The Nature of Balance

by Tim Lebbon

  There were people in the streets, but they seemed more confused and terrified than she. One man had walked straight by her as she tried to stop him, shoving her arm gently but firmly out of his way. He was carrying a rucksack, which leaked redly down his back. “I’m taking our baby home to my wife,” he said. “She has to see our baby.”

  Now, panic was building like a stifling cold, tightening her chest and pounding an ache into her skull. Something kept it at bay somewhat, but that just made it worse. It all felt like a bad dream but she still had Keith’s blood on her T-shirt, and that was no dream. And Jenny’s head had tilted sideways with a dry-biscuit crunch which no nightmare could conjure.

  Peer had led a simple, relatively normal life, drifting from job to job, with boyfriends here and there, in what her parents had told her was a dreadful waste of her intelligence. But it was a life she had thought she enjoyed; meeting new people meant a lot to her. The jobs were tiresome and often boring (the boyfriends likewise) but the people were mostly fresh and enlivening, and if she ever became bored with her work colleagues as well as the job, then she’d simply move on. She had lived and worked in Newport for four years. Jenny had been one of her best friends, and theirs’ was a friendship that had looked to last forever. Never, before this morning, had she seen a dead body. Even her parents had merely been innocuous boxes after their deaths.

  The world was coming to life around her, but it was the most abnormal beginning to a day she had ever seen. For a start, there were hardly any people.

  There was a bang. It could have been a lorry opening its doors, or a train shunting into a siding at the nearby station, or a car backfiring. But the way Peer’s mind was attuned, it sounded so much like a gunshot. She paused on the bridge, unable to determine the direction it had come from, unsure of which way to go. Her intention had been to head to the town centre, find help, tell someone about Jenny and Kerry and Keith, direct aid to her street. But events were rapidly turning this into a bad idea. If there was no help for a car full of dead people, surely she was on her own.

  How many more people were on their own today? Husbands kneeling by dead wives, children shaking bloodied parents, unable to wake them? To her left, looking south, smoke smudged the horizon. A bad day for everyone.

  She listened, trying to filter out the strange sounds echoing around this mausoleum of a town: shouts; screams; the squeal of brakes; smashing glass; barking dogs; the thump of running feet; car horns and burglar alarms; a full concerto of chaos. Her body was tense, tearing itself both ways. Her conditioning told her to go towards the centre of town, find a policeman and call for help. Her common sense tried to convince her to get out of Newport as quickly as she could, flee the madness and head out into the country.

  Take away three square meals, and you’re left with anarchy. The thought came unbidden, but seemed to meld in comfortably with what she had already seen this morning. Something terrible had obviously happened, and people were handling it in different ways. And just what had happened? Its bizarreness and suddenness had distracted her so much, that she had really not stepped back and considered what was occurring. In some ways she still felt partly removed from it all, as though it were happening in a country far away and she was merely visiting. But from other angles she felt inextricably enmeshed in events, deeply touched. Almost responsible.

  And that was just crazy.

  Gas? she thought. Chemicals? A disease?

  Her gaze fell once more on the crashed car. It was a Volvo. The man in the windscreen was topless because his pyjama top had been ripped off by the jagged glass. An atlas had spilled out onto the road, destinations he could never visit pinned with rosettes of drying blood.

  There was a bang. A hole the size of a fist appeared in the Volvo’s side door and the driver twitched in death.

  “Was it you?” a voice shouted. “Huh? Was it you?” Another bang, a tyre shredded. Peer ducked down onto her haunches, looking around desperately for cover but finding none. There was a man walking around the elevated roundabout, fresh cuts gaping on his naked legs and genitals, baring bloody flesh to the air. He carried a shotgun, smoke curling from both barrels, and a carrier bag full of cartridges slung over one wrist. Other than that he was naked, pale and shrivelled in the cold. As she watched he broke the gun, plucked out the spent cartridges and reloaded. He stalked closer to the ruined car, bending down as he approached so that he could see the driver shielded from above by the bonnet.

