Down: Trilogy Box Set (59 page)

The older man wasn’t done with his complaints. “All my bridgework’s gone,” he said pointing to the gaps in his teeth.

“I’ve got holes in my teeth as well,” Jack said. “And my watch is missing too.”

“The one mum gave you?” his younger son asked, suddenly patting his back pocket. “Hey, my wallet’s gone.”

“I’ve got mine,” Martin said, checking. He pulled out the leather wallet that was otherwise empty, the credit cards and money gone. “What was yours made of?”

“Nylon I suppose,” the other man said.

Tony began to hyperventilate again. “This is too weird. It’s too much.”

“Where are my children?” Tracy said numbly.

“Were they in the house?” Alice asked.

“No, they were at school.”

“Well, that’s a good thing. I’m sure they’re safe at school then.”

“What if I never see them again?” she said.

“You mustn’t talk like that,” Alice countered. “We’ll work this out and get back to where we’re supposed to be.”

“Maybe we’re being punked,” Jack’s youngest said. “Like for a TV show or a film.”

His brother rolled his eyes. “I thought you were just proposing abduction by aliens.”

“You can’t fault me for laying out all the possibilities. No one else is coming up with anything better, are they?”

“Well it’s a stupid idea. Even David Copperfield can’t make a whole housing estate vanish.”

“Could we have been drugged?” Tony asked in between rapid breaths.

“You mean something that would give a collective hallucination?” Martin asked. “There’s no such drug I’m aware of.”

“Maybe it’s something the army’s working on. Some secret shit they’re testing on us,” Jack’s youngest said.

Martin nodded at the young man. “You seem to have the most active imagination among us. Keep the ideas coming. What’s your name?”

“Charlie.”

His older brother volunteered his name too. “I’m Eddie.”

Martin shook their hands. “This hyperventilating man is Tony. That only leaves our patient.”

“Jack Senior,” the man on the ground croaked.

“Well,” Martin said. “I doubt we’ll get answers standing in the middle of this field. Perhaps we should split into two lots. One to stay with Jack Senior and the other to try to find help.”

Jack bunched and rolled his overalls until they were tight enough to stay up on around his waist. “I reckon we ought to stay together.”

“I can shift granddad piggyback,” Charlie said.

“Right,” Martin said, tacitly assuming leadership. “All that’s left is for us to pick a direction. Since I believe we’re facing where the street used to be, that way is east. We’ve got meadowland to the east, west, and south. Forest to the north. Any suggestions?”

No one spoke.

“Hang on a minute,” Martin said. Something had caught his eye and he headed out on his own for several yards before returning to the group and declaring, “The grass is beaten down here. There’s a path leading toward the trees. I think we should head north to the tree line. Perhaps we’ll find help in that direction.”

They began to walk.

The temperature was mild, the air heavy with moisture and before they made it to the trees it began to drizzle which made them determined to seek cover. Upon entering the forest, the dense canopy filtered much of the gentle rain, leaving them in fairly dry semi-darkness. Although Tracy was barefoot the soil was soft and a thick layer of rotting leaves provided further cushion. Charlie off-loaded Jack Senior to the ground and stretched his shoulders.

“Where to?” Tony asked.

Martin told them to wait while he did a quick reconnoiter and disappeared into the thicket. Several anxious minutes passed before he returned and announced he had found a trail.

“At least I think it’s a trail,” he said. “I didn’t make out any footprints but it does seem like it’s seen some traffic.”

Eddie took the next shift carrying his grandfather. They followed Martin to the narrow trail where the leaves did seem stamped into the soil. With the young men sharing the burden of Jack Senior, they carried on for over an hour, all the while second-guessing whether they had done the right thing going into the woods.

“I don’t understand how everything we know has just vanished,” Jack said. “I feel like I’m dreaming.”

“I didn’t feel too brilliant this morning,” Alice said. “I had a bit of a throat and almost called in sick but I knew I had the inspection today so I soldiered on. Worse decision I ever made.”

“Maybe we’re the lucky ones,” Eddie said.

“How do you mean?” Charlie asked.

“Maybe we’re the only ones left in the world. Maybe everyone else is dead and gone and we’re the survivors.”

