Ferine Apocalypse (Novella): 4 Hours (8 page)

Pearcey squatted by Gallagher, his attention switching between the nearby monster and his kneeling friend.

He laid a hand on the man’s shoulder and watched as Gallagher slowly lifted his head to stare at him.

A simple nod, and he helped him stand.

Pearcey wanted to embrace him. Opted for a supporting arm.

“Are you okay?”

Gallagher nodded again.

“Tired. Fucking knackered, if truth be told.”

That was good enough.

Pearcey was tired as well. He felt like eternity had passed by and left him behind to follow.

Faded and weary and running to catch up.

Wayne Raylens strolled up to them. Utterly incomprehensible and verging on indispensable.

It was ridiculous.

Pearcey felt holed below the waterline. Buoyancy leaking away and no way of plugging the leak. That this prick was his best bet was galling beyond words. Yet, he had no choice.

You played the odds.

Put your money on the horse that offered the best chance of a return. After that it was a pointless exercise. You embraced your selection and accepted the outcome.

It was useless to ponder. Worse than that, it was a distraction.

Gas masked head flicking backwards and forwards.

Unreadable.

“The aliens are here. It’s a real fucking deal. First, they read our thoughts and took us up to study our bodies. Examined us and decided to take over by the backdoor.”

A hideous gargling sound that might have been laughter inside the mask.

Hard to tell. It distorted sound, the mask.

“It’s taken them a long time and they’ve gotten careless over the years. Some of them crashed. That’s where the stories come from. Roswell and all of the rest. The vampires and the changelings. It didn’t matter by then of course, they could be as careless as they fucking-well liked. They had their mind claws into government and big business. Ran them like glove puppets. They controlled the
influencers
. They
invented
Twitter and Facebook. Did you know that?”

Pearcey could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t be antagonistic.

Gallagher stared blankly at the blank glass eyes of Raylens mask.

Angela Gacek muttered something. Pearcey scarcely caught it.

“You’re deranged.”

He wasn’t sure if Wayne Raylens heard her. He might have. His head might have twitched in her direction.

He didn’t say anything to her, made no sign that he’d heard her.

But it unsettled Pearcey, the girl saying that.

They couldn’t afford a confrontation. Not with an armed and clearly capable man, crazy or not. Not inside the store and definitely not out here, given the situation.

Gallagher changed the subject.

“Should we try and find another car?”

The same thing had occurred to Pearcey.

He wasn’t any car thief, but he thought he might be able to start something if it was old enough. Some junker from the nineties maybe.

But that route was fraught with difficulties.

They didn’t have the time or the option to casually stroll the streets looking for a likely candidate vehicle.

The clock was ticking.

Pretty soon it would be dark and that didn’t bear thinking about. He’d rather be stranded in Beirut on a bad night.

It struck him again that he was too old for this shit.

Nowadays, he was just a scary big black guy cut-out of a person.

Someone to stand by semi important people and appear intimidating.

A glorified driver with a gun who just happened to be able to shoot straight and punch hard if need be.

The army life was well behind him, along with most of his appetite for destruction. Now, his tastes ran more to slippers and sweat pants and a quiet evening in with a bottle of bourbon and a book.

Raylens pulled him out of introspection. The man shook his head, the swinging snout of the mask a darkly hypnotic fascination.

“If we’re careful and quiet, on foot is better. Even if we can find a car, the noise will alert them. By the time we get to your flat, they’ll be swarming us. I’ve seen it, their alien insect hearing is so fucking awesome. They’ve made us into killing machines to exterminate us. It’s a flawless plan. All we can do is resist”

Pearcey couldn’t agree the logic but the conclusion resonated with him.

The few of them that hadn’t undergone the mutation were up against odds that would give a bookie sleepless nights if he had any doubts about his reckoning.

Gallagher spoke and settled the matter.

“There’s a car at my place. In the garages at the back. We can use that to get back to the bunker.”

And that was that.

They followed the man in the mask because the choices had diminished with the light. In the new world, options narrowed in a heartbeat and outcomes were shrouded in veils of vaporous grey.

<><><>

A fever dream version of reality descended then.

Minutes, certainly less than an hour, that stretched like soft eternity.

A nightmare creep through darkening streets, along gloomy alleyways.

Wayne Raylens led them and didn’t falter.

Whatever he was beneath the disturbing mask and bulky coat, his instinct for survival seemed unquestionable. He demonstrated an uncanny knack for sensing trouble before it fully revealed itself.

Diverting them on to different routes before disaster could strike.

At one point, his instinct deserted him. They stumbled into some unknown square and he instantly herded them back.

The place was packed with mutated creatures. Savage, bestial things that were once human.

Some naked and some dressed in the rags of their past.

All terrifying and somehow fascinating.

To indulge that fascination would have been suicidal. To stand and observe would have been to invite death. To spread your arms and beg for oblivion.

Pearcey glimpsed the mass of creatures and felt his blood run cold. Took no persuading to backtrack one more time.

