by Tim Lebbon
It’s the ruin. The end of things. The woman had looked so familiar, but still a stranger. He had known her differently, of that he was sure. She had told him so little, but also so much, and it was obvious that she knew him. The chains from her temples down into her throat held a secret, she said, and Blane had known at once that it was something he could never bear to understand, not as he was now. This reaction in itself should be a clue as to who she was: why dread knowledge if it comes from an unknown source? The only facts worth worrying about are those half-known truths which could lead to something more terrible.
Find her, the Voice said. Blane glanced around, so struck by the sound that he was certain there was someone in the room with him. He looked for shadows, for hints, even for her. But there was only Gerald, puffing on his pipe, staring through the window with moonlight swimming in his rheumy old eyes.
Find her, track her down. She’s doing the same to you. Go on the offensive. The nearer you get, the more you’ll remember. By the time you reach her, maybe you’ll know. Forewarned is forearmed.
Know what? Armed against what? He needed to understand now. The Voice was his own, but if that was the case then was he hiding the truth from himself?
Know the truth of things. Know the feel of sand between your toes as the sun glides down into a purple sea. Know the smell of a fresh autumn morning, while birds gather on high wires in readiness for migration. Know the satisfaction of seeing them arrive at their journey’s end, flocking in from the sea or fluttering down to re-energise their depleted bodies. The sound of an elephant mourning the death of its mate; the taste of fear as a gazelle tries to out-run a trio of lionesses; the reptilian coolness of a crocodile’s mind. You’ll know all this, Blane. You’ve never really forgotten, but you’ll know again. You have to. It’s essential. You were a great idea, Blane. You can be again. You so nearly had it right; don’t let your fall distort the truth of things. If it does …
I wish I had some great ideas now, Blane thought in his own, familiar voice.
Track her down, the Voice said. It won’t be difficult. She’s following anyway, so it’s just a case of making contact. She’s got a secret to show you, but by the time she does, you should have an inkling anyway. You’ll have the upper hand. And you may need it.
Who is she?
You know that. I know that. But it’s … buried. It’s something that should become clear as you approach her. Try to remember. Try to recall. Remember her laugh, her face, her voice, her body. I can’t tell you yet, but the memory is there, waiting to surface, waiting for you to grab it from the depths. Don’t let her mock you with it. Find it out yourself. Then you’ll have the upper hand.
“The upper hand,” Blane murmured. Gerald did not react; obviously lost in his own thoughts.
Go soon. Go now. Pre-empt her. Find her and confront her. Don’t let her torture you like this.
Is this all her doing? All this death, all this change?
But the Voice was silent. He could still sense it there, ready to throw more hidden memory back at him.
That terrified him more than anything else. What was so bad that he could not bear to tell himself?
“At least you’re keeping me awake,” Gerald said, shifting to find a comfortable spot again.
“What?”
“With your mumblings.”
Blane apologised and closed his eyes. The woman had frightened him, but there had also been a sense of belonging, more than he felt with Paul and the others, almost as strong a feeling as when he was alone in the woods. The Voice – his memory, he was sure, returning to help him recall all those hidden truths he had been seeking over the years – had told him to go and find her. His instinct did likewise. Why lie to himself? Why deny himself? For although he believed that she had a part in what had happened to them today – Henry, dead in his trailer; the bird attack; the cars and passengers destroyed by wildlife – he was also certain that she would not harm him.
Or could not.
“Gerald, I have to go.”
The farmer jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Out the door, first on the left.”
Blane shook his head. “No, leave. Go. There’s someone I have to find.”
“Oh! Wife, is it?”
“No. Not wife. Gerald, I feel involved in all this. Not responsible, but a bigger part of it that the rest of you. And because of that, I have to find out why. It’s complicated. Believe me, you’ll be safer with me gone. I seem to attract death.”
Gerald looked at Blane and nodded slowly. “I’m not one to argue with another’s wishes, never have been. And you seem set on this. Well, you’ll be needing food, then. And a gun. And I’ve a Land Rover, if it takes your fancy?”
