Part 22 (1/2)

A gunshot coughed at the silence. Jack's father crouched down low, twenty paces ahead of them. He brought his gun up but there was no smoke coming from the barrel. ”Wait-!” he shouted, and another shot rang out. Jack actually saw the hedge next to his dad flicker as pellets tore through.

”Get away!” a voice said from a distance. ”Get out of here! Get away!”

His dad backed down the lane, still in a crouch, signaling for Jack and his mum to back up as well. ”Wait, we're all right, we're normal. We just want some help.”

There was silence for a few seconds, then another two aimless shots in quick succession. ”I'll kill you!” the voice shouted again, and Jack could tell its owner was crying. ”You killed my Janice, you made me kill her again, and I'll kill you!”

Jack's dad turned and ran to them, keeping his head tucked down as if his shoulders would protect it against a shotgun blast. ”Back to the road,” he said.

”But we could reason with him.”

”Janey, back to the road. The guy's burning his own cattle and some of them are still moving. Back to the road.”

”Some of them are still moving,” Jack repeated, fascination and disgust-two emotions which, as a young boy, he was used to experiencing in tandem-blurring his words.

”Left here,” his father said as they reached the B-road. ”We'll skirt around the farm and head up toward the woods. Tewton is on the other side of the forest.”

”There's a big hill first, isn't there?” his mum said. ”A steep hill?”

”It's not that steep.”

”However steep it is...” But his mum trailed off, and when Jack looked at her he saw tears on her cheeks. A second glance revealed the moisture to be sweat, not tears. It was not hot, hardly even warm. He wished she was crying instead of sweating.

His father hurried them along the road until the farm was out of sight. The smell of the fire faded into the background scent of the countryside, pa.s.sing over from lush and alive, to wan and dead. Jack could still not come to terms with what he was seeing. It was as if his eyes were slowly losing their ability to discern colors and vitality in things, the whole of his vision turning into one of those sepia-tinted photographs he'd seen in his grandmother's house, where people never smiled and the edges were eaten away by time and too many thumbs and fingers. Except the bright red of his mother's blood was still there, even though the hedges were pastel instead of vibrant. His dad's face was pale, yes, but the burning spots on his cheeks-they flared when he was angry or upset, or both-were as bright as ever. Some colors, it seemed, could not be subsumed so easily.

”We won't all fade away, will we, Dad? You won't let me and Mum and Mandy fade away, will you?”

His dad frowned, then ruffled his hair and squeezed the back of his neck. ”Don't worry, son. We'll get to Tewton and everything will be all right. They'll be doing something to help, they're bound to. They have to.”

”Who are 'they,' Dad?” Jack said, echoing his mum's question from that morning.

His dad shook his head. ”Well, the government. The services, you know, the police and fire brigade.”

Maybe they've faded away too. Jack thought. He did not say anything. It seemed he was keeping a lot of his thoughts to himself lately, making secrets. Instead, he tried naming some of his fears-they seemed more expansive and numerous every time he thought about them-but there was far too much he did not know. Fear is like pain, Mandy had told him. Maybe that's why his mum was hurting so much now. Maybe that's why he he felt so much like crying. Underneath all the running around and the weirdness of today, perhaps he was truly in pain. felt so much like crying. Underneath all the running around and the weirdness of today, perhaps he was truly in pain.

They followed the twisting road for ten minutes before hearing the sound of approaching vehicles.

”Stand back,” Jack's dad said, stretching out and ushering Jack and his mum up against the hedge. Jack hated the feel of the dead leaves and buds against the back of his neck. They felt like long fingernails, and if he felt them move... if he felt them twitch and begin to scratch...

The hedges were high and overgrown here, though stark and sharp in death, and they did not see the cars until they were almost upon them. They were both battered almost beyond recognition, paint scoured off to reveal rusting metal beneath. It's as if even the cars are dying It's as if even the cars are dying, Jack thought, and though it was a foolish notion it chilled him and made him hug his dad.

His dad brought up the gun. Jack could feel him shaking. He could feel the fear there, the tension in his legs, the effort it was taking for him to breathe.

”Dad?” he said, and he was going to ask what was wrong. He was going to ask why was he pointing a gun at people who could help them, maybe give them a lift to Tewton.

