On Deadly Ground

  ‘As you all know, there’s been an emission of toxic gas in Leeds that has resulted in a mass exodus. I’m sure you all agree that somehow we’ve managed to get more than our fair share of refugees in Fairburn.’ Quiet laughter from the audience sitting cross-legged on the grass. ‘So we all need to lend a hand to make sure our fellow Yorkshiremen are looked after until they can return home.’

  ‘Does anyone know how long that will be?’ asked a girl in her twenties.

  ‘Not yet, unfortunately. We need to know the exact nature of the gas leak before we can allow people back to their homes. But privately we’re saying the buses should start rolling up tomorrow evening to ferry everyone back.’

  ‘Surely they can manage until then?’

  Pat raised a grey eyebrow as the girl continued. ‘Sorry if I sounded callous. But it seems a waste of time to go to the trouble of setting up…setting up what amounts to a refugee camp for just twenty-four hours or so?’

  ‘I’d agree, if they were all healthy young lads and lasses like you. But we have a fair number of both very young and elderly people living rough out there. They are absolutely dependent on us providing for them. Do you think we’d have a clear conscience if we sat back and let them fend for themselves?’

  The girl flushed red on hearing this and kept her mouth shut for the rest of the meeting.

  Dean poked a finger in the air like he was still at school. ‘What’s this about London?’

  ‘About London? I don’t know anything about London.’

  ‘Big place with Big Ben sticking out of it, somewhere in southern England,’ chipped in Howard. Everyone laughed again, including Pat Murray. There was still this general feeling that what had happened that morning was just a blip on the steady line of normality. In a few hours, everyone was sure, the population of Leeds would be back in its homes and everything would be hunky-dory. In the meantime we’d all play at International Rescue. Then we’d look back and laugh about the day Leeds came to Fairburn.

  Pat was adamant he’d heard nothing about London. There was no news on the radio, although that means of communication was now suffering from interference. You’d switch on the radio and you’d swear the DJ was frying eggs for a hundred at the other end of the microphone. The power had been cut so we didn’t have a functional TV among us. Pat’s wife had gone to hunt for a battery-powered mini-TV but hadn’t returned yet.

  Pat moved briskly on: ‘Although we have a good number of skilled professionals in the village who are good on logistics—experienced at moving people and materials about and who can formulate complex plans of action—the truth of the matter is we’re very short of food, tents, blankets, clothes, medicines, that sort of thing. So we’re relying on people—volunteers like yourselves—to go out and forage for us. This means, I’m afraid, a little looting—albeit lawfully-sanctioned looting. You will be S Group. I’d be grateful if you would fix that in your minds: S Group. What we’re desperately short of now is baby food.’

  ‘Baby food?’

  ‘That’s right, Dean.’ Pat gave a friendly smile. ‘To you young single men, that is food for babies. Those funny little animals that appear nine months after you’ve forgotten to put your overcoat on.’ More laughter. ‘We need you to bring back as much powdered baby food as you can find. Don’t worry about bottles, teats and the rest of the gubbins, we’ve got plenty of those. Now, if I can hand out these photocopied maps it will show you where to concentrate your endeavours.’

  Again that mood danced in the air. We were breezy, even cheerful. We’d do our bit to help; then in a day or two everyone would be back home. Normality would return to that chunk of Yorkshire. Trains and buses would run on time again. Salad sandwiches and ice cream for tea. Cricket on the village green. Star Trek on TV. Someone in church saying, ‘God is good.’

  And as I sat there on the lawn, thoughtfully chewing a stalk of grass and watching Pat Murray briskly hand out the maps, I remembered what they always say at the start of a long and bitter war that drags on for years: ‘It’ll all be over by Christmas.’

  Chapter 11

  Monday night. Day two of the refugee camp on our doorstep. At midnight I took a leak before heading to bed. Stephen was already zedding away in his room. From the open bathroom window I could catch the faint smell of wood smoke from camp-fires. I sniffed again. It had been dry all day but I could smell the soil in the garden.

  It was exactly as I’d smelt it on the night of Ben Cavellero’s party. Like warm summer rain had drawn the aroma from moist soil.

