The cataclysm has brought about such a radical change in the way we live, communicate, and rely on each other that it’s almost as if we are killing ourselves. Society is built upon interdependence, and has been for thousands of years. We congregate in great communities of millions of people, creating complex webs of contact that cannot easily be unspun, and in times of chaos and need—times like now—it is human nature to draw that web in closer. To be with each other even more than we have before. We have come to rely on others for well-being—doctors, pastors, soldiers. Relying on oneself is too much of an alien concept for so many. That is why millions have died. If this had happened ten thousand years ago the vesps would have been called devils, but those small communities affected by them might well have been better equipped for survival. We need to return to that time. Flee the cities, don’t run to them. Find solitude, not solace in others. And remember, you are never alone. God is still with us; I believe that with every part of my terrified body and every shade of my battered soul. But now we can only pray to Him in silence.
Reverend Michael Morris, personal blog, Tuesday, 22 November 2016
We’re calling them sound ships. Holds filled with high explosives and fuel drums, superstructures mounted with speakers, cattle tied to the decks, floating far out to sea on remote control, blaring music and deafening horns, luring vesps out to them in their tens of thousands. Then the ships are detonated. I’ve been involved with seventeen so far in the English Channel, and hundreds more have been used elsewhere. But even this is just a drop in the ocean.
Anonymous, Royal Navy, Thursday, 24 November 2016
It’s like trying to cure the common cold with a machine gun. We need something that they will spread among themselves—a disease, an infection, a virus. Experiments are ongoing, and the sharing of resources, knowledge and data across the globe is unprecedented. But it all takes time.
Anonymous, MoD, Saturday, 26 November 2016
“So what have we found out today?”
With the others—his wife, son, mother-in-law—Huw had taken to communicating in soft, gentle whispers, each utterance separated by a long pause while they made sure nothing else had heard. Being able to talk again was welcome, but it was also accompanied by a terrible sense of dread. Each time he spoke he remembered that vesp flying at him and Kelly, its wide open mouth, its trailing tendrils, its teeth. It was the time in his life when he’d come closest to dying.
But it was these moments with Ally that he treasured the most. Each evening since arriving at the house they had spent half an hour or more together in the dining room, her iPad open on the table and plugged into a wall socket, two mugs of hot tea and a plate of food between them. They’d started on that first night, and nine days later they were still compiling information, signing to each other and existing in complete, comfortable silence. In all those years since the accident, Huw thought this was the closest he had come to understanding what it must be like for Ally. He even drank his tea quietly.
Her computer scrapbook was expanding rapidly, its front page a pinboard from which she could link through from several main headings: Timeline, Rumours, Facts, The Vesps, Us. She had constructed a complex file of information and cross-references, and even now Huw only had a vague inkling of just how it worked. But that was Ally all over. Once started on something like this she put everything she had into it.
He worried about what would happen if and when the power went out. He had not mentioned that to Ally, though he knew she thought about it. She’d left the in-car charger in the Jeep, so all they had was a standard issue charger that had to be connected to the mains.
Ally had changed the title of her scrapbook to The Silence. The New Worlds? moniker was still on the front page, but lined through with a heavy red line.
He leaned forward and watched as she started to type.
Monday, 28 November 2016
The usual messages from the Prime Minister’s office: “Stay inside, don’t travel, the struggle against the vesps is moving forward apace.” Then the lists of dos and don’ts that we’ve seen a hundred times before. It’s like things are on hold, and there’s been no new official information for days. Like during World War Two when lots of bad news was withheld and newsreels just had good news. Except there’s no good news, so instead they tell us nothing.
But there are still rumours.
@CallingMeIshmael says that large areas of London are on fire. Lots of other posts deny this, and plenty poke fun—“world’s-end-porn” one Tweet calls it—but there are other independent sources that appear to confirm at least some sort of major fire in London. It’s strange that there’s no consistency. Maybe people are scared, or don’t believe what they see.
