The Birds, They're Back

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The Birds, They're Back Page 11

by Wendy Reakes


  ‘It is thought that the arctic air stream covering the British Isles is causing the birds to migrate south and that hunger may be causing them to attack human beings. Communication lines are down, causing widespread panic among the population who are unable to make contact with loved ones.’

  ‘The home office has declared a state of emergency. A curfew will take effect from six pm today when all residents are ordered to remain indoors until seven am. Do not venture outside. Secure your homes and where possible, use cellars and windowless rooms to barricade yourselves in. Do not take risks. Board up windows and chimneys…

  The radio began to crackle.

  “Turn it off to preserve the batteries,” one said.

  He did as he was instructed. He was ex-army. They always did as they were instructed. Trained to obey.

  Ellen sat on an empty plastic crate, pushed alongside two others, where Anne and Alice, were now sitting since Ellen had told them they'd get chilblains sitting on the floor. "That's the sort of thing my mother would say," said Anne. Ellen smiled and hugged her, as a mother would.

  She wondered if anyone was hugging her baby right then. Molly would be scared without her being there. She wondered if they’d been smart enough to go next door to the Pipers. They were elderly now, but they had often in their younger days babysat for the twins when they were little. Then she had a notion about how all of them would manage? Maybe the Pipers adult children had come along, and now they were all huddled together in a cellar like the one in the restaurant. She couldn’t recall if the Pipers had a cellar, but their house was old enough to warrant one.

  Ellen thought about the windows up at the house. They stretched the length of the big sitting room facing the gorge, but they were made of safety glass. She couldn’t remember reading in the window’s brochure that they were good deterrents of bird attacks.

  Ellen had always been an animal activist. She abhorred all type of animal cruelty, but those birds…well, if she had a chance she'd wring their necks, squeeze the life out of them until they were gone. No, she had no qualms about them dying a long, painful death.

  The thoughts of them hurting her babies was too much. Now she had tears rolling down her cheeks and the two girls had noticed. She brushed her eyes with her sleeves. Anne and Alice needed someone strong, not a snivelling wreck like her.

  “Are you worried about your children?” Anne asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, very worried.”

  “They’ll be okay. Look at their mum and dad. They’re the strongest people I know.”

  Ellen was aghast. How could she and Harry be an inspiration for these young girls? Now, as she looked at the encouragement in their eyes, she was ashamed, ashamed that she had allowed her marriage to crumble. She should have supported him in his dreams, not fought against him. She was a bad woman. A bad wife. And most of all, a bad mother.

  Chapter 26

  They got Melanie inside the house and Bill slammed the door shut. Harry had carried her broken, bloodied body in his arms and lain her slowly down on the sofa. Behind him, the two Mrs Hocks were rushing around searching for bandages and cotton, antiseptic…anything they could get their hands on. They pushed him away as he stood there staring at her as if he didn't know who she was. She was a mess. Her face, her hands, everything exposed had been pecked and torn at. She had so many lesions, where would they start? She needed a hospital. He had to get her out of that place. Maybe even back to Bristol.

  She was unconscious, thank god. He couldn’t have coped with her pain. She must have been in agony as she fought for her life against those damn creatures. He hadn’t been with her. He should have been. Oh god, today was her birthday.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Bill’s. “She’ll be okay.”

  Harry shook his head. “She needs to see a doctor.”

  “Not tonight. We’ll get her there in the morning.”

  Harry looked down at a basin filled with disinfectant, now turned a cloudy red. So far, they had only bathed her face. Her clothes were torn, even the windbreaker. She was shoeless, and her bare feet were cut and bloodied. He looked closer. She had lost a toenail. Ripped off her like it was nothing. He prayed she hadn’t felt that. The only saving grace was that her eyes were still there. They’d checked already beneath her heavily shut eyelids.

