Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse

by Leonard, John F.

  “Miriam? Miriam?”

  Spoken, but not loudly.

  He paced about by the car, eyes peeled for the slightest hint of movement. Frustration, fear and equivocation vying for top spot in his confused head.

  Flared a cigarette. Five minutes. Ten.

  Nothing.

  At one point he thought he heard engine noise in the distance, but it faded and might not have ever been there.

  Where the fuck was she? He couldn’t just stand here with one thumb up his hairy jacksie and the other one wrapped around his rusty machete. Nor did he really fancy rootling about in the undergrowth trying to coax her out like some diffident cat.

  Good job Joe. Managed to get rid of this one before the day was out. At least the boy lasted twenty-four hours or so, give or take. Why didn’t you bring her with you to the shop? Cramp your inimitable style? Scared she’d slow you down? Be a liability?

  He could shout but that would be a last resort. Shouting might bring God knows what down on his thudding head and he wasn’t about to do it until he had no other choice.

  Why did you leave her in the car?

  He went back to the store and added bags of food and water to the cigarettes already loaded in the back of the Renegade. Then very carefully and very reluctantly began searching the area in widening circles. Reclaimed the police baton from the car as he passed it. Fifty minutes after he’d discovered her missing, he was none the wiser as to where she’d disappeared to.

  There was nothing for it. He strode into the middle of the intersection and bellowed her name into the still air.

  “Miriam! Miri-AM!”

  Stood and listened.

  “I’m going now! Do you hear me? We’ve gotta go now.

  Now! We Have To Go!

  I’m going.

  Miriam! Miriam!”

  Shouting left his throat feeling raw and his head pulsing sickly with headache.

  And fear.

  “For fuck’s sake Miriam, don’t make me drive off without you. I don’t want to do that.”

  Said more quietly to himself.

  Despairingly.

  He ran to the storefront and nervously stalked around the car he’d chosen.

  “Oh fuck it.”

  Mouthing more obscenities under his breath, he re-entered the store for one last time and supplemented his supplies with a generous quantity of alcohol.

  When he drove away, he drove away alone.

  <><><>

  “Joseph, you have a gambler’s blood trapped in an actuary’s body my friend.”

  He remembered Andy Pells telling him that and he’d laughed and been genuinely amused. Genuinely amused and also offended. Andy was definitely his friend and what he said was as obscure and humorous as you’d expect from a clever old puff. What offended Joe was the veracity of it. The accuracy of the statement.

  It was a long time ago and Joe Byrne had undergone a rigorous course of self-examination since then. A long old journey of self-examination and self fucking discovery. No doubt aided by the maiming of his son and implosion of his marriage, the gradual ostracism from his own fucking business. That examination might yet be enhanced by apocalypse a la mutant, zombie, alien ...whatever the fuck it was.

  At the time, when Andy has said that, Joe had found it immediately funny and then mildly offensive. Half cut after sealing a deal that propelled the company into the bigtime, he’d hardly been well inclined to dig around in his own belly-button looking for answers to questions he hadn’t yet even asked.

  Half cut? Fuck that, he’d been three sheets to wind and pretty much completely cut. Very well cut, as far as it went, thank you very much. He’d been celebrating and the celebrations went on for the years that followed, whether there was cause or not. He hadn’t cut up rough with Andy though, not as he would with others in later years when he perceived a slight to his character. Andy didn’t evoke that reaction in anyone which probably explained his success. But the pellet lodged under Joe’s skin and flared now and again with an unanticipated redness.

  He never really forgot that witty comment. When he pondered it, he kind of objected to it. To his way of thinking, at the time that is, he liked a drink and he did pretty fuck well at life. He certainly didn’t bet on the gee-gees and he didn’t possess the boring yawn, yawn calculation of the statistician. He was a creative entity. A mind that fostered innovation, sought to push the boundaries and, by the way, BT fucking W, was fairly good at returning revenue. That charmingly delivered serious witticism not only jarred with his vision of himself, it wasn’t fair.

  <><><>

  The Jeep drove easily and he didn’t encounter too many creatures. By the time Joe arrived at Marlborough, the Renegade’s bodywork wasn’t as clean as when he’d left Kenright’s store but it was still in decent condition.

  Underneath the drying blood and viscera that was. He’d dodged major areas and when he’d hit pockets of creatures, he’d gauged speeds that seemed to negotiate the ...blockages, without destroying the car or crashing. The screenwash had been topped up and the arc of the wipers was clear, ridged demarcations separating transparency from a red grey opaqueness.

  The approach to the town had been strange, not that strange was in short supply at that moment in time. He’d seen very little traffic in the last two days but on the outskirts of the town he encountered two other vehicles in quick succession, both going in the opposite direction. One with three occupants and another with a lone driver.

  They hadn’t stopped or made any attempt at communication. That in itself qualified as strange, given that any human being still capable of driving a car now effectively belonged to an endangered species. There might have been precious few normal people left but, even so, it seemed that communal spirit was also in short supply on this stretch of road.

  Joe didn’t mind, he didn’t feel all that communal himself.

