Death Tide

by Devon C. Ford

  As instructed, and careful not to show any reluctance or fear, Peter stepped forward, anticipating the clip around his ear which usually came with the orders to step within range of her.

  “What do you want to eat?” she snapped, a heavy hint of reluctance in her voice, as though she were fighting against her instincts to both nurture and abuse him at the same time.

  “Anything,” he said quietly, hoping that was the right answer.

  “Anything?” she sneered back at mockingly, “anything isn’t a meal. I asked what you wanted.”

  As she spoke, that sickly-sweet fermented smell of alcohol hit him. He fought hard to keep his face neutral as his eyelids fluttered despite the battle to keep them still.

  “Pasta?” he tried, hoping that would assuage her anger at his previous incorrect answer. She huffed, reluctantly allowing that as an acceptable response, and stalked away to the kitchen where she picked up another cigarette from a packet and lit it from the burnt-down nub between her fingers. Given no further instructions, Peter stepped gingerly into the lounge where he perched on the edge of the itchy, brown settee and watched the television screen. The program showing was saying nothing about what was happening, and he stood to switch the channel after first turning down the volume so that the sudden change was less likely to be noticed. Pressing in the first button on the top left of the control panel, which was unmarked but that he knew was for BBC One, Peter walked backwards to the settee again to watch the static logo on the screen and strain to hear the words.

  “…stay in your homes, do not interfere with military operations and do not try to attend hospitals if affected by the disease. You are advised to stay in your homes, do not interfere…”

  The recording looped again, repeating the same information over and over.

  What kind of disease was it? Peter thought. Why can’t you go to hospital if you’re ill? Isn’t that the reason for hospitals?

  “What do you want with it?” came the shout from the kitchen, making Peter jump.

  “Cheese,” he answered, adding “please,” before he earned punishment for poor manners.

  Grumbled noises came in response but nothing which required him to move or answer, so he switched the channel again. On the third button he found a live broadcast, or at least not a sound recording on loop. This one had a man in a suit and with a moustache that was distracting when he spoke. He looked slightly dishevelled and very uneasy, scared even, and his eyes kept flickering away from the camera to look around the studio that wasn’t shown on the screen. He shuffled some papers on the desk in front of him and asked someone behind the camera if they wanted him to go again, then he nodded when he got an answer, before clearing his throat and trying to make his face serious and commanding.

  “Good evening, and welcome to the ITN News. An epidemic is sweeping the streets of Britain, after a virus was inadvertently released from a London laboratory, we believe late last week. Experts state that the mysterious illness causing the chaos is similar to the rabies virus. Those affected by it display extremely aggressive behaviour towards others, and there have been numerous incidents of…” the eyes flickered again before the throat was cleared a second time, “incidents of cannibalism. Transmission of the illness is also believed, experts claim, to be via bites and saliva from the infected. The London Metropolitan Police Force made a statement yesterday urging everyone to stay in their homes and not to interfere with the efforts of police and military personnel. Footage from the capital.”

  The screen suddenly went black, shrinking to a slowly dying dot of white in the very centre of the box, just as loud swearing came from the kitchen.

  Power cuts so far away from the towns were a regular thing for the farm, but the timing of this one made Peter jump. He could hear the sound of drawers being pulled open and slammed closed from the kitchen, making him think that she was looking for candles to light and carry on with the meagre meal preparations. It was only really the lights which ran on electricity, as the heating and cooking was fuelled by the large oil tank outside. Because that was apparently expensive, the heating was rarely used. Peter wondered the last time he was told not to even think about turning the fire up, and how much their endless supply of oil cost.

  The television screen was in total darkness now, the tiny dot of residual light faded into nothingness, and he was left in the dark room alone without any link to the outside world.

  “It’s ready,” came an annoyed shout from the kitchen, and he stood to walk fast into the other room where he took a seat at the table, to be presented with a messy pile of undercooked pasta and not enough grated cheese to match it. He ate in silence, being watched the whole time as she smoked her way through three cigarettes until he had cleared the plate.

  “Please may I get down from the table?” Peter asked meekly but with enough confidence to hopefully avoid any accusation of mumbling. She nodded once, so he stood and carried his plate and fork to the sink where he began to run the water to wash them.

  “Oh, just leave that,” his mother snapped out of annoyance as she waved her hand in his direction, “I’ll do it, you just go to bloody bed.”

  He went without a word, and much later as he lay awake, Peter thought he could hear her crying downstairs alone.

  Waking the next morning, Peter did as he was told and didn’t put his school uniform back on. Instead, he wore the same clothes as he had been wearing the day before. They weren’t dirty, nor had he been wearing them for long enough to fall into that immeasurable bracket of ‘dirty enough to wash’. He went downstairs to find that she hadn’t risen yet, so Peter let the dog out of the back door where it was whining pitifully, and slipped his feet into his boots to follow.

