Breeding Ground

by Sarah Pinborough

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It was two days after that that George and I found the black spider fried by the main gate. It had obviously tried to scale it, and come off worse against the electricity. At least we knew they could die, that was a slight upside, and it seemed that maybe they weren’t party to that communal mind thing that the women had. That didn’t surprise me. As a species we’d never really known what was going on in women’s heads and I figured that Mother Nature wasn’t going to change that now. Staring down at the obscene creature, it was hard to associate it with John, even though it had evolved from his flesh and blood.

  Sniffing, the damp air giving us the constant feeling of a slight cold, I looked over my shoulder at where Rebecca was throwing a stick for Chester, the two of them bouncing with happiness.

  “You got any lumps, George?”

  After John, Dean had been the first to show signs of the growths on his chest, but Daniel and Chris had joined him late in the afternoon of the next day. So far they were all still alive, the lumps not yet moving, but the atmosphere in the hut was sombre with the weighty anticipation of death. Dean hadn’t stopped crying yet, despite the sedatives Chris had issued him.

  We’d decided it was giving John Rebecca’s blood that had speeded up the process, making the body less inhabitable for the newly evolving male and forcing it to hurry its own birthing process up, and that maybe it would take longer with the rest. Chris still claimed to be searching for a cure, experimenting with drugs in the medical room, but the couple of times I’d been in to see him I’d found him staring at his newly terraformed skin under his shirt with abject horror. I didn’t think he really had any hope of finding something to provide him with a miracle cure.

  George lifted his head. “No, no new lumps. Just an old man’s body under this shirt. You?”

  I shook my head. Despite finding myself checking every twenty minutes or so with a feeling of dread, I still had yet to find any evidence of anything growing inside me. My chest was smooth.

  “The others are starting to give us funny looks. Like they hate us.”

  George shrugged, lighting his pipe. “It’s only natural. They’re terrified. At least John didn’t know what was coming. They do. They’ve seen it firsthand. They’re terrified and we’re lump-free. Hell, I’d hate us.”

  I stared out at the fence. The widows had pretty much abandoned their vigil now. Maybe they could sense the change happening in the men, or maybe they were off mating with their newly found partners. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Once again the oppressive atmosphere in the compound pressed down on me.

  “Rebecca and I are thinking of leaving. We can’t stay here. Not even if the others, you know . . . die or change or whatever. We’ll stagnate. We want to find others out there. Especially now we’ve got the baby coming.”

  I’d taken George into our confidence the night John had died and Dean found the first signs of change in himself. I’d needed to talk about something good and talk we had, well into the morning.

  “I was expecting you to say something like that.” He peered at me from behind his smoke. “Where were you thinking of heading?”

  “North. You know, we keep thinking about that broadcast about the colony of children? Maybe there’s nothing in it, but maybe there is. It seems as good a place to head as any. See if we meet up with any other survivors on the way.” I stared at him, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t, so I carried on.

  “We wanted you to come with us.”

  It was George’s turn to stare out at the fence, and watching him I realised just how fond I’d become of him during the time we’d known each other. He was a good man, and a pretty wise one. I hoped he didn’t want to stay behind here and rot his remaining days away in this relic of a place.

  “That’s very kind of you. I’ve been thinking of moving on myself, but I don’t think I’ll be able to come with you. I’ll head up to that colony if there is such a thing eventually, but there’s somewhere I’ve got to go first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The air was quiet except for the lone sound of a bird calling out from one of the trees, its song muffled in the still of the morning.

  “Do you remember asking where I’d learned to sign, and I told you that my grandson was deaf?

  I nodded.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about him a lot recently. About how he’d be like Rebecca and Chester and that maybe there was a pretty good chance that he’d still be alive out there somewhere and needing me.”

  “But that’s all the way down in Cornwall, George. . . .”

  He hushed me with a smile and a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay. I know you two have your priorities now. You’ve got that baby coming and you need to find some kind of community quickly. I’m just going to have to catch you up later, that’s all.”

  Taking in a deep breath, he put one arm round my shoulder and steered me away from the rotting spider.

  “I think we need to pack. Now that we’ve decided, I guess we need to be getting on our way, don’t you?”

  I nodded, but my heart was heavy with the idea of him going off on his own. His chances were slim at best, but I knew that we couldn’t go with him. He was right. The baby was our priority.

  We’d had to jumpstart the two Jeeps, but once they were purring they seemed happy enough to run. Dean and Daniel stayed in the hut, but Chris came out to see us off. He was pale and sweating, tears threatening his eyes.

  “You lot take care now.”

  I nodded and shook his cold clammy hand, not knowing what to say. “What will you do?”

  “Well, I’ll let you out and then shut the gate. . . .”

  “No, Chris, what will you do?” I stared at him, my heart full of pity.

  He shrugged. “If it comes to it, I’ll just blow my brains out.” His smile was bitter at the edges. “But it’s amazing how much hope you can cling on to when you have to. Who knows, I might find a cure.”

  “Well if you do, then get on the radios. Let the world know.”

  “I will. I will. Look, I’d better . . .”

  He didn’t finish his sentence, but instead scurried away towards the comms hut to get ready to open the gate.

  We’d loaded up with plenty of food and equipment, no one having made any mention of us not taking anything, and we’d also packed up quite a lot of weaponry, as well as filling up some pressurised water sprayers, normally used for weedkillers, with blood solutions from Chester and Rebecca.

  Rebecca and the dog were already in the passenger side when I wandered up to George to say farewell. He was standing tall and proud, but he still looked like a fragile old man. My heart aching, I looked at him, saving him to memory. There was little real hope of ever seeing him again and that must have shone out of my face, because I saw it reflected back in his.

  “Don’t worry, son. I’ll be all right.”

  My throat was choking up with tears, and instead of speaking I embraced him in a hug until he pushed me away.

  “We’d better be getting along now.”

  Nodding, I turned and headed back to the truck and climbed in alongside Rebecca and the dog, all of us watching as George made his lonely way to the vehicle ahead of us. Jesus, I hoped he’d make it.

  Just as he was pulling open the door, Chester burst out barking and leapt out of the open window, running to catch the old man up. Without looking back, he jumped in. I called in vain after him, but he didn’t reappear. I guessed he’d decided that if George was going to have a chance of making it up to Scotland to meet us, then he was going to ride along. When the old man looked up to give us his final wave good-bye, this time both our grins were genuine. Chester would look out for him as best he could, and I felt better knowing that his journey would no longer be taken alone.

  Following them out of the compound, we waited until the gates had shut and George and Chester had disappeared into the distance before we turned to the left and started our own journey into what
ever the future held, a small hope growing in our hearts and Rebecca’s belly. A hope for mankind. A hope for us.