“I can’t drive. But food yes, and a gun … I suppose I should. I’ve never fired one, though.”
“Point it,” Gerald said, demonstrating with the shotgun in his hands. “Pull the trigger.”
Blane stood, patted Gerald on the shoulder. “I have to tell the others. I’ll leave in half an hour, but I have to talk to the others first. Tell them a few things. But only those upstairs. Get my drift?”
“Don’t want the pretty girls downstairs to know, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
Gerald nodded again, paused. “That one’s strange, the one with the dog. Full of hidden stuff. Right, I’ll go down and chat to the ladies. Come down when you’re ready, I’ll get some food packed for you.”
Blane smiled his thanks and stepped out onto the dark landing. He stood silently for a few moments, listening carefully for any sounds from Paul and Holly’s room. He did not want to barge in on anything embarrassing, but at the same time his need to leave was urging him onward. He felt the Voice holding its breath, ready to shout at him if he delayed any longer. And perhaps if he started out now, the Voice would start breathing the truth once more.
There was only silence behind the door. He knocked, waited for the reply and entered.
Mary had taken a seat opposite Peer at the fireplace. Spike lay by her side, slowly cooking himself in front of the voracious flames. They did not speak. Peer seemed fascinated by the fire; Mary was equally interested in Peer.
So this was the woman Fay was so afraid of? Why?
Peer was attractive, true, compared to Fay’s more earthy look. But at the last, just before she had left Mary alone to her task, Fay had gloried in her own luminosity, glaring brightly in her voluptuousness. She had been beautiful, her radiance reflected in the pools of blood spreading out from Rupert’s tattered throat.
Peer could not match that; not here, not now, and surely not ever. Her face was rich in character but flawed as well, sporting a nose too long, a mouth too wide. And her eyes were empty vessels compared to Fay’s blood-rich gaze, her frown a clown’s concern against Fay’s God-like countenance.
There was more than looks, Mary knew. Much more. There was spirit, humour, energy, ambition. All of which Fay had in abundance; none of which Peer possessed, this sad, depleted creature staring into the flames as if they would transport her back to a place and time before this nightmare began.
So this was the person Fay had asked her to kill? When the time was right, when the sign arrived? Mary smiled. It would be easy.
Watch her. Mark her. Wait for the right time.
Well, she was watching her now. She had marked her, though there really was little to see. Peer claimed an attraction to nature, yet still she was covered with cuts and bruises just like the rest of them. No love lost there, surely, even if she was right. Now, all Mary waited for was the right time.
She had lost her chain in the bird attack but she still had Spike, and she still had the fire. If the signal came now, she would have the bitch’s head pressed into the flames and hot coals before anyone could pull her off. She would have the pleasure of seeing the bitch’s hair burn and her eyes pop and melt before they could haul her away. By then it would be too late. She would have done Fay’s bidding. For once in her life, she would be a success
.
But there was no signal. Not yet.
Footsteps. The old farmer came downstairs, groaning as his knee joints grumbled at the descent. “Cup of tea?” he asked.
Mary nodded. Shrugged. “Make it coffee,” she said. She was feeling tired.
They had tried. It was not the best of places for such an encounter, and surely not the best of times. Their failure, if anything, drew them closer together, made them realise what a change had been wrought over the world in a matter of hours. Fear and trepidation conspired to dry their lust. Though their hearts told them they wanted to make love, the reality of events soon persuaded them otherwise.
A passion had developed from the dark, surprising both with its intensity. Paul whispered that they may be the first to make love since the world had moved on, and Holly breathed heavily into his neck as she unzipped his trousers and held him tight. It felt right, it felt naïve and innocent, as though they were two teenagers experimenting instead of two adults. Paul thought of Jenna but experienced no guilt. Holly thought of her dead boyfriend Tommy, but he was from another time.
