The Silence

by Tim Lebbon

  He could already hear how heated the discussion was. A tall man stood on the van, nursing a shotgun menacingly.

  “Selfish bastard!” a woman shouted.

  “I’m protecting my own,” the tall man said, voice calm and measured. He sounded very much in control.

  “So you’ll just leave us out here to—”

  “What’s up?” Glenn asked. His voice was one that always commanded attention, and even the tall man paused to look down at him.

  One of the drivers pointed. “Him and his mates won’t let us through. Says the Lake District is theirs, and the more people flood in, the more chance those things will spread through it.”

  “They’ll spread anyway,” Huw said.

  “But we’ll keep quiet,” the tall man said. “A million people like you come here because they think it’s wild and safe, and you make it unsafe.”

  “That’s so selfish!” another driver shouted. “I’ve got kids!”

  Huw touched Glenn’s arm and pulled him to one side. “We need to turn around and get away from here, now. There are a hundred roads in, not worth getting stuck on this one.”

  Glenn nodded. There were already three more cars pulling to a stop behind theirs, and it wouldn’t take much for the road to become blocked.

  Back in the cars, Huw performed a tight three-point turn and led the way back down the lane. At the junction he turned left, following a curving, tree-lined road that led along the foot of the hillside. The sun was up now, casting its glow across the countryside. It was beautiful, desolate, deserted. He could understand why the man had wanted to maintain that.

  The next road wound up the hillside, passing a couple of houses, farmsteads, and several camping and caravan sites. It grew steeper and more remote, and after twenty minutes Huw could see ahead to where it passed over the ridge and into the landscape beyond. He was starting to hope they’d found a way in when they hit the next roadblock. Whoever had made it had done a thorough job. There was no way around.

  “Where are they, Ally?” Huw asked. Lynne was sleeping. Ally looked exhausted, but she was still checking in on her iPad.

  “London,” she said softly. “The army is fighting them, but there’s no effect. Everyone was trying to leave.” She looked stunned. She had seen things no one should ever see, and Huw found himself selfishly glad that he was driving. He didn’t want to look, didn’t want to know.

  “How long until—”

  “The city was so noisy,” Ally said. She was looking through the windscreen at the roadblock, hadn’t seen him speak. “They said… they said that everyone started screaming. They called it a feeding frenzy. Now it’s a birthing ground.” Her voice was curiously flat, not textured with the pleasing musical lilt it had picked up soon after the crash. Kelly had said that her daughter always seemed to be singing, and Huw liked that idea. But she was not singing now.

  “Not long,” Huw said. “We don’t have long.” He was starting to panic. There were those houses back down the hillside, but they were too close to the road, too close to this roadblock that others would find. They could abandon their vehicles and cross the hills on foot, but there was a good chance they’d never reach shelter in time. Lynne would be slow, and though he knew that Jude was capable of long walks, he didn’t know if he’d last for hours, even days. They’d be caught in the open. Night would fall. The thought of that was like getting stuck on the cliff ledge in his nightmare.

  Glenn tooted behind him and started reversing back down the hill. When he reached a gateway he paused, then drove straight through. The metal bent, buckled, broke, and then he was into the field.

  Huw reversed and followed.

  They drove quickly, aiming uphill when they could, edging sideways along the hillside to avoid rocky outcroppings or copses. Sometimes the slope was so steep that Huw feared they would roll, and he found himself holding his breath. Kelly grasped the door handle beside her, staring across at him but not saying a word. Lynne muttered to herself. Otis whined.

  The hill grew even steeper. Glenn aimed directly upwards, crawling up the rough terrain, and Huw was careful not to follow too close behind.

  “Too steep,” Lynne said from the back, but Huw didn’t bother answering. What was there to say? If it was too steep they’d soon know.

  The ground eventually plateaued below a sheer rise, a small, flattish area just large enough to park the two vehicles side by side. The small cliff was only twenty feet high, but more than enough to halt onward progress. To one side a rocky outcropping prevented movement, and to the other side, a farmer’s drystone wall blocked the way.

