With a stiff turn, the lock clicked back and she pushed the front door open. It was lighter than she’d expected, and swung into the house with ease, revealing a neat-looking hallway. Lucy closed the door behind her before the smog drifted into the house. Boots caked in dry mud lined the wooden corridor, which led past two rooms and around a corner. The house was silent and filled with shadows.
Lucy flicked the light switch on the wall with minimal optimism. It bore no fruits, but she did spot a lantern and packet of matches on the counter below. Clearly the owners, whoever they were, had developed a system after the power failed. Absent-mindedly wiping her shoes on the interior mat, she lit the lantern and, sliding her backpack off onto the floor, began to investigate the house.
Ignoring the staircase to her right for the time being, she began with the first ground-floor room. Cuts of fabrics hung across a central workstation, with more patterned rolls standing in the corner leaning against the wall. On the floor was a half-woven wicker basket.
She moved on, lantern in hand. The door to the neighboring room was already open. She peered around it cautiously. Inside were two sofa chairs and a longer three-seater couch perpendicular to them, all oriented towards the massive widescreen TV hanging on the wall. The newspaper on the central coffee table was nearly four weeks old.
Pictures were missing from the mantelpiece, their absence betrayed by the lighter patches of dust. Lucy examined the remaining pictures: a slightly grainy color photo of a plump lady and chubby man cutting a wedding cake, and a more recent photo of the same couple, now both larger and older with thin, grey and white hair.
They had warm smiles. A third photo revealed the man standing in-between two strapping teenage boys who bore a close facial resemblance to him. He had an arm draped over each of their shoulders, and pride on his melanin-stained face. The woman was sitting down with the older son’s hand resting on her shoulder. Lucy’s eyes homed in on the background of the picture and she realized it had been taken in that very room.
Moving on, she passed a small lavatory before arriving at the kitchen, where she covered her nose, gagging at the rancid smell as she pushed the door open.
The place looked as if it had been abandoned in a hurry. Cereal decorated the floor. Most of the cupboard doors were open and the contents inside looked disheveled; some had been knocked over, others spilled.
Lucy’s attention turned to the tall, silent fridge and the small pool of brown liquid beneath it. She’d identified the source of the smell, at least. Cautiously, she opened the fridge doors.
“Eugh!” she spat, slamming both shut again. The smell was overwhelming, and the fridge was buzzing with newly hatched flies. Whatever it was the owners had abandoned in there had all turned to a seeping brown bilge.
A clanging noise came from behind, snapping her attention back to the hallway. She spun around, eyes fixed on the empty doorway, one foot extended in a lunge, ready to propel herself at the intruder. She glanced at the flickering lantern in her hand and blew it out in a single strong puff. The sound continued, a rattling, metallic clang coupled with a distant moaning; it was reminiscent of nightmares she’d had as a child. Drawing her gun, she edged towards the doorway, setting the smoking lantern down on the workstation as she moved, wincing at the faint tap it made as the metal rim hit the cold marble. Keeping the rest of her body hidden in the kitchen, she peered through the door frame into the hallway, in the direction of the noise.
The insect door swung back and forth in the wind, hitting the pot behind it. Lucy exhaled with relief. She opened the pastel-blue front door and held her breath as the howling wind funneled smog into the house. Lucy pulled the flapping insect door shut and quickly retreated back inside, firmly closing the blue door behind her and wafting away the smoky air.
Her attention turned to the staircase. She relit the lantern from the fetid kitchen, and, stirred by its comfort, lit a nearby tea light too, which she left on the hallway counter, its flickering light nudging the specters away.
Upstairs was a similar story; of the three bedrooms, two looked largely untouched. The third and largest bedroom, however, looked like it had been abandoned mid-preparation. Clothes lay strewn across the floor, the cupboards seemingly vomiting checkered shirts and cotton sweaters onto their surroundings. Resting on top of the neatly made double bed was an open suitcase, half-packed.
