by Tim Lebbon
"Pass?"
"On the road. We just want to drive on."
She smiles, and her amazingly white teeth form a slash across her bloody red face. The laughter sounds real, and for a moment I think I can see the human being beneath this charade. I wonder what she was before the end, but realise that no longer matters. Might as well ask what she had been in a previous life. We are all reincarnated now, in this world that seems to carry so little of the past.
"I can't let you drive on," she says. "I'm hungry. My sweet pig-fucking God, I am so damn hungry."
Something happens to her teeth.
I turn, shout, run toward the motorbike, trip and fall to the ground. The shotgun breaks the air. Something strikes the road behind me. I scramble to my feet and run for the Range Rover, and it's as if the air is being torn around me, things whipping at my clothing, something cool and harsh slapping the back of my neck, and then the explosions come in and I realise someone is shooting at me. I hear thuds and other metallic sounds as I reach the lead Range Rover, then the shotgun sounds again, the air rifle snaps at the air, and I leap into the rear seat even as the vehicles start moving.
"Keep down!" Jessica shouts. I look up at the back of her head and see it haloed by a shower of shattered glass. I sit up anyway, because I can't bear not being able to see. Jessica curses and punches at the obscured windscreen without slowing. It falls in on her, a million diamonds that pile onto her and Cordell's laps and scatter around their feet, and I just see a flash of white and red before the Range Rover bumps over something lying in the road.
"Was that my bike?"
"Already passed that," Jessica says.
More gunshots. Cordell thrusts the shotgun from his side window and fires at the hillside, but I can't see what he's shooting at. The car shakes as bullets strike it, and the door lining to my left erupts in pieces. I glance back and see the Irishman following. As he passes over the shape in the road it's mostly red.
"Get down, damn it!" Jessica shouts again.
"What the hell was that?" I say. "What was the point?"
"I heard what she was saying," Cordell says. He breaks the shotgun, trying to hunker down low in the seat as he pops in two fresh cartridges. "About Bar None." He sits ups again, gun resting on the sill of the shattered windscreen.
I realise that the gunfire has stopped. Something is growling in the Range Rover's engine, but there are no more bullets trying to tear us apart. I look back again and the Irishman is on our tail. There are some holes in his windscreen but it has not shattered. He smiles and gives the thumbs up, and I wave back.
"There was something wrong with her," I say.
"You can fucking say that again!" Jessica says.
"No, I mean something that's not wrong with us."
"Yeah, well." Cordell leans forward and scans the road ahead, the hillside to our left, the tall, wide hedge that now borders the fields to our right. We round a bend and there's a bus parked beside the road, a car buried in its rear. Jessica presses down on the gas and we roar by, Cordell tracking the bus with the shotgun.
"So what was it?" Jessica says.
Cordell snorts. "Does it matter?"
"Weird," I say, "like she had something growing—"
The shotgun explodes and a spread of shrubs to our left coughs leaves. "Thought I saw something," Cordell says.
Jessica glances at me in the rear-view mirror.
"Maybe we can talk about this later," I say. It's noisy. Wind whistles through where the windscreen had been, and I can see that Jessica and Cordell both have dozens of tiny cuts on their faces. Some of them drip blood, and I'm reminded of the red-faced woman we just left behind.
Jessica ran her over. I wonder whether it was on purpose, or because the road was not wide enough to avoid her. I try to remember where we had been standing, but I can't. I mourn the loss of the motorbike, a link to Michael, but I'm also strangely thrilled at what the red-faced woman had been saying. She and her friends knew of Bar None, which could only mean that it was real.
"We must be close," Cordell says.
"Why?"
"If they didn't want us to get there, they wouldn't be guarding roads miles away."
I dig around in the back of the Range Rover and find an old road atlas.
"Don't think we'll need that," Jessica says. Her eyes are stark against her blood-smeared face, and I realise for the first time how piercingly blue they are. Almost beautiful. I'd never thought of her that way before, and it surprises me.
