One (15 page)

'I get a feeling they saw us,' Chris said, risking the ire of his girlfriend for contradicting her.

Now they were running. Becky led them to a reception area on the east side of the hospital. A café was filled with patients and visitors obese with death. A security guard's hand was splayed on a visitors' book, his ravaged eyes downcast, tongue protruding as if in revulsion over his swollen, polished fingers. His skin was like paper, the heat had driven out the moisture from his bones. He was little more than a pillar of salt in a uniform.

They filed out, heads snapping this way and that as they searched for a path to safety, or somewhere to hide.

'Keep moving. Let's try to stay close and change direction as often as we can.'

They made their way through houses and shops, café kitchens into back alleys, hotel lobbies – Nance was eager to hide out in the rooms, but Jane's flesh tightened whenever they went indoors.

Eventually, with Angela close to tears and Brendan in need of oxygen himself after pushing his wife for so long, Becky asked if they might be safe now.

Jane stood still, looking back the way they had come. He waited a long time. Something in him, some diver's sensitivity to pressure change, suggested they were being followed.

'OK,' he said. 'I think we can rest for a while. But not too long, yes?'

'Well, that'll be for us to decide,' Chris said. Jane noticed the change in him, how he became cockier, more aggressive, when the number of companions increased.

'Of course,' Jane said. 'But if you're coming with me, I want to crack on.'

'We haven't decided what we're going to do yet,' Chris said.

Jane snorted. 'I'm sorry. I'm finding it hard to care. But in ten minutes, I'll be leaving. Anyone who wants to come along is welcome. Whatever you do, seriously, good luck.'

Chris wouldn't be mollified. Nance was egging him on with her eyes, with her body language. Jane gave him every opportunity, backing off, turning away, but Chris was at the point where any kind of retreat would be seen as cowardice. Nance would gut him for it later.

'Every step of the way you've been laying down the law,' Chris said. 'I'm not used to being ordered around.'

Jane couldn't suppress his laughter.

He felt Chris's hands on him, a push, a provocation. He felt fingers tighten on his jacket, turning him around.

'Maybe things can change a little bit,' Chris said, his fury spitting between clenched teeth, empurpling his face.

'You can be in charge all you like, Chris,' Jane said. 'Look around you. The world is all yours. Build an army. Go on a rampage. Conquer your enemies. Shout at their dead faces. Call them names—'

Chris hit him. The sound of the punch was flat and pathetic in this dead space. Jane felt a brief flare of pain in the lower left side of his jaw and thought he heard a distant scream, like those that had haunted them on their last few nights in the countryside.

Angela and Brendan turned away. Becky and Aidan watched with open mouths. Nance seemed excited, turned on almost, but confused too; perhaps she had been expecting a fight. Jane's pacific reaction was not in her copy of the script.

Jane readjusted his goggles, removed the air filter from his mouth and spat. Clean. 'What are you thinking, Chris?' Becky asked. 'We survived this terrible thing. There are hundreds of thousands, probably more like millions of people dead, and you're giving someone a slap because they said something you didn't like? Jesus.'

'Jesus,' Aidan said.

Jane kept his mouth shut. He stared at Chris, seeing the fight crumble out of him. Chris held up a finger; his hand was shaking violently: all that adrenaline crammed into his muscles and nowhere to go.

'A warning,' Chris said, but his voice could not invest in the weight of what he was trying to say.

They weren't safe.

As soon as they moved on they heard whooping noises again. Sounds of joy taken by some as yet unknown quantity into the realms of nightmare. These were violence sounds, death sounds. They carried on the wind currents like vengeful ghosts. Angela pushed herself up from the wheelchair and cried out: 'Leave us alone!'

Jane put a hand on her shoulder but it was too late. The whooping had stopped. Now they could hear determined footsteps slapping towards them.

'Keep your heads down,' Jane said. 'Don't make eye contact. Give them what they want. Don't give them an excuse to hurt us.'

