The Silence

by Tim Lebbon

  I touched his head and whispered, very softly, “Otis, no.” I could feel the rumble of a growl beneath my hand, and I glanced around at the others.

  They stared, wide-eyed and terrified. Jude was crying, pushed into the gap between front seats so that Mum could sling an arm around him. My parents had kept their promise and they were turned in their seats, looking back so that we could all see each other. Lynne sat upright against the opposite door, jaw clenching and unclenching. She looked strong. I’d always thought of her that way, and now her eyes were cool, expression determined.

  Mum held the shotgun pointing upwards.

  Dad was looking past me at the dog, and when he caught my eye he mouthed, “Keep him quiet!”

  I reached over into the boot and gently, slowly, hugged Otis to me. He resisted at first, then leaned into my embrace. I felt the growl rumbling deep within him, but his teeth were no longer bared.

  Something hit the Jeep. I felt the impact and glanced up in time to see the slick smears on the back window. Three or four more vesps landed there, those strange tentacles on their abdomens squirming for purchase against the glass. Then they fell and flew away.

  It was like the beginning of a snowstorm. Across the hillside the vesps drifted down from uphill, gliding back and forth, dodging rocky outcroppings and trees, circling in some places if they found something interesting and then moving on again. I saw some catching birds in flight, suddenly mimicking the singing birds’ flight patterns before plucking them from the air. Another dropped down onto something just out of sight, and several other vesps zeroed in on the struggle.

  There were only scattered groups at first, then over the space of a couple of minutes more and more came.

  One of them drifted close and gently struck the window close to Otis’s nose.

  The dog started barking. “Otis, no, Otis, no!” I whispered, but it was too late, and it was as if Otis had become senseless to everything but the vesps. He nudged forward between barks, butting the glass and the creature that clung to the other side. Its wings flapped rapidly, tentacles slicking down the window before finding some purchase below. Then its body seemed to tighten and flex as muscles held it taut, and the animal’s teeth scratched at the glass, scoring it deeply. Other vesps came.

  Dad grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around. “Make him stop!” he said, and I saw how scared everyone was. Jude had crawled into Mum’s front seat, and Lynne sat back with her hands to her mouth. Behind her, three vesps struck her window and started scraping.

  I pulled Otis towards me and leaned into the back seat, pressing my mouth to his ear and saying, “Otis, no!” I injected as much command as I could into my voice.

  The dog pulled away and jumped at the rear window where several vesps were now attached. He bounced from the glass and sprawled on the floor, shaking his head and spraying slobber. Then he crouched and started barking again, jumping in circles.

  I could just see past the creatures assaulting the Jeep, and across the hillside others were streaking towards us. They must release a signal, like bees, I thought.

  Someone started hitting me. I twisted awkwardly in my seat to see Jude reaching over to strike at me, tears streaking his face, and he said, “Make him stop!” He must have shouted because Dad pulled him back, hand across his mouth and calming words ready.

  “Otis, please!” I said. But the dog was both excited and terrified. His hackles were raised, his eyes dilated, and he leaped at the windows where vesps were attached. They scraped and scored with their ugly teeth, and in several places the glass was obscured by deep scratches. I could not imagine anything chewing their way into a car. It was impossible, wasn’t it? But in time, I guessed anything was possible.

  It depended on how long they stayed. And how long they would remember the noise, when and if I eventually made Otis stop.

  I tried to catch his collar and drag him to me. He was a big dog, strong, and it was only when Lynne leaned over and helped that we managed to hold him against the rear of the back seat. I tried closing his mouth with my right hand, but he twisted his head away and barked again. I reached again and he snapped at me. He missed. But I sat back on my heels, shocked, saddened. Otis had never, ever gone for me before.

  More vesps landed, thudding against the bodywork and windows. There were so many now that the interior of the Jeep had grown darker, sunlight jittering and dancing between bodies as they moved across the glass. I felt like screaming. Jude did too, I could see it in his eyes. It must have been even worse with the sound of the beasts hitting the vehicle, the screech of teeth on glass, and Otis barking us towards doom.