Lucy sat down on the bed and ran her hand over the soft sheets, bouncing a little to test the mattress, which was growing more inviting by the second. Five twenty-four p.m. according to the analogue clock on the wall. She pulled off her wet boots and waterlogged socks and felt the soft, thick carpet rise up between her cold toes.
She padded through to the bathroom and fetched a towel hanging on the rack, the coldness of the tiles underfoot chasing her back to the comfort of the bedroom, where she sat back on the bed and began to dry herself.
She surveyed the clothes left in the room and fashioned a makeshift outfit. University of Colorado Boulder, read the XXL T-shirt she pulled from the nearest spewing drawer. It was a woman’s T-shirt, and was fairly new by the feel of it.
With no other options Lucy decided to bed down in the farmhouse for the night. She scraped the putrid insides of the refrigerator into a plastic bag and hurled it out of the back door as far from the house as she could before scrubbing the festering remains out with the cleaning equipment she found under the sink.
Once the festering remnants had been banished, she grabbed the box of Lucky Charms. Flopping onto the sofa she shoveled them into her mouth, staring vacantly at the mesmerizing haze outside. It appeared to be thinning; glimpses of evening sky were breaking through the smog.
She washed the dry cereal down with some cream soda from the cupboard, then sat and stared at the carpet for a while. Her bowels eventually moved her. Gun in one hand, toilet roll in the other, she ventured back outside to where the gravel driveway met the edge of the vegetable field and defecated.
Kicking some crumbly soil over her mess, she returned to the house, washed her hands with sanitary gel from the cupboard, then set about a stock take of the kitchen’s provisions.
By the time she was done it was nearly nightfall. Lucy checked at least three times that every entrance point was sealed before closing all the curtains and withdrawing to the master bedroom upstairs. There she found a pen and began a new diary entry.
2nd October, I think. Found a farmhouse to stay in. No one else here. I crashed the car – hit a stag in the haze. There’s so much smoke everywhere, I could barely see anything – it’s gotta be a wildfire, but I have no idea where it’s coming from. I think the smoke’s lifting, though, so maybe I’m safe here. Don’t really have many other options. There’s a river between the house and the road, maybe that would stop the fire?
Car’s still in the water. I’ll see about trying to tow it out tomorrow, but the engine’ll be flooded by now. Besides, this farm looks too small to have a tractor. I reckon they grow the vegetables for themselves, maybe sell some at a local market, nothing more than that. Really hoping they’ve got more than rotting cabbages out there. If they’ve got potatoes, this place could do until I can figure out another ride, or at least figure out where the hell I am. Ideally both. Somewhere between Wichita and St. Louis I think. The fields turned to forests towards the last hour or so of driving. So I guess I’m in a forest.
There was no Gen Water here, so I think maybe the creatures aren’t here either. I don’t know. I’ve locked all the windows and doors, and I’m keeping the gun close – no crypt to hide in this time. Tired now. Exhausted. Scared. Alone. I’ll tell you about Wilson tomorrow, if I’m still alive.
“I’ll tell you.” She stared down at the notebook, and the words she’d just written, and burst out in tears, throwing the notebook to one side and pulling the duvet over her as she curled into a sobbing ball. She bundled the thick, voluptuous folds into her arms, and clung to the duvet with all her strength, clutching it fiercely as it absorbed her tearf
ul fits. She wept until she was too exhausted to weep any more, and gradually allowed grief and exhaustion to steal her away to sleep.
FIVE
Flesh and Bone
_______________________________________________
FOUR MONTHS LATER
The axe crashed down onto the white picket fence, splitting the wood with ease. Lucy grunted in approval. Over the past four months she’d seen the river freeze over entirely, the ground turn to compact permafrost, and the habitable rooms in the house shrink down to one.
Her breath misted as she scooped the last of the wood into a bucket and dragged it back, the cold air snatching at her scalp as she went, punishing her for shearing off much of her dirty, matted hair. Subsistence defined her life now; every day was devoted to gathering enough wood fuel to melt and sterilize the freezing water, and she needed to stretch out the food supplies until she could grow vegetables again.
