by Guy Adams
It wasn’t the first time we’d come across a wild animal, a number of them had broken free of their confinement at the zoo. Most had been hunted by residents whose interest in exotic wildlife now extended no further than roasting it over a fire. Those left were the animals that put up more of a fight. One of Gerard’s electricity team had been attacked by a leopard when fixing power cables; the rest only escaped because the leopard was too hungry to risk losing one meal on the off chance of catching another.
As the rhino drew level with us we could see that it was malnourished and ailing in this new concrete world. Its body twitched as it took faltering steps along the road.
‘If we could fit that in our packs,’ said Michel, ‘we’d return as heroes.’
‘I’m not risking my life for meat that could be diseased,’ said Antonio. ‘Besides, be sensible, even if we could kill it, we’d have to butcher it in the middle of the street, cutting off as much as we could carry. We’d be too exposed.’
I didn’t fancy carrying a bleeding chunk of rhino on my back and said as much. Once, the mere thought of killing another animal would have been something I couldn’t imagine doing. I wasn’t a vegetarian but nor had I ever been hungry enough to end a life, and, living rough, I’d been hungrier than most. Post-Change such moral viewpoints had shifted; we’d have happily killed the thing if it had been possible to take the carcass back with us. We’d caught a few rabbits, even rats, but some of the tunnels were so narrow that anything bigger would be impossible to carry. Besides, as Antonio had said, the rhino didn’t look healthy. It was swaying from side to side, its feet dragging on the road. It looked like an old man dancing, ancient hips struggling to capture a rhythm they remembered but could no longer maintain.
As we watched, it halted, its head shaking as if trying to dislodge something from one of its stubby ears. Then it turned slightly and it was Lucille who first realised what was happening.
‘It knows we’re here,’ she said. ‘We need to move.’
‘And get caught in the open?’ asked Michel.
‘Better that than boxed in here,’ she replied, stepping slowly towards the sidewalk. ‘Move as gently as possible. If it thinks we’re a threat it’ll definitely charge.’
We followed her, inching our way out onto the street. The rhino watched as we moved away, backs pressed against the shop windows.
‘You think it’s going to attack?’ asked Michel, his voice shaking.
‘Keep talking and maybe we’ll find out,’ she replied. ‘It doesn’t want to eat us but who knows its state of mind? Look at it.’
We hadn’t taken our eyes off it. It hadn’t stopped staring at us either. Its small black eye, buried at the centre of the rough, skin circles on its face, was fixed on us.
It came to a decision, lifting its head into the air, its mouth opened and the most awful noise erupted from it. This was no natural call, this was the reality infection caused by The Change. Earlier, we’d thought something was breaking windows but that sound, the shattering of glass, was the rhino’s voice. It turned towards us and began to charge.
‘Split up!’ Lucille said, her voice barely raised as she ran off in a diagonal, aiming for the other side of the street.
We did as she said, all of us except Antonio. He just stood there, staring at the rhino as it came towards him. It wasn’t fast, at least, not as fast as it once would have been, but if he didn’t move he’d only have seconds to live.
Michel began yelling at the top of his voice, running towards the animal. Distracted, it halted a couple of metres from Antonio and turned towards Michel.
As it charged towards a new target, I ran and grabbed Antonio, dragging him away.
Michel was running as fast as he could, weaving and looking for cover as the rhino closed in on him. Just as it was almost on top of him, he rolled to one side and it continued on, unable to stop itself from crashing into a parked car. There was a crunch of metal and its head vanished inside the car’s cabin. Michel was on his feet and running, just behind the rest of us, as we aimed for the manhole cover and safety.
Behind us the rhino fought to free itself from the chassis of the car but, confused and weak, it could do little more than shake the car from side to side.
I watched it as Lucille lifted the manhole and the rest of them climbed down one by one.
‘Come on Loic,’ said Lucille, when we were the last two on the street.
The rhino had given up now, its back legs shaking and twitching.
‘It would have been amazing once,’ I said, ‘beautiful.’
‘Not any more,’ she said, ‘now it’s as ugly as the rest of us.’
BACK BELOW GROUND, Antonio had regained control of himself.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He looked at Michel. ‘You risked your life for me.’
‘Nobody knows these tunnels better than you,’ Michel said, ‘if you’d died we’d probably never have got back.’
Humming again, he gestured for Antonio to lead the way and we followed him towards home.
Chapter Five
IT WAS AN hour or so before we made it back and we were greeted not by the usual excited questions as to what we’d found but a general panic. In our absence, The Impressionists had attacked again. Only three of them but that was more than enough to cause trouble.
One of them had been captured. We were all shocked to hear this; given their nature it was all but impossible to fight them let alone restrain them.
‘After the last time,’ said Henri, the man who fancied himself as head of security, ‘I got to thinking about ways we could deal with them.’
Henri had been in the army, though not for a few years. Whenever anyone asked him why he’d left he would give a different answer, usually hinting at some terrible injustice or moral decision that forced his hand. Most of us suspected he’d got booted out and just didn’t want to admit it. If he’d really pulled off what he’d claimed then he’d be treated like royalty for months to come.
