by Rhys Thomas
‘What happened?’ David yelled from the front passenger seat. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his face into his beard.
The rattle of gunfire came on the breeze and an instant later the clang of the bodywork being peppered with bullets roared all around them, striking the underside of the car.
‘Out,’ he heard someone call.
He pushed against the door nearest him but it was stuck. The frame was buckled. Tilting his body sideways he tried to right himself. Emily had stopped moving next to him. He prodded her.
‘Em.’
Nothing.
His door was yanked open from the outside and McAvennie’s arms pulled him out of the car. Charlie fell flat on to the wet road. A bullet ricocheted off the base of the car with a metal scream.
‘Come on,’ someone called.
David was running for the nearest house. He threw himself into the front door and it splintered open. A bullet smashed the ornate light next to him. McAvennie grabbed Charlie and they ran for the house. Bullets spat into the mud of the garden with dull thuds. Charlie covered his head with his hands and ran blindly. Emily, he thought. He slowed but McAvennie pushed him on.
‘Go,’ he said.
They were inside the house, in a dark hallway.
‘There’s someone in the back,’ David called from the far room of the house.
‘Upstairs. Get upstairs.’
‘I need to get Emily,’ Charlie said.
‘No.’ McAvennie’s face was fixed as he looked at Charlie.
A line of bullets spat into the hallway.
McAvennie grabbed Charlie and physically forced him up the stairs.
They went into a bedroom at the back of the house. Two skeletons were lying on the double bed, above the sheets. They were fully clothed. Plastic bags had been tied over their heads, sealed at the neck. What had been a woman lay with her arms tied to the rails of the headboard. The man had chained himself with handcuffs. Around them were damp green rings of what looked like mould. The place stank. Charlie stumbled backwards into the corner and vomited.
‘We’ve got to go back,’ he heard himself say. The sound of his own blood pumping pulsed in his ears. ‘Emily’s still—’
‘Wait here,’ said McAvennie. ‘I’m going to get her.’
He ran out of the room. Charlie followed. There was a man at the top of the stairs, wearing black trousers and a black sweater. He was holding an assault rifle. His face was covered by a small, insectoid mask. When McAvennie came out of the room they were just feet apart. The man in black hesitated for a second. But McAvennie did not. He threw himself bodily at the gunman and they tumbled down the stairs. There was a short crack of gunfire. The plaster on the ceiling rained down in thin, dusty columns.
McAvennie got to his feet and leaned over the gunman, who was trying to free his weapon. McAvennie struck him hard in the face.
There was shouting outside. More of them. No time.
The gunman shouted something but through his mask it was just a formless noise. McAvennie struck him again. And then again. The body of the man in black went limp and McAvennie unhooked the gun. He looked up the stairs to Charlie.
There was a movement in the front garden.
‘Look out,’ Charlie called.
McAvennie swung around just as the front door was kicked open. The Scotsman fired without hesitation and the noise of it in the small space was blistering. The man he had shot stood in the doorway for a moment, three waterfalls of blood trickling out of holes in his chest. That man was also wearing a gas mask. He pulled it off and there was a confused expression on his face.
‘We left the girl,’ he said, slowly, measured.
His right knee gave and he went on to it, his head slumped forward as if he was genuflecting to the man who had killed him.
Charlie ran down the stairs. McAvennie had gone out into the garden and made it to the garden wall. He was crouched behind it, firing randomly at the houses across the street. Charlie could not see anybody firing back.
Emily was in the car. The wheels were still spinning and he could hear the engine. There were flames coming from beneath the upturned bonnet, flowing out of the side and up into the sky.
Charlie could wait no longer. He ran out into the garden and immediately something struck him. It smacked into his leg and he fell where he was. Pain started to radiate from a single, tiny point in searing shockwaves. He put his hand on his leg and when he looked at it, the hand was covered in blood. The pain strengthened so intensely that white flakes filled his eyes.
McAvennie came to him and pulled him up against the wall.
‘Here,’ he said.
Charlie groaned. He felt warm metal in his hand. ‘What?’ he said, groggily.
‘Just fire.’
‘What?’
‘Charlie,’ he said. His voice was angry.
Charlie tried to focus. He opened his eyes. McAvennie was upside down.
‘You have to cover me,’ he said.
‘Cover you?’
His bald head was bleeding. ‘Come on, kiddo.’
Charlie nodded and took the rifle in both hands.
‘Just fire. And don’t stop until you’re empty.’
His mind returned. Quickly, as if through a tunnel, he could think clearly. It felt fleeting, as if the clarity would soon pass. He turned his body and brought the rifle up above the level of the wall. And fired. There was nobody in sight but the gunfire was returned. More of it struck the upturned car in which Emily still lay. They were upstairs.
Sparks flew from the underside of the car as bullets rained down. The pain from his leg had spread to his skull, the nerves that connected the two pulsing like pregnant spider sacs.
McAvennie ran recklessly out into the road. He crouched down and disappeared inside the car, his backside sticking up into the air. More gunfire. The flames at the bonnet were spreading. The driver’s seat was on fire.
