by Simon Clark
Now I had the kid’s precious camera. The photographs it contained would be revolting. Yet the knowledge that the child treasured this camera so much it had become an object of mystical power to him stopped me from smashing it against the fence. Even though the touch of it repelled me, this relic that the kid loved so much – that he risked his life for – fascinated me. I’ve said it before but it seemed to tingle against my fingers. I’d keep it. I wouldn’t let go …
‘Mason!’ Madeline appeared at the edge of the swathe of bushes through which I’d charged just moments ago. ‘Mason, they’re here!’ Her eyes were bright with fear. Immediately she’d shouted the warning she rushed back into the bushes as if to find a place to hide; a second later she shrieked in pain. I started forward as I heard what appeared to be heavy bodies shoving through the branches.
‘Leave her!’ I yelled. ‘If you hurt her I’ll kill you.’
‘Only us.’
I stared as my old buddies appeared – Paddy, Ruth, Dianna and Ulric. Paddy and Dianna pulled Madeline back by the arms. She struggled but they were used to dealing with Echomen by now.
Dianna sounded exasperated as she said, ‘Mason, why did you just leave like that without telling anyone?’
‘That shook us up, old pal.’ This was Paddy. ‘We didn’t know what had happened to you.’
Ulric scowled. ‘And didn’t you hear us? We told you not to go home. It’s dangerous for your family.’
Dianna slipped a noose of bright orange string over Madeline’s head then pulled it tight. So tight, in fact, that Madeline began to choke. She tried to use the hand with the Y-shaped scar to pull it free but Paddy pinned her arms behind her. Dianne increased the pressure. Madeline gagged. Her eyes were full of pain as her body began to shudder.
The four chatted like old friends who’d dropped by for snacks.
‘At least you’re in one piece, old buddy.’ Paddy kept a tight grip on Madeline’s arms and didn’t appear to notice her convulsions as she strangled. ‘We’d have come back sooner but we ran into a friend.’
Ruth glanced round at the neighbouring houses; she smiled as she said, ‘You’ll be OK to do the job here. As long as you stick close to the bushes nobody can see you from the windows.’
Ulric repeated in that mechanical way of his, ‘We told you not to go home. It’s not wise – not wise at all.’
‘We traded up to a motorhome, by the way.’ Dianna increased the tension on the orange string that cinched Madeline’s neck. ‘It’s even got satellite TV. How cool is that?’
Paddy grinned. ‘Not to mention the refrigerator. Hmm … ice cold beer all the way.’
‘Oh? And we came back for another reason. There’s somebody we’d like you to meet. Nearly done, Dianna?’
‘Another couple of minutes. She must have a tough neck.’
That broke the spell. With Madeline’s lips turning as purple as two ripe plumbs I launched myself at them.
‘Stop it! You’re hurting her!’
‘Hurting? We don’t plan on hurting her. We’re in the process of killing her.’
‘Let her go.’
I shoved Paddy back then dragged the cord from Dianna’s hands. With the constriction about her neck removed Madeline could spew out a whole volley of choking noises.
Ulric’s eyes narrowed as he watched me gently remove the noose from Madeline’s neck. ‘What’s going on, Mason? Why are you stopping us? She’s just one of those things.’
As I flung the noose to one side I brandished the camera in Ulric’s face. ‘You’d better listen to me carefully. I’ve got plenty to tell you. Plenty!’
‘And we came here thinking we had important things to reveal to you.’ Dianna nodded. ‘OK. We won’t hurt your …’ – she pursed her lips – ‘… your lady friend. So, Mason, you tell us your story, then we’ll tell you ours.’
chapter 26
So: I did the obvious thing. After telling the four I’d be right back, I went to find my sister so I could introduce her to them. After all, Eve was part of this, too. She would need to hear the information they planned to share with me. Madeline had just about recovered from nearly being strangled, although a red mark encircled her neck where the cord had bit deep.
Ruth tagged along. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘I live here. I’ll be fine.’
‘From the little we’ve seen it doesn’t look fine.’ She still smiled her perma-smile but her eyes were serious.
‘What are you going to do if we bump into a bunch of Echomen? Shout rude names at them.’
