by Sam Kates
Bri stepped into the road and Will did the same just before the lead rats reached them. Will’s groping hand grabbed Bri’s and clutched it fiercely. Completely ignoring the humans, the rats continued along the pavement, neither swerving nor paying the least bit of attention to anything they passed.
“Where are they going?” Will whispered as if afraid to speak too loudly in case the rats heard him and turned around. Bri suspected that he could hail the rats with a megaphone and they wouldn’t turn around, so intent had they been on whatever purpose drove them.
“I have no idea.” She, too, kept her voice low. “But I don’t like it. Stick close.”
Will did not release his grip on her hand. They stepped back onto the pavement and continued to the junction, keeping tight to the walls and hedges on their right.
They reached the garden wall of the last house and stopped. Bri let go of Will’s hand and raised her finger to her lips. Then she pointed to the adjacent street and motioned that she would take a peek. Will nodded.
Knees bent to bring her head to just above the level of the wall, Bri edged forward. Gradually, the next street came into view. Walking down the centre of the road were three people: two men and a woman. One of the men was looking directly at her.
As she darted back out of sight, she heard a shout.
“Hey! You! Do not move!”
“Come on,” she said, grabbing Will’s hand. “Run!”
Gripping the strap of her backpack with her free hand to stop it bouncing around, Bri ran back the way they had come. If Will wondered what the hell was happening, he didn’t waste breath asking her.
They had almost reached the point from which they’d started, the house where they had spent the night, when Bri felt a fluttering sensation inside her head and Will skidded to a halt. Bri’s hand tugged briefly at his, but he relaxed his grip and her momentum carried her free.
She stopped running and turned. Will was standing statue-still, his face contorted into a grimace. Behind him, Bri could see the three people. They had turned the corner and were standing together, staring intently in their direction.
The fluttering sensation in her mind grew in intensity, became more insistent. Without thinking about it, Bri resisted, fought against it, and the fluttering disappeared like fingers snatched back on encountering a painful barrier.
Only vaguely aware of the people conferring urgently with each other, Bri ran back to Will’s side.
“What’s wrong?” she hissed. “Is it your leg?”
“Ngh!”
She grabbed his shoulder. He felt stiff, like wood. Instantly, she was in his head, noticing the new change: a heavy, purple fog overlaid everything like a velvet drape. Paralysing him.
At the same time as she saw and understood the impediment, Bri knew how to remove it. The blanket that she cast over Will’s psyche was not white like the one she had used to calm the dogs, but the warm, clean yellow of a newly-bloomed daffodil on a bright spring day. It swirled onto and into the purple pall, dissipating, dissolving. . . .
She left the yellow blanket there as she withdrew; it would protect him. Ignoring the fresh stabs of pain in her head, Bri glanced up the road. The three people were gazing at her, brows drawn, one of the men’s mouth forming an O of surprise. Without waiting for them to recover their poise, Bri once more grabbed Will’s hand. He gripped it back.
“Are you okay?” she asked, the words tumbling over one another in her haste.
“Yes.”
“Let’s move.”
They broke into a run. Approaching the gate of the house they’d left only a few minutes ago, Bri had an idea. She swerved into the garden and up the path. Before flinging open the door, she risked another glance.
The people were on the move, sprinting down the road towards them. The woman and one of the men each clutched a dark object. With a start, Bri recognised the objects as handguns.
“Oh shit!” she muttered. “Inside. Quick!”
Within moments, they stood inside the familiar hallway. While Bri drew the bolts across, Will thrust the handle upwards and locked the door. He yanked out the key and threw it towards the stairs. As they ran through the living room to the kitchen, Bri glanced outside. The people had reached the house. The woman was peering at the window and levelling her gun.
“Shit shit shit . . .” muttered Bri, but they were already in the kitchen.
A report like a firecracker sounded behind them, followed closely by a crunch and a thud like a fist hitting a punchbag.
