On Deadly Ground

by Simon Clark

  ‘Did you know she was pregnant?’

  ‘I heard from Kate. No one else knew who the father was…would have been.’

  ‘No. She wanted to keep the whole thing a big secret.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She had her reasons.’ I sighed. ‘Deep down I think she was worried about the age gap between us. I’m nineteen; she was thirty-seven.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have mattered, would it?’

  I shook my head. ‘But I don’t think Caroline wanted me to feel as if she’d got some kind of hold on me.’

  ‘She was a good woman. She’d be happy to know that you and Kate got together.’

  I gave a laugh so rich in bitterness it sounded shocking. ‘Yeah…Kate and me…Christ…good while it lasted, eh, big brother?’

  ‘Damn it…Rick. We’ll find her. Even if I have to sprout damned wings and fly you there myself.’

  ‘You know, I—’

  ‘Stephen! Rick!’ Dean ran across the grass toward us. ‘Quick. Get yourselves to the radio shack! Howard’s on the radio.’ He was shaking so much he had to take a deep breath. ‘You’ve got to hear what he’s saying!’

  Chapter 91

  At the edge of the airstrip, concealed from view behind thick bushes, was the radio shack. We hit the bushes at a full-blooded run, leaves and branches whipping our hands as we held them high to protect our faces. Freak Boy stood at the doorway, gesturing to us to hurry inside.

  Old man Fullwood sat in front of the radio, mike in hand. He looked up when he saw us. His old-man eyes were vast, round, glistening; almost baby-like. ‘Stephen,’ he said in a shocked voice. ‘Howard’s in trouble.’

  Stephen took the mike. ‘Howard…Howard. This is Stephen Kennedy. What’s happened?’

  Burst of static from the speaker. ‘Christ…don’t believe it…don’t fucking believe it…bastard…bastard…’

  ‘Howard? Tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘Shot…bastards shot up the plane. I’ve got…More burst of static, drowning the words.…altitude…holes…damn machine riddled with holes…ack!’

  ‘Howard? Where are you?’

  ‘Over Cindy’s plane. I…I see it, right beneath me…damn…’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  No reply, only the sizzle of static.

  ‘Howard, please tell me what’s happening to you!’

  ‘Shot,’ came the reply over the speaker. ‘Shot to fuck. I…I brought the plane in low. I can see the road now. Perfect place to land. Then…then the whole plane started shaking. Machine gun fire from the ground. The plane’s riddled. Holes everywhere. Still losing altitude. Windshield shattered. Controls gone. Shit…the rudder bar’s jammed. Elevator’s gone, too. I can’t bring her nose up…Christ, Stephen, I can’t bring her nose up.’

  ‘Howard!’

  ‘Stephen…Oh, God help me…it’s going, it’s going. I can’t pull the nose up!’

  I stood there, listening, in total, total shock. Sweat bled from my skin. I could imagine Howard struggling with the controls of the plane. Already I could hear the rising drone of the engines coming through the radio speaker as the plane began to dive earthward, the slipstream screaming over the wings in that ever-rising note, sounding louder, louder, louder…

  Static roared. Howard’s voice mated with it into an electronic crunching sound. ‘Stephen…Can’t pull her up…controls all…rudder jammed…she’s going…I can’t bring—’

  A scream erupted from the radio speaker, tortured, rising in pitch. You couldn’t tell if it was Howard or the sound of the plane diving toward the ground. Or both. Mated together in terror.

  There came an almighty crack from the speakers. Then there was only the soft sizzle of background static.

  It was over.

  As quickly as that.

  I stepped outside the hut. I breathed deeply. The air icy against my skin. Seven people stood with their little bundles of belongings at the edge of the field; they were waiting for the plane that would never come now to fly them to the coast for a chance of life in another part of the world.

  Howard Sparkman was dead.

  He’d died just five seconds ago. Bloodily, messily, in the plane that had became his coffin the second it smashed into the ground. Now he lay dead in the mess of twisted spars, mangled aluminium panels, a spaghetti Hell of electrical wiring, the engines hemorrhaging engine oil, mingling with his blood.

  I saw it all so vividly in my mind’s eye.

