Chapter 1.
Sam and a Past Calling.
Samantha Scott drove away from the warehouse, drove away from the Banjo man with his kind eyes and wise voice, drove away from the confused old lady that had coaxed death into their midst. Drove away and didn’t look back.
It was different from her earlier flights in some ways. Still driving blind but different all the same. For the one thing, she hadn’t loved the people in the warehouse.
And she had a shiny new glow-in-the dark weapon for another. The fluo baseball bat.
Wow, she was armed and not very dangerous. And in the dark, she felt even more vulnerable without the protection of a windshield. Her little 500 was pretty much fucked if she was honest. She needed an armoured car in this madness, not a ripped and dented soft top with most of the soft top in tatters and a big space in front of her face where the glass should be. And her personal protection, her weapons cache consisted of a guilt-stained cast iron frying pan and a spiffing top-end baseball bat.
She felt too dulled to cry. That ship had sailed for the time being. She didn’t want to even think about what she was leaving behind, the outcome of it, and whether she should have stayed and tried to help. She hadn’t got to know any of those people to any great extent but they were still people. Unchanged people, trying survive the same as she was. Leaving them to whatever fate awaited them, scuttling out of a window like some thief in the night, made her feel bad. Worse than bad.
Made her feel wretched.
But just what the fuck was she supposed to do? Stay and be butchered alongside them? No, uh-uh, that hadn’t been an option. Suicide might be painless but it was a sin. A bigger sin than stupidity and she wasn’t sinful or stupid. Not wilfully, when the truth was as plain as the nose on the front of your once carefully maintained face.
Sam pushed away the contemplation and blood with a conscious effort and concentrated on the road. The ever-beckoning, never-ending, fucking horror-filled road. Being on the road seemed like the safest bet in this fever dream version of reality.
If she ever found somewhere genuinely secure, she swore wouldn’t get behind the wheel again for the longest time. She’d just settle herself down there, wherever that imaginary place was, and plan ways to kill those hateful fucking things. Plot and plan ways to turn them to smears on the ground.
The upswell of rage surprised her. Better than guilt but still one more unexpected and unneeded thought rattling round her head. What did she expect? Equanimity and peace when there was hell on earth. Everything was disturbing. Everything was unsettling.
And that unsettling everything included the petrol gauge. Her eyes finally registered what she’d noticed sub-consciously before stopping at the warehouse.
She was nearly out of gas. Dribs and drabs in the tank. The little electronic indicator had thinned to nearly nothing and she finally become aware of the warning message. As she scanned the shadows, an uncontrollable sense of hot panic flushed her mind free of anything but the immediate concern.
Sam had a dim recollection of where she was.
Oakhill village.
Village?
It wasn’t a fucking village. There wasn’t much Midsummer quaintness here. It was a sprawl of modern housing and industrial estate around a sad sixties shopping centre. The occasional historic building swamped and floundering in a sea of short term development opportunity.
She was near the centre. On her right, she passed a skeletal, burned out complex, indistinct in the darkness. The stench of dying fire filled the car.
She bumped over half human things crawling in the road and felt a scared satisfaction at the damage she might have done.
The night was full of furtive movement, ghostly suggestions of danger. She didn’t want to run out of petrol here.
Uh-uh, no way.
The ability to keep the car moving was what might keep her alive. Right now, she couldn’t control how much gas was in the tank, but she could choose where to stop if she made her choice quickly. If she didn’t choose, if she frigged around and waited for the shudder and chunk of a starved engine, she’d find herself in all sorts of shit.
And then it was there.
An unlikely answer, looming on her right like a blunt accusation fingered at the star strewn sky.
Oakhill Parish church.
With its crenelated block of a bell tower and ancient presence. This little bit of Oakhill was all midsummer murder. Centuries old stone and cold antiquity, immutable and silent. Unlit and brooding uncertain assurance in the darkness.
No real logic to her decision to slow and turn right, past the Celtic cross of the war memorial, and stop by the ancient wall surrounding the church. A little way short of the ominous black lychgate and overlooking the well maintained gravestones and grass. Grass that was grey and lifeless in the night, and graven stone that would leave your fingers nicked and rough if you were to run your hand over it.
No rationale as to why she should feel attracted to this foreboding midnight place. Maybe some vestigial echo of sanctuary wrapped in the lure of her faith. Maybe the subconscious pull of a promise of permanence. Maybe it was simply that it was quiet here, deserted and empty.
Sam could see the arched main entrance but she reversed and slowly drove along the wall that bounded the church and graveyard. She stopped again to stare through an iron gate at the rear of the building.
The soft chime of forgotten memory. She’d been here for a ceremony, a wedding she barely recalled. Some acquaintance. A long time ago, long before she was married. Before she became a mother.
There was another entrance at the back here, at least one, if she remembered correctly.
Sam turned off the engine and scanned the area, twisting in her seat to do a full three sixty.
Nothing.
Perhaps even monsters sleep.
The rustle and sway of the trees, an unthreatening ambient sound. Other than that it was quiet. The indefinable low frequency hum, that almost imperceptible background drone, the hum of modern life, was missing.
