Stood and ran to the kitchen.
Twirling, spinning on the spot, searching for car keys.
She can’t stay here. The normal world has gone somewhere beyond her comprehension and flight is the only answer. To get away from the mayhem, to chase after the ordinary world, chase after the news and holy wars and suffering and grief. Her car is at the back of the property and she runs to it because that is all she can do. The only option that will offer the shallow chance of living without madness.
Sam’s mother and brother lived together some miles away. She’d tried to contact them but the trauma of the last few days had meant that she hadn’t tried that hard. She was simply too distracted by her own son’s plight.
Naturally, she loves them both ...mom and her elder sibling David ...but she has her own life. And in reality she isn’t that close to them ...hasn’t ever felt the need to be so. Never felt the need to be as close as they seem to be to each other. The occasional phone call or visit is plenty. They’re essentially good people but to her mind they exist in their bubble and that bubble was never really a space she wanted to share with them. However, it’s to them that she now flees.
The journey normally took forty minutes but the roads were quiet. That is, if you ignored the running figures chasing other running figures.
Sometimes catching them.
Ignored groups gathered round the fallen, chowing down like there was no tomorrow, like they were really hungry, absolutely ravenous in fact. Like there was a moratorium on table manners and the ban on cannibalism had been lifted.
Sam drove very fast and reacted very swiftly when the need arose and she completed the trip in what would have been record time if she’d have been timing it. She wasn’t of course.
A tire screeching stop at her mother’s house found her panting and sweat slick, hands slipping on the lovely leather steering wheel of her lovely little retro chic car.
It’s an expensive ride but it’s worth it right? Yeah, sure is. Can’t put a price on cool quality right?
Should have called first, irrationally flashed across her mind.
“I can’t go in there, I can’t do this,” she muttered as she peered down the drive and saw the shattered front window of the house and the front door that gently swung in the slow breeze.
There was no choice really though, was there? There were other places to go but she couldn’t think of them right then. Couldn’t think of where or who she should go to. And now that she was there it would be a dereliction really ...to not go in, to not at least attempt to see what had happened.
I’ve already derelicted enough haven’t I? Can you derelict something? Is that a word? Her husband would know, he was good with words. He’s not here though kiddo, is he? He’s swimming in a lake of his own blood with sizeable amount of his face absent without leave.
“Fuck it,” she said, grasping the deadly pan that was on the seat next to her.
Her mother’s house was part of a line of others that sat back from a wide fast road, facing open fields. On most days, it was a pleasant view and one that conjured the comfort of happy childhood memories.
Today was different. She hadn’t driven down the driveway as she would normally, she’d pulled up on the big fast road.
Glancing either way up and down that well-known road, she saw figures in the distance. A fair way off yet but they were there nevertheless. And she felt no desire to meet them.
Best get this done quickly then Sammie.
She ran into the house and shouted.
Searched breathlessly, but the house was empty.
Finally dithered in the living room and almost subconsciously registered that the window was broken outwards.
The glass was mostly outside, not in the room.
Whatever broke it, that double-glazed, very tough glass, broke it outwards, not inwards.
“Ohhh God,” she quietly wailed.
The house hadn’t been broken into. Something had broken out of it.
That was it. That was enough. She ran back to the vehicle.
As she roars away, the figures she’d spied in the distance are a little closer but have stopped and are grouped around someone on the ground.
Attacking.
She’s never sure, and she doesn’t stop, oh no, no way is stopping a good idea, but there’s a very good chance that amongst them are her mother and brother. She can never be absolutely certain, which is a combined curse and blessing ...but she thinks so.
Oh yes, she very much thinks so, when her thoughts betray her and cycle back to that moment.
A snarling, vaguely female, face whipped around at the approach of the car, flesh hanging from its mouth, blood spraying in a charmingly pretty fan-like curve.
And behind that a broad shouldered creature contentedly crammed a dripping prize to its lips. An unspeakable prize that could have been a liver or kidney or heart.
The faces are twisted, disfigured versions of human but the clothes are something else.
Yeah, the vestiges of clothes that they’re wearing really are something else. Not sure good lookin but, something else. Uh-look-a-there, that’s something else, as the man once said.
A nightdress and a sweatshirt that haunted her, kept cropping up in dreams.
Sam is pretty sure that she bought those items and gave them as, let’s be honest, fairly substandard Christmas presents.
Gave them to her mother and brother.
Chapter 2.
Joe the Driftwood.
Joseph Patrick Byrne had ridden the tide through the beginning of the fall of civilisation. He’d felt the gravitational pull for a few weeks beforehand and had resisted it manfully. As was his way with that inevitable force.
But the tide had a tendency to catch you out. Shortly ahead of the first cases of the illness, the tide had snared Joe. Snared and wrapped him in its liquid arms and carried him away. To a place where he was blissfully insulated from the enormity of the crisis. Blissfully insulated from pretty much everything.
