Seawater sprayed onto the windscreen and up the side of the car as we carved our way through the shallow waters covering most of the tidal path that lead to the stone wall. The path of visible sand was narrow and marred by organs making their slow crawl towards the gate ahead. The car in front bounced, with its roof rocking back and forwards quickly and in its wake was an organ, flattened in the middle where the tyre had rolled over it. I swung the car to the side to avoid it and heard the swell of water mute the tyres briefly and then the spray smashed against the back windows. Roger in the first car started honking his horn and quickly a figure appeared and ran awkwardly down the paved road, taking little steps and with both arms tightly outstretched. Pressed up against the gate was an organ the size of a lorry tyre, but the man pulled back the gate, and the red mound of flesh slowly sank back into itself. In our convoy we drove past the organ and the gate, off the sand, out of the water and onto the road. We pulled into a car park of a large white hotel and Edwin leaped out of the car in front, he was wearing blue jeans tucked into green Wellington boots and looked the part. A shout came from down the road where the gate was and Roger ran back. I pulled out a cigarette and slammed the door behind me, I looked over at Rosie, she was patting down the end of her red dress against her legs. The door opened in front of us, and a white shirted man with the sleeves rolled up stood there looking pleased to see us. He had a narrow pointed head that continued all the way down to a sharp chin that was covered in ginger gone grey stubble.
“Welcome.” He said. “Just the three of you then?”
“Yes, just us.” Edwin answered.
“Superb. Come along, and we'll introduce you to the others.” He said, moving aside and beckoning us indoors.
We were lead into a room not far from the entrance that was white and black, littered with arm chairs and with an open fire against the far wall, which was ridiculous considering the temperature outside. A small crowd presented itself, intensely staring, as if we were game show contestants to be mused upon and judged. One by one a hand was thrust in front of us and we were told names and in the speed of it all, not one entered my head without falling straight back out.
“Where do you come from?” The man in a red t-shirt and ill fitting blue jeans that flared over his brown hiking boots said in a distinguished west country accent. The top of his bald head shone under the lights and his lower teeth twisted behind one another, he was obscure, a mystery, and I took pleasure in scrutinising him, listening and watching the ruffled eloquence of each word that he spoke.
“Ringmore. It's a small village about twenty minutes away.” I said.
“Originally, we are from London.” Edwin annoyingly chimed in with a correcting tone followed by an unnecessary throat clearing, “Uh hum.”
“Awfully long way to have come.” Said a woman with frizzy brown hair and a double chin that bobbed about in front of her neck. She looked like she had just robbed a clothing shop for cheap Chelsea farmers. She was wearing beige trousers that tightly hugged her thighs, a white shirt with sleeves that ended just after her elbows and also a navy blue down vest which accentuated her barrel like physique. I tried not to look at her, and continued to puzzle over the well spoken bald man in the red t-shirt.
“Yes. I thought all the roads were blocked from there to here. How on earth did you three make it all the way down?” Said the man who had greeted us initially from the car park and who was apparently called Adam.
“It was a struggle, I’ll tell you that. We commandeered some motorbikes and weaved our way through jam after jam of crashed and abandoned cars.” Edwin replied.
We had to answer countless more questions about our journey, what London was like and how we found each other. Eventually we relaxed into the arm chairs with a group of five others.
Adam and his wife, who was currently upstairs sleeping off a bad hangover had been sailing their yacht around the world when they pulled into Plymouth harbour and found no one around. They lived in a nearby village on the mainland and had seen a few lights come on in the hotel when they drove past one day. He didn't mention his previous employment and when Rosie asked he brushed over it very quickly. He had been a consultant for medium sized manufacturing companies. It sounded dull, but he chocked out the usual optimism that anyone intelligent knows to do.
The double chin enthusiastically wobbled and the woman told us about her life story and eventually reached her explanation of how she had come to be at the hotel. She tutted a lot. Her husband had operated the sea tractor that carried people too and from the island when the tide was in and when the path was impassable by cars. He had been taken ill on the island side of his shift and the hotel had offered them a free room for a night, at least until the water had relinquished its hold and an ambulance could be called. He never recovered and is technically still in their room, which she told us with a concerning frankness, and then feigned heartbreak, and muttered and tutted some more.
The man in red had been a member of the staff for years and continued to work and take care of the hotel until the others started to arrive. He was quiet and despite his clothes, he was well groomed and told his story, slowly and enunciating each and every syllable. Nearly half the rooms had guests, or rather, what used to be guests still in them. Each he had marked with a 'do not disturb sign', which he told us proudly. The rest of the rooms had been turned down and were ready to welcome anyone who might turn up seeking refuge, again with pride.
Two others added their stories, they were uninspiring much as the previous three we had heard. One, a seemingly hopeless man, lived on a boat and saw the lights at the hotel. He looked like a large hairy toad. His cheeks and thin lips were surrounded by short brown stubble. His two caterpillar brows joined in the middle and sat above his beady eyes that were inverted by his thick glasses. His blue fleece bobbled with wear and he kept rubbing his long fingernail hands up and down his fading blue jeans. His head nodding up and down as he listened and his wet tongue every now and again slid out and pressed against his bottom lip, and when it retreated back into his mouth it left a sheen of saliva on his chin.
