He wrenched away from the rat that nibbled at his arm, but the others crowded in on him, locking him tight among them, and Isobel leaned forward to kiss him, only her lips were bared and the teeth ready to sink into him. She ignored his rebuff and nuzzled his cheek, her smell choking him so that his throat constricted and he could hardly breathe. She drew blood and licked at it with a hairbrush-rough tongue. She guzzled and the sound sickened him even more. His clothes were gone and they grinned at his shame. They poked his soft, overblown flesh, making appreciative noises. They bit pieces from him as though tasting delicacies; the mouthfuls became larger, more substantial, and soon they were eating into him, ignoring his protests, and as his hands touched his own face he felt bristling fur, stiffened whiskers, and his teeth were like theirs, sharp and deadly, and his hands turned to claws and they raked his own body. And even being one of them could not save him, for they stripped him of meat and fought over his heart, until he decided he’d had enough, it was a dream and it was time to leave, time to wake up before they devoured him completely. He forced his consciousness to assert itself and reluctantly, sluggishly, it obeyed, drawing him away, back through the slimy, twisting corridors, up the spiral staircase, family, friends and others snapping after him, still grinning, enjoying the game, upwards, upwards, higher and higher, a light ahead, closer, a bright light . . .
Awakening.
Awakening to another bad dream.
23
They stood like grey spectres in the mist, unmoving yet somehow tenuous, like shadows cast on shallow water. They were silently watching the sleeping forms spread around the still-glowing embers of the fire.
Dealey nervously rose to a sitting position, careful not to make a sound, at first wondering if this was merely a continuation of his dream. The blanket, which had remained over his head as he had sunk into his uneasy sleep the night before, slid onto his shoulders. He tried to count the spectral figures, but could not be sure if some were only stunted tree trunks, the morning mist – although not as dense as the previous day’s – contriving to deceive. He was tempted to call out, to greet them or at least alert the others of his own group, but the cry stayed in his throat: there was something menacing in the vaporous silhouettes’ unmoving, silent stance. Dealey pressed his back against the charcoaled tree stump.
An insect droned in front of him before touching down on his eyebrow, immediately sucking moisture gathered there. Dealey blinked, twitching his face to frighten the fly off, afraid to slap it away. The insect, fearlessly large, refused and its host was forced to jerk his head. The fly angrily droned away, but now a trickle of sweat running into the crevice by the side of his nose sought to torment him. Cautiously he lowered his head and brushed his face against the hand resting on his upraised knees, blaming the sweat on humidity and not fear.
One of the figures was moving, drawing nearer to the recumbent bodies, becoming more visible. Dealey held his breath as the tall black man leaned over a heaped blanket, studying the sleeper beneath. The man wore a shapeless see-through plastic mac, buttoned at the neck like a cape, and in one hand he carried a rifle, in the other, a rusty butcher’s knife. He stood erect once more, then moved on to another sleeping form. This time he used the blade to draw back the blanket.
The other figures were emerging from the mist, becoming more distinct. One of them picked up the whisky bottle lying close to the embers and drained the last few dregs. The bottle was dropped back onto the blackened earth. The sleepers were beginning to stir.
Dealey counted ten . . . twelve . . . fifteen, at least fifteen figures approaching the makeshift campsite, and there were two, no, three small crouched shapes moving among them. Dogs! Oh, God, they had dogs with them! Weren’t these people aware of rabies?
He opened his mouth to shout, in part a warning, in part a greeting, and something smooth and hard slid along his throat. He choked as pressure was exerted, the iron bar pinning his neck against the tree stump behind. In the corners of his eyes he could see filthy, white-knuckled hands on either side of the metal bar and he knew his captor was behind the stump, arms stretched around it. Dealey felt his tongue begin to fill his mouth from the pressure.