He led us into one of the main access passages, a route The Impressionists had used twice before.
‘We put a watch in place,’ he said, ‘not that it does much good, we can’t stop them getting in, but at least we now have warning.’
To one side of the tunnel was a large object covered by a tarpaulin.
‘I also managed to rig this up,’ he said uncovering it.
Underneath there was a large perspex container, taller than a man and twice my width.
‘Used for storing grain,’ he said, ‘rigged a vacuum pump to the top. When the things came in two of my boys attacked one of them with the vacuum, sucked it right up!’
Inside the container, the creature wasn’t making much effort to appear human. Beyond the basic outline of a head and torso it was little more than a pillar of thick paint, swaying from side to side like a cobra.
‘It let you?’ asked Michel.
‘Didn’t have much choice did it?’ said Henri. ‘Too quick for it.’
Michel’s face mirrored the rest of our thoughts. In our experience The Impressionists could become solid with no more than a thought. Why hadn’t it just done so the minute Henri’s men had tried to suck it into the container?
‘I wouldn’t stand too close to it if I were you,’ said Lucille, putting her hand on my shoulder.
‘You worry too much!’ said Henri, clearly angry that we weren’t giving him the appreciation he felt he deserved. ‘It’s trapped, this thing’s solid.’ He banged on the side of the perspex tube and the creature inside turned towards him.
‘What you looking at, eh?’ Henri laughed.
It threw itself at the side of the container, spraying against the clear perspex in a swirl of colour. Henri fell backwards in panic. As the paint dripped down the inside of the canister it momentarily took on the form of a smiling face, white and red-lipped like a clown.
Henri was quick to get back on his feet, terrified of looking weak in front of the rest of us.
‘Showing off won’t help you,’ he said to the creature in the canister. ‘You’re ours now. Your friends left you. So maybe you should try being a bit more cooperative, eh? If you answer a few of our questions maybe we won’t hurt you too badly.’
Antonio scratched his head, turning his back towards the container. ‘Surely that rather depends on two things: it being able to communicate and our being able to hurt it?’
‘Going to pump some acetone in there,’ said Henri, ‘see how it likes that.’
He held up a length of hosing that was connected to the top of the canister. Lucille snatched at it but he pushed her back. ‘Careful! Open the valve on that and it’ll have a way out.’
Lucille was shaking her head. ‘As if we didn’t have enough to worry about you’ve now built a time bomb in our home.’
Henri was clearly furious. He’d expected praise and he’d received criticism. He turned his backs on us and began tugging the tarpaulin back in place.
‘You just carry on wasting your days out there and leave the rest of us to get on with the real work,’ he said.
I got one final glimpse of the creature before the tarpaulin covered it completely. It had reformed into a more human shape and appeared to be waving at us.
Chapter Six
AT THE STORES, we unpacked the little we’d found.
Tomas couldn’t pretend to be impressed at the soup and bread but, as predicted, the coffee got a better reaction.
‘I’ll add this to the rest,’ he said, ‘a bit more and we’ll have enough for everyone to have a cup.’
He was fair like that, stockpiling the rarer items like coffee, chocolate and alcohol so it could be evenly distributed.
‘Any of the other teams back yet?’ Michel asked
‘Aimée and Marianne got back half an hour ago,’ Tomas said, taking off his glasses and sighing in despair at the filthiness of the lenses. ‘Can’t keep anything clean down here,’ he moaned, rubbing at the lenses with his sweatshirt. ‘They did ok. Italian restaurant with several boxes of dried pasta. Marianne found a tray of tinned pears too.’
‘A perfect combination,’ said Lucille. ‘I know what we’ll be eating tomorrow evening.’
Tomas shook his head. ‘Tomorrow Chloe is unveiling some new mycoprotein blend she’s come up with in the vats. No doubt it’ll taste like all the others. Who knew the end of the world would turn us all into vegetarians? I’ve given her as many spices as I could to try and pep it up a bit.’
‘Did The Impressionists cause much trouble?’ asked Antonio.
Tomas shrugged. ‘The usual. I don’t think there were any actual casualties this time, most people just hide and wait for them to leave. I suppose there’s not much else to do but I don’t like it. They took a couple of kids with them.’
‘Kids?’ I asked, feeling panicked.
Tomas nodded. ‘I don’t know who, I’m afraid. I’m out of the loop down here, nobody keeps me informed. Twice now we’ve been attacked without me knowing about it until the panic was over.’
I said my goodbyes to the rest of the crew and ran through the tunnels on the hunt for Paulette. I was trying to convince myself that the odds of Adrien being one of the missing were slim. There were a fair number of kids down here after all. Of course, wishing that made me feel guilty, but there’s so much death now you’d go mad if you didn’t focus on your own.
Paulette was in her chamber, doing her best to reassure a couple of the younger kids that the trouble was over. She had her best happy face in place but I could see from her puffy eyes that it was a mask, a bit of theatre to keep the kids from panicking. As soon as she looked up and saw me it all but fell apart.