And that was it, the decision made.
She eased out of the car, squeezing the door shut as carefully as possible. Feeling exposed and vulnerable in the cool night air, despite the baseball bat dangling from her suddenly damp palm.
A baseball bat for God’s sake. It was better than nothing but it was still fucking ridiculous.
She needed an armed police escort to be even considering this, not a fucking posh rounders stick. She wasn’t some ganged-up street fighter, she was an aging hairdresser. She might as well have been holding one of her hairbrushes for all the capability she felt with the bat.
And tip-toeing round the grounds of a thirteenth century church, in the small hours, while monsters roamed the streets? Oh that ...that was just a wonderful idea wasn’t it. A real light bulb moment of inspiration.
But none of the options were great were they? Her choices had funnelled down to very few as soon as the virtual petrol needle had edged up to the empty.
Steeling herself, she crept along the path between the old graves. The building here was all corners and buttresses and sloping slate roof until she came to the recessed doorway. A weathered oak door that looked like it had been old when her grandmother was a girl. It looked like it belonged on the website her son had once shown her, gateways to hell or some nonsense.
She grasped the medieval ring that served as a door handle, prepared for it to be locked, almost wanting it to be locked. But of course it swung noiselessly open, as some part of her had known it would.
A dark corridor, darker than the night outside, and then another door into a dim room. A leaded window, a lighter rectangle in the wall. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she picked out kid’s toys and games, small plastic seats, scattered cushions and soft furniture. Vague childish drawings blutacked to brick.
A play room.
A final door led her into the church proper. She had a memory of uneven stone floor and wooden pews but it had changed in
the intervening years. Soft carpet now and rows of upholstered metal chairs. Incongruous somehow, the carpet and chairs, even in the dim illumination from the numerous stained glass windows that marched along the walls. More of a community centre, accidentally dropped amidst raw stone columns and rows of pointed medieval arches, than a church.
She wasn’t far from the altar and the rightness of being here washed over her like benediction as she stared at that slightly raised platform. She wanted to run to it and fall to her knees, pray for guidance and beg for forgiveness.
The noise broke her reverie.
Not loud but big in the silence.
A scuffled, scraping sound.
She froze, motionless, mouth open and breath held. Felt her heart hammering in her chest. As if it was shaking her with each thud, as though it might break free and leave her, stranded and still in this old holy place, a statue of the collapse, another slowly decaying echo of a time that was passed in a place from a past more distant yet.
A figure rose unhurriedly from the shadows opposite. Stood and looked at her for a long, long time. Began to move toward her. Deliberately, purposefully.
Sam knew she should run. Could hear the command shrieking, ragged and hoarse inside her head. But she was rooted. Fascinated and appalled by that languid, almost gliding progress.
It wasn’t quite the right shape for an adult. Somehow she knew that.
Another child. Oh God, no, not another child. That wasn’t fair, that just wasn’t fair. Not another mutated, monstrous child. Anything but that.
Without conscious thought, not wanting to do it, she felt both hands grasp the bat and position it, ready to swing.
Ready to prolong her life for one more indeterminate spell. To crush bone and spill blood and receive a communion of the unholiest kind. Ready to kill in this sacred place.
The thing continued its approach. Closer and closer, implacable and relentless, until it was close enough.
As Sam’s muscles tensed and the weapon jerked up over her shoulder in an automatic movement that lacked any volition, the thing spoke.
“Mommy, I’m sorry I killed you. Thank you for coming back.”
And as Sam Scott struggled not to scream, George Lowton crumpled to the floor at her feet.
What struck Sam Scott first and foremost was that he was beautiful. Perhaps an odd word for a boy, but it was right. He was beautiful. Damaged and dirty, struggling and spent but beautiful.
Thick dark hair and parched cupid lips.
An angel with the proverbially dirty face in an appropriate setting. To deny the density of that meaning would be madness. And she wasn’t mad. In spite of every encouragement, she wasn’t mad.
Not entirely.
She would care for him.
Save him.
That was her purpose. That was why she’d been led here. Why she’d made the decisions that she’d made. However hard and horrible those decisions had been. There hadn’t really been any choice, had there?
You end up where you are, and bitching about it is wrong and bad. Some people said prayers and she’d said hers.
I’ll save you beautiful boy.
Angel in a dead place.
I’ll save you.
Chapter 2.
Elliot and Joe Enter the Dream House.
Getting up was a pure effort of will for Elliot.
He reached sideways and grasped the handle of the broken baton that was embedded in the creature’s eye. The baton that he’d plunged into its eye and through its skull. Used the handle to drag himself off the ground and then shift his weight. He couldn’t help but put his hands on the thing as he got up. Its chest and torso. Feel the corded density of its dead body.
That body, hideous and also awesome.
He managed to pull the baton free.
The exiting slurp would have been sickening, except the energy to be sickened was gone. It might return, but as of that moment, energy was in short supply. That sound was just another bad memory to be buried in the field of rocks.
