Infested

by Mark R Faulkner

  And then I saw her rise to the surface; her limp body rotating as it came up through the water, red hair wrapped around her face and trailing behind her. Her body folded when it broke surface, loose, and then she sank once more beneath the churning water and there was nothing I could do. She was already dead and I couldn’t take her with me, presuming I managed to retrieve her from the weir without killing myself.

  I turned and let my legs buckle beneath me, the current carrying me back downstream to where the swamped canoe was lazily spinning in the water. I was numb, only able to think about the task at hand and nothing else and right now, the task was to empty the canoe of water. I had nothing to bail it out with, and made a mental note to fasten something for that purpose to the inside of the canoe for future trips, before remembering there probably wouldn’t be any more canoeing holidays for me, ever.

  Emptying the canoe meant I had to get it into shallow water so I could turn it upside down. When I’d waded in the mud to the weir, the spiders hadn’t been forefront in my mind but now my brain had time to process the situation, I wondered how close to the bank I could get, whether they could jump, whether there was a clear route for them onto the reeds and if so, were the plants in the margins infested?

  I was only a foot away from the bank in ankle deep water when I crouched down on my haunches and peered into the grass and mud, looking for spiders. I could see no sign of them and breathed a sigh of relief, although I wasn’t setting foot on dry ground until I’d seen someone else do it first. Still cautiously eyeing the bank, I dragged the canoe as far onto the mud as I could manage and, taking hold of one end, flipped it upside-down and lifted it above by head before twisting it back over and dropping it so it landed right side up. Thick, sulphurous stinking mud coated one end, but the inside was mostly empty of water and so I wearily clambered in.

  Afternoon sun warmed me on the outside and burned my skin, but nothing could take away the chill within. I wasn’t hungry anymore, just hollow, and neither was I thirsty as I must have swallowed half the river as it tumbled me downstream. With an empty heart, I paddled stolidly forward, meandering across the countryside but getting ever nearer to the wall of smoke near the horizon.

  The surrounding geography steadily began to alter. The banks were less steep and I was passing more houses; rows of them rather than the isolated cottages I’d been passing thus far. It didn’t surprise me that I saw no sign of life. I passed under a bridge carrying a major road, it too, deserted. The steel on its underside was painted green and the spaces between the girders were full of cobwebs. I passed silently beneath them, trying to shrink myself in the seat even though the ceiling was quite high, for a bridge.

  Shortly after the bridge, smoke lent a haze to the day and made breathing unpleasant. I shot another weir, mechanically, without adrenaline or issue and there was no jubilation afterwards. And then I was in town. It was dark with smoke, as the banks lost their muddy steepness to become cultivated things of concrete, brick and manicured verges. Not all the buildings were on fire but enough were burning to be able to say the town was ablaze.

  I was surprised more than anything when my last remaining shred of hope left me, I thought it was all long gone. I paddled through Oxford without stopping while on either side, the dull, orange glow of fires burning unchecked throbbed in the midst of the smoke screen. Apart from the sounds of its fiery consumption, the city was silent; there were no sirens, no calls for help or anything else which would betray a single thing left alive. I longed to hear even a dog barking in the distance.

  At the next bridge, of much older construction and with several arches, a motor cruiser had escaped its moorings and was crumpled around one of the stanchions. Cocooned remains of its crew lay twisted, half in and half out of the cabin door. In amongst all the other debris stacked up against the boat I saw two other bodies, purple and bloated in the water, and a cow, leaking bubbles of gas from its anus. When I passed, the water around the cow must have been disturbed as the animal slowly flipped over, revealing a blackened underside and trailing guts where scavenging fishes had been at work.

  And that’s how I left Oxford, paddling steadily onward toward the unknown, not looking at my surroundings but unable to avoid noticing the white mummies on either side, wrapped in their shrouds of silk. Before long I was travelling through fields again and the smoke cleared to reveal the unrelenting heat of the sun.

  A clenching of the throat was my body’s way of telling me I was thirsty again, but while I had been forced to drink river water at the weir, then it had been fast moving and at least had the appearance of being clean, while now the river was sluggish and I’d seen dead things in it. I held out a while longer but the headache had returned and my lips were dry and cracked. My tongue felt swollen to double its size.

  I dangled my arm over the side and scooped up some water, splashing it on my face. The relief was exquisite but the urge to drink, now I’d felt how good its coolness was, was futile to resist. I scooped some to my lips, slurping it from the palm of my hand. It tasted muddy but refreshing. After the first sip I figured it didn’t matter anymore how much I drank, I was likely to get ill anyway, and so I gulped the water down as fast as I could lift it to my mouth.

  When I’d had my fill, I gritted my teeth and set off with a grim resoluteness to reach London.

  Eleven

  Night was quick to come, enveloping me as if I were travelling into the belly of the beast. It smothered me, making the silence more profound. Nothing stirred and I was alone, the constant, soft, dripping song of the paddle the only noise in the dark.