When the waves washed him ashore and he woke feeling sick and dull, he had very little idea of what had happened in the preceding days. Dim recollection of this and that, but no details just then. The details might come later but, as of that minute, he felt purely like death warmed over. Old man death propped upright with a moth eaten overcoat thrown over his shoulders and shoved into the harsh morning light. With a cheery fare-thee-well, go easy fella ...fuck off and don’t come back.
Nothing new, he’d felt the same sourly shameful way too many times to mention, too many instances to bother recalling if you were a wise man, in his humble opinion.
He sensed that this was going to a doozy though, a proper job, a hangover that, even for a tide-tempered idiot like himself, was enough to knock him off his feet again when he tried to get up. Leave him making those self-deluding, reformative promises that would evaporate with a little time. Once he’d had a few days to forget how bad and useless he felt at that moment.
It was always the same when he hit it hard but that didn’t seem to make any difference. Experience was a failed teacher when he sensed the tidal tug of one more drink.
Maybe we’ll call it a day.
Or maybe we’ll call it a night.
Or maybe we’ll call it whatever’s the most sensible fit for this particular circumstance.
Mistress memory went running off up the beach. Sand flying from her joyless heels, leaving him free to dive in and begin making waves.
That bitch will be back Joey-boy, mark my words. And there’ll be hell to pay when she heaves her sorry recalcitrant ass back into sight.
Joe was smart enough to recognise it when it was approaching, when the pull was beginning to exert its influence. Possibly even to begin to understand where it came from. But Jesus H Christ, it had a way of overpowering any kind of logic that he applied to it.
More than once, he’d asked himself what shore it was that he was striking out towards ...and he’d yet to spit out an answer that made eno
ugh sense to stop him doing it.
Did he do it because it made him float on his own imagination?
Because his father had done it?
And Dear fucked-up Jesus, daddy had done it literally to death.
Or because he couldn’t cope with the life he’d made for Joe Byrne?
All of those and none of them, and he was no nearer an answer now than he had been the first time when, as a boy, he’d drank to excess. Lost the next day in a dithering daze and swore that he’d learned his lesson once and for all.
“Joey-Joe, ever-so-showy, don’t be like your father, don’t lose yourself in the drink. He’s drowned in it and it makes him less of a man ...he’s no man at all.”
His mother’s voice from his childhood. A mantra chanted during his father’s regular absences. As she offered him a small glass of sherry when he’d fetched the bottle for her from the cupboard. More often than not after he’d also ferried that same bottle from the drinks store. A little off-licence that would fill a pop bottle with draught sherry from a barrel in exchange for the pennies his mother had placed in his hand with an admonishment to be careful and hurry back now.
Draught sherry was a thing of the past.
Like the pop-man who used to deliver fizzy pop to the door. Pop bottles that could be used to ferry cheap sherry.
Things of the past.
Like his mother.
He’d followed her advice and been careful on those trips to the liquor store...
And at first he’d also followed her advice about the booze. Been careful not to let the drink become his watery maze. Working hard and pursuing whatever opportunities that presented themselves with a vitality that matched his not inconsiderable creative ability. A capacity to make captivating images, produce appealing design, conjure a knockout bit of text, they were all things that came naturally to him. But he honed the talent with a relentless energy that amplified his innate gift. A footballer spending hours learning how to bend the ball thirty yards and hit a pixel sized target. Chuck in the charm of the Irish and there was a pretty good chance that your uncle’s first name was Robert.
By the time he was thirty, Joe Byrne was an entrepreneur on the up, a big success with a growing marketing and design firm. Good business partners, decent honest men, and a raft full of employees to look after.
The whole shooting match, everything you could want.
His mother and father had passed away but he marched on with a lovely wife and a young son of his own to be going on with, thank you very much.
Ahh feck though Joey-boy, somehow, things have a habit of getting away from you. When the moon is in your blood, the tide never stops calling. You can always hear the surf, however faraway, like when you put that big old shell to your ear and are oh so delighted to hear the sea magically and inexplicably rolling around in there.
Slowly but surely he’d slipped into the water and got lost in the fluid labyrinth that his mother had warned him about.
<><><>
Kirsten, his German-American wife, made allowances and put up with his ...tendency...his calling, shall we say. His increasing bouts of indulge in over-indulgence were sporadic to begin with, the frequency growing with a gradual ease that belied the true nature of the issue.
Their joint perception of his drink problem was like some sort of inverse mathematical equation. As he became more immersed in the drink, he became exponentially less concerned about it. Transversely, it grew into a larger consideration for Kirsten.
The tipping point, and wasn’t that the absolutely right phrase, the episode which shifted the balance of inertia that held them locked in their slightly tortured spiral, came one night after Joe had been out celebrating the landing of a new contract. Celebrating pretty hard, and if truth be told, was pretty much fucked up beyond all measure.
Drunk, pretty much shit-faced, if truth be told. So shit-faced that his face was more shit than face.
So shit-faced that he’d poured boiling water on their six year old son Eddy.
Attempting to make tea that he didn’t even want. That was his recollection. Trying to make a cup of fucking tea.
