Bone Harvest

by James Brogden

  Sus’s hand went to her mouth, and she shook her head in swift denial. ‘No,’ she whispered.

  Moccus laid his hand on her cheek. It only had three fingers and she flinched from its touch. ‘Daughter,’ he said softly.

  ‘What…?’ Tears were spilling down her cheeks. ‘… How has this… you’re…’

  ‘I am home,’ he said. ‘Will you take me in and heal me?’

  She bowed before him, and the other Recklings followed her lead.

  They dismantled the barricade and carried him into the village. Matt couldn’t make out too many of the details but he got the impression that the village was deserted and partially ruined. Moccus was taken to a large barn-like building and laid upon a bed of rags and straw, and the Recklings crowded around him, telling him of themselves and what had been happening in Swinley in his absence. Sus took Matt to one side while this was happening. ‘There are still a few cottages left standing that you might be able to use for yourself,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about the owners. They’ve all… gone. I would get comfortable if I were you.’ She nodded at the adulatory mob. ‘This could take a while.’

  * * *

  The following day Sus showed him around the remains of Swinley.

  The hedgerows were overgrown and the fields were untended – some dotted with the long-rotted and partially eaten corpses of livestock, others with their crops lost to weeds. A herd of small muntjac deer bolted from them, dashing through a broken fence and back into the woods. There seemed to be few cottages or farmhouses, but those he saw were either broken open to the elements or fire gutted shells. He had found one that still had some food in the larder – stale bread and cheese, but as breakfasts went it was better than nothing.

  ‘It didn’t happen all at once,’ said Sus as they walked. They were accompanied by a male Reckling who introduced himself as Griskin. He wore the rags of a once-expensive suit, but with his head hunched so far forward that it was below the level of his shoulders, and though his arms were disproportionately short, they ended in claws that were long, black and wickedly curved. ‘When Mother Ardwyn and the butcher stole the carnyx it was like a beehive that someone had stamped on. Fury. Disbelief. We watched because there was nothing we could do. Some of the Farrow came and said “find them for us”, and a few tried, but we never heard from them again. Then the equinox came and we felt that He Who Eats the Moon was summoned, but not for the people here. They were not able to renew themselves with the first flesh. The oldest died first, as the sicknesses that they had kept at bay for so long caught up with them, but there was nobody living in Swinley who had not outlived a normal human lifespan, and within two months they were all dead. Some of them took their own lives. Some tried to escape to the outside for help.’

  ‘What happened to them?’ asked Matt.

  Sus looked at him sidelong. ‘We couldn’t let them draw attention to us.’

  Griskin chuckled quietly.

  ‘Some of the buildings caught fire,’ she continued. ‘The people who live in the neighbouring villages must have seen the smoke, but nobody sent help. I think they were glad to see Swinley burn.’

  By now they had reached a small church with a square Norman tower. Sus paused before she opened the door. ‘We put the rest of them in here,’ she said. ‘It’s what we think they would have wanted.’

  The sweet, thick stench of decay rolled out of the church as she opened it and led him inside, and he had to bury his nose in the crook of his elbow to keep out the worst of it. The Recklings had gathered all the corpses of the Farrow that they could find and put them here, having removed their clothes and placed them in positions of copulation as if indulging in one last and eternal orgy. The midsummer heat had not been kind to any of them. All were bloated, and many had burst, spilling their insides over each other. Flies, disturbed at their feast, swarmed up in great buzzing clouds from upturned faces and gaping jaws, while rats scuttled away under the pews.

  Matt reeled from the sight and clawed his way out to the fresh air, retching.

  Sus and Griskin joined him a moment later.

  ‘We are his children but those were his faithful,’ she said. ‘It’s different for you. If you’re going to fight for him, then fight, but don’t be surprised if this is the reward you get. That’s all I’m saying.’

  Later that morning Moccus called the Recklings to him. Now that Matt saw the barn in daylight he noticed all the traps and rabbit snares hanging from the walls, and he nudged Sus. ‘Did Gar live here?’ he whispered.

  Sus scowled. ‘Gar betrayed us. He helped Mother Ardwyn and the butcher steal the bone horn, and that killed this place.’

  Matt shrugged. ‘He was good to me. Taught me stuff.’ He was surprised to find tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. ‘The old woman’s fucking dog chewed his throat out. I’m going to kill them both for that.’

  ‘Shh,’ she said. Moccus was speaking.

  ‘Even though the next tusk moon is some time away we must still move quickly,’ he said. ‘There is a threat to me that must be destroyed.’

  ‘What threatens you?’ asked Sus.

  ‘By now the police will have found the carnyx and the knife, and therewith the means to both bind and kill me.’ Moccus growled – it was a weak, pained sound, but they all felt it vibrate through the ground, nonetheless. ‘I will not suffer that again. I will not be their meat again. I will be a man.’

  ‘But the police have guns and dogs and helicopters and all that,’ Matt pointed out. ‘They’re basically an army.’

  ‘So are we,’ said Griskin, and there was a murmur of approval from around.