There was also a university student who had been studying nearby. He had returned home in search of his parents who lived in Kingsbridge and had seen a car driving across the tidal sands a few days ago. He spoke slowly and in a manner which was hard to distinguish between confidence and arrogance. He had long dark brown hair which he repeatedly brushed out of his eyes with both hands. His t-shirt read 'Rippin' it' and I was instantly transported back to university and I hated him for it, and I saw Rosie, and she was looking at him and smiling, the type of smile that continued into her cheeks and made the rest of her face look like it was smiling too, and I hated him even more, and I tried to show contempt for him as he spoke by looking behind him, keeping my eyes still and focused on nothing in the distance, and I didn't listen to him, I just listened to my thoughts that told myself that everyone must be looking at me thinking that I couldn't care less about this guy, and that I had more important things on my mind.
Before Rosie had time to ask, questions were thrown at us from all angles as to whether we could explain the organs or what theories we may have. To which we shrugged and looked at one another which was met by disappointed, “Oh wells.”
“I know!” The woman with the double chin blurted out from her beige arm chair. “I think we're all immune! It is in our blood, we can't get sick. Whatever has infected all of them out there, and even my husband, well, we just ain't going to get it.” She stopped briefly, to tut and roll her eyes, I assume she was thinking about her husband, who not only was obviously dead but must have had to suffer years and years of marriage with this person. “I saw it all the time at the school where I worked. All them kids, running about, some would get sick, others wouldn't, no explaining for it.”
“Yes we know what you think Sally, but that doesn't explain my brother.” Adam said, and then he turned to us. “You see, I have an identical twin brother who lived down in Falmo
uth. I thought the same as Sally and went to check on him a few days ago. He too had succumb to this infection, and I know that we have not been sharing the same space for years, but we always tended to be in tune with each other. Growing up, if one of us was taken ill, within hours the other would then suffer the same symptoms.” He took a deep breath and turned to to Sally. “Now, I know that is not conclusive evidence but I don't think we should rule it out just yet that we 're not immune, and in fact that we missed out on catching whatever it was by chance and could yet stumble upon it.”
“What, you think we could still catch it?” Rosie asked.
“I am not a doctor and I have no qualifications to state that anything I say here is correct, however, I think it is important to not assume we are out of the woods just yet. If it is biological and we are immune then that is excellent news, however, none of us are qualified to determine this as fact. What we can do though, is through a process of elimination, is to try and determine if there is an instance, experience, allergy or even a distaste that we all have in common that might separates us from the rest of humanity.”
Sally tutted and then in a dismissive tone, “We could be here for forever Adam! Going over every little detail of our lives and all of us sitting around in a little circle saying I like pineapple, do you like pineapple?.” Her double chin gobbled out the words.
“Yes. We could be here for a while, however, it could mean the difference between life and death, not only for us but for the human race as a whole. For all we know there might only be a handful of people left in the country and maybe, maybe even the entire world. We have a responsibility to try our best to understand this.”
Sally, who should have felt embarrassed about how quickly her argument had been belittled showed no sign of humiliation. Sounding as enthusiastic as she probably could she muttered something about going in search of pens and paper so that everyone could make a list about themselves, and you could tell from her rolling eyes how much she wished for Adam to be proven wrong and for all of us to think that he had wasted our time.
“The next thing that I am sure is on your minds as much as it is mine, is what to do about the parasites. Have you had much to do with them?” We were asked.
We hadn't. Edwin told the man about pouring alcohol and salt on one to no effect and also their ability to corrode the front doors in London and I added that the one outside the gate must have been about three or four times the size of any we'd seen before.
“Okay. Well Roger out there has been driving around and has made some keen observations. Did you know that they are carnivorous? Leave them to it and they will find some prey somehow or another, and once one of those things out there takes hold of you, well, I don't think you stand much a chance of pulling it off, and they are damn hard to kill.”
“Yes, I have driven over a few and on my travels and where I expected them to be flattered on my way back, they weren't, the weren't even there.” Edwin added.
“Bloody hard to kill. Drowning them doesn't work either. The one you mentioned earlier down by the gate, nasty thing that he is. The tide comes up, fully submerges him, six hours later he is still there happy to keep on at our gate. Fire works, dries them out eventually, they are not flammable though, it is not like you can just through a match at one and be done with it, takes a lot of lighter fluid or petrol or whatever it is your using to get the job down.”
I looked at Rosie, she had turned slightly green and was clearly uncomfortable with the conversation, barely holding back her objections to what I am sure she perceived in some sense to have been murder.
“What about cutting them?” Edwin asked.
“Yes, gruesome job though. We hit one handsomely with an axe, it was like cutting a raw steak, not much blood and it didn't stop the thing. Roger eventually got through the thing and split it in two, however, that didn't entirely do the job, one side was still moving about, trying to grab hold of Roger's boot.”