Re-entering the house and stepping over her mattress, she tipped the wood onto the once-cream carpet where it would begin to dry out in front of the stove – ready to be stoked later that day. She never let the fire die out. The living room was now the only room that didn’t have permanent frost on the insides of the windows. Her eyes fell on the maroon wallpaper. The sprawling chalk tally she’d been scratching onto it each day made the room look like a very art-house prison; one hundred and twenty-eight short white lines were etched onto the wall, attesting her stay. The warm glow of the fire reflected off the fake mahogany furniture and the large leather sofa opposite the redundant TV. On the floor, two yards from the fireplace, was Lucy’s mattress, adorned with a scrunched-up duvet and two grimy-looking pillows. She’d dragged them all down from upstairs a couple of months ago, when the weather had really turned.
Next to the mattress, away from the fire, was a spotless plate, with a knife and fork which had been abandoned at an angle. Surrounding it was a small pile of books, all with makeshift bookmarks protruding out from the pages: Preserving Game, Great American Leaders, and The Horse Rearing Manual. They weren’t her usual go-to choices for light reading.
“Barn time. Come on now, barn time!” she said, rallying herself as she headed back outside, grabbing a colander from the gloomy kitchen as she went.
She crunched across the gravel yard towards the large metal barn. At the periphery of the former grazing field stood three empty stables, relics of the property’s bygone vibrancy. But Lucy wasn’t overly sentimental about the missing horses, despite her reading list. Perhaps the owners had set them free when they left, or taken them with them; either way, they’d left behind the horse feed, and those vast sacks of oats had become a staple of Lucy’s survival.
“Lovely morning. Lovely, lovely morning, I think you’ll agree,” she sang, clanging the colander against her leg as she reached the concrete barn floor.
Stacks of rectangular hay bales stretched all the way up to the corrugated roof, around twenty feet high. Loose straw pieces attached themselves to the underside of her boots as she walked over to a crate at the side.
“Why is the morning lovely?” She stopped and glared at the colander. “Because it’s sunny! God, it’s like I have to teach you everything.”
She danced her hands back and forth over the open-top palette containing the earthy potatoes she’d picked months ago.
“I choose … you!” she exclaimed, suddenly pouncing upon a medium-sized one. “Better luck next time, fellas,” she remarked to the other potatoes. “Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time I checked in with your cousins.”
Lucy ambled through the barn, weaving between bales of hay and inspecting the other boxes of potatoes she’d stashed away.
“Philip, you motherfucker!” she proclaimed, grimacing as she picked up a blackening spud from the third box. “Trying to ruin the party for everyone else, are we? We can’t have that, no, no, in the pot you go!” She dropped the rotting culprit into the colander and rootled around the rest of the box for signs of contagion.
“All clear, folks, just a drill,” she reassured the remainder as she moved on to the carrots, selecting two crooked orange truncheons for that day’s menu.
She grunted as she headed back to the kitchen, pausing to enjoy the sun’s warmth on her face.
She left the colander and its contents on the sideboard, next to her washed-up porridge bowl, and grabbed the two empty water buckets.
“Unlimited free refills folks, it really is the deal of the century – best make the most of it,” she declared, setting off in the opposite direction – across the frozen vegetable field towards the river.
As she approached the babble of the melting brook, the familiar wreck of her abandoned car came into view across the other riverbank. Only there was something by it.
Lucy stopped dead in her tracks, completely rigid, not moving an inch, unable to take her eyes off the immobile figure. She hadn’t seen another living thing in four months. Her heart pounded as the saliva drained from her mouth. She didn’t dare to blink, but stood rooted to the spot as her optic nerves relayed the same insistent message to her disbelieving brain.
The creature’s fur was pure white, luminescent almost. The magnificent spines, articulated by key vertebrae, rippled in the wind like sails. It was completely motionless; one arm lay outstretched, the other tucked beneath its torso, its broad back half-burying it from view. Two muscular legs splayed out from behind the body, pointing to its footprints higher up the bank, which ran down to their lifeless master like a set of broken tracks.