Another tweet from @maddogfucker says that the army are starting huge fires to clear the vesps. His joke name made me doubt his comments at first, but other posts make me think there’s something in it. And it seems to make sense. The army knows that using guns will only draw more vesps, so perhaps now they’re using fire instead of lead. Like the sound ships we heard about. Make noise to draw them in, then burn them.
I hope it’s working.
There’s also talk about three nuclear explosions in central Europe. Some of the news channels mention this too, but only the independents. Nothing on the BBC. Censorship? Awful if it’s true (also awful if that kind of news is being censored). There are photos of mushroom clouds but also comments that they’re stock images.
Some people say that vesps are the work of God. Others say Satan. Different beliefs seem to be causing friction, even violence. A man was found crucified in Birmingham. Some people say he tried to kill himself by jumping off a building, but others say he was murdered by a religious gang. On Flickr there are photos showing burning mosques, churches and synagogues. There are reports of military skirmishes in the Middle East. Even when things are this bad, religion leads to violence.
How depressing.
In Bolton, there’s a webcam focused on a pile of bodies at one end of a platform at the railway station. It refreshes every five seconds, giving an almost-real-time view of the vesps waiting there. A sick rumour is going around that all the dead people are black, and that gangs of white supremacists used the vesp attack as cover to launch their own horrible crusade. But I think that’s just rumour designed for… I don’t know what. Hate? Why hate anyone in a world like this? What’s the point?
The image from the webcam is too unclear to see.
America is clear.
America is infested.
Australia has closed its borders and shut itself off from the world.
Australia is now home to more refugees than Australians.
The vesps have a very short, very rapid life cycle.
The vesps live for ever.
There’s so much out there on the news channels, social media, and blogosphere that it’s becoming difficult to see the truth. And that’s something else I’ve noticed. Something really disturbing.
Things are breaking down.
Social media has become a very weird place to be, and not only because of the content. But I’ll talk more about that later.
I shoved the iPad away and sat back in the chair. I wasn’t yet ready to write about what I was seeing and sensing across the Internet, because I couldn’t quite place exactly what it was. Perhaps a break from the net would be good. Time spent in the real world, however dangerous and terrifying that world had become, might allow me to see clearer.
Dad also leaned back from where he’d been watching my words appear on the screen. He rested his hand on mine and edged in slightly so that our shoulders were also touching. We could take these moments, now that we were inside and mostly safe. Mostly, I thought, because I could never allow myself to believe that we were completely safe. Not with what could be seen outside, when we took time to look. Not with what had happened and was still happening. Mostly safe was as good as it could ever be.
We’d been in the house for nine days. After first checking that the woman had been alone, and then doing a much more thorough search for any vesps that might have got in, Dad had locked the doors and settled us in the kitchen. There was food chopped on the table and a saucepan of water still hot on the stove. For a while we left it, while we discussed—in hushed tones, barely whispers—what had happened and what the future held. But it had taken only a few minutes for us all to agree that we had to stay where we were, at least for that night.
Lynne had cooked us an omelette, and we’d eaten hungrily and carefully. One spoon clinking against a bowl might be loud enough.
A cough. A sneeze. Laughter, crying, my despairing gasp when I thought about Otis again, Jude’s sobs when he huddled into Mum’s lap and pressed his face to her neck. All of these might have been loud enough to bring vesps, had we not been more than aware of the dangers. My gasp had been all but silent, and it had seemed so unnatural seeing Jude crying dry tears.
Since then we had gone day by day.
On day two we took stock of supplies. The woman had kept a pantry of staples—rice, dried pasta, potatoes, tinned vegetables—and Dad said it was probably in case of snow. There had been enough to last us for a week if rationed conservatively, and maybe longer if we let ourselves go hungry.
On day three I tried again to get in touch with Lucy and Rob. Lucy’s social media pages were static, no activity. Nothing. I almost tried FaceTiming her, but imagined her phone ringing while she was crawling along a street, hiding in a garden. Rob did answer a message, told me he was in a place in North Wales and that he thought they were safe. It was good to hear from him. Even the way he typed messages felt familiar. I missed him, and we promised to keep in touch.