  “Now what?” Lynne said.

  “How about now we be a bit positive!” Huw said. It should have been ridiculous, because there was very little to be positive about. But Lynne sighed and said no more, and Kelly reached over and touched his hand. They must have touched more in the last two days than in the two months previous.

  They all jumped out to survey the scene. Downhill, in the direction they had come from, a line of traffic clogged one road in the distance. Horns blared. When the wind was right, it even brought the whisper of outraged, scared voices. They could not see its beginning or end, and Huw wasn’t even sure whether it was a road they had travelled. But it proved that they had done the right thing. If they became trapped up here, they’d be better off than most.

  He tried to imagine what it would look like—clouds of vesps swarming in, sweeping across the landscape, attacking any living thing that made a sound and planting eggs in the still-warm flesh.

  Jude ran past him and sat on a rock, staring down into the valley. “Wow, that was steep!”

  “Sure was,” Huw said.

  “Sorry,” Glenn said.

  “What for?”

  “Getting us up here.”

  “We haven’t stopped yet,” Huw said. “Come on.”

  Ally went with them. They climbed the small, sheer slope and continued uphill, frustrated to find that the ground beyond was actually much more gentle. They weren’t too far from the top of the hill, either. There was a public footpath heading that way, but they didn’t go that far because time was short. Huw hoped that beyond would be a gentle descent into the next valley, and they would be beyond the roadblocks.

  It would be much quieter down there.

  “We’ve got to try,” Huw said. “Come on. Let’s see what we can do.”

  “But we’re trapped!” Glenn said.

  “It’s not over till the fat lady sings. Come on.” Huw jogged back downhill, the others following. Kelly was silent, and Huw wished he could stop and speak with her, find out what she thought, what frightened her. But just being together felt good enough.

  Scrambling down the steep drop to the vehicles, Huw took a good look around. And maybe there was a way. If they could dismantle a portion of the wall they might be able to squeeze through, and then perhaps they’d skirt around the steepest portion, over a few dangerously rocky bits, and then up towards the hill’s summit. It was risky and dangerous, but other than going back down the way they’d come, it was their only option.

  Kelly was already standing at the wall looking that way. Glenn joined her, nodded, and turned to Huw.

  “So let’s get cracking,” Huw said.

  * * *

  They all helped. To start with, all six of them went at the wall, but they got in each other’s way. So they formed a chain, Jude and Glenn hauling stones from the wall, Lynne and Kelly passing them on, Ally and Huw tumbling the stones over the edge of the small plateau. Some of them came to a quick stop on the hillside, but a few of the bigger chunks found some momentum and skipped downhill, smashing into other rocks or being caught by spreads of dying, browning ferns.

  Glenn tried singing, but no one took up the song. It faded into an uncomfortable silence, and Huw immediately wished that he’d joined in with his friend. But it would not have felt the same to start it up again. The impulsiveness had gone, it would have felt forced, and forced good cheer never wo
rked.

  But the physical work felt good. Huw even caught Lynne smiling, though she looked tired, and that got him thinking. She had prescription painkillers, but radiotherapy sessions had been scheduled, beginning in just ten days’ time. That would not happen now. She was an intelligent woman, and she’d know what that meant. But she was not complaining.

  “Working up a sweat there, Jude the Dude,” Huw said. He hadn’t used that nickname for a while, and Jude burst into a fit of giggles. Ally looked from Jude to her dad, and he mouthed, “Jude the Dude.” She laughed as well.

  “Jude the Dude,” she said as she and Huw hefted another rock down the hillside, “liked his food, got in a mood, and pooed.”

  Jude laughed some more and it was good to hear.

  “Look at those biceps!” Glenn said. “Gonna be as strong as me!”

  They carried on working, bantering, enjoying the feel of the sun on their skin and the clear sky, despite it being November. The Lake District was renowned for its heavy annual rainfall. When he and Kelly had holidayed there it had been the height of summer, and for four days it had rained every afternoon and on into the evenings. But today looked like it was going to be clear and beautiful.

