by Simon Clark
At last I caught enough breath to speak. ‘We’ll wait until dark…then we’ll go back to the plane.’
‘Hell, Rick. You’ve got to be joking.’
‘I have to go back. I’ve got to see what’s written on the plane.’
Tesco shot me a grin; against his soot-blackened skin his teeth were so white they looked fluorescent.
‘I might have chucked school by the time I was ten,’ he said. ‘But my memory’s not that bad.’
‘You had a chance to read the message?’
He nodded. ‘It might make more sense to you than it did to me.’
I sat up straight, skin prickling. ‘OK, shoot.’
‘Let me get this right.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I read: Rick. Poor Cindy killed in crash. I’m going to join Ben Cavellero. Find me there. Love, Kate.’ He opened his eyes, looking pleased with himself. ‘What do you make of that?’
I was already on my feet.
‘Hey…Rick,’ he called. ‘Wait for me.’ Still breathless, he picked up his backpack and ran after me. ‘Who’s Ben Cavellero?’
‘He’s an old friend. He lives in a little place called Fairburn about four hours’ walk from here.’
‘You’re going there?’
I nodded.
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘There’s no need. You can still catch up with the main party. You’ve got a copy of the route.’
‘I have.’ He spoke firmly. ‘But I’m coming with you, OK?’
‘OK.’ I nodded. ‘It means going back through the centre of Leeds, then heading north.’
‘You think this Cavellero guy will still be there?’
‘I don’t know…I really don’t know.’
We walked on in silence. We entered the burnt-out heart of Leeds once more. The mummified bodies still swayed from the cables criss-crossing the road.
I shot a glance at Tesco. What did I make of him?
He’d tried to kill me on that island the first time we met. I punched him so hard in the cellar on Paradise Island that I’d torn a hole in his face. Not that it wasn’t a mess already with the scars radiating outward like the petals of a daisy. Now here he was, walking hard, big boots scrunching across the rubble. He was weighed under a huge backpack, his rifle on his shoulder; the silken strips fluttered in the breeze; the ones tied around his knees trailed, now and again, in the dirt, turning the orange strips black at the ends.
Surely he wasn’t here on some humanitarian mission to help me find Kate and the others?
After all, it didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to deduce he’d hated my guts.
Why the sudden change of heart?
Had Jesus sent him along to keep an eye on me? Maybe even put a slug in my back when I wasn’t looking? After all, I didn’t trust the pair of them. Jesus was always too quick to agree to whatever Stephen suggested. But Jesus was the leader of his community while Stephen led ours. I’d have thought there’d be more friction between the two.
It didn’t add up.
And the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that Tesco had an ulterior motive for helping me. I became convinced, too, that the Liverpudlian who called himself Jesus was engineering some secret plan of his own.
I was still mulling this over when I saw the remains of Howard’s plane. It had come down hard in the city square between the massive Queen’s Hotel and the post office. The machine was little more than shreds of blackened metal. One of its wings lay across the once-elegant entrance of the hotel.
Gingerly, I stepped through the wreckage and looked into what remained of the cockpit. Howard had been reduced to bones by the heat. I picked a piece of twisted metal from the ashes. His gold-rimmed glasses. They’d been melted out of shape by the intense heat.
There was nothing we could do. Howard Sparkman, age twenty-one, was dead.
I looked at my watch. We’d been without sleep for thirty hours. I felt dead inside. Emotionally dead.
We began walking again. We’d probably only been on the move for ten minutes when I noticed that Tesco had begun to repeatedly glance back the way we’d come.
I knew the reason. Slipping my rifle from my shoulder I said, ‘We’re being followed, aren’t we?’
Chapter 98
My name is Kate Robinson.
I’m writing this now because this might be my last chance to tell you, Rick, what happened. I know you’ll find this. Whether you will find my body I don’t know.
I must write quickly. They are getting closer. I know any moment they could break down the door. God knows what they will do to me then. Oh, Rick I’ve never felt so vulnerable and alone. I wish you were here with me.
OK, this is what happened to me:
Yesterday the plane carrying Cindy and myself suffered engine trouble. Cindy managed to land the plane on a road just outside Leeds. Just seconds after I climbed out of the plane, it was hit by gunfire. There were bullets hitting the ground all around me. I ran for cover, then waved to Cindy to taxi the plane out of harm’s way.
I could see the bullets hitting the plane as she taxied the plane along the road.
She tried hard to get clear of the gunfire; she pushed the plane faster than it was capable of. It was still taxiing along the road when the front wheel of the undercarriage hit a traffic island. In a second it had flipped over onto its back.
When I reached the plane I found Cindy dead in the cockpit.
What else was there to do? I decided to walk to Fairburn in the hope Ben Cavellero and the rest of the villagers might be here. I arrived at Fairburn last night.
You’ll have seen the change in the countryside here. The heat seeping up through the ground has killed all plant life. The trees are charcoal. The fields are blackened. There’s not a single green leaf to be seen. From Leeds to Fairburn there is nothing but desert now. Black desert.
I’d almost reached the village when I saw them.
That’s when I ran into the church and shut the door.
