Oh, Rick. I fought them. I must have done. I tried to stop them. But their strength is enormous.
Just a moment ago I poured a drink of water into a mug. I saw my reflection in the water. The face I saw is bruised; my lip won’t stop bleeding. My hair looks like straw.
Dear God. What did they do to me? I hurt all over. Just what did they do? It’s important I know what happened to me during the last three hours.
But can I remember?
No. Nothing. My mind’s a total blank.
I can only just remember my name. Then hazy patches of memory of you, Rick, the two of us together in London.
Think. Kate, think!
The Grey Men didn’t try to kill you.
So what happened? Grit your teeth, clench your fists—think! Drag that memory back!
Grey fingers. They touched you…they appeared to be examining you…yes, yes, that’s it! They were examining you. But it was a brutal examination.
Their thick grey fingers held open your mouth. Another of the creatures put his fingers into your mouth, gripped your tongue between his…its finger and thumb. Then it pulled out your tongue for examination. Pulled so hard you wanted to scream, the pain was so excruciating.
Those thick grey fingers were pressed into your neck, they followed the line of your spine as they counted your vertebrae. Experimentally they lifted your legs, or bent your arms to test the elbow joints, then wrist. Sometimes forcing your hand back until you were certain the delicate bones would break.
Then you saw their blood-red eyes coldly search your body as if they were looking for something important. Some sign that would say: Yes. You’ve found her. This is the one.
Did they find it? Did they decide I’m suitable for whatever Godforsaken experiment they’d planned?
Christ, I’m so badly scratched between my legs.
I’m so sore down there…I think they must have done something to me…and inflicted it with a savage, unimaginably savage force.
I know they will come back. They will conduct their nightmare experiment. I look through the door.
And even as I write this, I see those grey creatures walking towards the church once more. They’re coming back.
I’ll kill myself. That’s what I must do.
I’m sorry, Rick. But I can’t bear it happening again. They can’t have any comprehension of pain. They don’t understand the agony they put me through.
I have the rifle. I must use it on myself. A bullet will be quick. Painless.
Rick, I’m so sorry. But it’s my only means of escape.
Please forgive me.
Chapter 103
My name: Rick Kennedy. The time: two p.m.
Suddenly I found myself in the open. The forest lay behind me.
‘Damn!’
I needed those trees. That’s where I was going to hide. Now I was in the open. There was no way of concealing myself. Ahead, fields of dust, nothing but dust. Nowhere to hide.
I panted. Christ, I was so breathless. Fine dust hung in the air; it dried the back of your throat until you burned from the back of your mouth all the way down to your lungs. Sweat bled from my face.
This was murder; this was Hell.
How could I outrun them?
Think, Kennedy, think!
I looked back. Shit. Where was Tesco?
He’d been at my side a moment ago. Maybe he’d stumbled. Already the bastard monsters might be pulling him apart as easily as a kid pulls apart a paper doll.
I unslung the rifle. With it gripped tight in my fists, I ran back to the forest. I didn’t trust that freak Tesco as far as I could throw him. But I couldn’t leave him there.
I ran right into him…no…
Ran right into IT.
IT reared up from the ground.
IT roared.
ITS blood-red eyes locked onto mine.
I knew I should shoot. I had the rifle there clamped in my two hands.
Easy, Rick!
Point!
Pull trigger!
But Hell…I could not move.
The thing lunged at me, red eyes blazing like twin lamps, its two grey hands open like claws.
It was pure reflex. I roared like a beast; threw myself forward, fists punching.
I should have punched a wall. I would have had some chance of doing more damage. That beast face was concrete-hard. My punches cracked against the forehead, against the jaw, but it was unstoppable. The eyes blazed at me with a ferocity that was unquenchable.
In one second the muscular arms swept me aside like I was filled with shredded paper.
I stumbled, fell flat on my back. With the heavy backpack weighing me down I was as clumsy as an upended tortoise.
Then it leapt onto me. The grey hands clamped on my face, pushed my head back into the soot.
I tried to slide from under it, pushing against the ground with my feet.
I couldn’t move.
Above me, against the black-as-hell branches, I saw the grey face gazing down at me. The bloody red eyes blazed with such savagery I could believe a terrible fire burned in that skull.
I reached up to beat at the thick arms. No good. I could have been held there by steel girders.
Then the beast shifted its position. It squatted on my chest, the bare feet crushing down on my ribcage. My mind began to split apart with the sheer terror of the attack. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to scream when the thing clamped its great claw of a hand around my throat and started to squeeze with incredible strength.
Yet, part of me remained strangely detached. As if my soul had already slipped free of its body to watch as that grey monster squatted on a man, lying flat out on his back in the soot. Legs squirming. The backpack half-torn from the man’s body in the life-or-death struggle.
Me, Rick Kennedy. Nineteen years old. No longer breathing. The picture began to slowly fade. From grey. To black. I wasn’t breathing. Blackness rushing in. Life leaking away.
