“It doesn’t matter, Matt.” The words rang hollow around the room and she looked at me pityingly from those strange blank eyes. “I’m not me anymore. I’m… I’m something different. And I can’t control it for much longer.” There was something in her eyes that I
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couldn’t understand. “And I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to want to.”
Suddenly I wondered if her pain was caused by releasing me from the prison her mind had forced me into. Was she fighting her new self? Was I going to be slammed back against the wall any second? I didn’t care, not while she was here. While she was back.
“We’ve got to try, Chloe. You’ve got to keep fighting. They’ll have an answer soon, they’ll cure you. …” Man’s old-fashioned faith in they again. We either think they’re trying to kill us, or that they can find a cure for just about anything. That’s what they do after all, isn’t it? Kill or cure?
She barked a laugh at me. “There is no cure, Matt. It’s too late. It’s too late for all of us. So cut the shit and fuck off. While you still can.”
I ignored the implied threat and stepped close to where she stood, blocking the doorway to the kitchen.
“We’re having a baby, Chloe. Have you forgotten about that? Can’t you fight for that, even if you can’t fight for me?” She couldn’t give up on our baby. Not my Chloe.
“There isn’t any baby. Not anymore.”
My world stopped as I stared at her, waiting for some evidence of a lie. “What? What did you say?”
Stepping backwards, she opened up a path to the kitchen. “Take a look.”
I shuffled forward, needing to see, but not wanting to, knowing that this was it, this was the end of everything I knew and cared about. Behind me, Chloe retook her position in the doorway. Suddenly, all the panting and cursing I’d heard earlier made sense.
Tears burning my eyes, I fell to my knees on the tiles that were slick with blood. “Oh no. Oh no, no, no.”
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The tiny stillborn fetus was barely formed, but still just recognisable, one small arm developing a perfect hand and fingers towards its end, ears and nose beginning to take shape. My child. My beautiful never-to-be child. I sobbed openly, my vision blurred, but still I stared. I owed it to this little life. Horror mixed with indescribable anguish as I understood what I was seeing.
The other arm was missing, as were the legs, ripped away from the mutilated torso. I looked again at the congealing blood around me. Something had chewed on my child. Something had eaten part of my baby. Hearing my breath rushing in my ears, I felt completely cold, inside and out, and turned to face Chloe. She read the hatred in my mind.
“It wasn’t me.”
How could she sound so matter of fact, so uninvolved? I thought of the raw meat I’d watched her eat.
“You’re lying.” I spat the words at her, filling them with every lost hope I had.
“No. It wasn’t me.” Again that monotone sucked at her voice, and I realised she had been right. Our love didn’t matter. Not anymore. It was too late for that. I dragged myself back to my feet, and we stared at each other hopelessly.
“There’s not much time. Leave, Matt.”
“If it wasn’t you…then who?” I tried to keep the quiver out of my voice.
She paused before turning away and lumbering slowly back to the sofa in the sitting room, easing herself into the seat and staring forward.
“I think there’s something else growing inside me.” Some of that gravely non-Chloeness was coming back. “A different baby.” She smiled unpleasantly into space,
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rubbing her expanse of stomach. “A new kind of baby.”
A wave of nausea ran through me and I clutched at the breakfast bar. The headache was coming back. I stared at her, and then at our dead future on the floor at my feet, and then back to her again. She was starting to convulse slightly, her huge body jolting and twisting, something happening under her skirt, something starting to emerge from there.
“Chloe?”
“Now! Fucking get out now!” Her head spun round to me, angry and venomous as she screamed, but I’m not even sure if the words would have been enough to make me leave, to move my shell-shocked and shattered body from that spot, if two of her teeth hadn’t flown out as she screeched.
Watching their flight, almost in slow motion, I suddenly knew beyond all doubt that I had been a fool. There was nothing left to hold on to. She was right. She wasn’t Chloe anymore, no matter how much I wanted her to be. And the last bit of my Chloe, the last pure bit of her, wanted me to leave, to get the fuck out of there. While I still could.
