Blood Crazy

  ‘Miserable dog.’

  Someone went to fetch Dave Middleton; we grumbled, feeling suddenly awkward now the music had gone. ‘Noise keeps you clothed. Silence makes you naked,’ said a girl.

  We beat empty beer cans together like cymbals until Dave Middleton arrived.

  So, you’ll realize a lot of stuff’d flown under the bridge since Dave Middleton’s convoy rumbled through the hotel gates that day in April.

  The first few weeks went the way Dave planned. He and the Steering Committee efficiently drew up work programmes that got everyone busy. Scavenging parties went out in trucks; pretty soon the barns we were using for stores were stacked from floor to roof joist with food, shoes, clothes, hardware. Thanks to our discovery of an abandoned BNFL security post on the road between Calder Bridge and Sellafield, we even had a respectable armoury of assorted firearms and mucho ammo.

  We collected more survivors – the community grew fast, adding more skills so we could look after ourselves better. A seventeen-year-old girl joined who’d been a trainee nurse. Boxer had actually been in the army eight months before civilization bellied up. He gave us firearm training. We found generators and once more we had electricity.

  I captained Beta scavenging team and we ranged further and further from Eskdale, bringing back fuel by the tanker load, cylinders of gas for cooking and heating.

  We saw the cities were looking weird now.

  Plants were beginning to grow in town centre streets. Corpses had become skeletons. We began to have trouble with wild dogs so we’d shoot a few to remind them that humans were still kings of the world.

  In one town a river had broken its banks and now flowed down the high street, complete with otters swimming in and out through Woolworth’s doorways, and ducks nesting in Burger King.

  Animals had been escaping from zoos and circuses. In Nottler we saw a troop of monkeys hanging out at the police station. There were elephants wallowing in the local canal.

  The summer got hotter. And that’s when things started to change.

  People got tired of hard work day after day, they got tired of Steering Committee work rotas, they got tired of Dave Middleton full bloody stop.

  Scavengers still went out in their trucks but instead of returning with the flour on Dave’s list they came back piled high with cigarettes, sound systems, games machines, motorbikes.

  Dave reasoned with them. He prayed for them.

  And the kids realised he didn’t carry a big stick.

  For the last couple of months ninety-nine percent of us had dedicated ourselves to one, shining, golden goal.

  FUN.

  Thirty or so kids locked themselves into the attic rooms with the games machines and we didn’t see them from one day to the next. Occasionally one would wander out. White face, dark eyes, unhealthy looking, but brain fizzing with strategies for the electronic battles they fought. We called them The Spooks.

  So: Whatever you want to do – DO IT!

  That was the national anthem now. You like bikes. Great, get the biggest, fastest mother you can and torch up and down the roads all day.

  Guns? Grab your Uzi and go waste some sheep.

  Some just liked to relax fishing. Only the way they did it was to go up to the reservoirs and chuck in sticks of dynamite.

  The rest partied.

  We looked different now. Clothes got spectacular. Tattooing your face was IN for the under-fifteens.

  Martin Del-Coffey didn’t like what was happening. He quietly oozed off to shack up with his books, computers … oh, and Kitty, in a house down in the village.

  Slatter more or less kept himself to himself. Sometimes he’d beat people up for a little light entertainment but the only bother I got from him was verbal.

  Sarah and I shared a grand room overlooking the driveway.

  We hadn’t seen a single Creosote since we reached Eskdale. And life was twice as nice as paradise.

  Boxer was angry. ‘What the hell kept you, Middleton?’

  ‘I’ve been unblocking the drain again … You – you just can’t keep stuffing anything you like down the toilets and expect it to flush away. When we worked out—’

  ‘The generator’s packed in again. What the hell you doing with it?’

  ‘Me?’ Dave moved in the jerky, twitchy way he’d developed lately. ‘Me? Can I be everywhere at once?’ He looked round at us; his eyes like piss-holes in the snow. ‘I’m working eighteen-hour days to keep this place functioning. I get no help, I only get abuse. No one does anything any more. You’re animals …’

  Laughter.