  Her nose was bleeding. He imagined a bird’s beak going up into her nostril. If he and Bill hadn’t turned up when they had, what else would they have taken? Harry had forced opened her mouth. Her gums bled as if a bird had struck her inside while she screamed, but everything else was there. Her fingers were bloodied but they were still all there. The oddest thing was her chest. She looked as if she had been pecked many times over, as if they had searched for her beating heart, to steal it, to claim it. The tops of her breasts were cut and torn. Her underwear had prevented further intrusion.

  “We need more bandages,” Mrs Hock said looking at Melanie as if she was overcome with the task of repairing her.

  “We can tear up a sheet. Give us five minutes.”

  She called after him. “Bill, go into the bathroom upstairs. There’s some more cotton wool under the sink.”

  As he hurried from the room, Harry sat on a chair with his head in his hands. Then he felt someone get down on their knees in front of him. He looked up. It was Gladys Hock, Bill’s elderly mother. “Now, listen to me. You’re no good to that girl sitting there like you’ve got the whole world resting on your shoulders. Me and our Dolly can fix her up, but you need to go with Bill and sort the place out. Judging by what happened to your lady, we’ve got a problem, don’t you think?”

  Her aged, wise eyes stared into his as if she was hypnotising him. “All right,” he said simply and left them to it.

  He went up the wooden stairs. It was black up there except for a candle alight on a small hall table. It ghosted the room, throwing shadows over the dark walls and the closed doors. All except one.

  Inside the small bathroom, Bill was on his hands and knees with a torch looking for the cotton wool. “Found it,” he announced pulling out a plastic bag filled with white cotton balls.

  Then, at that very moment, the birds began their attack.

  A sound came over the house chilling his bones. Flapping wings, in masses he imagined, brushing against each other in their quest to gain entry. Their high-pitched squeals hurt his ears, and their squawking sounded like bamboo sticks being drummed one upon the other. Their colliding bodies charged against the roof tiles and against the boards covering the windows. Like frenzied demonic creatures, they wanted in and they would do whatever it took. They slammed their bodies, uncaring of certain death, and their beaks relentlessly pecked at every surface, yearning to get inside.

  Bill almost fell backwards, so abrupt was the force of the onslaught. The small glazed window had been boarded up earlier. They needed the bathroom, so that was the first room he'd seen to. The two bedrooms were secure, but he needed to watch them. They were just below the roof and he knew, by experience, the birds were capable of coming through to the rafters.

  Then the bathroom window shattered into shards as a sharp penetrating beak forced its way through the boards. He should have put the wood closer together, but they were random pieces stored in the barn. Now he realized, with enough perseverance the birds could come through the gaps. They could force their way through, as if they had a crowbar, splintering the lot and smashing the glass to overcome.

  "Billll…” he heard Dolly shouting from the floor below. He ran down the stairs, almost falling as Harry followed.

  The women and the children were in the lounge, standing, huddled together in the center, crying and holding their ears. Melanie was still unconscious on the sofa. A blessing, Bill thought.

  Lucy ran into his arms as he went in. He pushed her off, roughly, without meaning to, as he bypassed them all to get to the window. Outside, the birds were chipping away with their beaks, as if they knew that beyond the boards were choice pickings.

&n
bsp; The sound raised as if more had joined them. It sounded like hundreds…thousands…all flocking together with one thing in mind. To assassinate.

  A window smashed above their heads, making Bill run from the room and back up the stairs. He leaned on the door to the children’s room, putting his ear to it, listening for intruders. Should he go in? No, they were in there all right. He could hear them flapping randomly, waiting to feast on the humans beyond the door.

  He went to a large armoire on the landing and started to pull it towards him to block the stairs. If they came through the doors, they would have that to contend with too. He felt a hand behind him as Harry appeared pushing and shoving the wardrobe until it wedged into position. They stepped away, walking down the stairs backwards, looking upwards to see if there was any way in through the gaps. There was. A triangular shape at the top.

