The Nature of Balance

by Tim Lebbon

  “Wait,” he said, quieter, fighting tears of shock.

  “Blane.” Paul emerged from the hedgerow behind him. “Who are you talking to?”

  “You didn’t see her?”

  “See who?”

  “Strange woman,” Blane said, then walked unsteadily past Paul and headed back towards the road.

  Paul looked across the field, past the fallen tree, scanning the wooded perimeter. All was still. No birds, no rabbits, no squirrels. No woman.

  Too still.

  They found the tractor around the next bend.

  Henry was spread-eagled in the cart, arms and legs pointing at each corner. Paul and Blane jumped from the car. The Mini stopped behind them. Holly opened her door and leant out, frowning over at Paul.

  Blane stepped to the cart.

  The tractor was parked on a slight incline and Henry’s blood dripped steadily onto the road, running in rivulets across the tarmac.

  He had been killed, violently. His shirt had been ripped off in the struggle, and deep scratches scored his chest and stomach, welling blood. His head was thrown back, the darkness of his tattered throat peering out from beneath his thick beard, an insane second smile. The flesh was ragged and torn.

  Scattered across the base of the cart were red gobbets of chewed flesh. Whatever had killed Henry hadn’t liked the taste.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Holly moaned. She sat back down in the Mini and gripped the wheel.

  “Henry?” June was standing next to the Mondeo, leaning on the open back door, eyebrows raised. She looked angry at him for being dead.

  Paul went to her and tried to block her view, but she shifted to one side. He held onto her arms. “June, he’s dead. You don’t need to see.”

  “I do! Let me go!” She tried to shrug him off, but he grabbed tighter until she squealed with pain.

  “Believe me, it’s not nice. I wish I hadn’t-”

  “Let me go, you black bastard!” She shouted it out, drawing glances from Holly and Blane.

  Paul paused, then let her go. “I hope you like what you see.”

  June stepped around him without catching his eye, approached the cart, groaned. She started to shake her head, denying what was set out before her, shuffling backwards until her legs touched the bonnet of the Ford. She sat down heavily, rocking the suspension. She could not drag her gaze from the scene.

  Around them, the world was silent. It was holding its breath.

  “What did this, Blane?” Paul said, passing June and touching the short man on the shoulder.

  Blane shook his head.

  “Don’t know?”

  Blane did not answer. He did not move.

  “Or won’t say? Who was the woman, Blane?”

  Blane turned and walked back to the car, ignoring June where she sat on the bonnet. He slumped into the passenger seat and stared past Paul. At Henry.

  “Anyone ever driven a tractor?” Paul asked. Nobody replied, but he saw Holly shaking her head, her pale face and wide eyes begging him to help her, hold her, remove her from the path of all this death.

  He turned. He tried not to look, but his eyes were drawn to the grotesque display before him. He felt sick to the stomach, terrified, but his scientific mind still analysed, even as his body rebelled. He had no idea what could have done this, in this country, other than a wild dog. He walked around to the cab, convincing himself that a mad hound was loose, ignoring the insistent voice that kept niggling at the back of his mind: It’s sacrificial. He’s spread out like an offering to some insane god. He’s in the cart, not the cab. He’d have been safe in the cab, from a dog, at least. And what’s wrong with Blane? Who was the woman?

  “He’s a weird one,” Paul muttered, glancing over his shoulder through the open back of the tractor. June was staring up at him, an unreadable expression on her face, tears distorting whatever she was trying to impart. Blane remained motionless in the car, staring off to the side as though he could read the truth of things in the hedge bordering the road.

  As Paul started the engine the trees alongside the road burst into life, startling him. Birdsong struck up, drowning the engine, piercing and shrieking the day apart. A cloud of blackbirds darkened the sky for long seconds, circling the vehicles before heading off across the fields.

  They had been there all along. Watching, listening as the humans did what humans do; arguing, shouting, becoming emotional. Hundreds of them, all silent, hardly moving.

  Henry’s throat had been torn out.

