Jay goes into the room next, and I’m therefore the last of us to see Mr Grossman’s fleshy, decomposing body propped up in bed, a paperback copy of And Then There Were None, saturated in leaked fluids, held loosely in his right hand. It’s hard to say how long he’s been like this, but maggots don’t set up home in your mouth after one night. It’s one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen in my life, and given that I’ve already seen two humans get turned into conjoined twins today, that’s saying something.
‘Not on holiday then,’ says Jay. I try to tear my eyes from the body, its skin marbled in colours that no human should ever be. The bedclothes look crispy, like liquids have soaked them and dried out several times. His face is bloated and almost unrecognisable. One of his eyeballs has been entirely removed – eaten by god knows what, or rotted away. I gag and have to leave the room. I move to a second bedroom and sit on the bed next to a pile of dusty hardbacks, breathing deeply through my mouth.
‘Dex, you alright?’ shouts Jay.
‘I will be,’ I reply. I look around the room, trying to replace the image of Mr Grossman’s body with any other image, but can see no indication of any weaponry. ‘Any sign of the guns?’
‘Nothing in the wardrobe,’ Ruby shouts back. Feeling weak, I get up and return to them, clutching my shirt in front of my mouth and nose. Jay is absent, although I see a shadow in the bathroom that suggests the smell has got too much for him as well. Ruby, either recovered or powering through the situation, is rummaging through drawers of shirts, ties and socks.
I kneel down and peek under the bed, finding a few suitcases. I drag one of them out, in burnished leather that would once have been considered very fine but was battered by wear. Empty. I hook out a second and with an ‘Ah, ha!’ get the attention of the others.
Inside are three hunting rifles, a pistol and boxes of ammunition.
‘Is that pistol legal, do you think?’ I ask, pointing at it. ‘Is any of it?’
‘Hard to say,’ says Terry, rubbing his stubbled chin. ‘I don’t really know the ins and outs of the laws. Anyway, they’ll do.’ I reach under for a third suitcase but, aside from a balled-up sock, there’s nothing in that one either. I click the gun suitcase shut again and we make to leave, Jay meeting us on the landing, his skin a hue better suited to a stick of celery. It’s not the sort of smell that you acclimatise to.
‘What are we doing about Mr Grossman?’ says Jay. We look at one another but no one says another word. None of us wants to be the one who says we’re going to knowingly leave a body out to rot. Everyone deserves respect, even in death, but none of us are willing to touch the remains or spend time trying to dig a hole in the garden. Without a word, we go downstairs again and back onto the street, sucking in great lungfuls of clean air.
The dog comes from nowhere: a large Alsatian that I recognise as belonging to the scruffy-looking bloke who lives further up the road and keeps very strange hours. It’s not a friendly dog and approaches us barking and baring wet, yellow teeth. There’s a demonic look in its eyes, but also the hint of fear, of a creature that doesn’t know what to do.
‘Back to mine, run!’ I shout and, losing traction for a moment in my desert boots, head off back down the road. The others race after me, but the dog is fast and leaps at Ruby. She screams as she’s flung to the ground by the heavy dog. I turn around and swing the suitcase in its direction, but my aim is way off and I miss. It’s enough of a distraction though and the dog turns to look at me, affronted. Terry takes the opportunity to scoop Ruby up and carry on running.
The dog barks furiously at me and Jay, confused and angry. I jerk the suitcase at it again, but this time it stands its ground. Jay picks up a smallish rock and flings it at the dog’s head which turns out to be a big mistake, as the dog lunges for him and before he can leap out of the way, or I can get between them, it sinks its grotesque fangs into his leg, piercing the denim and causing Jay to scream in agony.
Our lives have descended into those of farcical distress quicker than you can say, ‘Is it just me or could those lights in the sky be incoming aliens?’ Jay falls but the dog makes no attempt to let go. Blood seeps into his jeans and I make the next aim count, swinging the suitcase a final time at the dog’s head. Leather connects with bone and the Alsatian removes itself, although a tooth is left behind, embedded in Jay’s leg. The dog barks at me like a demon possessed, and I’m aware of further screaming.
