The Devil in Green (2 page)

Briefly, he caught his reflection in the rear-view mirror: shoulder-
length brown hair framing a good-looking face that took its note from an
ironic disposition. It sent a shiver through him, and he looked quickly
away.

Obliquely, Mallory wondered if Salisbury was no longer there, like the
rumours he had heard of Newcastle and some of the villages in the
Scottish borders. The night had been so impenetrable as he drove south
that the whole world could have been wiped away.

If he'd had a choice in the matter, he would have travelled in daylight.
The countryside was filled with gangs armed with shotguns and knives,
raiding villages and the outskirts of towns for food; life had become
infinitely more brutal since everything had turned sour. But it was the
other things that cast more disturbing shadows across life. The silhouettes
of little men moving slowly across the open fields under the stars. The
thing he'd glimpsed up close once, emerging from an abandoned pig farm:
eyes like saucers, scales that glinted in the moonlight and fingers that were
too, too long. It only confirmed the stories that kept everyone confined to
their homes once the sun set: the night didn't belong to man any more.

Mallory watched the traveller's slow progress and wondered obliquely
what was on his mind.

The rider bowed his head into the rising storm, pulling his waterproof
tighter around him as the gusts of wind threatened to unseat him. Seeking
shelter was undoubtedly the wise thing to do, but the hard weight of his
fear wouldn't let him. To rest in a place where he could be cornered was
more than he could bear to consider; at least on the road he had the
chance
to flee. Single-minded determination was the only thing that kept him
going. He didn't even glance behind him, because he knew his imagination
would conjure faces in the trees and hedgerows, the rustling noises of
pursuit, the presence of something coming up hard to drag him from his
horse.

Nothing there,
he told himself.

He'd planned his journey to skirt Salisbury Plain - it was a no-man's
land and anyone who was stupid enough to venture in never came out
again - yet even the surrounding countryside felt unbearably dangerous.
But if he made it to Salisbury, it would all be worth it. Finally: salvation,
redemption, hope.

The thunder made him start so sharply that he almost jumped from the
saddle. It was the roar of a giant beast bearing down on him. The lightning
came a few seconds later, turning the inky fields and clustering trees to
stark white.

Nothing there,
he confirmed with relief.

To his right, the stern mount of Old Sarum rose up in silhouette. Soon
he might see a few flickering lights - candles, probably, to light loved ones
home. Perhaps someone had even got a store of oil to keep a generator
running. He was surprised at how much that simple thought gave him a
thrill.

More thunder, another flash of light. His thighs were numb beneath
sodden denim; he couldn't feel his fingers. He wished it were still high
summer.

The wind deadened his ears and started to play tricks on him. A gust
eddying around the cochlea became a song performed by a string quartet; a
breeze penetrating deeper was the whisper of an old friend. The blood
banging around inside his head only added to the dislocation that made him
ignore his most vital night sense. When the high-pitched whistle came, it
was nothing more than the protest of the trees' uppermost branches.

The second time the whistle rose, he clung on to the desensitised state
protecting him from the night fears; but the third blast gave him little
space to hide: it was closer, and had an insistence that suggested purpose.
Even then he couldn't bring himself to look around. He gave a futile spur
to the horse, but its weariness made it immune. Even his illusion of having
the freedom to escape had been taken from him.

A whistle is nothing
to
be scared of,
he told himself, while at the same time
picturing the bands of skinhead men with blue tattoos and dead eyes,
signalling to each other that it was time for the attack. He was armed for
defence, but he wasn't ready; he never had been a violent man, but he
could learn to change. The kitchen knife was in a makeshift scabbard of
insulating tape against his thick hiking socks and the cricket bat with the
nails hammered through it was slung over his back in a loop of washing
line. Which would be the best for use on horseback?

The whistle became insistent and continual, the high-pitched screech
somehow unnatural, not the product of men or musical instrument.
Suddenly it was
all
he could hear, and it was like nothing he had ever
heard before. It was growing louder, the unfortunate pitch making him feel
sick and disoriented; he wanted to plug his ears or sing loudly to drown it
out.

Instead, he forged on. So near to Salisbury, with its medieval cathedral
rising up to proclaim the majesty of God, with its ordered streets, its
gentility, its cafes and pubs, intelligence and history. Salisbury, the New
Jerusalem in the West.

Whistling is nothing compared to what I've been through
, he thought, but the
notion only made him feel worse.

As the road drove down steeply, the trees drew in to create a funnel
channelling the blasting wind. He felt like ice, and not just because of the
weather. To add to his discomfort, the rain started, quickly becoming a
downpour.

Shortly before he passed the first stretch of abandoned houses, he
allowed his gaze - stupidly
-
to wander away to the field on his right. A
flash of lightning brought it up like snow: across it dark shapes bounded;
not men.

He raced through the possibilities of what he might have seen, but
nothing matched the reality and the impossibilities were infinitely more
terrifying. Salisbury grew distant.

The whistling pierced deep into his brain, no longer a single sound but a
chorus of alien voices. Now he wanted to claw at his ears until they bled. It
was a hunting call.

He urged himself not to look around, but the magnetism was irresistible.
Tears blurred his eyes as he turned, and he had to blink them away before
he could see what was closing in on him. Another flash of lightning. Across
the countryside, the shapes fluttered eerily like paper blown in the wind,
drawing in on the road; some were already amongst the nearby trees,
dancing around the boles or swinging from the branches. Their whistling
grew louder as they neared, scores of them, perhaps even more than a
hundred. They had his scent.

He dug his heels hard into the weary horse's flanks, but all he could get
out of it was a burst of steaming breath and a shake of sweat. A cry caught
in his throat. He wanted to wish himself somewhere else, he wanted his
parents, but the shakes that swept through him drove everything away.

Though the blasting wind made his eyes sting, he kept his gaze fixed on
the wet road ahead, but soon his peripheral vision was picking up motion.
He was caught in a pincer movement. Some of them could have had him
then, but they were waiting for the others to catch up. Briefly, the hellish
whistling faded, but that was only because it was drowned beneath the
constant low shriek that rolled out of his own mouth. Dignity no longer
mattered, only his poor, pathetic life.