by Luke Walker
‘Help me up,’ he panted.
The agony grew as she supported him under the armpits. He leaned into her and eventually made it upright. The stink of sweat and blood stuck to him. He prodded the unconscious man with his bat and the man didn’t move.
‘Who the hell are these people?’ he whispered.
‘Give me that,’ Karen said and extended a hand.
She took the bat, Stu rested against a nearby table and Karen lifted the bat high.
She spat on the unconscious man and brought the bat down on his head. Bone split. He let out a bubbling squeal and slid to his side. Karen spat on him again and handed the bat back to Stu.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
Stu leaned into her and froze. The mess that had been the dead man’s head had changed into a black fog. It ran from his wounds like a murky stream and sank into the floor. A moment later, there was nothing before them but a corpse.
‘What the hell was that?’ Karen whispered.
A chuckling laugh answered her. As before, it emerged from the ground and the walls.
Stu whirled to face the nearest wall. His wounded leg screamed and he screamed back.
‘Come on. Fucking come on.’
The words tore in his throat and blood coated his teeth.
The laugh faded.
‘We have to go,’ Karen said. She was trembling but her grip on him remained strong. Stu stared at the dead man, at his mashed head and the patch of the floor which had swallowed the black fog.
‘It’s Dalry. These shits here. They’re Dalry. The bad side. It’s come here,’ he said.
‘I know. There are more of them.’
‘Good. I want to kill them.’
Using the bat as a makeshift crutch, Stu leaned further into Karen and they moved towards the doors.
A tremendous rumbling shook the outside, a shaking in the ground.
‘What the hell is it?’ Stu whispered.
They staggered to the nearest window. Out on the street, scorched with light and cooking in mid-morning heat, the houses on the other side of Cromwell Road were collapsing. Windows, bricks, roof tiles fell to the grass and road as if dissolving. Clouds of dust flew, blocking trees and hedges from sight. The rumbling grew louder and something not too far away exploded. Cars rolled from driveways into the road, struck each other and metal crumpled. Glass broke and the smell of smoke choked his nose and mouth. With it, the heat of the day faded. Winter air closed in. Through the rising dust, the sun was still visible but its light was murky, fading. Darkness crept into the day and cold air swirled in over the grass.
The grass was turning black.
‘It’s here,’ Stu said and he managed to keep a steady voice.
‘It’s come for us, hasn’t it?’ he said to her.
‘Will, Stu. Geri.’
A heavy explosion roared towards them and fire ate at the remains of the house directly opposite them.
Karen dragged Stu to the doors as the buildings on Cromwell Road continued to fall apart.
Eighty Eight
Kirsty stared into Block. The sixth form room wasn’t there. Nor was moonlight.
She saw.
Oh God.
She saw.
A bedroom. The window open wide and evening light slipping inside to cover the sill, the mess of books and clothes on the floor below the window. The light rising and falling in beams towards the posters of New Kids On The Block on the walls. A small chest of drawers with pots and tubes of makeup. A drawer open a couple of inches and underwear visible. Cotton underwear. Small bras. The light touching the garments with gentle fingers and falling into the shorts tossed to the carpet.
A bedroom pregnant with summer light even if it’s the light of sunset, and night will be here soon.
She was on the bed, under the covers and they were pulled up to her neck. She stared at the ceiling and tried to think of something other than his words. She couldn’t. They were stuck in her head in an endless loop and the secret part she could only just admit to herself is there was something in those words she liked. It was a secret thing. More than that, it was their secret thing and while that was a strange thing, new and full of possibilities, she knew enough to know she liked it. Liked it because it was a secret and it wasn’t allowed. She knew that much even if she couldn’t have said why.
It didn’t matter, though. He’d be here soon and he’d tell her the rest and whatever game this turned out to be, it would be their game. He’d said so. A game for her birthday next week. Had to be tonight. Had to before her birthday. It didn’t matter about him, he told her. Fourteen or fifteen, he could do this at any point. What mattered was her and playing this game before her birthday.