  ‘I – I planted crops in the spring. You used the fields for your truck races. Everything’s ruined.’

  ‘We’ve got food, you stupid twat,’ shouted Curt. ‘Why should we work like slaves when we’ve got everything we need?’

  Everyone agreed.

  Boxer spat. ‘Get the generator back on.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can, I …’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘It might be out of fuel, it could be … I – I don’t know … just wearing out. I—’

  ‘Who’s supposed to maintain it?’

  Dave had to massage his aching head before pulling out a name. ‘Anthony … Yes, yes … Anthony.’

  Boxer bunched his fists, bad tempered now. ‘Where’s Anthony?’

  Curt said, ‘He’s one of the damn Spooks. It’s that lot with their computers that are draining off all the power.’

  ‘You!’ Boxer pointed to a twelve-year-old boy. ‘Fetch Anthony. Now!’

  The boy ran off to the hotel.

  We waited, awkward. These days silence was the thing that was too loud. We needed music to kill it.

  The boy returned.

  ‘Boxer … Anthony says he’s too busy to come down, and he wants to know why the power’s off again.’

  ‘Shit.’ I thought Boxer was about to detonate. ‘Go back and get Anthony. Curt, you go with him. Drag him back by his hair if you have to.’

  I looked at Sarah. She raised her eyebrows. We’d not seen Boxer as mad as this.

  Minutes later, the boy and Curt returned with a dozen sulky Spooks. Even the sunset was too bright for them and they rubbed their sore eyes.

  ‘Which one’s Anthony?’ snapped Boxer.

  ‘Me,’ said a lanky, grey-faced teenager. ‘Why are the generators out?’

  ‘That’s what we want to know.’

  ‘Why ask me? Middleton sees to it.’

  ‘But you were on the rota. It’s your responsibility, Spook.’

  Dave watched: his tired eyes registered that something was building. So did the crowd round the swimming pool. No one talked.

  Anthony got defensive. ‘I’ve not touched the thing in weeks. So why the hell should I do it?’

  The Spooks nodded. They sided with Anthony.

  ‘But you were trained to look after it,’ said Dave in a low voice.

  ‘You were supposed to strip it down every three weeks to clean the plugs.’

  ‘Why should I be the one? You’re doing damn all, Boxer. You do it.’

  I saw it coming. Anthony did not.

  Boxer’s fist blurred through the twilight. The punch slammed square in the middle of the Spook’s face. He went down flat.

  For a second I thought he was actually dead. He stared up at the sky, the eyes sightless. Then he blinked and gave a moaning kind of cry. Blood ran down his T-shirt like a waterfall.

  The Spooks cringed backwards.

  ‘Stand still, you zombie shits … I said stand still.’ Boxer’s army training came back. The Spooks ignored him and began to move back to the hotel.

  In a single movement Boxer slid the heavy leather belt from his jeans and laid into the Spooks, using the belt like a whip.

  They came back yelping, their hands and faces covered in red marks. One tried to run for it. Boxer expertly tripped him, then yanked him vertical by the hair. The Spook howled.

  When they were in line, Boxer snarled
, ‘I am sick of this. No discipline. Everyone doing what they damn well like. That goes for everyone. Not just the Spooks. In future everyone listens to Dave Middleton – they do what he says. Or …’

  Boxer pulled Anthony to his feet and showed us his splattered nose. ‘Or … there are going to be a hell of a lot more people looking like this.’

  Totally unexpected – but suddenly we had order once more.

  It lasted fourteen days.

  And Dave Middleton, standing there exhausted, and shocked by the unChristian behaviour, had twenty-two days more to live.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‘If We’re Going to Survive, Need to Learn More’

  By the following morning it’d become clear Boxer was king. He said he wasn’t, that Dave Middleton was still in charge. But Boxer called the shots now.

  After breakfast people were assigned ‘duties’ and were hard at work again. The party was over.

  As I walked down toward the tanker truck I’d been ordered to service, a cigarette butt bounced down onto the ground in front of me.

  I looked up, squinting against the sun. Ten feet above my head, sitting astride the stable roof, like the Devil himself, was Tug Slatter. The first thing I noticed were his pit boots.

