by Sam Kates
Peter took a deep breath, ready to spring to Diane’s defence, although he knew there was little he could do. The silence was broken by an unexpected source.
“Maybe you’d better kill me while you’re at it.” George Wallace stepped forward, holding out his pistol butt-first to the Chosen. “’Cause I’m done with killing dro– humans, too.”
“Fuck, man, you’ve lost it,” muttered Lavinia.
Without lowering her gun from Diane, Simone looked at Wallace. She made no move to take the pistol from his grasp.
“Well, well, Raccoon-boy,” she said, “here’s one for the books. Angry old George becomes a drone lover. What next? Go seek out a human to make your wife? Plead for clemency for the survivors? Maybe–” Simone’s voice dropped and a glint appeared in her eyes “–maybe try to sabotage the Great Coming?”
Wallace snorted. “I’m no traitor, as you well know. If the consensus is to kill off the survivors—and I still can’t see any other outcome—I won’t take part in the Commune, but neither will I try to obstruct it.”
Simone stared at him for a moment, her lips twisting in contempt. Then she looked back at Diane.
“He may be right,” she said, her voice low and menacing, stripped of all vestiges of schoolgirliness. “He’s probably no traitor. A pussy, yep.” A further snort of derision came from Wallace; Simone ignored him. “And you, Diane, you’re a strange one. Difficult to read. Regret? Hmm, maybe, but you played your part in the Cleansing, of that I’m certain. And you’ve since helped drones, though not enough to make you a traitor. You won’t let me in to take a peek, but I believe that you killed Troy Bishop.” She shrugged. “He was a pig of a man. A rogue. If anyone didn’t have the good of the whole at heart, it was dear Troy. Probably better off without him. Which just leaves…” She swung the weapon away from Diane. For the third time in as many minutes, Peter faced the business end of a gun. He suspected this would be the final occasion.
“Just shoot me, Simone, and be done with it,” he said.
“You don’t deny you’re a traitor to your people?”
Peter shook his head. “We designed humans to be aggressive, to procreate, to colonise this planet, to evolve. We then decided to wipe them out because they proved to be too successful at the very things for which they were created. If refusing to take part in their annihilation because I had grown to love them makes me a traitor then, yes, that is what I must be.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Simone. “Goodbye, Ronstadt.”
Peter closed his eyes.
And opened them again at the sound of the engine. All heads turned towards the road. A car was heading towards them. As it pulled up, Peter recognised the black man behind the steering wheel: Jason Grant. The passenger door opened and Milandra eased her bulk out of the vehicle. She looked around the small company, her eyes narrowing when her gaze passed over the gun in Simone’s hands. The Chosen, as though with the greatest reluctance, lowered the weapon.
“Well,” said Milandra with a beaming smile. “This is convenient. All the Deputies gathered in one place.” She nodded at Peter and Diane. “Our errant members are here, too. I have something to tell you, something that concerns you all. Shall we go inside?”
* * * * * * *
It wasn’t so much a menacing advance as a stroll in the spring sunshine with guns. South of Hillingdon Hospital lay a pleasant residential area with tree-lined roads, middle-class suburban semis, schools, golf courses and parkland. Buoyed by the ease with which the hospital had been taken, people walked alongside their friends, chatting and joking. The line grew thinner and fractured as some took one road, some another, others a path across playing fields. So long as they headed south, no one seemed concerned whether they proceeded in any kind of order.
“I don’t like this,” muttered Zach. His gaze flickered this way and that, trying to cover all possible angles from which attack might come. He carried the assault rifle—one of those he had found in the army convoy on the road outside Augusta—casually, but ready to bring to bear at the first sign of trouble.
“Me neither,” agreed Frank. He, too, appeared tense. Zach had provided him with one of the American assault rifles and he bore it with a familiar ease. “Surprise has gone. Any possible advantage we had has been surrendered by allowing the enemy at the hospital to escape. This advance is unstructured and slow. If they hit us now while we’re spread out, disorganised, we, to coin an expression, is fucked.”
“Yep, all ways to Hell.”
Despite his grave misgivings about the lack of structure and leadership, Zach felt more alive than he had in years. He knew why. Carrying an assault rifle, a weapon designed to kill other men, completed him, but in a way that he despised. The conflicting sensations added to his unease.
He glanced at their companions. Amy walked alongside Nan, bearing her firearm with an air of ‘this is something new to me but, by golly, I’ll use it if I have to’. She noticed his glance and smiled. Nan and Elliott walked together, the slow pace suiting them. The elderly woman carried her rifle with the assurance of someone long accustomed to handling guns. Not so Elliott; his rifle was slung over his shoulder and bumped his hip with every step. Judging by the expressions of irritation that passed over his face, Elliott would as soon be rid of the weapon as have to carry it. Zach held no confidence that the man would be able to use the rifle with any degree of competence.
“Frank,” Zach said. “What say you and me ride point? Look out for our little group.”
Frank nodded and stepped away to take up position on the far side of Elliott. Zach maintained his place near Amy, but a few yards away so his view was not obstructed. The line had grown so strung out that the nearest people were more than twenty yards ahead. Others were further behind or to the sides, thinning out more as people chose different routes, nobody providing guidance or coherence.
Since he happened to be looking ahead when it started, Zach was the first to see the commotion. Amy and Frank, with the keener hearing of youth, were the first to hear it.
A small knot of people in front of them suddenly broke apart and scattered. Zach stopped and threw out his arm to indicate to the others that they should halt, too. On the other side of Elliott, Frank did the same. Then Zach heard what Frank must have already heard: screams and shouts. Moments later, gunfire.
“Everyone, down!” he hissed.
Zach dropped into a crouch and glanced left to make sure they had all followed suit to present themselves as smaller targets. He peered forward, unwilling to commit to any course of action until he knew what they were up against.
The road ahead widened at a four-way intersection. A circular concrete bump separated the roads from each other. Zach had heard of these; ‘mini roundabouts’ the Brits called them.
People were running back and taking one of the roads to either side or towards them, seemingly at random, driven by panic. Some turned and discharged their weapons, although Zach could not see at whom or what they were aiming. In the meantime, people coming up behind had reached the point where Zach and his small party crouched in the road. Unwilling to pass them, yet curious as to what was happening ahead, the newcomers milled about. It was becoming a little congested.
A young man, wide-eyed, ran by them, ignoring the questions people called to him. A woman staggered past, skirt torn, blood running freely down her legs from several gashes.
If she answered questions, Zach didn’t hear. He was watching what else was approaching.
The roads and sidewalks had come alive in the form of a brown, undulating carpet. Moving fast. It took Zach a few moments to believe the evidence of his own eyes. There were too many of them, thousands, acting in concert like fish in a shoal.
People behind him had also seen.
“Rats!” screamed a woman.
“Run!” shouted a man.
“Stand and fire!” shouted another.
There was no time to look for cover, no time to prepare.
“No shoot
ing,” shouted Zach to his companions. “Too many people about.”
The rats broke over them in a wave. For the next few minutes, the world became a furry, biting, clawing nightmare.
Gunshots, yelps of pain and cries of revulsion vied for supremacy against a background of squeaking and claws clicking on asphalt. Amidst it all, Zach swung his rifle from side to side, crushing dozens of rats, only for scores more to take their places. Amy, Nan and Elliott followed his lead, wielding their rifles like clubs, kicking out at the creatures that made it past to bite and claw at their legs.
Beyond the melee, at a row of semi-detached houses set back from the road, Zach glimpsed Frank. The young man was beckoning frantically to him from an open doorway to one of the houses.
“Amy! Run to Frank,” Zach hollered, struggling to make himself heard. “Nan! Elliott! And you.” He took one hand off the butt of his rifle long enough to point to where Frank waited for them.
The swarm of vermin was not lessening. Neither were the screams and gunfire, all underpinned by a frantic squealing. Faster than they could be shot or battered, more rats appeared. People who had made a run for it were overtaken and forced to fight or fall beneath the relentless weight of numbers.
Zach swung his rifle faster, ignoring the burning complaints of the muscles in his arms and back. Crushed rats fell away under the fury of his onslaught and a clear space formed around him.
“Now!” Zach yelled to Amy.
She stopped swinging her weapon and darted towards the houses. Moving a little slower, Elliott followed. Nan had started after him when she let out a strangled shriek, let her weapon fall to the ground and stumbled to her knees. Immediately, twenty or more rats were upon her.
Zach dropped his rifle, bounded forward and began yanking the creatures off her with his bare hands. They felt warm and frail beneath his grip; he could crush their ribcages with one squeeze if he had the time or inclination.
“Nan! You have to get up,” he hissed in her ear. He lacked the energy to yell any more.
He tried to get a hand under her arm and haul her to her feet, but she was a dead weight, her head slumped to her chest.
“Nan, come on. You have to help.”
Her hands hung down by her sides. Rats were chewing on her fingers; she made no move to dislodge them. More rats were scrabbling up her back. One had made it to her head and was biting at her hair. With a low grunt of disgust, Zach grabbed it and tore it free. A lock of grey hair came away with it.
Zach’s jeans and jacket grew heavy under the weight of rats clambering over them. His legs became leaden; he wanted to kneel next to Nan.
Then strong hands were gripping his arms, pulling him away. He felt the same hands brushing at his back, removing vermin. He resisted, trying to reach back to Nan who looked as though she were wearing a coat made of live, wriggling creatures.
“No, Zach! Leave her.” It was Frank’s voice.
“Huh? Can’t leave her…”
“She’s dead. A stray bullet hit her. Most of her face is missing.”
Feeling as if he had entered some crazy dream world where he was once more eighteen and watching his friends get blown away, except this was taking place in a concrete jungle where his friends had grey hair and cardigans, Zach allowed Frank to lead him to the house from which Amy and Elliott peered anxiously. As he passed the kneeling figure of Nan, Zach glanced back and saw that Frank had spoken the truth.
Rats tore greedily at the little that remained of the old lady’s face.
* * * * * * *
Simone handed the submachine gun back to Lavinia as they walked towards the hotel. She had been tempted to shoot Ronstadt despite the Keeper’s arrival, but reluctance to take that final step towards disobedience (and, necessarily, affirmation of ambition and individuality) had won out once more, although it was becoming a close-run thing.
Soon, she kept telling herself, and ‘soon’ was approaching fast. Perhaps as close as a week away. When the Great Coming took place, Simone would challenge Milandra for her position as Keeper even as the rest of their people descended from the sky. Then, after the old bitch had stepped, or been forced, aside—she rather hoped it would be the latter; boredom was making her antsy and spoiling for a fight—Simone would stand every chance of becoming Keeper for her entire people. Nobody seemed to know how it would be decided which Keeper, the incumbent on Earth Haven or the incoming, would take precedence over the other, but she intended being at the forefront of such deliberations. Whatever the outcome, she ought to be well placed to venture out into the empty planet in a position of power, ready to establish a base somewhere in the Caribbean or the Tropics and surround herself by sycophants who could help her plot to acquire more power. For what would be the point of ambition and individuality if not to try to advance her station in the new world? And having already spent almost four millennia on Earth Haven, what else could she do that she hadn’t already done many times and in many ages? Pursuing personal glory had thus far been denied her by her people’s need for anonymity. That consideration no longer applied.
They reached the hotel. As they were about to walk in, Jason Grant stepped aside, nodding to himself. All present knew what that signified.
He glanced at Milandra. “It’s Tess Granville,” he said. “They’ve come under attack. I need to speak with her.”
