Sometimes he wondered if something so abstract as happiness would ever be possible again.
But he tried not to think on that too frequently.
It wasn’t his responsibility, after all.
His brief—where it began, and where it ended—was to salvage what he could of the human race.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Then his task would be through.
Then he could be said to have been a success.
THE HUNT
Mitts felt a hard slap on his shoulder.
“You still with us, pal, or what?”
Mitts blinked away his daze.
Dag was staring back at him. “Seemed to slip away there for a moment.”
Mitts shook his head. He reached up and pressed a finger to his temple. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I’m okay now, though.”
“All right, if you say so,” Dag said, looking at him from out of the corner of his eye and then trotting on.
Mitts stumbled several times as he tried to keep up with Dag.
There were others with them, maybe a dozen, perhaps a few more.
Mitts could hear their well-drilled marching boots all around him.
When Dag had led Mitts out of the Station, they had proceeded through the Village at a rapid pace, and out of the gates. Then they had ended up on the stodgy, uneven earth which they were attempting to navigate now.
To begin with, Mitts had been almost overwhelmed by the thick, rich scent of wet earth.
It had been so long since he could recall being surrounded by it.
So long that he had assumed he would never experience the sensation again.
A steady drizzle fell.
It soaked Mitts’s tank top.
But he felt no cold.
That was the thing about the Village.
About the whole surrounding area.
The temperature was so comfortable.
Nobody ever wore jumpers.
Nobody ever wore anything more than the dark-green tank tops and the black jeans.
Right now it was humid.
Mitts felt his shirt stick to his skin. His drooling sweat mixed with the tumbling rain.
Several times, Dag grabbed hold of the front of Mitts’s tank top. Keeping him on his heels.
He wondered if Dag had been instructed to keep a close eye on him.
Or if Dag—just by instinct—wanted to have Mitts nearby.
At first, Mitts had been afflicted by a gnawing numbness in his legs. That was due to him having been kept in a prison cell for several hours. It took him a short while to get over the sensation.
To refind his legs.
Another issue was the rifle. Mitts wasn’t used to its weight and it caused him to lose his balance several times. With each step forward, Mitts would almost feel himself ready to trip over.
To land in the muddy earth with a squelch.
He clung onto the rifle tightly. Mostly out of fear.
There was no way of knowing what Dag would do if he lost it.
They finally reached their destination.
Heavy, lurking mists clung to the ground.
Obscuring everything.
Mitts observed the others around him get down on one knee. Take aim with their rifles.
Point off into the mist.
It took Mitts a moment to realise what the mists concealed.
Water.
All around.
A lake?
The sea?
A peninsula . . . that was how Samantha had termed it.
On instinct, Mitts glanced about him, to Dag.
Dag had drawn his rifle.
Like the others, he was down on one knee.
Dag eyeballed him. “You gonna take up your position or what, pal?”
Dag didn’t wait for Mitts’s reply. He simply reached up, grabbed a hold of Mitts’s shirt and dragged him down onto the sodden earth.
Mitts listened to the sharp clicks and snaps as the others prepared their rifles.
“How’d I do it?” Mitts said, unable to keep quiet any longer.
Dag, his attention back on his rifle, and his focus concentrated on the sight, said, “What’d you mean?”
Mitts stared hard at the side of Dag’s face, waiting for him to look back at him.
Finally, he did.
Dag fixed him with a stern glare. “You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”
He yanked Mitts’s rifle out of his hands, made it give a hard snap, and then passed the weapon back.
As Dag crouched back down into his ready position, he peered out into the mist, shaking his head. “Thought you killed your family . . . and now you don’t even know how to prep a gun.”
Before Mitts had the chance to reply, one of the armed guard among them called out.
Mitts turned his attention forward.
To the mists before his eyes.
Out there, in the obscurity, Mitts heard a throaty, sustained:
Croak.
* * *
Shots went off all around him.
Mitts’s heart hammered in his throat.
There was something about the crack of the shots which sent a shudder down his spine.
Something about that sound which set him on edge like nothing else.
Was it the knowledge that his whole family had been dealt with using gunfire?
Or was it something deeper buried?
Mitts was still staring off into the mist when he felt a sharp elbow in the ribs. He turned to see Dag there, nostrils flared, mouth a gaping hole. “Come on then!” Dag said. “You gonna shoot or what, nutbag?!”
Mitts glanced down, to the rifle he still held in his hands. And then he looked off, along the barrel, and into the mist.
In imitation of the others surrounding him, he brought his rifle up, and peered along the sight.
All he could see, though, was mist.
Nothing else.
Out of the side of his mouth, right after Dag sent an ear-splitting shot through the air, Mitts said, “Where’re we aiming?!”
