I fill my pockets and take a handful to the nearest bunk. Pushing discarded clothing and some well-worn paperbacks out of the way, I collapse onto the bunk and tear the silvery foil from the first of the bars. The sweet smell of it – concentrated fructose and fruit, mixed with grains – sends me faint and almost nauseous. I soon get over it though, devouring the bar in two bites and forcing it down barely chewed. There’s a tiny steel sink between the two racks of bunks with a single press-tab for dispensing drinking water. I go to it and lean down, praying. I’m rewarded with a stream of chilled, clean-tasting water.
Even after seven energy bars, I’m far from energised. A leaden mist settles over my mind and body. I’ve been so near to death. I’ve fought and fasted for days, and other wounds – deeper cuts – are still open and bleeding. I have enough strength to push the door closed and angle a chair back under the handle before collapsing onto the bunk, pulling the lightweight blankets over me and plummeting into unconsciousness.
***
I do not dream but the sounds I hear in my sleep lead me into a nightmare.
Moaning. Weeping. Perdition.
Still not fully awake, I wonder what might cause a person to wail with such need, such loss. Now, finally, I dream…
you come to consciousness to discover your genitalia have been surgically removed. the culprit, masked and gloved, has them, still living, in a solution of plasma. you can see them floating behind Pyrex, so precious, on his tray of instruments. it is possible, you realise, there is still time if he acts quickly, to reattach everything, to make you the way you were before. the noise of your begging, still incoherent with anaesthesia, that’s the sound that wakes me
…mumbled, unintelligible pleas echo outside the room.
I sit up, heart fluttering like a panicked sparrow, and I bang my head on the steel frame of the fold-out bunk above.
There’s something in the corridor near the door. I hear shuffling and scratching: not the sound of footsteps but something being dragged, perhaps? Rubbing my head, I wonder how I could have been so stupid as to fall asleep here. But I do have the energy and drive now that I didn’t have before. Every joint hurts when I stand but I don’t feel it so much; shots of adrenaline are already entering my bloodstream.
I edge towards the door, fully awake now and wondering how much time has elapsed. There’s a thunderous detonation and the whole room rocks left then right. It’s so unexpected I find I’m picking myself up off the floor a second later. A tiny streamer of dust falls from the ceiling, reminding me of the sand in an hourglass. For a moment the wailing, which I recognise, of course, stops. I move the chair to one side and reach out for the door handle.
Through the crack between the door and its frame, I can see the emergency lights still on in the corridor, though more of them seem to have gone out since I arrived up here. Then the wailing begins again and I see movement. Not one or two, not even a gang, but a mass of them. The Stricken – moving together in a wave – joined somehow at their feet and sliding across the stone floor as though on a thin layer of air. If they are a wave, then they are a tide. The tide sweeps up the corridor towards me.
I open the door further and look out to the right. The corridor is empty and most of the lights still work. Enough for me to see by. Enough for me to run by.
And run is what I do.
I look back of course and I’m alarmed by how fast the Stricken can move. Some of them hover along the walls of the corridor, still joined by their lower limbs to the rest of the throng and still hovering even though their bodies point horizontally into space. They’re all naked and their pale bodies have lost their shape. They’re still humanoid – two arms, two legs, and a head – but they lack definition. They’re doughy and puffy. Coincidentally, perhaps, their genitals are either gone or overcome by this blowing out of their tissues. As a unit they appear cumbersome, but that’s an illusion; the tiny cilia that beat beneath their soles move them as one and at high speed.
Running speed.
My feet hammer the concrete even faster.
The corridor begins to curve to the left and slope upwards. To either side I pass larger doors marked Civilian Recreation Halls, Civilian Medical Unit, Civilian Refectory, and Civilian Library.
And it hits me.