I look back again to make sure the Irishman is still following. He seems fine, but this time he does not acknowledge my wave. He seems lost, in a world of his own. Daydreaming.
I close my eyes and a flood of images hits me. I recognise them, but at the same time I do not. They're not from my life.
"Has anyone . . . ?" I begin, but trail off.
"What?" Jessica asks.
"Doesn't matter." I lie on the back seat and close my eyes, and this time I do not open them again. I don't sleep. But I do remember.
Nine: Black Sheep
I'd been at the party for about half an hour, and already I believed this would be a night that would change my life.
I walked from room to room, carrying a bottle of Black Sheep in one hand and a spliff the size of a Cuban cigar in the other. I knew a few people here, but not many, and as was usual when I was drunk and stoned, it was those I did not know who interested me the most.
The house was big, befitting the status of its owner. Rufus was a record producer of some repute. Unfortunately his reputation came from being an unbearable cunt to everyone he worked with, and for investing most of his honestly-earned in various underground ventures. Some said his money reached as far as London's brothels, while others—probably under the influence of too much dope—suggested that the man was a major importer of drugs.
I just thought he was a prick, but he always threw a good party.
I took another draw on my spliff and put down the beer. I decided to make my way back out to the kitchen to liberate a bottle of wine from the fridge. I passed through the large open-plan space that incorporated the living room and dining area, nodding to a couple of people I knew and smiling at a couple of women who glanced my way. One of them looked away, the other smiled back, and I promised to come back to her once I had a drink.
In the corridor between the main room and kitchen I suddenly decided I needed a piss. I tried one door, which was locked, and when I opened the next door—bathroom, I was right—I stood back and smiled. Rufus was sitting on the edge of the bath being orally amused by two young ladies.
"Shut the fucking door!" he shouted. I nodded, took one more peek at the naked rumps facing my way, and clicked the door shut.
Obviously being a cunt had fringe benefits.
I stumbled back into the open-plan room, frowned, remembered that I'd been heading to the kitchen for a bottle of wine, and then I saw the woman I was going to marry.
That was it, right there. There are times in everyone's life when things change suddenly and irrevocably, and that was one of my main moments. She was standing close to the fireplace and smiling indulgently as a tall, seedy-looking man tried to impress her. She was holding an empty wine glass in her left hand, running her right index finger around its rim, and I swore I could hear the subtle hum coming off the glass. Above the loud music, shouts, laughter and banter, she was drawing me in.
I let her. I crossed the room, looking down as I stepped over splayed limbs and almost knocked over a drink, and when I looked up again she was staring right at me. I froze, and that was another moment. Our gazes locked and for a while we could not let go. The guy with her turned to stare at me, and perhaps he sensed something of what had happened because he swore and walked away. I finished making my way over to the fireplace, and realised I didn't have a clue of what to say.
"I'm going to marry you," I said.
She raised her left eyebrow and pursed her lips, and a wave of sensual excitement pricked
at every inch of my skin. She took the spliff from my hand and stubbed it out in an ashtray. "Don't need drugs," she said.
"Me neither."
"What's your name?"
"A secret."
She raised that eyebrow again. Lifted her wine glass. "Refill?"
"I was just thinking the same thing."
We walked together, and when I touched her elbow it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
In the kitchen, everyone else around us now gone, all talk subdued, our own world expanding and begging to be filled with words and experience and history, I leaned in close and whispered my name in her ear.
"His name's Danny!" I sit up quickly, look back, and the Range Rover driven by the Irishman is buried in the hedge a few hundred yards behind us.
"Who?" Jessica asks.
"The Irishman's name is Danny," I say, and already I know that it's too late to stop.
Jessica slams on the brakes. Turns, looks over my shoulder at the crashed Range Rover. Cordell hefts the shotgun.
"Whatever his name, he's slipped from the road. Doesn't look too bad. If I reverse up and—"
"He's already dead," I say.