But Dag was back to concentrating—concentrating on something which Mitts couldn’t see.
Dag prepared his next shot. “Just shoot!”
With the crack of Dag’s latest shot ringing about his skull, Mitts brought his own rifle up. He felt its weight. And then, with a tentative finger, shaking hard, he squeezed gently.
Mitts felt the vibration rattle his bones before he heard the reverberating shot, and, even then, it sounded to his ears as if it had come from another gun.
Allowing the rifle to fall in his grasp, Mitts looked out into the mist, as if it might give him a better idea of what he had just shot.
But there was nothing.
Nothing he could make out.
Again, though, over on the bank, someone shouted.
The gunshots ceased.
Mitts felt panic ripple through those assembled on the bank. He felt himself shudder hard and long. A shudder he couldn’t control. Not even by sinking his teeth into his lower lip.
There was a moment of disorder—of confusion—among the men.
Mitts looked to Dag.
When Mitts glanced around, he realised that everybody else was doing the same.
Looking to Dag.
Waiting for their next move.
“Fuck!” Dag said, staring off into the mist.
Mitts followed his gaze, unable to understand what the problem was.
But then he saw them.
Their shapes forming out of the mist.
Slipping in between the sheets of never-ending drizzle.
Even in the night, by the light of the moon, Mitts could make out the shade of their grey-purple flesh. The slightly wet quality to their skin. And then, with the coolness of the night-time breeze blowing against his cheeks, Mitts caught that overpowering stench of sulphur in his airways.
Mitts stood captivated by the sight.
By how they floated over the water.
H
ow their limbs hung down at their sides.
Dancers slinking effortlessly across an ethereal dancefloor.
Coming toward them.
Coming to greet them?
When Dag screamed out his next order, it was loud enough to send a quiver all the way down to the soles of Mitts’s feet.
“Retreat!”
* * *
Mitts ran blindly forward. He hoped he was headed in the right direction.
Headed back to the Village.
Several times, he glanced back over his shoulder.
He caught sight of them.
Their bodies floating through the air.
Even despite the situation—despite the obvious peril—Mitts cast his mind back to what Doctor Heinmein had said. How he had concluded that the Strangers moved across land by ‘dragging’ themselves.
His hypothesis had been wrong.
As Mitts bounded onward, at Dag’s side, he heard the odd snap of gunfire on his heels.
He breathed in deeply, already feeling fatigued, despite his exercises, all the work he had put in with his routine back down in the Restricted Area.
Between gulps of air, Mitts managed to form words.
“What . . . are . . . they?”
Dag bounded on beside Mitts.
He saw the slight look of fear in Dag’s eyes.
That childlike fear.
The one which drove Dag toward safety.
Which implored him to return to safety.
A matter of life or death.
Mitts glanced back. The others had kept themselves compact.
Some turned to shoot into the mists as they retreated.
Dag shook his head, grabbed hold of Mitts’s shirt and dragged him onward. “No fucking idea, but we’ve gotta kill them.”
Mitts said nothing more as they closed in on the gates of the Village.
Gently, gradually—too slowly!—the gates were opening.
Dag only slowed when they passed through the gates.
Only when Mitts was standing back on the broken streets of the Village did he feel safe.
Safe from the monsters outside.
The Village was deserted.
Dag was barking out yet more orders.
Finally, he turned to Mitts.
A look of frightened decisiveness glared out from his eyes.
“You!” he said to Mitts. “Get up there, on the rampart. Now!”
Mitts obeyed.
He tagged along behind the others as they hauled themselves up the ladder.
Mitts reached the top.
About a thousand splinters jammed into his palms.
He glanced about the fear-stricken faces.
All of them staring along the barrels of their rifles.
Underfoot, he tried not to think too much about the precariously hanging, nailed-together, wooden boards. Most of the planks were half rotten.
Clearly structurally unstable.
Not up to the task of supporting this many people.
But there was no choice.
They had to be able to see out.
Over the walls.
Below, Mitts observed the gates to the Village gradually being swung closed.
Out there, in the mists, he could hear someone shouting out.
One of them.
He turned to the others around him.
To those with rifles clutched in their grips.
Some of them were women, he noticed now.
The short haircuts and the uniforms unsexed them all.
“You hear that?!” Mitts said. “There’s someone out there! Someone who didn’t make it in!”
Not one of the stony faces, their eyes fixed to the sights of their rifles, responded.
Once again, Mitts felt his heart in his throat.
Tickling his tonsils.
He looked down.
Caught sight of Dag.
Thick in conversation with Samantha.
Knowing what he had to do, Mitts rushed along the rampart.
