The Days After

by Alistair Ballantine

  After hours of discussions on topics I had no clue, let alone an opinion about, I excused myself to go and check on Guy and Roger and the two car sized organs that were writhing in pain, on fire against the gate. The smoke and the smell of burning flesh filled the air and it was strangely comforting.

  “How's it going?” I asked.

  “They're enormous. I was just telling Roger, I’ve never seen them so big.”

  “Getting bigger.” Roger added.

  ”I've never seen two this big together.” I commented.

  “How's the wedding planning going?” Guy asked.

  “Good, I think. We're having lots of Irises apparently.”

  “Oh.”

  “They can communicate, or sense one another.” Roger said seriously, looking at the charring flesh.

  “What?” Guy replied.

  “They keep coming, and they're getting bigger.” He added.

  “Maybe they're like wasps. You know, when a wasp dies, the others can smell it?” Guy replied enthusiastically.

  “Perhaps.” Roger said and proceeded to drop the head of the axe on the organ in front of him, tearing half way through it, and then he wriggled the steel left and right until he could pull it back out and wielded it once more, splitting the thick red flesh into two limp halves.

  Christmas approached and Edwin took us in pairs to Salcombe to find presents, presumably, despite the magnificent beauty of the seaside town, it had not been occupied because it lacked a supermarket or any sizeable stores of anything practical.

  On his third trip with Sally and Al, two people introduced themselves. They had been watching us and listening to us during our present hunts and had decided that perhaps we were a group that they would like to associate themselves with. Edwin brought them back to the hotel with an excitable Sally and Al, who no doubt gave a bad impression of us during the drive, and they looked visible relieved when they met the rest of us. The man looked at least in his sixties. His hair was wiry and grey and joined into a thick beard around a plump face that matched his body. His face was rough and pockmarked, his eyes had dark circles around them and an air of discontent rigidly clouded around him. He was or had been a fisherman and had come to Salcombe when he met Fee in Exmouth. Exeter had become overrun with, “Not the sort of people you want to keep in your company!” According to Fee in a put-on posh accent. She was skinny and potentially in her thirties. Although, she wasn't wearing make up and I tried to work out if that meant that she was in fact younger than she looked. Her hair was dark blonde, at least, I would call it dark blonde, countless female voices rushed through my mind telling me that she was in fact, a light brown, they wound me up until I quashed them and triumphantly continued to identify her as a blonde. She looked friendly and she had a big mouth, in both senses, she talked a lot, she had been a maths teacher, and she got excited when I told her I used to be an accountant. She rubbed my arm and told me in a jesting manner that I must be glad I’m no longer doing that. Her husband who was a biology teacher at the school with her. Mr Farnham, as he liked to be called, took the children of Fee's school on fishing trips each year, so when she saw him in Exmouth a few weeks after her husband and everyone else had died, she approached him. After a few more weeks, the town then became resident to a gang who apparently raced cars along the water front, shooting at windows as a game and drinking at all hours of the day, or so she said.

  Fee and Mr Farnham moved into the hotel with us that night.

  16th December

  Mr Farnham left for Salcombe and returned in his boat a few hours later. On the calm sea, something I had not thought possible during winter, he took a small contingent of the group mackerel fishing for a feast that was to be had that evening, for no reason other than human necessity.

  25th December

  The new blood rejuvenated the group and we spent Christmas all together, drinking champagne and brandy in front of the fire. We exchanged gifts which were often duplicated, as a result of them having all come from the same five shops. Guy bought Tom a book on Karma Sutra and it came out that Tom was gay and I think all of us except Sally felt ashamed that despite living together for five months there was no depth to our bonds, and it reinforced the fact that we were a group thrust together due to circumstance alone and would likely be broken apart just as easily.

  14th January

  The winter kept coming and so did the organs, more and more each day, larger ones. One morning two of them the size of cars had pushed the gate to the floor and were beginning to crawl up the road towards the hotel. We set them on fire and fixed the gate. Guy came up with a plan to put stakes deep into the sand in front of the gate to stop them. It worked, but it did present some problems. The organs would pierce themselves on the stakes, but each morning, when we set them on fire the stakes would also burn and each day we had to replace them, which was hard work. We eventually switched to using metal spears, fashioned out of scaffolding poles, sharpened at the end with a metal grinder, but these were not as sturdy as the wooden stakes and often the organs would overwhelm them and we would find them pressed up against the gate with the scaffolding pole sticking halfway through them. Our main problem was that we couldn't erect a permanent wall to impede them without blocking ourselves in.

  The others continued to ignore the problem, as long as the three of us dealt with them each day.

  Fee took a large involvement in planning the wedding, she talked for hours on end with Rosie about the ceremony and the location, they decided upon using a ruin of an old monastery that was somewhere on the island behind the hotel. I agreed to everything and told them it all sounded great, trying my best to hide my irreverence.

  19th March

  As a cold and wet February past, preparations for the wedding began in physical form. Tom and Fee took control, insisting that Rosie nor I should be involved and that it should be a surprise, which suited me.

