A Hatful of Shadows

by Richard Ayre

  He reached Oban at four in the morning. The Scottish town was deserted and silent, even for a ferry port. Four am. He had time.

  He parked the car and started walking up the dark, dew-damp grass towards McCaigs Tower, perched on a hill overlooking the town like a stone crown. She was waiting for him. He could sense her. Sense that she sensed him. He quickened his pace.

  He reached the tower and scanned all around. Even though it was pitch black he saw everything with a vivid reality. The stone tower itself with its many pillars that could be hiding the one he sought. She was here. He could feel her. But she wasn’t close yet. She was on her way though.

  He placed the heavy object he had taken out of the box in the boot and lugged up the hill with him in a patch of long grass so it could not be seen, marking the position in his mind.

  The vampire sat and leant against one of the columns. He closed his eyes and waited.

  He pushes open the sitting room door. She is standing in the carnage of his once neat and tidy house. He switches on the light and she turns towards him.

  His employer is enveloped in blood. She is bathed in it. His widening, unbelieving eyes cannot see one part of her that is not crimson. The whole room stinks of blood. He can taste its coppery bitterness on his tongue.

  She smiles her red smile at him and opens her arms as if in a welcome. She is so much younger than when he saw her last, just this afternoon. Six hours ago she was in her late fifties, still attractive but seemingly fighting a losing battle against time. But now she looks no more than twenty. Her blood covered skin is taught and muscular. He notices this, even though his attention is focussed on the two scarlet, ripped bundles of flesh lying on the soaked carpet in front of her.

  He takes a tentative step towards the shapes, but his knees buckle as the awful reality of what they are begins to sink in. He has to crawl towards them, squelching through the carpet, whilst the she-beast stands and watches him silently, still grinning.

  Monica and Millie are unrecognisable as the mother and daughter they had been. They have been torn, shredded. Parts of them are missing.

  The pain and horror and shock inside him rise up and he begins a scream. It is all he can do as he stares at the tattered remains of his life. Maybe given time he will feel anger and attack the creature who stands above him, but for this one, elongated moment, all he can do is scream his pain.

  But he doesn’t get the chance. For she grabs him with claws of steel and bites into him, and he can feel his blood being vacuumed from his body and into hers. He tries to grab the hands around his head but the blood is leaving his body too fast. Within seconds he is dead at her feet…

  He opened his eyes to find her standing above him. She looked about thirty, seductive and powerful. She was dressed in tight jeans and a blouse that pushed at her breasts, oblivious of the cold wind blowing around the hill. Her long black hair was unbound and fell past her shoulders. She was beautiful. He stood up to face her, using the column as support to do so.

  She regarded him gravely for a while.

  Eventually she gave a long sigh.

  ‘Why do you still fight it?’

  ‘To get to you.’

  She laughed. ‘You can’t fight it Christopher. It’s in your blood now. Embrace it. Embrace the life I have given you.’

  ‘The death you have given me,’ he replied, feeling his legs start to shake. The Hunger roared in his stomach and she laughed again.

  ‘You are a tiger and you’re acting like a lamb,’ she said scornfully. ‘Rabbits and moles will not give you what you need. Don’t you want to know what it’s like? Don’t you want to take control of the power you have?’

  His breathing was ragged now. He was weakening fast. He only had a short amount of time.

  ‘You killed my family,’ he whispered, his hatred rising. ‘You murdered them and you made me into this. Power? I have no power. You have taken everything from me and you didn’t even allow me to die. I have nothing!’

  She sighed again. ‘Look, why are you here? If not to join me, then what?’

  An idea suddenly came to her and she laughed. ‘You don’t think you can hurt me do you?’ She waited, staring at him in disbelief. ‘You do!’ She laughed again, this time a scornful bark.

  ‘I really made a mistake with you. I thought we could be together. But I can see I was wrong.’ She regarded him gravely once again. She turned to leave.

  ‘Goodbye Christopher. Good luck being dead.’

