Chapter 7, Bound
Hertford was stripped of its usefulness. Bags were crammed, clips snapped shut, a very special book was wrapped and protected and nestled under my thick coat.
We walk, we walk to you destiny, will you meet us half way or will we have to track all the way into the darkness in order to draw you out?
Lucy held the map. She was our navigator. Her reluctance to come had been evident in those last hours as we counted down to leaving the cave. But she was very much in love with Raj, and there were no paths down which she would not tread to be at his side.
I felt pangs of regret at leaving the cave, there was an essence of peace there, which I knew we would not find again. Regardless of any success the mission might bring, there was no haven which would ever hold us quite us snugly and as safely as the cave beneath Hertford.
This was a new day and every road we walked down was a new road. It felt like an adventure, albeit an incredibly dangerous one. But as the minutes ticked by, I started to feel better and better, the sun held my chin in its tender grip and decided that I needed more. Using Raj's knowledge of the cave network we'd exited through one of the portals as close to the edge of town as possible.
As we climbed a thinly wooded hill I looked back at the town. There was no movement, perhaps winters hand had scraped the town clear of all its infections, perhaps the cadavers were frozen statues in the towns square, perhaps the living still hid.
The first day was uneventful. The office of an abandoned petrol station was our refuge for the night. Pumps still hung from cars, but the juice had stopped flowing a long time ago, and whoever held the handle was long since gone, chased away by whatever had come upon it so suddenly.
There were a few bodies dotted around the forecourt, but time dealt with them, its thin, probing fingers had peeled apart the physical makeup of the former human beings. It would continue its grisly task, assisted by workhorses of nature, until only bones remained. Then slowly but surely it would whittle away at them, returning them to the dust of the world.
As we huddled under the torchlight looking at the map my heart sank. We'd walked all day with minimal breaks, yet barely covered an inch of ground on the map. The realisation dawned on me that it would take weeks to reach the Lake District.
“Happy?” asked Lucy reading my reaction.
“Leave it Luc” said Raj. Lucy's scowl continued long after the lights went out.
Day after day we plodded. Where we could we followed the main roads, but sometimes obstacles, both natural and unnatural forced us off-road into the undergrowth. There was the occasional cadaver incident. What is left of the human race is extremely lucky that these are such dumb creatures. In the cities, in the midst of all that writhing flesh, the cadaver is at the top of the food chain.
They turn quickly, those who are bitten and scratched, one becomes hundreds within a matter of minutes, within the concrete walls of civilisations grandest abodes. But, out here, the scales are even. For they have no guile nor cunning, they do not lay traps, nor do they lay in wait, they see as far as the next meal and that is all. If you can think at all then you can out think them.
So we played elaborate games of hide and seek, the stakes were high but we did not lose. Behind trees we would hide and lure our prey, then a rock would cave a skull, a knife would pierce a brain, an iron bar would dismember through blunt force. And so we carried on, where we could win we fought, and where we might lose, then we were never there to fight at all. We were the shadows in the trees, lighter and more fast flowing than the breeze.
Sometimes we caught sight of other people. Contact was minimal, we all remembered the lack of civility which humans displayed towards each other before, we could only imagine what we might have in store for each other now; now that justice and retribution were gone. We did not want to find out if there was any darkness in their hearts, and they did not want to fall under the shadow of ours. So we avoided them, we laid no traps, nor did we lend any blessings.
We three had each other, and as small as our clade seemed, it felt like enough for now.
A week into our journey we encountered...something.
Raj was on point, we'd all fashioned impromptu walking sticks. They knocked the dew from the grass, they took our weight and helped forge the path ahead. It was a sunny day, not the kind of day where you imagine evil will take the stage, I imagine that it would wait for cloudier, darker times.
We are approaching a motorway junction. Raj has procured a pair of binoculars from one of the hundred thousand abandoned cars we have passed along the way. He seems to spend as much time looking through them as he does his own eyes. A road weaves its way from the junction up to a service centre. It looks to be a big one, I can see the golden arches, and the logos from a dozen other branded chains.
“What do you think?” asks Lucy from behind me.
“I think we're running low on water” says Raj from behind the binoculars.
“I meant..”
“I know what you meant” he says. Things have been strained between them since we left the cave, the responsibility is mine, yet they both carry it too, without knowing. He turns. My smiling man is tired, too often does he volunteer himself as night watchmen. Too often does he sit up, looking at the stars. We were gone from under their gaze for so long, I wonder with what kind of curiosity they look back at us, certainly they do not lend us strength, for each night Raj spends under their glare his strength is waning.
“I can't see anything, but that works both ways. It's a risk. I will go alone”. I shook my head while Lucy voiced the words we were both thinking.
“No way, three sets of eyes, three sets of ears, three sets of weapons, remember?” she says pulling a large kitchen knife from her belt to emphasise the point. Fashion is gone, we dress for the world we are in, clothes are items of practicality, they are disguises and barriers against the world. Comfort and style have gone the way they needed to go.
Raj lifts his hands “Okay” says he. A strong man and a weak man all rolled into one, he cannot deny his ladies, where our reason may fail our strength of will overcomes him every time. On this occasion it is both.
We circle the perimeter of the service station until we are at the back of the complex. We help each other over the fence and creep across the service yard at the rear of the large building which has a tall glass pyramid on top of it. I gag at the smell from the waste bins, filled with rotten, putrescent slime that is swimming with maggots.