I turn around, not really wishing to take my eyes off the dog, but also curious as to what’s making that noise, to find Kay running at us, clutching a wing mirror she appears to have ripped off a parked car. Before I can stop her, she’s pounced at the dog and smacked it hard between the eyes with the plastic casing, blood squirting out onto the mirror and her black jumper.
‘Leave. My. Husband. Alone!’ she shouts, punctuating each word with another thwack of the wing mirror against the Alsatian’s cranium. It takes another full minute or so of her screaming and shouting before she stops and stands up, the dog in front of us with a smashed-in head, blood leaking out onto the pavement. She drops the wing mirror, sweeps her brown fringe from her eyes and stoops over Jay, pulling her jumper off and winding it around his leg in a vain attempt at stemming the flow of blood.
‘Help me get him up,’ she says, and it takes me a moment to notice that she’s talking to me. Terry has reappeared by this point too, takes one look at the dog and raises his eyebrows in appreciation and shock. He takes the suitcase from me and Kay and I help Jay up to his feet. With great care, we help him back to my place, where everyone else is gathered, watching the news-less television and trawling the Internet for information. There is a flurry of panic and action when they see what has happened to Jay. It’s like no one wants to be seen doing nothing.
I direct Shell and Alex to where I keep my first-aid kit, while Terry, Peregrina and I take a look at our spoils.
Fifteen
Annie-and-Matt
Annie Dickens and I almost never met and, perhaps, if the parallel universe theory is correct, this is the only universe in which we did. She and Priti had known each other since way back when, having had martial arts classes together when they were very young, but I never met her in those days. And after a few years, Annie and her family moved to Leeds.
That could’ve been the end of it.
But years later, in that way that makes you wonder if there’s a god of coincidence moving things around behind the scenes, Annie’s parents moved back to South Greenfield and Priti and Annie ended up at the same university and became friends again, picking up where they’d left off (although with more booze and poor decision-making).
Annie remained an enigma to me though, glimpsed through photographs online but never seen in person. It never made any sense. When not at university we lived in the same town, we shared a best friend, and if Priti’s tales were to be believed, we had a huge amount in common. Yet whenever Priti invited us both out with her, something always came up and one of us was unable to make it.
That was until one September evening when Priti invited both of us for a drink and the universe complied to let us both be free and not tugged out of the ring by a last-minute emergency or forgotten prior arrangement. I turned up at The Ship, a pub we were frequenting at that point, and did a couple of loops around the low-ceilinged rooms, searching out Priti. There was no sign of her or anyone who looked like the Facebook photos of Annie that I was trying to reconstruct in my mind.
I fired off a text to Priti and decided to get a drink in, catching the attention of the barman and ordering a glass of wine. Next to me at the bar, a girl sat playing with her phone, although how she managed to see the screen over her spectacularly large chest was a mystery. She was otherwise petite, with dark blonde hair dip-dyed lighter at the ends. When she looked up, her steely grey eyes met my green ones as she searched them for something, like she’d spotted a flash of gold at the bottom of an ornamental lake and wondered if it was koi or coin.
‘Thi
s is going to sound cheesy,’ I said, leaning towards her to be heard over the chatter of the guys on a nearby table. She flinched back a little. ‘Sorry, but have we met?’
‘No.’ Her voice is quiet but firm. She thinks I’m hitting on her and this is an absolute shut down.
‘No, sorry, I’m not hitting on you, I swear!’ I said, raising my hands in surrender. ‘I thought you looked familiar. Sorry, I’ll leave you to your evening.’ She softened slightly, but not much, like she was deciding whether to believe me or not.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, reaching out and fingering the stem of her wine glass. ‘I actually was thinking the same thing about you. It’s like I’ve seen you before, but I can’t place you.’ She gives a half-smile. ‘Are you local?’
