On Deadly Ground

  I locked up with shock. I had to do something.

  But what?

  I couldn’t shoot every man there. Maybe with grenades and a machine gun I could have done something.

  She ran straight at the wall.

  Uph!

  The concussion knocked the breath from her body.

  She began to climb the wall. Arms over, her gold bracelets catching the light, then she swung one bare mud-smeared leg over.

  She saw me; her eyes widened. Still keeping out of sight of the mob on the other side of the wall I reached up and began to help her over. I grabbed her slim wrist. She froze. Then tried to drag back, her eyes filled with terror.

  Uh-uh-uh-uh!

  The savage chant grew louder as the men approached.

  ‘Let me help you,’ I said under my breath. ‘Once you’re over the wall run to the stream. We can hide under the bridge.’

  She smiled. The look of gratitude on her face transformed it.

  ‘Thank—’

  Then she was gone. As quickly as that; snatched away from the other side. Her wrist slipped through my fingers, leaving me holding the gold bracelet.

  I stared at it in horror. Then my head snapped up: I expected to see leering faces above the wall. But the mob didn’t even know I was there.

  Quickly, keeping low, I followed the mob, occasionally spying through the cracks of the dry-stone wall and catching glimpses of the men carrying the blonde-haired woman away.

  I followed, still wondering what I could do. Come on, Rick, get that brain in gear. What would Stephen do? He’d think of a plan. Christ, the man was inspired these days. He could solve any problem, hatch any plan. You’re his brother, Rick; creativity is in the blood. You’ve got three minutes to save this woman. What will you do?

  Clutching the rifle in both hands, I followed the sound of the chanting madmen.

  Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh!

  If the bastards did rape her perhaps I could still manage to get her away from them later. Surely no one back on Fountains Moor would object to me bringing in another survivor.

  Then I reached a meadow that ran down towards a stream.

  At any other time it would have been a pleasant place: an acre of soft, sweet grass; a shallow stream catching the sunlight on this warm summer’s day. At the edge of the stream, a couple of willow trees. From one branch hung a rope swing. The kind I’d spent hours on as a ten-year-old, swinging to and fro across a stream near home. Back in those days long ago when the world was a fun place to be.

  But today that meadow was a genuine slice of hell.

  Still chanting, the madmen carried the woman into the field. Trying desperately to break free, she writhed and twisted, back arching, hips lifting.

  In the centre of the field was a wooden pole set upright in the earth. The top of the pole would have reached my shoulder.

  That’s when I knew what they were going to do to her. I think that’s when the woman realized, too. Because she began to scream. A bitter mechanical scream that went on and on. Even when I clamped my hands over my ears I could still hear it. That vocal cord-ripping scream. I can hear it still.

  I’ve promised myself to tell everything about how it happened. And not to censor any of it. Not one word. You must know what we did to each other that summer the world decided to burn itself up under our feet.

  But I wouldn’t blame you now if you skipped the next few paragraphs. It is dirty, it is disgusting, it is degrading; the sight of it is burned into my memory for life.

  All I can do is warn you. If you can take it, keep reading.

  This is what they did to the screaming woman: The mob carried the woman towards the pole. As they did so, men and the women who’d joined them began tearing away the woman’s clothes.

  Soon she was naked; I could see her navel, a flash of fair pubic hair; the shiver of her buttocks; her breasts swaying heavily as they lifted her up higher, her head twisting from side to side as she struggled to free herself.

  At that moment I knew what I had to do. The rifle had a telescopic sight. I was a fair shot by now. I realized the only option was put a bullet through the woman’s head so she wouldn’t experience the agony of what they’d do to her next.

  Because I realized then that this was no mass rape.

  The instinctive drive for survival had suppressed sex lust. The lust for food was all that mattered now.

  With two men at each side of the woman, gripping her by her legs and holding her high into the air, just as you’d see a jubilant football team holding the captain, they carried her towards the wooden pole.

  I put the telescopic sight to my eye and drew back the bolt of the rifle.