Charlie fired again. McAvennie did not stop. His body pulled at something with great yanks. He brought a foot up and put it flat against the concrete ground as a lever and then re-emerged. He had Emily in his hands.
The sight of her set off a firestorm inside of him.
‘Stop shooting,’ he called.
Though he did not stop himself. And then he saw it. The house across the street, on the roof. He could see the head popping up above the angle, the gun aimed down towards the car. Charlie pointed his rifle at the sniper’s head and pulled the trigger. Chunks of slate exploded off the roof low and to the left of his target. Coolly, he brought the gun around to adjust, fired and saw the head jerk backwards violently.
McAvennie rose to his feet with Emily in his arms and stumbled into the garden. There was no more gunfire. He sat down next to Charlie, gasping for breath. His head was slick with sweat and blood. His chest heaved as he laid Emily down. Her head moved and her eyes opened.
Charlie pulled her into his chest and as he did so he looked at McAvennie, who was still trying to recover his breath. David came out of the house. The cut on his forehead had bled all over his face.
‘The other one did a runner,’ he said.
Emily’s breath was hot on his neck but he could not take his eyes off McAvennie. He couldn’t believe he had got Emily back. The large Scot’s eyes were closed and his mouth was open in a grimace as his breathing steadied.
‘Fuck me,’ he panted. ‘I’m so unfit it’s ridiculous.’
The room was much longer than it had looked from the outside. Two large windows on the leeward wall were set into the brick. White light flooded through them. Miriam’s mind was flung instantly back to the hospital in London.
Two rows of beds, each perpendicular to the walls, spread into the distance. Down the centre was a line of fluorescent lights. Right at the far end, perhaps fifty yards away, was another set of doors. Apart from the windows in the one wall, the room attained a perfect symmetry.
White nets hung over each bed. Miriam had seen similar things in t
he government facility she had been taken to.
She hardly flinched at the sight of all the people. The density that had been so heavy when the illness first arrived, that had pressed in on her, was much lighter now. She was desensitized to it. She looked at the room, at the shapes of the people just visible behind the white veils. Nearly all of them were lying on their backs. Some of them, though, had sat up in their beds, where they remained now, motionless.
‘It’s just so strange,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ she heard the doctor say over her shoulder. ‘But when they react like this, so sad, it is more than a little beautiful, is it not?’
She felt something vibrate inside her. There was something beautiful in the darkness of it. When people just stopped being they had their protective shells stripped away to reveal their innermost delicacy and fragility. She saw it. The thing the ill people had become when everything else had left them was the one thing worth protecting in them. Seeing it there in the room, feeling it, restored something in her that she had not felt in months: a tiny, indefinable flicker that had been sucked out of her that day in the cellar.
‘Why are you showing me this?’ she said.
‘Why not?’ He walked past her and down the central aisle between the ends of the beds, his shoes clicking on the painted stone floor. ‘I like to keep the rooms clean,’ he said. ‘When people on the camp tell us somebody they love has become ill, we like to assure them their final days will be comfortable.’
His accent, now that she had placed it roughly, came through stronger.
‘It is for the best for everyone. In this camp, we have realized it is important to maintain the things that allowed us to get where we got to as a civilization. We are always compassionate.’
‘What about the people who become . . .’
‘Violent?’
Miriam nodded.
‘We keep them in the lighthouse itself.’
‘You lock them in?’
‘Yes. We have to. Their families always understand. Is that what you were thinking?’
‘I wasn’t thinking anything.’
‘Have you seen them? With their strength? Would you like to know what it is?’
Dr Balad didn’t turn back to her as he walked. His voice hooked her. The thought of the injured American man who had been in her house, the fear she had felt when she entered the camp: all of that was dissipating.
‘It is called hysterical strength. There is nothing more magical about it than a shooting star. It is strange, but it is normal. That is to say, it is within the realms of possibility. The muscles in the body are rarely used to their full potential. When somebody is electrocuted their muscles become rigid and strong. They grip.’ He lifted his hand up and clenched his fist. ‘In the olden days, the Vikings had fighters they called Berserkers. They were men who would fight in a fierce rage, a frenzy. You know the word “berserk”?’
‘Yes.’
She could feel eyes on her, peering out from behind the white veils, and she could see the heads of their owners turning as they walked past. She didn’t know if she believed what Dr Balad was saying. It was too arbitrary. She understood the doctor’s need to find a rational answer for why people were able to act as they did when ill, but the true answer was beyond rationality, beyond science; it was something outside human knowledge, something new.
‘There are theories,’ he went on, ‘that it was a psychotropic state, brought on by the plants they used to make their drinks.’
‘I thought those stories were old wives’ tales.’
‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ he said. He reached the far door at the end of the room and stopped. ‘But how else can we explain it? We have animal DNA in us, Miriam, which was locked off millennia ago. But it is there, inside us. It is all written in our genes. We do not use our bodies to their full potential. Now,’ he said quickly, ‘I would like to show you something else. But you must prepare yourself.’
