by Jack Lewis
Ben bent over to be sick, but nothing came out.
“Better take him away,” said Charlie.
“No,” I said.
Charlie looked at me with wide eyes.
“We don’t know what the hell’s going on here. Whatever did this could still be here.”
“If its stalkers” said Mel, “They won’t be here. It’s daylight.”
Kendal bent down toward the body of a woman. She took hold of her shoulder and gently rolled her over. It was a heavyset woman with a white blouse which was stained yellow through constant wear without a wash. Her hair was curly, and it was thick at the fringe but growing sparse at the back. I recognised her. She used to babysit the kids of the camp while their parents hunted and foraged. Sometimes she annoyed the parents by telling their children dark stories. I couldn’t remember her name, and the disrespect of it stung me. I felt like I owed it to her to know.
“It wasn’t stalkers,” said Kendal. “Someone opened them up like a tin of tuna.”
I thought about Shaun and his horror house. The dismembered limbs piled in his room like ornaments. Surely it was too much for one person to be responsible for, but I didn’t know who else would do something like this.
Al stepped beside me and put a heavy hand on my shoulder. In my weakened state, I felt like his touch was enough to push me to the ground. I needed to be stronger.
“Sorry, Kyle,” he said. “I think its best we leave. Any bloody thing could be watching us right now. Waiting. Better we go now, and you can grieve later.”
It was too much to process. We hadn’t been gone too long, but the smell of the blood in the air spoke of a slaughter that had happened long ago. It felt like we had stumbled into a tomb full of bodies left decaying amongst the dirt. I just couldn’t believe that everyone was dead.
Then I realised something. I counted the bodies, grimacing at each number in my head.
“There was over fifty of us,” I said.
“Come on Kyle,” said Al.
“Where the hell is everyone else? There are thirty two bodies here. So where are the others?”
Lou stirred on her stretcher. She tried to say something, but the words were lost in her fever. It had started to rain, and the soft patters fell on her forehead and the water ran into her eyes.
“Charlie, can you cover her?” I said.
Charlie took off his coat, struggling as he tried to shake his sleeve over his arm. When he got it off he gave a shiver, and then laid his coat over Lou. She shifted from side to side, and then laid back.
Al walked over to the bodies. He bent down next to a man. His name was Leroy Sultan, and he was an ex-carpet salesman turned wild berry forager. I had once sat with Leroy and we shared an old, sour-tasting bottle of scotch under the night sky. He had never had a wife or kids, and the thing he missed most about the old world was his dog, Kilroy.
Al put his hand into Leroy’s trouser pocket. He pulled out an old leather dog collar with a metal tag on the end of it. I had seen him do something similar at the helicopter, but I had thought nothing of it at the time.
“This isn’t the time for trophy hunting,” I said.
I felt angry. Not just at Al, but at everything. The fragile balance of the world. One where everything could look like it was swinging up for a second, and then come crashing down without warning. What use was there trying to survive when it took mere days for everything to be ripped apart?
I walked over to Al. I stood in front of him. I clenched my fists and felt heat run through me. I struggled to keep my head.
“Steady on,” he said. He put both his hands on my shoulders. The tag on the collar in his right hand dug into my skin. “This isn’t trophy hunting. I don’t know what you think I am, but what the hell kind of trophy is a dog collar?”
“Then what’s your game?”
He stepped back.
“Open your hand.”
I didn’t know what to think.
“Just open it.”
I held out my hand and opened my palm. Al pressed the dog collar into it and then closed my fingers around it. I looked at the collar. The tag was fake silver, and the colour had long started to flake away. Gouged in the metal, still legible, was the message ‘Hi! My name is Kilroy. If you find me on my own, please call XXXXXX.’
“It’s not trophy hunting,” said Al. “It’s called doing the decent thing and taking something to remember people by. Even if it’s a stranger. No one deserves to go without leaving some kind of impression.”
I didn’t say anything. I stood in the camp amongst the bodies of the dead. I wanted silence, but I didn’t get it. Instead, fainter at first but then louder, I heard a humming sound. It was a rumbling that came from the east. Soon enough everyone else heard it. Mel held her cleaver ready, and Charlie knelt beside Lou and beckoned Ben over to him.
Something was coming. I looked at the slaughter around us. I knew that whatever or whoever was capable of doing this to thirty-odd people was more than a match for us. I couldn’t protect everyone, I knew.
“Charlie. Take Ben and Lou into a tent. Don’t come out for anything.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll feel better knowing you’re hidden.”
“I’ll help,” said Kendal.