Will unlocked the back door, using the key that protruded from the lock, and stooped to undo the bottom bolt.
“Bri,” he said, “the top bolt. I can’t reach.”
Another report came from the direction of the living room. This time it was followed by the tinkle of breaking glass.
“Bri! The top bolt!”
Bri darted forward and slid back the bolt. Will fumbled at the key, trying to remove it from the lock.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. “There’s no time!”
The key came free. Clutching it tightly in his hand, Will yanked the door open and they were outside. Will turned and pulled the door closed. He inserted the key, thrust up the handle and locked the door.
“Leave the key in the lock,” said Bri, pulling him away. “In case they find a spare inside.”
They ran down the path that led between two lawns to the close-panelled rear fence. The gate in the fence was bolted, too, but only once. It didn’t look like the gate was much in use: the bolt was rusty. Bri had difficulty lifting it into a position where it could be slid open. She grimaced as one of her nails broke.
“Hurry, Bri.” Will spoke quietly, but she couldn’t mistake the note of panic in his voice. “They’re in the kitchen.”
At last the bolt moved upwards and Bri gripped it between her fingers. It slid back reluctantly with a metallic screech. Something sharp hit her cheek, making her cry out. She stared uncomprehending at the jagged hole that had appeared in the gatepost an inch to the side of her head.
The gate swung open and Will shoved her through the gap.
Another firecracker sound and the gravel of the path beyond the gate kicked up in a puff of dust by their feet. Then they were running again, to their right, shielded from view by the fence.
They were in a narrow alleyway that ran between the rear gardens of two rows of houses. At the same time that Bri realised they were running east, she also understood that to have run to their left would have meant heading towards the street from which the people had emerged.
They reached the end of the alley and skidded to a halt. Bri poked her head out and looked to the right so she could see the end of the street from which they had just escaped. There was no sign of their pursuers, but they must surely have already left the house by the front window and be sprinting towards them.
“Left,” she said, giving Will a push in that direction and taking to her heels after him.
Bri could see another side street approaching on the other side of the road.
“Cross over,” she gasped to Will. “Down that street.”
Without daring to look behind to see whether the three people had come into sight, Bri and Will darted between parked cars and into the side road. They raced to its end and into the next street. Halfway along was the opening to another alley that ran between the backs of two rows of terraced houses. Into it they ran.
They stopped midway down the alley, sheltered from view by high fences and skeletal trees. Bri shrugged off her backpack and sank to the ground, her back to a fence. Will joined her. Together they sat there panting, catching their breath. Bri could feel sweat cooling on her back and running down between her breasts. So much for my shower, she thought ruefully.
Gradually their breathing became less laboured. Apart from the occasional snatch of bird song and the distant bark of a dog—she felt Will stiffen beside her at the sound—Bri could hear nothing. No shouts, no footsteps, no gunfire.
> “Who were those people, Bri? Why were they trying to kill us?”
“I don’t know. But they must have something to do with the damage to your mind. They did something to you just now so that you couldn’t move. They tried the same on me, but it didn’t work.”
Bri felt a shy tugging on the sleeve on her jacket. Will was gazing up at her with a look of frank adoration.
“You saved me again,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” she said gruffly, “I guess I’m your guardian angel.” She stood and yanked the backpack over her shoulder. “Right, back on your feet. We need to keep moving. I think we’ve lost those three, but there could be more like them. And if they can mess with our minds, maybe they can communicate with each other like in science fiction films. Telephony, or whatever it’s called.”
Will’s eyes widened. He jumped to his feet.
“I’m ready,” he said in a low voice.
“Okay. The direction I want us to go is back where we’ve come from. Don’t look so scared; we can’t go that way. Too risky. We could try to circle round, but we don’t know how many of them there are. So instead we’ll have to keep moving east. Maybe a little to the south too. Put as much distance between us and them as we can. Then tomorrow we can head due south, get out of London that way. Perhaps make for the coast.” She shrugged. “We can worry about tomorrow in the morning. Let’s just get our arses away from here.”