“Please can we not talk about this, you don't know what you're doing.” Rosie picked herself up onto her feet, “You could be killing someone, and you're talking about them as if they were nothing, as if they didn't matter.” Rosie said, looking down at us, and she was right, the conversation was morbid and in a heartless manner but it was fascinating and before she had a chance to storm off with utter contempt, Adam kept on.
“Rosie, I am deeply sorry, and I know how you must be feeling, but trust me, these parasites, who killed our friends and our family pose a real threat to killing the rest of us. If they had anything left of the person they once were inside, well, then they wouldn't be prepared to do the things that those things, those parasites out there will do to any one of us given the chance.”
“Can't we jut leave them be? They are hardly posing a threat to us now, they haven't been a problem ever since they started.”
“Well Rosie, as Harry mentioned earlier, the larger one down by the gate, that was not always so big, therein lies the problem. It has taken on a few of the others, there was once a few of them outside the gate and we noticed one morning after the tide had gone back out that two of them had merged into one, doubling the size. Then later that night Roger saw it crawling over the third one and by morning, well, that is what you saw out there.”
“Does that mean they are eating each other?” Edwin asked.
“We don't know.” He scratched at his greying beard, “What we do know is that it is getting harder and harder to open that gate with the one down there the size that it is. If it gets any bigger, which it is bound to do considering that more and more of them are coming this way, drawn by the sound of the cars going back and forth. Sooner or later we are going to get trapped in here.”
“Why don't you just?” Edwin remarked, keeping his eyes away from Rosie's piercing gaze. “You know, get rid of it.”
“Ah, yes, we intend to, but whilst it is manageable we are going to continue to watch it and see what happens.”
“So what is the problem, if you can get rid of it?” Rosie protested.
“It is not just here I am worried about. We might be safe here on our defensible little island, but whilst we sit on our hands relying on the produce from the world that once was, those dreadful things out there are invariably going to continue to grow, leaving us with a very hostile England. Eventually, if we do continue to survive, well, we will need to start looking after ourselves properly. We will need to farm the land and build an actual community where we are safe.”
I looked at Rosie who was distracted in her own thoughts, and I could see them running through her mind, questioning why Adam and Edwin both seemed so monomaniacal, and if they had had some private discussion earlier: was Adam the architect of Edwin's idea of community, or was it the other way around?
Sally returned, and squeezed between each arm chair handing out letter-headed pads and branded pens.
“So what do you want us to write down then exactly?” She whined.
“This is a good exercise provisionally, however, if this yields no results I will conduct a more thorough study with detailed interviews of each individual person and collate the results myself. For now, please, if everyone here in this room could list out any allergies, extra-ordinary illnesses suffered, unusual dietary habits or requirements and any and all aspects of your lifestyle that you think is particularly unusual.”
I was surprised at how quickly everyone finished their list, managing to recall so easily all the little facts about themselves that they thought implied individuality. Then we had to read them out, one by one the people around me spewing uninteresting facts and I could imagine them in their worlds, surrounded by their friends or more appropriately, anyone who would listen, over a cup of tea or a pint of ale boring the poor sods around them about what a large baby they were, or the severity of their nut allergies.
I then reeled off my list, hearing myself in the past having told these facts that I once thought to be interesting little nuggets, and I felt myself turn red with self loathing.
Rosie gasped when I said I was allergic to dairy and she blurted out that Edwin and herself were also allergic to dairy and that maybe that was 'it'. Her excitement was quickly quelled as the others, some smugly, added that they had no such allergies.
Nothing matched and the morning turned to evening with no conclusion and the room sank back into their chairs, sweating in the thick air, the fire inexplicably kept alive by Tom the interminable caretaker, logs intermittently being tossed into the Art Deco fireplace, a thud and a burst of embers up the chimney. He brought up the subject of supper and disappeared downstairs to the kitchen.
Sally started up again, “I hope you all like soup, that's all we ever eat here. Except for a snack of sardines on crackers. Not much of a five star hotel.” She tutted and rolled her eyes, “More like a health spa if you ask me!” What an awful human being.
I feigned laughter, “Health spa sounds good to me, I need to loose some weight.” I hoped to insult her.
“No you don't, you're all skin and bones.” Oblivious.
Tom thankfully reappeared and shuffled into the room, “There is no gas, so we are limited to the microwave at present, so mostly we have been eating soup since-“ He explained to the three of us.
“I'm getting sick of soup.” Sally said churlishly.
“We always have sardines?” Tom's passive retort.
Sally tutted, “Ugh. No thank you.”
“There is an electric hot plate that you could cook on, tedious task though, cooking for ten on that thing, but feel free to give it your best shot if you fancy it.”
“I will make an omelet of sorts. I can throw in any of the veg that ain't turned yet and everyone can have a bit with their soup.”
“Yes, good idea Sally. None for me though. I don't too much like vegetables.” Tom replied.
The Days After Page 7