  She turned fully and Christopher took his chance. She was exactly where he wanted her to be. He pushed her to the left. A small push. But enough. There was a snap and she cried out and fell to the grass. She looked down at her leg.

  The old man trap was something he had come across in an agricultural museum weeks before. He had deposited himself within the building and had vanished with it in his possession without anyone knowing anything about it. Now it had its use.

  She stared at her torn leg for a moment, then her gaze swivelled back to Christopher. Incredibly, she smiled and leant decorously back, her head on her hand, her elbow in the grass. She shook her head.

  ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ There was no pain in her expression, just a puzzled, almost playful incomprehension.

  ‘I’ve looked it up,’ he said, as a red glow suddenly emerged over the waters of the Firth of Lorn. ‘We have exactly four minutes.’

  For the first time, her expression changed. From arrogance to the beginnings of fear as she followed his gaze. She sat up and bent towards her leg. But he had planned for this too. From under his short jacket he brought out the machete he had ‘acquired’ as well as the man trap. With one lunge he took off her left arm at the elbow. As she stared in disbelief he amputated her right hand too. The dismembered limbs lay on the suddenly red grass in front of her.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she shouted at him. ‘This isn’t going to kill me you moron. They come back. They always come back!’

  Christopher was grinning now, even as the Hunger burned him from the inside out. He shook his head.

  ‘Not this time.’

  He indicated to his left and her terrified gaze followed. She couldn’t turn away from the sight of the rising sun. Even as he grabbed her head and crouched beside her ear.

  ‘Let’s watch the sunrise my love,’

  He lunged and bit. He drank deeply. And for the first and last time he felt what she had talked about. He tasted the oily, engorging blood feast. Within his field of vision his hands, still gripping her head, pulsed with life, the thin skin tightening, the bones seeming to fade as the hands strengthened and became young again.

  That same feeling raced through his body. His arms tightened against the material of his jacket sleeves as the muscles grew. His legs felt the coursing tide of undead life soar through them. The memories and emotions about his wife and child vanished in an instant. He became a monster.

  Then the light hit them both and they screamed.

  An old man, walking his dog down by the waters, thought he heard something for a second and he paused. But whatever the noise had been it was soon drowned out by a screeching seagull. The old man listened but the sound did not repeat itself.

  Eventually, he continued on his way. Whilst up on the hill, the two bodies burned.

  This was another story I wrote years ago and have re-written from memory. I didn’t enter this one for any competitions you’ll be pleased to know.

  Toy Soldiers

  He remembered the flash of light. Not the explosion, but the flash of light. He had been on patrol. Then he was here. Not there. He frowned as he tried to remember what had happened. Nothing.

  His head was sore and he lifted a hand to rub it. But nothing touched his temple and he stared. The stump of his right arm stared back at him.

  He looked at his other arm. Like its twin, it had also gone AWOL. For a long time Deacon just stared, his gaze moving from one bandaged stump to the other. His thought process was trapped. It
wouldn’t react at all. It could not take in what it was seeing to make any viable conclusions. It was stuck, like a bad Skype signal. Frozen.

  The monitor beside his head flickered into life. A woman’s head appeared in it.

  ‘Hello Jack,’ she said. Too soothing. She was not human.

  Deacon eventually turned towards her, his face still showing the shock and wonderment of his realisation about his missing arms. The screen face smiled at him. It was designed to be comforting.

  ‘I’m sure you have a lot of questions,’ she said. ‘First of all, let me assure you that you are now on the waiting list for prosthetic limbs. You are number (a pause as the voice became a recorded message) two thousand, one hundred and three (the soothing voice returned) on that list. Your operations will take place beginning (another pause) September, 3rd, 2073.’

  Deacon eventually found his voice. ‘What happened to me?’ he croaked.

  ‘You will now be taken to the general ward,’ said the AI on the screen, flashing a smile again and ignoring his question. The screen flickered and went blank.

