The Devil in Green (5 page)

'No idea.'

'One of my mates saw a dragon.' When Mallory didn't respond, Miller
pressed on, 'Why are we being made to suffer like this?'

'You say
made
as if there's some intelligence behind it. The sooner you
accept there isn't, the easier your life will be. Things happen, you deal with
them and move on to the next. That's the way it goes. You're not being
victimised. You don't have to lead some deviantly perfect lifestyle just to
get a reward in some next life. You make the most of what you've got here.
It's about survival.'

'If that's all there is, what's the point?'

Mallory's laugh suggested that the answer was ridiculously obvious.

Miller became depressed by Mallory's attitude. Everything about Miller
said he wanted to be uplifted, to be told there was some meaning to all the
suffering everyone was going through. 'Is Marlborough your home?'

'No.' Mallory considered leaving it there, but then took pity on Miller.
'London. I wasn't born there, but that's where I spent most of my life.'

'Is it true the whole place has been destroyed? That's what people say.'

'I got out before the shit hit the fan. Went north. Birmingham for a
while.' His voice trailed away.

'No family?' Mallory's silence told Miller this was a question too far.
'I'm from Swindon,' Miller continued, to fill the gap. 'My mum and dad
are still there, and my sister. I suppose I could have stuck it out, too. Life
isn't
so
bad. People are pulling together, setting up systems. They've just
about got the food distribution sorted out. I reckon they should get
through this winter OK.' He paused as the harsh memories returned.
'Not like last winter.'

The thoughts stilled him for a while, but he found it hard to deal with
the pauses that magnified the dim whistling outside. 'I had to get out in the
end. My girlfriend,
Sue ...
we were going to get married, been in love for
ages .
. .
couldn't imagine being with anyone else.' His voice took on a
bleak tone. 'Then one day she dumped me, just like that. Said she was
moving in with this complete
moron
...
a thug . . . God knows what sort
of things he was involved in. And she'd always hated him, that was the
mad thing! But she said he made her feel safe.'

'These are dangerous times. People do what they have to, to survive.'

'But I didn't make her feel safe, you know?' Miller made no attempt to
hide his devastation; he reminded Mallory of a child, emotional, almost
innocent.

'That's what made you decide to come down here, to sign up?'

Mallory obviously wasn't really interested; it was a friendly gesture, but
after the rigours of the night it felt to Miller as if Mallory had clapped his
arms around him. 'Partly. I mean, I'd been thinking about it for a long
time. I knew I wanted to do something. To give something back. So many
people were making sacrifices for the greater good and I didn't feel as if I
was doing anything at all. I know you don't believe, but it felt as if God had
put us through all this suffering and spared some of us for a reason.'

Mallory made a faint derisive noise.

'No, really. Sometimes when you sit back and think about it, you can see
patterns.'

'There aren't any patterns, just illusions of patterns. It's the human
condition to join the dots into something cohesive when all there
is ... is a
big mass of dots.'

'I can't believe that, Mallory. When you see some of the goodness that
has come out of all
this
...
the goodness people have exhibited to others.
They could have wallowed in self-preservation.' His voice became harder
as he went on, 'Just done things to survive, like you said.'

'Well, I'm not going to try to change your mind.'

Miller's shoulders sagged so that the rainwater ran from his crown to
drip into his lap. He suddenly looked burdened by some awful weight. 'It's
hard to be scared all the time, do you know what I mean? Life was difficult
enough before everything changed, but now there's just . . . threat . . .
everywhere, all the time. It wears you down.' He trembled with a deep,
juddering sigh. 'Why isn't the Government doing something? Where's the
army, the police?'

'I don't think they exist anymore.'

'But if it's left to people like us, what's going to become of us all?'

Mallory couldn't answer that.

They sat in silence for a while until Mallory said, 'Well, it's not all bad.'

'What do you mean?' Miller mumbled.

'No more
Stars in Their Eyes'

Miller brightened. 'Or Euro-disco.'

'Or public-school boys getting drunk at Henley, or . . .' He made an
expansive gesture, just caught in a flash of lightning. The depressive mood
evaporated with their laughter.

It was echoed by another laugh away in the dark, only this one was an
old man's, low and throaty. Miller yelped in shock, pushing himself back
until he felt the stones hard against him. The shotgun clattered as Mallory
scraped it up and swung it in an arc, waiting for another sound to pinpoint
the target.

'I've got a gun,' he said.

The laugh sounded again, slow and eerie, though with a faint muffled
echo as if it were coming through the wall.

'Who's there?' Miller whined. He shivered at the haunting, otherworldly
quality of the laughter.

'My names are legion,' the old man said.

Miller started to whimper the Lord's Prayer.

'He's playing with you,' Mallory said. 'Aren't you?'

The old man laughed again. 'No fooling you, Son of Adam.'

'No!' Miller said. 'He's lying! It
is
the Devil! And he always lies!'

'There are devils and there are devils,' the old man snorted. 'You must
know the Devil by the deed.'

Miller hugged his knees to his chest. 'What are you?'

'Not of the Sons of Adam.' The statement was simple, but edged with
an unaccountable menace.

Not wishing to antagonise whatever was nearby, Mallory's tone became
slightly less offensive. 'What do you want?'

'The question, more likely, is what do
you
want? My home has looked
out over this place since before your kind rose up.'

'We didn't realise,' Miller protested. 'We don't want to trespass—'

'We're sheltering,' Mallory said. 'We'll be gone at first light, if that's all
right with you.'

'Perhaps it isn't and perhaps it is. I would have to say, in this day and
age I'm not wholly sure where the boundaries lie. You may be trespassing,
and then again you may not.'