  He noticed the smoke as he got closer. He’d considered circling the town centre to avoid any groups of creatures but had vetoed the idea in favour of reaching his destination that much sooner. Scooting through the centre at Marlborough meant that it was only a few more minutes driving to get to Andy’s house.

  He slowed and thought about the smoke in the sky.

  Smoke that was beginning to obscure a lot of the blue. Filthy black grey clouds billowing and shredding across an ever widening expanse of his windscreen. Maybe it was the deep seated drunk’s instinct of self-preservation or maybe it was the disputed actuary in his head speaking up, but he slowed more and then pulled off the road. He was still in countryside but very near to the modest residential sprawl that surrounded the town.

  Whatever was burning was big. It had be big to create the pall that filled the sky.

  He spotted movement further down the road in the direction in which he should be travelling. At first a single flicker that made him squint, trying to pick out detail. A figure moving in a manner that was all too familiar now. Then more to either side of the figure, on the road, in the fields, amidst trees and bushes. A growing agitation across his whole field of vision like an on-screen image beginning to pixilate and disrupt. A wave of motion rippling toward him. Inexorably advancing on him, as undeniable as the future.

  There were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.

  “Oh fuck me badly and wrong. Jesus God in television heaven.”

  They were coming fast.

  He could already see more specifics than he wanted to. Ragged clothing intermingled with naked and seemingly hairless hard-lined bodies.

  Something skidding past him on the right dragged his eyes away from front.

  A fox, flying low to the ground, legs a fluid blur. Followed by another. Racing from hell born hounds far more terrifying than any baying pack ever mustered by some red-coated master. Joe became aware of birds skimming past, like torn pieces of dirty bed sheet scudding through the air, blown before the coming storm.

  He was momentarily frozen with a combination of fear and sheer unbridled awe at the wave of
mutated humanity that was about to engulf him. That brief immobility, and the vacillation that lingered like a flashed after-image, left him in no position to flee. In truth, he was overwhelmed by the scale of what he faced. He could have slammed the car into reverse and attempted to outrun it, outrun them. There was part of his mind, the rapid evaluator, best-bet recognition bit of cortex that seems innate to some people, which simply denied the option. He didn’t know how many were coming. Whether he was already surrounded and had just lucked into a calm pocket in what might be a tumultuous sea.

  Perhaps he was just too scared to move. If they identified him as a target, he had a notion that this many of them would swamp the meagre defence of the metal around him, harvest him from the car like a winkle from a shell.

  He gently slid down into the footwell and tried to make himself small. A bag of groceries had been dumped in the passenger side and he emptied it over himself as a despairing effort at disguise.

  The car rocked at the first impact. Things bumped into it and leapt on it, bounding on bonnet and roof. Thunderous vibrational sound filled his world.

  “Oh fuck, here it comes, oh here it comes. Here come da flood. Okeydokey, little pig-in-the-smoky, oh fuck, here come da flood.”

  Nonsense words whispered into the rough synthetic car mat. From his own mouth to his own ear.

  He had an obscured view of the windscreen. Saw beast after beast skitter over. Bounce off it in a horrible blur. And then one landed and stopped. Loops of drool drizzling as it hesitated.

  Do you think it can feel the heat of the engine Joe? Smell that hotly fragrant oil and petrol perfume? Hear the faint ticking of friction cooling?

  Maybe feel and smell and hear you Joey-Joe. Hear the breath escaping your lips? You run-rabbit-run-boy-you. Foxy old fella that you are. Cept you ain’t no fox are you Joe? You were caught in the headlights, weren’t you Joey? Like a fucking skinny runt rabbit.

  A little condensation on the glass as it dipped and performed whatever passed for measurement in the brains of these new things. Before it had time to come to any conclusion, it was driven forward, dislodged and gone as a multitude more poured over the vehicle.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the frequency of the collisions and bangs began to slow. The thunder began to abate. He’d closed his eyes at some point and the encroaching silence and the stillness of the floor at last suggested that it might be safe to move.

  Shedding bottles and packets, he slowly sat up and surveyed the surroundings. It looked like a storm had scoured the land. Flattened greenery, swept and slanted in one direction. Or as if there had been a stampede. Which he supposed was actually what had happened. A stampede the like of which couldn’t even have been imagined a few days ago.

  The smoke above looked heavier and closer. It contrasted with the blue sky and lent an oddly surreal quality to the day. As if it needed to be any more surreal than it already was. Joe glanced at the bonnet and noted dents and scratches and it struck him how lucky he’d been that the airbags hadn’t been tripped by any of the impacts.

  That thought nearly made him laugh out loud. Partly because his luck was generally the baddest in a bagful of bad, and partly because the airbags were the least of it.

  He was lucky full stop baby. Lucky not to have been discovered. Lucky to be alive after that horde of creatures had swamped him. Lucky that he was immune to whatever the fuck this was.

  He started the engine and gently proceeded. There were bound to be some of those things left behind but he was never going to get a clearer run than right at that moment.