I’m under Long Marton airfield. I’ve made it to the bunker, but I’ve lost everything to get here. I console myself with the thought that, even if I’d done as Tara wanted me to and we’d travelled here with the survivalist, the place has still been overrun. In fact, it appears to have become a nucleus for the life forms that brought the Hush. Maybe, no matter what I’d done, Tara and Jake would still be gone. I want to believe that. I want a balm for my conscience.
But there is no such balm.
I have only two things left: my immunity to the sickness that has taken so many, and my legs.
The moans of the Stricken follow me. They cry out as one now, their need unfulfilled; their mind a single unit of yearning. I pelt up the corridor, searching for the way out.
There it is, up ahead: a checkpoint and a door within a door. The inner door is about two metres square, big enough to let a few people in and out. The outer door is large enough to let trucks pass. It’s the small one I’m interested in. Maybe I can slow them down here. Maybe I can stop them. But uppermost in my mind is the certainty that I have no ‘clearance’. I didn’t exactly stroll in through the front door. How the hell am I going to get out?
The guard stations to the left and right appear unmanned. Dim lights glow in their interiors but there’s no movement from within. I glance back. The waxy tide of inhumanity persists, no more than a hundred yards away at most. And they screech their loss and want to me like some kind of song, believing that I’ll listen and give them whatever it is that will fulfil them.
I skid to a halt outside the left guard station, using the open doorframe to swing myself in. There’s no one here. All the time my eyes scan for the door release. It’s unobtrusive but after a couple of seconds I see it on the guard’s control panel, clearly marked.
I press it and nothing happens. I press it again, frantically.
Through the glass in the upper half of the guard station I see the tide is sweeping along fast. There are so many Stricken now they almost reach the ceiling and their heads point inwards from every direction as their hairy feet grip the walls and floor. A clogged artery is what it reminds me of as I turn back to the desk and search again.
There it is!
Portal Manual Override.
I open a small casing attached to the wall and inside it there’s a switch. I turn it to manual. After a couple of seconds in which I begin to believe that nothing will happen, there’s a click. I rush into the corridor, still convinced I’ll be overrun, and push against the inner door. It’s heavy but my shoulder moves it.
I slip through. And push it closed again. There’s a satisfying snick and then the Stricken hit the barrier. The door shakes and moves towards me a couple of millimetres before settling. I hear them pound and weep on the other side but the door is thick and insulated, and it’s comforting how far away they sound. I move back from the door and turn.
Emergency lighting doesn’t work in here but it doesn’t matter. There’s daylight seeping in from many places in the roof. These are not skylights but ventilation shafts and they reveal a chamber, mostly in shadow, with concrete supports every few metres holding up the ceiling. It looks like a car park – only it’s bigger than any car park I’ve ever seen. Even with the light coming in, I can’t see the end of it. And it’s full. Absolutely full of trucks, ambulances, coaches, land rovers. Even a fleet of about two hundred quad bikes. All the vehicles are painted military olive drab. The survivalist was telling the truth and I never once believed him. I check the nearest of the land rovers. The door’s open so I climb in. The ignition has been modified with a push button where you’d normally insert a key. If I could find a ramp out of here, a vehicle like this would be a – Ha! – I was
going to say godsend. I wouldn’t have meant it literally, of course.
I push the button but nothing happens. It’s the same deal with ten more land rovers and quad bikes. Everything up here is shot. Shame – I’m getting tired of running.
Wary of the door and the muffled sounds from beyond it, I begin to follow the wall of the car park in a clockwise pass. Somewhere there’s a ramp for all these vehicles and that will be my way out of here. Now that there’s time to search for it, I need to be thorough. I walk from one weak pool of diffuse grey light to the next and it takes me several minutes to reach the corner. The chamber is absolutely huge.
I follow the wall, hoping I’ve taken the correct direction – if it turns out the ramp is on the opposite side, I’ll have to walk all the way round to find it. The only sound is that of my own already-tired footfalls whispering into the distance.
