The Fly-By-Nights

  “Yes, I understand,” said Garth, aware of the tension building in Zach and continuing to hold him at bay, albeit gently.

  Singer nodded again, and said, “Very well then. So just be listening for my call. We’ll go in on foot, obviously; weapons at the ready, and hand torches too, because it will be dark or at best gloomy in there. So make sure your batteries are fully charged…”

  With which he went to squeeze clumsily by and make his way along the narrow space to where two other members of his squad occupied seats on this side. At least Singer tried to get by—until Zach rammed his damaged limb across the gap, barring his way.

  “Eh, what?” said Singer, stumbling and almost toppling.

  Zach smiled up at him, but a very strange smile, and said: “You and me, Ned, we may have to be having a serious discussion about certain matters. And fairly soon, I should think, perhaps when we have a little time on our hands.”

  Singer knew what he meant and grinned sarcastically. “What, we’ll have a to-do? Just me, you, and that gimpy leg of yours?”

  Smiling his unsmile again, Zach replied: “You might want to forget my gimpy leg, Ned, and worry about the rest of me—such as these calloused old knuckles of mine.”

  Then, as Zach slowly, deliberately withdrew his leg, Singer leaned as far back from him as the cramped conditions permitted, scowled and moved quickly on. Regaining his composure, Zach turned to Garth and told him:

  “Son, I couldn’t be more proud of you—no way! First a scavenger, then an outrider on my old machine, now the youngest member of one of our seek-and-destroy teams under Ned Singer. Well, he might prove something of a problem but that can’t be helped. Here, give me that rifle of yours and take my pump-action. Its shells were old a hundred years ago but they’re tried and true and loaded to overflowing. You can return it—unused, I hope!—when all’s made safe…”

  There Zach paused for a moment, took a hesitant, reluctant breath in preparation, and finally changed the subject. “Garth, son, while we’ve still got time before Ned’s all set and calls for you and the others, won’t you tell me what the hell he was going on about? But listen, don’t you go thinking for a single moment that I’d give a damn or blame you if you had panicked a little, for I wouldn’t! It would be wholly understandable. But for a fact you haven’t said too much about that kill of yours. Now I can see you don’t much care to go on about it, but can’t you tell me at least something of what really happened?”

  “I could,” Garth answered, and shrugged, “but there’s not a lot to tell. What Ned seems to have seen one way, I saw differently, that’s all…” And hoping that would suffice he shrugged again. Looking at his father, however—and seeing that he was waiting for him to continue—Garth sighed resignedly and said: “All right. Since I’ve nothing to hide, this is how it was:

  “Billy Martin was front left, I was middle man, Ned Singer brought up the rear: all three of us about evenly spaced along the column’s length on the port side. Billy was maybe a little ahead of the column, which I’m told is normal for front pointsmen, who also scout the terrain ahead; it’s something I’ve not yet been required to do. Anyway, suddenly I saw Billy flashing red and heard his warning yell echoing back. The moon was full and high behind low hills, and I thought I caught a glimpse of movement: three, maybe four silhouettes moving quickly just on this side of the ridge—pretty close to where Billy must be.

  “Well, I was concerned for him, and I could hear Ned revving his engine behind me. He must have seen Billy’s flash, was on his way to help out; but I was closer and could get there a lot faster. The way appeared fairly clear ahead, mainly scrub, so I accelerated and soon saw Billy in my dipped headlight. He was off his bike, sheltering behind some rocks.

  “‘Watch yourself, Garth!’ he yelled out to me. ‘They’re in front and on both sides…I don’t know how many!’

  “‘Then let’s get out of here!’ I yelled back. ‘SOPs, Billy. We’ll fall back to the convoy, red lights flashing. Singer will see us going and follow on behind, and the convoy marksmen will take out whatever follows after us.’

  “‘Can’t ride!’ he called out. ‘The bike’s knackered. Engine cut out on me. I’ll have to get up behind you.’