He turned back to the house and registered Joe standing in front of it. A middle aged man who looked one step up from a street sleeper, standing outside that abstract structure as if time had stopped. He might drive like some sort of slayer saviour but he’d frozen when the creature in the tattered red trousers had appeared. Elliot couldn’t find it in his heart to be too critical. These were crazy days and the man had saved his life after all. If Joe was a little messed up, Elliot could forgive him that. He had a feeling that Joe was alright, not one of the bad guys.
He knew that on a level that he couldn’t explain. It could have been the slant of Joe’s eyes or it could have simply been the smell of the man in the car. He didn’t know and he couldn’t fathom it right now, but he knew the guy was alright. The same as he knew that things like the sack of shit lying dead on the ground at his back would never stop wanting to kill him.
New rules.
Elliot felt the weariness swell, wash over him in a dizzying wave that threatened to knock him off his feet again. And then Joe was at his side. At his side and holding him upright.
His legs felt useless. No strength.
The pair of them shuffled to the forbidding metal doorway and Joe leaned him in the recess. Like some precious burden that could all too easily be broken.
Worked a device in the wall and produced some spangly keys on a ring.
After that they were inside and he was sitting down.
“Wait here. This place is as big a fucking barn and I need to make sure there aren’t any other guests. Uninvited or otherwise. If there are, I’ll deal with it. Elliot, just stay put fella, we’ll be okay now.”
Elliot nodded and Joe went away.
He sat and watched, and while he did that he absently fetched his mobile from his pocket to try calling George. He wasn’t surprised to find no signal. No network. He pressed the shutdown. The charger was lost along with so much else and he needed to save the battery.
He was in a long room that terminated in another partly open double doorway. Guessed it was what passed for the hallway in this vast place.
It was five times the size of his bedroom at home. Suffused with subdued uplight. Whatever else was in here with them, the interior oozed calm and relaxation. A serenity that was in stark contrast to the struggle for survival that had preceded it outside.
Elliot knew he’d be okay, despite the new cuts and bruises and the feeling of total weariness, the disconnection. But he needed to rest, however urgent the requirement to keep going, to get home. To get to George.
After an indeterminate time, Joe reappeared and squatted at his side as if he were an elderly invalid or incapacitated child. He would have laughed at the absurdity, but right at that moment he felt like he could have been either. Old and weary or tiny and helpless. He was pretty much fucked, however you wanted to compare it.
“We’re good fella. The house is empty and it’s locked up tight. Come on through and I’ll sort out something to eat and drink. Don’t know about you but I could do with something. Are you okay? No bites ...or anything serious?”
Elliot shook his head.
“Got some more knocks but nothing bad. I just need to rest. A drink would be good. Not sure that I have much appetite.”
Joe helped him into a large room that included a living space with several enormous sofas, an impressive dining space and a colossal kitchen area, all partially segregated with cleverly designed part walls and divisional baffles.
He collapsed onto a sofa and dully appreciated the room.
However fucked you were, however mental the situation, it was hard not to be impressed by the balance that had been achieved here.
He’d read the books.
He read a lot.
A warm modernity that avoided the untouchable abstraction that some contemporary houses exuded. There was an indefinable impression that real people lived real lives within these walls.
Or used to live real lives. It was quite possible
that he’d not long ago driven a rough-ended shaft of wood into the brain of one of those real people. He pushed the thought away before it could completely flood his mouth with the sourness burbling at the back of his throat.
“There’s power,” Joe said.
He was moving around the kitchen.
“Food and water in the fridge. Not sure if the electricity is still coming from the mains or the solar panels, but it’s coming so I guess that’s all that matters for now.”
Joe cooked, defrosted bread and opened tinned beans, and they ate with a hunger that surprised them both.
As Joe lit a cigarette and hunted an ashtray, Elliot slipped into the exhausted sleep of those who have been pushed to their current limit.
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When Elliot woke, the first thing that struck him was that the quality of the light was different. The room was kind of gloomy, there were deeper shadows. No longer ambient daylight. Subdued, a dimmer and intangibly artificial illumination.
He knew where he was but was still spooked by that delicate disorientation of waking somewhere unfamiliar. He sat up and quietly groaned as the ache of strained muscle and the sting of sliced skin went to war over the right to be the dominant sensation in his body.
He knew he was filthy. His own rancid perfume was offensive.
The cataclysmic situation was more offensive. That was the root cause of the days-old stench of fear sweat that permeated his stained jeans and his ripped tee shirt.
He was still too drowsed with sleep and fatigue to be startled as Joe materialised from one of the shadow wrapped partitions.
“How’re ya feeling big fella?” He said.
“Sore and...”
The words trailed off and he shrugged in tired exasperation.
“Is there a toilet?”
Joe directed him.
“If it’s yellow, let it mellow kid. Not sure about the water situation yet. Plus we best keep any noise to a minimum.”
By the time Elliot had cautiously navigated his way back to the lounge area, Joe had produced food and drink. As he sat down he noticed that Joe was clean shaven and wearing fresh clothes. The shirt was too tight and the sweat pants too long.
Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse Page 36