  Harry rushed down, grabbed an old wool coat and stuffed it into the gap. It was nice and tight. It might help. With nothing more they could do, they abandoned the staircase to whatever the birds wanted to make of it.

  Bill rushed back into the sitting room. He guided Dolly and the children to a chair. They clung to each other as he placed his mother alongside Melanie. At the side of the chimney breast was a stack of wood for the fire. He indicated to Harry that he should stack the blocks on the windowsill on top of each other. Just as some added insurance. Young Toby helped him as he set to work.

  Bill went back into the hall. He checked the downstairs cloakroom. The window in there was narrow and tall, and it was holding well. He shut the door and went to the other small rooms. All good. Then he ran into the kitchen.

  The sound was deafening him. It was driving him insane, even though he tried to block out the threat of them entering. Now, he imagined them circling, like sharks circling a boat on the ocean.

  Then it stopped.

  The noise died down gradually as if the volume was being lowered on a record player. They were going away, flying off to another place, to torment another family or to nestle in the trees and wait ‘til dawn.

  The aftermath of the attack gave him a strange feeling. It left him drained, deliberating whether or not he should go outside and make good the damage, or should he too, as the birds had, wait ‘til dawn?

  Chapter 27

  Matt went into the kitchen where they all gathered to play cards. The game was his dad’s favourite; poker, gambling with coins from a jar, which his mother kept on the side for loose change. The last time they'd emptied it, they counted just under a hundred pounds. Ellen had given it to Matt and Gemma to do with as they saw fit. His mum didn't do anything without first proclaiming a life lesson in some awkward para-phrasing way. ‘Let this be a demonstration of how, if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves," she'd said. The two of them had nodded and smiled and assured her that they did indeed understand where she was coming from. Then Matt went and bought a new game for his X-box.

  Molly was asleep. They'd put her to bed an hour ago, exhausted from crying for her mum. Matt had threatened to put her in a taxi and have her sent to the restaurant. He was that sick of her. Gemma's two friends had offered protection against her wicked brother, and Molly enjoyed every minute of the attention. Spoilt Brat.

  Now it was the boys versus the girls. Five card poker was the game.

  Across the table, Gemma's friend Coco was making eyes at him. He'd never looked at her before. She wasn't that great looking, although, now, he must admit she had a certain appeal. Long brown hair which she kept down, unlike Gemma who always had hers tied up in some stupid coloured knot on the top of her head. Coco's hair was shiny with no streaks of green running through it. Green free. He liked that. The thing he noticed most about her was her brown eyes. They were big and knowing, dark in the middle with crisp white outers. Her brows weren't over-painted like his sister's, they were just natural arches, and she had no facial piercings, as opposed to the other girl who had a silver ring through her nose. Ridiculous. It just made her look like a cow in his opinion. Gemma didn't have any piercings, but that was just because their mum wouldn't let her. He'd heard a rumour she'd had one put in her belly button that mum didn't know about. He didn't know for sure. He didn't really care.

  Coco had been watching him all night. It made him feel good, knowing that she might fancy him. She had a nice figure, and she was shorter than him, which was important to Matt. Gemma had once gone out with a boy shorter than her and they looked ridiculous together, in his opinion.

  It was eleven o'clock on a Saturday night and Matt couldn't believe he wasn't in a nightclub somewhere in Bristol. The afternoon had been a drag. Earlier, they'd raided the fridge for anything to eat they wouldn't have to cook, and in the end, they all had beans on toast, Matt's speciality. The evening was getting going now. Sim and Franco and Matt had swigged on a bottle of mum's wine earlier. They'd drunk the whole bottle by ten o’clock and Matt had to go out and hide the bottle somewhere. The recycling had been collected only two days ago, so he couldn't hide it amongst other glass in the green box. Mum would definitely notice. That was the problem with recycling. The empties told a story.

