by Ian Woodhead
Even if that was the case, Harry doubted that he would be able to counter any holes they were likely to pick in what he had just told them. Harry couldn’t remember the last occasion when he spoke for such a great amount of time, probably never.
Talking aloud and for any amount of time had never really been encouraged. Harry believed that was one of the reasons why he used to love listening to the old ones tell their many tales of life before the Goliaths. They were only allowed to speak because of the great respect and awe the remaining humans had for them, coupled with the fact that they occupied the deepest burrows, well away from the dugouts, trenches, and tunnels, close to the surface.
The familiars had devices which could pick up human speech vibration through the ground. He had known of at least two near-surface colonies that had awakened to find adapted defilers breaking into their shelters.
Callum passed Harry a clear bottle containing what he hoped was water. The bottle’s lightness surprised him as did the material’s flexibility.
“It’s called plastic,” said Callum, smiling.
He nodded, containing his continued disbelief at how far they had progressed in this world. It almost equalled his shock at how the local population threw out all this gear with such wanton abandon. Harry had come up with at least four uses for this plastic bottle. This stuff was everywhere too. It felt like he was sitting on a goldmine. Some of this material would have been invaluable to his companions back where he came from and yet here, they treated this stuff as junk.
Perhaps their attitude will change with the coming of the war? Considering what is to come, Harry kinda believed that the locals would have more important things on their minds than working out what to do with an empty plastic bottle.
Right now, all Harry wanted to do was to find other people who would actually believe the trouble about to land upon their heads. If he couldn’t even persuade these chaps about what was to come, then what chance did he have of telling anybody else?
Harry shuffled to the edge of the folded-up mattress that he and Callum occupied and took the time to study the rest of his audience. The youth sat opposite Harry, looked approximately ten to fifteen years younger than him. It’s odd. Of all the men here, he saw this one becoming a good fighter. He certainly had youth on his side, as well as quick movements and a keen eye. He was obviously too soft, they all were, but that would soon go, if they lived past the big invasion. The boy stood a little taller than Harry and had quite a bit of muscle clinging to those bones. Earlier, Callum told Harry that the boy used to work out back before he fell on hard times. Harry had no idea what that meant but kept that to himself. There was a lot about this world that he didn’t understand.
The two other men were the leaders. That much was obvious, although how this came about was still a mystery. From what he had observed so far and taking pointers from his own world, Harry guessed that the two men had simply outlived all their potential rivals. Obviously, their lives hadn’t been as tough as what they would have endured on his world, but they had lived tougher lives than the other section of this world’s population, the ones who believed it was perfectly acceptable to throw plastic bottles over their shoulders and forget about them seconds later.
Callum told him moments before arriving under this huge road bridge that Malc and Dosser were the last of the town’s originals. He also reassured Harry that the two guys would know what to do about the shit-storm about to drop on their heads.
They sat in identical dull-pink armchairs directly opposite Harry. The one on the last, Dosser, reminded Harry a little of his old man. They both possessed the same intense bright green eyes. When he fixed you with that piercing gaze, it felt like he was peeling away pieces of your soul, layer by layer. Right now, that’s exactly what he was doing. He only broke the connection when the other man coughed.
“You’ve certainly given us plenty to think about, young man,” said Malc. “It is, you have to admit, a fantastic account.”
“No shit,” muttered Dosser.
“I know you believe it.” Malc stared straight at Callum. “And considering he went as white as a sheet once you told us how you two met, he believes it too. I tell you. It takes a lot to make our pal look like he’s just shit his pants.”
Dosser nodded in agreement. “Valid points, my friend. Trust us. We know a bullshit artist when we see one. Callum, why don’t to take your new pal over to the river bank for a few minutes while we decide how to proceed.” Dosser reached into his pocket and pulled out a small note.
Harry couldn’t help but stare as the old man handed the note over to the boy. He remembered when he was younger than this boy, back before the war knocked the sense of wonder out of him. Amongst all the other tales of old told by the great old ones, they used to talk about money in equal amounts of love and anger. To that young boy, their stories of how people killed over little bits of paper seemed utterly alien.
“I think the sandwich shop at the top of Greenhead Lane will be opening in a few minutes. Why don’t you go buy our guest something to eat?” He grinned. “Make it a bacon sandwich. If what he told us is true, then he won’t know the delights of such a mouth-watering meal. Get something for Callum, and I suppose you can have something as well.”
The boy nodded while grinning. The face soon changed to shock when the old man’s other hand whipped forward and grabbed a handful of grotty brown jumper. “If you even think about running off with that tenner, young lad, I’ll come over to your house and box your ears. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, and I also want some change. You got me?”
He released the boy then turned to Callum. “Go on then, you two. Off you trot. We’ll call you back soon.”
Callum nodded to the two seated men before hurrying towards an overturned vehicle. Harry did the same, unsure whether that was protocol. The other man took him out of the other side of the road bridge and down a grassy banking. Callum grabbed his arm and pulled Harry over towards a pile of thick rubber wheels.