  Howard strapped into the seat. The glasses still on his face. Only now a star crack destroying each lens.

  Christ. I remembered Howard Sparkman the night we went night swimming in the carp pond at Fairburn. There we were, Dean Skilton, Jim Keller, myself, then Howard, swimming the dog paddle and squirting out mouthfuls of water in a long thin stream.

  What will we be doing in ten years?

  That’s what we’d been asking ourselves.

  A week after that swim in the dark, ten-year-old Jim Keller (the boy who wanted to become a pilot) had lain dead at the side of the road after his father had driven away from the family home after splitting up with Mrs Keller.

  Now it was Howard Sparkman’s turn, my friend of ten years. He’d had a passion for food, for flying (realizing an ambition he’d shared with Jim). One day he’d promised us he’d open his own restaurant.

  So much for our dreams and ambitions.

  Chapter 92

  Within twenty minutes of losing Howard Sparkman the meeting was in full swing. We were crowded into the radio shack. There was Jesus, thoughtful, stroking his beard. Stephen, running his hands through his hair, hammering his brain for fresh ideas that would save the skins of his people. I stood beside the door, leaning with my back to the wall, impatiently tapping my palms against my leg. Christ, I was so keen to set off for Leeds on foot to find the planes. Even if it was only to confirm that Howard, Cindy, and Kate were dead.

  There were others crammed into the hut, too: old man Fullwood, Dean Skilton sitting on a chair with his rifle across his knees. Freak Boy squatting in the corner, resting his chin on his two clenched fists. And then there was Victoria, curling a lock of her red hair around a finger. Her bored expression suggested she took as much interest in what was going on as if she was waiting for a bus.

  Jesus launched right in, his Liverpudlian voice soft but businesslike: ‘Stephen. You do realize you have no planes left to fly us out to the coast. How will we reach the ship now?’

  Stephen rubbed his face and took a deep breath. ‘We’ll find a way.’

  ‘We can’t wait any longer, you know?’

  ‘I know that. Have you any ideas?’

  ‘You could find another plane.’

  ‘A new plane wouldn’t be the worst problem. Finding someone to fly it would.’

  ‘We’re deep in the brown stuff, boyo,’ Jesus said.

  ‘Tell me about it. Dean, how many people have we got left here?’

  ‘We’ve already transported sixty-two. Twenty-eight of Jesus’s people and thirty-four of ours.’

  ‘So we’ve…what? Fifty-eight remaining?’

  ‘Fifty-six,’

  ‘Fifty-six people that we’ve got to get from here at Fountains to the coast.’

  Jesus looked round at us. ‘Ideas, anyone? How do you shift fifty-six people to that ship before we starve to death here?’

  ‘There is one way,’ Stephen said carefully. ‘But I don’t think anyone’s going to care for the idea.’

  Jesus stroked his beard. ‘Maybe…what you got in mind?’

  ‘Walk.’ He looked round at us, gauging our reactions from the expressions on our faces. ‘We carry what we can…and we walk.’

  ‘Walk?’

  ‘It’s about a hundred kilometres as the crow flies. We can do it.’

  ‘Yeah, sure we could.’ Dean gave a grim laugh. ‘We could this time last year and we could call it a fucking holiday. But what lies between here and the coast?’

  ‘About two million starving people,�
� Jesus said in a flat voice. ‘Stephen, you know as well as I do that those people are so hungry they’d stop at nothing to get their hands on the food we were carrying.’

  ‘Even if we had no food they’d strip the human meat off our bones.’ Dean shook his head. ‘You think we could hope…just hope to somehow sneak by all those people in the dark?’

  ‘Do you think we should stay here?’

  ‘Well, we certainly damn well can’t walk to the coast. How far do you think we’d get?’

  I said, ‘Stephen’s right. We can’t stop here. The food’ll run out within a couple of weeks. And how long before the Greys get here? Have you forgotten about them?’

  Again this demonstrated we were two distinct tribes. Jesus’s people nodded. They believed in the Greys. Stephen’s people did not; they exchanged knowing looks or shook their heads, as if to say, ‘Rick, madder than a hatter, still rambling about grey bogey men again? Doesn’t the sad bastard know this isn’t the time for that crappola now?’