His companions were sitting up and looking around in surprise. Dealey watched, pinned to the tree, as one still sleeping man was kicked. Ellison awoke with a shout and tried to rise; a foot against his chest flattened him. Jackson saw and protested, but the big black man pressed the discoloured butcher’s knife into his cheek. Fairbank reached for the short-handled axe lying close by, but a boot pinned his wrist against the grass stubble and another kicked the tool away. Dealey began to gurgle, his eyes staring like those of a ventriloquist’s dummy in a garish-pink painted face, his tongue pressing between his teeth. His heels began to kick at the ground and he tried to slide beneath the bar, but the aggressor was too strong.
The tall black man looked his way and waved the rifle. With a last spiteful jerk, the pressure against Dealey’s neck was released. He slumped over, hands trying to soothe his bruised throat. A less-than-gentle nudge with the iron bar sent him scrambling to join the others. He stumbled to his knees not far from the two black men, Jackson and the raincoated man, and stole a quick look around at the intruders, twisting his head and massaging his throat as he did so.
They were a strange group, their presence made more sinister by their apparel and the assortment of weapons they carried. Much of their clothing was tattered and stained with filth, although several wore shirts and jackets that still bore the sharp creases of newness; he assumed that these had only recently been taken from partially-destroyed stores. Like the tall black man, some wore unbuttoned raincoats as if expecting the rains to return at any moment. One or two wore floppy-brimmed women’s hats. Ripped T-shirts, sweaters and jeans were the main dress, and shawls were draped around the shoulders of a few. There appeared to be more blacks than whites among the group, and all carried shoulder bags or cases of some kind.
There were three women with them, two West Indian girls, who could only have been teenagers, and an older, white woman with bedraggled yellow hair and an expression that was as stony hard as any of the men’s. She wore a patterned skirt, red the dominant colour although there was no brightness to it, which almost reached the bottom of her calves; below were ankle-length socks and sneakers. A loose-fitting blue sweater and a large, light-blue silk scarf, serving as a shawl, adorned her upper body. She coughed into a hand and the sound was throaty, full of bile. The two teenagers had on tight-fit jeans and sweaters, one wearing a man’s jacket despite the heat.
Dealey saw now that the rifle the tall man held was, in fact, only an air-rifle, although in his grip it looked lethal. A telescopic sight was even mounted on its top. As he glanced around, he saw that others had similar weapons, while some had handguns tucked into waistbands or pointed at the figures on the ground. By the look of them, these too were only air-pistols. The rest of their armoury consisted of knives and long stout sticks – pickaxe handles, he assumed. A frightening, unruly-looking bunch, he thought, and flinched as a dog trotted up and sniffed his feet. The animal looked as mangy as the rest of them, but at least no foam speckled its jaws and no madness glinted in its eyes. It appeared to be reasonably well-fed, too; but then acquisition of food should have been no great problem as they themselves had found. When the dog turned away, disinterested, he noticed the sores and scabs on its sides and belly; parts of its body were also free of any hair.
Dealey turned his attention back to the people and realized they, too, were in a poor condition. One side of the tall black man’s face was covered in sores and an eyelid was half-closed with an angry swelling; yellow, pus-filled spots flecked his lips. Others of his group bore the same marks. The youngest of the girls clutched her stomach as if it pained her and several of the men looked equally uncomfortable. Roughly tied bandages decorated several arms and wrists; dressings could be seen on legs through torn trousers. One, a youth of no more than nineteen, rested on crutches, favourin
g a foot swaddled in discoloured wrappings so that it was swollen to three times its normal size.
Unlike the creatures of Dealey’s dream, none of them was grinning. But the threat they exuded was the same.
It was Jackson who spoke first. ‘You gonna take this blade outa my face, brother?’ He used soft tones, as if gentling a wild beast.
There was no change of expression as the other man flicked the knife across Jackson’s cheek with a swift, easy movement, drawing blood. The prone engineer swore and touched his face; he drew the hand away and stared at his bloody fingers in disbelief.
