by Tim Lebbon
He felt like a failure, but sitting at the dining table and telling his tale, Ally put him right.
“You came home to us,” she whispered. “That’s a success.”
* * *
I sat back from the keyboard, fingers aching from the rapid typing. I hated the idea that Dad had been out there alone all night, scared and in danger. But I remembered my own delight when I’d seen him crossing the garden early that morning, cold and wet but coming back to us. Coming home.
None of us minded that he had returned without food.
“So now we know more,” I said. “The eggs sometimes rest until noise wakes them. The vesps don’t seem able to differentiate one noise from another. They’re unpredictable in a storm.”
Dad nodded and signed, “And don’t forget the cyclists. People are killing, too.”
I hadn’t forgotten the cyclists.
“The more we know, the better.”
19
I saw him open the car door and get out. It took him a while to stand, because he’d been stuck in the car for more than seven days. I don’t know what it’s like out in the countryside, but here in the city the vesps are everywhere—lining roof ridges and window sills, fences and hedgerows, sitting on car bonnets, just waiting. It’s as if they can smell or sense all the people still hiding from them. And I think they can wait longer than us. And there are the eggs, too, I’ve seen them laid in bodies, big swollen things ready to burst at the slightest noise. I’ve seen them born. Seen them swarm, attack, eating victims like eager young suckling at their mother’s breast.
I knew what he was doing and hated it.
He got out of the car, slowly, careful not to hit the door on the car parked next to him. He stood straight and seemed to take pleasure in stretching. Looked across the bonnets of four cars and right at me where I watched from inside the minibus, and his expression was so alien to me, so strange, that even now I still can’t…
He sat down out of view and started singing his favourite song. He used to sing it to me when I woke up with nightmares. Weird, but I honestly don’t think I’d heard it since.
Maria Roach, viral Facebook post, Saturday, 3 December 2016
Five days after he returned from that terrible stormy night Dad went out again, and this time he took me with him.
Mum objected, but only for a while. Lynne argued more, telling Dad that he was a selfish man taking his daughter into danger. Even when I stepped into the argument and signed that I was happy, that Dad and I would keep each other safe and I thought it was a good idea, Lynne did not relent.
I could see how awkward my family found it having an almost silent argument.
Jude backed me up. He’d changed a lot during our fortnight in the house, becoming less afraid and more mature. He was much quieter—we all were, of course—but more silent in his manner, too, as if he was thinking about things a lot more. In normal times I might have thought this a bad thing. A sad thing. I’d had some of my childhood robbed by the accident and the years of recuperation and adjustment that followed, and I’d wanted Jude to make the most of being a kid. But things had changed, and were still changing.
The fact that we were running very low on food helped settle the argument.
Dad and I went west, heading across the valley towards the white specks of houses visible on the distant slopes. It was noticeably colder than when we had arrived at the house, and north and west I could see snow dusting the highest hilltops. I was glad for some of the clothes that we’d found in the house, though the jackets were too big for me, the trousers too short.
We followed the lane leading from the house for a while, then cut across country until we met a B road. A mile later we saw the first bodies. Some were torn to shreds by vesps and whatever had snacked on them afterwards, others were swollen and home to glistening patches of vesp eggs. Some didn’t even look like people any more. We crept around them and continued on our way without incident.
I saw a cat. It slinked across the hillside above the road, keeping its distance but following us for a while. It paused when we paused. I thought of luring it down, but then remembered Otis. The cat disappeared a couple of minutes later. I never saw it again, but hoped that it was wise enough to stay alive. It had survived this long.
The first houses we came across were down on the valley floor. It was a small hamlet of half a dozen homes and a tiny, very old church. I felt a chill as we approached, because I could only think about what Dad had seen at the pub, and I dreaded what we might find.
There were no signs of habitation. Several cars were abandoned in the road, some parked normally, a couple askew and with open doors. I crept towards the first one and peered inside. Nothing. I looked up and Dad signalled that the second vehicle was also empty.
“Let’s try the one with the open door,” he signed, nodding across the street. Beyond the little church with its old graveyard and ivy-clad walls, a picture-perfect cottage stood with a gaping shadow where its front door should be.
I frowned, but Dad waved me forward.
We found no bodies in that hamlet, and no signs of life. We went into three out of the six houses, and by then our rucksacks were filled with tinned food, rice, and soup sachets. I suggested that we make our way back across the valley. I could sense that Dad wanted to explore further, but the place was starting to spook me. In the last house we’d found a table set for dinner, with glasses of orange juice furred around the edges and something dark congealed in a saucepan on the hob.
“I want to get back,” I signed. “We can come here again when we need more food. If we take more than we can easily carry we might drop something on the way back, and then…” I shrugged. And then we’ll be heard. But I didn’t even have to say that.
Dad nodded and gave me a careful hug. Even though I could not see his face I liked those hugs. It was a closer form of communication.
We left the houses behind, and the church seemed to watch us go. It was a strange feeling. I glanced back several times, and the spire was the last we saw of the small hamlet, visible for at least twenty minutes as we walked as if it were stretching, straining to keep us in view for as long as possible. I was spooking myself, that was all. Lynne would have said it was God watching over me. Yeah, right, I’d say, he’s done a great job up to now.