Some mumbled curses at him, but Mitts paid no attention.
He could feel his chest tight. His rifle butt knocked against his lower back.
He hurried his way down the rungs of the ladder.
This time he felt the splinters sink deeper into his skin.
Pain throbbed in his hands.
Finally, he landed on the broken-up cobblestones.
He turned his attention to Samantha and Dag.
Before he could get out so much as a word, Dag’s wild-eyed glare turned on him.
“I told you to get the fuck up there, on the rampart!”
Mitts felt his pulse pound through his body.
He held himself still.
He met Dag’s burning-eyed gaze.
Kept his calm.
He responded in a clear voice. “There’s someone out there—I heard the screams.”
“Get back up!” Dag replied.
Mitts held himself still. “We have to open the gates.”
The cooling, night-time rain still drooled down.
A stench of sulphur cut through the air.
He felt Samantha staring at him in profile.
He slipped her a brief glance.
Took in her pert-lipped expression.
He got the impression Samantha had been telling Dag the same thing.
They had the same idea.
Dag gave Samantha a hard glare.
He turned his back.
Trotted away from them.
“Please!” Mitts called out after Dag.
But Dag’s only response was to wave an arm in the air.
Mitts met Samantha’s blue eyes.
He saw the sorrow.
The despair.
Then he heard the hard, rusted-up hinges of the gates creaking into life.
* * *
Mitts stole out through the tiny gap in the gates.
Back out into the mist.
He could still hear the voice.
The cries for help.
He glanced back over his shoulder.
Samantha stood there.
She disappeared as the gates slammed shut.
Five minutes.
Dag would hold his gunmen off for five minutes. Once that time passed, they would shoot at anything that moved outside the gates.
Mitts trudged across the sodden earth.
He raised his head, listening out for the screams.
Only now did he truly realise why everybody in the Village lived in fear.
Why they lived in a fortress.
An outside enemy.
Something which threatened them.
Strangers.
He wouldn’t forget the look of fear on Dag’s face for a long time.
Back in the holding area, Mitts would never have believed Dag capable of showing fear.
Not in company.
Mitts held his rifle up.
He stared through the sight.
Into the mist.
Looking for those shapes.
The ones which’d indicate the creatures.
The Strangers.
But he saw none of them.
He reached up.
Wiped the rain out of his eyes.
“Hello?!” Mitts called out.
He listened for a reply.
Ears primed.
Ready to head off in any given direction.
No response.
Mitts wondered how long had passed.
He wondered how many of those five minutes he still had.
He called out again.
“HELLO?!”
This time Mitts heard something.
“. . . Over here!”
Mitts jarred his head around.
Stared off into the mists.
He could make out a form.
He headed toward it.
As he drew closer, he made out features.
A man maybe five or six years older than he was.
Bald.
His rifle lay off besi
de him.
On the earth.
His leg had slipped down a hole.
Got stuck.
The man brought Mitts’s face into focus.
He broke out into a maniacal smile.
“Thank you!” he said, in accented English, and then, “Thank you! Thank you!” as if this outpouring of gratitude was where their struggle ended.
Mitts shouldered his rifle.
He looked over the man.
How would he do this?
How would he do this?
The man was heavy-looking.
Surely twice Mitts’s weight.
Mitts crouched down. Ready to help the man free himself.
He had seen the man before.
He vaguely recalled having seen him in the kitchens.
Back at the Station.
Mitts got closer to the man. He reached out to take hold of his outstretched hands. He caught the thick scent of roast chicken clinging to him.
A warm pang passed through his chest.
Mitts clung on tight to the man’s hands.
He summoned all the force he could.
Pulled.
He wouldn’t budge.
A sudden flush of giddiness passed through him.
Nausea.
Apparently noticing Mitts’s struggle, the man’s eyes widened.
He pointed over Mitts’s shoulder.
His mouth yawned open.
Revealing a dark pit within.
Mitts followed the man’s finger.
Looked past those well-chewed fingernails.
Out beyond.
There Mitts saw them.
Hundreds of them.
Drawing close.
Appearing out of the mist.
Mitts breathed in.
The air felt cold now.
Much colder than it had before.
His skin puckered into goose pimples.
The sound of croaking filled the air.
Surrounded.
They were surrounded.
Creatures appeared out of the mist on all sides.
No escape.
Mitts turned his attention back onto the man.
His lips shook.
He was jabbering away.
About something or other.
Prayers?
Mitts listened in closer.
The man’s voice was almost a whisper.
“Don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me . . .”
If Mitts ran now he might save himself.
Surely he had another minute to make it back.
Another minute before Dag ordered his men to recommence shooting.
Strangers in the Night Page 14