‘I ain’t your brother, pigshit,’ the other man said quietly. Someone sniggered.
Dealey began to rise, still clasping his throat, and two of the intruders moved closer. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, hoping the authority in his voice would carry some weight.
‘Keep your mouth shut,’ he was told. ‘We askin’ the questions, you givin’ the answers.’ The tall black man raised the rifle, so it was pointing at Dealey’s head. ‘This is a .22, almost as powerful as the real thing. It hits target, it can kill.’
‘There’s no need for this, I can assure—’
A pickaxe handle struck Dealey on the back of the legs and he tumbled to the ground, crying out sharply.
‘I tol’ you to shuddup,’ the black man warned. The man who had hit Dealey stepped back and allowed the end of the thick stick to rest on the ground. There was an unhealthy pallor to his face and a redness to his eyes.
‘I wanna know how you escaped the bombs,’ the black man said. ‘How come you weren’t blown to pieces?’
‘We were—’ Dealey began to say.
‘Not you.’ He prodded Jackson with the gun barrel. ‘I want the nigger to tell me.’ His entourage enjoyed the humour.
‘Hey, come on, man,’ the engineer protested. ‘Why you talkin’ to me like this?’
‘Jus’ answer the question, pigshit.’
‘We were below ground in a shelter before the bombs dropped.’ He eased the end of the barrel away from his body, afraid the gun might go off. The other man allowed the movement.
‘What fuckin’ shelter? You govmint men or somethin’?’
Jackson realized his mistake. ‘No, no, we’re just engineers, man. We worked in a telephone exchange, under the streets, that’s all.’
‘He said it was a shelter, Royston,’ the yellow-haired woman volunteered. ‘I heard him call it a shelter.’
The dark man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Yeah, I heard. You one of them crazy bastards who set this up?’
Jackson’s eyebrows arched in surprise.
‘Are you kiddin’ me? I’m a fuckin’ maintenance engineer, that’s all. We’re all telecom engineers, ’cept for . . .’ He avoided looking towards Dealey. ‘Come on, what’s this about, man, we’re all in the same trouble.’
‘I figure different. You look kinda healthy, nigger. You all look kinda healthy. A lil dirty, maybe, but in pretty good condition, considerin’. We ain’t seen many like you.’
‘There are others?’ Dealey could not help but ask. ‘How many have you seen?’ He received a warning tap from the handle. ‘No, please, this is important. You must tell us.’
‘I don’t need to tell you shit.’ The man called Royston – Christian name or surname, it was unimportant to Dealey, at that particular moment – strolled over. ‘What you think anyway, everybody’s dead? Well most are, boy, an’ them that ain’t oughta be. But you still ain’t tol’ me why you lookin’ so plump and healthy. You know somethin’ we don’t?’
He squatted beside Dealey, the wrinkled plastic mac opening out and spreading around him, and said confidentially, ‘Take a look at us, man. We got scabs an’ coughs and cuts that won’t heal. We got the shits and some of our brothers have died jus’ from bad colds, know what I mean? See that lil sister over there? She got runnin’ sores all down her body. See the guy on crutches? His foot stinks so bad we can’t go near him.’ His voice became almost a whisper. ‘Half of ’em is dyin’ an’ they don’t know it.’
‘Are there no hospitals, no medical centres?’
‘You don’t hear me, mister. There’s nothin’, no hospitals, no help, no nothin’. The only good thing is there’s no law, ’cept in what we carry.’ He tapped the rifle barrel with the blade. ‘We take what we want an’ we do what we want, you understand?’
Dealey nodded slowly, realizing only brute force governed now. ‘Are there no troops in the city?’
