Part 9 (1/2)

'We'll have to be quick,' he told her. 'Can you see that grey over the river? The sun's coming back.'

'd.a.m.n the sun,' she spat. 'If I don't drink I'm going to start taking bites out of the Misfires, too.'

'You'd get more out of eating dirt. Did you see the look of disgust on the Berserkers' faces?'

'There's got to be-'

'Shhh.' He s.n.a.t.c.hed her back into the bushes. A second later the kid in the denim jacket scrambled by. He was followed by a dozen more men and women. They all groaned as if they suffered a pain that could no longer be endured. Just when April antic.i.p.ated the creatures would return to the cottage to ravage those people that were more dead than alive, she saw they were racing towards the beach as the tide rolled in. Within seconds they charged into the water. Briefly, there was a tumultuous splas.h.i.+ng as they ran through the shallows -then they were gone. The Thames, glistening with all the l.u.s.tre of black marble, had swallowed them. Not so much as a head or an arm broke the surface.

'Why did they do that?' she gasped.

'I told you. I've seen it before. They reach the point where they get so hungry they just lob themselves into the river.'

'They've killed themselves?'

He shrugged. 'Looks like it.'

Just for a moment she felt the need to talk about what she'd seen. That suicidal dash into the river by the crazed people she'd first encountered on the beach. Only there was something more important.

'Quick,' she told him. 'Before it gets too bright. We've got to make the most of this.'

She went to the beach where she threw herself down at the nearest tidal pool and began to drink.

'Pah!' Carter spat. 'It's just water.'

April grimaced. 'Try another. Remember, stick with the small ones. The salinity is stronger.'

The small ones were just as bad. Clear water that tasted of rain.

'This isn't estuary water.' Carter sounded disgusted. 'The rain's washed it out.'

'There's got to be one that's salty enough!'

In desperation she began drinking at one of the pools on the beach. Clear, sweet water. Not a trace of salt. She drank with a furious single-mindedness in the hope that a saltiness would emerge as she worked her way deeper. But all the flavour she found was that dusty taste of rainwater. The bite in her side itched again. A mad riot of sensation that made her long to rip at the still raw edges of the wound with her fingernails. And all the time hunger pulsed through her.

A moment later she gorged on mud again. Anything to introduce a solid presence in that yawning gulf in her belly. As she ate she found herself recalling Carter's own memory as if it was her own. The day two surprised boys stood in their uncle's greenhouse and lifted the lid on the reddest substance in the world.

THIRTEEN.

The sun didn't show. The storm that had broken the back of the heat wave left its cloud behind to cover the sky. Even so, for April and Carter the light soon reached a screaming intensity. The beach that had been a dull yellow by night now became a fluorescent gold that blinded them as they drank from pools on the beach or gorged on river silt. Most of the time April couldn't bear to lift her head as there was always that tantalizing promise that one of the pools would yield that satisfying salt she craved. Only it never did. Constantly, the light grew brighter and the pain it brought to her skin appeared to force its way through to meet the pain inside her body. That mingling and conjoining of two separate agonies threatened to push her into madness.

So when one pool didn't offer what her body howled for she scrambled on all fours to the next. At that moment all that mattered was food. Gorge on it, savage it, swallow it, munch, gulp, ingest - she must find real food soon. The consequences of going without were unthinkable. Beside her, Carter clawed at the water as if in the hope of finding salinity in the mud at the bottom. As her mind whirled with those secondhand recollections of Carter gazing into the barrel full of blood, and the twin agonies of the light striking her exposed skin, and the pain of starvation, she realized the futility of trying to satisfy her hunger. In the past, salt.w.a.ter had blunted the pangs. But the rainwater had diluted the estuary water to the point where there was nothing to be gained from gorging on it. The mud didn't help, either. If anything, its bulk only threatened to burst her intestine.

With a supreme effort of will she gathered her senses. 'Cartera Carter?'

He plunged his face into a puddle and savaged it like a wolf savaging a lamb.

'Carter, listen to me!' She hauled him from the water. 'Leave that and listen!'

Somehow his sight had turned inwards. She knew that he gazed into that vat of cattle blood again. The memory was transfixed in his mind.

She grabbed his head. 'Listen! This must have happened before. The rain washed the salt away.'

'Uh.'

'When it rained before, what did you do?'

'Nnn-uh.'

'You must have done something else to take the hunger away. No, Carter! There's no point in drinking it. It doesn't work anymore. It's been diluted!' Once more she pulled him away from the water so she could shout into his face. 'When it rained before, what did you do?'

He gulped; his eyes slipped into focus as an expression of horror contorted his face. 'It's never happened before.'

'It must have rained.'

He shook his head. 'I arrived at the start of the dry spell.'

His eyes rolled as he mumbled, 'S'never rained. Always hot. Suna it didn't rain. Not oncea'

'Okay.' She forced herself to think. 'We've got to ride through this. When the tide falls it'll leave salt.w.a.ter. As soon as the sun comes out the water will begin to evaporate. Salinity will increase. Then we can drink. We'll be okay.'

He grunted. 'Can't wait that long.' Suddenly his head darted toward her arm. She managed to withdraw it before his teeth snapped together.

'Don't bite me. I'm trying to save your life.'

'Why?' His eyes glazed again.

'Because you saved mine.'

'I mean what's the point, we're already dead.'

'Don't say that!' She rose to her feet despite the blinding light falling through the clouds. 'Get under the bushes. We'll wait it out in the shade. It hurts to stay out where it is bright.'

He muttered as if becoming feverish; already his lucidity was escaping him. When she tried to help him stand he darted his mouth at her, trying to bite her arms with those gold-tipped teeth of his.

'You've got to try, Carter. We need each other!'

At last he did stand. He was groaning; the pains were overwhelming; when he opened his eyes there was a desperate searching quality as he scanned his surroundings for something to eat.

'Cartera' she began, but he broke away from her with a scream. Then he lied. Any hope of him das.h.i.+ng back to the house was soon shattered. Arms flailing, he raced down to the water's edge, then waded into the river.

'Carter! Don't do it! Please!'

She saw his bright wake in all that dazzling radiance. The man became a silhouette even thought she s.h.i.+elded her eyes against the glare; a moment later he dipped his entire body underwater and vanished from sight.