Jessica glares at me. "How can you know?"
Because I just had one of his memories, I think. But of course, I can't say that. Not at all. "I just do."
Something slaps against the vehicle's roof, then its wing, and the gunfire starts again. Jessica falls back into her seat and we skid away, slewing across the road before she brings us under control. "I wonder if they have transport," she says.
I wonder if they need it, I think.
"We can't just leave him," Cordell says. "We have to go back, get him out."
"No use," I say. "No point. I think he was shot during those first few seconds." His name was Danny, and he met the woman he was going to marry at a party thrown by a corrupt record producer. How could I know that? Why did it feel so much like a memory of my own, when it patently was not? I shake my head and shout as another bullet stars the side window.
"How can you be sure?" Jessica shouts.
"I saw him," I say, and though that really says nothing at all, she seems satisfied. She skids around the next corner and the shooting stops again.
The engine is making a rattling, low roar, and Jessica seems keen to get as far away as she can before it fails altogether. Then, I suppose we'll be on foot.
"How many cartridges do we have left?"
"A handful," Cordell says. He passes me the air rifle from between his feet, along with a tin of pellets.
"Might as well fart at them."
"It's better than nothing," he says.
I pump the air rifle and load it.
Something breaks, the vehicle judders, and Jessica just manages to coast to the top of a hill before the engine gives out with a bellow of smoke. She slips into neutral and we start rolling, and in the distance, between the slopes of two hills, I can see the sea.
"I think maybe we're almost there," I say.
"Up there! What the hell? What the fuck?" Cordell is pointing to our left. For a second I can't see what he's pointing at. An open field, the beginnings of a forest, nothing that seems to be a threat.
"What? Where?"
"In the trees!" He props the shotgun on the side door sill and fires. Even though I saw it coming the shot shocks me, and I close my eyes against the explosion. When I open them again I look up, through the haze of smoke being wafted quickly through the vehicle, and see what he has seen.
There are things in the trees. Between them, among them, and high in their canopies, all of them moving parallel to us, moving strangely.
"What is that?"
One of the figures flashes and a bullet hits the Range Rover a few inches below my face.
Cordell fires again. I knock out my pocked side window and fire as well, though with the power of this air rifle and the distance involved, I may as well blow kisses.
"They're people," he says, breaking and reloading the shotgun. "But . . ."
"Changed," I say. I remember the red-faced woman and the roots curved around her hand, up her throat. There must have been much more hidden away beneath her clothing.
"How many of them?" Jessica asks.
I try to count, but it's difficult. "Lots. Why?"
"Because we'll be at the bottom of this hill in seconds." She tries bump-starting the Range Rover, but another cough of smoke from the engine says everything.
"Bar None must be around here somewhere."
"Why must it?"
"Because of them!" I point my gun from the window, shooting blind. "They're here because of it, trying to stop people from getting there. I don't know. They're the factions he told us about, the ones that don't agree. It just has to be, because if it isn't then we'll never reach it, and that's not the way this should end."
"What, you're talking fairness?" Cordell laughs.
I look up and see that the shapes have left the trees. They're running downhill toward us, closing in quickly, and they're moving faster than anyone I've ever seen before. I'm not quite sure exactly what I'm seeing—my brain has difficulty translating the images. There are faces and mouths, leaves and twigs, blooming flowers and bulbous tubers, and other things linking, entering or entwining everything else. Some of them pace, some of them roll. Others seem to float. More gunshots. The bullets go wide, and I think, Surely they don't even need the guns anymore?
"Holy shit," Jessica says.
"Yeah." I aim and fire the air rifle again. I'm sure I shot straight, but the thing I aimed at keeps on coming. He, she or it carries a shotgun, and they pepper the side of the Range Rover as they leap the tattered fence beside the road.
"Cordell!" I shout. He fires and the thing's shoulder explodes in a shower of feathered seedlings.
"No, I mean holy shit!" Jessica says. "Look. Look!"