  ‘You are aware that you’re talking about attacking a police station, right?’ Matt protested. ‘That’s a counter-terror-level response, right there. We’re talking drones and satellites and fuck knows what else. That’s a pretty big kick-me sign on the arse for someone who says he wants to lie low for a month.’

  ‘Do you think that I have not had enemies in all the long centuries before?’ Moccus replied. ‘Or that this place has not learned how to hide itself from the outside world? You have been here less than a day; you know nothing. Your arguments are noted but it is my will that you do this thing. Does that suit you? Will you defy me so soon?’

  Matt bit his tongue. ‘No, of course not. But how are we meant to find this horn and knife? They could be in any one of who knows how many places.’

  ‘Start with the police stations. You will know when you are near the carnyx – it calls to my blood and my blood will respond to it. Remember how you felt the presence of my children before you saw them?’

  ‘Fair enough. And transport? This lot are definitely not going to fit in my car and I’m pretty sure that the trains don’t do group saver tickets for things not of this earth.’

  ‘There are many farms in Swinley,’ said Sus. ‘A few of them have cattle trucks. They are old but they should still be working.’

  * * *

  And that was how Matt found himself driving a 1958 Leyland Comet cattle truck east along the M54 at 1 a.m., with a cargo of excitable Recklings peering out through the wooden slats of the high-sided vehicle at the lights of houses and oncoming traffic. Sus was in the passenger seat of the cab, navigating with an old-fashioned A-Z, since he didn’t want to risk the authorities being able to track his phone’s GPS.

  ‘This is not how I imagined my summer was going to go,’ he muttered.

  * * *

  The police station in Burton-on-Trent was sandwiched between the main works of Molson Coors Brewing on one side of a busy A-road and the loading and delivery yards on the other, and in between there were plenty of lay-bys and yards where a vintage cattle truck could sit unnoticed amongst all the container lorries and forklifts. Moccus had been right – Matt had felt something tugging at him as he’d driven slowly past the station house. He was just glad that it was still in the old Victorian premises rather than one of those corporate complexes on a new estate outside town where county councils lik
ed to stick all the emergency services under one roof. It meant that security might be a bit less tight.

  He jumped down from the cab, walked to the back of the truck and unhitched the rear panel, letting it down into a ramp. Inside, the cattle compartment was full of shifting shadows and eager whispers.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s do this.’

  3

  NIGHT SHIFT

  SERGEANT PRAVEEN KAUR SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN back at work.

  The problem was that the Briar Hill incident was throwing out so many offshoots in terms of just getting statements from everyone, never mind any of the forensics, and with staffing having been hacked back year after year because of budget cuts, it was all hands to the pumps, as the Chief said. He’d made the right noises, of course – told her that if she wanted to she could take whatever time she needed to cope with the aftermath of what she’d seen in that shed – and she had no doubt that he meant it, because Chief Inspector Connors was a decent man, but all the same she could see him wondering how he was going to cover her absence even as he said it.

  So no, according to any right-thinking person she shouldn’t have been in the office collating witness statements in the early hours. She should have been snuggled up in bed after a Thai takeout, a bit of a cry, and a long conversation with her Auntie Raisa (although ‘conversation’ might have been stretching it a bit) about why policing was far too dangerous a job and what was wrong with starting a family, anyway. But then she’d have had nothing to distract her from remembering the thing that had come out of the shed.

  The problem was that Prav was not a right-thinking person, at least as her Auntie might consider such things. Prav liked this. Collating and filing and organising helped to defuse the chaos, whereas sitting around at home in her slippers watching daytime television just let the chaos spread unchecked. She could have hung around at the allotments with the scene-of-crime crew but she’d only have been making a nuisance of herself and not actually contributing anything. Coming in after the front desk had closed meant that she could work uninterrupted by members of the public coming in to complain about their parking tickets or with things needing to be signed. And it wasn’t as if she was on her own. Spencer, the duty sergeant, was downstairs, and Ryland and Lennox were on patrol, which meant that they were in and out of the station all night.

  The wheels were turning, and as long as she was helping to turn them, she could see this ride through to the end and sleep happily when it was all dotted and crossed.

  After that disastrous interview, Hughes had been transferred to the station at Watling Street in Stoke, since the custody suite at Burton had been closed over a year ago because there wasn’t enough money to refurb it. Everett Clifton had been shot dead in a field. Dennie Keeling and David Pimblett were all in hospital, she recovering from some kind of seizure, while he was recovering from his mauling at the hands (and teeth) of that huge unnamed assailant that everyone in the station was calling ‘Chewie’, though never to the media and definitely not in earshot of the Chief. There was no question of Viggo being destroyed, since he had obviously been defending his mistress against a violent attacker.

  No, these two, physical injuries aside, weren’t the ones making all the work. It was the list of names that Pimblett had supplied – the ones who he accused of having been accomplices to Hughes and Clifton – that needed checking out. It seemed like he’d named half the tenants of the Briar Hill allotments. What the hell had been happening there over the summer?

  That had not been a fun interview either – though not for anything he’d said or done during it, so much as the exchange that had happened after she had put her notebook away.

  ‘When you and I went to that farm,’ she’d said, ‘you already suspected that the girl might be there, didn’t you?’