There were six of them – five men and a girl, all of indeterminate age – and they came sprinting out of Castles Farm Road. They did not look good. Their heads had either been shaved to the quick or burned back almost to bone. They looked like something peeled and bruised and sore: too pink, purple and moist. Their blasted faces carried eyes that were overly bright, too intense. Jane wondered if they could focus properly; it was clear they had taken drugs of some sort. And then he saw the melted eyelids, the skin hanging off them like strips of torn material, and he understood why. They were not going to live for long.

'You!' one of them screamed, and they all swerved towards Jane, like starlings at dusk.

Jane again cursed their lack of a weapon, especially when he saw the ice axes hanging from their belts. He hoped that a lack of obvious threat might work in their favour; Angela and Aidan too. The gang didn't stop moving, even when they were within metres of their quarry. They prowled and twitched and spat and perspired. Nobody said anything until Angela again rose.

'Sit yourself back down!' the girl screamed. Metal studs poked out of her shoulders. Her shaven head was pockmarked with razor scars and slashes; it was difficult to guess if any were deliberate.

The girl wore a T-shirt bearing the legend
I LOVE GIRLS THAT LOVE GIRLS
. Some of the men wore knuckledusters. The pain they felt was there in their eyes; you could see it beyond the gauze of narcotics, you could hear it in every laboured inhalation.

'We have painkillers,' Jane said.

One of the men, a tall bull-shouldered figure with lips so dry they had blackened, laughed and unclipped one of the ice axes. He buried it to the hilt in his own thigh. They knew they were going to die.

'We have water too,' Jane said. They were clearly dehydrated. They were high on whatever they had injected or swallowed, but also on the natural chemicals with which their failing bodies had flooded their bloodstreams.

'Fuck your water!' The girl again, stabbing her head into his airspace like a weapon. '
What are you doing here? This is our sweetshop. You been stealing sweets?
'

Jane licked his lips. Carefully he said: 'We took some painkillers. Some inhalers. That's all.'

'That's all?' asked the man who had injured himself. He hobbled around them, each stamp of his foot on the ground pumping fresh blood up around the blade embedded in his thigh. 'The fact is, you set foot in our sweetshop. Without express permission.'

Another of the men ducked towards them, squat, boxheaded, his teeth bared, gums bleeding a scarlet wash across them. 'Shoplifters,' he said, '
will
be prosecuted.'

'We didn't know,' Jane said. 'You can have it all back. We'll go somewhere else.'

'No. You won't,' said the girl, her words turning to ash. Her eyes were on Jane's throat. She was unhooking her axe; they all were.

Jane could see what was coming. He drove his fist into box-head's face and shouted '
Run
.'

He saw Becky drag Aidan away. Brendan was flapping at the girl's hands, trying to get her to drop the axe. Chris's hands were up in an appeal. Nance had ducked behind him, her hands holding on to the waistband of his jeans. Angela was leaning over her knees, praying or crying or trying to catch her breath.

Jane heard movement behind him and turned to keep it in front. As he circled he saw Angela lift her head, concern folding into her features. She raised a hand. He didn't realise she was reaching for him until he felt the blow on the back of his head. Suddenly he was on his knees, warmth trickling down his nape. He tried to stand but he couldn't feel his legs. Cold filled them. He vomited, put out a hand, but his eyes couldn't measure how far he had left to fall. He heard someone shout, 'No, Chris,' and then a cry: avian, shrill.

And then blackness.

9. THE PLUCKING POSTS

Blue sky. Such a searing science-fiction blue that he thought it must be a screen and looked to the horizon in case he could see its edge. He was lying on his back in a field. His arms were outstretched. Stanley's hands were touching his. They wrestled with each other lightly, fingers interlacing, interlocking, prodding, stroking. Jane turned his hand into a claw and froze it in mid-air. He began to move it jerkily, like a crippled crab:

Chum-chiggle-iggle-um-ching-cha . . .

No, Daddy
, Stanley cried out, his voice a mash of giggles and pretend fright.
No
.

Jane moved his hand closer to where he imagined Stanley lay, looking up in gleeful terror as the probing fingers drew nearer. There was a tickle at the end of it all, when the suspense became so great that he was convinced Stanley would come apart at the seams with unbearable pleasure.