On day four Lynne discovered a bag of flour in the bottom of the pantry and set about making bread. This had washed the smell of despair from the house for a while, and also given us a much-needed food boost.
Day five was when I lost touch with Rob. He didn’t answer any messages, and his pages were frozen. I tried again and again, trying not to cry or imagine what he might be doing, what he might look like. I promised myself that I’d try again the next day, but I went to bed that night wondering. I feared that I’d never know what had happened to him. Alive or dead, perhaps Rob was out of my life for ever.
It made the world seem very big and dark.
I knew that Dad had also been trying Uncle Nathan and Aunty Mags, with no success. He and his siblings had a weird relationship, and even talking about them always used to stress him out. I watched him when he tried to call them both and received no answer. His face looked soft and expressionless, his eyes empty. It would have been better if he’d cried.
On day six we saw a group of people walking along the ridge to the north. They remained in sight for ten minutes, seven small stick figures moving cautiously between trees and hedges, silhouetted against the darkening sky. I hoped that the people would see the house and come to investigate. But I noticed my parents’ relief when the shapes passed by. Even though we didn’t discuss it, that troubled me for a while. But when I really thought about what the group’s arrival might have meant, I understood it a lot more.
The vesps were always there. Sometimes, and some days, there were more in the sky than others, but we always saw them roosting nearby. The garden was quite big and they’d settle in plants and on walls for a while, and beyond the garden there was a spread of woodland beside the rough lane. Their pale shapes spotted the bare trees like misshapen fruits.
Lynne found an old pair of binoculars in a wardrobe, and Jude spent a long time scanning our surroundings. He spotted what he thought were several sheep up on the hillside. On day three the last of them stopped moving, and the next day several of the sheep gave birth to clouds of small vesps like exploding fungi. The creatures spiralled and spun for a minute or two, then the clouds dispersed and they disappeared across the landscape.
I think it was day five or six when we saw the dog approaching the cottage. Jude saw it through his binoculars and came to get me, telling me about the wolf out on the hills. I told him there were no wolves here, but went to see anyway. It was an Alsatian. Big, brown and black, it was slinking through the undergrowth as if stalking something, but its eyes were fixed on us. I went to fetch Mum and Dad, and I wanted Lynne to come too, but she was asleep in the old woman’s bedroom. She’d taken to sleeping a lot more during the day.
We watched the dog draw closer. I tried not to see Mum and Dad’s expressions, because I knew what they were thinking. We couldn’t have a dog staying with us. But for a while I suppose I did entertain the fantasy.
He came close to the house and then lay down beyond the wall, out of sight. We didn’t see him for some time. I wondered how he’d come to be out there on his own, where his owners were, how he had survived this long, and I realised that everyone and everything out there had a story, and that most stories would never be told. It made me sad. And for some reason that one lonely dog’s plight helped me understand the magnitude of what was happening, more so than any reports of London burning or sound ships blasting ten thousand vesps at a time to pieces. It was the idea of that animal’s own story that brought reality home.
When the dog jumped up onto the wall and stared at the house, it was Mum who moved one of the curtains at the window. I think she did it on purpose. I think she knew what she was doing. And I felt so sorry for the dog, because I couldn’t help thinking that he barked with sheer canine delight at seeing people again.
He ran back along the lane when they came, but they made short work of him.
Less than a day later the eggs laid in him hatched.
Now we were on day nine, and what had been a place to stay for the night seemed to be developing into something more permanent.
I moved and sat down again at the table, turning the iPad to face me. I liked these moments in the early evening that Dad and I spent sharing what we had discovered that day, filling in my scrapbook, and just being alone together. There was a selfish stab every time I thought like that, but also a sense of calm, even peace. I was still his little girl, and what little girl didn’t believe her father could look after her?
