The Silence

by Tim Lebbon

  Reverend Michael Morris, personal blog, Tuesday, 22 November 2016

  We’re calling them sound ships. Holds filled with high explosives and fuel drums, superstructures mounted with speakers, cattle tied to the decks, floating far out to sea on remote control, blaring music and deafening horns, luring vesps out to them in their tens of thousands. Then the ships are detonated. I’ve been involved with seventeen so far in the English Channel, and hundreds more have been used elsewhere. But even this is just a drop in the ocean.

  Anonymous, Royal Navy, Thursday, 24 November 2016

  It’s like trying to cure the common cold with a machine gun. We need something that they will spread among themselves—a disease, an infection, a virus. Experiments are ongoing, and the sharing of resources, knowledge and data across the globe is unprecedented. But it all takes time.

  Anonymous, MoD, Saturday, 26 November 2016

  “So what have we found out today?”

  With the others—his wife, son, mother-in-law—Huw had taken to communicating in soft, gentle whispers, each utterance separated by a long pause while they made sure nothing else had heard. Being able to talk again was welcome, but it was also accompanied by a terrible sense of dread. Each time he spoke he remembered that vesp flying at him and Kelly, its wide open mouth, its trailing tendrils, its teeth. It was the time in his life when he’d come closest to dying.

  But it was these moments with Ally that he treasured the most. Each evening since arriving at the house they had spent half an hour or more together in the dining room, her iPad open on the table and plugged into a wall socket, two mugs of hot tea and a plate of food between them. They’d started on that first night, and nine days later they were still compiling information, signing to each other and existing in complete, comfortable silence. In all those years since the accident, Huw thought this was the closest he had come to understanding what it must be like for Ally. He even drank his tea quietly.

  Her computer scrapbook was expanding rapidly, its front page a pinboard from which she could link through from several main headings: Timeline, Rumours, Facts, The Vesps, Us. She had constructed a complex file of information and cross-references, and even now Huw only had a vague inkling of just how it worked. But that was Ally all over. Once started on something like this she put everything she had into it.

  He worried about what would happen if and when the power went out. He had not mentioned that to Ally, though he knew she thought about it. She’d left the in-car charger in the Jeep, so all they had was a standard issue charger that had to be connected to the mains.

  Ally had changed the title of her scrapbook to The Silence. The New Worlds? moniker was still on the front page, but lined through with a heavy red line.

  He leaned forward and watched as she started to type.

  Monday, 28 November 2016

  The usual messages from the Prime Minister’s office: “Stay inside, don’t travel, the struggle against the vesps is moving forward apace.” Then the lists of dos and don’ts that we’ve seen a hundred times before. It’s like things are on hold, and there’s been no new official information for days. Like during World War Two when lots of bad news was withheld and newsreels just had good news. Except there’s no good news, so instead they tell us nothing.

  But there are still rumours.

  @CallingMeIshmael says that large areas of London are on fire. Lots of other posts deny this, and plenty poke fun—“world’s-end-porn” one Tweet calls it—but there are other independent sources that appear to confirm at least some sort of major fire in London. It’s strange that there’s no consistency. Maybe people are scared, or don’t believe what they see.

  Another tweet from @maddogfucker says that the army are starting huge fires to clear the vesps. His joke name made me doubt his comments at first, but other posts make me think there’s something in it. And it seems to make sense. The army knows that using guns will only draw more vesps, so perhaps now they’re using fire instead of lead. Like the sound ships we heard about. Make noise to draw them in, then burn them.

  I hope it’s working.

  There’s also talk about three nuclear explosions in central Europe. Some of the news channels mention this too, but only the independents. Nothing on the BBC. Censorship? Awful if it’s true (also awful if that kind of news is being censored). There are photos of mushroom clouds but also comments that they’re stock images.

  Some people say that vesps are the work of God. Others say Satan. Different beliefs seem to be causing friction, even violence. A man was found crucified in Birmingham. Some people say he tried to kill himself by jumping off a building, but others say he was murdered by a religious gang. On Flickr there are photos showing burning mosques, churches and synagogues. There are reports of military skirmishes in the Middle East. Even when things are this bad, religion leads to violence.

  How depressing.

  In Bolton, there’s a webcam focused on a pile of bodies at one end of a platform at the railway station. It refreshes every five seconds, giving an almost-real-time view of the vesps waiting there. A sick rumour is going around that all the dead people are black, and that gangs of white supremacists used the vesp attack as cover to launch their own horrible crusade. But I think that’s just rumour designed for… I don’t know what. Hate? Why hate anyone in a world like this? What’s the point?

  The image from the webcam is too unclear to see.

  America is clear.

  America is infested.

  Australia has closed its borders and shut itself off from the world.

  Australia is now home to more refugees than Australians.

  The vesps have a very short, very rapid life cycle.

  The vesps live for ever.

  There’s so much out there on the news channels, social media, and blogosphere that it’s becoming difficult to see the truth. And that’s something else I’ve noticed. Something really disturbing.