And so they weaved their way through West London, ducking down alleys and lanes and side streets, scaling fences and walls, crossing gardens and allotments and back yards, slowing to walking pace when they had little energy remaining, jogging when they could, but always moving.
Within the first couple of hours, they spotted three or four groups of rats moving in that peculiar, purposeful way. Whichever direction the rats had come from, Bri took Will in another.
Once they ducked out of sight as a sound reached their ears that had not long ago been familiar, but that now seemed incongruous: the grumble of an idling engine. They crept forward, oh so cautiously, until they could peer over a wall to see. In the distance, outside a block of flats, a flatbed lorry stood by the side of the road. Milling around the lorry, moving in and out of the building, were around a dozen people. They were bringing items from the building and depositing them onto the back of the lorry. Bri and Will were too far away to make out clearly what most of the items were, but one was obviously, from the awkward way it was handled, a mattress. Some of the items might have been sheet-wrapped bodies. The people were dressed in drab-looking clothes and moved in the shambling, detached manner that had characterised Will’s movements when Bri first met him. Standing a little to one side, watching the people work but offering no assistance, were a man and a woman. Even from this distance, Bri could tell that they were cleanly clothed. By each of their sides hung a dark object. Bri could not be sure, but thought the objects might be some sort of machine guns. She swallowed hard. They moved on, giving the building a wide berth.
They made their way through housing and industrial estates, down tree-lined avenues, through deserted parkland. They passed shops, but none that appeared to sell bicycles. Later, they saw Underground stations with names that Bri had never heard of: South Ealing, Hammersmith, High Street Kensington. She toyed briefly with the notion of descending beneath the streets of London, of working their way south, or even heading back west, below ground, safe from prying eyes. Then she thought of rats. If they had become so brazen above ground, what must it be like in the tunnels of the Underground, with no trains or lighting or people to confine the creatures to the margins? The platforms and concourses and escalator shafts, once brightly lit and alive with the constant bustle of mass human movement, ventilated by fans and the passage of trains, must now be dark and stifling, seething with the scurry and scrabble and squeak of thousand upon thousand of furry rodents, claws clicking on tiled floors, tails entwining like serpent lovers. Bri shuddered and dismissed the notion of going underground firmly from her mind.
After six hours or more, long after darkness had fallen, they felt safe enough from the risk of pursuit, or too tired to care any more, to find somewhere to hole up for the night.
By flickering candlelight, Will removed a splinter of wood from Bri’s cheek. She dry-swallowed the last of the painkillers; they had drunk the last of their water an hour before.
Physically exhausted and mentally drained, they fell asleep side by side on a cold, hard floor. They had travelled miles as Bri had intended, but in the opposite direction from the one she had wanted them to go. When they awoke the next day, they would find that far from leaving London behind, they had travelled deep into its heart.
* * * * *
Old Ben’s log cabin was cold and draughty. The tin stove that stood in the centre of the pressed dirt floor gave off fierce heat that was immediately lost through gaps in the walls and roof. Rain and meltwater entered through the same gaps, giving the interior a smell like old cellars. In one corner, a pale grey fungus pointed to the ceiling like a dead finger.
Zach sought isolation, not squalor and deprivation. He possessed the monetary means to make improvements and he didn’t hold back.
Although warped and weathered, the timbers forming the walls of the cabin were sound so he left them alone. He insulated the cabin and set ventilation ducts high in the walls, under the eaves and out of the wind. He replaced the timber roof with felt and tile, lagged and boarded from within.
He used timber from trees he cleared around the cabin to erect more outbuildings to house a modern privy (after years of squatting behind trees while on the road, Zach valued the relative comfort and privacy so provided), his pick-up truck, an oil-powered generator, and supplies of diesel and oil.