  I flushed the toilet and went to swill my hands under the tap (thankfully, water still flowed sweet and clear). I reached for the towel.

  The next thing I knew I stood in the kitchen. It was dark. I fumbled round the worktop for the torch and switched it on. The battery-powered clock on the wall told me it was 1:30.

  I looked down at my bare knees. I was wearing nothing but the shorts I normally wore for bed. Strands of dried grass still stuck to my knees. The bathroom towel still hung from my left hand.

  My mouth felt so weirdly dry, I had to gulp down half a carton of orange juice to knock the edge off my thirst.

  What had happened to me? Where had I been?

  I rubbed my stomach. The muscles felt twitchy as if I’d just had the shock of my life, but for the world I didn’t know what the hell it was.

  All I did know was that it had gone and happened again. I’d lost an hour of my life and I didn’t have a clue what I’d done in that time. The image of that grey face came back. Had I seen it again tonight? I turned to look at the door that led into the back garden. I had the torch. I could go and look. But for some reason the very idea terrified me. If I opened that door I knew what I’d see just outside.

  There would be that grey face; there would be those eyes that had the power to stare right through to the back of my head. Jesus, Jesus, I didn’t want to experience that again. Fear shook my hands so much that it made the torch beam send a circle of light wobbling across the kitchen wall. No. I didn’t want to see that face again. Just the recollection of it appalled me. But why, for godsakes? I began to rationalize it away again. That Friday night. What did you see, Rick? Surely it was just fungus, or a…or a piece of raw wood where a branch had been wrenched from the trunk in a gale.

  So, what is it you saw, Rick?

  I saw an awful thing. Grey-faced. Eyes that stabbed you in the heart…terrible eyes…it wants me…it has plans for me…

  My heart thumped, my mouth turned paper-dry. I didn’t know…Christ, I couldn’t say why, but I was so frightened sweat pricked out through every square centimetre of my skin. I turned my back on the door and headed quickly for the stairs. No way in Hell would I open that door tonight. No way would I see what lurked in the garden. I wouldn’t allow it to take me again. No way would I permit those filthy great hands to seize me…

  But what did happen to you, Rick? Why can’t you remember?

  Six steps up, I stopped.

  And I told myself, ‘You’re not going to let this thing beat you, Rick.’ That’s when I did something stupid.

  I turned round, walked right back down those steps, crossed the kitchen floor, opened the door…and walked outside.

  Tuesday. We still had our refugees. Tents appeared on the village green, football field and sundry bits of grassland. Life became more organized and here and there you’d see orderly queues of people standing in line for breakfast. We—S Group, that is—were still hunting down supplies of baby food. The little tykes were devouring it as soon as we could get our hands on it.

  It was decided that we should now see if it was safe to take the hunt for baby food toward the suburbs of Leeds, where we could crack open the big supermarkets—but we were warned not to go into Leeds itself because the gas might not yet have dispersed.

  Stephen and I walked down to Fullwood’s Garage. We chatted in a fairly light-hearted kind of way. Every so often I’d think about the hour I’d lost the night before. I wondered if I should t
ell Stephen, but in the warm light of that July morning it seemed too absurd to even give jaw time to. Now the memory of me coming to in the kitchen with the bath towel in my hand seemed no more real than a bad dream. Even my late-night hunt round the garden dressed only in shorts, nervously flashing the torch into hedge bottoms, jumping when I disturbed a neighbour’s cat, was nothing less than laughable. At least, it seemed like that now. But last night, alone in the dark, my heart pounding like it desperately wanted to escape through my chest wall…Hell, I admit it, I was scared.

  Also we had more important things to occupy our minds. Motorbikes were being organized for us because the word coming back from people who’d scouted the fringes of city was that most of the roads were blocked by abandoned vehicles. We couldn’t carry much baby food on a bike but at least the bikes would get us through.

  The sun burned through the early-morning mist. In the fields the acres of humanity were slowly coming to life after another night beneath the stars.

  ‘Lucky this didn’t happen in winter,’ Stephen said. ‘They’d have been dropping like flies from the cold.’

  ‘At this rate they’ll still be here come winter.’

  ‘Pessimist.’

  ‘Nope, realist. No one’s heard a dicky-bird from London yet.’

  ‘Well, your Prime Minister’s still at Number 10.’

  ‘So they’re telling us.’

  ‘Come on, you cynic, you, S Group are waiting for us. All right, campers!’ Stephen cheerfully shouted as he walked into the garage. I saw he brought a big smile to their faces. He had a knack of cheering people up just by walking into a room; now he walked amongst the twenty or so people there, dishing out hi-fives, slaps on backs and light-hearted comments. ‘Hey, dig the boots, Dean, so Wellingtons are de rigueur this summer…Wow, old Sparky.’ Howard Sparkman grinned like a school kid singled out for an affectionate ribbing by a favourite teacher. ‘Sparky, my man. Where did you get that shirt? I mean where did you get it? Don’t tell me, don’t tell me. You bought it from Stripy Shirts ‘R Us.’ But instantly he could morph that high-octane DJ voice into one that was sensitive, concerned. ‘All right, Stenno. How’s the eye, buddy?’

  Stenno, sitting on a pile of used tyres, pulled a weak smile. One eye was nearly puffed shut. The hospital dressing covered the eyebrow. ‘OK, Stephen. Thanks.’ Then he looked back down at the oil-blackened concrete floor as if he was working out some elaborate piece of mental arithmetic.

  I decided to grab the opportunity before Pat Murray arrived to ask Stenno what exactly had happened on Friday night. I remembered what I’d seen…what I thought I’d seen when we went into the woods. Now I had this urgent need to compare notes with him. Had he seen who had attacked him? What had frightened him so much?

  Skirting the inspection pit, I headed toward him.

  ‘Boys and girls. Can I have one moment of your time, please?’

  Too late. We were being called to attention. Howard caught my eye, stood up straight, arms by his side military style, and smiled. I shrugged. I’d grab a minute with Stenno before we left.

  I saw today that Pat Murray’s place was taken by Bill Fullwood, the owner of the garage. Even though way past seventy he still dressed like a grease monkey in a baggy boiler suit and boots with steel toe-caps. There wasn’t much in the way of hair on his head, but what there was (you know what old men’s hair is like: baby-fine, white) floated in the air and made you think of the way a swimmer’s hair floats when they’re under water. He was one of those people who seemed such an ancient fixture of the village you’d swear he’d been there as long as the village church. He shopped at the supermarket where I worked and as far as I could tell the old man lived on nothing but tinned tuna fish. Still, he looked all right on it, if he was still wrestling gearboxes out of cars at his age.

  The garage was an Aladdin’s cave of ancient bicycles, motorbikes—there was even a dusty Jag parked in one corner whose tyres hadn’t kissed road tar in twenty years. It seemed to be contentedly waiting for the day it would be lovingly carried away to some motor museum.

  ‘Gather round, boys and girls.’ The voice was kind but tired-sounding. ‘I don’t want to strain these old vocal cords more than need be.’

  We all moved closer, with the exception of Stenno who stayed on the tyres as if his butt had been bolted there. He stared at the floor. There in body; not in mind.

  ‘Boys and girls, we have a splendid treat for you today. We have scoured this fair land for motorcycles. Mr Stenton and I then burned the midnight oil affixing panniers and servicing the engines so they will take you to your destinations, then return you safely home. Those of you who haven’t ridden these wonderful two-wheeled stallions before will receive proper instructions how to do so. The rest will proceed to said machines and go forth to their appointed destinations. Which I have written down here on…now, now where did I put it?’ Slowly he searched through his pockets, then reached inside his boiler suit sleeve. ‘Ah, here we are…maps and pencils at the ready, boys and girls. Mr Dean Skilton, and Mr Howard Sparkman. You are to make haste to Scarcroft. Miss Melody Gisburn and Mr Tony—’

  ‘WHAT HAVE YOU COME BACK FOR!’

  You couldn’t have swivelled heads faster unless you’d fired a gun into the garage roof. Everyone spun round to look at Stenno. His face had bleached white. But his ears flushed an absurdly brilliant red. He’d come off his stack of tyres and was slowly advancing towards the group.

  ‘Why did you pick on me! Clear off…go on. Clear off.’

  He walked towards us. But he moved in a strange way. For all the world it looked as if someone had put a ring through his nose, threaded that with a line, then handed me the line to reel in. Arms down by his side, he walked bent forward at the waist, his face jutting out towards us as if pulled by that invisible line. The eyes blazed in an unblinking stare, the lips of his mouth peeled back to show his tongue clenched between his teeth.

  It was one of those moments when there seemed to be nothing you could actually do. Other than just wait and see what happened next.

  What did happen next was a mixture of the absurd and the frightening.

  His eyes locked on me; he pointed his finger at me. Then he ranted.

  ‘What you come back for! Why did you pick on me!’ He repeated the words over and over in a throat-stripping shout. ‘Why me! Why me! Why don’t you leave me alone! You fucking well touch me again…don’t you fucking dare! Don’t you fucking dare!’

  His eyes were like I saw them on Friday night when he lay on the lawn, face covered in blood. Iris and pupil shrunk to a black spot. And they were locked on my face. And I mean face, not eyes. I’d been in plenty of fights before. Then it was all eye contact, closer and closer until your noses were almost touching. But you never broke eye contact.

  Then Stenno barely made it. Those black dots in the middle of their whites flicked around my face as if he was seeing boils the size of yogurt cartons erupting from the skin. And all the time he was yelling. ‘Go away. Leave me alone. Touch me again, touch me again and I swear I’ll kill you. I’LL KILL YOU!’

  He still advanced. One step at a time. Face jutting forward. Eyes still blazing. But they were blazing as much with fear as anger. For some reason he was terrified of me. People moved aside as he approached. They were obviously puzzled and shocked by what was happening. But ready to leave the two of us to sort it out between ourselves.

  ‘Bastard…bastard!’ he screeched at me in a spray of spit. ‘Bastard!’

  Stephen moved smoothly forward, holding out a calming hand. ‘Easy there, buddy. There’s no problem.’

  Stenno still aimed his rage and terror at me. ‘Bastard…out that fucking door…fucking bastard!’

  ‘Easy, Stenno.’ Stephen said gently. ‘Let’s just talk about this.’

  ‘Do you know what that fucker did to me?’ Out came the spit scream again. ‘Fucker hurt me. Fucking well hurt me. Go away. Go a-fucking-way. D’ya hear me?’

  Now the eyes of the othe
rs were flicking from Stenno to me. Rising through their shock and their fear there would be a fight was curiosity too. What had I done to make Stenno as angry, as crazily angry as this?

  Stephen made calming noises. Bill Fullwood, as Stenno’s employer, had a go at exerting some authority. ‘I don’t know what’s happened between you two. But this isn’t the place or the time.’ He shot me a glance. ‘You’d better take a walk until laddo here calms down.’

  But Stenno’s fury was volcanic. He still approached in that single-step way, his face thrust forward as if I was slowly pulling him toward me, hand over hand, with that invisible line.

  ‘Basss—tarddd…’

  ‘Easy, Stenno—’ began Stephen.

  Bill pointed a trembling old-man finger at me, then at Stenno. ‘I don’t want to know the ins and outs of this argument. Rick, you wait down by the Swan; someone’ll call you later. We’ll get—’

  ‘Friday night…’ The voice came cracking from Stenno’s throat like he was on fire. ‘Friday night…do you know what that thing did to me?’

  Everyone stared at me. On top of the shock of seeing Stenno flip his skull another emotion came charging in. Guilt. I actually felt guilty. I found myself searching my memory for something I might have done to him. It must have been pretty foul for him to react like this. White-faced, red-eared, spit spraying out from his mouth at every screeched word. That weird single-step walk, steel-capped boots clumping down onto the concrete floor as he approached me, his menace and his terror fusing into one emotion that was as dangerous as it was shocking.

  Stephen touched my arm and said softly, ‘Rick. Walk away from this. Do as the old man says.’

  Easier said then done. One second Stenno was taking one halting step at a time toward me. The next he’d reached across to a shelf, picked up a piece of iron the size of a baseball bat and had positioned himself between me and the garage doors.