Moving as slowly as possible, she lowered each bucket to the ground in absolute silence. She lay down between them, flat across the frozen mud, raising only her head to see the beast where it lay. She hadn’t seen the creatures since escaping Fraser, and even then she’d not seen one this size or color before – let alone in daylight.
Lucy crawled forwards no more than a yard then stopped and reassessed; still no movement from the body. She crawled again, a little further this time. Nothing. She paused and scanned around; there were no signs of life anywhere at all across the other bank, or on her side. The thing looked dead.
Lucy climbed to her feet again and began to edge away backwards, leaving the buckets where they were. The creature didn’t move. Keeping her eyes on its white body, she retreated until the verge obscured it from view, then ran.
Her head felt light with the exertion. Bursting into the house, she slammed the kitchen door behind her and raced to the living room, trailing clumps of frozen dirt across the tiles and carpets as she went. Diving onto the mattress she grabbed the gun from under her pillow and sprinted back to the kitchen window, which overlooked the vegetable field. The field was deserted; only her two water buckets stood out at the far end.
“Think. Think!” she said to herself, trying to gather her panicking mind. She ran back into the hallway and up the staircase, mud splattering the skirting boards and walls as she went. Breathless, she arrived at the previous owners’ room. She fell to her knees and began frantically searching the drawers, tipping each one out and trawling through its contents. She leapt to her feet and began flinging cupboards open, digging through shelves and boxes until she found what she was looking for: binoculars. She grabbed the gun back off the bed and checked out of the window; still nothing. She rushed down the stairs and set off across the frozen vegetable field once again, checking the gun chamber as she went.
She hastened forwards, stooping as she ran, suppressing the tide of nausea climbing through her as she approached the lip of the riverbank.
The creature was still there, exactly as she’d first seen it. Lucy slowed, now that it was in plain view, and cautiously made her way down the embankment to the river’s edge. The ice was too thin to risk walking across straightforwardly, and a channel of meltwater flowed quickly through the center, cutting Lucy off from the other side. She raised the binoculars to her eyes, pointing them at the beast, her fingers jerking clumsily as she fumbled the focal dial into position.
The creatu
re really was perfectly still; no signs of breathing. She lowered the binoculars, skittishly checking her surroundings for signs of more pack members, but there was nothing. Once again she peered through the lenses, this time daring to take longer over the observation.
This beast was distinct from the ones she’d encountered months ago. Not just in the color of its coat, but the whole skeletal structure. Its size, limb ratio, skull design – almost everything was different in some way. Even the ribcage had a new protective translucent tissue covering it. Yet the texture of the fur, the tapering of the jaw, the overall make-up of the thing was consistent with the beasts she’d seen before. It had to be, at the least, a genetic cousin.
She scanned its body for clues, but there were no obvious signs of bodily damage, no flesh wounds, or lesions, or bullet holes. Nothing that had punctured the back, at least. She needed to see its underside to understand what had killed it, and the only way to do that would be to cross the icy channel.
Lucy abandoned the scene and hastily returned to the house, shoving her notepad and pen into a backpack. Josh’s insistence that they document everything they encountered rang in her ears as she grabbed the ladder from the adjacent barn and hurried back to the site.
She arrived at the frozen bank of the river and lay the ladder down, sliding it across until it spanned both icy banks. Lucy’s bridge was ready.
She knelt down on all fours and, very cautiously, began to move forward, advancing one limb at a time. The ice creaked beneath her as it took the strain. In her gaunt, malnourished state, a fall into waters this cold could be fatal.
As she shuffled across the middle section of the ladder, the babbling water splashed up into the gap between her coat and gloves, sending shivers across her body. The water between the rungs wet her knees and knuckles too, soaking into her clothes. She kept her eyes firmly on the creature’s body as she moved, eventually drawing level with her wrecked car. The river had broadened and risen significantly over the winter, claiming more of the car for itself, and ruling out any possibility of wading between the two banks.
Convulsive Box Set Page 24