‘Oh Loic,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry. I tried to protect him but he…’ She began to cry. ‘So brave. He tried to lead them away from the rest of the children. He was such an amazing boy…’
I didn’t want to hear what he ‘was’ anymore so I left.
Chapter Seven
I KNOW. IT was stupid. I shouldn’t have got attached. He was just some kid. He shouldn’t have been my problem. I had enough other things to deal with. It’s not like I could have taken him on the food run. He should have been safer here. Yes. That’s what it should have been. Safer.
I went back to the creature Henri had captured.
Henri wasn’t there but he’d left one of his people, Laure, on guard. She was standing well back, very sensible, probably wondering exactly what she was supposed to do if the thing broke free.
‘I want to talk to it,’ I told her, walking up to the canister and tugging the tarpaulin aside.
‘I’m not sure that’s…’ She stopped talking and looked around for someone else she could call on. She could see that I wasn’t going to take no for an answer and it would take more than words to keep me from what I wanted.
I stared at the creature in the tank. It was little more than a mound of alternating colours now, purple to red, red to blue, blue to an autumn brown.
‘Where do you take them?’ I asked it. ‘The people you kidnap. Where do you go?’
It pulsed slightly. Could it understand me? I thought of the smiling face it had presented to Henri. Was that the sarcastic jibe it had appeared to be or just coincidence? How did these things think?
‘Answer me!’ I shouted, banging on the perspex. ‘Where do you take them?’
It reformed into a human shape; after a moment I realised it was copying me, my hair as liquid spikes, colour matching the rest of me, my clothes, the tone of my skin.
It extended a finger to the perspex and a splatter of paint erupted from its tip. The paint formed words on the perspex, reversed so that I could read them: Only one way to find out.
‘Oi!’ Henri had returned. ‘What are you doing? Keep back from there.’
The words began to run, swirling around and reforming into new ones: How badly do you want to know?
Could we torture it like Henri thought? I doubted it. I think it would stay as long as it wanted to. The minute it had a chance to escape it would do so, taking one more of us along with it. In the meantime it watched and learned; a spy, curious rather than scared.
‘Come on,’ said Henri, grabbing my arm. ‘I told you to keep back.’
I nodded at the creature. ‘I want to know,’ I said.
I pulled myself free from Henri and grabbed the hose that hung from the top of the canister. The valve at the end had a circular tap fixed to it, I turned it, much to Henri’s disgust.
‘What are you playing at, you idiot?’
He made to pull the hose out of my hand but I shoved him backwards and flung the hose away from both of us. It thickened as the creature hurled itself to the top of the canister and began to force itself free.
‘Stupid kid!’ Henri shouted, scrabbling in the dirt for the end of the hose, desperate to close it off. I held him back.
‘Stay out of the way,’ I told him, ‘or it’ll go for you too.’
The creature spilled from the hose, a widening circle of thick paint. From its centre a pillar rose up that reformed into a human shape.
‘What should we do?’ asked Laure but Henri was already running past her.
‘Nothing we can do!’ he shouted. ‘Just try and keep out of its way.’
But I knew it wasn’t going to attack them, why should it? It had what it wanted.
It extended a slick hand towards me and I took a step back. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No need to choke me. I’m going willingly aren’t I? Take me where you take the others.’
Chapter Eight
WE WERE FOLLOWED to begin with. Henri, Laure and others all begging me to turn back. But what would have been the point of that? The Impressionist had to take someone, that someone was me. I either walked there of my own free will or it would choke the consciousness out of me and carry me.
But why go at all?
I couldn’t think of any other way of finding out where The Impressionists went.
Adrien. He had been quiet to begin with, but I
could understand that. I’d been quiet when I’d first found myself on the streets. When you’re young you learn quickly to make yourself invisible if you feel threatened. It’s nature. You look around you at the world you find yourself in, hostile and unknowable, an alien planet you can never imagine fitting in to, and you just shut up. You shrink, you hunch yourself, you give off a wave of invisibility. It’s what every kid does when they have a parent that hits them, a bully who beats them in the schoolyard, a gang that calls them names. They escape inside and disappear. Adrien had that. I’d had it too.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I only wanted to protect him because he reminded me of myself. Well, you may be that self-obsessed but I just sympathised, ok? I understood and wanted to give him something better.
Sometimes you just take stupid risks to help the people in life you care about.
After a while with me he’d laughed more. He’d talked more. He’d come out of hiding.
At night he’d tell me stories about his old life, about his folks or things that had happened to him at school. Ok, so maybe if he’d been older I’d have told him how none of that stuff mattered anymore, that the past is wiped away the minute it’s over, but he wasn’t. He needed that grounding. He needed to think that there was still a normal out there to be found again one day. Sooner or later he’d realise it had vanished for good but that would be something he’d discover for himself, not have hammered into him by me. I guess we’d all get along better if we let people find their own way, we so rarely do.
I would sit and listen to him talk and I’d find a little piece of normal for myself. Yeah, at the same time I’d be panicking, reminding myself that all I was doing was giving myself one more problem to deal with, one more way to get hurt, but mostly those thoughts came when he wasn’t around. When he was there I just let it be.