The Fly-By-Nights (23 page)

“—Where fly-by-nights like to hole up,” said Big Jon, indulging his habit of preempting the thoughts and suggestions of others. And again he said, “Go on.”

“Well,” said Garth, “we all of us know that a fairly large party of fly-by-nights, perhaps a swarm, has been moving apace with us heading north, and that recently—with all the breakdowns and other problems—they’ve even moved ahead of us. But the fact that they haven’t attempted to attack us is…well, it’s unusual to say the least. And I’ll risk repeating myself, but as I’ve stated before, I think it’s because they’re biding their time, looking for the perfect opportunity and…and in every regard being
instructed
or at least advised!”

Big Jon nodded and growled, “Softly softly catchee monkey!”

“Exactly,” said Garth. “And here we are, bottled up in this unexplored forest, unable to move on in a hurry—or even move on at all at night—and there could be dozens, hundreds of the monsters less than three hundred yards away through the trees and across the river, just waiting for darkness! So by all means we must man Don’s perimeter, but we should also have heavily armed men down on the approaches to those twin bridges; and here and now I volunteer myself and my squad to those tasks…”

As Garth finished speaking, a steeply slanting ray of weak sunlight found a way in through what must have been the smallest possible gap in the canopy’s outermost western fringe, and very briefly a myriad dust motes were seen swirling like miniature galaxies in its ephemeral beam. Then:

“Those rain clouds seem to be moving on,” said Myers, his normally strong voice suddenly small and shivery.

“Good,” said Big Jon, “but so is the time.” And turning to Maxwell he continued: “Garry, it’s time you went and organized the rest of the camp’s dogs. And tonight I want you out on the perimeter with your sniffers. Oh, and as of now we won’t worry too much about noise: if they want to make a fuss let ’em bark till they’re hoarse, just as long as they do their job! As for you three—” his keen gaze swept the faces of the night-watch bosses, “—you can get on and do what you’ve always done best, and may the good Lord watch over each and every one of us until morning…”

XII

For a little less than two hours Garth busied himself positioning his men on what remained of the tangled, almost obliterated road east of the forest, at junctions a quarter-mile apart from which a pair of lesser roads—in much the same degraded condition—had once serviced the bridges. He made sure that the men had superior, unobscured arcs of fire from the best possible cover, checked their weapons, ammunition and all other items of their equipment; and with evening turning to dusk and shades of night creeping from the east, he returned briefly to the camp a little less than two hundred yards away, where not far from Big Jon’s command trundle Layla had lit a tiny oil lamp in the entrance to their canvas shelter. For despite that beyond the canopy darkness was yet to fall, beneath it the gloom was already deepening.

Garth was only there to kiss and reassure her—and in turn to be hugged and reassured—but there was something different about tonight: a certain imminence that held him there with her a minute or two longer than he had intended. And all across the camp’s roughly circular area, though more especially around its outer edges, small oil lamps glowed like fireflies, casting fitful shadows where the people had erected their shelters. But as the camp settled down, and the murmuring of near-distant voices gradually faded—and the only movement was that of silent men and dogs on standby duty, when even the muttering of chief mech Ian Clement ended abruptly in a soft curse as he threw down his tools and gave up working on a broken generator—so the gloom deepened more yet and the sudden silence seemed other than natural…perhaps supernatural?

“What is it?” Layla asked, her voice hushed where she stood in Garth’s arms beside their makeshift lean-to. “I mean, why is it so quiet? Earlier—I don’t know if you noticed—but there were no birds calling in the trees, no small creatures rustling in the leaf-mould; only worms and beetles. It’s too still and I don’t like it. And just look at those dogs there, tails between their legs and starting at shadows! I think they’re feeling the strangeness. And all the clan folk, with nothing of energy left in them, apparently! But there have been times in the past when they’d be up, if only to huddle around a fire for company.”

“Fires are out,” Garth answered. “These huge trees are full of resin and the ground underfoot is a carpet that would smoulder and burn all too easily. Big Jon wouldn’t even have allowed oil lamps, but what few electrical batteries remain were needed by the men on duty on the perimeters. As for the people: they’re worn to the bone, and since there’s nothing else for them to do the best possible thing for them is sleep…and that includes you! And speaking of the night-watch: that’s where I should be, and without delay. But before I go…I only wanted to tell you how much I love you.”

“Oh, Garth—I love you, too!” She held him tighter still. “But I’ll ask it yet again—why does it feel so important that we tell each other that, especially tonight?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s like Big Jon says: feeling close to journey’s end we’re hopeful, but because we’re still not there we’re afraid we’ll fail. Which means that the closer we get, the more our fears will mount! It’s called a paradox, I think. Take my advice and at least
try
to sleep. And when you do, accept only the sweetest of dreams.”