  First: I saw the pole. It had been set firm in the ground like a fence post. The top had been sharpened so it resembled a giant pencil whittled to a wicked point. Through the cross-hairs of the telescopic sight I could see it was perhaps as thick as my wrist. It was stained. This had happened before.

  Mouth dry, heart thudding so hard the echo carried into my skull, I moved the rifle, seeing the magnified heads of the mob, their unkempt hair plastered with shit and blood; and their wild, wild eyes. Those eyes blazed with a greedy craving. Just weeks ago those chanting men and women had been schoolteachers, office workers, dentists, social workers—now they had evolved into a savage tribe.

  And I knew exactly what they would do with the blonde woman.

  Her heavy bare breasts bounced as they carried her to the pole and lifted her above it.

  I aimed. Her red face, quartered by the cross-hairs of the telescopic sights, filled my field of vision. Her teeth were clenched, her eyes screwed shut. She knew what they were going to do.

  Christ…they were going to sit her on the pole.

  You know exactly what I mean. But I find it a struggle to express plainly that…that, oh for Chrissakes, they were going to impale her on the wooden stake. They were going to drive that sharpened stake through the body. Not through her chest or the stomach. They were going to sit her on the pole and…

  I swallowed, held my breath to damp down the trembles bucking my arms, aimed. Her face was slap in the centre of the cross-hairs. I couldn’t save her life. But I could save her from the agony of that wooden pole being driven inside her.

  UH-UH-UH-UH!

  There was a savage ritual about this. They held the woman above the pole as they chanted so loud it drove the birds from the trees in terror.

  UH-UH-UH-UH-UH!

  I pulled the trigger, already anticipating the woman’s head dissolving in a spray of blood as that bullet kissed home.

  Then I’d have to run for my life.

  Click.

  That’s all. No bang. No kick in the shoulder as the bullet left the muzzle at four hundred metres per second.

  Shit.

  That piece of ammo was a dud. I pulled the bolt to eject it. It came part way. Then jammed.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I struggled with the bolt trying to eject the dud round.

  Then I stopped. Too late. Rick. You’re too late!

  The woman’s face was still screwed tight, her eyes crushed shut, teeth gritted. I sensed her exert sheer will-power in an attempt to block out the pain to come.

  Step by step the ritual continued. Still the chant: Uh-uh-uh!

  She was raised higher, like a sacrificial offering to some dark and bastard-hearted god.

  Almost reverently the woman was seated upon the sharpened pole. Her legs were held straight down at either side of it, feet towards the floor as if she was being mounted on a horse.

  Still her face was crimped tight. You sensed she was holding her breath. Willing the pain—that pain that was so inevitable—that fucking awful, skin-splitting pain—willing it not to rip through her body.

  Hands supported her torso, holding her upright.

  Then the men holding her by the legs pulled down.

  They pulled down hard. So hard that they lifted their own legs from the ground, using their body weight to exert a
greater downward force; they clenched their teeth and grimaced with the effort of impaling their victim on the wicked point of that pole.

  My eyes snapped back to the woman’s face as the pole slid in and in and in…

  Her body convulsed, her arms came out straight in a crucifixion pose.

  Then her mouth and eyes snapped open wide with the shock of the pain.

  Helplessly I looked back. Her eyes met mine and at that moment it seemed a bolt of psychic energy leapt from her to me; the shock was physical, knocking me back on my heels.

  All I could see was that look of pure shock on her face; her eyes so wide they looked as if they’d burst from the sockets; her mouth yawning so enormously it seemed as if the jaw would dislocate.

  And I felt that brutal stream of terror, pain, disgust and sheer, sheer sorrow at her life being ended on that wooden pole there in the field. Surrounded by chanting born-again savages.

  I was so appalled, so sickened. I stumbled backwards, unable to turn my back on the woman’s mutilation in the field. As they continued the ritual, women moved forward; they held butchers’ knives. They began to carve. Her right breast came away in a single bell-shaped piece; blood spurted.