If I didn’t dislodge the creature in the next twenty seconds I’d be dead.
Chapter 104
My name is Kate Robinson.
I am going to kill myself. But there is something I must do first. I must be quick. The grey creatures are walking towards the church again. They’re in no hurry. They know I can’t escape.
My God, just one look at them and my insides turn to water. I don’t think I have the strength to do this but I must.
Also, I must find time to write down what happens to me. Please, Rick. Make sure it goes into the archive with the rest of the notes. I’ll have no grave, no headstone—let these notes scribbled here be my epitaph.
The time is two p.m.
I’ve managed to do it. I searched the church until I found half a tin of blue gloss paint in a cupboard in the vestry. There is no paintbrush so I had to use my fingers. I also found a white cotton surplice the priest would have worn.
I’ve done now. So soon I can turn the rifle on myself. Dear God, dear God…I won’t let them take me again.
So, Rick, if you find this notebook you’ll have seen what I painted on the cotton surplice, which I strung between two stone pinnacles at the top of the church tower like a banner.
Painted on the surplice in blue is simply:
HERE—RICK.
—KR
If you see it, you’ll know I’m inside the church. I’m going to the top of the tower now. I’m going to sit up there, write the last few lines. The rifle will be with me. Everything is ready.
Chapter 105
My name is Rick Kennedy.
I lay beneath the black trees. The Grey Man crushed my windpipe with his great claw of a hand.
I couldn’t breathe.
Darkness rushed into my head. I could no longer see. I couldn’t feel. Dimly I realized my legs were jerking in useless kicks in the soot.
When the monster had finished it would leave me there to rot in that forest of silent, dead trees blackened by the heat that burned the Earth’s surface like a fever.
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I kicked.
No good.
I couldn’t shift the monster.
It must have weighed three hundred pounds.
I kicked.
That terrible weight alone crushed my ribcage. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
Kick.
For the first time my foot struck something solid.
Kick again, Rick! Kick again!
I kicked. I knew I kicked the trunk of one of those burnt trees.
Kick again!
Why?
What good would kicking a fucking burnt tree do?
I didn’t know, but the voice inside my head urged me to kick. To keep kicking.
Still lying flat on my back, I now lashed out with my feet at the trunk.
I couldn’t see, but I could dimly hear the thud of my boot kicking against burnt timber.
Kick harder!
I kicked.
Suddenly a crackling sound cut through the fog in my brain.
I felt dozens of blows against my legs and arms.
Then the pressure from my throat had suddenly—magically—gone.
The moment I opened my eyes I saw what I’d done. My kicks had shaken the tree enough to break the brittle limbs. A whole deluge of the blackened sticks, twigs, branches had come down onto us.
The monster’s head had taken the main brunt of the force as the branches crashed down. The impact had knocked the beast sideways.
It lay on its side now, its face crushed into the sooty carpet.
Coughing from the cloud of black dust thrown into the air by the impact, I struggled to free myself from the branches.
I didn’t believe for one second the monster was dead. It could only have been stunned. The branches had been charcoaled by the heat; even the largest felt surprisingly light as I pushed them aside.
I had to get clear before it awoke.
I made it to my feet; but the branches, interlocked, tangled, formed a kind of cage round my waist. I couldn’t even climb out of that mess of baked wood. When I tried to stand on a branch it snapped beneath my weight, sending out jets of black dust that irritated my eyes until they streamed and blurred.
I pushed branches aside to clear a path through the tangle.
I had to get away. I had to find Kate.
I should—
Hell.
The hand clamped around my leg.
I looked down. The thing leered up at me through the web of fallen branches. The bloody red eyes were bright, and bleeding pure menace.
A grey arm thrust upward, smashing through twigs. It gripped the strap of my backpack and tried to pull me back down into the branches. To finish the job of strangling me.
I grabbed the nearest weapon to hand. A branch as thick as my wrist and as long as my arm. I couldn’t swing it like a club, so I pushed it down through the tangle of branches toward that grey face set with blazing red eyes.
Then, like I was tamping down loose earth around a fence post, I began to pound the branch into the face.
When I shook my head sweat flew in a spray. My arms ached. Every time I breathed I sucked in clouds of dust that burned my lungs. But still I pounded that branch into the face.
The hands released me. The monster’s grey arms fell limply back into the branches.
I paused, panting.
The red eyes looked dull. The beast didn’t move.
I began to push my way out again.
But the moment I tried to move the hands erupted from the branches again, grabbed me.
Once more I worked that branch, tamping it down into the monster’s face.
I was locked into a nightmare. As long as I beat its head I could stun it. But the instant I paused it roared back into life and attacked me.
I’d have to beat the thing until doomsday. The second I stopped I’d be dead.
I struck harder. Mixed with the terror I felt a rage, a blazing, godawful rage that powered my aching arms.
I shouted as I pounded.
‘What do you want…what do you want from me?’
Pound-pound-pound…
‘Why are you here?’
