by M. R. Carey
Parks disentangles himself from Justineau’s heavy, sleepy embrace and crawls to the trap. He lifts it up and flicks the torch on, already pointed straight down.
Framed in its beam is a face out of nightmare. It seems to leap up at Parks out of the blackness. Dark-eyed, pale-skinned, piebald with dots and slashes of colour. Its wide mouth hangs open to display slender pointed teeth like the teeth of a piranha.
Then it really does leap up, reacting to the light with instant, murderous rage. Something parts the air in a whickering blur right in front of Parks’ face – something that shines in the torchlight, and hits the mouth of the trapdoor with a resonant clang.
Parks leans back, but he doesn’t flinch away from the misjudged blow, so he sees what’s happening behind his attacker. Children, boys and girls both, are swarming over the lurching hungries, pulling them down and quickly dispatching them with a range of weapons that’s both wide and eclectic.
But this isn’t what they came for. This is just clearing the ground. They didn’t find this place by accident. It’s the loft room, and what’s in it, that brought them here. The dark eyes flick upwards again and again, locking stares with Parks.
He flings the trap shut again. Justineau is already stirring, but he pulls her quickly to her feet.
“We’ve got to go,” he says. “Now. Get dressed.”
“Why?” Justineau demands. “What’s …?” She doesn’t finish the sentence, because she’s heard the sounds from below. Maybe she guesses instantly what they mean. She knows they mean trouble, anyway, and she’s not so stupid that she’ll ask for an explanation that could take up the time they need for an escape.
The trapdoor doesn’t have a lock, but Parks manages to topple the metal cistern on top of it. He’s barely in time – the trap was already being pushed open when the tank crashed down across it. A shriek from below tells him that whoever was climbing up didn’t enjoy being swatted back down.
In seconds, the trap is thumping and juddering as the hungry children bring their strength to bear on it. Parks has no idea how they’re managing to reach it. Climbing on each other’s shoulders, or on the piled bodies of the other hungries they’ve just harvested? It doesn’t matter. They’re too strong and too determined for the cistern to hold them back for long.
He jumps up on to the table and thrusts his head out of the window, which Justineau has left open. There’s nobody up on the roof. He gets his shoulders through and levers himself up on to the slates. Justineau is already following, and although he offers his hand, she doesn’t need it.
The sloping slates aren’t wet, but they’re still as slippery as hell. The two of them climb up to the roof ridge with their limbs splayed like frogs, pressing their bodies hard against the treacherous surface.
Once they reach the ridge, it’s easier. There’s a single skin of brickwork making a narrow walkway, so they can stand upright and stumble along like drunken trapeze artists, using the breastwork of chimneys and the pipes of heating vents to steady themselves.
Parks is aiming to get to the end of the terrace and find another window to climb in through. Before they’re halfway there, loud scuffling and shrill shrieks from behind them warn him that they’re no longer alone. He turns to look. Small, limber shapes, clearly defined in the moonlight, are swarming up on to the roof from the room the two of them just left. They’re not making for the ridge; they’re crab-shuffling diagonally towards Parks and Justineau, taking the shortest route to their prey.
Parks waits until he reaches the next chimney before he takes out his gun. He fires twice, at the closest of the children. The first shot is a direct hit. The kid is slammed backwards, goes tumbling down the slope and over the edge before he can stop himself. The other shot goes wide, but the children scatter, panicked, and another one falls.
The rest retreat quickly. Not quickly enough, though. Parks has plenty of time to pick off a few more.
“Don’t kill them!” Justineau shouts. “Don’t, Parks! They’re running away!”
They’re changing tactics is what they’re doing. But Parks doesn’t bother to argue. Better to save the bullets, because they’re going to need them when they get to the ground.
If they get to the ground.