A shadow flitted across the rearing perfection of sky. A jet, Jane thought. But it returned, or was followed by another.

Dad?

Jane was twelve when he went fishing for mirror carp with his best friend at the time, a boy called Carl from his class at school. They'd cycled to the gravel pit, mist-covered and grey this particular winter morning, with rods already set up and baited, pieces of corn infused with vanilla extract speared on their hooks. Jane had told Carl that vanilla extract was a bit gay, but Carl said the fish liked it, that they wouldn't spit the corn out because of it.

They ditched their bikes next to the pit and pitched a tent. They made their casts and sat watching the tips of their rods. Soon Jane dug into his rucksack and started divvying up their breakfast. Morning rolls spread with peanut butter and mashed bananas, cold crispy bacon wrapped in kitchen paper, a flask of hot chocolate. Jane was bored after a couple of hours. He wasn't the fishing nut; he'd simply agreed to come along with Carl who had a passion for carp. It had sounded like an adventure. It was just cold and dull.

He told his friend he was going to do a round of the pit on his bike, maybe see if there was anywhere to do some jumps. Carl waved him off. Something made Jane turn to look back at his friend when he was on the opposite side of the pit. A figure, slight and pale, wearing a Lord Anthony covered in
Star Trek
badges and jeans so faded they were almost white.

Almost immediately he heard the sound of cows lowing. He turned toward the noise, nervous. He didn't like cows. He didn't like their thick pink tongues licking at too-wet nostrils. He didn't like their swollen udders and the caking of shit around their tails. They stank. They attracted flies. He drove his mother berserk because she was worried he wasn't getting enough calcium inside him.

There were no cows in the field. He could hear the groan of morning traffic rising from the main road, a couple of hundred yards away. And this lowing.

He scrambled through the sludge of rotten leaves and mud, splashing cold, dirty water all up the back of his cords – his mother was going to clear his lugholes out over
that
when he got home – and found his way barred by a fence. Behind that were a couple of parked cars and an open door to the building beyond. The sound was coming from that.

Jane thought to go back to Carl and ask him about it – he knew this area better – but instead he dumped his bike and climbed over the fence. He went to the door and peeked inside. There were five men in white gowns and helmets, like a team of weird construction workers dressed up as ghosts. One of them turned around and Jane was aghast to see an apron slicked with blood. He stepped back out into the cold air, glad of it in his lungs, smacking him in the face. He thought about getting back on his bike and cycling to a phone booth, calling the police. There was murder going on here.

He had to make sure. He ran around the back of the building, where lorries were backed up against open bays. He heard the cows again. And other noises. Screams and squeals. This sounded nothing like the deaths that occurred on
Kojak
. Through a window he saw cows being led to pens. A man with what looked like a large black wand bent over them and pressed it to their heads. There was a hiss, a deep
ka-chunk
sound, and the animals dropped.

He didn't know whether what he felt then was relief or sickness. It was another kind of murder, after all.

He was thinking of bacon sandwiches, and whether he would miss them if he decided to become a vegetarian, when he heard another scream. This one was altogether different. It was high-pitched. Somehow
wetter
. It suggested a knowledge of what was happening to its owner.

He ran back to the windows, thinking of intelligent animals, wondering crazily when the British public had developed a taste for dolphins or octopi, and saw a long steel trench with lots of metal teeth turning within it. Someone had been piling indeterminate cuts and wobbling, shiny bits of offal from a plastic chute into one end but had got his arm trapped. His mates were running towards him and the man was screaming
Shut it off, shut it off
. Thankfully, Jane couldn't see his face. He didn't say anything else after that, because the auger ground him into the trench and he was killed. Jane heard the scream cut out as if the man had flicked off his own power switch. He'd heard, even at this distance, through the glass, the pulverisation of thick bone. He'd seen the teeth of the machine impacted with flesh and torn clothes. The man's face had risen from the trench, scooped up by a blade, like a bad horror mask on a pound-shop hook.