  As he rounded a curve in the road, buildings came into view. The edge of the residential district. Initially sparse but growing denser in the distance nearer to the town centre. Flames rose above them. A mass of flame like the world was burning. Joe slowed to a crawl and tried to think straight.

  He didn’t want to drive into that. No way did he want to go dancing into that fire baby. No way on earth.

  Feck this Joey-boy. Drive into a field somewhere, tear the foil off the top of one of those fine old bottles, crank up the aircon and smoke yourself silly for an hour or two. See the lie of the land after a little-bitty break. Feck knows, you’ve earned it

  Further on from where he’d stalled, the road became a corridor between walls of flame. He could smell it now even with the windows closed tight. Smell it and taste it at the back of his throat. Acrid and hot. One of those creatures came into view.

  And it was burning as well.

  The sight of that triggered a response. Without thinking anymore, he put his foot down and barrelled forward into heat and madness.

  On a day where time seemed to have lost any meaning whatsoever, that flight through fire was in truth relatively brief, however long it may have felt.

  What he witnessed in that short spell was appalling on a level different to that of the horrors he’d already endured. Speed and his fierce concentration blocked too much detail. The necessity to focus his attention on simply navigating a path meant that he was only afforded snapshots of horror.

  Still too much on top of everything else.

  Within a seemingly interminable few minutes he’d passed the worst intensity of the blaze and entered an area that burned lower in the aftermath. Smouldering fires still glowed and leapt but they seemed desultory affairs compared to the raging inferno now behind him. Small concussions and explosions popped and banged, some nearby, some more distant. He sped on, coughing and shocked, scared the car might fail in the heat or he himself might fall victim to toxic fumes that clouded and churned the air.

  As he arrived at the centre of the town he did finally stop.

  Joe remembered Marlborough fondly. The high street was very wide, a legacy of the market town’s history. He’d always thought it had an understated charm, an almost prettiness that mysteriously avoided quaintness.

  Now it reminded him of an old news report. War footage shot in monochrome. Joe thought that it might have started here because the fire was almost burned out. In that he was wrong. It had started in nearby unofficial, and quite possibly illegal, warehousing. The considerable quantity of paint and chemicals in one those storage units had turned out to be a catalyst that spawned something unstoppable. Combined with some extremely questionable sprinkler systems, mild weather and a favourable wind, the last great fire of Marlborough had taken swift and firm hold before devouring most of what lay in its path.

  The high street looked like it had been industrially blowtorched and then randomly bombed.

  Heat shattered glass, blackened buildings and smouldering wrecks of cars. A number of bodies. Joe didn’t know if they were human or mutated. He did know that the high street was pretty much fucked as far as it went.

  He didn’t think Angela Eden’s boutique would ever sell another party frock. He doubted Newitt Carpets would be laying anything luxuriantly plush anytime soon. Curiously, the MelonCauli specialist greengrocer had escaped the ravages of the conflagration.

  Looming to his left, St Peters spindled smoke into the air, resolute old stone sentinel sending unheeded signal of unknowable events.

  Joe drove on, following the twisting road. Leaving behind a disaster that would have been national, no fuck that, international news not so long ago.

  Now it was just another grim episode in days that seemed full of grim episodes. Unrecounted and unnoticed episodes unless you were in the vicinity. There wouldn’t be any fire investigators trawling these ashes, apportioning blame and making recommendation. No detectives filing reports and issuing public statements. There was precious little public left and no platform from which to address them in any event.

  The town was gone and whoever had survived would have greater concerns than lamenting its loss.

  Joe wanted a cigarette but he wanted to get away from here more. As he passed the still burning college and entered more open countryside the sense of relief was palpable.

  Not far now to his friend’s house. He needed that to work out f
or him, grant him a little respite. The chance to try and understand what was happening. Get a perspective.

  In the fields on either side he could see the occasional individual in the distance but the land seemed largely deserted. He had no intention of stopping and getting close enough to confirm if they were human or mutated. A modestly-sized housing development loomed further down the road on the left. He knew the area, this was the last bit of anything resembling population until he reached the small village of Bishop’s Caining which itself was pretty modest.

  On the outskirts of that was his destination. Andy Pells modern des res. Isolated but not remote. Not as remote as Joe would have liked given the circumstances, but he hoped it would serve as a way station until he could figure out something better.

  He spotted a running figure emerge from the cluster of residences ahead.

  Ragged and thin looking.

  Joe’s foot squeezed a little heavier on the gas pedal as the figure ran into the road. Then another runner appeared behind the first, followed shortly by three more.

  It took Joe another moment to realise that the first figure was human. Fleeing from things that were less than human. The thing closest was gaining and as it closed in the man suddenly whirled and executed a looping high kick that connected with a force that was awesome even from this distance.

  Knocked the pursuer to the ground.

  In the same movement the man was up and running again. Joe reacted instinctively and accelerated, foot jammed to the floor. Incredibly, the downed creature rose and continued the chase.

  Joe swerved to miss the man and hit the first creature dead on, hurling it up and over the Renegade. The impact shimmied the vehicle and put a decent crimp in the grill, but didn’t perceptibly slow it.