You recall St Helen’s church on the edge of the village? (That’s where I’m writing this now. Sitting on a wooden pew at the back of the church near the font.) I remember when the church’s limestone walls gleamed as white as milk in the sunlight; the square tower with the clock; the black slate roof; how the old graveyard, crammed with ancient headstones, surrounded it, making it look as picturesque as an old Constable painting.
You’ll have seen, as you walked here, how it’s all changed now. The walls are blackened by grass fires. There are fissures in the ground from which ashes and dust are propelled into the sky by jets of gas. The ash falls like black snow. It mounds against the walls of the church. The gravestones are covered. The hands of the clock in the tower are forever frozen at ten to two.
They’re out there now.
It’s nearly midday. The stained glass windows are smashed. If I stand on the ladder I’ve leant against the wall I can see out of the church. I see them moving closer.
You were right, Rick. I’d never seen these Grey Men before but they are real. Just to see them is the most terrifying experience of my life.
Against the black ground they seem to gleam bright grey. Almost as if they are lit from inside. The eyes are as red as fresh blood. Their arms are long, powerful, like those of apes.
They’re coming for me now. I’ve just climbed the ladder to see out. They’ve crossed what’s left of the fence into the graveyard. They’re now just thirty paces or so from the door of the church.
I’m going to take my rifle with me now. I won’t let them take me without a fight.
Goodbye, Rick.
I loved you. I really did.
—Kate.
Chapter 99
My name is Rick Kennedy.
We walked through Leeds; the roads were carpeted ankle-deep in shattered glass that crunched beneath our feet. Buildings were burnt skeletons. Venetian blinds swayed behind broken windows. No human beings moved through the city. Only the rats, crows—and now something else.
I nodded. ‘The boys in grey are back again.’
‘The Greys?’
‘See to our right? In the alleyway?’
‘Uh…I see them,’ Tesco grunted. He eased back the rifle bolt.
‘Don’t use the gun unless you have to,’ I said in a low voice. ‘I think they outnumber us by about a hundred to one.’
‘We’ll take some of the bastards with us. What do you say?’
‘I say, keep moving,’ I told him. ‘We might be able to lose them in the ruins.’
We walked faster.
I glanced back at the grey figures. They all looked so alike they could have been mass-produced by some nightmare machine. Picture this:
Eyes, oriental in shape. Glistening.
Red.
Wet.
Evil.
Big, mulish heads; a strip of bristling black hair that follows the crest of bone running from the forehead to the back of the skull. The arms are apelike. Biceps bulge with great knots of muscle; those arms are powerful enough to snap a man as easily as you or I would snap a pencil. And stretched over that thundering great framework of bone and blocks of muscle is the skin, looking like crudely tanned leather, the colour of grey clay; from this skin, warts poke out obscenely like coarse brown nipples.
The creatures didn’t rush us. They seemed pretty much detached and unemotional about the whole thing. They merely filed from the alley, to stand and watch us hurry away.
I knew within a couple of minutes why they weren’t tripping over each other to catch us. Because they were all over the city like a disease.
I passed a house. I saw a grey face watching me from the shadows inside. The blood-red eyes fixed on mine.
‘Hurry it up,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get clear of the city.’
Now we were moving at a jog. I wanted to run faster, but I knew we’d have to conserve some energy. We’d not slept in thirty hours. We’d eaten nothing but cake and apples on the trek down to Leeds.
Exhaustion started to bite.
The Grey Men were slowly moving out from the ruins and into the street.
You could sense the tension building. In the way the eyes stared at us without blinking. Biceps and shank muscles twitched beneath skin.
They were inhuman. But there was intelligence there. Some monstrous implacable plan had been formed. They were following that plan. When the time came for them to destroy us they would act.
Now they moved with robotic calm. They were in no hurry. We were easy meat.
Chapter 100
I am Kate Robinson. This happened to me:
It all happened so fast. How they got into the church I don’t know. Suddenly the grey monsters were everywhere. They surged over the pews as fast as tigers. I fired off a couple of shots before the creatures hit me.
Everything happened with such explosive speed that I have no clear recollection what happened next.
Only that I was lying flat on my back on the stone floor, my head hurting so much I thought I would vomit.
I felt hands grab me by my coat; savagely they dragged me to my feet.
I must have been on the verge of blacking out.
One moment I’d see a huge grey face pushed forward into mine, those blood-red eyes locking onto my eyes. Then the eyes searched my face almost as if they were reading words on a page. They were looking for something. I felt like a specimen in a laboratory.
All the time, those savage hands pulled at my arms, and at my clothes, examining me with a roughness that was incredible.
And all the time I was gasping, trying to scream, praying that if I could only scream loud enough they’d leave me alone.
Again, all I can say is that I only remember what happened in flashes, as if clips of videotape had been joined together in a random, chaotic way. These are the memories that flash into my head:
—I see a grey hand swoop out of the gloom like an obscene bird of prey. The hand grips my jaw, my face is pulled into the grey face of that thing.
—‘Help! Help!’
—No help coming.