  “Get back in the car!” Paul shouted over the sound of the engine. “Whatever did this might still be around.” June averted her eyes and complied. He knocked the tractor into gear and moved forward, the tow-bar clanking as the cart rattled on its poor suspension. The motion soon smoothed, and he nursed the vehicle along the lane until he came to a wider part. He drove as close to the hedge as he could, trying to tuck the tractor and cart in far enough to be able to slip by in the big Mondeo.

  The two cars had followed him. June was driving her Mondeo now, Holly the Mini. Paul parked the tractor and turned off the engine, pocketing the keys with a misplaced sense of security. He walked past the passenger side of the Mondeo, noticing that Blane barely blinked as he did so, and climbed into the back.

  June did not turn around, but he could hear the tension in her voice.

  “I am sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean that. I’ve never spoken like that. I’m not like that.” She trailed off, staring rigidly ahead, easing the car between the tractor and the hedge.

  “Don’t worry,” Paul said. I’ve heard it all before, he was going to add, but it hardly seemed appropriate. “No offence taken.”

  “Thanks.” She caught his eye in the rear-view mirror, and they offered each other a strained smile. “Do we just leave Henry like that?”

  “We can’t take him with us,” Paul said. “There’s nothing to cover him with. And when we find help, we’ll send them back this way. To pick up his body.”

  “Okay.”

  He’s going to be here forever, Paul thought, because there is no help, and the animals will eat him and the birds will peck out his eyes-

  “Henry loved the countryside,” June said, “he won’t mind staying here.”

  Paul could think of nothing to say.

  Blane rocked with the motion of the car. He seemed to have slipped away from reality, staring blankly through the windscreen, subsumed by some inner turmoil which excluded everyone else.

  Paul had a lot of questions for him. He would ask him soon, but not just yet. Now, he seemed one step removed.

  And, perhaps, Paul would not want to hear the answers.

  14. A Chorus of Cries

  Five minutes after leaving the broken-down Escort, Peer heard the sound of car engines.

  She stepped gingerly onto the hard shoulder in plenty of time for them to pass. The grumble of engines seemed alien now, shattering a silence which was far from natural. No birds; no dogs; no mutter of wind. The sun had risen as usual that morning, but the land it shone down upon was changed.

  Two cars approached side by side, keeping well below the speed limit. Both had roofs stacked with suitcases and black sacks, looking like grotesque boils. One of them, a big old Mercedes, had two bikes tied across the bonnet. The other seemed more suited to this day, carrying countless dents and scratches like the scars suffered by so many this morning. It was a Cavalier, a recent model but looking as if it had been through the crusher already. The front bumper was missing, and even from a distance Peer could see that the windscreen had vanished, leaving a ragged maw where it should have been.

  Peer was certain they would not stop. She held out her hand, thumb-up, feeling foolish but unsure of what else to do. She wondered what image she would present to the occupants of the cars: dishevelled; bleeding from multiple lacerations; heavy metal pipe protruding from her belt like the wounded guts of a deficient android. The trenchcoat would not help, either, the archetypal garb of the Hollywood vi
llain. She went to smile, but feared it would manifest itself as an insane grimace. She looked sad and pathetic instead. The expression took little effort.

  The cars passed, both full to capacity. Peer counted seven people in the Cavalier, and the Mercedes seemed similarly loaded. She sighed.

  They flashed at her with their brakes and drew to a halt. The Cavalier winked its surviving reversing light and laboured back up the inside lane at her.

  Peer tensed, ready to fling herself into the deep ditch. Did you kill her? Was it you? she remembered, the words of the mad naked man ringing in her head. The skin and flesh on her back should have been flayed and stripped by lead shot; only fate had helped her then. She doubted it would do so again.

  The car stopped thirty feet away. The driver held it with the foot brake. A head stuck from the passenger window, eyes wide and cautious. It was a young man, probably still in his teens, head shaved and rings and studs twinkling from ears, nose and eyebrow. He looked terrified.

  “You own that Escort a while back?” he asked.