Ten minutes after the church spire finally sank from view behind a fold in the land, we saw the man.
I spotted him first. I stopped so quickly that Dad walked into me, and I felt the cool kiss of the make-do spear’s blade against my ankle. He stepped quickly to the side until we were shoulder to shoulder, and I knew he was remembering those dead cyclists. We’d discussed that back at the house—who might have done it, why, and how far away they probably were now. But it was Lynne whose comment had been most chilling. We’re going back to the animal.
The man stood in the road a hundred metres ahead of us. He was short and thin, dressed almost entirely in black, and he seemed to err to his left side, like a scarecrow with a broken stand. It took me a few seconds to recognise the collar. He was a vicar. But there was something wrong with his face.
I raised my hand in greeting, and the vicar waved back. Then he started walking towards us.
Dad caught my attention and signed, “Be careful, stay alert.”
“Really?” I replied. But he’d already turned back to face the advancing man.
The vicar wore round frameless glasses with one cracked lens, and he walked with a very pronounced limp. As he walked his gaze did not shift from us. He reminded me of Otis when he saw something interesting or something that might have been prey, his head hardly moving while the rest of his body drove him forward. It was nature’s way of maintaining the hunter’s focus and keeping his quarry in sight. The vicar held out a notebook as he came closer, and I stepped forward to take it. His lower lip and jaw were darkened with bruising.
I am the Reverend, the note said in a spidery scrawl. Would you like to join my flock of the Hushed? I held it
up to show Dad, then handed the notebook back.
The Reverend’s eyes flickered between us, always settling back on me. He’s scared, I thought, but then as I examined him I realised I was wrong. He actually appeared quite calm, one hand in his pocket, his stance casual. Only his eyes moved with any haste.
“I don’t like him,” I signed to Dad, and he nodded in response.
The Reverend seemed fascinated with the sign language. He waved at me, nodded, perhaps urging me to use it again. But I did not. He seemed too eager, too forward. Inviting us to join his flock without even asking who we were, where we had come from? There was something presumptuous in that.
And what were the Hushed? The capital ‘H’ worried me. I couldn’t tell why.
Dad looked around, then gestured for the notebook. The vicar handed it over along with a small pencil.
I assessed our position while Dad scribbled. We were in open countryside, the road bounded by hedges on both sides, and a few vesps drifted by a dozen feet above. I could see several more roosting on the hedge top, and there were likely others in the fields beyond. Exposed and vulnerable, I wished we could keep walking.
I looked back at the Reverend to see him reading what Dad had written. He frowned. Seemed angry. Then he opened his mouth into a smile, and I was terrified that he was going to speak.
But he could not. He winced as he opened his mouth wider and lowered his face slightly, giving us a perfect view of the bloody, ragged root of his mutilated tongue.
I gasped and pressed a hand to my face, taking a couple of steps back. Dad stood firm. I could see the whites of his knuckles where they grabbed the double-bladed broom handle. That’s it, I thought, looking at the still grinning Reverend, that’s what I was trying to see. He’s mad.
Dad waved me on and we walked past the Reverend. He touched my shoulder as we went, not quite grabbing, and I jumped aside. He stared at me so piteously that I paused and held out my hand. But instead of reaching for me, he opened his mouth again to show me the ruin where his tongue had been cut or torn out, and I could smell something rank and rotten on his breath.
Dad took my hand and we walked on. He hadn’t held my hand in years—my choice, not his—and I felt tears burning at everything he’d done, all he had given up and sacrificed to help me survive and move on after the crash. All he had lost. For an instant I felt totally, completely safe with him, a childish sensation that I had not felt for a long time. Since before the accident. The innocent, blind belief that young children have that their parents can protect them against anything. I tried to grab onto that belief now, because it drove away everything else. I wondered if my grip was as painful, as comforting, as his.
The road led across the valley floor, twisting and turning and yet visible for several hundred metres ahead. That was our way, I knew. Back to our family and relative safety, and back where something of the old world could still be touched via my iPad. For now I set aside my worries and fears at what the online world had become—
—that’s not for now, that’s for later, that’s for when I’m safe again—
—and embraced the existence we still had. Whether or not the Reverend really did have a flock, removing his tongue was a sign of madness. He could still groan and screech, I was certain. He could still bring them down if he was not careful.
He was keeping pace with us. I saw Dad’s expression, stern and grim, and glanced back at the man now walking confidently behind us. Gone was the limp, the sign of weakness or injury that he’d perhaps used to garner our pity, and now the Reverend looked like a new man. Even more confident, taller, more imposing than before. Stronger. He strolled while we seemed to hurry. And while there was nothing overtly threatening in his gait or his expression, he terrified me. His madness hung about him like a visible aura. What he’d done was a stain on his face.
Dad tugged at my hand and we walked faster. I concentrated on the ground, terrified that we’d trip or kick a stone, anything that might alert a nearby vesp to our presence.