Paul pushed her down and undressed her, kissing her between the legs and biting her thighs, always gentle, both of them wincing as their new wounds were knocked or scraped. She pulled him up and held him, but he went soft in her hand.
She had tried for a while, with her hand and her mouth, but in the end they simply dressed and sat at the foot of the bed, arms around each other, enjoying the shared warmth. Neither of them mentioned the failure, and as the minutes rolled by time seemed to mark it more as a success. There had been no shyness, as is often present in a first sexual encounter. Their bodies had seemed familiar to one another, designed to fit, moulded together from afar. Destined always to meet. The fact that they could not finish what they had begun seemed coincidental, as unimportant as the memory of a bad meal. Good meals would always follow.
And it was this mutual acceptance of failure, without embarrassment, without any of the usual intense angst involved in human couplings, successful or otherwise, which drew them together until they felt unable to ever part again. It was a comfortable feeling, one which should exist between two old lovers rather than people who had known each other for a day. They were both aware of why it was there – desperate times provoked extraordinary responses – but this was unimportant. For the first time that day, they both felt safe.
Paul spoke of Jenna, his dead wife, and how she had drowned back in the Dominican Republic. Car accident. Flipped onto its lid in a river. Stupid. Holly told him about Tommy, their young love, his anger and fury at the fact of her sterility, the crash that had killed him years ago. They swapped tales and their tears merged.
Then they fell silent, but they moved constantly. Fingers stroking, arms squeezing, knees nudging, in a constant concern that the other may have nodded off. Sleep loomed over them like a huge, blackened demon, once an angel but now scorched by the fire of death and the threat of unknown fates. Fear of what they would find, should they close their eyes and cross that ambiguous barrier between waking and sleeping, ensured that their eyes stayed wide open. Sitting next to each other, knowing for certain that any lapse in concentration or descent towards sleep would be instantly noticed, made it easier.
Paul had never been afraid of death. He supposed that he was like many people who claimed this, in that it was the manner of his death which terrified him, not the assurance of death itself. Now, sitting in a badly lit room next to a stranger who he had just failed in making love with, he was as scared as he had ever been. Not of death, as such. But of sleep.
He did not want to fall.
Fear seemed a theme for the day. Paul felt bereaved as much as anyone who had lost a relative, because the nature he so adored had vanished. In its place was a bastardisation of what he had loved, a cruel sham, exposing only the grim side of the world, displaying nothing of the wonderful balance which nature used to support. Now there was only death and violence. It upset him more because he knew it would not last. Nothing could live like this. Whatever had gone wrong would be the end of things, unless circumstances changed very quickly. Nature had not only turned sour, it had also gone into decline. Humanity seemed to be the first victims of the catastrophe, perhaps because it was so removed from nature anyway and could not hope to cope with such an aggressive change. But Paul would not mind betting that soon, perhaps within days, they would begin to see the change exerting a detrimental influence on other species. Perhaps trees would start to wither and die, or birds …
Like today. The birds had fallen from the air on cue. Dying instantly without having to sleep and dream of a momentous impact to kill them.
Paul groaned.
“What?” Holly glanced at him.
“Nothing. There’s nothing. No hope.”
“Paul …”
Then there were footsteps, a knock on the door, and Blane entered.
“Glad I didn’t disturb anything,” he said. Holly smiled, Paul shrugged. Blane strode in and closed the door behind him, turning out the light and going straight to the window.
“I feel responsible,” he began, staring outside. His breath misted the window and faded again instantly.
“We’re here to help each other,” Holly said, “nobody said you have to make decisions if-”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant this.” Blane nodded at the window, at the landscape splayed in silvery light and impenetrable shadow. “I feel I had something to do with it. I feel that it’s following me. Everywhere I go, people are dying. Things are dying.”
Paul nodded.
Holly, exasperated: “But the animals. They’re doing this anyway, it’s nothing to do with you.”
“The two car loads of people were massacred just before we got there,” he said. “Message for me. The boy in the graveyard: message. And Henry the farmer, had his throat ripped out. For me. By her.”