  Things are breaking down.

  Social media has become a very weird place to be, and not only because of the content. But I’ll talk more about that later.

  I shoved the iPad away and sat back in the chair. I wasn’t yet ready to write about what I was seeing and sensing across the Internet, because I couldn’t quite place exactly what it was. Perhaps a break from the net would be good. Time spent in the real world, however dangerous and terrifying that world had become, might allow me to see clearer.

  Dad also leaned back from where he’d been watching my words appear on the screen. He rested his hand on mine and edged in slightly so that our shoulders were also touching. We could take these moments, now that we were inside and mostly safe. Mostly, I thought, because I could never allow myself to believe that we were completely safe. Not with what could be seen outside, when we took time to look. Not with what had happened and was still happening. Mostly safe was as good as it could ever be.

  We’d been in the house for nine days. After first checking that the woman had been alone, and then doing a much more thorough search for any vesps that might have got in, Dad had locked the doors and settled us in the kitchen. There was food chopped on the table and a saucepan of water still hot on the stove. For a while we left it, while we discussed—in hushed tones, barely whispers—what had happened and what the future held. But it had taken only a few minutes for us all to agree that we had to stay where we were, at least for that night.

  Lynne had cooked us an omelette, and we’d eaten hungrily and carefully. One spoon clinking against a bowl might be loud enough.

  A cough. A sneeze. Laughter, crying, my despairing gasp when I thought about Otis again, Jude’s sobs when he huddled into Mum’s lap and pressed his face to her neck. All of these might have been loud enough to bring vesps, had we not been more than aware of the dangers. My gasp had been all but silent, and it had seemed so unnatural seeing Jude crying dry tears.

  Since then we had gone day by day.

  On day two we took stock of supplies. The woman had kept a pantry o
f staples—rice, dried pasta, potatoes, tinned vegetables—and Dad said it was probably in case of snow. There had been enough to last us for a week if rationed conservatively, and maybe longer if we let ourselves go hungry.

  On day three I tried again to get in touch with Lucy and Rob. Lucy’s social media pages were static, no activity. Nothing. I almost tried FaceTiming her, but imagined her phone ringing while she was crawling along a street, hiding in a garden. Rob did answer a message, told me he was in a place in North Wales and that he thought they were safe. It was good to hear from him. Even the way he typed messages felt familiar. I missed him, and we promised to keep in touch.

  On day four Lynne discovered a bag of flour in the bottom of the pantry and set about making bread. This had washed the smell of despair from the house for a while, and also given us a much-needed food boost.

  Day five was when I lost touch with Rob. He didn’t answer any messages, and his pages were frozen. I tried again and again, trying not to cry or imagine what he might be doing, what he might look like. I promised myself that I’d try again the next day, but I went to bed that night wondering. I feared that I’d never know what had happened to him. Alive or dead, perhaps Rob was out of my life for ever.

  It made the world seem very big and dark.

  I knew that Dad had also been trying Uncle Nathan and Aunty Mags, with no success. He and his siblings had a weird relationship, and even talking about them always used to stress him out. I watched him when he tried to call them both and received no answer. His face looked soft and expressionless, his eyes empty. It would have been better if he’d cried.

  On day six we saw a group of people walking along the ridge to the north. They remained in sight for ten minutes, seven small stick figures moving cautiously between trees and hedges, silhouetted against the darkening sky. I hoped that the people would see the house and come to investigate. But I noticed my parents’ relief when the shapes passed by. Even though we didn’t discuss it, that troubled me for a while. But when I really thought about what the group’s arrival might have meant, I understood it a lot more.

  The vesps were always there. Sometimes, and some days, there were more in the sky than others, but we always saw them roosting nearby. The garden was quite big and they’d settle in plants and on walls for a while, and beyond the garden there was a spread of woodland beside the rough lane. Their pale shapes spotted the bare trees like misshapen fruits.

  Lynne found an old pair of binoculars in a wardrobe, and Jude spent a long time scanning our surroundings. He spotted what he thought were several sheep up on the hillside. On day three the last of them stopped moving, and the next day several of the sheep gave birth to clouds of small vesps like exploding fungi. The creatures spiralled and spun for a minute or two, then the clouds dispersed and they disappeared across the landscape.

  I think it was day five or six when we saw the dog approaching the cottage. Jude saw it through his binoculars and came to get me, telling me about the wolf out on the hills. I told him there were no wolves here, but went to see anyway. It was an Alsatian. Big, brown and black, it was slinking through the undergrowth as if stalking something, but its eyes were fixed on us. I went to fetch Mum and Dad, and I wanted Lynne to come too, but she was asleep in the old woman’s bedroom. She’d taken to sleeping a lot more during the day.

  We watched the dog draw closer. I tried not to see Mum and Dad’s expressions, because I knew what they were thinking. We couldn’t have a dog staying with us. But for a while I suppose I did entertain the fantasy.

