Hunting. They looked like they were hunting.
“Switch on Jules, for fuck’s sake. If you start daydreaming out here bright boy, you’re liable to end up dead meat in no time at all. And even worse than that, I’m likely to end up dead meat trying to save your sorry arse.”
Pearcey’s voice was a loud whisper. The man’s arm felt like an iron bar across his chest. He smiled and winked before removing it and motioning them forward. The intense focus that the man had displayed during their escape from the bunker seemed to have instantly resumed, although he appeared fractionally less humourless now that they were no longer underground.
A hundred yards later, a break in the buildings opened onto a patch of gravelled wasteland enclosed by a chain link fence. Pearcey quickly unlocked a wide gate and led them over to one of the dozen vehicles crammed into the small space.
Carlton’s car wasn’t what Julian had been expecting. He wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but it certainly wasn’t the rust flecked antique in front of him. Even so, he felt happier sitting in the passenger seat with something between him and the outside world.
However illusory that sense of protection might be.
“It’s a ...err, nice car Carlton.” He said seriously.
The big man glanced at him, frowning.
“Un-fucking-believable. The four horsemen of the apocalypse have just ridden into view, we’re knee deep in the walking mutated and you’re taking the piss out of my trusty old Impreza turbo.”
Julian twitched a smile and Pearcey smiled back at him.
“Yeah, it’s a piece of shit but it can still shift. I’m always driving government cars so it doesn’t see much action. Had it years. It was alright back in the day. Never got round to upgrading.”
The man ferreted around in the glove box and produced a dog-eared road atlas.
“Keep an eye out for company while I check our route.”
Julian shifted his attention to their immediate surroundings. The fire was intensifying. Spreading unchecked, coming their way with a relentlessness that was awesome and undeniable. London would burn until the fire burned itself out or hit natural barriers. There would be no human intervention, there was no one left to intervene. Julian wondered if it would kill the creatures and as if in answer to the thought, some of them appeared.
“Carlton?”
The man’s head snapped up as Julian pointed through the open chain link gate at. A number of the things were running away from the flames that had advanced chillingly close to where they sat. Too close for any comfort.
“Fuck it. We head for Birmingham and worry about which house the party’s at when we get there.” Pearcey said.
He whirled the atlas into the backseat without looking. The engine started with a throaty rumble like a grumpy old dog startled into wakefulness.
“Might want to fasten your seat belt,” Pearcey muttered as the car shot through the gateway, spitting bullets of gravel behind it.
<><><>
At several points, Julian didn’t think that they’d make it out of London. He thought that the sheer numbers would simply overwhelm them.
Initially, Pearcey had intended a detour to his own apartment. He wasn’t specific as to reason but he alluded to the fact that he had weaponry and ammunition that would be useful. He abandoned the idea as they pulled into his street and he caught sight of the entrance to his building. It was swamped with once human monstrosities. All manner of mutated flesh swarmed the street. Short and tall. Clothed and naked. Slow and fast.
It had taken them an age to get there. They’d seen some other traffic, other people. Julian didn’t want to think too deeply about that. People, ill-equipped but fighting for their lives. All too often losing. The other traffic, like them, fleeing and more often than not pursued as they themselves were. They’d outdistanced the last group of creatures shortly before arriving at Pearcey’s apartment but there was no respite, more would be on them in no time.
As they paused and surveyed the entrance to Pearcey’s building, creatures closer to them were already stopping and turning in their direction. It reminded Julian of the way birds flocked. The awareness spread through the group, like it was a single organism. Most of the creatures before them slowly wheeled, a murmuration of savagery, and fixed on their location, began to move towards them.
Pearcey reversed, tires smoking, and narrowly avoided collision as another car rocketed past the intersection. He still managed to complete the manoeuvre without stopping, swapping backward motion for forward, and one direction for a radically new one, with no noticeable pause. Pearcey drove with an oiled violence that mumbled to Julian of things he didn’t comprehend and probably didn’t want to know. Worlds Julian hadn’t visited and had no desire to tread, experiences beyond his understanding that weren’t meant for people like him.
“Our friend there definitely has the right idea. Time to get the hell out of Dodge. In fact, let’s fuck ourselves out of Kansas completely shall we?”
Panting and smiling, Pearcey accelerated away from his home without a backward glance.
Julian was terrified of the things that were all around them. Hungry and horrible things. Alien creatures bringing another reality that he couldn’t comprehend.
And scared of the man next to him when he smiled that way. When Pearcey smiled and talked like that it was as if there was some abraded pleasure in all of this. As if the situation could stimulate something other than pure abject terror.
<><><>
After giving up on Pearcey’s apartment, they concentrated on leaving London in one piece.
It was so difficult. So endlessly, relentlessly difficult. A rolling, unremitting reel of feeling and fear and horror.
Julian blanked parts of it. Great big parts of it.
The first splatter of blood across the bonnet had made his mind retreat. When Carlton Pearcey began to swear with a brutality that was scary, he’d withdrawn further. The everyday motion of the windscreen wipers to clear accumulated gore was the welcome sweep of the mesmerist’s pocket watch. The sporadic bumps and impacts became little more than interruptions. The spells of freewheeling forward transit a blessed respite, watery balm on a parched throat.