  The woman on her skewer, still alive, seemed to dance in slow motion, arms waving slowly—even serenely—above her head. A parody of a dance I’d seen danced by Asian women: arms above head; move slowly to the left; move slowly to the right.

  They were beginning to eat her alive.

  Still she danced; the pain had burnt out her mind.

  Still she danced.

  Children clustered to drink the blood drenching the pole between her legs the deepest crimson.

  Still she danced. The skewered woman.

  I turned.

  And ran. And ran.

  Chapter 42

  The shock had screwed my sense of direction. I ran blindly. Falling. Dropping the rifle. Stumbling back to pick it up. Running again. I was crying as I ran. Blubbering and snotty-faced, like some little runt who’s fallen off his bike and is running home to mummy.

  I don’t know what disgusted me most. The mob in the field who’d tugged the woman down over the pole, leaving her to hang there, skewered from crotch to throat, while the bastards dined on her. Or myself. And the people back on Fountains Moor. We were so ignorant, so fucking insulated from all this. Men and women were eating each other; they’d turned savage; they’d turned into beasts. And we were sitting up there on the hill, still eating sardines from cans, and there was still a shot of whisky before you stood up, scratching your belly and saying you were going to turn in. Then, once in your tent, you zipped yourself all nice and clean into your nice, clean sleeping-bag.

  Who were we kidding?

  Just who the fuck were we kidding? This was the cold bleeding-hearted reality now.

  Kill or be killed.

  Eat or be eaten.

  I scrambled over walls, trudged through streams. Then came a band of black earth as wide as a highway. The soil smoked. I even felt the heat against my skin as I ran along it. I didn’t care. I wanted to run and run. Run so fast I’d manage to outrun my own skin.

  I climbed another wall and found myself in a farmyard. I skirted a burnt-out truck.

  Then I saw the Grey Men.

  In fact I saw several of them.

  I stopped and stared, the rifle—that fucking useless rifle—gripped in my fists.

  There they were — twice the size of me.

  The Grey Men were painted on the wall of the barn, aerosoled in silver paint—but I knew what the artist intended. They were supposed to be grey but the silver paint gave them a supernatural luminosity. In their build, massive shoulders, massive head, band of hair following the crest of bone from forehead to nape of neck, long arms as strong as a gorilla’s: they were exactly as I remembered them. The eyes were red. A wet, glossy red. And I knew the artist had used a different kind of paint there. In fact, sitting on a table was the plastic bucket with the brushes still inside.

  I looked.

  In a detached way I counted three hands, one still wearing a wedding ring. There was also a heart. Human, I guessed. And in the bottom of the bucket a good dollop of still-wet blood that had served as paint for the red eyes. Flies buzzed in and out. They’d feed well on what the artist hadn’t used.

  I moved on through the deserted farmyard, looking up at the windows of the farmhouse expecting to see faces peering back.

  But the place looked deserted.

  Hanging by lengths of electrical flex from a child’s climbing frame in the garden, twenty or more heads. The eyes of some had been gouged, leaving bloody red sockets; one had a galvanized nail, as thick as your thumb, hammered through the forehead. The face wore a look of stupid surprise; the same kind of wide-eyed expression the cop always wears in Laurel and Hardy films when he gets cream-pied.

  (Nice one, God; another pant-wetting cosmic joke. How come you never let us poor saps die with dignity?)

  The heads swung and turned gently in a light summer breeze.

  ‘Adapt or die.’ That’s what Stephen had said. The people who’d made this place their home had done just that. They’d flipped over to cannibalism. Radical changes had taken place inside their heads. As if their new environment had demanded a new mental software to reprogramme their behaviour.

  By the outdoor swimming pool I saw another Grey Man. This one had been moulded from concrete. It stood there, grey, rock-like, like the statue of some Babylonian god of death. The eyes had been painted red. Again, a bucket holding paint brushes and severed hands (still redly oozing the medium) sat nearby.

  I walked on. The rest of my hunting party would be wondering where the Hell I’d vanished. I’d have to find them or they’d leave without me.