<><><>

He’d smelled something as they approached the square. Something coppery and rotten. Something hot and yet wetly cold. Like damp earth soaked in filth and shed blood. The smell flooded his senses when they turned the corner and then he saw the shifting mass of mutants.

It was the smell of them made huge by their number. The smell of that many permeated the air, drifted lazily in the spaces between the buildings, soured his lungs with a rank sweetness.

A distant part of Pearcey wondered if that smell would eventually fill the world. Become the signature of life on the planet. A commonplace scent that signified the presence of the dominant species.

They mystified and appalled him.

He couldn’t understand what made them congregate. Maybe they were communal. Maybe it was that they had a pack mentality.

Or maybe it was a last vestige of their humanity. An echo of what they were before the contagion warped them into something new and beyond comprehension.

Raylens was right when he referenced insects.

There was something vaguely insectile when you caught sight of that many of them gathered in one place. They were tactile, contact aggressive and animalistic. They roiled around each other like smoke given substance. Snapped and hissed, but didn’t actually fight amongst themselves.

It was overwhelming.

Chilling.

Eerie and dreadful.

The smell and the sight of them.

More than that.

He couldn’t put it into words. It unmanned him in a way that he couldn’t define. Left him feeling as desperate and terrified as a child faced by the nightmare materialising in daylight.

The situation was beyond him.

They were beyond him.

Those things were something that defied his understanding.

They offended his sense of wrong and right. They were worse than wrong. They were unearthly.

Raylens was crazy but it was understandable.

Mad as a hatter and as bizarrely dressed.

And why not?

Why not be crazy when you were surrounded by the insane.

At that moment, Pearcey understood his deranged interpretation of events. These creatures, the mutated people, were horrendous.

Otherworldly and totally alien.

If Raylens was paranoid and dangerous before the event, and Pearcey was pretty much convinced that was the case, why not embrace the delusions when they manifested themselves in reality.

It was hardly surprising that Raylens had his own take on things. It
was
crazy, but crazy was the order of the day.

If those things in the square had seen them, they would have had no chance.

Pearcey was absolutely sure on that score.

None and Bob on the hope front, as the man once said.

<><><>

Wayne Raylens saved them.

Led them away through more darkening alleys and crumbling brick passages.

The intermittent ringing of untended alarms. The occasional rumble of vehicles being driven at speed.

Sporadically, the dim boom of collision.

Twice they met lone creatures and twice Raylens acted without pause or request for assistance.

Wielding the bayonet like he was born with it in his hand.

Slashing and stabbing with an effectiveness that left Pearcey somewhere between open mouthed admiration and subdued alarm.

Mutated blood sprayed, followed by muttered, inaudible commentary from behind the mask.

The man killed without thought.

As casually as you’d step on an ant or swat a fly.

And with a cold proficiency that spoke of time worn familiarity.

Pearcey wondered again how hot he must be in that outfit.

The big coat, the hood and clinging constriction of the mask.

There was no indication of discomfort, but he must be sweating like a pig.

It was cooling as the night came down, but it had been an unseasonably warm day earlier and was still humid.

An end of May hot spell that had no place at the dawn of a dark age. The weather should have cold and wet and grim.

Not unusually warm and dry. It was wrong that there was heat in the air and even a glimpse of the sun through evening cloud.

But why would it be otherwise. The wrong was everywehere.

Everything was wrong.

<><><>

They emerged into more open roads.

Smoke and ash in the air.

The soundtrack a subdued crackle and roar.

An orange glow in the sky that could only mean that something was burning. Raylens led them towards the glow until they rounded a corner and were confronted by a street that was on fire.

One side in flames.

Pearcey caught up with Raylens before he could continue. Laid a hand on his shoulder and was met by the unreadable mask turning to him.

“We aren’t going down there are we?”

Raylens moved away, out of reach, as if Pearcey’s touch was an affront. The gloved hand that slipped to the rifle was an unmistakeable warning sign.

“Fuck yeah baby, that’s where we’re going. We’re close now. Close to your friend’s block of flats. If it wasn’t for all the smoke, you’d be able to see it.”

Pearcey thought he could detect pleasure in the tone.

Enjoyment.

Excitement.

“And don’t touch me Bunker Man. I don’t like it. You’re obviously immune, but that may not last and I don’t want your spore on me. They may be able to track that.”

Pearcey nodded.

“Yeah, okay. I ...err, I know what you mean. I just wanted to get your attention. Are you sure that this is the best way?”

Raylens gargled behind the mask.

Laughing, speaking in tongues?

Pearcey didn’t know and it was pointless even questioning it.

He wanted to kill Raylens and also hug him like a brother and tell him it would be alright.

He couldn’t do either so he just had to grin and bear it.

Eat shit and smile like it tasted good. Nothing new, but he’d had a bellyful.

The gargling stopped, replaced by speech.

“This is a bonus. The fire. It’ll give us a clear path. They don’t like it, the alien ants. From what I’ve seen, it scares the shit out of them. They runny-run away on their bone-worm legs. I saw it earlier today. It’s actually pretty funny. They’ll run at a car and get smashed to fuck, but show them a burning building and they’re on their toes.”