Something hits the brickwork of the chimney right next to Parks’ head, and splinters fleck his cheek. From behind chimneys and gables, the hungry kids let loose with what must be slingshots – but with the whiplash speed of a hungry arm behind them, the stones hit like bullets. One of them cleaves the air so close that he can feel it, and hear its mosquito whine as it goes by his ear.
Enough.
He unships his rifle and fires two wide bursts. The first sprays the chimney stacks, forcing the kids back into hiding. The second shatters the slates between him and them on a sweeping, ruinous arc. They’ll have a hard time coming across that stretch of roof, if they decide to risk it.
“Keep moving,” he yells to Justineau. He points. “Down! Down that way. Find a window!”
Justineau is already sliding back down the tiles towards the rain gutter, arms spread to slow herself, feet scrabbling. Parks follows her on hands and knees, facing backwards up the ridge, ready to shoot at anything that moves. But nothing moves.
“Parks,” Justineau says below him. “Here.”
She’s found a window that’s not just open but gone, frame and all. All they have to do is let themselves down from the roof, taking their weight on their elbows, and step off on to the sill. Then it’s the work of a second to duck and snake inside.
Seconds count now. They’ve got to make it to the ground before the kids do. Get as good a head start as they can manage. They stumble through the dark, looking for a staircase.
That’s when the walkie-talkie goes off. Parks doesn’t stop – doesn’t dare to – but he snatches it up from its holster on his belt and answers.
“Parks. Go.”
“I heard shots,” Melanie says. “Are you okay?”
“Not so much.”
Justineau grabs his shoulder, drags him sideways. She’s found some stairs. They launch themselves into the lightless well, stumbling and almost falling. He should stop and get the torch from his backpack, but using it would probably just bring the kids down on them more quickly.
“Some hungry kids found us,” he says, through panting breaths. “Armed to the teeth. Kind of like you, only harder to get along with. They’re still on us.”
“Where are you?” Melanie asks. “Where I left you?”
“Further. End of the street.”
“I’m coming to find you.”
Good news. “Come fast,” he suggests.
They can tell when they’re on the ground floor, because the house’s street door is gaping open. They’re heading right for it, but the moonlight frames a silhouette as it pops up right in front of them. Four feet tall, a knife in each hand, ready to carve.
Parks fires, and the slight shape ducks away. Last bullet in the mag, or maybe second to last. He slides to a ragged, flailing halt. Justineau slams into his back. In full reverse, they head for the rear of the house.
Through one mouldering cave after another. The functions of the rooms are impossible to guess and of no damn interest to Parks at all. He’s just looking for a back door. When he finds it, he kicks it open and they burst out into – what he was praying for – the walled-in wilderness of an urban garden twenty years gone to seed.
They dive into head-high brambles, leaving flesh and cloth as tribute. An ululation from behind tells them that the kids are close at hand and still coming. Parks wishes them joy of it. Most of them are bollock naked, so they’re more exposed to the inch-long thorns, which are thickest close to the ground.
He looks behind. The doorway they just ran through is already lost in the inky dark, but he can see some vague movement back there. He fires into it and something shrieks. Fires again and the slide springs back with a barren click. Does he have another mag in his belt? Is he going to stop and reload,
in the dark, with those cute little moppets climbing right up his arse?
A garden wall. “Go! Go!” he shouts. He boosts Justineau over it, then jumps, misses, jumps again. He finds the top on his third try and she’s hauling him up by the neck of his shirt.
Something punches him in the shoulder. Another something explodes against the brickwork next to his hand. Justineau grunts in pain and she’s gone from the top of the wall, toppled as clean as a target on a gunnery range.
Parks slides over the top and jumps down after her, on to the cracked, weed-choked asphalt of a car park. The remains of a four-by-four lies beside them, its front wheels gone, looking like a steer down on its knees and waiting for the bolt gun to be pressed to its head. The coup de grâce.
Justineau is down, and not moving. He feels her forehead gingerly, and his fingers come away wet.