The back door is open, darkness streams through it. Our eyes adjust as we creep through the portal. We have entered a kitchen behind one of the fast food takeaways. Once a beehive of grease, shouting, and rampant consumerism; now, there is a solemn silence, an acknowledgement by the cluttered work surfaces and rusting cooking implements that they will never feel the heat again. The taps, like most of those we have come across, dribble out a dark brown sludge that would likely kill us as quickly as dehydration.
The mouldy fridge is empty, we will have to explore beyond the realm of the king of burgers. The counter creaks as we climb over it. There is less darkness here. Sunlight streams in through the dirty glass of the pyramid. The vending machines have been smashed to pieces, we are not the first to have come across this place, though we will likely be the last to retrieve anything of use from it.
We have better luck in the newsagents. There was obviously a fight in the refrigerated section. The remnants of a corpse are there, where it has rotted away we spy several bottles of water in the folds of its clothes. He or she fell upon these, in their dying moments they covered over this precious resource, and only in the wasting away of their form have the bottles been revealed. Once the gore has been wiped away from the plastic, they look like new, and are stowed safely in back packs, after a quick, guilty guzzle.
As we leave the newsagents to cross the foyer a sound grabs out attention. Half a dozen figures, loitering just beyond the smeared glass of the non functioning automatic doors, while one of th
eir number attempts to jimmy them open.
Seconds to react. Panic, rushing blood, adrenaline. I run across the foyer. The door breaks open, I turn in the dark portal, I can see Raj and Lucy. Oh my god, they didn't run with me. They stayed on the other side of the foyer, they are hunkered down behind some counters beckoning furiously at me to run to them.
A group of men has walked in through the doors, they are armed. I can't take the chance, I just can't. I shake my head at my comrades, I back further into the darkness and slink into the rest room.
The windows in here are tiny slits through which little light can pour. I can hear walking and talking coming from the foyer. I hope that my friends will be okay, I hope that they will take no risks for me. Untreated septic tanks have seized the air inside the dank toilets. As I creep forward through slimy puddles which are made up of things I don't want to think about, I turn to look in one of the mirrors.
There is a figure there, one who is not me. I freeze in fear, but there is something I recognise about the form. I turn, ever so slowly to where they should be standing. There is no one in the rest room with me, I turn back to the mirror which tells a different story. As my eyes adjust to the darkness my focus and concentration on the figure in the mirror becomes greater. Then I see that it is her, the dismembered girl from my dream. She speaks, with clarity and urgency. “Hide, it is coming.”
She doesn't have to tell me again. I splash through the puddles into one of the cubicles. I shut the door quickly and quietly behind me, before closing the loo and climbing up onto the seat. Seconds tick by, I am listening intently, listening in the direction of the foyer, for the men who entered there. But, when I do hear a sound, it is not from that direction, it is coming from the far end of the expansive rest room, from a dark corner that I never laid eyes on.
The smell from the loo was enough to make me gag, but it was almost like a breath of fresh air compared to what came next. An odour that filled every pore. A scent so foul that for weeks it would linger with me, to be in the same room as its source, was to feel like it was pouring off of me. And as for that source.
Well, all I can see is blurry, slow movements in the dark. The shadows grow deeper, for whatever is out there, whatever makes the stench, has arrived before the cubicle in which I cower. I hear a scraping, a sharp, probing, scratching noise on the door. I hear a talon probing curiously outside the locked cubicle.
Then there is a shout from the foyer. The claw retracts from the door, the slow heavy thing starts to move away. It seems to suck the darkness along with it, the pondering, thudding footsteps are a testament to the weight and bulk of the stench creature. A cadaver perhaps, I tell myself this, as if the thought of the cadaver is somehow less horrifying than the unknown.
The odour drifts away along with the sound of the creature. Against my better judgement I slink out of the cubicle and slowly step along after the beast. Cadavers are thin. Even the grossest and most overweight individuals tends to shift their bulk once they join the ranks of the dead, once they start to gorge on a new kind of meat. Whatever it is moving away from me out into the lobby area, it's big, and it smells worse than death.
An overcast sky has formed above us. The darkness has increased in tone. Spidery shadows have became bloated whales of gloom. I exit the rest room to the sound and scene of violence. Lucy is dragging Raj through broken glass and discarded toys. Back towards the land of the king of burgers they go.
I run towards them. As I go I try to take in the scene unfolding close to the front doors. The men who broke in are fighting, and dying. Try as I might I find it difficult to focus on their foe. Because it doesn't make sense. It fails to fit with any of the dimensional norms of the kingdoms of earth, human and natural entities.
It's torso is huge, a hunched rippling mass of armour plated muscles that look like they're being held together with crooked metal staples, as the creature breathes the plates flex and part in places, to reveal a glowing, red, oozing mass underneath. The two arms which emerge from that, are each split into four other arms at the elbow, each of these is currently engaged in acts of violence.
Several of the already dead men are being held down on the ground by those arms, they are convulsing, in a way that looks as if something is being pumped out of their bodies. In the time it takes me to run across the foyer and start helping Raj over the counter all of the men are truly dead, and being drained by the bulky creature which turns on its grey, tree trunk legs.
As I climb over the counter I steal a glance I cannot give back. Its eyes are glowing red coals, it makes no move towards me, instead it smiles, row upon row of broken jagged yellow teeth. A pointed tongue all covered in boils takes a long, lingering lick over those teeth. I take one more quick look down at its victims, which are now paper thin husks on the ground, I leap down behind the counter and follow my comrades out into the woods. Hell has spilled over. And it stinks.
Of the Shadows Own Accord (The Green and Pleasant Land, Volume 3) Page 7