  The morning air was brisk but not cold, but that wasn’t what made his brow furrow. It was something else; it was the noise of the morning which was wrong. Normally, there would be some sounds from the farm, and the absence of those regular noises felt alien. Not that the morning was silent, but instead of the distant hum of the dairy machinery working for the morning milking session, there was the constant and distressed cacophony of cows.

  His young brain recognised that they should have been milked by now, as that process started when the sky was still just in darkness at this time of the year, but their braying complaints rolled across the yard behind the house to spell something very out of sorts. In light of the dawning realisation that his father was probably never coming back, and therefore not in a position to reprimand him for going over there, and the realisation, too, that his mother was still sleeping off the bottle or two she had gone through the day before, Peter walked to the gate and made his way on to the farm, with the dog trotting easy circles around his slow progress.

  Peter found the milking parlour in silent darkness, something that the power cut shouldn’t affect, because it had its own generators as testimony to how often the electricity grid failed their remote location. He carried on past towards the sound of unhappy cows. Creatures of habit, all the black and white cows with their heavy, swinging udders all crowded in the field at the gate, expecting it to be opened and to file in to be milked and fed. Peter doubted whether they really understood what happened each morning and why, but even a creature as simple as a cow could understand a routine.

  He knew then, that with his father gone, none of the others would work on the farm. One had already left, he knew that much, but the others had either quit without telling anyone or had also abandoned the farm.

  Or worse, he thought, before he banished that thought from his head, but that can’t be, can it? That’s in London and it’s miles and miles away from here.

  Walking back to the house, Peter had been back inside for less than a minute before he heard the sounds of her walking down the stairs, surrounded by the cloud of her first cigarette of the morning.

  SEVEN

  Peter’s life evolved into something resembling more freedom than he had ever enjoyed, but the cost of that was a crushing loneliness which ga
thered more force daily. The knowledge that his father and sister weren’t going to come back escaped his young mind most of the time, and he found that he was banishing the facts that he didn’t want to recall to the fringes, where they could be almost ignored.

  He filled his days with walks on the farm, sometimes with the dog at his side; not out of any loyalty to him but another force of habit that dictated its place was outside. The dog was no pet and seemed to ignore Peter most of the time as it clearly felt its own spot on the family hierarchy was well above Peter’s own. Only now, with the father and the dog’s master gone, did a reluctant companionship emerge between the two.

  That bubble of freedom was burst after four days, when his mother woke him with her screeching voice from downstairs as she raged and broke things. Pulling up the covers a little tighter, he hoped that she would contain her rage to the ground floor and not remember him.

  Early on the fifth day that they were alone, Peter woke to a sensation that something was wrong. His eyes fluttered open; first the left and then the right until the bright light streaming in through the open curtains was manageable. The thing that was wrong, as he realised with sudden fear and panic, was his mother standing in his room wearing an exasperated look of hostility. She picked at her nails, something she did when she couldn’t smoke, and her red-ringed eyes bored into him menacingly.

  “Get up,” she snarled, “we’re going out.”

  Doing as he was told, he dressed under her watchful and malevolent gaze, then tried to inch past her in the doorway. She did this often, blocking his way to force him to ask – to beg – for her permission to pass.

  “Excuse me, please,” he said in a humble voice.

  “Speak up,” she snapped at him.

  Raising his eyes in defiance, then as his nerve abandoned him at the last minute, he dropped his gaze and asked again in a louder voice that still showed what he hoped would be enough deference to avoid being hit.

  She smirked unkindly and stepped aside to allow him enough room to get through the gap by her elbow. As he passed, she leaned sharply towards him and caught the side of his head with the elbow, as though it was his fault.

  Numb to the pain and almost immune to her bullying tactics after so many years, Peter regained his footing and walked to the bathroom where he did what he needed to do and brushed his teeth afterwards. Realising that breakfast would obviously be bypassed, he was hustled out of the front door and towards the farm. She shoved him in the back towards the battered pickup, as their family car was now missing, and she fumbled with the unfamiliar keys to get in. Spending almost a minute adjusting the seat back, she left him standing outside the passenger door until she reluctantly leaned over to let him in. Settling into the seat and making himself small and insignificant, he pulled his seatbelt and clicked it home. As the squeaking, rattling engine whined, the pickup bucked slightly as she failed to anticipate how low the clutch was on the unfamiliar farm wagon.

  Stopping at the edge of the driveway onto the road, more out of habit than actual care, she paused to look right before turning left to go down the narrow and overgrown track that led to nowhere special.

  The roads, as unmaintained and rough as he was used to, bounced Peter around in the passenger seat uncomfortably as his mother mithered and muttered under her breath beside him. He kept quiet and looked out, unable to open the windows to allow in any fresh air because of the overhanging greenery scraping and bumping off the cab intermittently. Staring out of the dirty glass, Peter found solace in doing something and moving somewhere, instead of just waiting at home barely getting fed.