She’s no lightweight, but Parks manages to get her up on to his shoulder. He can’t keep her there one-handed, though, so it’s either run or fight.
He runs. Then figures out immediately that it was the wrong thing to do. Half a dozen low, lithe forms come sprinting around the side of the house into view, and they don’t even slow as they head for him. More are squirming up on to the garden wall and dropping down on to the asphalt behind him.
He runs in the only direction he can see that’s clear, out into the open, where he’s a sitting duck for the slingshots. Right on cue, they start up again. He takes another hit, low down on his back, and it feels like someone punched him in the kidney. He staggers, just about stays upright.
And he’s tackled, run right off his feet, by the fastest of the kids. It launches itself at him in a flying dive, lands on the small of his back and clings there, letting its momentum topple him. Parks goes sprawling, trying to twist his body around under Justineau’s to cushion the landing, but they part company somewhere along the way.
As Parks goes down, the hungry is already clawing for his throat. He punches it in the face, as hard as he can, and it falls away, giving him space to get his foot up and kick it away into midfield. He’s doing fine now. Got space enough to grab his rifle and bring it round.
Something smashes down on to his shoulder – the same shoulder that took the slingshot stone – with shocking force. The rifle falls from his fingers, but he only knows that because he hears it hit the ground. For a second or two he doesn’t feel anything, not even pain. Then the pain rushes in and fills him to the brim.
He’s sprawled on the ground, the rifle next to his head, and though he’s trying to move, nothing very much is happening. His right arm is useless, his right side a barbed-wire tangle of complex agonies. The painted kid in the flak jacket kneels at his side. The others are massed behind him, waiting, as he leans in with his mouth gaping wide. From this close up, there’s no doubt about it: those teeth have been filed.
They meet in Parks’ forearm. It’s the right arm, so it doesn’t hurt; there’s no free space on that side of his body for new pains to be inserted. But he screams, all the same, as the boy’s head bobs back up again, a lump of Parks’ flesh gripped raw and bloody in his jaw.
This is the signal for the feast to commence. The other kids come skipping in, as though they’ve been called to a picnic. One of them, a tiny blonde girl, scrambles on to Helen Justineau’s chest, grips her hair to tilt her head right back.
Parks’ left hand finds the handgun tucked into Justineau’s belt. He pulls it out and fires. Blind. The kid goes spinning away into the dark, the hollow-point shell whipping her like a top.
The hungry kids freeze for a moment, startled by the booming report at such close quarters.
Into that moment, something new inserts itself.
Deafeningly.
Terrifyingly.
Spitting fire and screaming like all the demons of hell.
70
Melanie did her best with the limited materials that were available to her.
She advances on the feral children on tiptoe, straining for height, making herself look as little like a girl and as much like a god or a Titan as she can. She’s naked from the neck down – sky-clad – but she wears on her head the oversized helmet from the environment suit, whose polarised view-plate completely hides her face.
Her body is bright blue and glistening, anointed from head to foot with the disinfectant gel that Dr Caldwell employs – used to employ – in her dissections.
In her left hand, she carries Miss Justineau’s personal alarm, which is doing exactly what Miss Justineau said it would do. A hundred and fifty decibels of sound hammer the ears and hector the brains of everyone in the vicinity, making clear thought impossible. It’s doing this to Melanie too, of course, but at least she knew it was coming.
In her right hand she carries the flare pistol, and she fires it now directly at the painted-face boy who stole Kieran Gallagher’s jacket. The flare shoots right past his head and the smoke from its passage falls over him, over all of them, like a shawl dropping out of the sky.
Melanie flings the personal alarm at the boy’s feet, and he takes a step back, flailing at the air as though he’s being attacked.
She throws herself at him. She doesn’t really want to. She wants him to run away from her, because then all the other kids will run too, but he’s not doing it and she’s reached him and she’s all out of ideas now.