  Usually they were clean. Now they were pasted in so much dried blood it looked as if he’d paddled through a slaughter house.

  ‘What’s been happening, Aten?’

  In as few words as I could I told him. The last thing I wanted was to stand chatting to the tattooed ape.

  Slatter spat, missing me by a yard. ‘About time someone took charge. Middleton’s shit.’

  I didn’t disagree. ‘What about you, Slatter? You haven’t been around for a couple of weeks. Been far?’

  ‘Far enough. My old man caught up with me. He’d been following me ever since we left the farmhouse where that Keene bitch snuffed it.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I sorted him out.’

  I looked back up at his bloody boots and didn’t have to try hard to guess what had happened.

  ‘Aten. You’ll have to do the same with yours.’

  ‘My parents? The last time I saw them was on the Selby road before we got here.’

  ‘That’s because you go round with your faggot eyes shut.’

  Slatter swung himself round, bloody boots leaving rust-coloured smears on the stone wall and disappeared.

  I shook my head and carried on walking. It was a typical Slatter wind-up. Mum and dad were miles away. They might even be dead.

  I reached the truck, pulled out the tool kit from the cab and set to work. Boxer wanted the truck to bring back more fuel before winter set in.

  Ten minutes later Martin Del-Coffey ambled up, laces trailing through the dust.

  ‘You look busy, Mr Aten.’

  ‘That’s because I am. We don’t see much of you these days. What do you want?’

  ‘You don’t beat about the bush, do you, Mr Aten?’ He looked at his clean fingernails. ‘I heard what happened last night, and that Eskdale has a new lord and master. What’s he like?’

  ‘Boxer? He’s seventeen. He trained for a few months as a soldier. If you ask me, deep down he felt guilty about partying all summer with the rest of us. What he really craves is order and discipline. I guess in a few weeks we’ll all be in uniform and saluting.’

  ‘Well, in a situation like this, you need a leader who wields a big stick. Middleton’s democratic, let’s-all-co-operate-as-reasonable-human-beings modus-operandi was doomed to failure.’

  ‘Oh, so you saw it all coming, did you, Del-Coffey? Is that why you took off to live in the village?’

  ‘I needed peace to work.’

  I snorted and hammered loose the air filter.

  Del-Coffey went on, ‘He’s got the right leadership qualities then?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? I’m a grease monkey. I can’t give you a psychological personality profile, can I?’

  ‘Maybe not, but you’re streetwise, Nick Aten, you know the kind who rises to the top of the pecking order. The kind of guy who can lead a gang.’

  ‘Boxer’s no bully. He’s not bright but with a bit of guidance from Middleton he’ll get the community in shape again.’

  ‘So he’s the kind of person who’ll listen to reason?’

  ‘Ah … So you did have a motive for coming up here.’ I blew dirt off the filter. ‘You want something from him.’

  Del-Coffey smiled. ‘See, you’re not as ignorant as you pretend, Nick. Very perceptive of you. The truth is I need help with research. Kitty and I are working every hour God sends.’

  ‘You won’t get it. Boxer’s told us plain and simple – what’s done is done. All he wants here is a comfortable routine with everyone sticking to a timetable.’

  ‘I’ll reason with him.’

  ‘Your funeral, Del-Coffey. Curt tried to persuade Boxer that getting up before nine was a mug’s game. Now Curt’s lip looks like it’s got a chunk of raw meat stitched to it.’

  ‘Listen, Nick. The Creosotes are changing. They might pose a greater threat now than they did back when this catastrophe started.’

  Del-Coffey looked round as if afraid he would be overheard, then he leaned forward. ‘Three weeks ago I saw twenty Creosotes gather on the big hill that looks over the hotel. They arrived about an hour before sunset. You lot were in the middle of a party, and so stoned you probably couldn’t see much past the end of your noses, never mind half a mile away.’ Del-Coffey’s hands shook, excited. ‘I watched through my telescope. They just stood there and very, very intently watched what was going on in the hotel grounds. At dusk they turned round and walked away over the brow of the hill.’