  “‘Right, but be quick about it,’ I answered, skidding to a halt beside him. And right then was when the fly-by-nights attacked…

  “There were three of them—seeming to float on air, their naked feet hardly touching the ground, arms reaching, and awful eyes burning—drifting like smoke out of the dark, with their stringy hair and tattered rags of clothing wafting along behind them. Deceptive in their movements, incredibly quick! No sooner seen than they were upon us: one on the right, one on the left, the other coming centrally over a massive domed rock, but seeming to slither or flow, as if he were made of water!

  “There hadn’t been time enough for Billy to climb up on the bike behind me, and I couldn’t ride away without him. There was only one thing for it: hindered by the bike, I got off, propped it against a boulder, grabbed my rifle…and no time to spare! I saw Billy fire…nothing happened…his gun had jammed! I saw the creature on the right reaching for him, its jaws chomping; but I couldn’t shoot because Billy was in the way! I swung round, snapped off a shot at the one coming over the domed rock and somehow missed. Well, not exactly; my bullet hit its shoulder, threw it off balance, so that it slid down the boulder and flopped to the ground.

  “About then I was aware of the background sound of Singer’s engine revving close by, and I knew that any time now Ned would be joining the fight. By then Billy had ducked the fly-by-night on his side and was trying to run from it. He tripped, went flying, landed on his back…and the thing was almost on him! He managed to eject the dud round, cocked his weapon, fired again. And the monster sighed—just a weird sigh!—as it flew backwards and collapsed in upon itself.

  “I heard another sigh—or more likely a moan: of pleasure, anticipation!—and spun to my left. The fly-by-night was reaching for me, dribbling slime, a crazed light blazing in its eyes as its clawed hand thrust the barrel of my rifle aside! I yanked on the trigger anyway, and the bang! made it snatch its hand away. I got off another shot, but much too hasty; and the sheer speed of that horror! It slipped to one side, came at me again, drew back its crumbling lips from fangs jagged as broken glass and yellow as the moonlight!

  “That was when I saw Ned Singer, still in the saddle on his stationary bike and revving its engine. Now, I don’t know, perhaps I shouldn’t mention this…except Ned looked about ready to take off! But surely not? He couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting me; maybe he was waiting for me to escape from the fly-by-night, when he would either shoot it or run it down and cripple it. That had to be what he was thinking, but I simply can’t say for sure…and everything was happening so very fast!

  “The thing had taken hold of my jacket and I could scarcely believe how strong it was! It had dragged me close, was licking its awful drooling lips, sniffing me out with its sunken, badly fretted nose; why, I even fancied it was laughing at me…but silently! And it was holding me so close that I couldn’t get my rifle in between in order to shoot the horrible thing!

  “Meanwhile, the one that had come over the boulder had got itself together somehow and was on its feet again. Billy fired at it; his shot knocked it down, passed right through it, too, I think, because the bullet ricocheted and I heard it go whining off close to the creature that had hold of me; which caused it to back off a little, but without letting go its arm just seemed to stretch! But finally I got my rifle in between us and squeezed the trigger, putting my bullet into one of its sulphur yellow eyes! Then, as I think I’ve already said, I saw its head fly apart like some kind of pulpy puffball!

  “But Father, I admit I was scared, and I put another bullet into that broken thing, and another into the one that was still mewling, spitting at the foot of the boulder. And yes, mine and Billy’s bullets were flying just a bit thick and wild, more out of shock that necessity, probably, b
ut not nearly as bad as Ned Singer makes out…at least I don’t think so.

  “As for Ned: still on his bike, he seemed to be aiming that gun of his at me and Billy! So I thought, until a fourth fly-by-night appeared from behind the same boulder and a burst of fire from Ned’s big gun passed over us and took its awful head off!

  “And, well, that was that…”

  Slowly Zach nodded. “All done?” he said.

  “Yes. Nothing more to tell.”

  “Maybe not,” Zach growled, “But plenty to wonder about. Now you listen to me: I may have said or hinted at this before, and it’s possible I’m completely wrong—it’s difficult to know for sure when it involves a man who comes over as naturally offensive and unlikeable as Ned Singer; which makes it easy to think the worst of him—but still I’m telling you to watch out for that man. Fly-by-nights, deadly weapons, and dangerous situations—yes, and a little jealousy to boot, certainly on Ned’s part whether it’s warranted or not—such things don’t sit any too well together. One thing’s for sure: I’m awfully glad that Billy Martin was out there with you, and not just you and Ned, if you follow my meaning.”

  “I’m trying not to,” Garth replied. “I’d much prefer to believe that Ned’s just a bit jealous—though of what I really don’t know—as well as being an unpleasant bully. As to that last…well, he can’t be that bad. Layla Morgan doesn’t seem to think so, anyway.”

  Now it was Zach’s turn to shrug. “One man’s meat,” he said. “Or in this case one girl’s, maybe? But in any case I’m telling you to be careful. Because if there is anything to worry about, then this morning’s little chat won’t have improved matters!”

  By which time the convoy had come to a halt, the motors had all fallen silent, and the shade of the great squat building on their right was cool and very welcoming…if not the prospect of its exploration and (possibly) its cleansing…

  IV

  Half of the column was clustered close to the big building; the other half, under Big Jon Lamon’s personal direction, had moved on to another tall but badly damaged edifice close by.

  In a little while, when Garth heard Ned Singer’s bull voice calling his seek-and-destroy squad to disembark, he was at once on his feet and out through the open side of the trundle, using his bike as an aid in climbing down. Hurrying around to the far side of the vehicle, he approached Singer where he stood elevated on a pile of rubble, with his heavy multi-barreled machine-gun cradled in both brawny arms.

  Singer fondled the blued-steel side of his ugly weapon like a favourite child, and when his squad was accounted for he told them: “Whatever else you do when we’re inside, don’t anyone get in front of this gun! When this beast of mine is on heat it can cut down trees, knock holes in walls, and blow anything living, dead or undead straight to hell!”

  Then, looking from face to face, he addressed each man individually: first Billy Martin. “Billy, how old are you?”

  “Nineteen,” that one answered.

  “And how many kills?”

  “Seven, most of ’em scavenging with you, when we worked out of the Southern Refuge.”

  Singer nodded. “So you know a thing or two about going into places like this: the dangers that may be lurking in dark corners? All right, I won’t worry about you.”

  He moved on. “And you fellows: Dan Coulter, Peder Halbstein and Eric Davis. Oh, I think I know you three pretty well: married men, all three of you, with wives and families. Too much to lose in general; nothing wild about you fellows; steady as they come, and I trust you.”

  Singer turned his narrow-eyed gaze on Garth. “Then there’s the young one: the son of a fighting cock, and maybe as wild as his father was—well, in his time. Also, it’s not too unlikely that ‘cock’ is the right word for him: him being so very young, and all his sap starting to rise. Ah, but it appears that certain juicy young girls prefer grown men, eh, ’prentice Slattery? As for me, I still prefer to think of such as you as a pup!”

  Before Garth could reply, if he would, Singer went on: “You can stick close to me, at least close enough that I can keep an eye on you.” And then ignoring the youth, glancing this way and that along the column where the folk of the clan were disembarking now, stretching their limbs, easing their cramps and keeping to the shade, Singer continued: “Now then, where’s gangling Garry Maxwell and his sniffers, eh? Ah, here he comes now.”

  A tall thin man, with a pair of equally lean hounds on long leather leashes, came hurrying, almost running, from one of the animal trundles further along the vehicle chain. Garth, finding himself wondering who was in charge—Maxwell over his dogs or the dogs over Maxwell—had to smile. But in fact this emaciated, almost skeletal man knew exactly what he was doing, and so did his dogs. When Maxwell dug his heels in, dragging them to a strangled halt and throwing down a rag of disintegrating cloth, the hounds immediately quit snuffling at some unguessable trail and turned on the rag in a coughing, snarling fury.

  Maxwell let them play tug-o’-war briefly, finally slapping their noses and retrieving his rag. “Fly-by-night clothin’,” he informed unnecessarily, “from a dead ’un. Or p’raps I should say from one with no life of any sort left in ’im! It lets the dogs know what us and them’s a-doin’ ’ere, and gets ’em all keyed up for it.” Then, turning to Singer: “Ned, if you and one o’ yours will be watchin’ my back, me and these lads o’ mine is ready.”