  At that point, Victoria broke the awkward silence. ‘You know what you have to do. But none of you can bring yourselves to say it out loud, can you?’ Victoria spoke in a bored tone; she paid more attention to the curl of hair between her fingers.

  We all looked at her.

  Briefly she raised her eyes to us before dropping them back to the strands of hair, which she slowly twisted around her middle finger.

  Stephen asked, ‘Victoria, what do you mean?’

  ‘Go west.’

  ‘West?’

  ‘It’s the only way any of you will reach the ship.’

  ‘West?’ Dean echoed in disbelief. ‘For Godsakes, Victoria. The ship is anchored off the east coast. The bloody east coast.’

  ‘And that, dear girl, is in the opposite direction.’ Jesus shook his head sadly.

  Stephen stood up suddenly. He punched his left fist into his palm. ‘Hell, Victoria!’

  She looked up.

  ‘You’re right…you’re damn’ well right.’

  Dean shook his head, puzzled. ‘What do mean? We go west?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what we do. We pack up and we walk that away.’ He pointed. ‘Due west.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ Dean said.

  ‘No, it isn’t—it’s a stroke of genius.’

  ‘The ship’s on the east coast. You want us to walk west? What’s the damn point in that?’

  ‘Think about it,’ Stephen said, suddenly enthused by the idea. ‘Jesus. Haven’t we got enough crew on the ship to sail her?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Yes, but nothing.’ A fire came into Stephen’s eye. He’d found a way. ‘This is what happens. We radio the ship tonight. We tell them to sail north, then west across the tip of Scotland, then south, down into the Irish Sea. By the time they’ve reached the coast, due west from here, we’ll have walked the eighty-odd kilometres across country to meet them. Then—’ He clapped his hands. ‘We’re sailing south. To safety. To a new life.’

  ‘OK, Stephen.’ Jesus spoke gently. ‘Just wait a minute there, boyo. Yes, there’s enough crew on the ship to do that. But aren’t you forgetting something?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The land to the west of here. It’s nothing but cinders and ashes. Am I right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We’re to walk through that? You say that’s a logical plan?’

  ‘Not only is it logical, it’s the only way we’re going to survive.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Jesus, I know so. Look.’ Stephen rested one foot on a chair, and leaned forward to talk to us. He’d got the bit between his teeth. ‘You’re right, Jesus. Everything west of Leeds is desert. A big, black, ugly, godforsaken desert without so much as a blade of grass. But—’ he held up his finger. ‘It will be empty. When the heat came it drove everyone east. There will be no people to get in our way.’

  ‘And the Greys?’

  ‘The Greys?’ Momentarily he closed his eyes. I thought he was going to rubbish the idea that the Greys even existed. Instead he took the diplomatic route. ‘OK. Some people believe in these grey…grey humanoid creatures. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that something inhuman does exist out there. All right, I’ll go with that. But that’s a risk we’ll have to take. My guess is, if we stick to a route that takes us across the highland areas, well away from whatever’s left of the towns, we’ll not see any of these Grey Men. They’ll not waste their time sitting out in the middle of nowhere. With luck we can hike right through to the coast in three or four days.’

  ‘With luck?’ old man Fullwood said heavily. ‘Luck is perhaps the most rare commodity of all.’

  Stephen looked at Jesus. ‘It’s your crew and your ship. What do you say?’

  Jesus stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘If we stay here we’ll die. That’s a certainty.’ He nodded. ‘OK. We go west.’

  That was the decision. We were moving out. And we’d be going into the burnt lands. Maybe right into the grey arms of the bogeyman himself.

  I guess it was the right decision. After all, it was the only option, short of walking directly to the east coast. Which would have been suicide for sure. The green lands to the east were thick with hungry survivors still. We wouldn’t last a day out there.

  The truth of the matter was that right then I simply wanted to kit up ready to walk to Leeds to find the two crashed planes. In short, I wanted to find Kate. That’s all that seemed important to me.

  As Jesus, Stephen and the rest thrashed out the logistics of the plan I headed outside to scrounge together a backpack, food, water bottle and a gun.

  Within five minutes on that cold winter day I was ready. I found Stephen to tell him I was leaving.