  Half an hour in and the wall looked barely touched. The stones had been so well stacked that each one took heavy tugs to pull it free. Glenn’s hands were bleeding, and he’d already told Jude to stand back a little while he worked. He stripped off his jacket and grunted with the effort, wiping his bloodied hands on his trousers. Huw thought he looked like a movie star. He chuckled, swept sweat from his forehead. If they had any hope of survival—if there was even the smallest chance that they’d find somewhere safe to ride out this storm—having Glenn with them would boost their chances hugely.

  He was a proven survivor. He’d had meningitis as a child, and when he and Huw were sixteen they’d been in a serious fight, a random attack. A bunch of drunk men had stumbled from a pub just when Huw, Glenn and their mates were walking by. The men hurled abuse. Glenn alone returned it with gusto, and so it was him that they chose to beat to a pulp.

  Huw and his mates waded in and were punched and kicked to the ground. But Glenn remained defiant, standing as long as he could stand, fighting back, and he’d ended up with a fractured skull and a bleed on the brain. Three weeks in hospital had followed, and by the time he came home Huw’s own bruises and cuts were all but gone.

  Glenn had recovered, surprising the doctors and his parents with his resilience. It had taken several months of physiotherapy to regain ninety-five per cent usage of his left arm and leg. None of the attackers were caught. Not by the police, at least.

  But Glenn had a memory for faces.

  Out of the five men who’d been involved in the attack, there were only two who he’d never faced down. The first was only a couple of months later. Huw hadn’t been with him, and Glenn had only told him one night when they were drunk on scrumpy cider, listening to the newest metal albums and talking about fingering Donna Francis.

  “I found that fat fucker,” he’d said. “The one who liked using his feet on my head. I was on my bike and I saw him putting petrol in his car. Had his two little kids in the back. I could’ve called the police but…” He’d shaken his head and finished his pint. “Only hit him once, from the side. I think I broke his jaw. He fell against the petrol pump and I saw a tooth come out.” He hadn’t smiled, or laughed. But Huw had sensed the deep satisfaction in his friend’s act of personal vengeance.

  Glenn had told him about the others over the next couple of years, casual comments slipped into other conversations when none of their other friends were listening.

  Hey, remember that one with the camo-shorts? Found him. Broke his arm… and… Oh yeah, bastard who punched me first, he won’t be playing football again. There was never any more than that, and there were no more repercussions.

  And although Huw could not help but admire his friend’s sense of personal justice, all he could see when he thought about the attack was that fat guy’s kids sitting in the back of his car, watching their father have his jaw broken by a total stranger. Maybe the action was justified. Maybe. But the fact that Glenn hadn’t considered the effect it would have on those kids always bothered Huw. It scared him a little, too. It made him glad that he was Glenn’s friend, because he could be dangerous.

  He was never more glad than right then.

  It was almost ten in the morning before Huw stood upright and told them all to stop.

  “So?” he asked.

  “Looks good to me,” Kelly said. “Let’s give it a go?”

  “Yeah,” Glenn nodded. He clapped Jude’s shoulder. “Come on, dude, let’s scout the route.” They climbed over the remaining wall foundation and trotted along the hillside. Huw watched his son go, heart aching, loving him so much and so desperate to protect him, protect all of them. Ally was sitting on a rock wiping sweat from the back of her neck, and she smiled up at him.

  “You think we can get past now?” she asked.

  “It’s worth a try,” he said. “Yeah, I think so. Glenn’s a good driver, we’ll follow in his tracks.” He turned to Kelly. “You want to drive?”

  “I’m okay on the roads, but I haven’t driven off-road since I was twenty,” she said. “I’ll be ballast.”

  “Lynne?” he asked, offering her the keys. His mother-in-law drove a small Vauxhall, and he knew the thought of driving a beast like the Jeep would give her the jitters. She chuckled softly and shook her head, but he could see the pain she was holding back. From the corner of his eye he saw Ally’s face drop. He looked at Kelly, raised an eyebrow. We’ll have to have this conversation soon.

