The Silence

by Tim Lebbon

  People attempting to flee in cars and aircraft would have quickly been taken down. I’d seen the terrible evidence of that, and was pleased to be out in the open, however much it stank, however terrible it was feeling a vesp’s wing snag my hair or brush past my arm.

  So far, none of us had cried out in fright. Not even Jude, bless him. But then kids always do adapt quickly.

  Right then, the future was barely an hour long. Find safety, somewhere we could hole up and rest, sleep, wait for whatever was to come. A place with food and power if possible, so I could monitor world events without worrying about the iPad running out of charge. After that we’d have to think about our future in the long term. Days ahead, we might have to consider how long our food supplies were going to last. Weeks, and if the power and water failed, we would have to adapt even more.

  Months? Would help come, would anything change? Could it really last that long?

  But it was the immediate future where the greatest danger lay. So I thought less than an hour ahead, less than ten minutes, and tried to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, treading carefully and lightly, so as not to bring down a cloud of vesps.

  One wrong move from any of us would put us all in danger. It was a heavy burden, but sharing it brought us closer together.

  At one point we all stopped and turned back the way we’d come. I saw a cloud of smoke boiling up into the sky. We could no longer see the burning vehicle or the upended Jeep downhill from it, but I guessed that something in the Land Rover had exploded. Vesps darted rapidly towards the noise, and I could just make them out, so many of them circling the smoke that they formed their own patterns in the sky.

  Mum waved us on. Lynne smiled, kissed her fingertips and touched my cheek. I smiled back. Such communication had become precious.

  I saw them taking lots of birds. Mostly they plucked them from the sky, eating them on the wing, but sometimes the vesps dropped down into the undergrowth or glided into leafless trees. The birds didn’t know to keep quiet. The beasts were stripping their songs from the countryside, and I remembered it clearer than ever.

  Mum had to stop and pee. She squatted down and we turned our backs, giving her some small privacy. Dad remained alert, glancing all around to see if even the sound of pee hitting the grass would attract the beasts. But we were safe.

  We came to a well-used path that veered along the side of the hill, and after a brief pause Dad turned right. He was still taking us roughly north, away from where we’d left the vehicles and the blocked road we’d seen further to the south. I could see far across the countryside here, but it was a surreal sight.

  It should have been beautiful. This must have been a rare November day in the Lakes, because the sky was mostly cloudless, the air clear, and the breeze breathing across the landscape was cool but not cold. A few sheep still speckled the hills and fields, though when we came closer we saw that most of them were dead. In the distance sprawled a small town.

  But familiar though the scene should have been, I could not see it without also seeing the vesps. Close by they drifted north and west, sometimes crossing paths, flying in groups here, individually there. Further away they were pale, slow specks dusting the view. Here and there I could see denser concentrations of the creatures, like wafting mist. In one place a couple of miles to the south-west a spiralling mass circled something out of sight. And above the small town there was a swarm.

  Smoke rose from a couple of places between the buildings, too thick to be from chimneys or garden bonfires.

  As we walked, I turned to Lynne and signed, “Can you hear anything?”

  My grandmother glanced at the town and shook her head. “Too far away.”

  I wondered if there were screams, and how far they travelled before fading to nothing.

  The path wound down behind an old stone wall, and we had to work our way around an area of waterlogged ground and through a couple of wooden gates. We all walked slowly, worried that splashes might alert a passing vesp, or even the squelch of shoes in mud. I moved close to the wall, reaching out now and then for balance as I concentrated on my footing.

  A stone moved beneath my hand. I fell to the left, shifting my hand quickly and stopping my fall before I struck the wall, but the stone tumbled away.

  I held my breath and winced, glancing quickly around at the others. They all stared at me wide-eyed. It made a noise! I thought, and I crouched down and looked for vesps coming for me.

  A few metres along the path, a vesp flew quickly past, sweeping over the wall and just missing it. The creature didn’t seem to notice us.

  I let out my held breath slowly, carefully. Dad waved us on.

  The muddy path continued, and a few minutes later the wall disappeared and the path swung down towards a road, and a wider parking area beside it. There were several picnic benches and a few litter bins, and an information board with cracked glass and a fading map of the area. It might have been a nice place to stop in the summer, with a spectacular view out across the wide valley and the walk up into the hills. But now it was a quagmire.

  And there were the dead.

  They were about a hundred metres along the road, down a gentle slope and just before a bend cut behind stark, leafless trees. Three cars had come to a halt on the other side of the road, one of them tilted precariously over a steep drop. The people had left the vehicles. Maybe they’d all been one group or even one family, but most of them had died alone. There was a huddle of bodies close to the rear vehicle, and six more were scattered along the road.

  Several vesps roosted on and around each car, and a crowd of them bickered over the body that seemed to have made it furthest along the road, a couple of hundred metres away. The one that nearly got away, I thought.

  We stopped when we saw the dead and grouped close together. I felt sick. At first I thought a couple of the people were still moving. Crawling away, perhaps. But then I saw the reality, and I almost cried out in disgust.