‘What are you going to show me?’
‘There is a man in here. He will say things that might frighten you, and you must not listen to that. But you should see him.’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Why are you showing me all this when you keep other people away?’
Dr Balad smiled.
‘You are our neighbour, Miriam. You have a right to know what is happening here.’
They waited behind the wall for several minutes. The gunfire had stopped but they didn’t know if there were more snipers lying in wait. Slowly, the beating of Charlie’s heart levelled out. His leg throbbed. He looked down at Emily and could just see her face as the mouth turned downwards and her eyes scrunched shut.
‘Charlie,’ she said.
She was crying. She never cried. He put his hand on the top of her head.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘It’s over now.’
He made sure his head was below the level of the wall. He was too scared to move. They were so vulnerable where they were.
‘I think they’re gone,’ said David.
‘Aye, well, they’re not fuckin’ shooting at you, are they, you daft twat?’ said McAvennie.
The realization that David was standing up in the centre of the garden in full view of the street struck Charlie, and he laughed with shock at the insanity of it. When he did, pain shot through his leg.
‘We’d better check the houses,’ wheezed McAvennie. ‘See if anyone’s alive.’
Charlie stayed where he was. He knew that if he stood up his legs would fail him. He watched McAvennie’s face. An expression of saddened disbelief was across it.
‘You OK, Charlie?’ McAvennie said, turning his head.
‘I’m fine. Just give us a minute.’
‘How’s the leg?’
Charlie smiled. ‘Shot.’
‘Do you think you can walk, kiddo?’
Charlie closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Yeah. Just give me a minute.’
The two men walked out of the garden and out of sight.
‘Emily?’
She was sobbing into his chest.
‘It’s OK. They’re gone.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to see me cry.’
He pulled her closer. From behind the wall, McAvennie called to Charlie. Emily let go of him.
‘You’d better go.’
Charlie looked at her. ‘He saved you,’ he said. ‘He just ran out into the street and saved you.’
Emily dried the tears from her cheeks. ‘I know.’
Charlie braced and pulled himself up. White pain flashed through his body but he ignored it. McAvennie wanted him and he was not going to let him down. He had to stand up. He put his weight on the good leg and looked down the street into the lane, at the end of which lay the dark and forbidding structure of the large farmhouse. That was why they had come here. The street appeared deserted. Weeds had started to grow up between the kerb and the gutter. His eyes moved upwards, to the roofs. He looked at the spot where he had fired at one of the attackers. A sudden and intense plume of darkness billowed up from beneath him and he physically shook his head to disperse it. He had shot Charlie in the leg, and if Charlie had not killed him then Emily would have still been inside the car, burned alive. There had been no choice.
He noticed one of the large blue water tanks that had appeared when the government was still operating. There was a gash ripped out of its side. Just past it, McAvennie appeared from a house.
‘Anybody in there?’
He shook his head despondently.
‘Dead,’ he said simply.
They found nobody alive. Every one of the houses had been raided. The only place left to check was the farmhouse. The four of them went up the short lane. The hedgerow on either side was laced with brown sinews of dead honeysuckle. Charlie and Emily moved slowly.
There was a large garden in front of the house, covered in gravel. Charlie noticed there were no cars. The front door hung open. McAvennie and David went inside. In silence, Charlie and Emily st
ood on the gravel courtyard.
They waited. They could see the men moving around through the large windows. The house was in good condition. The windows were new, the brickwork had been restored. Small conifer trees lay on the ground, fallen from pots that had been pushed over.
‘What’s that?’ said Emily. She was peering down a thin alleyway at the side of the house. ‘The grass is dead.’
The gravel crunched under her feet as she went towards the edge of the house, craning her neck to see. Charlie followed. At the far end of the alleyway was a lawn with a black line across it where a streak of the grass had died.
The air was colder at the side of the house. Slime had grown along the path and they had to be careful to keep their footing. Slowly, the back garden came into view. The black line in the grass fanned out. The shape was like a funnel, the wide end opening up as it got near the house.
Further into view the garden came. Emily saw it first. She let go of Charlie and screamed. Pain bolted up his leg and he fell against the wall. Emily had jumped back into the alley, her feet sliding in the slime.
Charlie peered out into the garden, worried that another of the snipers was there. But the garden was still. He looked at the thing Emily had seen and his mind froze.
The sliding doors at the back of the house were open and thin white curtains were blowing out into the garden. The blackened grass was like a bulb in front of the windows. In the middle of the blackness, lying on its back, its arms upturned and the fingers of black bone pointing upwards to the sky, was the charred corpse of a human being. The body was as black as coal in most places but in a few patches it was a deep pink, where the flesh underneath had been exposed from animals feeding on the carcass. The mouth was agape in agony. A long metal pole the height of a person had been thrust into its belly. The skeleton had concaved itself where its owner had been trying to reach up to the pole to pull it out.
Charlie tried to understand how a person could ignite somebody like that and then skewer them so grotesquely, but his mind could not assimilate the idea. He went towards the body, unable to stop himself.