Kendal and Charlie took hold of Lou’s stretcher and carried her over to a nearby tent. Ben followed, and the four of them went inside. Charlie poked his head through the door.
“Kyle…”
“Close the zipper, Charlie,” I said.
The droning sound was louder now. It was an unnatural sound, something man-made that broke the stillness of the countryside. I looked around me, but I still couldn’t see anything.
“Over there,” said Mel.
A truck drove toward camp, approaching from the east. Its wheels tumbled over the rough grass, flattening it under rubber, and black smoke spat from the exhaust.
“He’s not alone,” said Al.
A quad bike span out from behind the truck. It levelled alongside it, and then sped up and overtook it. It headed straight toward camp, making easy work of the highland terrain. A man drove it in a standing position, with big arms gripping the handlebars.
“No bloody way,” said Mel.
“Know him?” said Al.
“Kyle is that…”
I looked at the man. He was tall and muscled. His head was tucked down in a look of concentration, and his shoulders shook as the quad bike sped over rocks and grass. I knew this man. I couldn’t believe it, but it couldn’t be anyone else.
“Billy,” I said.
***
We first met Billy in the Bleakholt settlement. He was the right-hand man of the leader there, a stern but strong woman named Victoria. I had been suspicious of him at first, but Billy had proven himself to be a good guy.
In the middle of the battle of Bleakholt, stalkers had attacked. This should have been the end for us, but Billy had taken off on his quad bike, using himself as bait to lead the stalkers away. Later I used to think about what might have happened to him. I poured my thoughts over all the potential outcomes, but it was rare that I imagined one where he survived.
Yet here he was in front of me. He rolled his quad bike to a stop a few feet in front of us. His head was no longer shaved, and instead he had let his hair grow on the front and sides, but I saw that he was balding at the back. His face was covered by a mossy beard. Underneath the strange hair and beard though, was the man I knew.
“Know this guy?” said Al.
“Yeah,” Mel answered. “He’s a friend.”
“Was a friend,” I said. “We don’t know what he is now.”
Al nodded. “That’s the spirit. Nothing wrong with a healthy distrust in people.”
The truck pulled into the camp. It was too big to thread through the tents like Billy on his quad bike, so the driver slowed to a stop on the outskirts and stopped the engine. The doors opened, and a man and a woman got out. The man carefully shut his door and locked it. The woman
slammed hers.
“Careful,” said the man. “The paintwork.”
Billy walked toward us. Part of me was happy to see my friend, but I looked at the bodies on the floor and I felt my natural caution close over me like a shell. The world changed all the time, I knew, and people changed with it. I remembered what Billy was capable of. He and Lou once travelled together, and there was a time when they were so hungry that they had robbed a man and let him starve.
He stopped when he was a couple of feet away. Al held his combat knife in his hand, making no pretence of his distrust. He eyed Billy with an unflinching stare.
Billy held out his hand toward me.
“It’s been a long time,” he said. “This is Casey and Alistair”. He jerked his thumb toward the man and woman who had driven the truck. “Don’t mind their scowls, they’re just tired. They think I don’t know, but they spend all night screwing when I’m asleep.”
Casey frowned and shook her head. Alistair’s cheeks started to redden. After a few seconds, realising that I wasn’t going to shake his hand, Billy withdrew his.
“That’s the Kyle I know and love,” he said.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” I answered.
He looked at me as if he couldn’t believe what I was saying. I needed to know where he had been all this time. It wasn’t as easy as just trusting him. Casey and Alistair stood in the background and watched.
“Why didn’t you try and find us?” I said.
“Give him a break, Kyle,” said Mel.
Billy took a step forward.
“Come on, buddy. That’s no way to welcome an old friend.”
I nodded at the bodies around us. Men and women piled on top of each other in the dirt, gaping wounds in their chests, blood staining the mud. I didn’t want to think Billy was capable of something so terrible, but the days were gone where people got the benefit of the doubt.
“You don’t really think I had anything to do with this?” said Billy.
Across from us, a voice shouted out.
“Billy!”
Ben had opened the tent. Charlie tried to grab hold of him but the boy was too quick. He eluded Charlie’s one-armed grasp and ran across so us. When he reached Billy, he leapt against his waist and gave him a hug. Billy laughed, pressed Ben close to him and ruffled his hair.
“At least one of you is pleased to see me.”
“Like I said, you’ve got some explaining to do.”
Billy crouched down until his head was level with Ben’s. There was genuine warmth in his smile.
“Go back to Charlie,” he said. “Me and Kyle need to talk.”