‘Always lived here,’ I said, taking a sip of my wine. ‘How about you?’
‘On and off,’ she shrugged, ‘although on at the moment.’
‘Dexter.’
‘Annie.’
A groan of dawning realisation burst from both our mouths and we laughed politely.
‘So, at last I meet the famous Annie?’ I said, raising my glass. She raised hers too and we clinked them together.
She said, ‘And I meet the infamous Dexter.’
‘Infamous?’ I laughed again. ‘I don’t think I’d go that far. I dread to think what Priti has told you. Don’t believe a word of it.’
‘No, actually, you come out of it fairly well,’ she smiled. She had a very pretty smile when she didn’t feel like she was defending herself from creepy pub patrons. ‘What’s she said about me?’
‘Many things, all of them good,’ I said. I pointed at a table that had become free and said, ‘Shall we?’ We moved and continued chatting over our wine and the river of conversation between us never clogged, meaning that by the time Priti arrived we’d moved on far from favourite films and books and were embedded in a conversation about whether or not we’d ever unforgivably betrayed anyone.
Priti at first seemed put out by the fact we’d managed to bond without her there, but she took it on the chin and joined in as the conversation slipped round to relationships.
From that moment, Annie and I became good friends, meeting every few weeks for a non-stop barrage of conversation over a bottle of wine. In some areas she was intensely private, but in others she was wonderfully, refreshingly open and I can’t remember any cross words passing between us that had a lasting effect, although there was a certain fire about her that I had a feeling would spell bad news for me if I found myself burnt by it. She wore a mask of cynicism, constructed from the remains of a number of failed relationships, but it was clear to everyone that it would only take the right man to remove it.
That would happen a few months before the invasion.
*
The story of how Annie met Matt Sullivan changes on an almost daily basis. No one was present and the details change depending who is telling the story, who is hearing the story, how drunk anyone is and, hell, probably even things like the weather and the pollen count.
However, the general gist is something like this:
It was a Friday/Saturday/Tuesday afternoon/evening and they were both in a local pub/bar/bowling alley with their separate groups of friends, although who these friends were has yet to be established. Either immediately, after a while, or as they were leaving, he approached her or she approached him and they introduced themselves.
He offered to buy her a drink – a wine/vodka and Coke/lemonade – and they got talking about music/films/art. When Annie’s friends were leaving, they either asked if she was coming with them or left without saying anything, and so Matt had to drive her home. It was on this short drive home to her house (or maybe his flat) that they discovered that, while she was twenty-six, he was actually five years her junior, despite having two/three/four inches on her height-wise and looking around her age. Originally daunted (or deciding immediately that she didn’t care), she and Matt shared a kiss at some varying time and place.
The next day, he called or she texted asking the other one out on a date that night. They went for dinner, or a film, or to a bar and discovered that their views on music, politics and/or television overlapped considerably. Later that night (or the next day, or maybe even the night before), they discovered that they were also sexually compatible. That happened four months ago and Annie has since been wrapped up in her world with her new plaything, who she’s already pinning her hopes on for an eventual wedding ring (or perhaps not).
Suffice to say, we believe that they actually met on Tinder and are, for whatever reason, too ashamed to tell us.
Sixteen
The Fellowship
The nine of us – ten if you count Catsby, and I do – are ready to leave. The street outside is silent. A few more people and stray dogs have run past, but we’ve seen no aliens. We have decided to make a move to Fairmill where we can hide in the school, given that it’s bigger and easier to find somewhere to tuck ourselves away, as well as having more supplies. We’re walking. None of us knows how to hot-wire a car, so the only car close enough that we could definitely get into is Jay’s Mini, which is far too small and, while it would be quicker if we could go that way, it’s one more thing to go wrong.
We collect up non-perishable food from my cupboards (there’s surprisingly little as I’ve a bad habit of too-regular takeaways), the remains of my first-aid kit, and some of my jumpers that we can use for warmth as and when. Peregrina has hold of Catsby and is stroking him gently. She says she’s calming him down, but I think it’s actually doing more to help her. Terry has divided up the weapons.
