by Peter Liney
Jimmy crouched down over the remains of the animal. “No smell of gas,” he said with a frown. “No smell of anything combustible.”
Eventually Nick led us back outside, the three of us filing past a plainly unimpressed Gigi. “It’s just a dog,” she muttered, like she’d seen a whole lot worse and we should put it into perspective.
“This time,” Nick told her.
He invited us into his home. His other two sons, Edward and Daniel, were in the kitchen, both silent and subdued, as if more concerned by what had been done to the family than the dog. George came out to greet us but only stayed for a few minutes. His smile was as sad as an orphan’s at Christmas, his eyes red and raw, and I had to fight off the urge to put my arm around his shoulders in case it triggered more tears. As for Nick’s wife, Miriam—well, she was in bed, like she always was. No one had ever said exactly what was wrong with her, but there was a kind of unspoken understanding that the only way she’d be leaving that place was in a coffin. Nick shouted to her all the time, telling her who was there, what they were talking about, but I’d never ever heard her reply.
He made us coffee—well, more like some kinda instant coffee substitute, which tasted pretty much as it sounded. He was chatting away about all manner of stuff, avoiding returning to the subject of the dog, telling us how to plant and take care of the wheat, then later, took us back out to his store and gave us a hundred-pound bag of seed-grain. “It’s good stuff,” he added, “fast-growing, high yield.”
I thanked him with a warm handshake, aware he was providing us with a real chance to make a life for ourselves out there.
“Keep an eye out,” he warned, as we set off. “Crazies are everywhere.”
“Probably miles away by now,” I said, trying to sound reassuring.
“Beats me where they’re coming from,” he complained.
I hesitated for a moment, letting the others go on ahead; I wanted to speak to him on my own, but wasn’t sure how to bring up the subject.
Nick scratched his gut for a moment, watching Jimmy and Gigi walking away, and I realized he too was waiting for us to be alone.
“I don’t think it was Sandy you heard,” he eventually muttered.
“No,” I agreed.
For a moment he just stood there, gazing around the valley as if expecting to see an invading force come streaming down the surrounding slopes at any moment. “Something’s going on.”
I stared into his face, not sure what to say; his unease was ramping up mine.
“Big Guy!” Jimmy called back.
“Coming,” I replied.
I thought that was all Nick was gonna say, but maybe he’d just been trying to think of a way of phrasing it.
“Whatever it is,” he sighed, “I don’t think we’ve seen it before.”
This time Gigi called to me as well and I turned to go, telling Nick to take care before setting off, but I hadn’t gone more than twenty or thirty paces before I glanced back, his words still echoing inside my head. He hadn’t moved an inch, just stayed where he was, staring after us. I waved, and after a moment’s hesitation he did the same, but there was an unease about him, a sense that he felt it was madness for anyone to be heading off on their own.
On the way back over the hill, Jimmy had to stop for a few moments to get his breath back. Not that he was carrying anything—but I guess he wasn’t getting any younger.
“You okay, Big Guy?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Kinda quiet?”
“We’re gonna have to be more vigilant,” I announced. “Keep a closer eye on things.”
“It was just a dog,” Gigi sneered.
I stared at her for a moment. She had a point: it was just a dog, but it was still a senseless act of violence. On its own, it mightn’t amount to much, but with what else was going on, I didn’t care for it one little bit.
Without making any further comment, I heaved my sack back up onto my shoulder and resumed our walk, the others soon following on behind.
At the very top of the hill you could see down into both valleys. It really was quite a view: all the many smallholdings looked like some kinda marquetry on fancy furniture. To one side the hills rolled on into the Interior, to the other, to our valley and then the mountains beyond. Nothing could’ve looked more idyllic, more peaceful—and yet, try as I might, I couldn’t shake this growing sense that it was happening again. I didn’t know from what direction, nor by what means, but somehow I knew our little world was about to be shattered once more.
CHAPTER THREE
That afternoon we went out sowing the two fields we’d spent so much time plowing, still bearing the bruises and blisters of all that hard work, Gordie with a bandage on his leg where he hadn’t got outta the way of the blade quickly enough, Lena with a bruise on her forehead from when we ran into a buried rock and she’d collided with the plow handle.
We collected everything we could use for seed containers: flour bags, buckets, some of the old tin cans piled up behind the lean-to at the back of the barn, and I cut a long gash in the sack the wheat came in so I could poke my head through and hang it over my shoulders. We knew we couldn’t waste a single precious seed, that we had to really take our time up and down those haphazard furrows and make sure that each and every one had their chance at life. Even with this new souped-up, fast-growing variety it would probably be a month or more before we could harvest. But with the little bit of food we still had stored, some foraging and the occasional trade, we should be okay.
Hanna and Gordie had somehow managed it so they were seeding adjacent rows, so they could physically bump into each other now and then, or exchange words or giggles. He had that look about him that every man gets, irrespective of age, when he’s trying to impress a woman: strutting his stuff, rolling his sleeves up as far as they’d go to display newly filled-out muscles, and I noticed he’d redrawn the dragon on his bicep again. He did that every now and then, in honor of little Arturo, that time they both had tattoo transfers on their arms—his a dragon, and Arturo’s, Mickey Mouse—in remembrance of the day that the little guy got killed and brought a premature end to the magic duo of “Dragon Boy and the Mickey Mouse Kid.”