A door closing somewhere. Footsteps rising. Summer light and her warm bedroom. Then him in the doorway, close to filling the doorway.
‘Are you ready for the game?’ he said and she said yes she was. He smiled and the first warning alarm rang for her.
The smile didn’t work. It was like when Mum shouted at Dad about something and he smiled to say he didn’t mind the shouting.
The light at the window. Warm.
He came to her bed, sat beside her.
‘Are you really sure about playing this game tonight?’ he said.
She said yes she was.
‘Really sure? I mean, it has to before your birthday but it’s our game. Can’t tell Mum or Dad. They’d ruin the game.’
She asked why.
‘They’re too old for this game.’
That didn’t make much sense but she let it go.
He took hold of the top of her duvet and pulled it down an inch.
She asked him what he was doing.
‘It’s hot in here. Don’t want you getting too hot under the covers.’
His words made sense. The last fortnight had been a hot end to a long summer and the approaching night hadn’t cooled a great deal.
He pulled the cover again and eased his face towards her.
‘This is our game. But we don’t have to play it tonight, okay?’
She said she wanted to but didn’t know if that was true. His face seemed too big. His breath was hot on her mouth and nose.
‘Do you really want to play this game?’ he whispered.
She said she really wanted to.
Then her covers were off and he was whispering against her ear.
‘You can’t tell anyone about our game. This is our secret game and we’ll be in trouble if you tell.’
She pulled her face from his, opened her mouth to speak or shout—she didn’t know which—and his face was half an inch above hers, blocking out the last of the daylight and robbing her voice. Something tickled her knees, then the skin above her knees, then it tickled higher.
Something oddly pleasant in that, something secret, something new.
A single second of time span around her head, chasing itself and marking its prints over her mind, making its home in her head. This moment raced ahead of her, filling the days, weeks, months and years with its sad weight. Her life shrank to an infinitesimal dot; she lived inside it and called it home even though it was a home of hurts.
The tickling came again, higher, and that second that seemed to have lasted for years was long gone. Nothing pleasant now, only fear.
She squirmed, felt her t-shirt rise over her stomach and the ghastly sensation of her shorts now around her thighs. Warm air kissed her thighs, kissed higher and all at once it was more than warm. The air burned her alive and her scream at this shock remained locked in her mouth.
Then he was on top of her and then the room was far too hot, the light of sunset too red, too …
red
too red …
too red down there, oh mummy, oh it hurts, oh it’s …
red.
Eighty Nine
The stairs. The fucking stairs.
Will staggered towards them and tripped when the mammoth rumbling shook everything. He crashed into an open door and fell through into a classroom
. Dropping beside the teacher’s desk, he used it to pull himself up into a crouch.
‘What the fuck is this?’ he shouted.
The rumbling had grown louder in the last few seconds. Panting, Will managed to stand and stare outside. The grass beside the building was no longer visible. Flying debris filled the air and coated the green as far as Will could see. With delicate, frightened steps, he moved closer to the windows and made out the wrecked buildings across the road. He attempted to cross reference the sight with the familiar. The best he could do was the idea of an earthquake. He seized on it, aware it wasn’t true. Earthquakes didn’t work like this. They didn’t eat into buildings this way; they didn’t break windows with a deliberate pattern. Nor did they leave buildings looking much older than they were in the space of a minute.
‘Dalry.’
The word gave the scene flesh and brought a sickening fear. Any minute now, the sun would vanish, turning the familiar street into an endless night. And then they’d come, the people, the things who’d killed Andy and Mick. They’d come to finish their work.
Will stared, unable to move. Cracks in the road spread rapidly to meet and form holes. Trees collapsed to block the road. Cars rolled from driveways to crash into the fallen trees. He watched the growing chaos, mouth open wide and feet unwilling to move.
Karen.
The single word came from somewhere far away in his mind and brought Karen’s face to him.
Realisation of his situation smacked into him. He drew breath and roared his wife’s name.
‘Karen.’
The windows coughed inwards, glass flew towards him and he threw himself down and away in an ungainly movement. Broken glass pattered on the floor and table. Will crawled to the door. He stared.