  In the privacy of our room, during the haze after we had fucked, or as Rosie would say, “Made love.” She would lie, with her head resting on my stomach and ask me to read to her, or talk to her so that she could finally sleep, she would ask me to take away the horrors that played over and over again in her mind, and she would ask me to wake her up if I was leaving, she said that she never wanted to wake up alone, and I wondered as she lay there sleeping on my lap, was she saying these things to appeal to some part of me that she sensed wanted to be her protector or was she actually haunted in by her mind's eye? Did she actually feel a vulnerability that could be defeated by my presence? Does not admitting your own vulnerability dismiss your vulnerability in the first place? If I was lucky a snort or nose whistle would interrupt me before I spiralled any further into doubting Rosie's

  The day before the wedding Edwin and I drove to Salcombe to find suits for the two of us. Bluebells and daffodils sporadically flourished in the wild hedges on either side of the road. The sky above was a thin blue intermittently mixed with harmless white clouds at winters edge.

  “I wonder how long it will be until they become too overgrown to drive through?” I commented about the hedges.

  “'I don't think that will happen” Edwin replied.

  “Huh?”.

  “We're going to have to find another way.” Edwin said and began to reverse the car.

  “Why?”

  “There was one of those buggers up ahead. Blocking the way.”

  I had been so consumed with the nuisance of disposing of them in front of the hotel that I hadn't once considered that Edwin must deal with them day in day out on the narrow roads.

  “How often does this happen?” I asked him, and it sounded stupid coming out of my mouth.

  “A lot. It's worse in the mornings and at night.”

  “How big are they normally?” I asked.

  “On average the same size as the ones down by the hotel. About six foot all around. The biggest one I’ve come across was almost double that.”

  “Are you serious?” I relaxed my voice a little
, “Where?”

  He laughed. “Stupid bugger got stuck, too big to make it down one of the country lanes in Frogmore.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I just left it there. Thought about setting it on fire, but it seemed like a waste of petrol, and besides, it would have taken gallons of the stuff to kill it.” He paused, looking slightly defeated. “Soon we'll only be able to travel by boat if they keep growing like this, closing off the roads.”

  “How do you think they're growing. How on earth are they getting so big?”

  “They keep merging together. The larger ones seem to attract the smaller ones.”

  “But how are they surviving, it's not like they're eating?”

  “Well they are.” He said in a nonchalant tone that only served to highlight my ignorance.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They're essentially eating each other, and they're eating bugs, animals and all the greenery.”

  “The greenery?”

  “Look around at the hedges either side of us. The tops of them are wild, overgrown, but the bottom halves, well, the leaves, the plants, the grass, it has all withered away.”

  “I thought they were carnivorous. I thought that’s why they came for us?”

  “They come from humans, we're omnivores” Compounding my ignorance, “Like humans they probably prefer protein, they hunt it down in fact, but they can at least survive off plants, much as humans can. After all, that is how we believe whatever this is began, infecting, consuming, incubating in vegetables, fruits, grass even, and fortunately for them, we happened to walk right into their trap, infecting ourselves unwittingly.”

  “Wait.” I said with exaggerated shock. “You think they're sentient, you think this was some sort of elaborate trap.”

  “Maybe.” He paused. “The obliteration of the human race seems to have happened all too easily and unopposed for it to have just been dumb luck on their part.”

  “Just so I have this clear in my head. You think there is an alien race out there who has on purpose infected our planet with the intention of wiping out humanity?” I said, trying to exaggerate how ridiculous it sounded.

  “I never said anything about an aliens.”

  “But what then?”

  “It could be anything, it could have been a weapon, a virus detonated in the stratosphere around the globe that slowly integrated into our environment around the planet. But then again, it could have just been some biological Darwinian mutation that spread and spread until we all consumed enough of it.” He stopped to let it sink in. “I am not trying to say I know how it happened, but, what I am trying to say is that we don't know, and in the face of everything I have seen and the success of it all, well, it leaves a very sour taste in my mouth that feels a lot like intent in some form or another.”

  I gave it a few minutes.

  “Have you talked to anyone else about this?”

  “Adam.” He replied.

  “And what does Adam think?”

  “He won't rule it out, as you know he is trying to learn and understand without hypothesising as to what has infected our earth. After all, if we don't determine a way of detecting whatever this virus is, well, we cannot live forever if we cannot live off the land.”

  His words hit deep and consumed me for the rest of the journey, but, to my surprise, as we approached Salcombe, images of my future with Rosie over took me and I comfortably filed Edwin's words in a mustard coloured folder and closed the industrial metal cabinet.

  We arrived in Salcombe and picked out suits. I made Edwin get one with tails and grey trousers. I chose a slim fitting black suit that I looked great in. I wound Edwin up by repeatedly telling him how good I looked in the suit and how I was about to marry his sister, and each time, through his teeth he would respond with a monosyllabic term of agreement. I think, deep down, he was happy with how annoyingly excited I was being.

  When we arrived back at the hotel, I kissed Rosie in the car park and told her I loved her, and she told me she loved me and then I left and drove back home to the cottage after receiving strict instructions from an excitable Fee that I couldn't see Rosie the night before the wedding.