Gordie rarely said anything about it, but I knew he still missed his little buddy. On the other hand, I guessed Hanna was some kinda agreeable compensation.
I didn’t know exactly what was going on with those two, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t wanna, either. A year or so back, when I first realized they had a crush on each other, it was kinda cute, but with them now grown into young adults, it was all a bit intimidating. I know it was human nature and all, and maybe it’d become physical already—although I didn’t think so—but I really wasn’t sure how to handle it. If they so much as put an arm around each other, I looked the other way. Lena said I was being “old-fashioned,” that it was none of my business, and I guess, strictly speaking, they weren’t our kids, so she was right—but that didn’t stop me from doing their blushing for them now and then.
The other problem, of course, was that none of this was going down very well with Gigi. At one stage she’d undoubtedly been under the impression that it’d be her teaming up with Gordie. ’Course she did everything she could to pretend total indifference, that she didn’t give a damn, but the occasional snap of resentment or lash of jealousy betrayed her over and over. Not to mention made for one helluvan uncomfortable atmosphere.
Hanna and Gordie used to try to include her in whatever they did, inviting her on their outings, but I reckon she thought that was just rubbing her nose in it and after a while they didn’t bother. It’d been plain right from the start the two girls had issues; when Gigi got really irked, when she got that “Island blade” look about her, she called Hanna “the princess”—which could’ve been a term of endearment, but out of her mouth sounded more like something she couldn’t wait to spit out. It was an aggravation we could’ve well done without, though more than that, it worried me that one day it m
ight erupt somehow and affect us all.
Gigi’d never actually come out with it, but at times she must’ve thought she would’ve been better off staying back in the City. Though bearing in mind what was waiting for her there, who was after her with murder in her heart, I wouldn’t have recommended it.
Neither Lena or me ever talked to the others about the night we got into Infinity; that Gigi had obviously been playing some kinda double game with Nora Jagger, no more than I’d ever asked her for an explanation. In the end she came good and that was all that mattered—maybe she’d planned it that way, maybe she hadn’t. I thought she might talk to me about it one day, but with a year and more passed, I was beginning to think that she just wanted to forget the whole thing.
As well as her heavy bucket of seed, Lena also had Thomas with her, his blanket tied into this kinda homemade papoose. I’d told her not to worry, that we could manage without her, but I knew how important it was for her to prove she could do most things as well as us, and after all, she could follow a furrow as easily as a length of string.
Thankfully it was overcast, so she didn’t have to worry about the little guy getting all hot and bothered, though later in the day he did do that thing where he starts crying and simply refuses to stop, and she was forced to take him inside, which I reckon was what he was after all along, that he’d just got bored with looking at the same view all the time.
The rest of us finished seeding around about seven and trudged wearily back to the house, Jimmy and Delilah too tired even to speak, Hanna and Gordie still fooling around, Gigi making a solemn point of ignoring them.
With the light starting to fade, my thoughts had gone back to what’d happened the previous night—not just here, but also over in the next valley—and I had an idea.
“Kids—can you give me a hand?”
Jimmy glanced back but was too weary to show any further interest, while the kids followed along in the direction of the barn without a word.
It wasn’t exactly inspired, nor that original, but I’d been pondering on what Nick’d said and it’d occurred to me that with crazies around and weird things going on, any kind of early warning system would be useful—and we had the beginnings of one already in place: Lena’s wires, that’d helped her find her way around when we first arrived. We could retrieve all those cans piled at the back of the barn and attach them to the lines, along with old bottles, anything that would make a noise when they knocked together.
Gordie was a long way from impressed—he’d wanted infrared beams at the minimum, maybe some kind of disguised animal traps—but it was better than nothing, and when I demonstrated how it would work, how much noise it could make, he did kinda nod with grudging approval.
We stayed out ’til the light was just about gone, threading all manner of stuff to clang and clink together. In total, with all the different lines star-bursting away from the farmhouse, we must’ve set up half a mile or so. Admittedly, it couldn’t have been much more basic, but at least it felt like we’d done something, that we weren’t entirely at the mercy of anyone who came a-calling.
Delilah came out on the porch and hollered for us to come in and eat. The last thing I did before I closed and locked the front door, even though I didn’t understand the impulse, was to take a long, hard look at the sky. It was if my instincts were telling me that if any invaders were on their way, that was the direction they were going to come from.
I’d anticipated the atmosphere in the house would be a little anxious, but with the assistance of a bottle of the homemade hooch we’d found stashed in the barn when we’d first arrived, Lena, Jimmy, Lile and me talked things out ’til we felt much more relaxed. Over dinner I told them what we’d been up to, tying stuff on the wires, what purpose I hoped it’d serve—but apart from a half-hearted nod of approval from Jimmy, there was little else in the way of reaction.
“Let’s hope they’ve moved on,” Lile croaked.
“What kind of person does that to a dog?” Lena asked, pouring herself more hooch.