  On each body, nestled amongst the bloody remains opened to the world, several vesps pulsed and squirmed. They were laying eggs, I guessed, and each grotesque flex of their sickly-pale bodies might have been another expulsion. I wanted to run at them and knock them aside. I imagined my mother shooting them away, disintegrating their disgusting bodies with shotgun blasts. But neither course of action could save those already dead.

  Dad turned and signed to us all, “Across the road and down the hill.”

  Lynne pointed in the other direction, along the road and away from the nesting vesps. But I shook my head.

  “That’s back towards the roadblock, around the side of the hill.”

  Lynne nodded, but looking across the road she frowned. Trees grew close to the road there, and the land dripped sharply away into woodland.

  I could understand my grandmother’s misgivings. I’d have much preferred to stay on the road or the path we’d been following. Into the trees meant into the wild, and with the vesps abroad, that felt like a more dangerous place. But truth was, it was probably safer. Where there were people there would be vesps. The wild was the safest place to be.

  Mum leaned close to Dad and pressed her mouth to his ear. I held my breath, but saw Dad listening, and there were no signs that the vesps along the road heard anything.

  As he started to nod, I saw movement from the corner of my eye.

  A vesp squatted atop one of the litter bins less than ten steps away. Its small feet were clawed into the heavy rubber lid. Its strange tendrils were splayed behind it, like a featherless peacock’s tail. Its head, level with its body, seemed to be turned to one side. It was all teeth.

  Mum, Dad, no! I thought, but even in panic I did not speak. I waved instead, and as Mum whispered something else to Dad he saw, his eyes went wide, and he pushed her to the ground.

  The vesp flew at him and he fell, bringing his arm up in front of his face so that its mouth closed on the thick sleeve of his jacket.

  I froze. But it was Mum who did not
let terror slow her down. Even as she stood she was swinging the shotgun, and the metal barrel connected squarely with the vesp’s head. It flipped from his arm, tearing the jacket, sharp teeth trailing threads of material, and bounced across the gravel.

  Lynne took three steps and brought her foot down on the stunned creature’s head. It burst apart in a spray of dark red blood, tendrils stiffening and then slumping to the ground.

  I scanned around for other vesps, afraid that more might have heard, terrified that the dead creature had transmitted a scent signature or a call of some kind. But though some of them flew higher up, and those creatures still roosted on the cars and bodies along the road, none approached.

  Lynne stepped away from the bloody mess. When she reached the grass she wiped her foot slowly.

  Jude, little boy that he was, walked towards the dead creature to see. I grabbed his arm and shook my head. There was no telling how dangerous they were, even dead—that blood looked thick, and darker than it should. My brother pulled a face.

  Dad checked his arm. Even though the vesp had been at him for mere seconds the jacket was shredded, but his skin was intact. The thick material had saved him from any serious injury.

  I wondered what would have happened if he had been hurt. We had a few basic first-aid items like plasters and bandages, but nothing more heavy-duty. No needle and thread, no antibiotics. There was no saying what diseases those things might carry. Unknown, I thought. Whatever bacteria or viruses they carry will be unknown to medicine, so even if we did have antibiotics they’d probably be useless. The creatures were as good as alien. The idea depressed me. We were less than an hour out of the vehicles, and already we’d had a close call.

  I tried to bring the future in close once again, not projecting ahead. But I couldn’t help imagining Dad fevered, diseased, and dying of some terrible blood poisoning.

  “Clean your arm,” I signed.

  “There’s no wound,” Mum signed back.

  “The teeth might still have touched him.”

  Dad nodded, but signalled across the road. I understood. He wanted to get away from the dead creature as quickly as possible, just in case any others somehow sensed it and came to investigate.

  Slowly, careful not to scuff our shoes on gravel or trip over in a shallow pothole, we crossed the road and entered the woodland.

  17

  We were expecting another statement from the Prime Minister over an hour ago now, but so far there’s only silence.

  BBC Radio 4 News, 3 p.m., Saturday, 19 November 2016

  Please remember—listen through headphones.

  BBC Radio 4 News, 3 p.m., Saturday, 19 November 2016

  Huw was shaking. Holy fucking shit, she barely whispered and that thing heard! The shocked realisation as the pale shape on the bin resolved into one of them, its wings unfurling, shoving Kelly away and down, and then the sudden movement as it flew at where it had heard her voice, a blur of wings, the gaping mouth… it all rebounded back at him again and again, and other possible outcomes played out with equal, horrendous clarity. Kelly with the thing burrowing at her face. Jude, the vesp clawing and biting at his throat.

  He’d taken a moment to examine the dead vesp. The teeth were incredibly sharp, reminding him of the mouth of a piranha. It had long, slender claws on its stumpy legs, and the tips of its bat-like wings were also tipped with a vicious-looking claw. A clear fluid dripped from them. Poison, perhaps. For such a small animal it was comprehensively armed.

  He glanced back to make sure his family were following and saw similar shocked expressions on their faces. It’s only just begun, he thought. Looking far uphill he could still see a spreading haze of smoke from the burning Land Rover, and in that smoke would be the stench of his dead friend. It’s only just begun, and already it’s too much.