  “Was it you? Killed my Helen? Huh? Was it you? Maybe it was.” He pointed the gun at the man’s head and fired.

  Peer turned away just as the shadow beneath the Volvo’s bonnet erupted. Among the echoes of the blast, she heard a noise like the heavy patter of penny-sized raindrops.

  “Oh, maybe it wasn’t you!”

  She looked back, trying not to see the mess splashed out into the road. The man was loading his gun again, glaring around through a veil of tears and second-hand blood, walking around the car.

  “Who was it? Who the fuck was it?”

  Peer began to scurry back the way she had come.

  “Maybe it was you!”

  She glanced over her shoulder. He had seen her. He was aiming the gun.

  Whatever fate saved her left her with the gory memory, like a part-payment for providence. She would remember it forever, because death was like that. The shotgun exploded in the man’s hands and sent him stumbling back against the upturned car, his face all raw meat and ruptured eyes. He opened his mouth to scream but his throat had gone, and instead he slumped to the ground and twitched his life away.

  “Oh God!” Peer gasped, running, tripping, tangling herself in her own terror. Her bloodied elbows and feet received another shock, leaving exclamation marks of blood on the paving slabs. She finally found her feet and her voice, and ran screaming from the bridge.

  There were several people ahead of her, clustered on the pavement outside the old film college. As she ran blindly towards them they held out their arms, as if trying to redirect a herd of cattle. “It’s all right,” they were saying, “calm down, you can come with us, we’re going to the hospital now.” Peer heard but did not comprehend; what she did understand was that nothing would get her back across that bridge. Over the river was real horror. Splashed across the road. Awaiting her return. Peeled shotgun smoking in readiness.

  She dodged the arms, ran out into the road and sprinted away. She passed familiar names: the Riverside Tavern where she had drunk on occasion; Kentucky Fried Chicken; KwikFit. Memories fading into history already, although their shells remained like ghosts.

  Long minutes later she came to a halt and slumped down in a pub doorway. It smelled of stale beer and piss, echoes of a time before this madness had begun. Last night people would have left this place, laughing and feeling well with the world, the germ of a hangover already planted in their heads. Peer wondered how many of those people were still alive now; how many hangovers stung them this morning? Or were they dead, spread across their own or someone else’s bedroom? She had a brief, chilling vision of the future: mould speckling the insides of used glasses; dust settling over full ashtrays; food rotting, then drying into hard husks in display cases. She shook her head to disperse the images, but still they came, scaring her, draining her. Everything was changing. Nothing would be the same again. The world had shifted, and the direction of shift – forward or backward – had nothing to do with those few who survived. Control had been ripped from the hands of humankind. The survivors would have a new fight on their hands.

  She so wanted to be one of those survivors. She remembered the little dead girl of her dreams, moving and animated but so desperate for recognition and love. She did not want to be that girl, although she knew she was. And there was something else that strove to protect her as well, a deep-seated feeling in her guts which seemed peculiar to her. It urged her to stand, move, get out of Newport and find refuge in the country. The town was a dangerous place, it told her. After this – for a while �
� people would be dangerous as well.

  It was logic talking, and the instinct for survival, but also an impulse of another kind, something she could not identify. Something from outside her own mind, alien yet comforting.

  As she stood she caught the first whiff of smoke. It was acidic and rich, subtle but definitely there. Automatically she glanced over the rooftops, searching for the tell-tale smudge in the air which she’d seen minutes before from the bridge. She was used to the undercurrent of smoke and smog in the town – there was a steelworks not far away, exhausting relentlessly into the atmosphere – but this was more overt. This was a fire.

  A car roared down the street, heading for the bridge she had just fled. Wide-eyed passengers stared at her through the windows, faces full of dread, pleading an understanding which may never come. Lots of faith would be challenged today, she thought, in many ways. Faith in the relative comfort most people inhabited, a firm belief that water would flow and electricity would be there when required, and order was constant and undeniable.