She catches him under the chin with the butt of the flare pistol, a solid blow that snaps his head back and makes him stagger. But he doesn’t fall. Shifting his stance, he swings the baseball bat with all his strength.
And connects. But he’s been fooled by the helmet, which is way too big for Melanie and sitting very loosely on her slender shoulders. He thinks she’s six inches taller than she is. His devastating blow, which would have staved in the side of her skull if it had connected, ploughs into the top of the helmet instead and whips it right off her head.
The boy seems surprised to find that she’s got another head underneath, and he hesitates, the baseball bat poised for a backhand slash. The sound of the personal alarm is still shrilling in their ears. It’s as though the whole world is screaming.
Melanie clicks the flare gun a quarter-turn, loading another pellet. She shoots the boy in the face with it.
To the other kids, watching, it must look as though his face has caught fire. The flare pellet is lodged in his eye socket, shining like a piece of the sun that’s fallen to the ground. Smoke pours out of it, straight upwards at first, then breaking into a tight spiral as the boy bends backward from the knees. He drops the baseball bat to clutch at his face.
Melanie uses the baseball bat to finish him.
By the time she’s done, the other kids have finally run away.
71
Melanie leads the way and Sergeant Parks comes after, carrying Miss Justineau on his left shoulder. His right arm hangs straight down at his side, swinging very slightly with the rhythm of his walking. He doesn’t seem to be able to move it.
Miss Justineau is unconscious, but she’s definitely still breathing. And there’s no sign that she’s been bitten.
The kids are getting their courage back, a little at a time. They don’t dare to press an attack just yet, but stones whistle out of the dark to clatter at Melanie’s feet. She keeps to the same level pace, and Sergeant Parks does too. If they run, Melanie thinks, the children will chase them. And then they’ll have to fight again.
They turn a corner at last, and Rosie is before them. Melanie walks just a little faster so she can get there first and open the door. Sergeant Parks staggers over the threshold and sinks to his knees. With Melanie’s help, he puts Miss Justineau down. He’s exhausted, but she can’t let him rest yet.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” she tells him, kicking the door closed. “There’s something we still need to do.”
Sergeant Parks gestures, left-handed, at the ragged rent in his shoulder. His face is pale, and his eyes are already a little red at the corners.
“I … have to get out of here
,” he pants. “I’m—”
“The flame-throwers, Sergeant,” Melanie interrupts urgently. “You told Miss Justineau there were flame-throwers. Where are they?”
He doesn’t seem to understand what she wants at first. He meets her gaze, breathing hard. “The wall?” he hazards. “The … the fungus stuff?”
“Yes.”
Sergeant gets to his feet and stumbles through to the aft weapons station. “You need to power up,” he tells her.
“I did that before I came to get you.”
Sergeant wipes his face with the heel of his hand. His voice is a whisper. “Okay. Okay.” He points to two toggles. “Primer. Feed. You light the primer, then you uncap the feed, then you fire. Jet stays alight until you let go of the throttle here.”
Melanie stands on the firing platform. She can reach the controls, but she’s not tall enough to put her eye to the sights or even to peep over the lower edge of the viewing port. Sergeant can see that she’s not going to be able to do this by herself.
“Okay,” he says again, hollow with pain and exhaustion.
She stands down, and he climbs up in her place, stumbling and almost falling off the platform. With one hand useless, firing the flame-thrower seems to be a lot harder to do than it was to explain. Melanie helps him, working the toggles while he manhandles the gun itself.
The turret turns with servos, following the movement of the gun barrel, so at least that part is easy. Sergeant targets on the dull grey mass of the fungus forest, which is impossible to miss because it fills half of the horizon.
“Anywhere?” he asks her. His voice is slow and slippery, the way Mr Whitaker’s voice sometimes used to be.
“Anywhere,” Melanie confirms.
“Kid, there’s miles and miles of that stuff. It won’t … it won’t penetrate. Not all the way. It’s not going to punch a way through.”