Spawn of Man (18 page)

Chapter Nineteen

2036. October, Sunday. 11.04 a.m.

Jack Blythe stood washing his hands at the kitchen sink. The radio was turned on but the volume was low, and the report being broadcast still sat on the edge of his perception. There was a noise from upstairs, like the opening of a suitcase zip, long, crisp and snapping off towards the end. Jack stopped the water flowing from the tap and tilted his head, already beginning to disregard the noise. The only thing that would compel him to tackle the thirteen steps that lead to the first floor would be the
imminent
emptying of his bladder. All else was secondary and therefore not worth the considerable effort.

Jack’s legs protested on a far more regular basis these days. His knees creaked and groaned as if they had been surgically replaced with old floorboards and the pain that radiated into his back was hot and cruel. Jack knew of no sure-fire method that would appease the remonstrations from his limbs, but avoiding the thirteen stairs was a start. Denying his knees the opportunity to inflict more torture on him by restricting visits to the first floor was a minor victory in the battle against his own body. But it was a victory nonetheless.

However, Jack knew he was losing the war. Ever since Kathy, his wife of fifty years, had passed away five years ago, he had been starring down the barrel of a gun. She had been his only ally in the conflict with old age and her passing had left him vulnerable and exposed.

Yes, he could have installed a downstairs bathroom or a stair lift. But the truth was Jack had surrendered and resigned himself to the outcome. He no longer cared that he was reaching the end of his time. There were no children and of course, no Kathy.

The noise from the radio drifted across the edges of his awareness again and somewhere within the sound, Jack thought he detected a brittle, slightly desperate note. He strained to hear but his hearing was flawed now and Jack could not be certain if this interpretation was connected to that impairment somehow. And besides, Jack did not have the inclination to fumble with the radio’s volume control. It would inevitably result in more pain, this time localized in his arthritic fingers.

So Jack prepared a cup of weak coffee and left the kitchen, and the radio droned on in the background, unheard.

The voice being broadcast was frantic. ‘Dear God, please, everyone, listen to what I am telling you. For the love of God, we are under some kind of attack! These… things are appearing from thin air! For God’s sake get off the streets! The army and civil defense bodies
have
been mobilized. The Prime Minister will speak in the next sixty minutes. If one of these things appears in your home, defend yourself! Do not try to speak to them, I repeat, do not try to engage them in conversation, they
are
hostile!’

Jack moved into the lounge with his coffee, walking past the TV set. The television programs had all been taken off air and every channel was broadcasting reports on the crisis. A young reporter was on the screen, obviously terrified and attempting to keep his voice as even as possible. Behind the reporter a building burned, the flames out of control and unattended. As the reporter spoke a window burst outwards as a figure hurtled through the glass. The figure plummeted to the ground from nine stories, turning once, screaming with hair and arms ablaze, before it hit the pavement with a sickly wet sound.

The young reporter closed his eyes and stopped speaking for a moment. Then he continued with his eyes still shut tight, even though the death had taken place behind his back.

‘There seem to be confusing reports as to the phenomenon. The military has called for calm and our sources indicate martial law will be invoked within the hour.’

Nervously, the young reporter opened his eyes, staring apprehensively at the camera. ‘We are being told that the Prime Minister will address the nation shortly. Although there are no explanations for what is happening, speculation is ranging from alien invasion to government experiments in inter-dimensional travel. What is known is that the entities are appearing all over the world, in every country. And the devastation they are wreaking is total and unprecedented.’

Jack’s brain registered segments of the report and disregarded them, assuming it was a fictional drama of some description. He moved into the hallway and retrieved his post from the floor by the front door, grimacing as he inclined his back quicker than the rigid bones would consent to, and almost dropping the cup he held. The postal service was the last vestige of the old-world to survive the modern age. Although it existed now only as lip service to those times, and it was necessary for citizens to register and pay for its limited services. Jack owned a computer of course, but had virtually refused all implants and multimedia paraphernalia.

There seemed to be some manner of commotion in the street outside, shouting and screaming. Jack could see distorted images move through the colored and frosted glass of the door, like phantoms changing their shape as they flickered across the uneven surface.

‘Kids!’ he sneered. ‘Bloody kids.’ And collecting the few items of post, and stretching his indignant back muscles out, he returned to the lounge.

‘My God! My dear God!’ exclaimed the young reporter on the screen. Jack threw another cursory glance at the screen.

There was a reporter crouched behind the remnants of a building, covered in dust and debris, and he was cowering and clutching his microphone to his chest. The camera shots that caught his petrified features also displayed the scene beyond the barricade. The drama was extremely realistic and very explicit. The base of the building that the reporter had formerly stood outside was still ablaze and bodies were crashing to the ground at regular intervals now. Four or five strange beings had blinked into shot, seemingly from nowhere.

Jack frowned at the footage, as one of the tall, thin, grotesque creatures stooped over a twisted, broken form. It was one of the people that had fallen from the building, a woman. She had evidently flung herself from only three or four stories, and was in agony with limbs at improbable angles and part of her skull detached. She had bright blonde hair and the smashed section of skull lay a foot away from her head, and hair was still attached to it. It looked like the woman had simply removed a hairpiece, except there was a pink and grey bulge protruding from a hole in the side of her now misshapen head.

Amazingly the woman still lived and she writhed and squirmed amongst the dust and falling embers from the burning building. The thing standing over her was cocking its head from side to side, studying the woman’s suffering, when it heard a noise from above and it tilted its massive, deformed head upwards. A shrill scream was falling, slightly preceding the figure from which it issued. It was a man, travelling at a rapid pace and performing a series of uncoordinated tumbles as he watched his world move fluidly through every perceivable angle.