The glass had missed him by less than a foot. He splayed a hand on the dirty floor, realising the kitchen knife he’d taken from Geri’s house was long gone. For all he knew, the blade had fallen between their last seconds with Mick and their arrival at the school.
‘Fuck this,’ he said and ran back to the corridor. Other windows had exploded. Pieces of brick and road lay in loose piles on the floor; dust rose and filled his mouth. He coughed and spat the taste away. The corridor shook; Will slapped his palm against a trembling wall to steady himself and did his best to believe this was just a picture, this wasn’t his school or his past. The floor trembled, spilling him against the wall. Dizziness filled his head and he forced his eyes to focus on a classroom door. With no surprise at all, Will realised he was looking at the door to his year ten class. A barrage of memories assaulted him: sights, sounds and smells from his past come back as if they’d never been away.
‘Bollocks,’ Will croaked and ran with lurching steps. ‘Geri.’ He coughed hard. ‘Coming, Geri.’
He tripped on the third step and struck his head against the wall. Blood ran into one eye. Groaning, Will used the wall as a guide and ascended as fast as he could. The stairs curved at the tenth step, there were another six, then the floor, then the doors he hadn’t seen in twenty years.
The ground shook hard enough to drop him. He bashed his shin against a step and bellowed. Limping, he pulled himself up to the floor, stared at the doors, both so brown and old just as he remembered them. Even the faded metal of the handles was the same.
Will let out a mad, raving laugh and ran in a lurch to the entrance. A deep, savage chuckle ran through the entire school as Will ran, the laugh emanating from floors and walls and doors.
Dalry, bad Dalry, bad fucking Dalry.
Will’s hands struck the doors dead centre and they flew open to crash into the wall. At the same time, the day’s glorious sunshine winked out and night pooled in through the wrecked windows.
Red. She’s red.
Then he was running to Kirsty even as the man holding her swung his arm upwards and moonlight shone on something in the man’s hand.
Ninety
Karen heard the laugh. Even with the horrendous noise of the buildings falling apart and the school rupturing, she heard it.
A scream tore out of her and she came within a second of throwing Stu to the wall and running the rest of the way down the corridor to Block.
‘Faster,’ Stu yelled and for a few painful steps, he was ahead of her. She gripped him as tightly as she could and they staggered onwards. Stu’s wounded leg dragged behind him like a club and fresh blood stained Karen’s jacket the faster they moved.
Whatever had caused the destruction outside appeared to be growing stronger. The cracks in the walls rose into the walls and spread to the ceiling. Plaster rained and clumps of it fell when the school trembled. Karen didn’t think of it or its cause. She thought of Will.
They drew level with the little corridor that ended at the cafeteria. The windows collapsed at the same time with a shriek of breaking glass; plaster fell on Stu’s shoulder. He leaned into Karen and she pulled him forward.
The doors were in sight, both hanging loose from the frames. Stu and Karen reached them and she saw the debris covering the stairs. Getting up there would be close to impossible.
‘Stay here,’ she shouted and Stu shook his head. ‘You can’t get up past all that shit.’
He shook his head again and let go of her. He dragged his wounded leg, blood now dripping from the makeshift bandage Karen had made from an old cloth. He made it up two steps before falling. She ran to him, caught his arms and couldn’t halt his downward movement. They fell together and a stair jabbed hard fingers into her back. She cried out, pulled Stu upright and tried to holler over the noise.
‘Up.’
He nodded and she had no idea if could hear her or not.
They moved up another couple of steps, Karen’s muscles howling in protest. As she lifted a foot to move to the ninth step, Stu slipped from her grip and dropped.
Karen saw the next few seconds with a horrible clarity: Stu falling, his wounded leg buckling beneath him and his head connecting with the stairs. She heard the sound of the impact as clearly as she could hear the school falling apart.
Her slow, stupid hands reached for him and they were much too slow, much too stupid.
Stu’s wounded leg jerked upwards. It rose an inch, two inches, and Stu rose with it. Karen realised he was screaming just as she was. Stu came down on the next step and fell against her. She caught him.