But those moments were also troubling. And the things we’d talk about—what he had seen, what I had read—would often haunt me into the night.
“So tell me what you found,” I signed. Dad had been out on a search for food, and since returning he’d been quiet and withdrawn. He and Mum had gone to the room they’d taken for themselves for a while, and I thought perhaps they’d had sex. Not that I liked to think about it, but I understood. They were like one person, even if sometimes they seemed to forget that. But the atmosphere was more tense than usual, and Lynne had been pacing the downstairs rooms ever since.
Even though Dad hadn’t told us what he’d found, he’d still brought it home with him.
“Okay,” he signed. “But you’re not going to like it.”
I shrugged. “What’s left to like?” I opened a new document in my scrapbook and prepared to type.
* * *
Huw didn’t really think he’d have to stay out until the next morning. He took some of the warm clothing they’d found in the old woman’s wardrobe—her dead husband’s, he guessed, though it seemed that he’d been gone for a while—and part of that was a precaution, just in case he did have to spend the night elsewhere. But he wasn’t really prepared mentally. He didn’t want to be away from his kids and Kelly for any longer than was necessary, certainly not through the night.
He missed home. He wondered whether they had made a terrible mistake in running, exposing themselves to wider danger by coming somewhere they didn’t know. They could have stayed in Usk, perhaps in Glenn’s house. If they had maybe Glenn would still be alive. Or maybe they’d all be dead. Agonising over things did nothing, and he tried to drive it from his mind. No doomsdaying now, Huw! he kept thinking. Focus on now, not the past or future.
The spear didn’t make him feel much safer. A broom handle with a carving knife taped to both ends, it was hardly high tech, though they had all seen what the old woman had done with just one knife. She’d fought hard, bless her.
He went north-west, further into the valley and down towards the lake in the distance. He intended to move cross-country or along country lanes where he could. His plan was to walk until he saw some buildings, then assess the situation, see if it was safe to approach. He took Jude’s precious binoculars, promising to bring them back. He intended to sit and watch any settlement for some time before closing in.
He was hoping to find a pub or a hotel. There were hundreds in the Lake District, and a pub’s larder would see them well fed for weeks. And he was also hoping to bring back some wine.
It was his first time away from the house since arriving eight days previously, and leaving was very difficult. Everything he loved was there. At the garden’s edge he paused for a while, feeling them all watching him. He almost turned back to wave, but feared that if he did he might never go. So he climbed over the wall and started down the narrow lane leading into the valley.
Passing the rotting remains of the Alsatian and seeing the glimmer of its name tag gave him a stab of remorse.
There were vesps all around. Plenty were still flying, but now he got the impression that they were patrolling more than advancing. There didn’t seem to be a specific direction to their movements any more. He couldn’t help thinking of them as an army—they had an advancing front, taking possession of territory, driving forward; and behind was the occupation force. They cruised, looking for prey, but many of them also remained motionless. It was these that worried him most, because sometimes they remained unseen. He’d seen them roosting in trees, as still as the trees themselves. They often seemed to take the higher ground, perhaps because it gave them a better field of hearing. But sometimes they were low down too. Once Huw almost stepped on one, and he was amazed it didn’t hear his gasp of shock. It didn’t move. Maybe it was dead. He didn’t wait to find out.
By midday Huw had travelled maybe two miles, following public paths where he could. He was much closer to the lake, and using the binoculars he could see that there was a small village at its southern extreme. Several boats seemed to be abandoned on the water. He was still a long way off, but could see no movement in the village, no signs of life.
He didn’t want to go there.
Finally he took to a proper surfaced road. It was a country lane, really, but there were scraps of litter by the roadside and no weeds growing through the tarmac, and it seemed well travelled. He made a decision to follow it for a while—it seemed the best way to find a building. If he heard engines he’d get off the road and hide. If he heard voices, he’d do the same.