  Something happened. I felt the tension in the Jeep shift. Everyone turned their heads as one to look downhill at the Land Rover, and several vesps dropped from the windows and darted that way. The glass was smeared with their secretions and clouded where they’d been scratching with their teeth, but it was clear that the Land Rover had now become a newer, more attractive target.

  “What happened?” I whispered. There were only a few vesps left on the Jeep now, and Otis stood panting, no longer barking.

  “Glenn,” Lynne mouthed to me, and then I knew.

  “Oh, no,” I whispered. Mum and Dad were pressed to the windscreen, breath held so that they didn’t mist the glass. Past them, I could see vesps converging on the Land Rover from all directions. Many of them landed on the upturned chassis and crawled across it, their movements awkward. It seemed they only had grace in the air. Others dropped to the ground close by and hobbled forwards, while some flew straight into the vehicle’s interior through the smashed windows.

  The shattered driver’s window faced uphill, and in moments it was a squirming, pale yellow mass of vesps, seemingly struggling against each other to reach what lay inside.

  A mess of bloodied parts and smoke blasted outward, smoking flesh pattering across the grass. But the gap made in the crowd of vesps soon filled again.

  “What did he do?” I whispered.

  “Shotgun,” Mum signed. “Now he’s shouting.”

  “Still?” But no one answered that. We all watched. Lynne attempted to reach forward and cover Jude’s eyes, but he shook her off and she did not try again.

  I was shivering. The more I tried not to imagine what was happening to Glenn, the more I saw.

  Dad turned away but I did not catch his eye, could not. I looked past my family at what was happening to our friend. I didn’t doubt for a minute that he had done it for us. He’d seen and heard what was happening, and although he perhaps already believed himself doomed, it didn’t make the decision he had made any less awful.

  “He killed himself for us.” Tears blurred my vision but I wiped them angrily away.

  “What?” Jude said, nudging me and saying it again so that I saw. But no one said anything else. We were all equally shocked and horrified.

  Dad climbed between the front seats and I edged sideways, pressing against the door, because I didn’t want him to hug me. It felt wrong taking comfort while Glenn was still suffering. He’s dying right now, I thought, and I watched because I felt a duty to witness his death. Even though I could not see through the chaos of vesps, I was seeing his final moments. He’d been there ever since I could remember, my Uncle Glenn, and now he was dying.

  But Dad did not remain in the back seat. He reached out and took the shotgun from Mum. I caught her eye as she passed it over the seat, and then I knew.

  I didn’t shout. To do so would have betrayed Glenn’s sacrifice. I struggled instead, throwing myself against Dad, trying to stop him climbing over the seats into the boot area. But I was too late, he was gone, and Otis jumped around delighted, licking Dad’s face and raising his head to howl in that way that always brought tears to my eyes, even though I only actually heard it in memory. It was a sign of pure joy.

  The howl did not come.

  “No,” I whispered, allowing myself that. Mum drew me back, putting her hands across my eyes from behind, but I shrugged her off, tear
ing her hands away from my face. I was not a fucking kid.

  I watched Dad choking my dog to death with the shotgun. He kept his back to us, at least, trying to shield us from the worst. I could see Otis’s kicking legs, and the muscles on Dad’s neck standing out.

  Afterwards he knelt there breathing hard, and I allowed my tears at last.

  As vesps continued flying past the Jeep, no longer landing, I realised that Dad was not panting at all, but crying.

  PART TWO

  SILENCE

  15

  Consider what you have in your life that might produce noise:

  —All electronic devices should be muted or switched to silent: TVs, phones, tablets, personal music devices, satnavs, GPS, digital watches, etc.

  —All medical warning devices should be deactivated: medication reminders, hearing aids, etc.

  —Babies should be comforted at all times. Do your best to prevent your child from crying. If you cannot prevent it, try to remove yourself from other people, somewhere as secure and safe as possible.