  ‘They just stood and watched?’ I looked up at his face. ‘So? That’s good news, isn’t it? They watch but they no longer attack us.’

  ‘They haven’t attacked yet. That doesn’t mean they won’t try in the future. If we’re going to survive, we need to know more.’

  ‘Well, there’s only twenty of them. There’s three hundred of us – and we’ve enough guns and ammo to fight a war.’

  ‘But if you could have seen their faces, Nick. You look at them and you know, you just know, they are planning something.’ He took a deep breath. ‘From my findings over the last few months, my conjecture is that adults are undergoing some kind of transformation here.’ Del-Coffey tapped his head. ‘What we saw in Doncaster, that savage and insane behaviour, was only the first stage in a continuing process. Adults are undergoing a psychological metamorphosis. Although their bodies are the same their minds are being retuned. Like when you buy improved software for your computer, the hardware’s the same but its performance is better. Do you follow? Or if you replace the engine in your car with a more powerful one … Remember Slatter’s father? He could hear things none of us could. I watched those adults on the hill. They were half a mile away and yet they could see what was going on at the hotel as if they were looking through binoculars. And listen to this … I was in the house in the village, and when I called Kitty to the telescope, the Creosotes on the hill actually turned their heads to look down at my house. They had actually heard me. No, Nick, don’t pull a face, it’s not fantasy. The changes in their heads have radically improved the way they process data coming in through the senses: hearing, seeing, smell … I’d put their audio ability on a par with a dog’s, which is very good indeed.’

  ‘Okay, Martin. So, you’re telling me this: a bunch of loonies that look like tramps are turning into supermen.’

  ‘No, not exactly. But the psychological metamorphosis is improving certain aspects of their minds.’

  ‘Well …’ I wiped my hands on a rag. ‘You go tell Boxer that and he’ll either laugh you to shit or he’ll crack your nose.’

  ‘It’s true, Nick. We need to send teams out to conduct field research. We need to know where the Creosotes migrated to; we need to know who they were signalling to; what the symbols laid out in fields meant and what—?
??

  ‘Where are those Creosotes now? If Boxer sees them he might at least hear you out.’

  Del-Coffey shrugged. ‘God knows. They stayed two days to watch the hotel. Now they’ve disappeared. I found signs they had stayed in the next valley up near the dam.’

  ‘What you need to do is show Boxer a mob of blood-thirsty Creosotes … Words like ‘research,’ ‘hypotheses’ and ‘psychology’ don’t exist in his vocabulary.’

  Del-Coffey pulled an envelope from his back pocket. ‘I’ve got photographs.’

  ‘How did you get these?’

  ‘On the second evening. I managed to sneak up the next hill with the camera and a telephoto lens.’

  The black and white photographs were as clear as I expected them to be, taken as they had been by Eskdale’s resident genius. They showed twenty men and women, watching the hotel and its residents at play. They looked like naturalists closely observing our behaviour patterns – as if they would take that knowledge away and use it in some strategy they were creating.

  Their clothes were shabby, hair long, scruffy, the men bearded. An old man carried a long pole. Ever eaten a kebab with vegetables and meat on a skewer? There were little heads threaded on the pole.

  Del-Coffey pointed to the man with the pole. ‘That’s my uncle. He helped my mother raise me. And those,’ he pointed to the head pole. ‘I think those are my cousins.’

  Suddenly the bees buzzing through the flowers sounded very loud. I pointed to the photograph of a man and a woman standing on the brow of the hill.

  ‘And those are my parents.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sex and Murder

  The fourteen days were up.

  Dave Middleton had seven days left.

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘I didn’t hurt you?’

  ‘No … Nice … Oh, very, very nice.’

  I lay on my back, Sarah above me: the early morning sunshine penetrated the curtains in a blaze of flaming glory.

  Naked, she pressed down onto me, sighing, letting her head drop forward so her hair washed across my bare chest.

  Boxer’s orders. Work six days a week. On the seventh day it’s R&R. Rest and Recreation. Sarah and I hungrily obeyed.