“Who the hell is she, Blane!” Paul almost shouted, but it was fear- rather than anger-driven.
“I don’t know,” the sad man said, “but I feel I should. My memories are crying out for me to understand what’s going on. I don’t know what good it would do if I did, but that’s no reason not to find out. Knowledge begets knowledge. I tell myself that I can find out, so I must try to do so.”
“How?” Holly still held Paul’s hand, clasping it harder now, as if she was watching someone walking to their death and felt powerless to prevent it.
“Well,” Blane said, “that’s why I’m here. I’m going to go out and find her. I think she’s more aware of what’s happening that I am. That she’s even causing some of it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Paul said. “You’re getting into the realms of fantasy stuff here, Blane. You need …” He smiled grimly.
“Sleep?”
“Blane, nobody on their own can cause what’s happening here. Not unless they’re some mad professor with flyaway hair and a hunched associate who’s created the ultimate death-beam or doomsday bug. And I don’t believe that for a second.”
“Explain, then,” Blane challenged. “Tell me what’s wrong. Tell me why there are millions dead people rotting around us, and the animals are eating the survivors.”
“I don’t know.”
“There.”
“All right, but listen. I can tell you a story which sounds far more plausible than some mad woman running around the country setting birds and sleep-demons onto you for some vague reasons you don’t even know. Try this, and this is off the top of my head! Right: sunspots, storms on the surface of the sun. Send out electro-magnetic waves that mess around with the human mind. I don’t know, cause mass-embolisms that bleed into the dream centre of the brain and trigger delusions. When those people sleep, they all have a similar dream, caused by disorientation, fucked up balance glands, whatever. When they hit the ground, their brain is so certain its for real that it mimics the wounds the body should receive. In effect, the person’s imagination kills them.”
“Paul-”
>
“Holly, hang on. I’m on a roll. Let me finish, then we’ll hear what Blane thinks is happening. So, okay, you’ve got fifty million dead people hanging around, and the survivors – the ones who weren’t asleep and who therefore haven’t yet used that damaged portion of their brain assigned to dreaming – they’ve still got these embolisms, waiting to kill them as soon as they nod off. Their own bodies are ready to kill them. Just shut eyes, sleep tight, kapow!” He slapped his hand on his thigh and winced in pain. “I’m a case in point,” he said. “My own mind tried to kill me. Luckily, there was a snowdrift handy.”
“The birds?” Blane said. “The animals?”
Paul shrugged. “Same cause. Different reaction. They wake up to a world with ninety percent fewer people, their brains fried by the sun explosion. Go on the rampage. Then drop dead.”
“You’re clutching,” Blane said.
Paul held up his hands. “Hey, this is just a thought. But it works, don’t you think? It could even explain the phone lines going down, and why the TV’s don’t seem to work any more. Electromagnetic pulse. Wiped out all the circuit boards and electrical gizmos.” He shook his head. “Bullshit, I know, but Blane, listen to yourself. You see some fucked up woman in a field who hints that she knows you-”
“She knew my name-”
“Yeah, she probably heard me calling you from the car. You’re getting paranoid. I can hardly blame you, but hell, it’s just plain daft. And as for feeling responsible for any of this …” He waved his hand in the general direction of the window.
“I think,” said Holly slowly, “that what Paul is trying to say, in roundabout terms, is that he doesn’t want you to go.”
Paul nodded. “Safety in numbers, Blane.”
Blane sat on the window sill, looked down at his scuffed shoes. “I want to believe you,” he said.
“Good.”
“But I don’t. I know I’m right. I can feel it. I have to find this woman, Paul, and you’re going to have to let me go.”
Paul did not answer. He knew now that he could not talk Blane away from this course, and for a moment he had the idea that he should keep him here by force. But what good would that do? He recalled what Blane had said earlier, about slipping from the edge and having to be prepared to fight, to kill, for what was left. He would never go down that route.