  David’s eyes were guarded as he replied, ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Because if you didn’t know then and only found out later, you wouldn’t have made the call anonymously. You’d have given your name. You didn’t give your name because you didn’t want to have to explain why you failed to report that you thought she was at the farm very first thing. So. Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Because they threatened my family, okay?’ he said, probably thinking that he sounded defiant. ‘I had to make sure that my wife and daughter were safe first. I told the police as soon as I could.’

  ‘Which gave Hughes and Clifton enough warning to move her somewhere else, obviously.’

  He fiddled with his hospital bracelet, avoiding her eyes. Most of his torso and left arm were strapped up and according to the doctors he was lucky that they were still attached to each other. He must have been in considerable pain, but he’d told her that he wasn’t taking any morphine at that moment because he wanted to give her as clear an account as possible. She had to credit him with that, she supposed, but all the same she couldn’t not pursue it. ‘You knew that Lauren was probably being raped and tortured as we stood there on the doorstep getting fobbed off by that bloody woman – and you let us get fobbed off.’

  ‘Yes!’ he said, and when he looked at her again she saw how haunted he was by that decision. ‘And all I could see was it happening to my little girl instead. What was I supposed to do? What would you have done?’

  ‘I’d have trusted the person sitting next to me in the car,’ she retorted. ‘You should have trusted me, David.’

  ‘Ardwyn chose the people around her – the Farrow – very carefully. Tenants on the allotments who could cover for her, me because of my volunteering with the police, basically anybody she thought might have had influence and could help her. Maybe even you, for all I knew. I couldn’t take that risk. Are you going to put this in your report? Have me charged with perverting the course of justice or whatever?’

  Prav sighed. ‘No. What good would that do? You helped save the girl in the end and that’s got to count for something. People like Ardwyn Hughes become strong by making people like you and me distrust each other. I’m not going to give her the satisfaction.’

  And with that she had left David to heal what he could.

  The playlist that helped her concentrate came to an end and she removed her headphones, thinking that it might be technology’s way of saying that’s quite enough for one night.

  She heard something fall over downstairs.

  Prav left her desk and went to the office door, which opened onto a short hallway and the staircase down to the ground floor.

  ‘Spence?’ she called.

  There was the sound of something being dragged.

  He’d probably decided that he needed to go looking for something in one of the cells, which were now being used as general storage and overspill for the evidence room. Even though the custody suite was out of commission, Burton was one of the few stations left with a front desk where the public could hand in lost-and-found, because knives and drugs didn’t need to be fed and monitored in case they choked on their own vomit or pissed on the floor. Spence was in his sixties; whatever he was trying to move, he was likely to give himself a hernia.

  ‘Do you need a hand with anything?’ she called as she went downstairs.

  She saw Spence in the long corridor that ran from the front desk to the back door. He was lying on the floor, face down, being dragged backwards by something that made no sense. For a start, it had no arms or forelimbs, just a pair of thickly muscled legs with knees that rose over its back as it crouched by Spence’s head. It was dragging him with a whiplike tongue that was wrapped around his throat, and he was leaving a streak of red on the floor.

  The thing looked at her, opened its mouth and squealed.

  That was when she saw that the door to what had once been the cellar of the old Victorian building was open. Normally it housed just the boiler and electrics, but something simian with a pig’s face launched itself out of there, jabbering at her, and all of the other doors in the corridor were open, spilling forth creatures that looked like they’d step
ped straight out of a vivisectionist’s nightmare.

  Prav ran.

  She didn’t run without purpose, though. She dashed for the back of the building, towards the changing rooms. There was a rack of personal radios permanently on charge, and she grabbed one, pivoting left down a side corridor and towards the unused cells. Something close behind her skidded on the polished floor as she took the corner too sharply for it to follow and crashed into a bank of lockers, screeching. She didn’t look back to see what it was, simply yanked open the first cell door that she came to, praying that it was being used for storage, and threw herself inside. She saw boxes, a filing cabinet, two old desks stacked on top of each other, and a huddle of broken office chairs. She tipped the filing cabinet over as the door was shoved from the other side; it landed with a crash, drawers flying open and spilling old property records everywhere, but it stopped the door opening more than six inches. A hand snatched through the gap, except it wasn’t a hand, it was a pig’s trotter with a thumb. A yellow eye peered at her through the viewing slot in the metal door, and something half-snarled, half-squealed: ‘Goan tah eeechooo!’

  ‘The fuck you are.’ Prav shoved the desks towards the door too, and upended them onto the filing cabinet, then began throwing boxes onto her makeshift barricade. When it became clear that no amount of pushing from the other side was widening the gap any more, she took out the radio.

  ‘All units, all units! This is bravo zero! Burton central is being attacked! Over!’ Despite her best efforts to remain calm there was no disguising the panic that was creeping in at the edges. ‘All units, all units!’ she repeated. ‘This is—’

  ‘Bravo zero, this is mike three,’ said Mick Ryland’s voice on the other end. ‘Prav, is this a joke?’

  ‘No, it’s not a fucking joke, Mick!’ she screamed. ‘Some fucking I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-they-are have broken into the station! They got Spence! They got him on the fucking floor!’