“Folk have been chucking these tyres over the edge of the flyover ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”
Harry nodded once, despite not understanding any of that. He didn’t think he would ever understand their strange accent or their terminology.
“I used to love coming down here when I was younger you know.” He plucked a long blade of grass and wound it around his index finger. “I shouldn’t have been down here at all. Back then, this area belonged to a rival gang and if any of them had caught me in their patch, so to speak, they’d have knocked seven shades of shit out of me.”
“A rival gang? You mean other kids like you?”
Callum nodded. “Yeah, there were two schools in the area, and we were always having a go at each other. It’s just what you did, you know?”
Harry shook his head. “I think so. I guess if we didn’t have the horrors belonging to the local Goliath hunting us down, then I suppose I would have been just like that.”
“Not that any of them did catch me, mind. I was way too fast for them. Hell, even if they had caught me, what they did would have been nothing compared to what my dad would have done.”
“Did he not like you fighting?”
“It’s not that. See, I skipped out of school to come down here.” Callum sighed. “Perhaps if I hadn’t missed so many lessons, then my life could have been so much different.” He laughed. “Then again, considering what you have been through, I should probably count my blessings. “Can you believe that I actually thought my time in the army had turned me into a monster?
“You were a soldier?”
Callum pulled a haunted expression. “They thought it would sort me out. It was my dad who ordered me to sign up. I didn’t really have a choice. It was either that or jail time. I was a right little shit once the old balls dropped. Alienated my family and what few friends I had.” He shrugged. “Looking back, maybe a bit of jail time would have been better for me.” Callum picked up
a flat stone and skimmed it across the river. “At first, I loved the Army. The routine, the training, the lack of responsibility, the fact of never having to worry where my next bit of money would come from. It was all fluffy blue sky and unicorns until they shipped us off to Iraq.”
“You were involved in conflict?”
“While I was over there, I did as I was told, followed orders just like everybody else. I saw mates getting shot or blown up. I killed the enemy and all that time, none of what I did or saw registered. It wasn’t until I came back and tried to fit back into society when the problems began to surface.” He turned to Harry. “You’re a soldier. You must know what it’s like.”
Harry leaned back and looked into the morning sky. He saw at least three aeroplanes and from the lack of noise, their altitude and size, their engines inside those huge metal beasts were more advanced than anything dreamt up by the old ones. Hundreds of automobiles sped along that road above him. The people inside their metal boxes had absolutely no idea of the terror about to befall them. Finally, he looked back at Callum, the man broken by having to murder members of his own species.
Harry shook his head. “No. We have never known anything other than war.” He paused. “No, it wasn’t war. Not by the time I was born. By that time, we had exhausted almost all of our ammunition, and they had decimated our population. To make things worse, if that was even possible, the things we were fighting were made from our dead.” Harry was a little surprised by his subtle response. Deep down, he wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck and tell him to pull his head out from his arse. In fact, Harry wanted to do that to those two as well. While he sat on this banking, listening to this man’s tale of woe, those things belonging to the Goliath were continuing to secure their foothold upon this world.
“Christ. You really have come from a hell planet. Was it really so grim?”
Harry shrugged. “That is difficult to answer as I knew nothing else. Although, I suppose, if the Goliaths had not succumbed to their mysterious malaise, then it is likely I wouldn’t be here to provide my futile warning.”
Callum’s mouth opened then closed without a single word leaving his lips. Even after all the horrors that man had been put through tonight, Harry seriously believed that Callum simply could not imagine what Harry’s existence had been like. After a full five seconds of staring, he pointed towards the top of the banking
“I think the originals want us back. I’m sure I heard them shout.”
He followed Callum back up the banking, knowing full well that the two men up there had not shouted anything. Harry had excellent hearing.
“There you are,” said Dosser. “I was just about to call you back.’
The old man reached down and helped Harry up to the top. Dosser had a firm grip. He pulled him a little closer.
“Tell me something. Is your last name Scrimshaw by any chance?”
Harry’s other hand instinctively tightened around his weapon. “How the hell did you know that?”
Dosser released him and chuckled. “Relax. I knew a couple of Scrimshaws back in the day. You share their features. Come on, let’s go back to the chairs. There are a few points we still wish to discuss.”
Harry wasn’t sure whether to demand the old man to disclose more about this alternative Scrimshaw family that he allegedly knew or laugh out loud at the man’s pompous attitude. Harry might not be from around here, but it was still as plain as the nose on the end of his face that he had fallen in with a group rejected by the rest of the humans who shared this location.
What right had they to act like judge and jury regarding his account? They would soon change their attitude when the others appear in the midst of their cities.
He took his place back on the mattress with Callum sitting next to him. Dosser sat back in his chair. The old man then looked at the other one before they both turned to face Harry.
Malc let out a quiet sigh. “We’ve known that something’s been seriously wrong in Brandale for the past few weeks. The rats were the first ones to vanish followed by the cats.” He looked straight at Callum. “Joe isn’t the only one to go. A couple of drifters who used to bed down behind the railway station vanished a couple of nights ago.”