  —Do not attempt to start any vehicle engines, generators, or other mechanical equipment.

  —Pets should be silenced.

  Cobra Emergency Text Transmission #14, Saturday, 19 November 2016

  When he was fourteen, waiting for his music teacher to arrive at the start of a lesson, Huw and his friends had been larking around, not causing chaos but generally acting in the manner of teenage boys. Some mild abuse, amusing banter, and all of them cognisant of the girls watching their every move.

  A fly had been buzzing around him, and several times Huw snapped out his hand in an attempt to catch the insect. He wanted to look cool, especially in front of Ashley Hughes, who was watching him with a calm, appraising expression. She was his first real crush, and much of what he did was to impress her.

  He couldn’t catch the fly. It was too fast for him, or he was too slow, and Ashley had eventually leaned back in her chair and started talking with her friend, pointedly ignoring him.

  The fly had landed on the window, and Huw snatched up a sheet of music and jumped forward, placing it flat on the glass and trapping the fly. He’d pressed gently around the insect, feeling soft vibrations as it buzzed between glass and paper, doing its best to escape. Light shone through the paper and he could see the dark, manic button of the fly twisting back and forth.

  Then he’d placed his thumb over the fly and gently pushed. He felt the tickling buzz of wings transmitted through the paper and against his skin, then a soft pop as the body burst, then the splash of blood and insides.

  “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” their music teacher said with evident disgust. He’d been standing directly behind Huw when he’d crushed the fly to death.

  “Yes, sir!” he’d said, keen at the time to impress his friends. Maybe he had, maybe he hadn’t. He could never remember anyone’s reaction—his friends’, Ashley’s, even his own. It was only many years later that the incident came back to him, in the way that seemingly random events from years before so often do.

  As he grew older, Huw had started to relate more and more to his teacher. Not at all religious, he had developed a respect for life that prevented him from killing any living thing. If Jude found a spider in his room Huw would catch it in a glass and take it all the way downstairs to let it loose in the garden. If a mosquito buzzed at night, he’d stalk the bedroom naked, a pint glass ready to catch it, and then release it from a window.

  Kelly sometimes took the piss. “It’s only a fly,” she’d say. Mostly Huw would just shrug, not bothering to reply because she was the one still in bed and he was the one doing the saving. It shouldn’t matter to her whether he killed the thing or let it go.

  When he saw roadkill he felt pity for the creatures. He’d wonder whether their deaths had left any defenceless young behind, now destined to starve to death or be picked off by predators. He didn’t like watching hunting on television. Images of cruelty, to animals or humans, disturbed him.

  Kelly found it difficult to understand. He ate meat, and didn’t seem to mind the fact that he was eating dead animal flesh. But he took time selecting where he bought his meat and whether it was free-range, ethically sourced. He reasoned to her that if he ate a creature that had been treated well and had a comfortable life, then that animal would not have lived at all if it were not for him wanting to eat it.

  It troubled him. It amused Kelly.

  Once, after she’d killed a wasp and he’d berated her, she’d lost her temper with him. And he’d told her why. “That wasp was alive. It was more amazing than anything humans have ever made. It was incredible, and because it annoyed you, you crushed it to death.”

  She’d called him a knob.

  As an adult he often thought back to that fly he’d killed, and what his music teacher had said. And he was glad that the man was no longer the boy. Yes, he’d enjoyed it then. No, he would not enjoy it now.

  Huw didn’t kill things, because life was a gift.

  * * *

  Otis had pissed himself while Huw was choking him to death. The dog lay across his outstretched legs, still warm. His right jeans leg was soaked with dog urine, his left ankle badly scratched where Otis’s panicked, lashing claws had caught him. His shoulders and arms ached from the force he’d had to apply, pulling the shotgun up beneath the animal’s head and crushing it back against his neck, as hard as he could, desperate to kill the dog as quickly as possible. And not because of any noise he might make, but because he didn’t want to hurt him.