Not that it mattered, but there was no way that making tea at that particular point in time would have been important to him. Just a thing that he’d done ...when he was so fucked up that he couldn’t do it without burning off half of his son’s face.
That beautiful little incident dragged Joe back to dry land for a fair old spell. The tide receded and it fell back a good old way. A long fucking way, off there in the distance where he could ignore it, pretend it wasn’t there.
But the damage had been done.
Both figuratively and literally.
This ferryman was going to be paid retrospectively, however hard Joe bargained.
It hurts and it hurts and then it hurts some more and the damage is done Joey-boy. And do you know what? Those dolorous intonations make fuck-all ground in terms of restitution for the crime. In simple terms, saying sorry ain’t gonna swing it this time baby-boy.
Joe attempted redemption, but on a level deeper he knew that you couldn’t make up for certain actions. Knew that he’d gone too far this time. Crossed a rubicon, blown by a wind that boded nothing but ill for everyone concerned.
Kirsten and Eddy ceased to be close to him.
Not any great fucking shock there Joey-boy. Funny how love and affection is easily boiled away. Especially with boiling water. Especially in the heated, flaring crucible of pain. Drug infusion decisions and discussions about future cosmetic surgery have a nasty habit of diminishing an already evaporating skin of trust as well.
Hardly surprising that one day Kirsten announced that she was returning to America and taking their son with her. Her strength and resourcefulness were the very things that attracted him. When she exercised her right to use them, he could hardly complain. After all, she was making the right decision in all reasonable regards.
The right decision.
And after that, Joe drifted.
Not really designing anymore, not in any really meaningful way. Not contributing that much at all for that matter.
He couldn’t. He was spent.
Creatively. Emotionally.
There just doesn’t seem to be any juice left in that-there tank fella? Not in light of all of the juice that’s out there, ready and available to be poured into the tank. You’re fond of the juice aren’t you boy? Still running on empty though hey Joey-boy? That’s just the way it goes boyo, get yourself on down the road and see how it ends up. Hahahaha.
He coasted towards the role of ambassador, the deal-lander, the glad-hander. It suited him and permitted over indulgence.
He was now, after all, the figurehead. He could assign whatever duties he chose to assign.
It wasn’t the first time he’d woken, wasted and totally fucked up, in Adi Croger’s flat in the city.
London fucking-la-de-dah Town.
Adi was probably his best friend. Definitely one of them.
Ridiculous that. Adi, one of his best friends.
Adi, who dwarfed his own success and, without being patronising, still patronised him with contracts and contacts. Patronage that helped keep Joe Byrne Associates afloat and kept Joe himself afloat within the associates.
They’d approached you though, hadn’t they Joey-boy? Your associates. Those genuine guys. Those decent partners. Those bastards. Most of them anyway, apart from Pellsie.
Told him politely that he wasn’t pulling his weight.
Told him oh so politely and oh so tactfully.
And he’d told them to fucking-well buy him out if they didn’t like the orders he was pulling in. And if they could manage it, after they’d pulled that off, to simply fuck off.
Stalemate there but just a matter of time. They’d made the same judgement as Kirsten and Eddy, however unsavoury the decision.
Joe had developed more sink than swim these days and nobody wanted to be dragged down with the drowning man did they.
Apart from Adi who was buoyant beyond belief.
A veritable titanic. Unsinkable.
Swamped with cash aplenty, beautiful wife, not to mention multiple mistresses, and an outlook on life that was sunshine all the way without a hint of blackness.
And a curious affinity for the gifted self-destructive arseholes of the world like Joe.
<><><>
Joe, who sat now on the edge of a rumpled, borrowed bed with aching teeth and a cloudy head.
You know it’s been a doozy when your teeth hurt. It’s got to have been a doozy.
Thinking about bars and clubs and Adi collapsed in one of those bars.
Can’t remember which one though, hey Joey-boy.
And himself wandering off to drink, drink, and then drink a bit more. Just splashing about.
Ending up here with the apartment keys that Adi had given him. Standard practice when they began the grand tour, after concluding another grand agreement. More money for the associates, those bastards, grist to the mill, an extension of his existence as the figurehead. A meaningless chunky cut for Adi who simply enjoyed the glory of the game.
Joe searched around for cigarettes and discovered a couple of packs. One full and unopened, one a little crushed but open and nearly full. He dug his zippo from a pocket and lit one with a hand that had a distinct tremor and then cast around for an ashtray. He’d flick shit on Adi’s doorstep but not inside his house.
As he pondered it, he remembered that, as the May Grand Intoxication and Oblivion Tour had progressed, the bars and streets had become increasingly empty.
Fewer and fewer patrons in the upmarket brasseries and seedy clubs alike.
Less and less traffic on roads that never slept.
It was this bug, the Sweeping Sickness thing, the City Flu. They’d laughed about it. He and Adi.
Laughed about the newsjacking possibilities for the social media guys. Joked that it was a bandwagon that would be eagerly boarded by a number of employees of whom they had a particularly low opinion.
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