Pound-pound…
‘You can’t speak, you can’t fucking speak. You’re nothing but an ugly…fucking…beast…’
Exhaustion bit deep.
I stopped beating.
Fists erupted from the branches like hammers, slamming against my hip.
I beat again. Harder. The red eyes dulled. The arms dropped down once more as the blows stunned it.
‘Who sent you?’
At last I heard some kind of reply: ‘Sss…ssee…ss.’
I screamed as I beat down: ‘ Who the fuck sent you here!’
It hissed just one word: ‘Jesus—sss…sss.’
‘Jesus?’ I looked down in shock. ‘What do you mean—Jesus?’ The eyes, dulled almost to brown, filled with that liquid red again.
The hands shot up, grabbed me. I beat it hard, my fists clamped around burnt wood: again and again, I smashed the end of the branch down into that grey face, the concussion knocking the head back into the earth.
I beat until the arms dropped, until the eyes turned dull brown. I beat until a liquid the colour of gravy bled from its black-lipped mouth.
I knew the moment I stopped it would kill me.
Chapter 106
I am Kate Robinson.
I sit on top of the church tower. And I write this looking down on a world that looks like Hell itself. Where there were once green fields there is only black desert. The trunks of trees stick from the ground in black columns. In the distance, gas jets vent from the earth. The flames are all colours—blue, yellow, orange, red, even vivid greens—and are strangely beautiful.
A wind has sprung up; the pages of this notebook flap. I hold them down with my free hand. I must keep writing.
The wind strengthens, droning, howling like a savage beast. It tears across that black desert, whipping up dust tornadoes that twist towards me; they blast against the church tower, the grit stings my skin; the gale rips wildly at my hair.
For all the world it looks as if black spirits dance across the surface of the Earth.
The dust hanging in the air forms a black mist. Even the sky is black. My world is dead.
Two hundred paces away a line of those grey beasts surrounds the church. There is no way out. Soon they will come for me.
When they walk along the path, the graveyard path, to the church doors, that’s when I’ll use the rifle on myself.
No more pain.
No more anxiety about food shortages.
I’ll do it now.
Before they march into the church to—
Christ. I remember.
I remember what they did to me last time.
The memory came back to me as suddenly as a clap of thunder.
I remember!
They flung me onto the stone floor inside the church. They tore at my clothes with those claw hands.
Then suddenly they stopped. As if they’d been given an order. Then two of the creatures stooped down, each grabbed one of my ankles. Then they began to drag me across the floor. By the time they reached the doorway they were running.
I remember screaming. They didn’t slow down. They ran, still dragging me by the ankles outside into the churchyard. I remember seeing the ruined headstones flicking by. My head smacked against the ground, my body scraped a furrow in the black ash.
Where were they taking me?
What did they intend doing to me?
I screamed, struggled, my arms trailing out above my head, but it was as if I’d been tied to the back of a car to be dragged away. They didn’t tire, they were unstoppable. I screamed and screamed; the cinders raked my bare back.
Then they’d dragged me onto the dunes of ash that had been drifted there by the winds. Up one dune. Down the other side. Up the next.
I knew what they’d do.
They’d chosen me for their inhuman mating programme: BEAST FUCKS WOMAN.
I was to have forced sexual intercourse with these monsters.
I screamed. My sanity began to crack. I swore, spit and yelled and shouted filthy names. I’d have clawed out my own womb with my fingernails given the chance.
And all the time, this sensation of great speed as they dragged me.
Then it stopped.
No more movement.
No more grey monsters.
As suddenly as that.
Why had they left me there? Why had they gone as suddenly as that?
I can’t tell. All I know is, I was alone.
On all fours I crawled back to the church where I passed out on the floor.
I must keep writing. Every now and again I look down at the dust devils twisting across the desert. I feel the grit sting my skin as the wind blasts it with enough force to make the cotton surplice flap with a tremendous cracking noise.
Any second there might be a gust that tears it free from the string to send it tumbling away into the sky. So I tie more string to it, then wind the ends around the iron hooks set in the top of the tower. You must see it. You must find the book, Rick. Even if it’s only to enable you to close this Chapter in your life, so you can start afresh with someone else. The gusts tear at the pages, threatening to snatch the book from my hands. I hold it flat against the stones on top of the wall. I keep writing. Grit hits the paper, some catches in the crease-line between the pages. It looks like a line of black pepper.
I can hardly see the Grey Men now. The wind has whipped up so much of the black dust I can barely see beyond the perimeter fence of the churchyard.
But here comes one now. At least, I assume it’s one. The black mist is so thick. All I see is a tall figure, indistinct, pale.
I’m going to stand at the hatchway which is set in the roof of the tower. I’ll see it climb the steps. Please, God, let me take one of these monsters with me. Just to show them we humans can fight back.
I’ll fire four rounds into it as it climbs towards me.
I’ll save the final bullet for myself.
Here it comes. I hear its feet on the stone steps.