  I began to shiver and although the temperature had dropped with the waning of day, it felt more like I’d picked up a chill. Not long after, my stomach cramped and although I clenched as hard as I could, there was no stopping the foul eruption which burst forth to fill my pants. With a groan, I shuffled in my seat but it only made things more uncomfortable. The only virtue was that there was nothing left alive to witness my disgrace. Rather than attempting to wash in the dark, I decided to press on until morning when it would be a much safer operation.

  The silence and the pitch black of the moonless night combined to cause some kind of state of sensory deprivation and my mind was quick to fill the gaps. I kept catching movement out of the corner of my eye, imagining spiders dropping from overhanging branches and I cowered, moving slowly down the river, trying to stay in the middle but not being able to see the banks. Often, I thought I saw the looming shadow of trees and turned sharply to avoid them, only to find myself being slapped around the face and scratched by branches on the opposite side to where I thought I was, forcing me to quickly correct my course. Each time this happened I panicked that spiders would fall on me and for all I knew, they might have, for my skin was crawling with fever and fear. More than once, I felt the tickle of a silk thread across my face.

  The fever, for that’s what it certainly was, was worsening. I ached all over and no longer did I make any attempt to control my bowels. The throbbing from the bite on my calf had migrated up past my knee and it felt as if my leg was on fire.

  It was the second night without sleep and exhaustion kept trying to force my eyes closed. My thoughts turned back to the fateful afternoon of the murders, which by then seemed an eternity ago.

  It happened on Friday. My boss had left the office at lunchtime, telling me with a smile that he had business to attend to before swanning out of the door. At the time I’d wondered why he’d bothered to let me know. Andrew Morris was not the best person to work for; I’d go as far to say he was a bully, always picking holes in my work, taking every opportunity to ridicule, giving me impossible deadlines and so I often worked well into the evening while he always finished early. You get the general idea.

  Anyway, on this particular afternoon I’d managed to catch up on things in the office and found myself with little to do and so, rather than sitting twiddling my thumbs for the last two hours of the day, I decided to grab back some of that time
and finish early.

  As I neared home, and was driving along my street, I saw Andrew’s car parked outside my house. Instantly my suspicions were raised. I could think of no reason for him to be there. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach. Something was wrong and my mind raced to figure out what it was. I slowed the car to a crawl, buying myself some thinking time and then, instead of continuing along the street to my house, I stopped a few doors down and walked the rest of the way.

  My hands were trembling as I slid the key into the lock and quietly pushed open the front door, expecting to hear conversation from the living room or the kitchen. I’d planned on eavesdropping for a while, to enter the room forearmed. I didn’t expect to hear the bed creaking upstairs and the unmistakeable groans of sex.

  Blind rage descended upon me but instead of flying upstairs to confront them, a strange thing happened and something deep within my mind became unhinged.

  Despite the tears streaming down my cheeks and the blurring of my vision, I was utterly calm as I slipped off my shoes, so as not to create noise on the laminate floor, and searched downstairs for a suitable weapon. On the pine kitchen table lay a claw hammer, sitting next to the shelves I was half way through building. The weight felt good in my hand and with it I crept up the carpeted stairs, taking extra care to step over the creaky fourth step, lest it too betrayed me. By now the rhythmic creaking had quickened pace and the groaning was louder and breathless.

  The door to my bedroom stood ajar. Suddenly it didn’t feel familiar to me, didn’t feel like home. He was on top, thrusting hard and fast into her writhing body. She was blindfolded, her hands tied to the head of the bed with the cord from my dressing gown.

  Maybe I made a noise, or possibly he sensed my presence as I surged forward, but he turned to look up just as I was twisting my body to swing the hammer, two handed, at his head. All the usual smugness had gone from his face, which was flushed with exertion. His eyes widened at the sight of me and widened further still as the claw end of the hammer became embedded in his temple. She writhed even more; still blindfolded she was filled with panic and confusion as he convulsed on top of her.

  The hammer was driven so deeply into his skull I struggled to pull it free. I grasped the handle with both hands, pulling with one foot planted on the edge of the bed and succeeded in rolling him off her so he lay face up, his body twitching and his features drooped. With much tugging, I finally managed to work the hammer free and I swung it again, as hard as I could. It connected with his forehead, just between the eyes, while she struggled to escape her bondage and cried his name.

  “Shut it,” I spat, concentrating my efforts into repeatedly smashing the hammer into Andrew Morris’s skull until his brains were splattered across the bedroom, my naked wife, and me.

  “Michael?” she whispered, shocked.

  “I said, shut it.” I snatched the blindfold off - one I’d bought her to help her sleep after she’d complained about the streetlight outside the window - and a fistful of hair came with it as her head was yanked forward. She screamed and I shoved the blindfold, hair and all, into her gaping mouth before setting about her with the hammer.

  When all was done I undressed and out of habit, put my clothes in the wash basket before taking a long bath. It felt good to be clean after such dirty work and without haste, I packed my provisions, loaded the canoe onto the car and locked the front door behind me for the last time.

  Twelve

  I must have been delirious, for I didn’t notice the morning approach until it was already light. The sun found me in another urban area, high banks of red brick and concrete hemmed me in, over which I could see the tops of tall buildings. I didn’t know which town I was passing through and was too tired to work it out. Reading perhaps?