—That face in close-up again, its nostrils widening; it pants so excitedly I feel its breath gusting into my face. It stinks of rot and damp. The blood-red eyes narrow. My God, I see the face in mad, mad detail…blood-red eyes again, wet, slick, halfway between liquid and solid. But oh, so red. I see the warts as thick as your thumb studding the forehead, the jaw; I see the mane of black hair bristling across the great bony skull
—What do I feel? What do I feel? Keep a grip, Kate; don’t let this crack your mind.
—So, what do you feel? I feel terror, such unimaginable terror; the grey hands run over me like a butcher feeling the meat on a pig. They squeeze cruelly hard.
—I can’t breathe. I want to scream. But I can’t draw breath. I feel a tremendous weight on my stomach,
—Oh, dear God. Rick. Please, Rick, where are you? These monsters are tearing me apart.
—They lift me clean off the floor by my hair; the grey paw clutches a great fistful. Still they squeeze my arms, thighs, hands, face. They squeeze with such a savage strength I could pass out…
—The blackouts come.
—My coat is torn off.
—I hear my sweatshirt rip as a fist grabs the collar, pulls, pulls hard again. I can’t breathe. Dear God, make them let go of the sweatshirt; the collar’s pulled tight around my throat. I can’t breathe.
—OH!
—The pain is sickening. I’m dropped down flat to the ground. I see smashed pews, the remains of stained glass, the wings of an angel; torn Bibles…
—Candles scattered on the floor. I can’t think straight. Still I can’t breathe. This is agony.
—Oh, please don’t let them do that.
—Rick, Rick, where are you please…please…
—They have grabbed my ankles. I lie on my back. They’re lifting my legs up. Oh, Christ…not that. I don’t believe they’d do that. They’re not men. Surely they don’t believe they could…
—OH! OHHHH!
—Not that!
—Oh, they wouldn’t do that. Please let go of my legs, don’t force them up towards my chest…you’re breaking my back…you’re breaking my back!
—You’re ripping my clothes!
—No, don’t do that!
—You’re hurting…please…you’re hurting…you’re hurting…oh! You’re—no—no—ah!
Chapter 101
My name is Rick Kennedy. This is the outskirts of Leeds. I’ve just seen a sign that points to Fairburn.
But that’s when they make their move.
‘Run!’ I shouted. ‘They’re coming for us.’
The Grey Men moved like panthers.
We pounded across the road. The heat had broken up the blacktop so it splashed as loose as biscuit crumbs every time our feet thumped down.
I panted, glanced to my right. Tesco was at my side, rifle gripped in his two hands. He panted hard, sinking everything into running, his eyes nailed to the road ahead.
‘Stand and fight them!’ he shouted.
‘You wouldn’t have a prayer. Lose them!’
‘Lose them where?’
‘There, in the wood.’
It was a wood once. Now it was a petrified forest of burnt timbers; the branches made you think of giant spider legs, long, spindly, brittle, dark as Black Widows.
Most of the trees still stood, in black, silent columns.
We’d fallen into a ghost world.
Populated with ghost men.
And soon they would tear our arms from our bodies.
As easily as you tear the legs off a cooked chicken.
Easy meat.
That’s what we were.
But, Christ knows, I didn’t want to die.
I wanted to find Kate.
If it was the last thing I did.
The forest was dark. Dead branches still blocked out much of the daylight. When we ran it was
eerily silent. Our footsteps muffled by the thick layer of soot beneath our feet.
‘Rick—’
I held up my finger to shush him. I didn’t want to give the grey bastards a single extra advantage. OK, they might find us. OK, they might kill us.
But, believe me, I was going to make it difficult for them. Fucking difficult.
Our only hope was to run deeper into the forest. If the trees grew dense enough we might lose them.
We ran deeper. With the Grey Men padding after us with brutal tenacity.
Come on, come on, I hissed to myself. If the tree cover grew more dense we might live.
The trees didn’t grow denser. In fact we came to a clearing.
And that’s where it happened.
Chapter 102
Kate Robinson…I am Kate Robinson. Oh, sweet Jesus Christ, it’s a miracle I can remember my name at all after what has just happened.
It still hurts. I’ve never experienced pain like that.
My throat is sore with screaming. I have ashes in my hair, in my mouth. My clothes are ripped. Christ. They even ripped my skin.
Here I am, back in the church in Fairburn once more. The Grey Men are gone. I am alone.
I’ve lit candles; they cast ghostly shadows across the stone walls. Dazed, I look round the upturned pews, the broken altar. A torn Bible lies across the breast of a stone angel. Coloured glass from the stained glass windows sparkles on the floor like gemstones. The face of the Virgin Mary, painted on glass, lies intact by my foot as I write. Her large brown eyes gaze soulfully up into mine. They seem to know what happened to me just a few moments ago.
All I feel is total pain, total humiliation; total confusion. I can’t remember…I don’t know what happened to me.
But I know this:
SOMEHOW THEY STOLE MY MEMORY.
I only have the clues: broken fingernails; blood oozes through my torn fingertips. Ripped sweatshirt; my shoes are missing; the leather belt of my jeans looks as if it’s been gnawed in two by a hungry animal.