In the distance stood the church where I’d found Kate the day before. Now the ash slowly engulfed it. Soon it would reach the clock in the tower that was frozen at ten to two.
I repeatedly raised my hand to my shoulder where I expected to feel the reassuring press of the rifle strap.
‘We should have brought the rifles,’ I said. ‘We don’t know what we’ll find down here.’
‘You remember what Ben told us?’
‘Yep. The Grey Men are nothing but products of our imagination, triggered by the electricity coming out of the ground.’
‘You believe it?’
I sighed. ‘You know I do. It’s just if one of those big Grey guys comes around the corner it’s going to take a lot of will-power to keep calm and tell yourself it’s only some freaking illusion.’
‘You must try, Rick…Rick?’
I felt her hand tighten on mine.
‘Rick. You’re seeing one, aren’t you?’
‘Nothing. I see nothing.’
‘Rick.’ Again she squeezed my hand. ‘I can tell by the expression on your face. Breathe slowly. Remember what Ben said. Breathe slowly…be aware of your breathing…imagine it away…imagine it’s fading away into the air…vanishing. Imagine it doing that, Rick. It’s fading to nothing.’
‘Beam it up, Scottie.’ I took a deep breath, I was sweating. ‘OK…it’s OK. It’s gone.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure.’ I breathed deeply again. ‘Hell, Kate, I saw it. A Grey Man in the garden, standing by the Porsche. It just seemed to rise out of the black dust to stand there, big apelike arms, red eyes. And just for a second I knew it was going to attack.’
Kate fixed her eyes on me. ‘And you know what would have happened then?’
I nodded. ‘According to what Ben has told us my brain would have scrambled up the hallucination of the Grey Man with you. I would have seen you as one of those Grey monsters.’
‘And then you would have fought me, thinking I was one.’
‘Yeah…’ Still sweating, I forced a smile. ‘Then we’d have ended up using the rifles on each other, if we’d brought them.’
‘So it’s a good job we listened to Ben.’ She lifted my hand, kissed it. ‘Otherwise we’d have had the noisiest game of cowboys and Indians Fairburn’s ever seen.’
‘You’re right.’
Ten paces away from me stood another Grey Man. It lifted its muscular arms ready to attack, hands hooked into claws above its head. The lips peeled back from the teeth; they jutted from the gums like splinters of stone.
Go away, I told it inside my head. Go away. You’re not real.
The edges of the figure blurred; then the whole fabric of the arms and legs and torso melted into the air.
Gone. I took a deep relaxing breath.
I could do it. I could get rid of them.
‘The main thing,’ Kate said, ‘is to keep as relaxed as possible. Once you get uptight you see them popping out of the woodwork right, left and centre.’
‘Yes, Miss.’ I smiled again, but still my knees felt watery from the effort. The damn things looked so real. They looked as if they could just walk up and tear off your friggin’ head. For Godsakes, you could even see—
No. I shut off the flow of thoughts. I had to keep telling myself they weren’t real. That they couldn’t hurt me.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked.
‘I’m ready.’
‘Which house is it?’
‘There it is, home sweet home. The one with the wrought-iron gates.’
I walked into the patch of black dust that had once been the garden. All the plants were gone. Only the skeletal trunks and branches of trees remained; blackened and completely dead.
The house stood intact. The dust had reached the ground floor windows; the weight of it had pushed in the French windows.
We walked into the garden, boots scrunching on the black ash.
In what had been the centre of the front lawn, gas detonating underground had torn open a crater perhaps two metres across and a metre deep. What appeared to be brown sticks protruded from the dust.
‘Poor girl.’ I crouched down. This bloody planet won’t even let you rest in peace.’
‘What is it?’
‘What was it, you mean.’ I gave a laugh, but it was an expression of sadness rather than amusement. ‘See, there’s the collar. Can you read what’s on the metal tag?’
‘Amber?’
‘Amber. My dog. She died when I was a kid. We buried her under the flower bed. The explosion’s thrown out her bones, poor girl.’
‘Come on, Rick. We’ll look in the house, then go back to Ben’s.’
We had to climb the mound of ash, then slither down it into the living room. The walls were black with heat marks.
‘There’s no furniture,’ she said.
‘I expect the looters took everything. Maybe they hoped that when the world returned to normal they could take our leather suite back home with them.’ I shrugged. ‘Much good it will do them now.’
The thick layer of windblown ashes jammed the internal door shut. I had to scrape a deep furrow with the heel of my boot before I could open it.
‘Hell, look at that.’
‘Good heavens. It still seems so clean.’
The hall and landing had been sealed shut from the outside world. The emulsioned walls were still dazzlingly white. The carpets were spotless. No ash had blown in here.
‘There’s the telephone. And the coat pegs. Christ, even the print of The Haywain. Hell, a neighbour gave us that when we moved in. My mother hated it, but she felt duty bound to hang it in the hall.’ I looked at it all in astonishment. Even the mundane framed pictures, the coat pegs on the wall; the little table at the bottom of the stairs with the telephone directories and copper ashtray where I’d dump my van keys with a noisy enough rattle to signal to Mum I was safely home: it all looked magically new. My heart beat faster. If I closed my eyes and opened them again I could believe this shit-awful disaster hadn’t happened. That if I looked out the front door I’d see a green garden, children playing football on King Elmet’s Mile.
I found myself trembling as I tried the door to the kitchen.
‘What’s wrong?’ Kate asked.
‘The door won’t open. Uh…see the ash leaking through the gap at the bottom; the kitchen must be full of it. It’s holding the door shut.’
‘Try upstairs.’
Hand in hand we climbed the stairs, looking more like a newly betrothed couple out house-hunting.
My parents might be alive. They might be dead. I had no way of knowing. As rituals went this came the closest to a funeral. In a few minutes I’d say goodbye to the house that had been a home for ten years, then walk away, never to see it again. At least it was one way to bring to a close a phase of my life and then, God willing, move on to something new.
Most of the bedrooms were stripped of furniture. But still there was the familiar: the carpets, the candy stripe wallpaper, a pink lampshade in my mother’s bedroom. An old Star Wars figure of Chewbacca I’d been given as a ten-year-old lay against the skirting board.
‘Look…photographs.’
She bent down to pick up a handful of photographs scattered on the floor. She handed them to me. ‘They’re of your family, aren’t they?’
Feeling strangely numb but calm, perhaps more calm than I’d ever felt before, I nicked through them. ‘That’s Stephen and me. When we lived in Italy. I’m still wearing the bandage where he shot me.’ I spoke in that low, even voice. ‘Here I am on my bike. I got that for my seventh birthday. There’s Dad. Heck. One with Dad and Mum holding hands. It’s strange to think they actually did love one another once. This one: Stephen’s pretending to play the guitar. I’m imagining the pans are a drum kit. Even back then we wanted to be a part of the music business.’ I slowly flicked through the photographs. There were shots of Stephen and me at some Christmas long ago, unwrapping presents, or sat round the table with pa
per hats on our heads, and the turkey in the middle of the table. Or nine-year-old me with a look of comic surprise on my face as I sneaked a drink of beer from a can. Or Stephen and I made up for Hallowe’en. He wore a skeleton mask; for some reason I was made up as a witch complete with green nylon wig and pointy hat.
There was nothing extraordinary about the photographs; they’re the kind found in drawers or cupboards in any household across the world. Photographs of children and parents at holiday time, weddings or birthdays, when it seems the done thing to make a permanent record of one specific second of that day. The fashions and hairstyles change over the years. Our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters manage to look unfamiliar yet achingly familiar, both at the same time. And we stare out from the past with surprisingly solemn-looking expressions. As if what had happened in the last few months had cast an ominous shadow back as far as then.
I looked down at the photographs in my hand. I still felt calm, even strangely empty. I’d let go of something I’d been holding on to. I’d already said my goodbyes and not even realized it.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s collect our backpacks from Ben’s; it’s time we were moving on.’
We left the house the way we came, boots scrunching over the loose black ash that slowly drifted into the living room like Hell’s own snow. I walked past the bones of Amber in the garden. Then, for the last time, out through the driveway gates.
At first I didn’t look back as we climbed the hill to Ben Cavellero’s house, but then I shot glances back over my shoulder.
I saw the redbrick house, with the tiled roof, the TV aerial poking higher than the surrounding roofs. I could see the garden, the fences now burnt to ash; that drifting black grit filling the pond and covering everything like a global funeral shroud.
At the corner of the street I glanced back again. Now my old home was nearly hidden by the burnt-out shells of other houses; all I could see was the roof of my house and part of my bedroom window. I carried on walking. When I looked back again I could see it no more.
Chapter 114
‘Where’s your backpack, Ben?’
‘I’m not going with you.’
We were standing in the corridor on the upper floor of Ben’s house. We’d have to leave by the window, then slide down the great drift of black ash to ground level. Kate and I were ready. The backpacks contained fresh clothes and enough food to see us through to the coast if need be. We carried the rifles, shoved barrel first into the backpacks.
I shook my head, puzzled. ‘What’s there to stay here for?’
‘This is my home, Rick. The day I saw this house I knew I’d buy it and never leave.’
‘But the whole village is going up in flames!’
‘I’ll take that chance. Besides, I like to be conceited enough to believe I’m more useful here.’ He eased the silk scarf a little higher up his nose. ‘Sometimes people pass through. I tell them the truth about the Grey People, that they are hallucinations. The people move on better prepared to survive in this hostile new world.’
The idea of leaving him in this burnt-out stretch of countryside seemed unbelievably bleak. ‘Stephen could use you.’
‘We need people with experience,’ Kate added. ‘Most of us are under thirty.’
‘Precisely,’ Ben said, and even though I couldn’t see those cut lips I sensed he was smiling. ‘Precisely. You are a community of young people. What you lack in experience you make up for in zest and imagination. You don’t want to be carrying the baggage of old men’s philosophies into the future. Invent your own. It looks like the end of the old world; but you can also consider it the birth of a new one.’
‘There’s no way we can change your mind?’
‘No, Rick. I’m staying. Don’t worry, I’ve plenty of food.’
I turned to go.
‘Rick…just one more thing. You didn’t tell me the ship’s destination.’
I shrugged. ‘We don’t know exactly, other than to sail south.’
‘South? The south’s a pretty big place.’
Kate added, ‘The South Seas. If we find an island untouched by the hot-spots we’ll settle there.’
‘Are you sure you’re not secretly hoping you’ll make it to Australia or New Zealand and find civilization still intact?’
‘Well, if we do, that’ll be Christmas come early,’ I smiled. ‘I’ve grown accustomed to living in a house and sleeping in beds down through the years.’
‘But it’s all changed now, Rick. You’ve changed more deeply than you realize.’
‘I don’t think I’ve changed that much, Ben. Give me clean sheets and three meals a day and I’ll be happy.’
‘So, you’ll arrive in Melbourne, say. What then? Find a job in a bank? Buy a house?’
Ben was trying to push me into reaching some new understanding about myself. I felt myself resisting. In fact, I was resisting so hard I felt myself growing angry with the man who’d been one of my best friends for the last three years. ‘No,’ I said. ‘When I get some money together I’ll buy a guitar.’
‘And put a new band together?’
‘Why not?’
‘You still want that?’
‘Yes.’
‘To play music when there’s a new world to build?’
‘What new world?’
‘You don’t believe me when I tell you that the old you is dead. And that there’s a new you now. A brand spanking new Rick Kennedy, but he doesn’t realize it yet. Am I right?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ben. It’s all very deep but, believe me, it’s going over my head. Right, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll be on our way. Kate?’
She folded her arms. ‘Ben’s right.’
I shook my head firmly. ‘Same old Rick Kennedy. Nineteen years old. Still moonstruck on music.’
‘Really?’ Kate raised her eyebrow.
‘Really. Now let’s—’
Kate gave an amused smile. ‘Nineteen years old?’
‘Yes.’
‘Rick, your twentieth birthday was two days ago.’
‘So what? I had a lot on my mind if you hadn’t noticed.’
The pair of them were beginning to grate. ‘Look,’ I sighed. ‘Believe me, I want to leave this shit behind and sail south. So what if we end up in Australia? In some rented room watching old Ren and Stimpy shows on TV, drinking Foster’s lager with a mutton chop on the barbie for supper? Well, that sounds just dandy to me right now. I’m sick of seeing babies’ skulls scattered round in the dust like pebbles; I’m sick of running for my life; I’m sick of worrying that my people haven’t enough to eat. I’m sick of the smell of burning forever up my fucking nose…shit…’ My voice choked off, my hands shook.
‘That’s how the old Rick Kennedy is thinking,’ Ben said gently. ‘You’ve got to shed him like a snake sheds an old skin. Then you can face the future.’
‘The old Rick Kennedy’s dead, the old Rick Kennedy’s dead. You keep saying that, for Chrissakes. What do you fucking mean?’
‘The old Rick Kennedy dreamt of being a rock star?’
‘Damned right I did…still do! You going to convince me I’m wrong?’
‘Why don’t you go upstairs?’ Ben said. ‘There’s someone up there you can ask.’
‘Someone I can ask? I thought you lived here alone.’
‘Why don’t you ask Sasha?’
‘Sasha? Ha, fucking ha. Some joke.’ I turned to Kate. ‘Sasha is my guitar. I stored it here when I left Fairburn.’
‘Do as he says, Rick.’
I sighed. ‘Ask the guitar if there’s now a new me under this skin? OK. OK. I’ll humour the pair of you.’
I stomped up the stairs to the attic. Everything was covered with a fine layer of that gritty black dust where it blew in through gaps in the window. I saw the guitar case straight away, laid out on an old sofa. It was covered with a white sheet and looked for all the world like a body draped with a shroud.
I pulled off the sheet. T
hen I opened the case.
There was Sasha, my six-string electric Stratocaster, in a beautiful sunburst finish of reds and golds. The chrome pick-ups and controls shone in the red light of the sun filtering through the attic windows. The strings looked as if they’d been spun from pure silver.
I touched a string.
Then I brought the lid of the case down hard.
Ben was right, damnit; he was right and I knew it.
Whenever I saw a guitar it said: PLAY ME.
I couldn’t keep my fingers off the strings. I’d pick out melody lines of songs I heard on the radio, or forever tinkered with the notes of new songs I was writing. Guitars obsessed me. I couldn’t see one without imagining myself not only playing it but where I’d be playing it.
Now the guitar said:
Come on Rick, admit it. What does it say?
It says a big fat: NOTHING.
The obsession to become a rock star was gone, too. Along with the old me.
Oh, I might play music again one day. But it would be another kind of music for a different audience.
I knew I had another mission now. Ben was right. I needed to think about my role in this new world.
Downstairs Ben and Kate waited for me.
I went down to them. This time I couldn’t speak. I only nodded, then hugged Ben, then Kate.
‘Shit…’ I shook my head, my eyes burning. ‘Sorry for being such a damn blockhead. What can I say, Ben? You were right.’
There were tears in Ben’s eyes, too. ‘You’re going to be a great man, Rick. Now…’ He took a deep breath. ‘You go and find your brother. Tell him what I’ve told you. They’ll need to know if they’re going to get through that burnt-up bit of world in one piece.’
Chapter 115
We’d been walking for less than an hour when it started to rain skulls.
Human skulls. They fell out of the sky to hit the black ground in front of us. Each impact raised a splash of black dust; most of the skulls shattered on impact.
One landed five paces from me; the teeth jolted from the jaw bone by the impact spattered against my coat.