  Peer nodded, deciding it was easier than trying to explain. The boy gave her the once over, pausing in his examination as he saw the pipe in her belt. He glanced down at her feet.

  “Hurt your feet.”

  Peer felt a sudden lump in her throat at the concern in his voice. She had not heard a tone like that for days, let alone since all this started. “Yes,” she said, “like shit.”

  “Hang on.” The head disappeared back inside the car. There was a pause of a few moments, then the door opened and the boy stepped out. He reached back in, never taking his eyes from Peer, and his hand came out holding a sawn-off shotgun.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Peer screamed. She could not move. Fear had disconnected her brain. “Oh no, please don’t!”

  The boy looked startled, then sheepish. “Hey, don’t worry, missus. Hey, sorry.” He handed the gun back in the car and held his hands out, his eyes wide, his expression gaunt with guilt. “Hey, no harm intended, missus. Christ, I’m sorry, it’s just that …” He shrugged, nodded back at the black cloud above Newport. “Had a run-in with a gang back there.”

  Peer could hardly talk. Her limbs suddenly felt like lead, holding an insubstantial body hundreds of feet above the soft ground. She went to her knees, holding her head in her hands, shaking uncontrollably. Yet again, she was faced with a shotgun. And once more, it seemed, she would survive.

  The boy approached her cautiously, but she could that there was no threat here. He seemed as afraid of her as she was of him.

  “You come out of Newport?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Only an hour ago. Is the fire still going?”

  The boy nodded vigorously. “We came over the hill from Caermaen. The whole town is on fire. Christ, all of it. It’s like doom in there, hell, burning people everywhere. A gang were charging people to get by on Chepstow Road. There were dead people in the gutter, and …” Whatever else he had seen was too awful to utter. “We only just got out.”

  “I wonder what caused it?”

  “What caused any of this?” The boy’s voice suddenly seemed different, and when Peer looked up she could see he was on the verge of crying.

  She wanted to comfort him, but she did not know who was in the car. She didn’t want anyone thinking she was crowding them out. “I’ve lost friends today,” she said. “All dead. All … dead in their sleep.”

  “Sleep!” the boy said, suddenly. “That’s what’s done it. There’re thirteen of us here and none of us slept last night. It was only the ones who were asleep that it happened to. Like my Mum. Happened to her.” His eyes glistened, then spilled over. He walked into Peer’s natural embrace, and she locked her hands behind his back. He smelled of sweat and fear. She held him, and gained as much comfort from the contact as he seemed to. “It’s all gone shit,” he said. “It’s like dreaming. Except if we were, we’d be dead anyway.” His earrings scraped against her cheek.

  She recalled her recent dream, just before she had woken with a start and heard the noises from next door. Something about falling. Being thrown. Then a voice. Wake up Peer. Pleading with her, protecting her from the ground rushing up to meet her, bringing her back towards the darkness of her room. This isn’t real. But it could be …

  “I was asleep, then I woke up,” she said.

  “Were you falling?”

  The shock stole her voice. She could only stare at the boy as he pulled away and nodded at her stunned expression.

  “Yep,” he said. “There’s a young girl in the Merc. She’s got broken legs. We’re taking her to Chepstow, to the hospital. Newport hospital’s full, and there’re police stopping anyone else getting in. She was asleep, she says. Says she fell out of a haystack in her dreams. Hit her legs on a tractor.”

  “How…?” Peer had so many questions that they blended into one, unspoken, unspeakable.

  “Heard her screaming,” said the boy. “I broke down the front door in the end. Her parents were dead. I carried her out. Met up with the Merc just outside her house, cruising slowly down the street. Dave – he’s the driver – reckons we should go to Chepstow.”

  “Why?”

  The boy shrugged. “He says there’s help there. None of the phones are working, did you know? And on telly, there’s only some old music. Opera. Always did give me the creeps.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.” Peer could barely take it all in. “Chepstow?”