  He didn’t want Otis to suffer.

  Now he was dead, and Huw could not hold back the tears. He felt eyes boring into him. Maybe his children would never forgive him, but he hoped that they would at least understand. You couldn’t tell a dog to be quiet. You couldn’t explain mortal danger. He remained kneeling down facing the rear window, shoulders shuddering with each silent sob. It seemed unfair that Otis was dead and they hadn’t killed one single vesp, but the beasts were gone now, drifting by like giant snowflakes, leaving behind slick smears and scratches on the windows.

  Then he thought of Glenn, and shock dried his tears. That amazing thing, life, was gone from Otis and Glenn, and now they were just sacks of dead meat. Between one moment and the next they had ceased to live, their histories venting to nothing, memories disappearing, everything they had been existing now only in the memories of others and what they had left behind. But they’d both fought hard.

  The bleeding scratches on Huw’s ankle were testament to that.

  And he believed that Glenn had fought for them.

  He let out a slow breath and bowed his head. He closed his eyes so that he did not have to look down at Otis, then opened them again. He tried to take stock of their situation, because after what he had done, and what had happened to Glenn, they had to make the most of things. They had to honour the dead by surviving.

  They’re all going to hate me, he thought, and he could not bear to turn around.

  Vesps still flew by, weaving down the hillside and parting around trees, rocks and the Jeep like water around obstructions in a river. Though blind, they could still see, and Huw guessed they had some form of sonar. If that was the case, perhaps sound of a certain frequency could confuse or hurt them. But that was not for him to test or speculate on. A thousand scientists in a hundred bunkers around the world would be doing their best to find these creatures’ weak spot.

  Across the hillside, in the distance, he could just make out the line of vehicles twisting up towards the ridge. A couple of them still burned, but there was no longer any movement. If anyone had survived, they were also trapped in their vehicles. But it had been so much louder over there—gunfire, burning, more people panicking and running. He wondered whether the vesps would have given up so easily in their efforts to break into the cars.

  Leaning closer to the rear window, he could see the tracework of scratches etched into the glass by their teeth; sharp, curved patterns among the smears of saliva and other
fluids. Some of the scratches looked superficial, but there were a couple that seemed to have scored deep. That would have necessitated retracing the scratches again and again, which would have meant a sense of purpose. The vesps had known what they were doing. They weren’t just blindly gnashing and thrashing, they were consciously using their teeth to carve their way inside.

  He shivered. They were so lucky that Glenn had drawn them away.

  Huw slumped down against the side of the boot’s interior, gently lifting Otis’s head from his leg and resting it on the floor. Then he turned around to accept his family’s hostile glare.

  Jude had his face buried in Kelly’s neck. Good. Huw hoped he’d been like that for some time. Kelly looked sad, teary, but she nodded at him to show that she didn’t blame him, and that he’d done what he had to. Lynne retained her usual cool stare, but he could see no resentment in her eyes.

  Ally would not meet his gaze. Wide-eyed, pale, she stared past him at her dead dog, or as much of him as she could see over the back seat. Maybe she was remembering all the good times she’d had with Otis, and how much he had helped her. She called him her hearing dog, and although she’d trained him herself he had been surprisingly adept at helping her with certain tasks. He let her know when the phone was ringing, when someone was at the front door, and he’d also been trained to warn her about the presence of fire. They’d had to practise that every three months, just to ensure that he hadn’t forgotten. Kelly hadn’t liked doing that, as she said it was tempting fate, but Huw had scoffed. There was no such thing as fate, he said, and not training Otis about fire would be putting Ally’s life needlessly at risk. If she was alone in the house and a blaze started downstairs… it didn’t bear thinking about.

  Now her hearing dog could hear no more, and there were dangers greater than flames.

  Huw leaned into the Jeep’s rear seat, reaching for Ally. She turned her head away from him, eyes closed. He held her shoulders and felt her stiffen. They had to remain silent. By turning aside she was denying him the chance to say sorry.