Turning my back on her, not wanting to see anymore, not wanting to know anymore, I fumbled at the back door, trying to turn the key, finally yanking it open and stumbling out into the light before the headache took over. The early morning air was fresh and new and I ran into it, my muscles burning with the sudden activity, sobs tearing from my chest, and I ran and I ran and I didn’t look back. The houses on either side of the street loomed aggressively above me, and I turned down towards the river, running alongside it until I reached the old aqueduct that separated Stony
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from Old Stratford. My trousers, wet with piss, rubbed at my skin, but my mind was ablaze with the threat of madness.
Leaning against the worn stone surface, built so many long centuries ago, I stared up at the branches and sunlight above until the sweat cooled on my face and finally my stomach cramped. Twisting sideways, I tipped my head forward and threw up my madness.
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Chapter Five
By the time I straightened up, my mouth and throat were aching and sore from the constant heaving, having retched loudly and angrily long after there was anything left inside me; but the hot white fear of insanity seemed to have passed. Shivering, I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock. I’d been out here lost in shock and battling the onset of madness for over two hours. Jesus.
Looking around at the lush fields and the river with its neat towpath, nostalgia washed over me. I’d come walking down here all my life, but despite its familiarity I couldn’t deny the newness in the air. What I knew couldn’t be trusted. It was a brave new world I was looking at. There was no real human sound for a start, no cars, no children shouting at their friends, no hint of a passing conversation. I’d only experienced something like that once before in my life, on a holiday to Los Angeles. Tired with the shallowness of Hollywood, I’d hired a car and driven out to Death Valley,
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slicing through the silent red desert, a vast expanse that went on forever as far as I could see. I’d felt as if I were the last man on earth out there with just dust carried on the echo of wind for company, suddenly realising how fragile my existence was, how easily I could never be found should an accident happen. I drove more carefully after that moment of fear.
Standing there in the shadow of the aqueduct, I felt like that again, only this time for all I knew I was the only person left alive. The only sane one at any rate. Blocking out thoughts of Chloe, I remembered the horror of my frozen state in the lounge. Was that where all the children and people were now? No. I couldn’t believe that. I wouldn’t. Logic dictated that if I was here and okay, then other people must be wandering around shell-shocked, too.
The cool breeze drifted past, reminding me that I couldn’t stay here, I had to move, to try and find out what the hell was going on. My jeans were acrid with dried piss and I was sure that I’d probably more than splashed myself with bile during my throwing up. At least that gave my journey a place to start. I needed fresh clothes.
Finding my legs steadier than I expected, I pushed away from the wall and followed it until I reached the steep stairs leading back up to the road that ran across the aqueduct. The gate squealed as it opened, the sound sending a shudder through my insides. The violence of the noise was out of place in this new, hushed world. Closing it behind me, I started to stride back to High Street, forcing confidence into my walk. If I allowed a noisy gate to make me nervous, then I was done for. Still, if I said that the dull thud of my shoes
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on the pavement didn’t ring a little too loudly in my ears for my nerves, then I’d be lying.
I followed the curve of the wall until it bloomed into buildings-the mix of old and new shops and houses that made up the main street of the town-and then slowed down, nervous because of the silence. I couldn’t believe all the people that filled the houses around me were dead and gone. If the local population were alive but not out here with me, then the alternatives were spine-chilling and I wasn’t ready in my head to go there yet. There was only so far I could push my sanity in one morning.
To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what had happened to Chloe, let alone anyone else, but I wasn’t going to go back and find out. If she were still alive, then she wasn’t my Chloe anymore.
Stony wasn’t a town with many clothes shops. After going through a period of floundering without direction during the eighties, it had finally found a niche for itself in the retail world-small outlets and boutiques filled with gifts and knickknacks, glassware and ornaments. It was where people in Milton Keynes went to fill Christmas stockings and to buy that special something for a birthday present. But it wasn’t a place to come to if you were looking for the latest in jeans or designer gear. In fact, it wasn’t a place to come for stuff to wear if you were under retirement age. There was one shop that sold relatively good clothes for women; Chloe had been known to pick up a couple of things from it, but there was nothing here for men. Apart, of course, from Morris’s Menswear, halfway up High Street.