He constructed a timber-framed greenhouse in which he cultivated fruit and vegetables during the long winter months, before transplanting the hardier species to a vegetable patch that enjoyed full sunshine during the summer.
He replaced the ill-fitting doors and windows with custom-made security units, the glass double-glazed and tinted, the door capable of withstanding attack from a sledge hammer.
Cold water was pumped via a filter to a faucet housed over a Belfast sink inside the cabin. Hot water was heated by the log-burning range with which Zach replaced the tin stove. The range catered for all his cooking requirements, simple as they were.
He paid skilled tradesmen to carry out much of the installation work and studied what they were doing with such grim concentration that one or two of the workmen seemed a little put out, though none dared mention anything to his face. If Zach noticed their discomfort, he ignored it. He watched and noted and learned so that if anything went wrong with any of the installations, he would be able to fix it himself. And so he became largely self-sufficient, completely in some aspects. He still needed to take a monthly trip to town to stock up on supplies of grain and oil and beer (though never bourbon or other hard liquor), ammunition for his rifle and reading materials for long winter evenings. He needed to buy batteries for his radio, at least until he replaced it with a clockwork model. Occasionally, he needed to replace worn clothes or boots, or broken tools, or light bulbs. He sometimes needed spare parts for the generator or pump. But everything that needed to be replaced or repaired he did himself. Once the initial work on the land and cabin had been completed, he never again summoned a workman to his property.
Zach learned to bake his own bread. He laid traps for rabbits. He hunted deer and elk and bear. He supplemented his dwindling savings by selling furs in town and surplus fresh produce.
Dwindling they might have been, but his savings sustained his meagre needs for over forty years. He erected a fence around his land and a sturdy gate. He did nothing to improve the condition of the access track or to discourage undergrowth to encroach upon it in spring and summer, partly concealing it.
Aside from his monthly trips to town, when he interacted with local people only in as much as was necessary to conduct his business, and l
ess frequent visits to Augusta to satisfy another need, Zach Trent cut himself off from the world. He did not contact the closest thing he had to a friend, the lawyer Mr Benton. For all Zach knew, Mr Benton had died many years ago. If not, he must now be dead from the Millennium Bug that had seen fit, for reasons at which he could not even begin to guess, to spare Zach.
Although he did not often listen to news reports on his radio, preferring light music or comedy shows, Zach could not avoid hearing about the spread of the virus that was killing indiscriminately and by the thousand at first; then by the million; finally by the billion. He had fallen ill, laid low by a sweating, shaking fever that he thought must spell his end. He retired to bed, ready to look his maker in the eye, and perhaps to spit in it. It was more to a feeling of great surprise than relief that he awoke, weak and stinking and thirsty, but alive.
While he recovered his strength, an incident that had struck him as a little peculiar at the time, but that had almost passed from his mind, played on his thoughts.
It had been a week or two before Christmas and Zach had gone into town to stock up for the festive season. Not that he celebrated the religious aspects of the holiday, but used the occasion as an excuse to spoil himself a little with chocolate and a fat cigar. And maybe an extra crate of beer.
As usual, he had pulled up in front of the hardware store where he would transact most of his business. It was as he climbed out of the pick-up that he noticed the woman. Ordinarily, he kept his gaze cast down so as not to make eye contact with anyone and prompt an attempt at conversation. But that morning he paused beside his vehicle, head raised, watching her.
It wasn’t the woman’s looks that caught his eye. She was of unremarkable height and build, middle-aged, hair shoulder-length and mousey. It was the way she was behaving. An open shoulder bag hung by her hip and she dipped her hand inside frequently as she made her way past the row of storefronts. She approached each store and grabbed the handle of each door as though about to enter, but then walked on as if she had changed her mind at the last moment. At the bank, she stopped in front of the ATM and dipped her hand into her bag once more. Zach did not notice her insert her bank card into the machine or withdraw any bills or statements, but she nevertheless pressed every button of the pad before moving to the door of the bank and briefly clutching the handle.