  Deacon stared at what was left of his arms again. He lifted his head when there was a hiss and the doors to the room opened, a porter smoothly entering on its rubber wheels. Its metal and plastic face smiled down at him.

  ‘Good morning Corporal. I have come to take you to the general ward.’

  ‘What happened to me?’ repeated Deacon, knowing it was useless to ask.

  ‘I’m sorry Corporal. I am not programmed to answer that question.’ It smiled at him again, then turned and reversed up to the foot of his bed. There was a clunk as the mag-locks engaged and then the porter started forward, out of the room. Deacon and his bed were towed behind it.

  Deacon stared around the sterile corridors. Everything was white. The floor, the walls, the ceiling. A magnetic strip ran the length of the floor which the porter followed. It branched off every now and then down other corridors, and the porter followed its programmed route, eventually emerging into a huge room, filled with beds. Beds and broken bodies.

  The porter towed him past men and women with no legs, or like him, no arms. He passed staring faces that had no jaws, or no noses, or no eyes. Sometimes no faces at all. He passed bodies that were no more than torsos, childlike and strange. Eventually, the porter reached a space and reversed Deacon’s bed into it. The mag-locks disengaged and the porter left without another word. Off to perform its next duty.

  Deacon stared at the sleeping man in the bed beside him. His ebony face was unmarked but he had no legs. He lay like he had been thrown there. Slowly the man woke. He blinked a couple of times in Deacon’s direction.

  ‘Hi,’ he said eventually. Deacon nodded at him.

  The man reached up for the grip hanging above him and pulled himself upright.

  ‘What number are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Deacon, Jack, Corporal, 5th Northumberland Rifles. 601…..’

  He broke off as the other man waved him into silence. ‘Nah, man. What number on the waiting list?’

  Deacon nodded, feeling foolish. ‘Two thousand and something. Can’t quite remember exactly.’

  The other man nodded. ‘Yeah. Comes as a bit of a shock doesn’t it. Waking up with that electric bitch smiling at you?’ He stuck out a hand and then pulled it back sharply as realisation hit him.

  ‘Shit, sorry man. Old habits and what have you.’ He smiled at Deacon. ‘A corporal eh? Got some royalty in the place at last.’ He looked across the room to another broken piece of humanity whose one eye was watching the exchange. ‘Got a corporal here Simms. You better do what you’re told from now on.’

  ‘Fuck off Richards you nonce.’

  Richards laughed and turned back to Deacon. ‘Simms don’t like gays,’ he said. ‘Thinks we’re all going to try and shag him in the night.’ He laughed at Simms who muttered something and turned away. Richards turned back to Deacon. ‘As if I’d have anything to do with an ugly bastard like him,’ he whispered, grinning.

  Despite everything that had happened to Deacon in the last hour, he managed to smile back.

  Richards looked around him at the other men and women in the room. ‘The War, eh?’

  Deacon nodded. The War had certainly taken its toll. Now in its thirteenth year it had claimed the lives of billions of people. And it showed no signs of letting up yet. The blasted wastelands of Central Europe, Russia and Asia were mincing men and women and children every single minute of every single day. And no-one seemed to know how to stop it. Deacon shook his head. Maybe no-one wanted to.

  His attention was brought back to Richards who was talking again.

  ‘So, two thousand and something,’ he said. ‘What’s your date?’

  ‘September 3rd.’

  ‘That’s good. Means you have a week before they start operating, then at least another week or two before your new arms have taught themselves what to do. I reckon you’re out of the War for at least two months.’ He lay back on his pillow. ‘Enjoy the rest buddy, enjoy the rest.’

  ‘What number are you?’

  Richards smiled lazily. ‘Three hundred exactly. I like that. It’s a nice round figure. Like Simms.’ He laughed. ‘I go for my first op tomorrow morning. Fitting the first leg.’ His smile faded slightly. ‘Be weird. But better than no legs at all I suppose.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Nice meeting you Deacon,’ he said. He slipped into sleep again.