Except it doesn’t really work like that. He couldn’t blank it completely, because everything that he saw sat at the back of his head, nattering and shrieking in the shadows. The best he could do was draw a curtain across it and maintain that he’d blanked out. If he could ever bring himself to offer the whole and unexpurgated truth, if he was ever in a position to be unselfishly generous with that episode, the story would be fuller and more obscenely detailed than anyone would want to hear.
The easier truth, what he would say if asked, was that he just jumped out of the process. Blanked out as much as he could because that was the only that he could continue to function. He would have admitted that Carlton was a constant. A constant reassuring presence at his side. By turns grim and purposeful, laughing and manic, thoughtful and musing. But always there, always driving, always in charge and capable.
When they stopped, truly stopped, not just a slowing to crush creatures without destroying their car, when they were still and motionless, it was the urgency in Carlton’s voice that reached him.
It was getting dark. They were stationary on an empty street. An unnaturally dark and still suburban street.
“Julian. If you don’t fucking well answer me, I swear I will punch some fucking sense back into you ...and I’ll take a certain amount of pleasure doing it.”
He looked across at the man. Blank and overloaded, distant but coming back.
“I can’t drive anymore. I’m done. Finito. Fucked. A fairway past the last hole. You get that Julie baby? I’m fucking well done. We have to rest up for the night. It’s quiet here. As good a place as I can find.
I’ll pick a house, secure it and come back and bring you in. Answer me now and tell me you’re going to sit tight until I come back and extract your sad sorry self or I will hurt
a response out of you.”
Julian mumbled something and it was enough for him to be left alone. Enough to satisfy Pearcey that he could get about their business. Enough for him to be left alone in the blissfully still, nearly dark street.
Sometime later, he didn’t know how long because time had lost its relevance, his door opened and he was extracted. Yanked out into the cool night air. Propelled along pavement with a strong yet measured arm around his shoulder, manoeuvred through doorways and up stairs until he fell onto softness that smelled sweetly clean.
Sleep swept over him with the swiftness of medication. A few short hours where no nightmare could begin to match the nightmare reality of his waking hours.
<><><>
Splashing.
The sound of water splashing.
It was a good sound and it made him realise how thirsty he was. His mouth was dry and stale and his head throbbed with a dull ache.
Julian groaned and rolled onto his side. Squinted in the sunlight that shone through a gap in partially drawn curtains. Flowery feminine curtains that matched the flowery feminine duvet over him. For a moment he didn’t know what day it was, couldn’t think where he was.
The room smelled of perfume and hairspray and all things female. A woman’s bedroom and it had been a long time since he’d woken in a woman’s bedroom.
His own smell was less pleasant. Old sweat and dried fear. And then it came back to him and he sat up with a jolt that caused the throb in his head to thud with a sickening intensity.
He thought it was Friday but he wouldn’t have sworn to that. Funny how the collapse of civilisation made what day of the week it was somehow irrelevant.
“Morning professor. Sleep well?”
Carlton’s voice startled him afresh. The big man filled the doorway to the room. Towelling his face dry. Moisture still glistening in the beginnings of a beard. He reached back into the hall and produced a pint glass of water which he handed to Julian along with two white tablets.
“Drink that and take those. You’ll be dehydrated after yesterday. They’re only Paracetamol. If you feel anything like I did when I woke up they’ll barely take the edge off it. Feel like I got hit by a rusty truck and left in the sun to cure.”
Julian gratefully chewed the bitter little caplets and gulped water.
Carlton drifted over to the window and regarded the street, careful to conceal himself behind the curtain. Sitting on the edge of bed, stockinged feet on soft carpet, Julian noticed his boots were placed neatly on the floor. He didn’t remember removing them.
“I need the bathroom,” he said, standing and moving to the door.
“Don’t flush it,” Carlton replied, his eyes not leaving the view.
When Julian returned, the man motioned him over. A firm hand on his shoulder stopped him shy of the window itself.
“Stay well back Jules. Don’t show yourself. We really, really don’t want them to see us.”
There were at least four or five mutated things on the street below. Moving in and out of their field of vision. Predatory but aimless. Julian’s heart began beating faster just at the sight of them.
“Wished I’d parked the car closer now,” Pearcey muttered.
The vehicle was in front of the next door house. Peppered with drying gore, grooves and dents, an ugly testament to the previous day’s journey. Wing mirrors gone. A headlight broken like a gouged eye socket.
Julian retreated and sat back on the bed.
“I’m not sure I can do this Carlton. I lost it last yesterday and I don’t know if I can deal with it now. I’m sorry. I just ...shut down. If you hadn’t been there, I’d be dead already.”
His voice trailed off and lowered his head into his hands.
Carlton carefully moved away from the window and sat by him. Julian felt the weight of the man’s hand settle on his shoulder again. He looked up into the Carlton’s red-rimmed eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept or well or hadn’t slept at all.
