October 2027
Back in the late Autumn of 2026 the air was still warm, the summer heat lingering along with meadows of wildflower in an endless cycle of birth and rebirth. I can’t imagine what it was like before ‘the end’ but walking through fields and then suddenly hitting tarmac was a constant and surprising delight, the boundary between nature and Man growing greener by the year as the cracks widened and everything from the yarrow and the dandelion to the brambles and ivy sprouted from wind-dusted gutters or weakened mortar. From what I could gather from Father and old nature programs, this heat was a new normal; where it might have hit twenty-two or twenty-three degrees on a really nice day, it wasn’t unusual to hit thirty in October. It made me pine for the old days; something I could say I had in common with Mother and Father, for completely different reasons.
It was just too hot. I often stared at my brothers working bare-chested and wonder if whatever made me different from them also made me hate the heat more – or was it that way for everyone? Would most people just want to hibernate away in shade or sit all day in water?
I didn’t sweat as much as they did, that was one thing. They shone while I could almost see my skin hardening in the sun, as if that was its form of self-preservation instead of sweat. It had its bonuses, I suppose. I guess it never got in my eyes or stung them. I was dampest under the armpits, wiping my hand there every now and then and scenting a tree or a crumbling old wall. There weren’t many walls around here – fields were mostly separated by hedgerow or trees and the occasional wire fence, but some lanes near to our neighbours had quarried stone walls. Hidden now in places. There was one old house with a square wall all the way around and a single waist-high gate that had caught my eye one day; its brown slate roof waving at me from above an orchard of apple and cherry trees. It looked lonely beneath the blue sky. Whatever road had lead here was long reclaimed. Not much of a garden size-wise. A shed that had rotted lopsided and exposed rusted machinery. It seemed odd to me that there should be somewhere like this, out here in the middle of the land if that wasn’t land that you owned. That you farmed. Seemed to me in the old world with everything it had going for it you’d want to be closer to the cities and towns than this, especially if you weren’t a farmer.
Imagine not having to grow food or forage to eat. Imagine going to a shop and being able to eat whatever you wanted. The kind of person who had lived in this house must not have enjoyed food very much, or they wouldn’t have moved here. Even the nearest village shop, a few miles away, was so small it might not have something you were craving. I’d been there, seen the empty shelves and tried to imagine them full, and then compared it to films with shops one-hundred times larger, and how full they looked. It seemed like a dream. One that would never come true again.
I took to calling the house my home from home. The second time I paid a visit I wasn’t alone. My scent must’ve been all over it; and in the fields and woodland around, for it drew unwanted attention. The smell of dead mutates came with the chance of deterrence, for dead mutates could mean danger. However, the smell of a fresh young thing like me meant dinnertime. In the late autumn of 2026 I almost became dinner.
That air was hot and the sun stinging and the meadow still as well-water. Only movement was me, swimming through it towards the beacon of the house. Disturbed untimely pollen gave it a yellow hue; I remember everything feeling saturated. The house yellower and yellower the closer I got. Before long I hit the jagged edge of the stone wall and vaulted over, faced with a rectangle of wall with two peering windows. It really was just a box in the middle of nowhere. Here and there at my feet were remnants of an old stone pathway, or a section that had been decorated with pebbles. Terracotta plant pots sat brimming with soil and no plants, not even weeds. Long grasses now brown and brittle attended the garden gate, seemingly flattened in some areas. Briefly I asked myself if I’d done that last time, and then went round to the back door. The front door had been locked, but back doors so often weren’t. The skeleton of a greenhouse stood at the back with empty shelves, all the empty plastic pots blown away; some now entwined with nature itself.
Inside was amazingly cool. It was like the farmhouse; you stepped straight into the kitchen, and though nothing worked, I was already thinking of it as my kitchen. They had pipes and a tap, so it used to run at one time. Not anymore. With no well, this wasn’t the kind of place you would easily choose to wait out an apocalypse. But in the days after? Well, perhaps not even then. Unless you were like me and unafraid of the five-minute walk to the stream meandering through the woods off the hill. I could smell my nascent nest, not as strongly as I would’ve liked. A doorway lead through a small hallway into a lounge, curtains drawn and dust settled over an empty patterned sofa, empty coffee table, empty writing bureau with cup rings engrained forever in the top. Hundreds of years from now, perhaps someone would use it again.
Something moved above me. There at the top of the stairs was something wearing the gorse I had used to begin decorating my nest; tucked into its vest. My straw hat was on its head. As it jumped down I remember being impressed by its ingenuity. Only with it bearing down on me could I now sense something else beneath my own scent. I rolled into the lounge, knocking the writing bureau and sending it flying. So much for future reuse. It cracked against the wall just as I rolled back to my feet.
Straw Hat landed, and I could see it was a strong one. Between its cunning and the popping hamstrings, evidently he ate frequently and ate well, and was developing into the intelligent fighting machine that may once have been the intention. If it lived longer it’d soon apex and join others like it.
I braced to jump, not sure yet in which direction. It copied me and snarled its deep, guttural growl. Its jaw had fused with muscle meant to clamp down rather than sound out round ‘O’ sounds, and its lips had pulled back to reveal a set of short teeth sharpened by grinding. It scraped the wooden floorboards with a fingernail, and tapped rhythmically.