‘Something like that.’ Her smile broadened as she collected a sports bag where she must have dumped it in the undergrowth when they pounced on Madeline. She showed me the sub-machine-gun lying in the bottom of it.
I smiled. ‘You could do some wicked name-calling with that.’
So we turned the corner and we bumped into Sis. She was having a conversation with the creature who was a duplicate of our mother.
‘I can be your Mom,’ she was saying. ‘Just give me time. I can make it up to you. Everything will be like it was before.’
I caught Ruth’s eye, then glanced at the Echo. The bruising on her neck told me this was the one and who had appeared this morning to cook us breakfast as if nothing had happened. Ruth gave a nod, then slipped her hand into the bag to grab the gun. I stabbed a glance at her while mouthing, ‘No.’
The woman stood at the driveway gate. Behind her, neighbours’ kids cycled their bikes in the afternoon sun. To start blasting lead at the creature would lead to innocent children catching a round or two.
Eve didn’t seem to have even noticed I stood behind her on the drive. Or Ruth for that matter. My sister growled, ‘You’re not my mother. I told you the first chance I got I’d kill you.’
What the neighbours made of what happened next God alone knew. Eve advanced on the woman. The way her body language screamed violence, I knew my sister planned murder. The creature saw it, too. She fled across the road, then cut along a path between two houses.
‘Eve,’ I called, ‘there’s some people I want you to—’
The red mist had come down on Eve – OK, so it’s metaphorical red mist but it was dense enough to obscure not only everything in the world apart from the object of her hatred, it clouded reason, too.
‘Eve. Come back. Eve!’
But my sister took off with the speed of a gazelle after the monster who pretended to be our mother. In a blur of blue denim she sprinted along the path between the two houses in hot pursuit.
‘Eve! Eve!’
And that’s what our neighbours must have seen if they were taking a peek through their windows. Eve Konrad apparently chased her mother, Delf Konrad, across the street and into the woodland at the back of the houses. Was this some kind of Konrad family lark, they’d have been asking themselves? Or had the mother-daughter relationship collapsed into raging warfare? I started running after them then paused as I realized that Ruth ran with me.
‘No,’ I called to her. ‘Go back and tell the others.’ I eyeballed the sports bag that contained the machine-gun. ‘But I need that.’
‘Mason, you don’t know how to use one of these.’
‘I’ll figure it out.’
If she didn’t agree I was going to wrench the bag out of her hands but she threw it at me. ‘Make sure the safety’s off, then point and squirt.’
I weaved between little kids on their bikes as I charged after Eve. Even though there was the temptation to pull out the machine-gun, so I’d have it at the ready to blast the Mom look-alike, I kept it in the bag. The neighbours might turn a blind eye to what seemed like Eve pursuing long-time resident Mrs Konrad, they would absolutely alert the cops if they saw the son toting a sub-machine-gun.
Once you’re through the gap in the houses that’s where the suburbs ended. The path led into a dozen acres of oak and chestnut trees. It tended to be quiet there but I couldn’t rule out dog walkers, or even teenagers indulging in a few beers out of
sight of their parents.
‘Eve!’ Now I yelled as she bounded toward the trees. Ahead, Echo-Mom had vanished into the shadows of a monster oak. ‘Eve! Leave her! Come back here, you don’t … damn!’ The shadow swallowed her, too, in a gulp. Damn it, Eve. What a crazy thing to do – what a bloody crazy thing! Echomen are going to pounce on you. Even though some raw phrases that described Eve were bursting from my lips I knew I’d never turn back. Premonitions snapped through my skull. If I didn’t catch up with my sister in the next twenty seconds I’d never see her again. Worse … hell, a lot worse. I might see her again, but like the ‘Mom’ she pursued, my sister wouldn’t be the same one I’d known for two decades. So I bounded forward like I’d got springs fixed to my soles, jumping over dumped mattresses, abandoned car tyres, builders’ rubble because they’d been too bloody lazy to take it to certified dumping grounds. Then I plunged into the shadow ocean, too, beneath the spreading branches. Birds screamed in alarm. A rabbit fled in panic from my thudding feet. Deeper into the forest the garbage assumed a raunchier aspect – hanging from branches were used condoms that had gone all pendulous with the weight of their liquid cargoes pooling in the teat; then there were the withered remains of cannabis roaches, and lying on a bed of purple toadstools were the remains of a bong made from a plastic bottle. Beneath the branches the air had become heavy with that musky smell of wild animals. Shadow crept in with a density that was not only blinding but suffocating. Whereas before, in the open, I’d been able to view almost a mile in front of me now I could only see five yards. Tree trunks crowded together like they yearned to squeeze human beings out of their space.