Royston allowed himself a short laugh and Dealey winced at the stale breath. ‘Nothin’. There’s nothin’ left anywhere, not in the whole fuckin’ world. We come from th’other side of the river thinkin’ somethin’ had to be left over here, but all we foun’ was the dead and the walkin’ dead. Sure, a few other groups like us, survivin’ on what they can, killin’ to get it if necess’ry. Jus’ law of the jungle, what you might think is right for me, huh? So here am I gassin’ an’ you ain’t answered one question yet.’ He touched the top of the knife against Dealey’s nose and his voice became harsh. ‘How many of you aroun’ here an’ where do we find this shelter?’
‘Look what I caught!’ The interruption came from some distance away and all heads turned to locate its source. Two figures came through the mist and one of them was Kate. Of course, Dealey remembered, she had drifted off with Culver the night before to find their own sleeping space. The other figure, a white man wearing trousers several times too large for him and an equally baggy jacket with just a vest beneath, was propelling her forward with one hand entwined in her hair. In the other hand he carried a curved meat-hook.
The smile behind Royston’s eyes was not pleasant. He rose from his crouched position.
The other men in his group looked on with keen interest, while the blonde woman with the silk scarf regarded Kate with undisguised hostility, as though she posed a threat.
‘Found her sleepin’ just a little way off,’ her captor announced with a grin. A red handkerchief was tied around his forehead to keep straggly hair away from his eyes. Like the others, he hadn’t shaved for quite some time and there were blemishes on his skin that might have been healing burns.
‘She on her own?’ the man called Royston asked.
‘Reckon so. She was sound asleep when I crept up on her.’
Dealey looked off into the mist. Culver, where was Culver?
The big black man stood in front of Kate. ‘Not bad,’ he appraised, running the back of his fingers down her cheek. ‘Not great, but not bad.’ He allowed his hand to stray beneath her chin, touching her neck, sliding into the open shirt collar. He felt her breast and squeezed hard.
Kate recoiled from his touch, hitting out with clenched fists. The man still gripping her hair forced Kate to her knees, while the others, wary of the men they guarded, chuckled in anticipation. Over the past few weeks they had learned that everything, anything, they could find was for the taking: food, clothing, shelter, bodies, and lives – all were included. There was no control anymore, just survival.
Royston carefully laid the air-rifle on the ground, but kept the knife blade pointing upwards, and approached Kate once more. She glared angrily at him, but fear was in the expression too. Royston laid the blade flat against her cheek and the cold steel was as repugnant as his touch. His face was only inches away and she thought the smell was from the sores and scabs on his skin and not just his breath; his ulcerated lips moved slowly, as if it hurt to talk.
‘You need a lesson, white lady. You ain’t got the say no more.’ He twisted the blade so that the sharp edge was pressing into her cheek. Kate tried to pull away as blood seeped onto the discoloured metal but the hand in her hair held her firm.
‘What the fuck you doing?’ Jackson screamed, outraged by the reflection on his own race as much as the assault on the girl. He sprang forward and kicked at the other black man, sending him reeling and following through by grabbing the knife-wielding hand. Baggy Trousers let go of Kate and caught Jackson from behind, using the
meat-hook to snag his shoulder, and pulled back. Jackson screamed as the curved point sank into a muscle. He was hauled off and he curled up into a tight ball as they attacked him with vicious kicks.
The two young blacks watching over Fairbank, one of them wearing a floppy-brimmed woman’s hat, dared the stocky engineer with their stares to make a move. Another, a white man of considerable girth, but of tender years, held a thick arm around Dene’s neck and pressed the barrel of an air-pistol into his temple. Ellison was similarly guarded and Dealey remained immobile on hands and knees.
‘Stop it, you’re killing him!’ Kate pleaded.
‘Hold it!’ The big black man was on his feet once more and Kate sobbed with relief when the beating ceased. Her relief was premature.
Royston stooped to pick up the rifle and said, ‘This mutha’s goin’ to learn the hard way. An’ maybe we’ll git some questions answered at th’same time. Bring him over here!’
He strode towards the remains of the fire and kicked at the ashes with his boot. Beneath the white dust, embers still glowed fiercely. ‘C’mon, git him over.’