I hear something else. A kind of rattle and thump. I look back even before I’ve consciously registered that behind me is where the noise originates. The Stricken are pouring through the window of the guard’s station, the toughened glass obliterated by the sheer weight of them. They’re still attached to each other but they come out as though squeezed from a tube, two or three at a time. Once in the car park they spread out, at first unsure which way to go. I don’t know whether to run or freeze but in thinking about that, I’ve come to a dead halt.
I watch.
I begin to edge away, tiptoeing. I almost giggle at how that must look.
When I look back again, the Stricken have begun to ooze with more confidence. They’re joining up again and flowing away from the door.
Directly towards me, the quick way. Flooding between the ranks of dead vehicles. I turn from them and run.
They’re faster now. I don’t know why, or where their strength comes from. Perhaps it’s just that I’m so much slower by comparison, even though I’m running for my life again. Up ahead I see something attached to the wall and I dare not believe it’s what it might be. But the nearer I get the more certain I become.
A steel ladder with a safety frame around it, bolted to the wall. There’s only one place that can lead. I glance back again and I see that this ladder is my only option now. Perhaps there’s another farther along but I’m not going to make it that far. I climb into the skeletal cage and rise from the floor. Looking up I see how high the ceiling is. Looking out, I see the Stricken, washing through the car park like liquid fungus.
I crawl up, the sheer mass of fatigue sinking into me again, slowing me down, deadening my muscles. I can see the hatch above me and I don’t even bother to hope that it’s open. I’m too tired and too frightened to think about what will happen if it isn’t.
I reach the top of the ladder and find the circular hatch is opened with a spinning handle, much like those on an old submarine. At first it won’t move. I look down and the Stricken have reached the bottom of the ladder already. They rise up like rotten milk through a straw. I hit the handle with the edge of my fist and it gives a little. After that it spins fast and locks open. I push up, getting my shoulder under it – only one chance at this and I have to give it everything.
It is heavy. Bastard heavy. But it gives, rises; light blazes in around it. Half blind, I climb out and let the hatch fall back with a clang. I can’t lock the thing from out here so they’ll be through it in seconds, but at least I’ve fulfilled my objective, at least I’ve been reborn into the light. I stumble away from the hatch with my arm held up to shield my eyes. I see the collapsed hangars over to my left and a few more paces bring me onto the runway – what’s left of it.
The quakes have broken the land and the buildings. Whether this part of the country was ‘liquidised’ or not, I don’t know. Actually, it just looks shaken and broken as you’d expect after a severe tremor. One thing that has survived – flourished even – are the trees. In the glare of the sun, they look huge.
I look back at the hatch. They should be here by now. I’ve got my breath back a bit. Perhaps I could run a little more, give myself some more time out here in the light. For some reason, insane curiosity I think, I continue to watch the hatch. It doesn’t open. My eyes adjust to the brightness and I lower my arm.
And I realise:
They never come out in the daylight!
And I am immune to whatever ails them and so the daylight is my world. My safe haven once again. Until dusk I am a free man. Un-hunted.
Ha!
I don’t run. I dance. Some strange dance it is. Not something I recognise but it comes from deep within my bones, rejoicing to be alive.
I stop dancing when I notice the trees again. If they are trees, then something has spread all over them. Some kind of fungal growth. The more I look, the more I realise they aren’t trees at all. The real trees are beyond the perimeter fences of the airfield where they won’t cause a problem for planes taking off and landing. Some of them are even quite tall; majestic copper beeches and sycamores among them. The things growing inside the airfield are something else entirely.
The smallest of them is a hundred feet high, the tallest nearer two hundred. That union of jellyfish and mushroom comes to mind again. A ridged stem, pale as cottage cheese, rising up to a bulbous head, roughly domed about fifty feet in diameter. There are gills underneath the domed caps and they are breathing.