  Lynne seemed to sense the tension. She stood and heaved a few smaller rocks aside, lobbing them far enough to be away from the gap they’d opened up in the wall. But she wasn’t proving anything.

  Jude came back first, sprinting downhill and leaping from a pile of rocks onto the more level plateau. He was wide-eyed and eager, and he started talking even before he’d caught his breath.

  “We can get up there, it’s okay, and we saw down into the valley and there’s this big lake and some houses, maybe a village, but there’s something on fire in the road!”

  “Which road?” Kelly asked.

  Glenn appeared, trotting across the hillside and over the wall. He looked troubled.

  “What?” Huw asked.

  “What Jude said,” he said. He was barely panting. “We can get over and into the valley, I reckon, though it’ll be a tricky drive. But there’s something going on along the valley, maybe a mile or two to the east. Something burning, and maybe gunfire.”

  “‘Maybe’ gunfire?” Lynne asked.

  “Not shotguns,” Glenn said.

  “Military?” Huw asked.

  “What, the army?” Jude blurted.

  Glenn shrugged. “They do a lot of training up here.”

  “It’s insane!” Lynne said. “Who do these people think they are? They can’t just close off the Lake District, there are hundreds of roads leading in, tracks across fields. And anyway, it’s a National Park, it belongs to everyone!”

  “Not so many roads,” Glenn said. “Seriously, for people who know the area it’d be pretty easy to close off sections of it.”

  “Especially with guns,” Kelly said. “Jesus.”

  Ally had gone back to the Jeep and was now leaning against the front grille, iPad open in her hands. The dread on her face did not need explaining, and Huw wanted to hug her safe. My little girl, he still called her, annoying her and making her embarrassed. But he meant it.

  “Come on,” Glenn said. “We’ll get past the roadblocks this way, down into the valley. Find a house. It’ll be much quieter down there.” He ruffled Jude’s hair. “Ride shotgun for me, dude?”

  Jude grinned and looked to his parents for approval.

  “Look after my little boy,” Huw said.

  Glenn grinned back. “He’s looking after me!”

  * * *

/>   Glenn went first in the Land Rover, tilting alarmingly to the left as he passed over the remains of the wall they’d all sweated to dismantle. Huw followed in the Jeep. Kelly sat beside him, Ally and Lynne in the back, with Otis whining in the boot as the vehicle rocked left and right and bumped over rocks and humps in the ground. The wall scraped the left wing and doors, then they were through.

  Glenn followed the slope for fifty metres, then turned right. Huw tried to keep in his tracks, figuring that a safe route for the Land Rover would also be safe for them. He could just see Jude in the front seat, arms waving as he talked to Glenn, probably advising him on where to go and how to drive.

  Heading uphill, seeing the summit lit by the sun and the clear blue sky beyond, Huw began to think that they’d make it. But the idea of what they might find down in the next valley was daunting. If Glenn really had heard gunfire, and it really was the military, who knew what orders they had received? There was no saying what was happening elsewhere in the country. Perhaps the unit had even gone rogue, securing their own safety by any means necessary.

  They wouldn’t be shooting at people, surely. Not at civilians.

  “Huw!” Kelly shouted. He jumped, twitched the wheel to the left, and narrowly avoided a rocky projection. It would have shredded a tyre at best, maybe even smashed the whole wheel. He breathed deeply, then concentrated on the route uphill.

  They came to a steeper slope again, and Glenn slowed almost to a standstill, letting the four-wheel drive crawl them uphill at a snail’s pace. Huw followed quite close behind, not wanting to stop and wait in case he found it hard to start again. The Jeep was digging in, but he was not used to driving something like this off-road. It was all new to him.

  At last the ground started to flatten and they reached the summit, bouncing over several deep ruts that tortured the suspension and set Otis barking as he was flung around the boot. Glenn did not stop. Jude turned and waved to them, grinning from ear to ear, as Glenn headed across the hilltop and then down towards the valley on the other side.