He tried to speak against her ear. He had nothing but his panting breath.
A hand touched hers. Karen looked down and saw the shape of a hand already fading to a shadow. With the shadow came a name.
Andy? Are you here?
She was crying, heart bursting. Andy was here. Andy was gone. Andy was gone. Andy was here.
Karen dragged Stu to the tenth step, still weeping. It seemed she could do nothing but weep. Andy had come. Dear, sweet Andy.
Stu’s mouth brushed her ear and he wheezed a laugh.
‘Got a free period. Want to go for a fag?’ he whispered. Karen gazed at him, eyes wet, and saw his exhausted smile.
‘Later,’ she said and kissed his cheek.
They kicked through the piles of rubble on the steps and made it to the second floor, Stu shaking and sweat dripping off his head and Karen unable to stop her tears.
‘Fucking hallelujah,’ Stu whispered and there was a moment, a glorious second between only them when it seemed the rage eating into the school’s fabric paused and drew a breath.
Silence filled the world.
They walked, staggered, ran to the doors of Block and those doors opened as they moved and the world was made of tears.
The world was made of red.
Ninety One
Geri is on her bed.
Geri is aged eleven and her childhood is over.
Over and dead and buried inside a scream she keeps inside.
The summer light fills her bedroom. There aren’t any shadows at all and that means nowhere to hide, not here, not in the safest place she knows and loves. There’s just one big open hole and she’s deep inside i
t, looking to the light at the top and she knows it’s a billion miles away. It’s as far beyond her reach as anything in the world because that is where her happiness lives now, where it went. She’ll be looking for it for the rest of her life. She knows that just as she knows that life is going to hurt, going to do nothing but hurt for as long as it wants. And it makes no difference that she wants that happiness and that she wants to love. It’s gone from her just like the sunlight is gone from today. It doesn’t matter about the last of it falling through the window in little drops of red and yellow and pink and green, coming to her bed in red, so much horrible red. None of those things are real for her now. What matters is what’s here, what’s come to her.
Nothing.
Nothing left.
She curls up on her bed and listens to the sound of her heart beating. It beats in time with the terrible throbbing between her legs. She counts those beats, one after the other, as night closes into her bedroom and the time slips away until her mother calls up the stairs that it’s time for bed.
One beat after the other. Time flowing past her and her bed. Time like water. Like blood. Like all the red between her legs.
Let it go, she thinks. Let the pain go and stay here, stay as far away from it as you can. It’ll go away if you let it. If you let it. If you stay here and the pain goes wherever it wants. Stay here in bed. Stay red.
Beat after beat. Thud after thud and she’s eleven and the world hurts her and the last of the daylight fades into black.
Now she’s crying again and it’s her fourteenth birthday and he’s here. Stu’s here and he’s talking to Karen, not her, and she knows why. He wanted to talk to her. Made that pretty clear at school yesterday and she was so far away, stuck in her bed, stuck in the nightmare there, so now he’s talking to Karen and pretty soon they’ll be kissing. Pretty soon they’ll find somewhere private upstairs and that won’t be with her.
She faces the stereo and turns up the volume, not reacting when Andy shouts that he loves this song, not wanting him or any of the others in the room to see she’s crying. The music covers her hitching breath and that can only be a good thing in this warm room, warm house, warm with too much sun. She leaves the room as quickly as she can without running, grateful nobody is near the door. Motes of floating dust touch her in the hallway, the frosted glass of the front door ushering in the light outside and someone says her name. Her sister Leigh is halfway up the stairs, ten years old and smiling, asking if she can come downstairs and join the party. Geri tells her no, tells her to go back upstairs to her bedroom and not talk to anyone. She doesn’t wait to see if Leigh does as she says; the tears come back when she hears Stu laughing above the sound of the music. She runs to the downstairs toilet, locks the door and sits on the lavatory. Rocks back and forth, hugging herself and forcing her mind to close off its images, memories, forcing her head to stop. Just stop. Just fucking stop.