“Yeah, alright, you were out of it last night. But last night’s fucking-well gone and ain’t coming back and you’re still here. Listen Jules, there’s a trick to this. To surviving. You have to change the way you think about it. Set a small target, get to that and then set the next small target.
Survive a day at a time. An hour at a time. A fucking minute at a time if you have to.
You try and get all big picture on this and you’ll go crazy or make mistakes that’ll get you killed.”
Julian held a breath and let it out slowly and shakily. Nodding and swallowing past the lump in his throat.
“We don’t know how this is all going to pan out. No rules anymore. No expectations. No way to know what tomorrow brings.”
Carlton smiled thinly.
“I’m personally hoping that after a few days, they’ll all suddenly disappear up the own arseholes like the fucking oozlum bird. Although, I wouldn’t place a bet on it ...even if I could find a bookie without claws.”
Julian smiled back at him despite never having watched a Carry On film, or ever having entered a betting shop, and basically having no idea what he was talking about.
<><><>
They’d made poor progress the day before. A hundred and twenty mile journey that should have taken three hours tops. They’d barely covered twenty-five miles. The house that they currently occupied was on the outskirts of St Albans.
They had water. No electricity. No internet.
Earlier, when dawn light was seeping into the world, Pearcey had got a couple of mobile reception bars but no connection when he tried to place a call. The bars had since disappeared.
They ate a cold meal scrounged from the contents of the house. After that, Pearcey stationed Julian at the upstairs window as a lookout and gathered basic supplies.
Two litre bottles of water from the redundant fridge. Chocolate and a variety of tinned food. Matches. Kitchen knives. Two duvets and a double sheet from the beds. He bound the bedding with some string from a kitchen cupboard and stuffed the rest into an old bag-for-life carrier bag that looked like it might be nearing the end of its particular life. Perhaps pining for its owner, Pearcey thought as he filled it.
As he padded upstairs to tell Julian that they were just about ready to leave, Julian appeared at the top of the stairs. Anxious. Scared.
“The other bedroom. Far left,” Julian said.
Pearcey made his way to the room and peered through the window. Further up the street at the limit of his view a group of the creatures was massing around a detached house. More were appearing along the length of the road. Seemingly out of nowhere. Drawn to the focal point. That house.
“It started suddenly,” Julian whispered.
“First a few of them. Running like they’d seen or heard something. I think there’s someone in there. Someone like us. Unchanged.
All I can think is that person, or people, made some sort of noise. Something that attracted the creatures. Whatever alerted the first few, it’s like it spread. Rippled out. I don’t think there’s anything particularly intelligent about it ...just a kind of ...pack mentality, communal alert.”
Pearcey remained silent watching the spectacle unfold. Whatever was in that house, those things wanted it. Abruptly the focus of their interest seemed to resolve itself. As if some of the creatures had seen or sensed something specific. Several of them hurled themselves at the front window.
Again and again.
Relentless. Uncaring of hurt or injury.
Rebounding and snapping and biting the air as others amongst their number leapt to take their turn at catching the quarry.
At first, the toughened double glazing held despite the ferocity of the attack. And then the window simply shattered out of existence. An unlikely dam giving way. The creatures poured through the breach like snarling liquid.
Pearcey surveyed the rest of the street.
Swarming. More than he wanted to count.
“Fuck,” he breathed, moving away from the window.
<
br /> “I don’t fancy their chances, whoever was in there. And I don’t fancy our chances of even getting to the car at the moment. It’s fucking heaving with them out there. We’ll just have to keep our heads down and hope they move on. Hope some other poor bastard attracts their attention.”
And so they waited.
After the initial flurry of activity, the creatures began to disperse, but it was a slow and listless drifting dispersal. After an endless hour, poised and ready to dash for their escape, Pearcey judged that there were still too many. He seemed able to accept the delay with some equanimity. Composed and self-contained. Silently balanced on the edge of engagement.
Julian wasn’t quite so balanced. His nerves were frayed. He was fearful at the prospect of setting foot outside and simultaneously scared of remaining here. The danger outside was obvious and the danger of remaining here was wrapped up in the illusory sense of suburban safety created by four walls and a roof. But Julian was getting over that, getting over that false sense of security. This was a false refuge. The earlier incident had shown that.
Yes, it felt safer than standing out in the street. It probably was safer than being out there in the open.
Marginally.
But it was all temporary. How long could they scoot from one unknown place to another, hoping they’d be able to lock it down until the next frantic dash? Tip-toeing around wherever it was and hoping they didn’t drop something and make too much noise. Hoping one of those things didn’t see or smell them.
Julian could feel the panic creeping back, threatening to overwhelm him, like it had in the bunker, like it had during the nightmare journey here.
He hoped that their destination, Black Hills, would offer something more secure, something more permanent. Never mind that, he hoped they could actually get there in the first place. Because what he’d told Carlton was true. He wasn’t cut out for this.
Set small targets, Carlton had said, and recalling that, Julian adjusted his ambition, and hoped instead that they could get to the car in one piece. If they could get to the car, they’d have a chance. Pearcey drove like he’d been born with a steering wheel between his hands and his right foot on an accelerator. He’d get them through.
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