I’ve been given the pistol and have it tucked into my belt. Terry has shown me how to work the safety so I don’t accidentally shoot my arse off. The three rifles have gone to Shell, Pete and Terry himself. Jay is in agony still, and everyone is wary of touching him in case they do more damage. Pete used his switchblade to extract the tooth, and a couple of tea towels tied around Jay’s leg are doing their best to stop the flow of blood. They are already stained red. We’ve fashioned a crutch for him out of an old spade I found in the shed. Kay clings to Ruby, although her eyes don’t dare leave Jay for more than a second at a time.
‘Everybody ready?’ I say, thinking how ridiculous we look. There is a quiet chorus of assent and we move for the front door, not going too fast because of Jay who is helped to his feet by his wife. His face is sullen and grey under the brim of his ever-present trilby, and he’s clearly frustrated he might be considered a burden, but no one is going to give him a chance to be self-sacrificing and insist on staying behind. All for one, and all that jazz.
We step into the street and head north. Our plan is to follow the train tracks up through St Simon’s, Blackpond, and into Fairmill.
It isn’t long before Peregrina points out the alien ship on the horizon to the east. It appears even bigger than it did on the television. My heart beats like a cornered mouse, and I’m sure I can’t be the only one. The streets are already pretty quiet, just the occasional person with panicked eyes running away from something. Two or three cars pass too, ignoring the speed limit and with terrified-looking adults in the front and screaming children in the back.
It may have been a short matter of time, but dogs are already the dominant life form here. They look slightly confused and we thankfully find none that are aggressive. Some of them approach us for a sniff and a pat, but they soon scarper again, hunting out the trails that their humans have left behind. There is no sign of any alien activity either, save for the towering ship which stares down like one of the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Shell-and-Terry are leading the way, followed by Peregrina still clinging to the nervously quiet Catsby. He’s not much of an outdoors cat, but he’s not showing much concern for the time being. Alex and I come next, although we’re not talking – no one’s talking – and he keeps looking around with jerky, fearful movements, reminding me of a meerkat. Behind us are Jay-and-Kay and Ruby, the two girls ac
ting as supports, which is somewhat awkward given the fact he’s also trying to hold a spade-crutch and they’re both a good few inches shorter than he is. Pete brings up the rear, his gun ready.
After twenty minutes or so, going slower to account for Jay’s leg, we arrive at the train station and stand on the northbound platform, looking down at the tracks.
‘Are we safe to walk on them?’ asks Alex.
‘Isn’t there one that we’re not supposed to touch?’ I ask, aware that we didn’t give any of this much thought. What are we doing?
‘They might not even have power going to them any more,’ Jay winces through gritted teeth. ‘Throw something metal onto the tracks, see if they spark. If they do, we should stay off them.’ We look around for something metal and I wonder foolishly how easy it would be to rip apart the black railings that line the platform. A degree in English Literature is proving to be useless in an end-of-the-world scenario. It’s not like Jane Eyre had these troubles and I can learn from her.
Down the end of the ramp that the staff use to get onto the rails are a few unused bits of railway track. Terry and Pete pass their guns to Ruby-and-Alex and go to examine how easy they are to throw. The rest of us stand around and look for any signs of aliens, or indeed an unexpected flash of mauve or burgundy in the corner of our eyes. A signal.
‘What do you think those colours are about?’ says Peregrina. ‘First the big yellow flash, followed by little ones. Global psychological trauma?’
‘I think it’s how they communicate,’ says Jay. He points at a bench with his spade and Ruby and Kay ease him down onto the malformed wooden slats, soaked and warped by years of British summers and no shelter. ‘Humans have always been too obsessed with the idea that aliens, if we ever met them, would communicate like we do, but obviously not. If you ask me, they’re speaking to each other and, since we can see colour, we’re picking up what they’re saying.’
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