As the vehicle drifts to a halt, the front grille nudges against a stone wall. Beyond the wall, a garden. Facing the garden, a couple of hundred metres away, is a large stone building.
"Do you think . . . ?" I say.
"See him? Sitting on a garden bench?"
And I can see him, Michael, nursing a pint of beer and shielding his eyes from the sun as he watches us. He waves, then gestures us to him.
"Through the windscreen!" Cordell says. He fires the shotgun one more time then climbs from his seat, sliding across the bonnet and rolling over the head of the wall. When he stands and turns, a grin of amazement lights his face. He's looking straight at me, but through me as well. He drops the shotgun just as one of the strange people strikes the side of the vehicle, reaching in with bare barked fists to clasp my wrists. I prise them away, kick out at the thing's face, and Jessica helps me over the front seats. We exit the windscreen together. I feel the hot metal of the bonnet, then the cool stone wall, then the caress of soft grass as I drop to the ground.
Then I stand up, and look back, and see what Cordell saw.
"Welcome to Bar None," Michael says.
I'm so full of questions that I cannot speak. Cordell and Jessica are similarly stunned, by what we have come through and what we have seen; the deaths of Jacqueline and the Irishman, and our arrival at a place we thought might never exist. So many questions, so much left to know, and Michael smiling at us from the wooden bench, a half-full pint in his hand.
"Thanks," Jessica says.
I nod at Michael, then look up at the large building behind him. It's everyone's idea of a quaint country pub. There's ivy climbing toward the eaves, leaded windows, bare, random stone walls, a tiled roof with a chimney breathing smoke, and a sign hanging above the door with "Bar None" painted in extravagant white lettering. The picture below the name shows an approximation of the building set against a wide green background. It doesn't look quite right. Nothing about this place does, even though it's a cliché brought to life. Not quite right.
"What's inside?" I ask.
Michael laughs. "A pub, of course. But it's bigger than it looks.
There are plenty of rooms, and many bars. Lots of places to sit and chat. And when you're ready, just follow the stairs up to your rooms."
"It doesn't look that big," Cordell says. Michael raises his glass and takes a drink.
"How did you get here before us?" Jessica asks.
"What were those people? Where have they gone?"
"Why were they trying to stop us coming in?"
The questions flood out, Cordell, Jessica and I stumbling over each other to ask what is on our minds. Michael lets us blabber on for a moment, then raises his free hand until we quieten.
"Please," he says, "there really is plenty of time. Go inside. Get yourself a drink and something to eat. It's on the house." He says no more, and when I go to ask another question he raises the glass to his lips and looks away.
I look at Cordell and Jessica, shrug, and I am the first one through the door.
The bar we enter is small and surprisingly bare. But it feels familiar, with a fire roaring in the fireplace, empty picture frames hanging haphazardly on the stone walls, and built-in benches and tables polished smooth by decades, perhaps centuries of custom. Some of the chairs have threadbare cushions, and few of them match. It smells of spilled beer and cooking, and all the sounds I associate with a good pub are here. All of them. Even the voices.
There are a dozen people sitting around the large room. A few of them are alone, drinking in contemplative silence. Others sit in pairs, chatting, laughing, seemingly without a care in the world. Eyes turn toward us then away again, unconcerned at our arrival. The oldest person must be in his nineties. The youngest, barely out of her teens.
"What can I get you?" The barman is a big man, with a bushy beard and strong hands resting atop his bar. He rearranges bar towels without looking, smiling at us as he awaits our order.
"How long have you—" Cordell begins, but I cut in.
"I'll have a Reverend James," I say. "And can we see your menu? Michael told us it's on the house."
The barman laughs as he takes down a pint glass from a hook above his head. "On the house! It is, that's true. Everything's on the house." He looks at Cordell and Jessica as he pours my pint. I can smell it, hear it flowing into the glass, and I wonder what memories will come to me tonight. I hope they will be my own.