With which they slowly drew apart, and Garth went out into the deepening dusk, where the valley’s western ridge was rimmed with fading gold and the first stars were winking into being in the east. But as he made his way toward the closest of the pair of positions manned by his squad, Garth too pondered the apparent lethargy of the clan as a whole.

Was it simply because they were “worn to the bone,” as he’d suggested to Layla? Or could it be that something else—something from outside, not so much physical as mental—was insinuating itself into their minds; something stultifying, that was making their minds unreliable and even more acquiescent?

With these questions and a pair of ancient adages repeating in his head, Garth hurried as best possible through low shrubbery and gathering darkness towards the river.

As for these sayings he was repeating to himself: “Familiarity breeds contempt” was the one, while “Slowly slowly catchee monkey” was the other…

It began something less than two hours later. Garth had visited the northern junction, where three of his men looked down along the short access road and out over the slumping, half-submerged structure of the bridge toward the now darkly ominous buildings on the far bank. The clouds had drifted away south, leaving the black river water to shine in the light of a half-moon. Despite that this was wont to fade occasionally behind the wispy, trailing revenants of the departed cloud mass, still the pale-yellow light vas a mercy; as was the fact that only the faintest trace of mist was finding its way ashore from the river.

Now, having satisfied himself that the team watching the northern bridge was well situated, alert to a man, and that all was in order, Garth had returned along the crumbling old road’s barely traceable track and through its shrouding foliage to the southern manned location—that closest to the camp in the forest—and mere moments ago had accepted and was sipping from a welcome mug of herbal tea, when a friend of several adventures, Billy Martin, gave him a nudge him and said:

“Garth, did you ever see anything like that before? I mean, what on earth…?” But his words tapered off as, peering uncertainly, wonderingly, he let his mouth gape and pointed a finger out across the bridge and over the river.

Along with the other members of the team—Eric Davis, and the recently recruited Gavin Carter, who seemed much calmer and more at ease now than previously—Garth’s gaze traced Billy’s to the ugly square facades of the partly ruined buildings on the far bank. Silhouetted against night’s faintly luminous backdrop, they looked gauntly eerie.

But there was something else of luminosity there, and by no means static: a glittering stream composed of myriad pinpoints, that flowed from the base of the building directly opposite the bridge’s far end and down toward…toward the bridge itself!

Then for just a moment Garth asked himself—even as Billy had asked him—
Now
what on
earth…
? But only for a moment—

—Because then he knew!

That the countless pinpoints were an effect of the sulphurous rottenness in the eyes of dozens, perhaps even hundreds of fly-by-nights! And that even as he watched they were beginning to cross the bridge at a pace that was ever quickening!

A rampaging swarm—the biggest swarm ever seen, ever imagined—with the sweet scent of blood in their fretted nostrils, its taste in their yawning mouths, and the longing and the lust for it in eyes that glowed pale as the silvery moonlight!

Garth’s three heard his gasp, saw him stiffen, and knew the worst: just three of them, or four including Garth himself, and a horde of monsters on its way across the bridge!

“We shouldn’t be here,” said Gavin Carter, quite calmly. “I should not be here! And he put down his self-loading rifle and began to lift a bandolier from around his neck—at which Garth was released from his momentary paralysis.

“You can run and die, Gavin,” he said, his voice straining however slightly, but somehow managing to stay in control. “For if we can’t stop them here they’re going to get you anyway. And not just you but everyone—you, us—the whole clan!”
Even my
Layla!
he thought.

“But
you
will definitely die first!” Billy Martin growled. “For I swear I’ll shoot you myself, and you’ll thank me for it in heaven or in hell, whichever!”

And Eric Davis pinioned Carter and held him still, saying: “It’s why we’re here, Gavin. And it’s why you’re armed; unlike the majority of our people, those poor bastards in the forest, who won’t even know what hit them! But if we’re going down, the least we can do is take a bloody great swathe of these buggers with us! So what do you say to that?” Then releasing the other, and grimacing as if Carter’s proximity made him feel ill, Davis shoved him forcefully away.

“Do I have…have any choice?” Trembling, stumbling, and almost falling, Carter choked the words out; but he didn’t run.

“You can stand, fight and probably die,” said Garth again. “Or you can just give in and die anyway, as a coward! Not that anyone will ever know.” And suddenly disgusted at his own fear, he spat into the night as if to rid himself of the taste of it, spat as hard as he could, as so often he’d seen his Old Man do. “Those are your only choices, Gavin, and the same goes for all of us. So what’ll it be?”

“But whatever you choose—” Billy added, loading shells into a sawn-off shotgun’s breach, then laying it aside and taking a fragmentation grenade from his pocket, arming it and thumbing down on the sprung safety lever while gauging the distance, “—you’d better make it quick, ’cause here they come!”

“I’m no…no coward,” said Carter, shaking his head. “I’m just… It’s just that I’m scared!”

“So, welcome to our world!” said Eric Davis. But even as he spoke Carter was gritting his teeth, taking up his weapon again and saying: