So we made love. On that stone-slabbed kitchen floor, which was warm to the touch of our naked bodies when, in our passion, we rolled off the blanket. Around us, the farmhouse furniture. The table, chairs, cooker, sink. Brass pans hanging on the walls that swung gently as the Earth heaved and tore itself open somewhere far away. Flashes of light pulsed through the window from the electric storm in the clouds.
Kate rocked above me. Her head swayed from side to side. Her long hair trailed forward to stroke my bare chest lightly. She slid her body up, then slowly down onto me with such trembling tenderness I couldn’t bare to look at her wounded face.
A lump formed in my throat. I turned my face away. I didn’t deserve her.
I heard her breathing quicken; then I sensed her muscles twitch. Soon the gentle pulsations turned into a series of violent shudders that jolted through her body like electric shocks, one after another, as she orgasmed.
When it was over, she lay forward face down on my chest, her face wet with tears, perspiration, blood.
Gently, I nuzzled my face into that mass of yellow hair. And I knew there and then that if I ever did anything to hurt this beautiful woman again I’d kill myself.
Chapter 118
My name is Kate Robinson.
We left Ben Cavellero’s house yesterday. We spent the night in a deserted farmhouse not far from Ilkley.
I’m taking a few moments to write this at the kitchen table as Rick cleans the rifles. The black grit creeps in everywhere. Now there’s a real danger that if we ever do need the rifles the firing mechanism might simply jam from the build-up of grit.
I’m bruised. I ache from head to foot. As Ben Cavellero said might happen, Rick hallucinated last night. In his mind he saw me as one of the grey creatures. For a moment I thought he would kill me. The only way to break the grip of the illusion is to keep repeating the name of the person affected.
I think Rick is more vulnerable to the hallucinations than I am. But last night as we made love I felt the grip of the madness that is caused by the electric field generated in the ground.
Rick lay on top of me, making love with such tenderness. He was terrified of hurting me. But as I looked up at him I saw his features change. They smoothed out, his head grew larger, his blue eyes darkened then turned red.
It was like watching a movie special effect. His face melted, turned grey.
Then I wanted to scream.
Because I was being penetrated by one of those grey monsters.
Or so the hallucination made me believe.
With a vivid clarity that was so incredibly shocking, I saw it raising itself up on its knuckles like an ape so it could thrust itself into me. The arms thickened. Its veins stood out from the grey skin.
In sheer horror I stared up at the face; the black lips were parted, the face was angled down at me, its blood-red eyes blazing into me with such an intensity I felt giddy.
My muscles went into spasm; all of them tightened so hard I felt as if they’d snap. It felt for all the world as if the monster’s penis grew inside of me. I felt as if I’d split in two.
Only, deep down, I knew the muscle spasms had affected my vagina too, triggering vaginismus, the condition that causes the involuntary contraction of the vagina’s muscles.
I wanted to scream.
The monster was tearing me in two. It panted above me, its breath blasted into my face; the massive grey hands clamped onto my shoulders holding me down.
I couldn’t move.
Its weight was crushing.
I thought I’d die there.
It thrust like some vast machine of blood, muscle and bone.
My head spun.
I couldn’t breathe.
It filled me tight to splitting.
Christ…
But I hung onto what I knew about me.
My name, my memories. I remembered meeting Rick in the cafe in Leeds when he talked to me in such a shy way about the cappuccino I blushed for him. I remembered the gerbils at school. The day one escaped and chased Mr Prentice from the room. My first day at work in the bookshop in Leeds. I couldn’t find the toilet and was too absurdly shy to ask. I fiercely locked on to the memories…hung on…wouldn’t let go…
When I opened my eyes again the Grey Man was gone. I saw Rick looking down at me. He smiled. Kissed me.
I’d conquered it.
Now, we’re ready to move on. We must catch up with Stephen and the rest in the next few hours—before they’re gripped by these wicked hallucinations. I dread to think what they’ll do to each other. Rick is pulling on his backpack, adjusting the straps on his shoulders to make them more comfortable. He’s ready to move.
This is another day in Hell.
Chapter 119
My name is Rick Kennedy. This is what happened the moment we left the deserted farmhouse.
All around our feet, white rounded objects the size of table tennis balls were pushing up through the black ash that covered the farm yard.
You seen speeded-up film of mushrooms growing? They start as tiny, pale grey buds poking out of the dirt. Then they expand, swelling into bulbous rounded shapes.
These looked the same.
But if you looked closely enough you saw eyes. Tiny dots like pinpricks of blood.
‘Rick?’ Kate watched me anxiously, her face still a mass of bruises from the night before. She knew what I was capable of once the hallucination locked me in its steel grip. ‘Rick…keep repeating your name; say to yourself: my name is Rick Kennedy, my name is…Rick!’
I looked up from the hundreds of grey heads sprouting fungus-like around my feet, their mouths opening to cry like newborn babes.
I’d looked up because I’d seen something that had taken my breath away. On the hillside opposite was a cliff face as high as a six-storey building. Only now I didn’t see sheer rock: I saw a vast grey face looking down at me. The eyes were shut but as I watched the lids broke open and a pair of eyes the size of buses gazed down at me. The eyes were red, a vast expanse of blood, big enough to swim through, big enough to dive into and get thoroughly soaking wet…fresh, wet, crimson blood.
‘Rick.’ Kate tugged my arm. ‘Rick. Don’t let go. Remember who I am. You thought I was one of the Greys last night. You nearly killed me…please…Rick. Remember it’s me: Kate. I love you, Rick. Don’t hurt me again, please…I couldn’t bear that again…I need you to—’
The huge mouth that belonged to the head breaking out through the hillside opened. I heard a tremendous rumbling sound as if it was beginning to speak.
I reached out and grabbed hold of Kate, holding her with a ferocious strength.
‘Rick. They’re not really there—you’re hallucinating. Please…don’t hurt me!’
My eyes swept down to her, locked hard onto her frightened green eyes.
She gasped, screwed up her eyes, expecting any moment my fist to smash into her mouth.
‘Kate,’ I shouted. ‘I know it’s not real. But do you know what’s happening?
Shocked, she shook her head.
‘Down there!’ I pointed toward our feet. ‘The ground’s heating up fast. That’s why the hallucinations are so strong. We’ve got to get out of here. The whole hillside’s probably going to blow sky-high any moment. Run!’
With the backpacks swinging heavily, we left the farmyard at a run. Our feet hitting the ground sent up gouts of black ash.
Overhead, lightning roamed the clouds in vivid splashes of blue. The flashes were like vengeful spirits hunting for victims.
Ahead, forked lightning zithered down to strike an already scorched tree trunk. The blue flash was blinding. The tree trunk shattered.
Thunder boomed.
‘Keep going uphill!’ I shouted. ‘We have to get over the other side before it goes.’
Now I felt the ground twitch beneath my feet.
Down there, perhaps a hundred metres, two hundred metres below the surface, the temperature climbed remorselessly. What lay down there? A gas pock
et? An oil-filled blister of rock? A locked-up reservoir of water that had turned to steam and was now straining to burst its way outward?
Whatever it was, I could sense that pressure climbing, ever climbing; the force bursting upward through layer after layer of rock, seeking an escape that would be explosively catastrophic for any poor hapless creature that happened to be on the surface.
And that was us.
‘I’ll carry your backpack,’ I shouted.
‘You won’t. I can manage. Come on, Rick—faster!’
We ran up the blackened hillside, leaving the deserted farmhouse far below.
In the bottom of the valley ten, fifteen, twenty, small geysers erupted like whale spouts from the ground. They jetted their white steam into the air with a sudden cracking sound.
Panting, lathered in sweat, we reached the hilltop.
I looked down the other side. My heart sank. ‘We can’t go down there.’
‘We can,’ Kate said grimly.
‘Have you seen what’s there?’
‘We can make it.’
She ran on. I followed.
Scattered like a rash across the hillside were innumerable craters that belched orange flame. You could feel the heat against your face.
But Kate was right. We had to get through that burning landscape somehow.
Because at that moment the valley behind us exploded.
Chapter 120
I opened my eyes. I lay flat on my back, looking up at the slab of cloud sliding low across the sky. Lightning still flashed in continuous pulses of electric blue light.
I shook my head; my skull ached from the force of the blast in the next valley. As I struggled to my feet I saw Kate had managed to get to her knees.
I looked back the way we had come. A pillar of flame blasted skyward, tearing a great hole in the cloud. The pocket of methane gas must have been a big one. The flame didn’t diminish in size for another four minutes as the gas vented, gushing upward with enough ferocity to shake the ground beneath me.
Kate gave me the thumbs-up to indicate she was OK. I nodded. Then side by side we jogged on down the hillside, the backpacks bumping heavily against our bodies.
The noise from the gas venting in the valley behind us was so enormous we couldn’t make each other hear, even when we shouted. So we relied on looks and hand signals.
Ahead the landscape was pockmarked with old craters. Here, too, gas pockets had vented through the surface. Most were dead, but a good few still burned with a popping sound that was just audible above the roar of the grandaddy of all gas jets in the valley behind us.
A couple of times the earth beneath my feet gave way. A hard crust had been formed by the heat. Beneath the crust it was hollow. Each time it happened I thought I’d plunge into a fiery pit to be burned alive. Luckily, I dropped only knee-deep. Even so, each piercing of the crust would release a gush of smoke into my face that stung my eyes.
When we were far enough from the roaring inferno Kate asked, ‘Are you OK?’ while anxiously scanning my face.
‘Are you all right?’ I replied. Her face was still a cluster of painful-looking grazes. My heart went out to her. Poor kid had gone through Hell for the last six months. Now I had beaten the living daylights out of her. I couldn’t look at her face without a stab of guilt.
She knew what I was thinking. She pulled me to a stop. ‘It’s OK, Rick. It wasn’t your fault. Remember that. And remember I love you. OK?’
I smiled. ‘OK.’
‘Come on, let’s find that brother of yours.’
We moved on across the blackened desert that just months ago had been green pasture. Most of the field walls were still intact; although here and there would be a breach in a wall where a geyser had erupted, or inflammable gas had vented explosively, scattering heavy stone blocks like pebbles.
And always the landscape was black. The ash still pittered down like dry snow flakes.
But you had to keep the image of the ship in your mind. The ship would take us south. We’d find an island with palm trees. There’d be a turquoise lagoon where we could swim.
If the ship really does turn up?
Doubt nagged. There was so much that could go wrong.
We still had to cross this black desert as far as the west coast.
Any moment the ground might erupt beneath our feet. We might be incinerated by one of those gas jets that flared without warning.
We might be running across a thin crust of earth. It might break like thin ice beneath our feet, plunging us down into a chasm.
We might find Stephen, Jesus and the rest had killed each other while they were in the grip of those vicious Grey Man delusions generated by the electrical discharges from the tormented rock. Now I realized the Grey Man I’d fought in the petrified forest just outside Leeds was probably none other than Tesco. I’d returned to the forest and in my neurologically screwed-up state I’d seen the man as one of those grey monsters. God knows what had happened to him. I might have hit him so hard I’d killed him. Now he lay beneath the branches, his flesh desiccated into leather by the heat.
As we walked my thoughts moved in repetitive circles.
We would reach the ship, wouldn’t we?
The ground wouldn’t collapse beneath our feet, would it?
I tried to keep hope alive. I had to believe there was a chance we would survive this Hell.
But already some evil, black-hearted god was clapping from its hands the dust of centuries, while it chuckled over its plans to give future events an unexpected and cruel twist.
Chapter 121
‘Stephen’s been this way.’ I pointed. ‘See what’s painted on the post box?’
We’d reached the outskirts of Skipton after a six-hour trek that had taken us over Ilkley Moor (now a powdery black wasteland), then close by the village of Kildwick (comprising burnt-out houses; inflammable gas vented out through the remains of the post office in a pillar of blue flame). The River Aire had been reduced to a silt bed, baked into scales of mud by the heat.
Kate touched the metal postbox. She took her fingers away quickly, her fingertips singed by the heat conducted up through the metal from the ground.
The top of the post box was still the traditional post office red but the lower half had been scorched black. Painted on it in silver, just below the slot where once upon a time you’d shove the mail, was a large S> symbol. Stephen had been here, left his sign, then moved on, keen to reach the ship as quickly as possible.
Kate said, ‘He can’t be that far ahead, can he?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. It’s a big group to move on foot. They’ve got children with them, and old man Fullwood. They’re bound to slow him down.’
She looked at the sky. ‘Christ, just what we need. Rain.’
At first the rail fell in a fine drizzle.
We pushed on, keeping up that punishing pace. We needed to reach Stephen and warn them about the hallucinations.
Lightning still stalked the burntlands like the war engine of some stony-hearted god. We watched lightning bolts smite the remains of trees in showers of blue sparks. Rain began to fall in big filthy drops full of black dust. When it hit the road it was like watching spit fall onto a hot iron. It sizzled away in balls of steaming water. After a while the heat worked through the soles of our boots, making our feet uncomfortably hot. Eventually it drove us to walk on the deeper ash that was cooler than solid ground. However, it slowed our pace so much that after a while we simply had to walk on the road with teeth gritted against the scorching heat.
Repeatedly I checked my boots, expecting at any moment to see them reach a temperature where they’d combust into balls of flame.
Three hours later we reached the route of the old Roman road. Not that there was much left to see of it; but the road signs were still pretty much intact, albeit scorched. So we pushed on harder, following a route that took us through the villages of Bracewell, Horton and Newsholme (on post boxes we saw Stephen’s sign: S>). Further
on, we reached the higher ground where we’d skirt the Forest of Bowland. There were no streams now; only arid tracks of mud where the water had once coursed. There were no people. Houses were burnt ruins. The rain still fell in huge dirty balls of water that boiled away to steam on touching the soil.
Lightning bolts spat at the ground. God despised the Earth. He despised everything and everyone on it. I didn’t doubt that now.
At last He had decided to bring the world to an end.
Kate saw my sour expression. She gave my hand an encouraging squeeze. ‘Don’t give up hope.’
‘Difficult, though, isn’t it?’
She nodded.
‘Have you seen what’s left of the forest? Charcoal.’
She looked me in the face. ‘Have you seen anything?’
‘You mean am I hallucinating?’
She nodded, face serious.
‘It comes and goes,’ I said. ‘But I think I can control it now. And you?’
‘Often just glimpses, as if I see something out of the corner of my eye.’ She looked at me, concerned. ‘Do you see anything now?’
I looked down the hillside to the road that ran out in an elongated S shape between hills. There were cars on the road; with their paint skins burned off they’d all rusted orange; doors yawned open where their occupants had run for their lives. But I saw something else. I saw lines of pale, grey figures walking along in a solemn procession. They looked tall, almost dignified now. They moved slowly, purposefully, looking neither to the left nor the right; their bloody red eyes were fixed on some point in the distance.
When I looked at my feet I saw cracks appear in the black dirt. Then worms the size of snakes would ooze pinkly out. They slithered over my boots. Then erupting suddenly from the same cracks came grey hands. They grabbed at my ankles, and…
They weren’t there. The worm-snakes and grey hands were created by the interplay of those electric fields created by the tortured rock and the electrical waves in my own brain. I told Kate all this. And I tried to reassure her I could stop it taking control of me. That I could distinguish between reality and delusion.