***
We went across camp and into my tent. I wanted to sit on my bed, but I was worried that if I did, my body would just give up and sleep would overtake me. I paced around the floor, which had been made dirty by the tracks of mud we had trailed in with us. Mel, Kendal and Al sat on the chairs that had once been used for our council meetings. Lou was in the corner on her stretcher.
Billy knelt down next to her. “Poor girl,” he said. “What the hell happened?”
“She broke her leg. We tried to get her antibiotics, but someone cleaned out every pharmacy in a fifty mile radius,” I answered.
“That wouldn’t be anything to do with you, would it fella?” said Al.
Billy jerked his thumb toward Al. “Who’s the big guy?”
“I was once a pilot, but my sparrow’s gone. Don’t know what I am now. Guess I’ll have to find out.”
Dots of rain pattered on the canvas above us. It was daylight outside, but the light struggled to creep in through the tent sheet. I thought once that this place could be home, but now it just felt empty. The tent fabric wasn’t enough to stop the smell that drifted from outside. It was one of old blood, and of flesh that was already starting to rot under the Scottish drizzle.
“Listen Kyle. This wasn’t me. But I know – “
“Then who was it?”
“Let him finish,” said Casey. She and Alistair stood together at the opening of the tent, their shoulders touching.
“Oh just quit the act,” Billy told them. “I know you guys are together. Think I’m blind and deaf? You sound like animals when you go at it. Thought about risking a trip to town to get earplugs, at one point.”
Casey grabbed Alistair’s arm and made him drape it around her shoulder. She smiled to herself, her freckles creasing around her nose.
“Go ahead,” I said to Billy.
Billy took a few seconds as if he was organising his thoughts, and then he spoke.
“Like I said. I know who did it. It might seem funny, us turning up like this, but the fact is that we spotted your camp a few weeks ago. We stayed back and watched you guys for a while. You don’t know what kind of people are out here, Kyle, and we had to make sure. Funny though. For all the time I watched this place, I never saw you. If I had, maybe we could have spoken to you sooner.”
He walked a few paces in the tent, and then carried on talking.
“There are some people around. The kind you’d hurry past if you saw them in the Wilds. Only, they wouldn’t let you. They’re not the shy type, you see. They’d stop you and take everything you’ve got.”
“Sounds like someone I know,” I said.
“That was a long time ago,” said Billy. “Lou and I paid for that.”
“Sometimes you don’t just get to say sorry and then get on with your life,” said Mel. “I like you, Billy, but don’t think you can wash away guilt by saying sorry a few times.”
“You’ve got bigger things to worry about than something I did a couple of years before I even met you. So maybe you better focus on that, and the people I’m telling you about.”
“Where are these people?” I said.
“Ten miles to the east, just off the coast.”
Mel jerked her head back in surprise.
“Off the coast?”
“Yeah,” said Billy. “They found an old fishing ship. This place used to be full of trawlers looking for coalfish and cod. These guys must have an engineer with them, or a little engineering know-how at least, because they got the old tub working.”
“What’s their goal?” I asked.
“They drift up and down the coast looking for survivors, but not so that they can lend a helping hand. Guess you’ve figured that out, though. Right now, they’re anchored ten miles away from you. Seems like they took interest in your camp.”
“And they’re the ones who did this?” I said.
Billy nodded. “Yep.”
“Why all the mutilation? What does it do for them? I just can’t get my head around it.”
Billy shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t have a clue.”
Al ran his fingers through the bristles of his moustache, and the hairs curled over his lip.
“So let me get this straight. Bill, right?”
“Billy.”
“Al’s not good with names,” I said.
“Let me get this right, Billy,” continued Al. “You knew about this camp. And I gather you’ve got some kind of principles about you, from what you’re saying. You knew about a bunch of folks on a ship who aren’t quite on the right side of the moral compass. You ever think about warning the camp?”
Casey shifted on her feet and she moved away from Alistair’s arm. Her face bristled with anger.
“For all we knew, you guys were part of them. Think we’d just wander into a camp of strangers and give ourselves up? We didn’t fancy getting our livers ripped out.”
“Wait,” said Mel. She had started to look tired, but she still held her cleaver in her hand. The blade was stained red. “The people on the boat. They’re the ones who have been leaving the bodies around camp? Cutting people open and stuff?”
“That’s happened before now?” said Billy.
I nodded.
“Few mornings we’ve woken up to find bodies in camp. I thought it was stalkers, from the way they’d been ripped open.”
“These guys have some pretty crazy ideas. They’ve got rituals. We scouted them two days straight once, and some of the things they did made me cold. Honestly, it got so I couldn’t bear to watch them.”
“So why didn’t you do anything?” said Mel. She looked at Billy with scorn.