  And spiritual faith, too. How could God let this happen? Peer shook her head, let out a laugh that was half sob. God had never been a close travelling companion, but He was always there in her background, a sneaking misgiving that she was wrong to doubt more than an actual, active presence. Now, she felt He had slipped even further into the shadows. Ironic that she felt even less in control of herself, as though God had chosen to distance himself from her to encourage fresh belief.

  But she was moving as if there was another, stronger hand controlling her fate. That, she had faith in.

  A second car came careering along the street, clipping the wing-mirror of a parked vehicle and sending it scattering across the tarmac. The driver braked for an outrageous few seconds, as though considering leaving a note on the damaged car’s window. So sorry, broke your mirror, you can find me at the hospital. Then they knocked down a gear and accelerated past Peer. A woman was hunched over the wheel, seat slid all the way forward, face almost pressed against the windscreen. Peer caught a fleeting glimpse of shapes in the back seat, bundles of clothes, blotched red and for all the world resembling the picnic blankets of fairy-tales.

  Peer needed a car. She had to get out of Newport, she was more sure of that than ever, because everything was going bad. Where there was one man with a shotgun there would be ten more, and twenty with knives, and a hundred with grudges against society. She had never passed her driving test but had taken a series of lessons in her early twenties, and she was sure she could pick it up again. Like riding a bike, she hoped. Or walking.

  She started down the street, heading towards Maindee, deciding almost without thinking that she would leave via the eastern side of Newport and head towards Chepstow. Perhaps subconsciously there was the hope that by heading towards London, she would find more order.

  She passed a side street and decided to venture down it in search of a car. The thought of stealing was abhorrent to her, but she could really see no other option. It was unlikely that public transport was operating a normal service today.

  The street curved around to the right. Houses stood in bland serried ranks, many curtains drawn, only one home displaying any signs of life: a woman, walking in through her front door, out again, in again, never disappearing for more than three seconds before emerging back into the light. Peer called but she seemed not to hear. Her mouth was hanging open, her eyes wide and unblinking. Peer thought at first that she was dressed in a red sari, but then realised it used to be white. The woman stepped back into the house, reappeared again, looking straight through Peer as she passed on the other side of the street.

  There were five cats sitting on the pavement. They were normally solitary creatures, and Peer could not remember ever seeing this many together before. Staring. Watching. Waiting for her. They were silent. One of them, a fat old tom, had fresh scratch marks on his face. Blood hung on his whiskers like desperate dew. It was this, more than anything, that made Peer turn around and step back to the nearest door. She had seen enough blood for one day.

  She banged on the door, keeping her eye on the cats. Pigeons fluttered overhead and settled on the sills of houses opposite, but the cats seemed unconcerned. There were at least thirty town birds, all fattened up on chips. A bee buzzed at her ear suddenly, startling her into an air-waving pirouette. The cats stared. A sparrowhawk landed among the pigeons, but looked only at her.

  She banged again, using the heels of both hands. There was no answer. The echo from inside sounded muffled and dead. She glanced at the window, saw that it was not double glazed.

  The cats and birds watched with disdain. The woman – into her house, back out again – provided the only real movement in the street.

  Peer prised up the corner of a cracked paving slab. Even half smashed it was heavy, and she had to heave with all her might just to raise it up to chest level. She flung it, ducked to escape the noise, and remained on her haunches as glass clattered to the stone sill. The pigeons took flight at the sudden crash, but soon came down again in the same spot. The cats merely stood, looking even more threatening than before. The sparrowhawk surveyed the street with its jerky glare.

  The woman across the road paid no attention. She wandered in, out, as if working up the courage to actually go all the way in, see what confronted her there. Her clothes were drying black.

  The window had been painted shut, so Peer had to remove jagged shards of glass before carefully easing herself through the gap. She was as cautious as she could be in her agitated state, but she still managed to add to the cuts on her feet as she stepped gingerly onto the carpet. She pulled the curtains wide, listening for noises from within the house, ready to defend herself should the need arise. She hoped the house was truly empty, or the inhabitants dead upstairs. Rather that than have to face a petrified father, protecting his family against an intruder from the obviously mad world outside.