  “All right then,” said Singer, jumping down from his rubble platform. “Let’s get it done, the place cleaned out, emptied of scum—if there’s any in there—and these folks safely inside before the sun gets up any higher and a whole lot hotter!”

  There were two other such teams, and two other dog-handlers with canine charges, but all of these had moved on with Big Jon Lamon to the mainly ruined church close by; for Garth had heard people talking, and that was what they had been calling it. And now that he thought about it, he recalled seeing pictures of an ivied, very peaceful looking place—a church, of course—that had looked just like the broken hulk in its overgrown grounds a rubble-heaped block away: pictures in a crumbling old volume in the Southern Refuge’s so-called library. The sole difference being that the one in the book had been complete and had featured a tall spike at the front, something called a steeple.

  Garth and his curiosity, his almost unquenchable thirst for knowledge; he had read or at least skimmed through almost every volume the Southern Refuge had to offer…perhaps thirty? And what he’d read had always left him feeling trapped in the world of the refuge. However vast, that subterranean labyrinth, with its two and a half miles of workplaces and galleries, halls and “homes” (little more than one- or two-room caves in fact), still as a child Garth had been familiar with every inch of the veritable warren, roaming free after school hours at least until his Old Man finished his shift in the sorting bays, where the scavs dumped the often precious salvage retrieved from dead towns and hamlets “outside.”

  But…that was then and this was now, and right now Garth must concentrate his mind on the present: on this (to him) incredibly huge concrete building they were about to enter.

  First Garry Maxwell and his dogs, followed close behind by Ned Singer on one side and Garth on the other, with the remaining members of the squad bringing up the rear. Once inside this place—after the dogs had signaled the all clear, or perhaps not?—they would split up into three two-man teams, when Garth would remain paired with Singer. So perhaps it was as well that Maxwell would stay with them, under Singer’s direction.

  The building, for all its size, had just two entrances—or rather, one entrance and one exit: both vastly gaping apertures with weed- and bramble-grown concrete ramps some ten feet wide. The nearest such opening still bore a metal sign swinging overhead on a thread of rusted iron which once was a screw. Most of the white paint had long since flaked from the sign’s centuried legend, whose embossed letters could still be seen to read:

  MUNICIPAL CAR PARK

  Mainly uneducated and dull-minded ev
en by refuge standards, Ned Singer was muttering darkly to himself as he and Garth followed Maxwell and his dogs in under the sign:

  “They used to leave their cars here?” Ned was puzzled. “Why so regimental, when they had a whole world of space? Why didn’t they leave them at home, at their houses? And look: there isn’t a single car in sight! Given facilities like these, didn’t they have sense enough to use them?”

  Garth knew he shouldn’t say anything, but did anyway. “This place must have been for the use of people who drove into town. They would park their cars here before going to their places of work…or to carry out whatever tasks they were here for.”

  “Really?” Singer sneered. “You know that for a fact then?”

  “No, but it seems logical.”

  “Then why are there no cars here? Or is that a part of your logic too, ’prentice?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact it is,” Garth answered. “It’s because the bombs fell at night, when the people were at home…”

  Singer thought about that for a moment, then muttered, “You and your fucking ‘education!’ A schoolboy, eh? Well I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I attended classes!” He actually seemed proud of that fact.

  “Ho lads!” Garry Maxwell yelled out loud to his dogs. “’Ere we goes! And you people back there—guns at the ready, if you please, but for fuck’s sake watch where you’re aimin’ ’em!”

  Scowling across at Garth, Singer patted his ugly weapon and said, “The only education a man needed back at the refuge—or at any refuge for that matter—was how to load and fire one of these big fellows. That, and perhaps how to scav for good stuff among all the rubble. Those few things, and how to destroy fly-by-nights and blow them to fucking pieces, is all that was ever needed: the wisdom of my Old Man, who was a scav before me! And he was right. The only thing he got wrong: he thought he was invincible; he ignored his radiation badge’s warnings, went where invisible fires were burning still, till in the end they burned him, too…” Though he talked hard, Singer’s voice was somewhat hushed, growing quieter still as he finished up: