Chapter Fifteen

 

"I want to help."

Katja: hands on hips, hair cropped raggedly short, head cocked back to look me in the eye.

Joyce, Parfitt and Akinbode climbing aboard the Chinook. Hendry at the controls, Lomax guarding the entrances like fucking Cerberus. The rest were staying to guard the village.

"If you want to help, see if you can get anything more out of Stiles."

Folding her arms; looking pissed off. "Stiles talks when he wants to. I don't control him."

"No, but he's more likely to want to talk to you than anyone else."

A shrug. "I can do more than that."

"How?"

Nodding towards the Chinook. "Let me come with you."

"What for?"

"You need everyone you can get."

"These men are professional soldiers."

"So was my father. And he taught me a lot."

I still didn't know exactly what she'd gone through, but it couldn't have been easy. I remembered her eyes when I'd first seen her, after the initial terror. They'd been dark and staring somewhere far past me. She'd seen Hell, or something damned close to it, and she'd survived. She'd kept her head.

"Can you handle an automatic weapon?" I asked her.

"Give me my rifle and I'll show you."

I looked into her eyes; she didn't flinch.

Some things break under pressure. Others grow stronger.

"OK."

 

Our third day at Pendle.

We'd hooked up with the occupants of the other hamlets immediately around the Hill; Newchurch-in-Pendle, Sabden, Spen Brook. No further attacks. Nothing on the radio.

Too fucking quiet for safety. We were soldiers. Needed to be doing something.

Needed to see what was out there.

 

The rotors chopping at the air. The sound beating through the hull. The sky outside still dark. Rain peppering the cockpit canopy. Least they'd managed to scrub Cannock and Tidyman's brains off it.

Katja sat, rifle across her lap, in a spare army jacket two sizes too big. It, and the Browning pistol in her belt, had still been in the dinghy. The pistol had been Marta's - I'd got her friend's name from her, though nothing else. The rifle was an old US Army M-14, firing 7.62mm NATO rounds. They packed a punch. The 5.56mm rounds in our SA80s wouldn't even slow a nightmare down unless it was a headshot, but a 7.62 would knock it flat, dead or not.

The men huddled in their seats, smirking. Probably thought I was cunt-struck. But the smirking stopped if she looked their way. There was nothing comic about her, outsize jacket or no. Her face was hard, expressionless, her jaw set.

We touched down on the fell we'd passed on our first approach, a broad shoulder of grass and rock. The men de-bussed, surrounding the chopper. Katja went with them and fell into place, gun held ready.

"Akinbode, stay with the chopper. You and Lomax man the guns."

"Sarge."

"Rest of you, with me."

The farmhouse was near the water's edge. No-one in. The only other life visible on the fell were a dozen or so sheep, cropping the grass.

The rotors wound down and fell silent. A thin wind keened across the fells and the sea. I heard the faint lap and suck of waves on shore. A sea sound. It didn't belong here.

A sea.

Sometimes it takes that one final detail to bring it home. To make it real. It was all gone. Waterstone's and Starbucks, Tesco's and the Co-Op, Boots the chemist, multiplex cinemas, McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut. All the totems and trademarks of the world we'd lived in. All gone.

Glasgow. The street I'd grown up in. The house I was born in. Gone.

London, Manchester, Birmingham, Paris, Berlin, New York, Washington, Pretoria, Harare, Brisbane, Melbourne...

Gone.

This huge sea, in place of them all.

Focus.

There are different kinds of silence. The kind that's all charged up with something about to happen. The hush before something breaks.

Or the kind that says nobody's home. When you walk into the married quarters and you know she's gone. There's more space in the house suddenly.

This was the second kind of silence.

A sheep bleated. An ordinary countryside sound. Like the lapping of the water, it made the loss more real.

It would be so easy just to stand here and try taking in the scale of it. The people we knew who'd be dead by now. That we couldn't believe might have survived, because the one thing worse than certain death was false hope.

So easy.

Mustn't let it happen.

"Parfitt?"

"Sarge?"

"Round up the sheep."

"Sarge?" He looked like I'd just told him to piss out his ear.

"Round them up. We could use the meat."

"Fucksake."

"What was that?"

"Yes, Sarge."

I grinned as he scooted off. Lomax would probably say a damn sight worse when we started herding old McDonald's farm aboard the Chinook.

"What if there's still someone here?" whispered Katja.

"That's the big question, isn't it? Joyce?"

"Sarge."

"Check round the back." Joyce nodded and moved off. I turned to Katja.

"Alright, hen. I'm going in."

She covered me as I went down the slope. The door had been smashed in. Most of the windows were gone as well.

Joyce moved round from the other side of the building, keeping out of Katja's line of fire. "Clear, Sarge."

"OK." I motioned to Katja and she followed us in.

Chairs knocked over. An old child's Peter Rabbit mug - probably the mum or dad's, handed down - on the table. A congealed, half-eaten plateful of bangers and mash with listless-looking flies crawling on it. Potted herbs on the windowsill. A Welsh dresser surrounded by broken crockery.

Spent shotgun shells on the floor. Buckshot spatters on the walls.

Three bodies, the waxy remains of their eyeballs crusted on their cheeks below the empty sockets. Nightmares. They'd each been blasted in the head.

Another nightmare lay in the hallway by the smashed front door, head gone above the eyebrows. Arcs of blood on the walls. Arterial spray.

When had it happened? During the storm, maybe, when the nightmares had attacked Barley. I hoped so. Because then we couldn't have saved them. It wouldn't be my fault. No need to feel guilty.

Only, I did.

The bodies in the sand, staining it with blood. The women and children, carrying the dead away. The girl looking back.

I shook my head.

Focus, you prick.

The dining room. Untouched. The battle had never spread there. The table was set for some special occasion that'd never arrived. It could come and pass unmarked now, with no-one to observe it or even know what it was.

The living room.

Katja went in first.

There were bloodstains on the living room carpet. Chunks of shrivelled flesh. A couple of severed fingers. A hole blasted in the ceiling. Shotgun.

I found the shotgun itself in the corner, broken open. A shell loaded into one barrel, the other empty. An unfired shell on the carpet. Like a painting - the composition tells the whole story. I picked it up, pocketed the shells.

Katja was staring at a photograph she'd found. When she saw me looking, she put it face down on the mantelpiece and moved away. I lifted the picture; a husband and wife, three kids, the youngest not much more than a toddler.

We checked upstairs and in the cellar. There was no-one else, dead, alive or anywhere in between. There was blood in one of the bedrooms. A child's nursery. Arterial spray on walls and ceiling.

Messy eaters.

There were cured hams and flitches of bacon stored in the pantry. Cans. Jars. Some fresh. Cabbages and lettuces. Boxes of shotgun shells. We took them all.

Parfitt had herded the sheep onto the Chinook. Lomax didn't look happy about it. Neither did Parfitt. Or the sheep, come to that. When not thrashing or nipping, the sheep retaliated by shitting everywhere.

Akinbode seemed to think it was hilarious. If looks could have killed, the one on Parfitt's face would have finished him on the spot. Meantime I told them to help Joyce load the provisions.

Katja and I picked up the last load. We were about ten yards up from the farmhouse when Akinbode pointed down the slope and shouted.

They stood in the shallows below the farmhouse. It lapped around the knees of the two adults and the waists of the two older children. The toddler clung to the mother. They stared up at us with their slack, empty faces and glowing eyes, but they didn't move.

"Shit!" I dropped the cans and fumbled for the rifle. Katja was already on one knee, the M-14 shouldered.

I don't know why we didn't fire straight off. But we didn't. The father turned his head to stare at the farmhouse; he cocked it to one side, as if trying to recognise it. The children stayed close to their mother, who clung to the toddler. All of them staring up at us.

"They're all around us, Sarge," Akinbode shouted. I managed to look away from the family. Heads broke the surface here and there. Not many. After the other day, there couldn't be that many left in the area. But they were in the water around us, watching.

"Fall back to the Chinook," I shouted, "and fast."

I walked backwards. They didn't move. Maybe they could tell they were outgunned. There weren't enough of them to rush us.

Not yet.

The doors slammed. The rotors churned. The chopper lifted.

I peered out of the window. The family stood where they'd first appeared, watching us go - except for the father, who still stared towards what had been his home.

Katja was looking down at them too. I touched her arm; she whipped round.

"You did good back there," I said.

"I know," she said.

But a small, crooked smile touched her lips.

 

Back at the farmhouse, we opened a few tins in the front room. Stiles was in his usual corner with another bottle of gin. His eyes brightened when he saw Katja. She went over and sat beside him.

The rest of us sat on the far side of the room, drinking in silence. It was Parfitt, in the end, who said it.

"You reckon they remember anything, Sarge?"

"What?"

"Those fucking things."

"Why should they?" Akinbode's fingers brushed the small cross at his throat. "They are dead. They are just... corpses. Things made to walk around. What could they remember?"

"The fuck should I know?" There was an edge in Parfitt's voice; Stiles and Katja both looked up. He glanced at them, took a deep breath, calmed himself down. "I mean... come on, Aki, you saw them too. You and all, Sarge. It was like they knew the place. Like they remembered it'd been -"

"Shut up," said Akinbode. "Just shut up, Mark."

But I knew he had a point. We all did, even Akinbode; he just didn't want to accept it.

When they were just nightmares it was easy enough. They were monsters. They weren't human. You pointed a gun and you shot and their brains flew out and they were dead. Like they should've been to begin with.

But the way they'd stood in the shallows. The way the father had looked up at his old house. The way the dead mother held her dead baby...

I'd felt fear, yes. But something else. Almost... pity.

"Doesn't matter," I said. "Doesn't change anything. We've seen what -"

"They don't remember," said Stiles.

We all turned around and looked at him. Even Katja was staring at him. I looked at his drawn, prematurely aged face, the bleary, reddened eyes.

"They don't remember," he said, "but the Deep Brain does."

"What the fuck is the Deep Brain?" I asked.

His face tightened in pain, and he looked down.

"Stiles? Stiles, what's the Deep Brain?"

He didn't answer. Katja laid a hand on his arm, looked up at me and shook her head. She leaned in closer to him and spoke softly, but his head kept shaking, although after a while, I heard murmuring too. I shrugged and turned back to my beer.

We finished our drinks and the others went off, they all had work to do. So did I, but fuck that for now.

Stiles had slumped over in the corner. Katja looked up. "Passed out. Can you help me get him back?"

 

"He was lucky to survive," she said back at the caravan, looking down at him sprawled on the filthy divan. "He was in agony, after the accident. Still is. Not as bad, but he's still in constant pain."

Just for a second or two, the hard mask slipped, and I saw - something. Sorrow, perhaps.

"Poor bastard. But it's not much use to us. No fucking relevance at all that I can see."

Katja put her finger to her lips. "I think there is a link," she said outside. "But I don't know what. I also think he wants to tell us. Or me, at least."

"Did he say anything useful?"

She shook her head again. "Odd words and phrases. The Deep Brain, the voices, the souls. They're calling him. Over and over again."

"Word salads."

She gave a short laugh. "That's a good phrase. I like it. Otherwise, he talks about his childhood, his adolescence, his first girlfriend, university, going diving. He wants to make sense. But he can't. It's like..."

"What?" We started walking back down, close, almost touching. Not a date, exactly. But a man could always hope.

"He's afraid."

"He can join the fucking club."

"Do you have to swear so much, Robert?"

I was tempted to say aw fuck off, just for the hell of it, but that was lost in the realisation she'd just called me by my first name. For that, I'd even sign the pledge.

Well, hang on. Maybe not that far. I'm not fucking demented.

"Sorry."

She shrugged. "No. I am. Stupid really, with everything that's happened."

I didn't say anything. Sometimes women want you to agree with them and sometimes not. Buggered if I ever know which it is.

Probably why I know what a married quarters feels like when you go in and you know it's empty, and she's gone.

Jeannie.

Christ. Don't start thinking about her, Robbie.

The blood in the sand, the bodies, the women walking away.

No, she wasn't there. But she was part of the casualty list, even so. Part of the fallout.

Death, murder... the cost is limitless. Like ripples from a rock. The damage it does knocks on, in ways you never expected. It can come back and damage the murderers too.

No more than I deserved.

But still it fucking hurt.

"You said he was afraid. Stiles, I mean. What's he afraid of?"

"I think..." She looked up at the hillside, bit her lip and shook her head, then looked over at me. She really had beautiful eyes. Big and dark.

Christ, Robbie, you're falling. Don't fucking do it. Just don't.

"I think he's afraid that if he talks about it - whatever it is he's so scared of, this Deep Brain thing... he's afraid it will know and come for him."

"What the fuck is the Deep Brain, when it's at home?"

She didn't tick me off over my language this time. "At a guess, whatever controls the dead things."

"Controls them?" That would make sense. I mean, there had to be a reason that the dead started waking up. Didn't there?

"The 'Brain' part would suggest a controlling intelligence, yes? But what it is, and where..."

"That's what we need to know." The thought of the 'Deep Brain' made things better and worse at once. Worse because it was bad enough when the nightmares were just shambling flesh-eaters. The idea of something directing them...

But if there was such a thing, it could be found. Perhaps destroyed, if there were some submarines left. Torpedoes punching through soft grey brain tissue and exploding, blowing it into scraps of fish food. The nightmares keeling over, the lights going out in their eyes.

Give me an enemy I can fight, and I'm a happy man.

"We're so in the dark, with this." Katja sat on a drystone wall. "We don't even know what his theories were. He could be insane. Or only half-right. Which could be just as disastrous."

"Well, keep trying. You're the only one he seems to talk to. Maybe he's in love."

She didn't answer.

"Sorry," I said.

"What for?"

"I shouldn't - I mean, I wasn't - I didn't mean to take the piss."

"You think you can offend me?" She looked up."You will have to try harder than that. Do you know that there are mornings when I give thanks for the flood, even for the dead things? Do you know what I was, before this? What was done to me? I was fucked by a dozen, twenty men a day. Sometimes so sore I bled. Fucked in the arse so I could barely walk. Treated as a piece of meat. You think a joke will hurt me?"

My face was burning.

"But," she carried on, "you could be right."

"What?"

"Stiles. Perhaps I remind him of someone. Perhaps I'm just the first pretty girl who doesn't laugh at him or look at him in disgust. Either way. He wants to make contact with me. He just doesn't know how. And I don't know how to help him."

I looked at her and I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to ask if I could kiss her. Been a long time since I've done that. I've slept with hookers. But Katja wasn't one, not anymore, and God help any man who treated her as one. And even then -

I didn't just want her. I wanted her to want me.

I had no idea where to start with that.

"When are you next going out?" she asked.

"Tomorrow. We'll scout west."

"Can I come?"

"Aye."

"Thank you."

"Just be careful."

No-one else could get shit-all out of Stiles. If she died, we'd know nothing. Always assuming there was anything to know in the first place.

If I was honest, that was why I didn't like him - apart from the obvious one of him being mad. I'm not comfortable around mental illness, can't handle the idea of it finding a home in me. I laugh at nutters out of fear - fear I might become one of them. Because I've come too close to it. So I laugh, because I'm still on the rails and they're not. Ugly but true.

But it wasn't just that.

It was Katja.

I was jealous.

 

We found survivors in nearby villages that had survived the flooding - Blacko, Roughlee, Downham. More often than not, we'd see the nightmares, lurking in the shallows. They didn't attack, just watched. We never had to fire a shot.

For the first time, an uneasy hope began to blossom. Perhaps they'd leave us alone.

After all, they were dead. And dead flesh rots. Tendons and ligaments parting, the skeleton falling apart. And bodies in water, salt water most of all, rot away fast.

If we could just wait them out. If we could just hold on long enough, then nature would do the job for us.

About a week after that first flight out, I was in the farmhouse front room, drinking with Mleczko and Chas. Billy sat by Mleczko - there was no shaking him, which got Mleczko ribbed unmercifully - while Jo and Chas sat together on the sofa, holding hands like a couple of kids. Nobody took the piss, and not only because Chas'd make their lives hell if they did. It was - never thought I'd say this about Chas Nixon - sweet. Good to see something going right.

Katja and Stiles were talking in their corner. I took a large swallow. Stupid to be jealous of Stiles anyway. She wasn't with him out of love.

Katja got up, left the room.

Mleczko nudged me. Stiles was coming over, hunched and moving stiffly, grimacing at the pain each movement brought. Poor bastard.

He had Katja. Lucky bastard.

Stop snivelling, Robbie.

"It isn't over."

I looked up at him. "What?"

He gestured round with a free hand. "You think it's all over. Don't you?"

"They think it's all over," Billy sniggered. "It is now."

I ignored him, and so did Stiles. He just stared at me. His eyes were incredibly bloodshot, the irises snared in red webs of tiny broken veins. Dad'd had had eyes like that.

"It hasn't started yet," said Stiles. "The Deep Brain. It's watching and waiting. The ocean. The voices. The souls. It's coming."

"What is?" I asked.

Stiles' eyes screwed shut, as if against a sudden jab of pain, lips peeling back from his clenched, yellowed teeth. Then he sucked in a breath and opened his eyes again. "It's coming, Sergeant," he said again, and then turned and limped back to his corner.

"What is?" I asked. He didn't answer. I stood up and shouted. "What fucking is?"

The whole room was silent. Movement at the corner of my eye; Katja, stood in the doorway, watching.

Stiles did not turn around. "Death," he said. "Death is coming."

Then he sat back down, picked up the bottle he'd been working on, and said no more.

Katja went over to him. I sat back down.

"Fucking lunatic," muttered Chas. Jo huddled closer to him, as if for warmth. It was the closest to frightened I'd seen her.

"Apeshit," Mleczko agreed.

"Yeah," Billy echoed, "apeshit."

"Yeah." I grunted.

I saw them sat together. I wanted to look away, but didn't.

He was holding her hand. And Katja... Katja wasn't just letting him hold her hand. Do you understand? She was squeezing his hand back, stroking the knuckles with her thumb. She was responding. Of course, it could have just been like a whore's kisses - faking it to please the customer.

But I could see how she looked at him. I could've handled pity. Even lust, hard to imagine though that was.

But this was something else. This was the look I'd wanted to see in her eyes when she looked at me.

She realised she was being watched. She looked up. I turned away before she met my eyes.

"I need some fucking air," I said, standing.

I went outside.

"You OK, Robbie?"

"Aye."

"Rob -"

"Chas, I'm fine."

I felt the cold wind on my face, breathed out. The clouds had broken briefly, letting moonlight gleam on the dark waters beyond. Scratching the surface, shedding no light on the depths. And all I could think was:

Death, Sergeant.

Death is coming.