Part 23 (1/2)
The night was full of furtive movements, clawed feet on hard ground, sagging bellies dragging through stiff gra.s.ses. There were no grunts or cries or shouts, no hooting owls or barking foxes screaming like tortured babies, because dead things couldn't talk. Dead things, Jack discovered that night, could only wander from one pointless place to another, taking other dead things with them and perhaps leaving parts of themselves behind. Whether he closed his eyes or kept them open he saw the same image, his own idea of what the scene was like out there tonight: no rhyme; no reason; no compet.i.tion to survive; no feeding (unless there were a few unlucky living things still abroad); no point, no use, no ultimate aim...
... aimless.
He opened and closed his eyes, opened and closed them, stood and walked quietly to the window. The moon was almost full and it cast its silvery glare across a sickly landscape. He thought there was movement here and there, but when he looked he saw nothing. It was his poor night vision, he knew that, but it was also possible that the things didn't want to be seen moving. There was something secretive in that. Something intentional.
He went back to bed. When he was much younger it had always felt safe, and the feeling persisted now in some small measure. He pulled the stale blankets up over his nose.
His parents slept on. Jack remained awake. Perhaps he was seeking another secret in the night, and that thought conjured Mandy again. All those nights she had sat next to his bed talking to him, telling him adult things she'd never spoken of before, things about fear and imagination and how growing up closes doors in your mind. He had thought she'd been talking about herself, but she'd really been talking about him as well. She'd been talking about both of them because they were so alike, even if she was twice his age. And because they loved each other just as a brother and sister always should, and whatever had happened in the past could never, ever change that.
Because of Mandy he could name his fears, dissect and identify them, come to know them if not actually come to terms with them. He would never have figured that out for himself, he was sure.
What she said had always seemed so right.
He closed his eyes to rest, and the dead had their hands on him.
They were grabbing at his arms, moving to his legs, pinching and piercing with rotten nails. One of them slapped his face and it was Mandy, she was standing at the bedside smiling down at him, her eyes shriveled prunes in her gray face, and you should always name your fears.
Jack opened his mouth to scream but realized he was not breathing. It's safe here It's safe here, he heard Mandy say. She was still smiling, welcoming, but there was a sadness behind that smile-even behind the slab of meat she had become-that Jack did not understand.
He had not seen Mandy for several months. She should be pleased to see him.
Then he noticed that the hands on his arms and legs were her own and her nails were digging in, promising never, ever to let him go, they were together now, it was safe here, safe...
”Jack!”
Still shaking, still slapped.
”Jack! For f.u.c.k's sake!”
Jack opened his eyes and Mandy disappeared. His dad was there instead, and for a split second Jack was confused. Mandy and his dad looked so alike.
”Jackie, come with me,” his dad said quietly. ”Come on, we're leaving now.”
”Is it morning?”
”Yes. Morning.”
”Where's Mum?”
”Come on, son, we're going to go now. We're going to find Mandy.”
Her name chilled him briefly, but then Jack remembered that even though she had been dead in his dream, still she'd been smiling. She had never hurt him; she would would never hurt him. She would never hurt any of them. never hurt him. She would never hurt any of them.
”I need a pee.”
”You can do that outside.”
”What about food, Dad? We can't walk all that way without eating.”
His dad turned his back and his voice sounded strange, as if forced through lips sewn shut. ”I'll get some food together when we're downstairs, now come on.”
”Mum!” Jack shouted.
”Jackie-”
”Mum! Is she awake yet, Dad?”
His father turned back to him, his eyes wide and wet and overflowing with grief and shock. Jack should have been shocked as well, but he was not, not really that shocked at all.
”Mum...” he whispered.
He darted past his father's outstretched hands and into the bedroom his parents had shared.
”Mum!” he said, relief sagging him against the wall. She was sitting up in bed, hands in her lap, staring at the doorway because she knew Jack would come running in as soon as he woke up. ”I thought... Dad made me think...” that you were dead that you were dead n.o.body moved for what seemed like hours.
”She was cold when I woke up.” His dad sobbed behind him. ”Cold. So cold. And sitting like that. She hasn't moved, Jackie. Not even when I touched her. I felt for her pulse and she just looked at me... I felt for her heart, but she just stared... she just keeps staring...”
”Mum,” Jack gasped. Her expression did not change because there was no expression. Her face was like a child's painting: two eyes, a nose, a mouth, no life there at all, no heart, no love or personality or soul. ”Oh Mum...”
She was looking at him. Her eyes were dry, so he could not see himself reflected there. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s sagged in death, her open shoulder was a pale blood-less ma.s.s, like over-cooked meat. Her hands were crossed, and the finger she had p.r.i.c.ked so that he could study her swarming blood under his microscope was pasty gray.
”We'll take her,” Jack said. ”When we get to Tewton they'll have a cure. We'll take her and-”
”Jack!” His father grabbed him under the arms and hauled him back toward the stairs. Jack began to kick and shout, trying to give life to his mother by pleading with her to help him, promising they would save her. ”Jack we're leaving now, because Mum's dead. And Mandy is all we have left, Jackie. Listen to me!”
Jack continued to scream and his father dragged him downstairs, through the hallway and into the kitchen. He shouted and struggled, even though he knew his dad was right. They had to go on, they couldn't take his dead mum with them, they had to go on. They'd seen dead people yesterday, and the results of dead people eating living people. He knew his dad was right but he was only a terrified boy, verging on his teens, full of fight and power and rage. The doors in his mind were as wide as they'd ever been, but grief makes so many unconscious choices that control becomes an unknown quant.i.ty.
Jack sat at the kitchen table and cried as his father filled a bag with food and bread. He wanted comfort, he wanted a cuddle, but he watched his dad work and saw the tears on his face too. He looked a hundred years old.
At last Jack looked up at the ceiling-he thought he'd heard movement from up there, bedsprings flexing and settling-and he told his dad he was sorry.
”Jack, you and Mandy... I have to help you. We've got to get to Mandy, you see that? All the silly stuff, all that s.h.i.+t that happened... if only we knew how petty it all was. Oh G.o.d, if only I could un-say so much, son. Now, with all this... Mandy and Mum can never make up now.” Bitter tears were pouring from his eyes, no matter how much he tried to keep them in. ”But Mandy and I can. Come on, it's time to go.”
”Is there any news, Dad?” Jack wanted him to say yes, to hear they'd found a cure.
His dad shrugged. ”TV's the same this morning. Just like that 'Be back soon' sign.”
”You checked it already?”
”And the phone and the radio. All the same. When I found your mum, I thought... I wanted help.”
They opened the front door together. Jack went first and as he turned to watch the door close, he was sure he saw his mother's feet appear at the top of the stairs. Ready to follow them out.
It was only as they came to the edge of the grotesquely cheerful garden that Jack saw just how much things had changed overnight.
Looking down the hillside he could recognize little. Yesterday had come along to kill everything, and last night had leeched any remnants of color or life from those sad corpses. Everything was dull. Branches dipped at the ground as if trying to find their way back to seed, gra.s.ses lay flat against the earth, hedgerows snaked blandly across the land, their dividing purpose now moot. Jack's eye was drawn to the occasional hints of color in clumps of trees or hedges, where a lone survivor stood proudly against the background of its dead cousins. A survivor much like them.
Nothing was moving. The sky was devoid of birds, and for as far as they could see the landscape was utterly still.
”Through the woods. Back of the house. Come on, son, one hour and we'll be there.” Jack thought it would be more like two hours, maybe three, but he was grateful for his dad's efforts on his behalf.