It’s funny the things you totally ignore in your
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everyday life. Morris’s Menswear had been here for as long as I could remember, passed down through the family, surviving the cull of bankruptcies and repossessions that swept the town in earlier decades, but I had never even really looked at it, let alone considered going in. It still retained the same unassuming frontage that it had for years, its very blandness maybe the key to its success. It was aimed at a breed almost extinct, especially this far out of London, those kind of men who like to know their tailor, who like to buy their country casuals and business suits all in the same place, who like it that someone knows that “sir dresses to the left or right.” I didn’t reckon there were many of them under fifty.
Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and my options were limited. I crossed the road at the churchyard and headed towards the tan awning, passing some of the smaller privately owned businesses, the pet shop, one card shop, a florist; all shut. No explanations on the door this time. By the time I reached the small co-op, it was obvious that Stony Stratford was not open for business today. All the doors were locked and the gloom behind the shutters and windows showed no sign of impending life.
The sun however, was beating down, keeping the air pleasantly warm. It was shaping up to be the best day of the year as far as the weather was concerned. It seemed that Mother Nature was oblivious to the problems of man, or maybe she just didn’t give a shit, and who could really blame her? It wasn’t as if we’d really played fair, had we? But that’s a debate for another time.
Pushing my shoulder into the thick glass of the door,
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I realised that it was going to take more than just a shove to get inside. There was no way I could just punch it and break it; it was too strong for that. Sighing, I squinted and peered along the empty street. I was going to need a brick or a missile of some kind and I wasn’t sure where I was going to find it. Smiling, I saw the metal swing board of the butcher’s-falsely advertising friendly service inside the abandoned shop-and jogged down to fetch it. It was heavier than it looked, and as I hurled it towards the glass window I flinched and cringed from the smash, expecting an alarm to rip through the empty air around me, heralding my descent into crime to any who cared to listen.
After the shattering of glass there was nothing. There must have been more pressing matters to attend to than setting the alarm for whoever was last to leave the shop premises, and I straightened up to get a good look at my first successful breakin. Not the most subtle approach, but it had worked. The models were wearing a dusting of glass bits, glinting in the sunshine, and the window was no more, a thousand pieces sprayed into the heart of the shop.
I climbed into the small room, carefully knocking out jagged shards that poked sharply at me from dangerous angles as I went, my eyes scanning ahead for any that might stab me as I passed. This was not a day to be getting injured. I doubted that A&E were up and running even if I could get myself there. I wasn’t sure that I’d make the cut if it were survival of the fittest, but if it was survival of the wariest, then I was in with a fighting chance.
The shop was well lit from the sun outside, but the air was refreshingly cool as I brushed past the rows of
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suits. I needed new clothes, yes, but a shirt and tie weren’t really what I had in mind. At the far side there was a rack of shelves with neatly folded trousers and jumpers filling them, and it was there I headed, ripping them out to find some my size.
Much to my surprise, I found a pair of pretty respectable chinos, a Levi’s T-shirt and a crew neck jumper, all of which were wearable without disgrace. Coming across some Calvin Klein underpants brought me out in a full-blown smile. A pang of pain went through me as I imagined how pleased Chloe would be at my concern for appearance at a time like this, and I shoved it aside, peeling off my dirty clothes right there in the middle of the shop, dressing quickly in their crisp clean replacements.
Straightening up after re-tying my laces, I noticed a slimline portable radio on the counter above the till and credit card machine and my heart leapt nervously. Here was my chance to find out if anyone knew just what was going on in Stony and how widespread the problem was. Moving across the shop, my hand hovered above the On button for a second. Despite the horrors of the night before, there was still a certain amount of bliss in ignorance, and at the moment I could almost ignore the evidence to the contrary and believe that this was solely a local nightmare. I took a deep breath and pushed down on the thin steel.