”Oh dear G.o.d,” his mum said, and Jack heard the crackle as she leaned back against the hedge.

There were bodies tied across the bonnets of each car. He'd seen pictures of hunters in America, returning to town with deer strapped across the front of their cars, parading through the streets with kills they had made. This was not the same because these bodies were not kills. They were dead, yes, but not kills, be-cause their heads rolled on their necks, their hands twisted at the wrist, their legs shook and their heels banged on the hot metal beneath them.

Jack's father kept his gun raised. The cars slowed and Jack saw the faces inside, young for the most part, eyes wide and mouths open in sneers of rage or fear or mockery, whatever it was Jack could not tell. Living faces, but mad as well.

”Wanna lift?” one of the youths shouted through the Hal's smashed windscreen.

”I think we'll walk,” Jack's dad said.

”It's not safe.” The cars drifted to a standstill. ”These f.u.c.kers are everywhere. Saw them eating a f.u.c.king bunch of people on the motorway. Ran them over.” He leaned through the windscreen and patted the dead woman's head. She stirred, her eyes blank and black, skin ripped in so many places it looked to Jack like she was shedding. ”So, you wanna lift?”

”Where are you going?” Jack asked.

The boy shrugged. He had a bleeding cut on his face; Jack was glad. The dead didn't bleed. ”Dunno. Somewhere where they can figure out what these f.u.c.kers are about.”

”Who are 'they'?” Jack's dad asked.

The youth shrugged again, his bravado diluted by doubt. His eyes glittered and Jack thought he was going to cry, and suddenly he wished the youth would curse again, shout and be big and brave and defiant.

”We'll walk. We're going to Tewton.”

”Yes, Mandy rang and said it's safe there!” Jack said excitedly.

”Best of luck to you then, little man,” the driver said.

Then he accelerated away. The second car followed, frightened faces staring out. The cars-the dead and the living-soon pa.s.sed out of sight along the road.

”Into the fields again,” Jack's dad said. ”Up the hill to the woods. It's safer there.”

Safer among dead things than among the living, Jack thought. Again, he kept his thought to himself. Again, they started across the fields.

They saw several cows standing very still in the distance, not chewing, not snorting, not flicking their tails. Their udders hung slack and empty, teats already black. They seemed to be looking in their direction. None of them moved. They looked like photos Jack had seen of the concrete cows in Milton Keynes, though those looked more lifelike.

It took an hour to reach the edge of the woods. Flies buzzed them but did not bite, the skies were empty of birds, things crawled along at the edges of fields, where dead crops met dead hedges.

The thought of entering the woods terrified Jack, though he could not say why. Perhaps it was a subconscious memory of the time he had been lost in the woods. That time had been followed by a mountain of heartache. Maybe he was antic.i.p.ating the same now.

Instead, as they pa.s.sed under the first stretch of dipping trees, they found a house, and a garden and more bright colors than Jack had names for.

”Look at that! Janey, look at that! Jack, see, I told you, it's not all bad!” The cottage was small, its roof slumped in the mid-die and its woodwork painted a bright, cheery yellow. The garden was a blazing attack of color, and for a while Jack thought he was seeing something from a fairy tale. Roses were only this red in stories, beans this green, gra.s.s so pure, ivy so darkly gorgeous across two sides of the house. Only in fairy tales did potted plants stand in windowsill ranks so perfectly, their petals kissing each other but never stealing or leeching color from their neighbor. Greens and reds and blues and violets and yellows, all stood out against the backdrop of the house and the limp, dying woods behind it. In the woods there were still colors, true, vague echoes of past glories clinging to branches or leaves or fronds. But this garden, Jack thought, must be where all the color in the world had fled, a Noah's Ark for every known shade and tint and perhaps a few still to be discovered. There was magic in this place.

”Oh, wow,” his mum said. She was smiling, and Jack was glad. But his father, who had walked to the garden gate and pulled an overhanging rose stem to his nose, was no longer smiling. His expression was as far away from a smile as could be.

”It's not real,” his dad said.

”What?”

”This rose isn't real. It's... synthetic. It's silk, or something.”

”But the gra.s.s, Dad...”

Jack ran to the gate as his father pushed through it, and they hit the lawns together.

”Astroturf. Like they use on football pitches, sometimes. Looks pretty real, doesn't it, son?”