‘Eve.’ My yell morphed into a whisper. ‘Eve. Can you hear me?’
I followed the only obvious route, a path that curved from side to side, so I couldn’t see more than a few paces ahead at any one time. Every ten seconds or so a branch would snag the sports bag, nearly ripping it from my hands. ‘Eve!’ My voice rose. It was getting wild in here. The heat grew oppressive. Humidity put a squeeze on my lungs so it was hard to breathe. And at any minute I expected to turn a corner to find Eve lying on the dirt with her blood splashed all around. As I ran I searched through my memories of this place when I’d ridden my mountain bike along these paths. I knew a disused quarry lay at the centre of the wood. There were also old mine workings here. The mouths of the pits had been closed up with flimsy plugs of fern, so everyone in Tanshelf knew if you weren’t careful you could plunge through the greenery into a pit deep enough to crack every bone in your body. Those were the kind of pits that were black as the inside of a tomb; they also stank of something that had once been alive but had now gone rank and rotten. If you dropped a stone into a pit it vanished into darkness for a long, long time before you heard the thud of rock hitting soft, rotting stuff, or maybe you’d be rewarded with a splash that made you wonder what it would be like to tumble in there to drown in the darkness.
So, as I ran, I kept an eye on the earth in front, in case it presented that telltale circular depression of soft greenery that would admit you to a whole universe of pain. Consequently, when I happened on the figure I couldn’t stop and slammed into it.
‘Hell, Mason! Can’t you watch where you’re going!’
‘Eve?’
She grunted. ‘You clumsy idiot. You nearly broke my damn back.’ Still rubbing her spine where I’d charged into it, she pushed me back a step, then she put her finger to her lips. ‘Shh.’
‘What’s wrong? Have you found the woman?’
My sister shook her head; her eyes were so serious I felt my stomach turn chill. ‘Listen.’ She gripped my forearms as she locked eyes with me in a way that reminded me of my mother when she revealed bad news. ‘I’ll show you them if you promise to keep your head.’
I laughed despite the situation. ‘After what we’ve been through? Of course, I’ll keep my head. What is it?’
‘Remember? Promise.’
‘OK, OK. Promise.’
She stood back to allow me to move to the edge of the tree-line. I knew where we were. This was the old quarry. A deep gouge in mother earth where, as kids, we’d throw old refrigerators over the edge to watch them splash in a white mess of destruction as they hit boulders fifty feet below. So there we stood, brother and sister, at the edge of the limestone cliff. Beneath us, the bottom of the quarry was a flat expanse of grass with a turquoise lake in its centre.
And there they were … the hell-born masses … the evidence, which told me that all I’d done in life was futile. That I’d lost the war after all. In the Bible there are demons that announce ‘I am legion.’ I always took it to mean that the demons numbered in their thousands or millions, but they were all exactly the same. A mass of identical demons – indistinguishable from one another; indestructible.
And there ‘I’ was: down there in the quarry beneath me, Mason Konrad. There ‘I’ was and I am legion. For in that god almighty wound in the face of the earth was me – or that should be 500 versions of me. The legion of Echomen all wore my face. I knew they’d all have the habit of pushing their thumb into the corner of their mouths when they were thoughtful. And if I had a suicide-wish I could have found a path that led down into the quarry, then, at my leisure, checked each and every hand – and, don’t you know it? Each hand would own a Y shaped scar on the back – a fork of red lines etched into the skin.
Eve whispered, ‘They did this on purpose. They used the woman to lure us here. Mason? Mason, I warned you … keep your head. Don’t do anything stupid. Mason!’