Approaching a gate in the stone walling, he saw a pile of dead cattle. There must have been a dozen cows there, crushed against the gate and the wall on either side, corpses bloated with gas, legs stiff, mouths frozen open and eyes wide. Some of the eyes had been pecked away by birds, but several dead crows were also scattered amongst the bodies.
Wounds pouted open, bubbled with eggs. Silent vesps nestled in the spaces between bodies. The stink was horrendous, and he breathed through his mouth as he eased cautiously by.
The stench followed him along the road. The cows must have panicked, herded together and pressed against the gate as the vesps came at them. How many had it taken to kill them all? It hardly bore thinking about, and Huw did his best to shrug it from his mind.
The road veered down. It curved around a hillock and swept across the wider hillside.
About ten minutes later he saw more bodies. These were human. They were lying in a ditch beside the road, so he paused and checked them out through the binoculars. It took him a while to work out what was so troubling, then he realised that there were no vesps guarding them. He was already so used to seeing vesps around bodies that these looked unusual without them.
Huw weighed up the option of leaving the road and skirting around the dead, but he’d effectively trapped himself—a steep wooded slope down on one side, an even steeper hillside heading up on the other. Go either way and he might make a noise.
He made sure the rucksack was on tight and held the spear in both hands, then started downhill again.
It was a man and a woman. They were lying beside the road and it looked like they’d been dragged there, arms up above their heads, legs straight out. Still no vesps. He paused several times as he walked closer, looking around, and it all felt wrong, unnatural. He was more worried about there being no vesps than if he’d seen them.
They were in their twenties, fit-looking, both kitted out in cycling gear. Their bikes were nowhere in sight. The man had his wrists tied together with a sock and his throat was cut. Huw thought the woman had been stabbed. He didn’t get any closer. The smell was bad, there were insects, and he didn’t want to see any more.
From that moment on everything changed, and Huw carried that change with him. It had been bad enough seeing that bastard pointing a gun at his daughter, but seeing those two bodies brought home to him that they now existed in a very different world. They were living after. Before was order and society, structure and support systems, and even when the vesps came and attacked there were plans, advice was being broadcast, and they were waiting for the authorities to come and help. They had been waiting for others to put things right, and now he was unsure whether that was ever going to happen. They couldn’t live in the before any more. Someone had killed that couple, because it was after. If they were going to survive, they had to embrace the change. Go with it.
Huw realised that they also had to keep doing what Ally was best at—gathering information and knowing as much as possible about the world they faced. The murdered cyclists were as much a part of that as the vesps.
He moved on quickly, upset at what he’d seen and more scared than he’d ever been. Part of him wanted to rush back and be with his family, just in case whoever had done it found the house. But the bikes had gone, and he guessed that the bodies were at least a couple of days old. Whoever had murdered them was far away. Or dead themselves. His family needed food, and if they started going truly hungry it would affect their judgement. They had to keep their wits about them.
An hour later he sensed a change in the air around him. It started feeling heavy, and it even smelled different. He worried that perhaps a new, huge wave of vesps was incoming, spreading that weird, sour smell they seemed to exude. But then he looked west and saw the heavy clouds rolling over the ridge line, and knew that a storm was building.
He didn’t for a moment think about what that might mean.
He knew he had to turn around and get back. There were maybe three hours of daylight left, and it would have been dangerous to travel by night, even though he had the torch. He knew that there were more dangers out there now than just the vesps.
But he was much closer to the lake by then, heading north parallel to it so that he didn’t get too close to the town, and he wanted to reach the top of the rise just ahead. Just one more look, he thought. And when he reached the top he looked down and saw the pub. It was maybe three hundred metres along the road, an old, attractive building with a car park, large garden, and a couple of smaller outbuildings which were probably holiday homes.
Half of the pub had burnt down. The other half was blackened, windows smashed, roof stoved in, but he could still see how nice it had once been. Lots of the ash had fallen across the road, and as he drew closer he could see only a few tracks through the ash fields. Some sets of footprints, and a few bike trails. Some of the footprints led back and forth to the pub, but it seemed quiet and still, deserted.
He approached cautiously, the spear in one hand and binoculars in the other. He paused every few steps to check out the buildings and car park. There were a few cars there, and a couple of vans with bike and canoe racks. He worried about those vehicles. There was no movement, but they all had windows covered with ash from the fire, those closer to the building scarred with bubbled paint from the flames. He couldn’t see whether any of them were occupied.
Everything told him to get away. Time was passing and he had a several-mile hike back to the house before dusk fell. But he was desperate not to return empty-handed.
He moved closer. Stayed alert. Watched for movement, listened for noise. There were a few vesps flying around, though no more than usual. He noticed some birds, too. Siskins, thrushes, some blackbirds, and none of them were singing. That was amazing, and he logged that for a later discussion with Ally. Could birds really learn that quickly? He didn’t know, but it buoyed him, and gave him a glimmer of hope that he’d been sorely lacking for the past few days.
He passed through an open gate into the beer garden, and it was… strange. Most of the ash seemed to have been blown out across the car park and road, and the garden was surprisingly tidy. There were still a few glasses on the tables. One was full of wasps. He thought it was too late in the season, but they’d come from somewhere, drawn by whatever had been left in the glass, and drowned. Cider, probably. He wondered why their buzzing hadn’t brought the vesps. Perhaps it had, and the solidity of the glass had made them lose interest.
It was the back end of the pub that had been burned, and his spirits sank when he realised that the kitchens and stores were probably housed there. But there would still be crisps and nuts behind the bar, and drinks. That close, he started to really want a drink.
He needed to be careful, to take things slowly, but there was also a pressure to move fast. Time was running out. Daylight had been replaced by a heavy greyness. A breeze picked up ash from the burned buildings and bare tree branches waved. A couple of crisp packets skittered across the garden path and Huw froze, looking around for roosting vesps.
After a few moments he approached a smashed window towards the front of the pub. That was when he caught the first whiff of decay. There was something dead close by, and that meant there was a good chance there were vesps guarding it.
Unless the eggs had already hatched. He didn’t know, didn’t understand enough about them to guess at what stage these eggs might be. He should have turned around and left, but he’d cast aside good sense. It was partly the lure of food and drink, also pure curiosity. He wanted to be able to return home, sit with his sweet daughter, and tell her something new.
So he went to the window, trying to breathe softly through his mouth in an attempt to avoid the awful stench of rot. He could smell the fire, too, and tried to concentrate on that. When he reached the window and looked inside, he smelled more. They say that aromas inspire the strongest memories, and…
Spilled beer, sticky carpet, and Huw was back in his twenties, him and Kelly courting and spending most Tuesday evenings out at a country pub. They’d sit in the beer garden. Usually just the two of them, but sometimes friends would go too, and some of those evenings were special times for Huw. Those moments that don’t seem so spectacular when you’re living them simply because you expect them to be good, but when you look back they’re some of the best moments of your life, so clear in your memory that they might as well be happening on a loop. He felt that, and other things too, recognising less pleasant smells like the odour of vesp, the dampness of old burnt wood. Rotting meat. He’d never quite known the smell of human remains in decay, until then. Good old memories clashed with horrible new ones, and he leaned over and vomited in an old sand bucket sprouting cigarette ends. He tried his best to be quiet. He was terrified. After each heave he looked around, broom-handle spear raised. But nothing came at him, not from the trees and darkening sky, and not from the ruined pub’s interior.
After Huw finished vomiting he moved forward and shone the torch inside.
The bar was a ruin, scorched black from smoke, bottles and optics smashed from the heat. It was a mystery how the fire had not consumed the whole building. Perhaps it had rained heavily soon after the fire began, so it didn’t really get a good hold.
There were ten, maybe twelve dead people inside, all huddled around or on top of the bar. He guessed there were more behind the bar, too. They’d died after the fire. There was no sign of scorched clothing or melted shoes, no burns on the bodies. But he guessed that they had been dead for a week or more, and they stank.
They were guarded by vesps. He could see maybe eight of them. Most were motionless, roosting, but a couple walked slowly across the carpet around the corpses.
He wanted to leave. He knew then that he should have never gone so close, shouldn’t have let curiosity get the better of him, nor his desire for a bottle of wine. How stupid. How selfish! He backed away, very slowly, and a gust of wind hushed through the trees and bushes around the damaged pub.
The vesps around the bodies shifted as one, their tendrils rising, splaying out and feeling at the air, as if they could feel the sound rather than hear it. He saw a shimmer pass through a couple of them, a shudder as their glistening skin stretched and contracted again. He brought the spear around, readying to swing it across in front of him and cut them from the air if they launched themselves from the window.
But none came. And as Huw started moving again the torchlight shifted, and through the window he saw something else. In the opened stomach of one of the bodies on the bar there were handfuls of eggs. They glistened like ice cubes, a wet glimmer reflecting the torchlight. There must have been twenty eggs, each of them the size of an apple, and he couldn’t help wondering how long they had been there.
Those corpses they had seen on the road soon after leaving the Jeep were new, the eggs in them recently laid. But the ones he was looking at there were days old, maybe a week. The bodies were bloated with gas, the rot was sickening, and he saw other signs of how long they had been there. Slickness. Leakages.
He started wondering why the eggs hadn’t hatched. So much of what they had seen, and even more of what Ally had read out from the Internet, indicated that the vesps had a very rapid life cycle. The eggs hatched, the young were instantly able to fly; they grew quickly and were soon able to reproduce. It all contributed to how they had come so far so quickly, and how the vesps that emerged from the cave had rapidly become the millions, or billions, that had swept across Europe. They were a virus.
But these seemed to be waiting.
Curiosity bit Huw again. He backed away across the garden until he reached the gate, then went out onto the road. The car park was on the other side of the pub, in the opposite direction to the one he needed to take. It seemed safe.
Before he could think about it for too long he picked up a stone from beside the road and threw it.
Huw thought he would never be able to make that throw again, not if he tried a hundred times. The stone arced over the road and into the car park, struck the bonnet of a car parked there, bounced, and smashed the side window of another.
It was more noise than he’d heard in over a week.
He crouched down with breath held. Then he heard it. His kids had always loved bubble-wrap, popping the little bubbles one by one. The sound he heard was a little like that except louder, and wetter. The sound of many bubbles popping, machine-gun quick. A high-pitched keening hurt his ears. Almost too high to hear, still it seemed loud.
Infant vesps. They came quickly, fluttering from the smashed window he’d been staring through so recently, more exiting through other openings, and they descended on the car park. They were clumsy at first, flitting back and forth, colliding with each other, and Huw was sure he saw some of them fighting. Several fell and twitched on the ground. But most of them swarmed across the two cars where the stone had hit, crawling wetly over the ashy bonnets and windscreens.
The bigger vesps that had been guarding them circled, never quite settling. Perhaps they could already sense that there was no prey.
He wanted to run. It was disgusting. Once when he was a kid, Huw had found a spider’s nest in his parents’ back garden. He didn’t know what it was so he prodded it with a stick, knocking it back and forth until it fell from the fencing panel and burst on the ground. Countless little spiders spilled from it and starting crawling, everywhere, in every direction. He dreamed about it that night, and his mother told him it was the only time she’d ever heard him shouting in his sleep.
As he retreated from the pub as quickly as he safely could, his only thought was to reach the cottage. He wanted to be with Kelly that night in case he dreamed and started to scream. He looked back a few times, and the last time he saw the swarm of baby vesps dispersing in all directions, some settling on the pub’s roof, most disappearing into the distance. Having found no prey at the source of the sound that had wakened them, they were going hunting.