“Kids—” Jimmy started to say, old attitudes dying hard, but though he stopped himself, Hanna jumped on him.
“We wouldn’t do that!” she protested.
“Other kids,” Jimmy explained.
“Last night—we should’ve gone over,” Lena said to me, “checked it out.”
“That wasn’t just the one dog in the woods,” I said, not for the first time.
“Woke me up,” Gordie complained, like that’d been the real tragedy of the night. “If it happens again, I’ll make sure it’s dead.”
We discussed it a while longer, ’til eventually a long, thoughtful pause became the cue to retire. We were country people now, early to bed and early to rise, needing to make the most of every daylight hour.
One of the great things about living in a proper home—and after some of the hellholes we’d bedded down in, there were lots—was that we had a measure of privacy: a bedroom for Lena and me, another for Jimmy and Delilah, and, unavoidably, the last one for the two girls (and wouldn’t I’ve liked to have heard those “goodnight” conversations!) while Gordie slept on the sofa.
That night Lena and me made love, something that, since the birth of Thomas, hadn’t happened that often, and it crossed my mind that we were reverting to old behavior, that ’cuz we were feeling threatened, we wanted to reaffirm our love for each other, as if to fortify ourselves against whatever might be on its way.
When the little guy was first born he slept with us, but I got so nervous of rolling over in the middle of the night and crushing him, I couldn’t close my eyes for a second. When we moved into the farm, we fixed him up a bed in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe—it might sound odd, but it worked like a charm. Wrapped in his favorite blanket, the little guy looked as comfy as a baby bird in its nest.
The one thing I didn’t normally have trouble with was falling asleep, it was staying that way that was the problem. After a few hours, Thomas had only to snuffle and snort to wake me—and later that night, that’s exactly what he did. I lay there for a while, feeling an impending bout of attention-seeking coming on, knowing if I was going to nip it in the bud I had to get up right away.
I just about made it: on my way outta the bedroom he was already taking in as much air as his little lungs could hold and by the time I’d reached the front door, he was choosing the opening note of his I Want Overture.
I paused out on the step, looking all around, mindful of what’d happened the previous night, and seeing nothing, took Thomas on his usual circuit of the yard, the little guy going back to sleep almost immediately. The night was exactly as before—one moment bathed in moonlight, the next plunged into darkness. The only difference was the occasional clank or scraping noise from the items we’d tied to Lena’s wires, which I’ll tell ya, did nothing to settle my nerves.
I wasn’t that surprised when the howling started again: those same tortured cries cutting across the night like slithers of flying glass. Once more it was in the woods, but this time much further away, down the slope toward the road. It also sounded like just the one animal this time, though the pain, the agony, was exactly as before, as if something was being tortured.
I never heard anything like that in my life. All that time out on the Island, the terrible things that went on, the “clean-ups” in the City when hundreds—including dear little Arturo—got slaughtered? They were all nightmares, but I never heard pain expressed like that before.
I pulled back Thomas’s blanket to see if he was registering anything, if there was a change of expression, but thankfully there wasn’t. Maybe down the line, when he was older, he’d have the worst nightmare and we’d all wonder why, what’d possibly brought it on—unquestionably, it would be this. It sounded like whatever-it-was was being skinned alive, slain and driven crazy all in the same moment. I still didn’t haven’t the faintest idea what kinda animal it was. In fact, in that moment, I wasn’t even sure it was an animal.
I ran back into the
house, putting Thomas back to bed, grateful that once he did nod off, he could sleep through just about anything. As I crept back out through the living room, Gordie started mumbling sleepy complaints about the recurring wailing, but never seemed to really wake and was asleep again before I even got outta the door.
I hurried over to the far side of the yard, the howls getting slightly louder, more distressed. I broke into a trot but had to stop the moment I got into the woods to allow my eyes time to adjust to the almost complete darkness. In the day it was a nice place to be; at night it damn near frightened the life outta you.
Slowly I edged my way forward, but the closer I got to that noise, the more confused I became. Something was definitely going on—some kinda disturbance, a struggle maybe—as well as the repeated howling, I could hear heavy, thumping collisions. For the briefest of moments the moon’s light filtered down through the branches and I caught a glimpse of something big and dark rolling across the forest floor. What the hell was that? But the light was extinguished before I could get a proper view.
I crept a little closer, trying to be as quiet as I could, though with all the noise going on, the grunting and howling, I wasn’t sure if there was a need. It took me several seconds to realize that whatever it was, whatever creature was involved, had got to its feet and was now running my way.
I couldn’t move, as much frozen by confusion as fear. Did it know I was there? Was this an attack? It continued to scream and howl toward me, but it sounded so crazed, so completely deranged, as if it didn’t have the slightest idea where it was or what it was doing.
I did think about running, but whatever it was, it was moving a damn sight quicker than I could, and I realized I had no choice but to stand my ground. It was approaching at such speed, with such pounding heavy footsteps, I got it into my head that it might be a bull. I crouched behind a tree, fearing the worst as it got ever closer, that I was about to be crushed to death, but it thundered past with barely a foot or two to spare, those panicked screams of terror like some shrill squealing alarm.