I find I’ve been backing away but when I look around me, the fungal growths are all over the airfield, though concentrated into a shape. It’s the same shape I saw when I looked up from the floor of the cavern. These are the heads of the tendrils, growing so vast because far below they are feeding on the bodies of the human immune that they’ve captured and transported underground from every direction.
I’m running again before I even know what my body is doing.
Just running.
I don’t know where to go.
The ground is uneven and I stumble. I cut myself on the broken tarmac, rise and run on. This is pure instinct now, if it never was before. I am a wild animal before these new predators. My intelligence does me no good and I am alone.
My mind says stop but my body won’t. It keeps running. I’m proud of it though some part of me still thinks that running is stupid and that there’s no dignity in it. My body doesn’t care. It wants to survive.
I’m immune.
I keep telling myself this.
I’m not one of them.
Somehow, I don’t know how, I find my way off the airfield – out through the gates and onto the road. The road is broken by quakes, too, but it is something I recognise and I let it guide my stumbling footsteps. The airfield occupies a shallow, natural concavity in the landscape – rare in the hilly Cotswolds – but the road takes me up a hill; always up a bloody hill, eh? When I reach the top, I stop and look back at the forest of fungus. Nothing has changed. Nothing has moved. Nothing follows me. But there are forests of whitish stalks and domes visible all across the landscape from my little vantage point at the top of this rise. The dread I feel is impossible to shape with words. I feel alien and small on my own planet, in my own world.
A loud pop, echoing up from the airfield, makes me start and I stagger away. It was the sound of a single, really good handclap, only much, much louder. Over one of the domes, a dark mist has appeared. A similar mist shoots up from another pale dome and moments later I hear a second pop. The bursting forth of dark particles becomes more frequent, as do the accompanying percussions. The dark clouds rise up, thin out and disappear.
I don’t wait. I run. What else can I do?
Perhaps a mile farther on, with bursts echoing over the landscape from every direction, I see the shadowy rain. It descends in slow sheets, floating – not falling – down from the sky. I take shelter under the trees at the roadside but the trees are dead; their leaves dried and fallen, their branches desiccated and light as balsa. Poisoned by the new life, I suppose. What else would have caused it?
A tiny pattering overhead signals the first contact of the slow rain touching th
e dead wood. The rain is hard and dry, made of small brown pods with a wiggle of hair behind them; each filament-like ‘tail’ an inch or so long. It’s a sunny day but the sky is obscured somewhat now. Perhaps shrouded is a better word. Any optimism it initially lent me is quelled now by this slow, lightweight hail.
The seeds remind me of something but it’s so obvious I don’t make the connection to begin with. It’s only as they land in my hair and on my hands that I finally allow for the association.
When they start to wriggle they look like dirty, brown sperm. They wriggle as soon as they touch me. I can feel them investigating their way through my hair like little explorers, snaking across the backs of my hands and down between my collar and my neck.
The ones that fall to the ground don’t seem to move at all. It’s as if they’ve no reason to come to life when the thing they’ve landed on is already dead. And the land is dead for sure. The grass is brown. The trees are whitening. The hedges are bare and bony.
As I try to brush the tiny pods from my hair and hands, try to scoop them out from the back of my neck, I notice a herd of cattle in a field near the airstrip. Like me they must have been immune to what first came with the Hush. They don’t move in a herd now. They run and buck, whipping themselves with their tails and throwing their heads back to lick frantically at their flanks. The mooing they make is dreadful; panicked, desperate, insane.
Once it becomes clear that the pods don’t brush off so easily, I begin to panic too. Their little heads quiver and buzz and this vibration opens up my skin like the surface of a pond. Before I can do anything about it, several tails are disappearing below my own surface. I manage to grab one tail between my thumb and finger. Pinching it hard, I pull it out. The pod has immense strength for such a tiny thing. It fights to get away, to disappear into the haven of my flesh. Eventually the tail snaps and it is gone. In my fingers, the remnant still writhes in fury. I throw it away.
The Veil (Testaments I and II) Page 15