  Wearing my suit, I paced around the house. I couldn't eat, I smoked and I drank. I met Chevy by the wooden fence behind the stream. I told him I was getting married and he seemed pleased for me. I went back inside and drank some more. I dropped ash onto my suit and spent a panicked hour trying to get the stain out. I drank more. I ran out of ice, the freezer door mocking me as it creaked shut, I drank from the bottle and told the freezer that I didn't need him. I sloped to the deck and sat under silver clouds and danced with my cigarette as if it was a sparkler whilst sitting on the wood with my feet just above the wet grass. I drank more scotch. I talked out loud to the valley. I howled at some point and scared myself and I stumbled back into the house. The whiskey bottle didn't want to stand up straight when I put it down on the kitchen table and it fell onto it's side, but I victoriously managed to catch it before it rolled off the edge. I had another dram and then with one leg in front of the other I waltzed upstairs and collapsed almost completely onto a single bed and disappeared into an amber sleep.

  A snake attacked me in the middle of the night and I hid from it by standing on a desk in a classroom. I woke up, dehydrated in the pitch black and images from my nightmare haunted me and without any point of reference, I started to doubt where I was and if my reality was in fact a figment. It was quiet and the ticking of my watch filled the room and entered my brain, until it was all I could think about. I imagined the hands in front of my eyes, ticking and ticking, it lasted forever. I waited for the morning light, rolling around uncomfortably under the duvet. Cracks of light eventually shone through the white checks of the curtains and I think I managed to fall back to sleep.

  20th March

  The wretched alarm cranked its endless call, and in my head the letters U-R-G-E-N-T appeared one after the other mimetic of the electronic beeping. I was awake.

  I had a cold shower, tried and failed to eat any cereal or drink any coffee. I had a cigarette on the deck, barely able to admire the view. It was warm for March, but still, a thin layer of silver resided over the grass in front of me. It caught the sun and the glistening light bore into my eyes. I went back into the house and poured a large whiskey. I managed to drink half of the glass and gagged and left the rest by the sink. I had another cigarette. Everything I was doing seemed slow, delayed, my hands and my feet felt sluggish and my neck felt stiff, but inside my pounding head was still the ticking clock, counting down at double speed, telling me how little time I had left to get ready, to get myself feeling normal, and I looked at my watch again and the time had disappeared.

  I felt guilty, I thought about what Rosie would say if she knew how unexcited I was, how I wasn't in love with her. I said, “Sorry!” Out loud to no one, “Argh” I screamed out. I was too hungover to care, I was trapped in a mute bubble, a cocoon devoid of emotion. I wanted to smile and laugh to myself, but I couldn’t, I felt sick, maybe I would throw up. I knelt over the ceramic bowl and put my fingers down my throat. The rancid heat of the whiskey burned as it spluttered out of my mouth. I was empty, nothing else came. I drank some water and dried my eyes. I felt too sick to eat. I had another cigarette and paced around the kitchen feeling faint. I looked at my watch and it was 11.30. I had to go, I was out of time.

  Just before I got into the car, the water jerked inside of me and I threw up all over my shoes. It was only water, I wiped it off with a piece of clothing from the back seat. Concentrating on the road hurt my head even more, it was bright and there weren't enough clouds in the sky. I had another cigarette and it made me feel even worse, and by accident I dropped it before I reached the window and it fell under my seat. I tried to find it with my hand but I couldn't, and the smoke just continued to creep up from under my side and seep out of the window.

  The coins in the glove compartment rattled and it annoyed me, so I threw them
out the window. The car bounced as squished a small organ in the middle of the road. I drove over a sleeping roundabout and down the long narrow lane towards the hotel. I squished another organ and the car bounced again. I couldn't smell the sea, the air reeked of smoke. I swung the car around the final corner and focused on the sand in front of me. The tide was out. The hotel was on fire.

  Black smoke was billowing into the sky blocking out the sun. I could see flames in the windows and hiding in the smoke above the roof. I kept driving across the sand and over the flattened gate. Heat filled the car and flushed over my body. Smoke was pouring out of the entrance. I couldn't see in. Some windows had shattered others were black. I shouted desperately at the fire. I called for Rosie, over and over again I called her name. I ran around the back of the hotel, watching the white paint blacken with soot, and called out again. I counted the cars in the car park and tried to remember how many there usually were; none were missing. I ran up the hill to the ruins of the monastery, I had to stop halfway to catch my breath. I felt so weak, yellow bile chocked out of my mouth and I fell onto my hands and knees and crawled up the rest of the hill. The ruin was a hollow paradise, white chairs and flowers in vines wrapped around the grey stone. I collapsed on the grass looking down at the hotel, looking down at the flames and the suffocating smoke.

  I slid down the hill and called out towards the hotel again but the fire was too hot and it felt like it was melting my skin. I looked towards the sea. The yacht and the fishing boat were peacefully resting on the water. I wanted to swim to them, but I was too weak, I wouldn't make it. I sat on the sand watching the boats and looking across the shore. Waiting for Roger to appear, or Adam to wave to me from his boat. I waited and I waited but nothing. No one came, no one appeared.