  But as I ran back to the road I saw my way was blocked.

  There were the wild-eyed men, women and children. A big man with a bald, sunburnt head lead the pack. Held reverently in his two hands, as if he carried a sacred object, was a human head. I recognized the short blonde hair. An expression of shock and pain still forced the eyes wide open in the dead face.

  When they saw me they howled. As if I’d desecrated something unbelievably precious.

  Then came a dangerous silence as they moved slowly but purposefully towards me.

  I jiggled the rifle bolt backwards, forwards, then—

  Click.

  The dud rifle cartridge ejected to rattle onto the ground.

  I chambered another bullet.

  Those faces were brutally angry. And that rifle in my hands felt about as lethal as a posy full of dandelions.

  They moved forward, menacing, dangerous. Eyes glittering, fists clenching.

  Crack!

  I fired over their heads. The sound made them flinch. But they didn’t stop moving toward me.

  I had three rounds left. Maybe I could kill three of the savage bastards. But that would leave me in the hands of the other forty or so. I didn’t doubt that my fate would be the pole in the meadow.

  I had one option.

  Run.

  Then hide.

  I ran.

  Chapter 43

  As soon as I turned to run, the mob followed. They chanted as they ran: uh-uh-uh-uh-uh!

  Hell, did I have a story for Kate Robinson’s archive: Rick Kennedy’s story: CANNIBALISM AND THE CULT OF THE GREY MAN.

  Only there was a real chance I’d never tell another living soul what I’d clapped my eyes on.

  I ran back through the clump of farm buildings, by the barn, complete with murals of Grey Men with blood-red eyes.

  Ahead of me, a five-bar gate, then a dirt lane that led back the way I’d come. In the distance I could see the clump of trees on the hillside where I knew Dean Skilton and the others would be sitting, passing round the whisky bottle and wondering where the Hell I’d got to.

  I couldn’t lead this mob to them. I’d have to run fast, then duck out of sight. When they’d cleared off I could make my way up to the wood.
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  That cross-country run was the stuff of nightmares. I climbed fences, vaulted walls; then I bust through a hawthorn hedge, my arms in front of my face to save my eyes as the thorns slashed blood-red lines into my skin. I’d almost cleared the hedge when I felt something grab hold of me. I struggled round to fight off my attacker to find a branch had caught under the rifle strap. I wrenched myself free, then ran on.

  But I noticed how close the mob were now. They were close enough to make out the patterns on their blood-and mud-stained clothes. Some were still wearing nightclothes (again evidence that this disaster had struck with brutal swiftness in the middle of the night all those weeks ago). I even recognized the remains of a police uniform. Most were barefoot. This is what happens when human beings turn feral.

  I pumped on across the field, my trainers slapping the grass.

  A couple of pheasants spooked by the wild chase fluttered up in front of me.

  Then the grass turned to black ash. I’d reached the hot spot again. This time I followed that stretch of burnt earth, my pounding feet kicking up gouts of black powder.

  For one thing it made running easier. The ground was baked hard beneath my feet; grass, plants, even bushes had been reduced to ash. Wooden fences had been burnt to powder. That line of black that I now so desperately ran along followed some subterranean fault line across the earth, creating what looked like a straight black road.

  The smell of burning filled my nostrils. Here and there, coils of blue smoke rose from the soil. I ran through swampland. The once sloppy grue had been cooked as hard as concrete; although at either side of the black track, steam still squirted into the air.

  I shot a glance back. They were still following. I could hear the uh-uh-uh-uh! of their manic chant.

  Somewhere to hide! Christ, there must be somewhere to hide. But all I could see to left and right of me were fields with scrubby hedges. A rabbit couldn’t lie low amongst that.

  As I ran I felt the ground grow hotter beneath my feet; walls and rocks began to shimmer as the heat distorted the air. Behind me the wild-eyed bunch were running across that hot track in bare feet. Their rage at me numbed them. They wanted the meat on my bones. That’s all that mattered to them.