  Deacon tried to do the same. He dreamed of the land mine and he at last remembered what had happened to him. Gilly had stood on it and had been torn apart. He remembered her body simply shredding itself into pieces in front of him, taking out half a company of Decoy Battalion robots with her. Her gore had covered him. He had lost consciousness. He hadn’t realised then that he had also lost his arms.

  Richards was taken for his first op the next morning. Exactly on time. Deacon wished him luck and said he would see him later. He was brought back into the room with a new leg. It was supposed to be an exact match for his skin colour but it was a poor attempt. It looked like what it was. Metal and plastic. Deacon waited for Richards to come round.

  A medic was waiting by his bed when he did. He was asked about the pain, on a level 1-10 (4). The medic then brought the leg online. It began exercising, rotating the foot, flexing the knee etc. Richards was told by the medic to concentrate on making his leg do his bidding. The medic then turned and slid smoothly away to its next programme. Richards spent hours doing this, sweating and cursing when the leg did not respond or did something he didn’t want it to do. Eventually, by early evening he fell asleep, exhausted, his leg still flexing and adapting to its new existence.

  The days went by. Deacon slowly got used to having no arms. He got used to robots helping him go to the toilet, helping to change his clothes. He was allowed up. He and Richards began taking short walks, Richards still on crutches but his new leg behaving itself. Other people in the ward went away and quite rapidly the ward began to empty. Apart from the people in the ward, they saw no other human. Richards went to get his other leg attached. But he didn’t come back.

  Deacon waited, but as evening drew in he stopped a passing nurse and asked it where his friend was. ‘I’m sorry corporal, I am not programmed to answer that question.’ She trundled away. Eventually Deacon fell asleep.

  The next day was his turn. Richards still hadn’t turned up but he was given his pre-med and didn’t really care after that.

  He awoke to find himself in another room. He looked down and saw that he was now the proud owner of two grey arms. He thought hard and one of the fingers twitched. A shadow fell over him.

  ‘How do you feel?’ asked the medic.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘On a level 1to 10, how is the pain?’

  ‘4.’

  His arms were brought on line, and immediately he felt pins and needles in his fingers. This rapidly went away, and under instructions of the medic he began exercising his arms, concentrating on one at a time.

  ‘Where
am I?’ he asked the medic who smiled at him.

  ‘Rehabilitation Room 1.’

  ‘Where’s Richards?’

  ‘I’m sorry corporal. I am not programmed to answer that question.’

  Deacon sighed. ‘Are there any humans in this facility? Someone I can talk to?’

  The medic stared with its glowing blue eyes. ‘I’m sorry….’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Deacon, cutting it off. The medic left.

  Over the next few days, Deacon began to come to terms with his new arms. By the end of the week he was changing himself, including fastening and unfastening the buttons, and even wiping his own arse. His arms seemed to be almost completely incorporated. They were still clumsy and he tended to smash glasses when he picked them up, but they were getting better. But Deacon was becoming increasingly paranoid.

  Since his removal from the ward, he hadn’t seen another human being. The room he was in was huge, but he was the only person in there. And where was Richards? Why hadn’t he come back after his second op? Was he in another ‘Rehabilitation’ room? What about the other people in the ward?

  He asked the medics or nurses or porters whenever they appeared, but the answers were always the same; ‘I am sorry corporal. I am not programmed to answer that question.’

  Eventually, he decided to find out where everyone else was. He dressed and moved to the door at the end of the long room, peering into the white corridor outside. There was nothing there. He stood on the pressure pad in the floor and the door slid open with its customary hiss.

  He set off down the corridor. There were no doors, just that long white tunnel, but eventually he came across another entrance on his right. The sign above read ‘Rehabilitation Room 2.’ He entered, the lights flickering into existence.

  Nothing. The room was empty. No beds, no people, no robots. Deacon left and set off down the corridor again. Eventually, as he assumed he would, he came across Rehabilitation Room 3.