“You never told me that.”
“I’m telling you now, Callum.” Malc shrugged. “You and Gavin aren’t one of the originals. Granted, you are closer to being an honorary member far more than Gavin is on account of you not being an idiot. Still, though, there’s stuff we don’t like to share. It’s just how it is. Speaking of sharing.” He turned his attention to Harry. “I want you to tell us about these Goliaths. Before though, do you think the bits which fell off the mobster which chased you two will be a concern?”
Harry shrugged. “I cannot answer that with authority as there wasn’t much individual life left in my world.”
“You mean no animals?” asked Malc.
“Perhaps a few scattered birds and insects but nothing larger than my hand. As for the pieces of wandering flesh?” Harry shook his head. “My advice is to stay well away from anything belonging to the aggressors. Perhaps they will not actively seek out prey at least until the Goliaths arrive.” Harry looked up, noticing the boy was making his way through the knee-high grassland. He carried three white packages, a red cylinder, and a beaming smile. Before too long, the only thing that boy would be carrying was a weapon, if they could find any. That is, if he survived the first few hours of the inevitable apocalypse.
“They appeared in our cities seventy years before I was born, so I can only convey the tales that I heard during my younger days, if that is acceptable?”
Dosser nodded. “Please. The more we know, the better prepared we are.”
He took the packages from Gavin, and passed Harry the cylinder and one of the packages.
“It’s a can of coke,” he said, grinning. “Callum will show you how to open it after you have eaten your sandwich. Judging from the lack of meat on your bones, I’m guessing you’re not exactly used to starting your day by stopping off at a sandwich shop before you go and battle your monsters?”
Harry shook his head while listening to his stomach rumble. The aroma that left the package when he opened the top turned the bottom of his mouth into a lake of drool. This world truly was a paradise, and it did make him sad to know that it would not stay like that. Harry confirmed the heavenly metaphor after he took his first bite from the sandwich. Harry had fallen in love and its name was bacon.
“I will recount what horrors that my old friend, Fred Davis, witnessed just days after returning from the trenches. I have heard the story so many times that I can almost imagine being there with him.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Of the seven hundred from the town who set out to battle the Hun four years previously, only seventy of Brandale’s warriors came back, and each and every one wanted nothing to do with the celebrations that the town elders, mothers, wives, and girlfriends organised for their glorious return. All Fred craved was his comfy bed, the arms of Hilda, his wife, and to sleep for a week.
Sadly, none of that happened.
One of his fellow survivors, a man called George Hammond, actually stopped the bus before they reached the town, stating for the benefit of the others that he had nobody waiting for him so if they didn’t mind, he intended to spend tonight swapping his remaining eight shillings for ale. Fred remembered several other soldiers getting off the bus at the same time. He also remembered that if his darling wife hadn’t been waiting for him, Fred would have done the same. He had enough of cheering crowds back in Southampton.
Leaving the bus had just guaranteed that those seven men would be part of the few who would survive to see the next dawn.
Fred could never remember the time from stepping off the bus to the arrival of the monster. It all seemed to merge into one multi-coloured cacophony of confusion broken with kisses from his wife, bottles of warm beer pushed into one hand, and wet sandwiches pushed into the other hand.
Fred awoke to screaming. For a terrifying moment, he thought the armistice and the homecoming hadn’t happened, that his tormented mind had imagined everything from escaping the horrors of the trench to falling into the arms of his darling Hilda.
The soft sheets smelling of fairy soap and sound of his grandfather’s mantelpiece clock ticking away downstairs helped to put away that irrational dread of still being in the trenches, and yet that terrible screaming continued.
He snapped open his eyes and jerked up in bed. Fred realised that all that screaming was bleeding in through the shut windows at the same time as finding Hilda had left his side.
Fred threw the covers back and stared in disbelief at the sight of a thick glaze of red-streaked slime which covered the white sheet where his wife should have been. He scrambled backwards and fell onto the floorboards when he caught his foot in the sheet tangle at the foot of the bed. Fred lay on the floor, listening to the continuous manic screaming, breathing in the dust and looking at the shrivelled remains of his wife which had been pushed under the bed.
The only way to lock in the fanciful notion that none of this was really happening, and to come to terms that the war really had followed him home, was to stare at the mind-numbing atrocity that was once his wife. Fred’s tear-blurred eyes followed the contours of the broken skeleton from the shattered skull all the way down to the small toes fragments, poking out from the end of the bed. “We’ll meet again, my darling. That is a promise.”
He untangled his feet, stood up, and wiped his eyes before covering up the mess on the bed. As the first sheet fell, some of that jelly-like stuff showed through the fine fibres. He stood there, unable to move, holding the remaining covers in his hand while the perfect outline of Hilda appeared through that single sheet. It had to be his mind hammering in one more nail into his sanity, but Fred just could not look away. He needed to see this outline move, for her shapely leg to bunch up or one of her slender arms to reach up and push that sheet closer to him.