  The boy looked suddenly sheepish again. “Thing is,” he said, “there just isn’t any more room, at all, in the cars.” He stepped back slightly as he said this, perhaps afraid that Peer would whip out the metal bar and bash his brains in for having the impertinence to refuse her a lift.

  “Right,” she said. She knew he was right, she could see from where she stood, but still she felt let down.

  “What we thought, though, was that we could meet up at Magor services. Only a couple of miles down the road. We’ll find another car there, ease up the pressure on us lot.” He nodded back over his shoulder. The Cavalier revved twice, obviously a pre-arranged signal, for his face changed and his eyes widened again.

  “You go,” Peer said. “I know you have to, now. But please, do as you said, wait for me at Magor. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She glance down at her feet.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” the boy said. “Here.” He bent down to undo his shoelaces and the car revved again. “Hang on!” he roared over his shoulder, and Peer could not help laughing.

  The boy looked up at her as he struggled with his knotted laces. He was attractive, wide brown eyes and a skull shape that cried out to be shorn of all hair. His image suited him. He smiled.

  He gave her his trainers and ran back to the car. “I’ve got another pair in my bag,” he called. “See you at Magor!”

  “Thanks!” Peer said, waving. The Cavalier moved off until it was adjacent to the idling Mercedes, then they both accelerated smoothly away, leaving the hint of exhaust in the air.

  Peer sat awkwardly on the rough tarmac and examined her feet. The left was worse, having seemed to steer itself towards the sharpest pieces of glass in both the forcible entries she had made that morning. There was a deep cut at the junction of big toe and foot, and the thick rough skin of her heel had been slashed right across. The cut welled like a pouting mouth. She could see her flesh, pulpy and pink, squeezing to escape the confines of her skin.

  She did not look any more. There was nothing she could do, so she had to make the best out of what she had. She had to walk, to reach Magor services, to join up with the group that had just passed her by. There was no alternative. She was sure she would not be able to walk much further that day, nor at any time in the near future, so she had to push herself this final distance.

  She tried to think of what she had to strap her feet up with. In the end it came down to her knickers, so she eased herself down the bank on her rump and peeled off her jeans and underwear. She relieved herself while she was undressed, unaware until now o
f how much she had wanted to pee. The jeans felt rough as she dragged them back on, and she wished she had not been so inclined to buy tight jeans. Who was going to see her looking good in them now? Would she even want anyone to think that?

  She tore her knickers into three uneven strips, used two on her left foot and one on her right. The makeshift bandages seemed to stem the bleeding somewhat. She hoped there were medical supplies in the Merc and Cavalier, and berated herself for feeling so self-pitying; there was a little girl with two broken legs in the Mercedes. How must she be hurting? Would they find anyone to treat her?

  None of the phones are working, the boy had said.

  The sound of a speeding car suddenly broke the silence. Peer hauled on the trainers, wincing at the pain and their moist warmth. Then she pulled herself up the bank on her bum, pushing with her hands and feet, but only as much as she had to. She reached the top just as the car flashed by. As she stood the brake lights flashed on, and the car left four screaming skids on the tarmac as it slewed sideways to a halt. It turned and drove back to where she stood, facing the wrong way now, the driver handbraking when he reached her and spinning the car through ninety degrees.

  A sudden flush of dread turned her mouth dry. Her hand moved fractionally towards the deep side pocket of the coat, where she had stowed the bar after dressing again.

  Had a run-in with a gang back there, the shaven-headed lad had said.

  A boy opened the driver’s door and stepped out. He must have been all of seventeen, six feet tall, muscular. His eyes were wide and a sparkling blue, his left hand clasping a bottle of Vodka. “Hey, babe,” he said. “Want a ride?” His eyes passed over her T-shirt and down to her crotch, lingering there. “Woah!”

  Peer hauled the bar from her pocket and brought it down heavily onto the car bonnet. “Not with you, bastard! Fuck off!” She was shaking with adrenaline-rush, wondering exactly what she would do if the boy came for her. Would the bar hurt him enough, with one smack, to stop him? It would have to. She was certain she would never get in more than one blow.