  He wanted to ask where they were going, what they were looking for and to quiz her about the reasons, but the risk of her responding as she usually did was too great and would spoil his mood. He kept quiet and waited to find out the answers to the questions which were too risky to ask. When they reached a T-junction, devoid of any traffic or obstructions, he held his breath as her muttering became louder. Glancing across, he saw how she gripped the wheel with one hand as the other shook almost uncontrollably at her mouth, while she intermittently bit at the nails in between uttering words he couldn’t make out. Too scared to move, he stayed still and quiet as he always did around her when she was within striking distance. Without warning, she snarled something to herself and turned right in a chirp of tortured tyres as the pickup bucked with the change from first to second gear. Keeping her foot hard down on the accelerator, she crept the speed up into the next gears, as Peter stayed still and quiet. Slowing after a while, she turned right off the road into a small car park. He recognised the place, having been dragged there in the past to collect their car, or even once in the darkness when his father carried her bodily out of the small brick building.

  Their nearest pub, ironically called the Fox Arms, which always made Peter ask the silent question to himself about foxes not having arms, stood quiet and brooding. His mother seemed oblivious to the air of brooding menace the building seemed to give off, as she spilled from the car with shaking hands and a pale visage displaying her annoyance at catching her son’s eye.

  “Stay here,” she said firmly, giving Peter the slight sense that he detected a waver in her voice.

  He stayed. He watched her stagger slightly as she made as straight a line as she could manage towards the front door of the building, disappearing inside and leaving him suddenly alone.

  His heart rate rising fractionally, Peter scanned his surroundings just past the dirty glass which was all that separated him from the outside world and all of the unknown frightening things which were happening there. Forcing himself to breathe and be calm, he assessed the things he saw and catalogued them. A tall evergreen tree swaying slightly, betraying the wind blowing higher up than ground level. The flashing lights of the railway crossing further up the road, not flashing now as no trains were imminent. The two other cars on the small patch of ground he occupied, both looking cold and still as though they hadn’t moved in a while.

  Slowly, he dared to wind down the window an inch, stiffening at the squeak the handle emitted when he first took up the pressure, and allowed more senses to come into play to build the picture of his immediate surroundings. Lifting his chin to take in a long breath through his nostrils, Peter added more information to the list.

  Birdsong, high in the trees. A slight chill on the breeze, bringing with it the smell of wet woodland which was very different to the wet grassland that was so familiar on the farm. More noises drifted to him then, both familiar and startlingly different.

  Glass breaking, muffled by distance and obstructions, but unmistakable. A shout, a bang.

  At the sound of the bang, his visual acuity snapped his head to the right and back to the door which he had last seen his mother disappearing into. She re-emerged then, her arms full of clear glass bottles containing liquid that looked like water, but Peter knew was not. In her panicked flight, he smirked as she fumbled one of the bottles held awkwardly in her arms and dropped it, to hop in an ungainly dance over the smashing glass, heard crisply and clearly now. He also heard the string of foul obscenities that spewed from her vile mouth and the smirk wiped itself from his face in case she saw and took her revenge.

  From the way she ran, or was trying to run, awkwardly with her arms full, Peter thought that she hadn’t paid for the bottles and associated the shouting from inside to mark that theft. His brain registered that he had only heard one voice shout, unmistakably that of his mother, but the omission of other sounds didn’t fully paint the picture that she described when she regained the safety of the cab.

  “He’s fucking nuts, that bastard,” she spat as she threw herself in, barely able to perform basic motor functions with her rapid breathing and red face. Throwing the four surviving bottles into Peter’s lap, she turned the key and crunched her way into first gear before slamming her right foot down and tearing out of the car park almost out of control. Revving each gear beyond comfort for as long as Peter could hold his breath, she sud
denly slowed and stopped the car on the gravel verge, before fumbling with the sequence of the controls she needed to manipulate, and she stalled the pickup.

  She turned her furious eyes on him, and he snatched an involuntary breath, flinching to shut his eyes tight as her hand shot out towards him.

  Opening one eye to confirm what his ears had told him was happening, he stared at her as she sat next to him. Her desperate reach wasn’t to hit him, he realised, it was to make a grab for the one thing she needed most. The seemingly life-sustaining liquid in the bottle she now tore at feverishly to remove the screw cap from, and to tip it to her mouth. The roof of the cab prevented her from upending the bottle completely, forcing her to dip her chin and try to make her body smaller in an attempt to force the drink to flow. Pausing, she took three deep breaths to steady herself, then began her frantic guzzling once more, before a lack of oxygen forced her to stop and breathe. Slowly, her hands no longer trembling incessantly, she put the lid back on the now quarter-empty bottle with relative ease and closed her eyes as she let the drink flow though her body, as though she couldn’t think or function without it, as if it was the fuel she ran on. Opening her eyes, she turned to regard him and did the rarest of things.

  She smiled at him.

  He had seen it a few times in his life. Not the smile she cast on him when she was relishing the anticipation of punishing him, but a genuine smile of someone who was happy. Her sudden likeness to his sister stung him deeply, as though without seeing his mother look at him kindly, he had never noticed the family resemblance until that moment.