  He said, ‘We’re starting out at first light tomorrow, so there’s no point in returning to Fountains Moor once you’ve found the planes.’ He handed me a map on which he’d drawn a red line. Every so often along the red line were red asterisks. ‘The red line’s the route. It’s an old Roman road that avoids what were once main areas of habitation. The asterisks are the villages you’ll pass closest to. If you rejoin this route here at Skipton, you’ll catch us up. When I can I’ll use an aerosol paint can to spray a ‘K’ on walls and trees en route, so you know we’re ahead of you.’

  ‘Where are you rendezvousing with the ship?’

  He pointed to the map. ‘Here on the coast. There’s a place called Heysham, just west of Lancaster. See the lighthouse marked there?’

  ‘I see it.’

  ‘If you don’t catch us up en route, or you’re forced to follow an alternative route, make for the lighthouse. Once we join the ship we’ll wait until precisely ten days from tonight. Then we set sail.’

  I gave a grim smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there.’

  Chapter 93

  For an hour I’d walked through green fields. Now I stopped on the bank of a dried-up river bed. Beyond the river bed were the burnt lands.

  They began as abruptly as that.

  Grass at this side. Lush, green, very much alive.

  On the far side of the waterless river, nothing but burnt grass, burnt trees, burnt fences, houses, cars, churches, melted roads, burnt bones…lots and lots of burnt bones. The smell of burning filled my nostrils.

  You could see human skulls spread all across that black desert like big yellow pebbles. Thousands of them. The skulls of men, women and children who had struggled to survive.

  Just like us.

  They hadn’t made it.

  Just like us?

  I shivered.

  DANGER!

  The north wind blew. It sounded human, like a girl crying, alone, brokenhearted. The wind blew harder, the cry sounded louder, more despairing, It whipped up black dust devils that twisted savagely, battering the burnt shells of cars, rolling skulls madly across the ground before dying back into that dead black earth. I shivered again, zipped up my jacket.

  DANGER!

  Christ, yes. Dang
er. There might as well have been a dirty great sign, its post planted deep in the river bed. I’d no difficulty imagining it there, complete with big red letters: DANGER! DO NOT GO BEYOND THIS POINT. YOU’LL NEVER COME BACK ALIVE.

  I looked across the river bed, the mud dried into flaky black scales, and I felt nothing but a cold, oozing dread.

  Even so, I knew I had to go on. I had to find the plane. Kate and Cindy might be hurt. Trapped in the plane, or lying unconscious in their seats where they might be eaten by rats. Without a doubt, the cold alone would kill them in a few hours.

  The wind blew hard again, flattening the hair against my head, making my eyes water.

  More dust devils reared like the ghosts of the dead to dance their mad dance, twisting across a black desert that looked like edge of hell itself.

  ‘OK…are you ready for this?’

  By my side stood Tesco. He wore a backpack, his rifle slung by the strap across his back; blown by the cold wind, the orange strips of silk rippled and cracked like pennants.

  Tesco had insisted he come with me to find the downed planes. But I knew he wasn’t ready for this. He was used to a flooded London. This nightmarescape of black dust was something else. He stood there, eyes fixed on the burnt world that seemed to roll out into forever.

  ‘Well?’ I prompted.

  Tesco looked in disbelief and sheer eye-widening horror. ‘We have to walk across that?’

  There’s no other way.’

  ‘Christ Almighty. There’s nothing alive in that shit.’

  ‘You don’t have to come with me, you know that?’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Tesco said, swallowing. Then, taking a deep breath as if he was going to take a dangerous leap from a clifftop into the sea, he said. ‘What’re we waiting for?’

  He walked down the river bank, silk strips fluttering, and jumped down onto the crust of the river bed. Dust squirted up around his feet.

  ‘A word of warning,’ I said as I followed him. ‘The ground might not be as solid as it seems.’

  ‘Not solid?’

  ‘Tread carefully. Keep watching the ground around you. Keep listening, too. When the heat builds underneath you, you’ll hear thumping sounds, clicks, creaks, groaning. That’s the rocks expanding; also, groundwater will have turned to steam and be doing its damnedest to force a way out.’