  Instead, he put it in the corner of the shed. His plan was to get it later in the week and put it in the green box after it had filled up a bit. Matt gave himself a tap on the back for his cunning ingenuity.

  “Anything else to drink?” Sim asked.

  Matt had a good hand, so he wasn’t about to be distracted, which was probably Sim’s intention.

  “I know where mum keeps a bottle of sherry,” Gemma announced. She got up and went to the cupboard above the microwave, she came back holding the bottle aloft with a ta-da expression on her face.

  Matt placed his three-of-a-kind down on the table and scooped up his winnings.

  It was at that moment the girls screamed when the lights went off and they heard some strange noises coming from outside. Matt hissed at them to stop squealing. They collapsed into fits of giggles as he went to the cupboard above the microwave where Gemma had found the sherry. He grabbed the torch and switched it on, shining it at the faces of their friends sitting around the table hugging each other and laughing with mock fear. “Shut up”, he said firmly as he heard that noise again. The electric box was in the cupboard. Harry had taught him what to do if the electricity should go off. ‘Usually,’ he’d said, ‘you’ll find it’s just a power break and all you need to do is to put the switch back up.’ Now, Matt was looking at the switches. They were all on. That meant it was an external power cut and there was nothing they could do until the electric company fixed it.

  That was the one thing he admired about his dad, he knew how things worked and he’d taught Matt a lot of stuff over the years. The problem with Harry was, he had betrayed their mum and Matt found that hard to forgive. Maybe one day, but right now…

  He heard that noise again. He wondered if it was a burglar.

  Behind him, Gemma lit a candle.

  He put the blind up in the kitchen. The window looked out over the gorge but there was a mist out there. That wasn’t unusual. They were so far up, inside the gorge, that mists were common late at night. He shone the torch through the window, but the glare of the fog made it shine back at him.

  He'd go take a look in the lounge. He should have checked before because he'd noticed earlier that Gemma had opened the glass doors a little to let in some air. Mum would be well pissed if she found out they'd left it open. He could hear her voice now. "Why don't you just leave the burglars a note, saying come in and take what you want?"

  Matt always argued that any potential burglars would be hard pressed to get in that side of the house since there was a 300ft drop. He never told his mum that he knew a way around it since he'd climbed it once for a dare. That was when he was younger. He'd never do anything that stupid now.

  The kitchen door was a swing door. They were always getting shouted out for using too much force on it. “You’ll swing that door off its hinges one day,’ his mum often said.<
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  Now, faced with the possibility there may be an intruder in the house, he pushed it gently away from him and stepped into the lounge.

  It was black in there too until he shone his torch.

  He eyes were deceiving him. They must have been.

  There, over every available surface of the furniture, and covering the floor, were birds of all sorts. Birds! Just sitting there looking at him as he stood in the doorway with his mouth open. WTF?

  He couldn’t move. Most of them were big. Gulls and crows, and some other sort he was incapable of naming, looking like they were having a party of their own.

  He couldn’t comprehend. It was the oddest sight he had ever seen.

  With the door still open, he turned his head back into the kitchen. “Hey, guys, come and look at this.”

  That’s when a crow pecked his ankle and drew blood. His normal reaction was to lash out, and it was that response that made those birds take flight and attack.

  When the birds flew at him, Matt, swiftly and efficiently, as if he'd done it many times over, shut the door to barricade the birds from the kitchen. He kept his fingers inside the jam, pulling the top of the door towards him while his foot blocked the bottom, preventing it from swinging inwards. He had done it in the past when he'd stopped his sisters from attacking him. Except this wasn't playing. This was something else entirely.

  He shut his eyes to block out the agony of the birds pecking away at his fingertips, like they knew what to do and that they had done it many times over. The torch was on the floor, shining aimlessly. He couldn't stand the pain much longer. He pulled his fingers away, when he realised, unlike his sisters in the past, the birds couldn't pull the door from the other side. All he had to do was to prevent it from swinging inwards with the force of their weight.

 

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