Milandra nodded. While Grant turned away, she looked at Simone.
“I might as well take this opportunity to eat,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”
Simone could not resist. “Yes, you look it,” she trilled in her best schoolgirl voice. Her ‘flibbedy gibbet’ voice as she thought of it. She wasn’t sure if anyone, least of all the Deputies, were taken in by it, but she didn’t care; it was too much fun to do. “You really should be taking it a little easier at your age.” She noted the faint tightening at the corners of Milandra’s mouth and chalked up another tiny victory. “Lavinia, the Keeper’s old and hungry. See to her.” She flapped her hand as though dismissing a slave.
A broad grin on her face, Simone turned and entered the hotel.
* * * * * * *
From the journal of Elliott King:
So much for being the next Faulkner or Fitzgerald. Looks like the task appointed to me in my twilight years is not to compose a great work of fiction that will accord me honor and respect throughout the literary world, dare I say putting me in the running for a Pulitzer.
I am to be a chronicler. Instead of the Hemingway or James of my generation, I’m fated to be the Pliny of today’s Vesuvius, recording the death throes of a fading species. For so it appeared to the people of Pompeii and Herculaneum, that it was the end of days.
And so it seems to us. It is doubtful whether those ancients in the first century A.D. appreciated that the calamity they faced—the hail of pumice and ash, the poisoned air—was localized. In one sense, the peril we, this small band of ‘we’, face is narrow since there are people in the wider world who will go on living even though we perish.
But for how long? The inevitability that they, too, will meet their end before the summer is through makes our feeble efforts seem less futile, of some value greater than worthless. Perhaps even noble.
I can embrace being a chronicler, maybe the last chronicler of mankind. What I cannot embrace is the pretence of being a fighter. I am no soldier, guerrilla, freedom fighter. I have never hunted, never discharged a firearm, never killed a living creature. My parents brought me up to value books, not guns. The only battle I ever fought was with my sexuality. I won, repressing my true nature to avoid bringing shame to my family in times when shame would indeed have been the outcome had my true leanings become known.
Caught up in the fervor of the moment, embarrassed at Nan’s ready willingness to fight (she is—was, though it breaks my heart to write it—my senior by four years), and Amy’s (she, too, has never held a gun before), and Sarah’s (she’s two months’ pregnant, for Chrissakes), I agreed to go to war. Who was I kidding? Nan could
tell in New Jersey that I was unfamiliar and uncomfortable with handling firearms. Frank and Zach shared a look when I said I’d go into battle with them. They were kind enough not to say anything, but I understood its meaning: why is he going? What help can he offer?
They were right to question. At the first sign of trouble, my bowels liquefied, my arms became saplings quivering in fall gales. I only overcame the impulse to flee from fear that my legs would fail to carry me in their abruptly leaden state.
After surviving that first attack, I gave my gun and grenades away. I am armed now only with this pen and notebook. The pen is mightier than the sword, right? Not so sure it beats a 9mm round to the head, but metaphors aren’t supposed to be taken literally. It’s why they’re called metaphors.
Not that I’ve had to dodge any bullets. Not yet. We haven’t so much as caught a glimpse of our adversaries. If they are near, they hide within office buildings or churches or schools or houses. This is a large, sprawling city. It offers many places of concealment. They are watching us. Sending beasts against us. They don’t need to show themselves.
I have Frank and Zach to protect me, and—I’m not ashamed to say it—Amy, too. What that girl lacks in natural ability she makes up in enthusiasm.
“Ain’t never been ’thusiastic ’bout nothin’,” she said (making my inner English teacher cringe) when I commented on her apparent keenness to shoot somebody. “’Cept now I guess I’m anxious to bag me some alien on account of ’em murderin’ muvvafucks killin’ my momma.”
Okay, okay, I’m exaggerating Amy’s patois, but I never got the chance to write fiction, so indulge me.