  The carpet was old and threadbare, the furniture torn and tatty. A television stood in the corner, an old fake wooden monstrosity with heavy protruding buttons and cup-marks on the top. Peer had a sudden urge to turn it on and see what was being transmitted, if anything. But she was terrified that there would be a blank screen, a low hum, a white dot. Nothing.

  Jesus Christ stared down at her from above the fireplace, a huge, gaudy painting portraying him with hands outstretched, as if to encapsulate the terror at large in the world this morning.

  Peer hoped these people had a car. She swept her hand through her long hair, lifting it back over her shoulder, before calling: “Hello? Anybody in? I’m not here to steal, I just wondered … anybody in?” She was here to steal. Already she was lying. What would she be doing next?

  There was no answer.

  Her words fell heavy in the silence, sucked up by the damp walls. In the hallway, folds of wallpaper hung like the wrinkled skin on an old body. Shelves held nik-naks and ornaments, all of them religious in nature, most of them tasteless and exploitive. The house stank of dampness and age. The staircase was carpeted with off-cuts, no one step matching the next in pattern or shade. Peer edged slowly towards the back room, unintentionally rubbing her arm against the wall. She cringed; it was greasy with slimy damp. It smelled of rot.

  In the next room, adjacent to the kitchen, a man sat in an armchair. His eyes were closed and he seemed at peace. There was even a shadow of a smile on his old, spittle-encrusted lips. His head rested on his left shoulder. He was dead, Peer was sure. He must be. But she did not go to him to check.

  She let out a sigh, her body relaxing, and realised how tense she had been. Her arms and legs began to shake, her stomach rumbling. She ran her hand through her hair again. It seemed easier this time. She sat on one of the dining chairs, taking the weight from her painful feet, and looked around the room.

  She didn’t even know whether he had a car. And if he did, which one was it? And where were the keys? Fate answered her questions for her. Next to the back door there was a key hook. Hanging on this was
a large bundle of keys. She snatched it up and recognise the old, sweat stained leather keyring immediately. A Morris.

  She took a final look at the man. He must be dead because he was smiling, and the expression looked alive on his time-ravaged face. She left the house through the front door. It seemed the right thing to do, as did locking the deadbolt after her. It could be that nobody would ever enter this house again.

  The stench of smoke was stronger now, unmistakable, and she was sure that the air was hazier than when she had broken and entered minutes before. Looking back down at the main street, she saw a bus trundle by. It was empty, apart from the driver. She wondered if he was stopping at every stop and smiled bitterly at the thought. If he was, he was mad.

  The cats had gone. The pigeons were still there, but much of their attention seemed to be taken with the woman across the street, still walking back and forth. The sparrowhawk hovered above the street, beak pointing down at the top of the woman’s head. Peer did not want to wait and see what happened. There was violence in the air, as well as smoke, though she could not make out whether it was the sense of trouble past, or the promise of pain to come.

  She searched along the row of parked cars for a Morris, and spotted a Marina estate several spaces away. It was white, tatty, the paint crazed and peeling from the bonnet and roof. The first key she tried opened the door and she jumped in with a gasp of relief. It smelled similar to the house; the old man’s scent, stale and rich. She wondered whether he would sit in his armchair for all eternity, head on his shoulder, the smile on his lips slowly stretching into a rictus grin as decomposition did its wet work.

  The car started first time. Peer closed her eyes and muttered a thanks to nothing in particular, then felt for the clutch. There was none, and a moment of panic bit into her. Then she saw the gearstick, realised she had picked an automatic, and thanked whatever was looking over her shoulder today. She performed a clumsy six-point turn in the street, crunching into a parked van on the final reversal. Nobody complained. Her feet hurt terribly and she berated herself for not looking for shoes in the old man’s house. But there was no way she could go back in there now.