  As they crossed the potholed road he looked at the bodies. Three vesps were walking around one of them, as clumsy on the ground as they were graceful in the air. They reminded him of penguins, so awkward on ice, yet quick and adaptable under water. These creatures seemed to be guarding the corpse, the odd tentacle-like appendages at their rears waving at the air like sea anemones. Guarding the eggs they had just laid.

  A stone scraped beneath his foot and he stopped. Nothing happened.

  Moving again, he heard a pebble kicked across the road. He froze, seeing the pebble from the corner of his eye, looking around for the flash of yellow that might be a vesp homing in on the sound. Still nothing.

  When they reached the grass verge and ditch that gave way to the wooded area beyond, he was grateful to be walking on a soft surface once again. He smiled at Kelly and the kids, nodded at Lynne. His mother-in-law was suffering in silence as she always had. He’d always been frustrated at that, because although she believed she was perhaps too proud to accept help, in reality he thought she was just stupid. They were family, and if they couldn’t support her in her illness, who could? But now he was pleased. He could see the discomfort in her eyes, but he knew that to deal with that right now might upset Ally and Jude. He didn’t want to see them crying again.

  It was Jude who worried him most. Poor kid, he was only ten years old and he had seen too much already. Huw found it amazing how quickly his attitude to his son had changed. Days ago he’d have been angry if he found Ally showing the boy a horror movie, but now they were living in one. He’d done nothing to prevent Jude from seeing the corpses along the road. Maybe in his own panic Huw was beginning to realise that to survive in the new world, his son would have to understand it.

  He glanced at his watch. It was almost three-thirty, and in another hour it would be growing dark. He didn’t want them spending the night outside. Shelter was a basic human need, and one which he’d never had to worry about before. It felt strange not knowing where they were going to sleep, how they were going to survive the night. It would be very cold, perhaps windy, and they might even wake up to a frost. Could they sleep under the stars in such conditions? He didn’t even know. All the programmes he’d seen on surviving in the wild had been presented as entertainment. Now he wished he’d taken more notice.

  Would one cold night be enough to kill them?

  Was it safe to sleep in the cold, or should they keep moving?

  He was starting to panic. By deliberately heading into a region that was sparsely populated, they’d driven themselves into a different kind of danger. It was ridiculous, it was almost unbelievable, yet it was a sign of how quickly things had changed.

  Huw headed down into the woods. He crossed the ditch beside the road first, checking his footing before moving forward. The ground sloped down, gentler than he’d feared, and for a while the way amongst the trees wasn’t too difficult. The fallen leaves underfoot had been mulched down by frequent rainfalls; only a few weeks before this path would have been deadly, the leaves crisp and noisy. He deliberately took the lead and stepped slowly, checking every step for twigs or loose stones hidden in the undergrowth, and looking around to spot any vesps roosting nearby. Several of them veered through the trees, dodging trunks, but he saw more passing above the bare outstretched limbs.

  The slope grew steeper. The woodland was not large, and he could see down the slope to where it appeared to end. There was more open ground down there, swathed in ferns turning brown as they died back and spotted with rocky outcroppings. Beyond that he could not tell. But he was already beginning to doubt this course of action.

  He’d wanted to stay away from the road because the road meant people.

  But coming this way drastically cut down their chances of finding somewhere sheltered. Along the road there would be homes, farms and pubs, any one of which might provide somewhere suitable for the night, or even longer term. Cutting across country meant that they would only find a building by luck.

  Huw held up his hand and turned to face his family.

  Being unable to talk was so unnatural. He wanted to share his ideas with them, discuss. Though they might well be luckier than most—they
could communicate silently—this craving for conversation, for noise, was something he had never experienced before. He liked peace and quiet, but he was coming to realise that he liked the voices of his family more.

  “Maybe we should go back?” he signed.

  “Not up there!” Jude said.

  Ally shook her head. Lynne raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m afraid of not finding somewhere before it’s dark,” he said.

  Kelly frowned, and he knew she’d been thinking the same as him.

  “We’re ill-equipped to spend the night out in the open,” she said.

  What if we talk in our sleep? he thought. Ally was a deep sleeper, but Jude often chatted his way through dreams, and he had been known to sleepwalk. Inside they could handle that, but not out in the open. Not with vesps drifting past a few metres above them, huddled down in undergrowth or in the elbows of tree branches.

  And they couldn’t move in the dark. They would be blind, while day and night held no distinction for the vesps.

  “It’s too dangerous back there,” Kelly said. “We’ve got to balance the dangers. Do what’s best.”

  Lynne started signing but then waved her hands, nodded, and pointed downhill.

  Huw looked at his daughter. She also nodded.

  Balance the dangers, he thought. Bad or terrible. Great. Maybe a lot of our decisions will be like that from now on.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, he was convinced that they’d made the wrong choice. They had emerged from the wooded area and were still heading downhill. The undergrowth around them consisted of drying, dying ferns, tough heathers, and clumps of bramble bushes which were similarly dying down. Winter was coming, and the dried rustling of dead plants sounded like a last breath.