He started running. He did so as silently as possible, remembering what he had read about effective, soft running—land on your mid-foot, roll forward, push the ground behind you. He didn’t go too fast because he didn’t want to pant too loudly.
By the time he passed the two dead cyclists, the storm was setting in, but it was only when the rain began that he really noticed it. The fury. The noise. And he stopped in the road and looked around at the rain coming down in sheets, the sudden darkening of the skies, the leafless trees waving in the wind, the plants in turmoil, and those greyish-yellowish shapes flying back and forth, confused and panicked and insane.
He spoke aloud then for the first time in six or seven hours. Without even thinking about it he said, “Oh shit,” but his voice was lost to the wind. The storm had fallen quickly and heavily, and he was stuck in the middle of it. The rain and wind didn’t bother him so much, nor the cold. It was them.
There was sound everywhere, and so were they.
He headed for a wall at the side of the road, thinking he might find cover. Over the wall, huddled against the other side where it was sheltered slightly from the storm, he shrugged on another fleece from his rucksack and settled down to wait.
The storm had brought an early dusk. Dark clouds surged above, and the downpour had become even heavier. Wind roared against the hillside, shaking trees and whistling between rocks. Lightning flashed and thunder smashed. And the vesps were everywhere.
He could see them flying in confused patterns, crawling across the ground, leaping from rock to tree and back again. Some of them seemed to attack wherever they landed, others simply flew or crawled. Most were alone, and he thought perhaps they could not hear each other’s calls in the chaos.
A few minutes after he took shelter, a vesp dropped down beside him. It was less than a metre away, and for an instant he was frozen, staring at it. The thing’s mouth was wide open but not facing directly at him. So many teeth. Its little legs were straight and stiff, holding it up from the wet ground, and those tail tendril things were splayed behind it, squirming as they tried to make sense of the storm. It jittered left to right and back again, and the tentacles became tangled as they switched direction.
He picked up the broom handle and stabbed it at an angle through the mouth. It struggled a bit, but Huw pushed hard, then lifted it against the wall and pressed it there. The knife sliced out through its side and the thing dropped dead.
Huw so wanted to run right then, but it took only one glance over the wall to make him realise he was safer where he was. It was strange how he was thinking of that old woman’s cottage as home, surprising how a dangerous place could seem so idyllic when he was somewhere far more dangerous. But he guessed home was where his family was.
He remained behind the wall, and it was one of the worst nights of his life. Not since the crash had he felt so alone. While the storm raged he weathered some rough times—terror over what might be happening back at the cottage, sorrow that his family might lose him and never know what happened, even jealousy that they were all together and he was alone.
There was more thunder and lightning, and that seemed to rile the vesps even more. He saw them attacking each other.
Three more times through the night he killed a vesp with the spear. He used the torch as much as possible. He was concerned that the batteries would fade, but even more worried about being in complete darkness. He didn’t know what might be out there in the night. He had not been afraid of the dark since he was ten years old.
The storm raged until the early hours, then slowly began to fade. Huw was soaked through. Shivering. Trying to stop his teeth from chattering, because as the wind faded he saw vesps roosting in trees and across the top of the wall once again.
He returned home through the dawn, shaking so much from the cold that he could hardly breathe, empty-handed, bringing only the story of his expedition for Ally’s expanding notes.
He felt like a failure, but sitting at the dining table and telling his tale, Ally put him right.
“You came home to us,” she whispered. “That’s a success.”
* * *
I sat back from the keyboard, fingers aching from the rapid typing. I hated the idea that Dad had been out there alone all night, scared and in danger. But I remembered my own delight when I’d seen him crossing the garden early that morning, cold and wet but coming back to us. Coming home.
None of us minded that he had returned without food.
“So now we know more,” I said. “The eggs sometimes rest until noise wakes them. The vesps don’t seem able to differentiate one noise from another. They’re unpredictable in a storm.”
Dad nodded and signed, “And don’t forget the cyclists. People are killing, too.”
I hadn’t forgotten the cyclists.
“The more we know, the better.”