Tracy began to weep. “My children. Are you saying they’re dead?”

Alice jumped in protectively. “Don’t be talking rubbish. Of course they’re not dead. No one’s dead.”

“Yeah, shut your gob,” Jack said, scolding his son. “Don’t be a prat. Can’t you see the woman is delicate?”

Martin stopped and cupped his ear. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Tony asked.

“Running water.”

A hundred yards on, the trail ended at a shallow stream with flowing, clear water. Martin knelt on the bank and cupped some into his hands. After a taste he declared it perfectly fine and all of them drank. While they rested Martin sloshed through the stream and found the trail continuing on. On his return he prompted a discussion about going forward versus reversing course. No one had the inclination to backtrack but Martin made it known he wanted decisions to be democratic.

“I’ve no desire to be decider-in-chief,” he said.

“I’d rather you than my brother,” Eddie said. “With his ideas about aliens and TV shows he’ll have us barking at the moon. You’re a doctor. You’re educated.”

“Tony’s an architect,” Martin said. “He went to better schools than me.”

“Maybe but he’s not what I’d call rock-solid,” Jack said. “I’ll go with you, doctor.”

“By all means, listen to Martin,” Tony said with no trace of resentment. “I’ve got no idea what to do. Absolutely none at all. God, I’m dying for a cup of tea.”

“Right,” Martin said, accepting the leadership mantle. “Onward and upward.”

Eddie helped Jack Senior onto Charlie’s back and walking single file, they began to ford the stream.

There was a high-pitched noise, as if a large insect had flitted by.

Then another.

Then one more, but this time the noise ended with a dull thud and a low groan.

Jack Senior let go of his grip around Charlie’s neck and splashed into the stream. The clear water began running red.

“Granddad!” Charlie screamed.

Martin turned to see the old man lying face down, a long arrow buried in his back. The doctor’s survival instincts were stronger than his healing ones.

“Run,” he screamed to the rest of them. “Run for your lives!”

The car was far too small for the seven of them but comfort wasn’t high on their list of concerns. The only thing that soothed the men’s jangled nerves was the darkness.

The darkness was their friend. After all, they ruled the night, at least in their world.

The two women took no such solace.

The driver was the least afraid of the men. Operating a car was an experience he never imagined he’d have again, and after twenty miles on the motorway he relaxed enough to begin to enjoy it. The cars of his day had been more basic, but not so different. There was a gas pedal, a brake, a clutch pedal, a shifter. What else did he need? He tried to ignore the bright, confusing digital displays. The petrol tank was reading full, not that any of them knew how far they were going. He had five pilfered twenty-pound notes in his pocket and he found it somewhat comforting and surprising that Elizabeth’s portrait was still on the bills. With a hundred quid he reckoned he could buy enough petrol to take them to John O’Groats plus all the steaks and beer they could eat. Maybe later he’d try and figure out how to make the radio work. He didn’t need to look for a map in the glove box because there was one on the dashboard with a moving circle that he reckoned was their car. What a marvel! What other wondrous things were there to be discovered? And this too: what kind of a car name was Hyundai?

The man beside him in the front passenger seat couldn’t bear to look out the windscreen or the side windows. Talley fixed his eyes on his lap and planted his feet beside the bloody knives on the floor. He spoke through gritted teeth.

“Where’s the bottle?”

From the back seat Barrow said, “I got it.”

“Pass it over.”

Talley went for a cork but he remembered his mistake and fumbled with the screw top, an invention centuries off when last he drank from a bottle.

“This grog’s not half bad. What’s it called again?”

The driver, Lucas Hathaway, told him it was called Scotch whiskey.

“The grub’s good here too,” Barrow said, recounting their feast in the last house they had invaded. After murdering a family in Upminster they had raided the pantry and eaten enough to make their sides split. “So good and plentiful there’s hardly no need to cannie.”

That provoked guffaws. They were cannies all right. They’d eat whatever they could forage at night—horses, pigs, humans, it made no difference.

“We’ll go all fat and lazy, we will.” That opinion came from the cramped cargo space in the SUV, from a man called Chambers who was crammed beside another filthy brute named Youngblood.