  He came close to the house and then lay down beyond the wall, out of sight. We didn’t see him for some time. I wondered how he’d come to be out there on his own, where his owners were, how he had survived this long, and I realised that everyone and everything out there had a story, and that most stories would never be told. It made me sad. And for some reason that one lonely dog’s plight helped me understand the magnitude of what was happening, more so than any reports of London burning or sound ships blasting ten thousand vesps at a time to pieces. It was the idea of that animal’s own story that brought reality home.

  When the dog jumped up onto the wall and stared at the house, it was Mum who moved one of the curtains at the window. I think she did it on purpose. I think she knew what she was doing. And I felt so sorry for the dog, because I couldn’t help thinking that he barked with sheer canine delight at seeing people again.

  He ran back along the lane when they came, but they made short work of him.

  Less than a day later the eggs laid in him hatched.

  Now we were on day nine, and what had been a place to stay for the night seemed to be developing into something more permanent.

  I moved and sat down again at the table, turning the iPad to face me. I liked these moments in the early evening that Dad and I spent sharing what we had discovered that day, filling in my scrapbook, and just being alone together. There was a selfish stab every time I thought like that, but also a sense of calm, even peace. I was still his little girl, and what little girl didn’t believe her father could look after her?

  But those moments were also troubling. And the things we’d talk about—what he had seen, what I had read—would often haunt me into the night.

  “So tell me what you found,” I signed. Dad had been out on a search for food, and since returning he’d been quiet and withdrawn. He and Mum had gone to the room they’d taken for themselves for a while, and I thought perhaps they’d had sex. Not that I liked to think about it, but I understood. They were like one person, even if sometimes they seemed to forget that. But the atmosphere was more tense than usual, and Lynne had been pacing the downstairs rooms ever since.

  Even though Dad hadn’t told us what he’d found, he’d still brought it home with him.

  “Okay,” he signed. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  I shrugged. “What’s left to like?” I opened a new document in my scrapbook and prepared to type.

  * * *

  Huw didn’t really think he’d have to stay out until the next morning. He took some of the warm clothing they’d found in the old woman’s wardrobe—her dead husband’s, he guessed, though it seemed that he’d been gone for a while—and part of that was a precaution, just in case he did have to spend the night elsewhere. But he wasn’t really prepared mentally. He didn’t want to be away from his kids and Kelly for any longer than was necessary, certainly not through the night.

  He missed home. He wondered whether they had made a terrible mistake in running, exposing themselves to wider danger by coming somewhere they didn’t know. They could have stayed in Usk, perhaps in Glenn’s house. If they had maybe Glenn would still be alive. Or maybe they’d all be dead. Agonising over things did nothing, and he tried to drive it from his mind. No doomsdaying now, Huw! he kept thinking. Focus on now, not the past or future.

  The spear didn’t make him feel much safer. A broom handle with a carving knife taped to both ends, it was hardly high tech, though they had all seen what the old woman had done with just one knife. She’d fought hard, bless her.

  He went north-west, further into the valley and down towards the lake in the distance. He intended to move cross-country or along country lanes where he could. His plan was to walk until he saw some buildings, then assess the situation, see if it was safe to approach. He took Jude’s precious binoculars, promising to bring them back. He intended to sit and watch any settlement for some time before closing in.

  He was hoping to find a pub or a hotel. There were hundreds in the Lake District, and a pub’s larder would see them well fed for weeks. And he was also hoping to bring back some wine.

  It was his first time away from the house since arriving eight days previously, and leaving was very difficult. Everything he loved was there. At the garden’s edge he paused for a while, feeling them all watching him. He almost turned back to wave, but feared that if he did he might never go. So he climbed over the wall and started down the narrow lane leading into t
he valley.

  Passing the rotting remains of the Alsatian and seeing the glimmer of its name tag gave him a stab of remorse.

  There were vesps all around. Plenty were still flying, but now he got the impression that they were patrolling more than advancing. There didn’t seem to be a specific direction to their movements any more. He couldn’t help thinking of them as an army—they had an advancing front, taking possession of territory, driving forward; and behind was the occupation force. They cruised, looking for prey, but many of them also remained motionless. It was these that worried him most, because sometimes they remained unseen. He’d seen them roosting in trees, as still as the trees themselves. They often seemed to take the higher ground, perhaps because it gave them a better field of hearing. But sometimes they were low down too. Once Huw almost stepped on one, and he was amazed it didn’t hear his gasp of shock. It didn’t move. Maybe it was dead. He didn’t wait to find out.

  By midday Huw had travelled maybe two miles, following public paths where he could. He was much closer to the lake, and using the binoculars he could see that there was a small village at its southern extreme. Several boats seemed to be abandoned on the water. He was still a long way off, but could see no movement in the village, no signs of life.

  He didn’t want to go there.

  Finally he took to a proper surfaced road. It was a country lane, really, but there were scraps of litter by the roadside and no weeds growing through the tarmac, and it seemed well travelled. He made a decision to follow it for a while—it seemed the best way to find a building. If he heard engines he’d get off the road and hide. If he heard voices, he’d do the same.