I asked it what it was waiting for and it grunted a reply. Maybe the tongue was too swollen or thickened to make any other noise.
Finally, from a launching position, it jumped. Midair, it tried to adjust as I jumped to the ceiling; instead its nails reached for my boots and failed to find purchase and it collided with the wall where I had been standing. I came down from above and kicked at its head and tried to find purchase on its shoulder, but it rolled away. Here came what I called The Frenzy. The mutates couldn’t hold on to their intelligence for long before lust overpowered them and set them on a spiralling act that either ended with death or food.
It jumped at me again, hissing, head down and turning into a shoulder barge. I grabbed the coffee table and used it to deflect the jump, surprising it with my speed. It bounced across the sofa. I used the opportunity to smash the table against the floor, breaking it into pieces. Shield lost but weapon gained.
It snarled and turned for me again, launching into another pounce that turned the sofa onto its back. I rolled forward, grabbing a stake just before it hit me. It ripped at my back and snapped its mouth at my neck; there was no pain but that would come later. I expanded my chest and pushed out my elbows, appreciating how I’d never take my personal space or granted again. Its breath reeked and its bald head greased with some kind of slimy residue – perhaps what substituted for sweat. Its skin was ferociously hot, burning, yet it was white as the moment it appeared.
From beneath, I brought up the stake and pushed it through its chin, ceasing the snap and the growl – and stopped. Pushing forward, I was able to get its claws from my back, and the higher I pushed the stake, the weaker it became as it realised the end was near. Its eyes were wide and white, pinpricks of black. Staring at me as I lifted it higher, to the point it stood on tiptoes and its own weight was now pressing it down. The tip of the stake must’ve reached its brain by now; thick, glutinous blood dribbled from the wound and down my hand and arm. Its eyes remained locked with mine, and for an instant before death there might have bee
n something like relief there – or perhaps that was my imagination. It could just as easily have been the settling dust.
February 2029
I’d never slept in my home from home before. There’d be too many questions I didn’t want to answer. But it was here I learned to meditate and understand some of the things I was capable of with my body. On the morning I brought Dale and the rest of the group the sky was a clear, deep blue as the light from the sun arrived. The clouds and rain had gone; together we trudged through wet mud and short grass in single file, quiet as the wind. Dale and Adeline front and back, with me leading. There was no path for I was the only one who could disturb the grasses and hedges, and I tried to do that as little as possible.
Aled once tried to follow me but I circled back on him and gave him the fright of his life by snarling as deeply as I could; not quite mutate but definitely not human. He ran back home and told on me, expecting Father to have stern words with me; instead he got the belt himself and told to Stand up for yourself, boy.
And now he was gone, along with Dylan and Jack.
I imagined Father and Mother digging graves. Where would they put them? Next to mine? The truth of what had happened still hadn’t hit me; the practicalities of the dead bodies and the tears and screaming, the chores and feeding, the work to be done now stretched out over two people. What would they do now? Continue childless? Live into old age repeating the same cycle of chores, with little to no contact with the outside world?
They should give up, I thought, as the familiar sight of my home from home came into view nestled in the bottom of its small valley.
Dale and the rest followed me to the bottom. Before opening the gate I raised a hand so they’d stop behind me, and I toured the perimeter, scenting and sniffing and looking for signs of intruders. When satisfied all was clear, I opened the gate and entered, vaguely aware of the strange looks they were giving me, and each other.
Around to the back door, I unlocked it with a key I had found hidden under some plant pots in the damaged greenhouse.
Have you ever nurtured something, all on your own? Or held something back – some secret – from loved ones and friends? To then share it? As they entered the kitchen behind me, every footstep on the floor was like a violation, and when I turned and saw them stamping their muddy boots and loosening all that foreign scent, all I could do was stand in silence, jaw popping. In seconds my nest was filled with strangeness, wasps in a beehive, foxes in a rabbit hole.
“So this is safe?” asked Dale, looking around.
I nodded. “You?”
“Us?” laughed Bessie, squeezing into the tight space with her backpack. So many backpacks, all falling to the floor, filled with weight.
“Yes, we’re safe,” said Dale. “Not that I think you need to worry about us. I’m more worried about you. Are you safe?”
I opened the nearest cupboard on the wall, revealing a tin-pile stacked high. “Food, if you’re hungry. Rooms for sleeping. Mutates don’t bother me here, anymore.” I left them in the kitchen and went upstairs.
“She wants to fatten us up,” I heard Greg joke among their murmurs. Adeline shouted after me, asking me where I was going.
“I’m hungry,” I called down. I had one space that was all mine. A rope hung from the rafters through the open loft hatch and up I climbed into it, pulling the rope up with me. Light edged its way in from the makeshift dormer cut from the roof and lined with good wood stolen from another house, creating a flap that I could prop up to see east. The light shone on my scavenging exploits; trunks of all kinds of clothes and footwear and boxes of dried and tinned food. I’d piled books in all the corners and in the summer I’d heaped dried hay by the window and lay down in the shade of the flap with the field and distant wood shimmering, reading the next one and the next one and the next one; a time that now feels so far distant as to be lost. I’d wanted it to last forever, while knowing that it wouldn’t. That it shouldn’t. There was more out there and all this was preparation.
A skinned rabbit hung above, drying. I sliced some meat away from the hind and began to chew, enjoying its rich taste while listening to the intruders and their noise. Four sets of feet came up the stairs and dispersed while the other two went into the front room. I’d never cleaned the mess made in there after removing the body. Never thought I’d have visitors. Someone said, “Too tired to eat,” and another said, “You should get a couple hours. This seems like a safe enough place.”
It is, I thought, lying back and closing my eyes.
I dreamed of my brothers turned into mutate statues, frozen in a storm of ice. Locked in place with their arms reaching for me and their mouths drawn wide into snarls, mid-bite, only their eyes twitching as I moved between them. Hot on bloodlust, their penises jutted from within the melting ice and tried reaching for me. They were light as I lifted them. I realised I was in the cellar of the farmhouse where the camp beds were sometimes stored, so I placed one of my brothers on top of one. I picked up the next in line and placed him on top of the other, and then the last on top of that. Standing back, the door to the cellar crashed open and Mother appeared in silhouette, screaming, “What have you done?” Father appeared in the corner of the room, arms crossed, head shaking.
The sun was high, glaring into the loft space when I woke, feeling warm. The dream stayed a while, Father’s face watching me from the rafters. It was a recurring theme in the months that followed, and even now sometimes I see his face, calling me out, trying to draw sympathy, or pity perhaps. But I took it as a warning in those early days. His eyes said “You should have killed me. I’m coming for you.”
“You’d never leave Mother,” I whispered into the eaves. “And Mother’d never leave the farm.”
I rose and grabbed another slice of dried rabbit to ease my growling stomach. I knew it wouldn’t be enough, not after the excursions of the previous day. I already felt weaker for it, despite the rest. In the far corner was a stack of tinned meat with dogs and cats upon the labels. I used my penknife to poke a large hole in the corner of one tin and then prised the lid back with my nail before spooning the food out. It tasted... old... tasteless... despite its pungent odour. From age it had little nourishment, but it would fill a hole until I could manage to find some fresh meat.
The loft hatch opened into a darkness that should not have been, and from somewhere a memory of thuds came floating back. Likely to be things moved across bright windows as I’d requisitioned all the curtains for my loft nest. I dropped down into snores and deep breathing, leaving the rope where it was. All the doors were open so from here I could see that the two bedrooms were occupied, bags at the foot of the beds. Temptation and habit drew me to the bags, but those days were over. At least for now.
A voiced stopped me at the bottom of the stairs. “Is there water?”
I peered around into the living room, eyeing the broken writing bureau pushed against the front door, and the coffee table upended against the window to block light. Dale was in his sleeping bag on the floor, while Bessie lay on the springs of the sofa (the cushions also up in the loft).
“A stream,” I answered. “I’ll grab some.”
“I’ll come with you.”
I shrugged and turned for the back door. Tired groans followed me as I left my home from home, my nest, and grabbed the bucket from the half-open shed at the back of the garden. I upended green, unused water on the garden and then headed south, through the gate. Dale was at my side, quiet, until about halfway across the field towards the woods.
“So do you have a name?”
“They called me Ffion.”
“Ah yes, last night, they were calling you.”
Dale was younger than Father in years. In experience, though; in his scars and in his eyes, it was easy to tell he’d lived more than Father ever had. He caught me looking, and unlike so many people, didn’t shy away.
“Why were they calling you?”
“For help.”
“Is that what they
did? Take people in. Kill them. While you kept lookout?”
I unbuttoned my jacket, feeling the heat now. We passed a mound of earth that now had fresh roots, fed by the dead flesh beneath. “Sometimes.” I wondered if he could smell it.
“Yet you were unarmed.” This wasn’t posed as a question. It came with a nod and a sideward’s glance.
“Where are you going?”
Dale looked to the sky for the position of the sun and then pointed north, north-west. “That way.”
“That way?”
“That way,” he smiled. “You’ll excuse me if perhaps I don’t want to divulge everything.”
“That way ain’t straight to the sea like most people.”
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “How many never made it to the sea, I wonder.” Again, a statement, not a question. “They... were your brothers?”
I nodded, ducking beneath the first of a series of low branches that formed a thicket wall into the thinner forest beyond.
“If that was your family, why did you turn on them?”
“I have no family,” I replied.
“Surely they raised you?”
“Were the chickens family? The pigs?” The ground began to descend at this point, causing us to duck and crouch walk with our hands to the wet earth. We slid our way down, bucket clanking.
“This don’t bode well for getting back up.”
“There’s a walk-around,” I said. “Direct route’s faster.”
“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to. Maybe they abused you, or something. Maybe they were just bad people and you had had enough.”
I raised my hand to halt us.
“What is it?”
I raised a finger for silence.
“No. You tell me what it is.”
I glared at him and he turned his eyes to my growling stomach.
The Risen ( Part 2): The Risen, Part 2 Page 5