A lively banter ensued about the seemingly bountiful victuals on Earth. This was proving to be a more compelling subject than trying to fathom the reason they had suddenly found themselves back among the living.

For the first time in hours one of the two women in the back seat spoke. Cristine, in her thirties, was in the middle, next to Barrow. Beside her was Molly, in her forties. Both were scared and haggard.

“Please let us go,” Cristine said. “You don’t need us. We’ll only slow you down.”

The women had left the village of South Ockendon to fetch water from the nearby creek on that fateful morning two days ago, though it now seemed very far off. Mid-morning was the safest time of day. They had made the journey through the woods countless times in the thirty years they had been in Hell and had rarely encountered anyone other than a fellow villager bathing or watering a horse. On that morning their long streak of luck ran out. Talley and his band of rovers were passing through the woods after foraging near the village in the night. Talley spotted them first and seeing they were alone, lit after them. Hathaway and the others followed, chasing them from the woods into the clearing.

In the middle of a meadow the six men caught up with them and with Hathaway in particular baying for blood, the rovers were about to commit rape and worse when suddenly they weren’t in the meadow but inside a large, strange house, filled with objects and furnishings that the women and Hathaway recognized, but the others did not.

“I’m offended you don’t favor our company,” Talley said.

“We don’t keep company with rovers,” Molly said.

“Well maybe you should,” Barrow said. “Real men, we are, not soft farmers like the lot in your village.”

“Real men that murder and eat human flesh,” Molly said.

“Don’t provoke them,” Cristine whispered.

But Talley repeated, “That’s right, don’t provoke us. No telling what we might do.”

Hathaway found that hysterically funny.

But Cristine persisted. “I’m begging you to pull off the motorway at the next junction and let us off.”

“And what would you do?” Talley asked. “You’ve got nowhere to go. This isn’t your place no more. You’ve got more in common with the likes of us than the likes of them. You’re evil beasts. We’re evil beasts.”

“Evil and fetching,” Youngblood said, reaching over the seat to paw at Molly’s breasts.

She bit his dirty forearm. He yelped and withdrew it to the laughter of the other men.

Talley turned to her. “You’re a flesh eater as well it seems. So don’t be acting all high and mighty. You’ll stay with us. As long as there’s food aplenty you won’t be eaten but believe you me we will lie with you whenever we damn well please.”

“It pleases me now,” Youngblood moaned.

“There’s no room for that in this moving crate,” Chambers said.

“I claim first fuck for her that bit me,” Youngblood said, sucking at his bleeding arm.

“She’s mine,” Hathaway said. “I’ve been waiting too long.”

“If Jason were here, he’d split your head,” Christine said.

“Well he’s not here,” Hathaway replied. “He’s about as far away as you can get.”

Hathaway drove on. There were signs for Cambridge but he had no interest. Nottingham was his destination. That was his city. He associated London with death because that’s where he had died. Nottingham was where he had lived, and lived well as a real up-and-comer, a one-man crime wave. He had left the city as a twenty-year-old in 1969 for the greener pastures of London. His parents would be long dead. His sister was considerably older than him and had been sickly. She must be dead too. But his younger brother, well, he could still be alive and kicking. It was worth the investigation. No one else had a destination to offer. The other men had been dead for hundreds of years and they were utterly lost. And he wasn’t asking the women for suggestions.

Hathaway kept to the left, allowing faster cars to pass and when they did he snuck a glance at the other drivers. He wondered what they’d think, what they’d do if they knew that the silver car in the slow lane carried Hellers.

Talley nodded off.

He was scared of Talley. They all were. He lorded over the band with an iron fist. He decided who they would attack and when. He allocated the booty among them, food and women, by his own capricious rules. He decided who could join their gang and who would be kicked out, and by that he meant, who would be roasted and eaten like any other victim. Hathaway was still a new boy, always tested, often victimized. But in the strange circumstances in which they now found themselves, the power had tilted in his direction. He knew the year on Earth; he’d seen the wall calendar in one of the houses. For him it was the near future, strange but recognizable. For Talley and the others it was inconceivably foreign. To survive here, they’d need more than handiness with knives. They’d need him.