every room, turning trips across the room into a game of hopscotch.
Jordan turned and went into the living room, as if pulled along by invisible string. An umbrella stand and lamp had been knocked over. The light bulb glass crunched underfoot. Jordan brushed his fingers over the objects in turn. He sat on the sofa, head in his hands. Anne sat beside him and laid a comforting hand on his back.
“Jordan? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s this house,” he said, not looking up. “I’ve been here before.”
He raised his head and stared with haunted eyes.
“It’s the house from my dream.”
Episode Five
146.
Anne watched Jessie collecting dry wood out the window. There was precious little to find out on the beach, which was precisely why she’d sent her out there in the first place.
After Jordan’s disclosure, Anne had checked upstairs. One bedroom still had the bright yellow wallpaper it’d been decorated with. Toys were spread all over the floor – a purple unicorn rocking horse and some transforming robots. The other bedroom door had creaked open like something from a horror film, the interior painted in a vibrant red hue until she realised it wasn’t paint at all.
Presently Jordan sat staring into space, a bowl of dry cereal before him. He hadn’t touched it.
“You ought to eat something, Jordan. You must be hungry.”
/>
He didn’t reply.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He shook his head.
“You have to talk about it sometime, Jordan.”
“I can’t.” He looked at his hands. “Of all the houses we could have found why did we have to find this one?”
“You make it sound like it was unlikely.”
He frowned. “Wasn’t it?”
“Not if you suppose your subconscious led you here.”
“Here we go again,” Jordan said. “My subconscious. It’s more active than my conscious the way you go on about it.”
“It’s well documented that sometimes our subconscious takes us places, bypassing our conscience altogether,” she said. “Haven’t you ever been out driving and arrive home without realising it?”
“So it led me here, now what? Am I supposed to have an epiphany? A moment of realisation?”
“In a manner of speaking. It wants you to discover something.”
“Discover what?”
“If we knew that we wouldn’t need to discover it, would we?”
Jordan reached into his pocket, took out his knife and the block of wood he’d been whittling. “Let me know when I should start doing something worth discovering.”
Anne looked at the figurine. It had a long nose and thick mane. Something protruded from between the horse’s ears on its forehead. Jordan shaved off another curl. Anne’s eyes settled on Jordan.
“What?” he said.
“Why do you whittle, Jordan?”
Jordan shrugged. “It soothes me. Some people smoke, some drink, I whittle.”
“But why a horse?”
“Stacey liked horses. I was making it for her birthday. I thought I might as well finish it.”
“Did she ever tell you that?”
“Tell me what?”
“That she liked horses.”
“She must have mentioned it at some point.”
“Don’t you remember?”