A shadow closed around us then passed by, and the Reverend was walking backwards ahead of us, mouth open as he displayed the root of his new belief. He’d run to catch up. He scribbled on the pad, tore the page and let it flutter before him.
I grabbed it from the air.
With me and the Hushed you might survive. Teach me your silent speaking.
I dropped the paper and let it float away. He’s going to trip, I thought. Fall, and while that might not make a noise loud enough, a cry of pain will. He’s going to—
Dad let go of my hand and brought up the broom handle with the blades at either end. He aimed it threateningly at the Reverend, and the man stopped so suddenly that Dad almost speared him there and then, the carving knife’s point pressing against the tight white collar around his throat. There was no blood on the collar at all. Must have stripped before having his tongue ripped out, I thought. Or cutting it out himself.
The Reverend blinked quickly behind his frameless glasses, one hand clasping the pencil, the other his pad. Slowly, he went to write something else.
Dad barged forward and pushed the man aside, and I quickly followed. As we walked down a slight slope I looked back several times to see the Reverend standing there in the road, still with his back to us, apparently looking down as he wrote something on his pad. His stance looked dismissive, but I knew that it was anything but.
The last time I glanced back he was gone.
I looked at Dad but he was focused on walking quickly, silently away from the madman. I reached for his hand again but he only squeezed once before letting go.
We reached the house an hour later without further incident. The haul of food should have made us happy, but we both stayed on edge. I didn’t know whether Dad told anyone about the encounter.
I kept it to myself.
I went to the small room I’d taken and checked the iPad. Still plugged in, still fully charged. I opened the scrapbook and entered “The Silence”.
Maybe it’s because no one’s policing it any more. Maybe it’s because all the filters are down, both electronic and moral. Maybe it’s because I’m looking more, delving deeper into the places I never used to go. But I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s any of that. I think it’s because everything is changing, and just as Dad sees things he’d never have believed possible in the world outside—those two cyclists murdered for their bikes—so I’m seeing and sensing things in here that weren’t here before.
I sat back on the bed and ate some of the food I’d brought up with me. A bowl of tinned fruit mixed with custard. I’d loved it as a kid, but now it tasted desperate. Maybe because there wasn’t much choice. I continued typing.
Social media feels changed. Weird. Stale or… no, not stale. Strange. Less reliable, more prone to hysteria. Maybe the Internet is going mad.
Before, if I’d found something disturbing there was always somewhere to retreat, a sea of relative normality because most people prefer to float in that place. There’s curiosity in anyone, and sometimes that might drive people to look at stuff they usually avoid. But mostly people are pretty normal. That normality has gone.
No one really knows what’s normal any more.
There’s lots of talk of suicide, for a start. Whole sections of YouTube, links from Twitter, announcements and photos on Facebook and other sites, all about people finding their own way out. I stopped looking after seeing three or four “goodbye” films, because they depressed me so much. But they’re everywhere, and sometimes I just can’t avoid the pictures or comments.
News is still coming in from Europe and beyond, so much of it so quickly that I can’t keep up, and I’m just dipping in. It’s like picking out single sentences from a five-hundred-page book; there’s no way I can understand the whole story from that, only isolated incidents. I’m doing my best but… it’s like distances are growing larger. The walk there and back today, maybe five or six miles, felt like for ever. France suddenly seems like another world.
There are the shouts and screams, written and literal, by people wanting, craving order. Official announcements are still being put out by the government, police, army, media, local authorities. But it’s becoming more and more difficult to tell real announcements from fake ones. Contradictory advice is issued and spreads across the net. Stay at home… move north. Don’t touch the vesps… dead vesps are not a danger. They are dying out… their spread is continuing.
And then there are the haters. The net has always been filled with them, but they’re now the ones making the most noise (sometimes I wish they would, literally, because we’re in enough trouble without them). Extremists from all the big religions are saying that this is their own particular end of days, apocalypse, whatever. Anti-religious people are out in force too, shouting back at them with just as much nut-job fervour. People blaming the government. Environmentalists saying it’s because of centuries spent raping the planet. The French blaming the British, the British blaming Russia, Russia blaming everyone. A whole network of hatred across the web, and I wonder what sits in the middle, sensing the vibrations and waiting to pounce.
It’s as if the moment society started to break down, people lost their handle on right and wrong. Did they ever really have it? Dad tells me that he’s always scared of bad things happening to good people, but I’m starting to wonder if there were ever good people at all. The world’s getting bigger, the groups we live in are getting smaller, and we’re going back to the way things used to be. Back to the animal, Lynne said. Thousands of years ago we lived in villages. Tens of thousands of years ago, small nomadic bands.
What next?
Perhaps we’re all destined to face the future alone.
“Fucking hell, that’s depressing,” I whispered. Speaking to myself was a strange habit, and I only did it when I was really upset or depressed or so wound up about something that I felt the need to shout. But right then, the whisper was enough.
I flipped the iPad lid closed and sat back. When I blinked I saw the Reverend and his horribly mutilated mouth, felt his eyes on me when I signed, like a hungry man seeing roast meat.