My sister had seen the expression on my face. My eyes went wide, and probably somehow lost looking, as if I looked into an abyss and seen Satan himself in all his demonic majesty, rising out of hell’s fire to claim me. As one, the 500 Echomen in the quarry lifted their heads to look at me. Their collective sight hit me like a punch in the face. I gasped as I rolled backward at the force of it. Faces that were identical to mine smiled. And something of their minds reached into mine. Just for a second, I stood at the bottom of the quarry gazing up at the Mason Konrad standing on the cliff top.
‘Mason, don’t!’
Eve may have struggled to stop me. Only I don’t remember. All I do recall was ripping the machine-gun from the bag, then hauling back the bolt. Make sure the safety’s off, point, then squirt. Ruth’s words came back to me clearly enough. That’s when I squeezed the trigger. Thirty-five rounds of 9mm ammo snapped out of the muzzle to rip into those mirror images of me down below. Heads burst in a splash of glorious crimson. Nearly a dozen Echomen dropped down dead or dying. The others kept on smiling. You see, I’d killed maybe two or three per cent of that evil legion. That’s all – a tiny, tiny percentage. They knew it. They knew I knew it. Fuck, they knew they’d already won the battle.
‘C’mon! Mason, move it. They’re coming up the path,’ Eve shouted but I ignored her. All I craved was to kill those bastards in the quarry. With luck I might have nailed Konrad, the one I’d stabbed with the buckle pin. God, the satisfaction of wiping that shit off the face of the earth would be substantial indeed.
Eve dragged at me. ‘Mason, get back home! Didn’t you hear? They’re coming to get us!’
The words punched through that fog of rage inside my head. The machine-gun no longer had ammo. I’d spent it all in one vicious discharge. OK, I’d butchered some of the monsters. The thing is, 400 of their surviving brethren were intent on butchering my sister and me. And here they come. They surged toward a slope where trucks had accessed the workings to collect the stone. In a couple of minutes they’d be fighting over what was left of us.
So, thrusting the firearm back into the sports bag I called Eve to follow me. We charged back into the trees to retrace our way back to the house.
‘Mason. Eve. Let me be your mother.’ The copy of Mom stood in shadow, her face the epitome of maternal concern. ‘Just say “yes”; I can protect you from them.’
Now it might be Eve’s turn to deliver bloodshed. But despite the killer look she shot
the woman she kept running. Once more we were in the stifling atmosphere under the branches. Birds screamed in alarm. Rabbits fled from us. We could see no more than a few paces ahead in that choked world of trees, bushes, hemlock, brambles.
‘Mister, I want my camera back.’ The boy who’d visited me earlier stood beyond a tuft of ferns. ‘Please, I want it back. It’s mine.’
Eve goggled. ‘Mason, that boy looks like you when you were—’
‘I know, it’s one of those things. Keep moving.’
‘Please, mister.’ The boy’s eyes filled with tears. I’d never seen anyone look so wounded. ‘You don’t know what that camera means to me. I spent days fixing it. I’ll never be able to get another.’
I encouraged Eve to move with a pull on her elbow. ‘Hurry up. They’ll soon be here.’
‘Please, Eve,’ the boy said, ‘will you make him give the camera back? I’ll be good.’
He stepped forward. The mat of green under his feet sagged like it was rubber. A second later it split wide as he tumbled through into the old mine working.
Eve screamed, ‘He’s fallen!’
‘Good!’ I yelled back at her. ‘Because I haven’t got any bullets left to kill him.’
Eve slowed. ‘You’re not going to leave him down there?’
‘He’s not even human. Come on.’
From the trees behind us came the sound of what could have been a massive engine. But that deep, deep thudding sound wasn’t the result of pistons. These were the feet of hundreds of Echomen coming our way.
‘If we start running now,’ I told her, ‘then we’ve got at least a chance of making it back to the house.’
After shooting me a frightened glance, she nodded. Then she started to run like she’d never run before.
chapter 27
Eve and I met Paddy as we ran through the gap between the houses.
‘Paddy where did you leave the truck?’