The creature moved out of the path of the falling man lithely and he careered into the injured figure already on the ground. The falling man died instantly and the impact produced a moist, smacking sound, as sections of his flesh burst. The injured woman took the force of the collision from her waist down and that area of her body was pulverized into a bloody, dismembered mess. The creature generated a high-pitched warbling noise, as if with glee, and approached the woman again with renewed intent and vigor.

Jack narrowed his eyes and whispered, ‘Bloody sick. Who watches rubbish like this anyway?’

The camera shook, and the scene became slightly distorted, before righting itself again. The injured woman was in the final moments of her life. Her shattered body was virtually severed at the waist and remnants of her spine were visible through exposed crushed pelvic bone. The creature seemed enthralled by the misery the woman was enduring and reached down to take hold of the exposed spinal column.

Jack grimaced and spoke again to himself, ‘Disgusting. Why would they make stuff like that? That’s not entertainment, for God’s sake!’

The creature placed one foot solidly on the woman’s head, anchoring her to the ground and pushing her face deeper into the rubble. Then it stood erect, dragging the woman’s spinal column from her body and snapping it off at the neck.

Jack turned away and was confronted by his late wife Kathy. The cup of coffee slipped from his hand, bouncing once on the floor and drenching his shin in the hot liquid. The coffee soaked through the thin material of his trousers to scald the even thinner skin on Jack’s lower leg, but he did not react to the searing pain. His mouth fell open and his heart struggled to maintain a rhythm.

Kathy did not speak, did not blink and did not breathe. She sat with her cold dead hands folded neatly on her lap. She wore the black and red flowered dress she had been buried in and her silver hair was brushed away from her face.

Jack noticed she wore no shoes. Of the hundreds of words that Jack could have uttered he chose, ‘Where are your shoes, Kathy, my love?’

Kathy did not answer. Her face seemed very sad and not quite right. The eyes were the same green color and the shape was the same, but they seemed empty and hollow now. Also the mouth was too wide and it kept opening and closing, almost mechanically. When the mouth opened, it allowed a glimpse of rows of wickedly sharp, black teeth. There was no variation amongst the teeth. It was as if each individual tooth had been filed down into a fine point, and Kathy seemed to be testing these saw-blade fixtures by snapping them together, again and again.

Her usually manicured nails were long and hooked and her skin glistened thickly, like it was doused in petrol. In life she had been a tall, graceful woman, even when her final years had bowed her. But now as she sat on their old couch, and even though her hands were folded demurely, she was no more than four and a half feet in height and the slight curvature of her back was greatly pronounced. The material of her dress was creased and stretched across her shoulder blades to permit the rise of a hunched span of bone that thickened the back of her neck and rounded her small shoulders. A thin line of saliva lined Kathy’s chin and fell to her lap between her folded hands as Jack stood looking at her. Her lips were black and thin.

The young reporter on the screen behind Jack was whispering now, ‘… and more and more reports coming in. Dear God, they are appearing all over the globe. They are maiming, killing, and… and, my God, eating people. What the hell is happening?’

Jack felt his legs begin to buckle and he sat in one of the chairs placed opposite the place where Kathy sat. He held onto the armrests, as if he were zooming around a fun-fair ride at breakneck speed. The young reporter was screaming.

Jack had forgotten the program now though and was oblivious to the events on the screen. The camera had fallen to the ground and now rested at a slant, so that the world was viewed at an unnatural angle. And through this perspective the young reporter was now filmed kneeling in prayer. Behind him there were a dozen of the creatures, with more materializing as the young reporter softly wept the words of his petition.

The screen wavered and became hazy as bands of static jumped across the picture. But through the distortion, and seconds before the screen collapsed into darkness, the young reporter’s fate was captured on film. One of the beasts appeared where the reporter knelt. Only it did not form next to the reporter or in a position in front or behind the young man. It occupied the
same
point in space as the young reporter. The young man exploded as if he had swallowed a hand grenade that had detonated deep inside his stomach. Blood and fragments of flesh and bone splattered the screen as the creature stretched out its arms and howled in ecstasy.

The screen remained blank. Then an older man appeared, sitting in a studio and wearing a facial expression as blank as the screen had been seconds earlier.

He seemed to compose himself slightly and began to speak, reading prepared information in a staccato voice. ‘Martial law has now been imposed across the country. The Prime Minister has been killed in an incident involving the creatures. I repeat the Prime Minister has been killed in an incident with the creatures. Reports are now suggesting some of the creatures that have appeared
resemble
people already deceased.’

The man paused and Jack peered over his shoulder as the words finally began to impact upon his awareness. ‘We are led to believe that some of these… things
appear
to be the… re-embodiment of the dead. As fantastical as this sounds, we understand that positive identification has been made by members of the public and in some cases it seems that recently deceased members of family have returned to their homes.’

Jack’s eyes narrowed. There was a stream of words running across the bottom of the screen, but he could not bring them into focus.

The man continued, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we do not know how long we will be able to broadcast. All we can say is, please stay indoors and await further advice. The military is on the streets as we speak. Again we must impress on the public: this seems to be some kind of global event. We have no idea of the reason for the creatures’ actions or their agendas. We have eyewitness testimony of acts of cannibalism committed by the creatures, but we also have reports of the military retaliating and killing some of them, I repeat, they
can
be killed. But we must emphasize, this
is
an invasion by a hostile enemy of an undetermined nature. The general public must do all it can to stay safe. Do
not
attempt any communication with the creatures, even if they appear to resemble family members.’