  Everywhere there were cobwebs, glistening with dew. Under any other set of circumstances, it would have been a wondrous thing to behold but it was a sight which brought only despair, clustered tightly over every surface like a shimmering veil.

  I approached a bridge and as I neared, my attention was drawn upward to a stationary car. Sunlight glinted off the windscreen, which may have been what first grabbed my attention but when I looked more closely I could see movement within. I sped up slightly to get closer and then held myself steady just before the bridge, to give myself a clear view.

  There were two people inside, but my brain struggled to process what my eyes were telling it. It was an old couple; a man and woman, him bald and her grey. They saw me too and their elderly faces filled with false hope and they started banging the windows with their fists and from the movement of their mouths, I could tell they were shouting. All I could do was raise a hand to acknowledge them, knowing they were beyond any help I could offer. My mind turned to the soaring temperatures of previous days and I marvelled at how they hadn’t cooked in the car like dogs.

  As I glided beneath them and they realised I wasn’t going to be their saviour, I saw them both sag back into their seats, their hopes dashed. The underneath of the bridge was meshed so thick with webs that none of its construction was visible. Spiders scuttled to and fro and I kept a wary eye on them as I slid beneath. When I passed out the other side, I breathed a sigh of relief but didn’t look back, for I didn’t want to catch sight of the car or its passengers.

  The need for sleep was overwhelming. My vision blurred as I battled to stay awake. For a brief time I considered disembarking to find a car of my own to sleep in, but the fear of waking up trapped was worse than that of staying on the open water. And so I continued on my way along the river.

  I decided I needed an anchor, so I could snatch a few hours’ sleep and not touch the banks of the river. For a while I considered what was needed to make one. Something heavy and a rope were all I required and I sidled into the next marina, of which there were many along the course of the river, making my way slowly amongst the boats looking for them. All of the cruisers had rope aboard, mooring them to the banks or to other boats, but I needed to find one which looked easily detachable, which I could undo in a hurry.

  Eventually I settled on a blue boat; a little older than the others and somewhat shabby around the edges, the bow was low enough so that I’d be able to undo the rope while standing in the canoe. Its name, Drinks O’clock, was painted on the bow in tall, white letters. Despite my illness, I had a craving for vodka and lime, with plenty of ice.

  I manoeuvred in close, so our hulls bumped together, and peered up to study the knot. A spider crawled over it. It’s only one. I can handle one, I thought before taking a deep breath and adjusting myself, ready to stand so I could reach up and untie the rope. As I shifted, my pants were crusty and brittle, the stench coming off them added to my nausea and as I began to rise to my feet, I became light headed and touched one hand to the peeling blue paint of the boat’s hull.

  Almost instantly, perhaps attracted by the vibration, at least two spiders appeared over the deck and began down the side of the boat toward my outstretched hand. I recoiled, a response already conditioned into me by the pain in my leg, and lost my balance, almost falling into the river. I wind-milled my arms for a moment before slumping back into my seat.

  I fell into a pit of despair. The damn spiders were everywhere, thwarting my every move. Was this my punishment, never able to set foot on dry land again? Maybe I should climb up? I thought, and let them have me.

  There were no options left open to me but to continue. I was too weak and fragile for anything else and so day and night, I paddled resolutely onward toward London. Memories of that time are hazy, disjointed. I was in the full grip of fever, starving and deprived of sleep and I was hallucinating. Sometimes, in the day, I would see Lindsey’s body in the water, or swimming alongside me. She’d turn her small, pale and decaying face up toward me and say: “This is your fault, you know? It’s what you wished for.”

  I didn’t possess the strength to answer.

  “You killed me, and my family. You killed everyone.”

  I don’t
know whether or not I cried every time she appeared, but the sadness and guilt I felt were so deep they threatened to consume me entirely.

  During the night it would be Helena, my wife, who visited, or Andrew Morris; “Come into my office,” I’d hear him say. “We need to talk about your performance.” He said, his back turned, walking away from me in a manner which said I needed to follow. I could see him as if we were in the same room, only his feet floated in the dark.

  And then I’d see her, one eye oozing from the pulpy mess which was once its socket, smashed teeth protruding through torn lips like buckshot. Then her broken jaw would sag, her tongue darting in and out as she laughed, “Your performance leaves a lot to be desired.” And then he would turn, his face also a red mush on a misshapen head, and they’d come closer, both laughing.

  This continued, day and night, for God knows how long until, in a moment of lucidity, I realised I was once again in a built up area, with restaurants and shops lining the river. I couldn’t remember when I’d last been travelling through open countryside and guessed I might be in London. The air was filled with acrid smog, which tickled the back of my throat and maybe it was this which had rekindled my senses. There were no fires alongside the river, but in places the smog appeared darker, as if there was smoke rising from somewhere deep within it.

  Then I was in the heart of the city, seeing landmarks I knew from TV and postcards. The houses of parliament and Big Ben were on my left, just before the towering London Eye, which was so covered in silk it was easy to imagine it as one giant web. Of course, there were no people, at least not alive but the water was teeming with bodies, as if they’d jumped from the embankments like lemmings.