Authors: Conrad Williams
Bo was up through the fracture in no time, reaching back through
it to help the others on to the roof. The cold slashed through Sarah's
thin woollens and she wished she'd slung on a coat before leaving.
Underfoot, the tiles were slippery and steeper than they had appeared
from the inside. Her legs wobbled a little when she realised how far
up they were; there was nothing in the way of balconies or trees or
soft earth to offer a barrier if she should trip and fall, just fifty feet in
which to get used to the idea of soft meets very hard.
It didn't help that the darkness was so complete up here. There
were no streetlamps working, no ambient light of any kind. She could
see a fire, though, on the roof of the Centre Point building; another
on the summit of the BT Tower. Standing on that unstable roof,
wondering if she should kick off her shoes so that she could gain a
better grip with her toes, she thought about Christmas and the lack
of decorations anywhere. She felt briefly panicked about what to buy
Claire, whether she would appreciate some clothes, maybe some
amber jewellery – she reckoned it would suit her eyes, her skin colour
– and almost laughed out loud at the peculiar way the mind worked,
at the impossibility of her situation.
Eddie came up last. Bo and Nick had him by the arms when he
pulled a face. 'My belt,' he said. 'It's caught on something. Wait.
Wait.
' The last word came out as a strangled runt of a sound. Bo
could see enough of him to know he wasn't wearing a belt. Something
had hold of him.
'Eddie,' he said.
Eddie's head snapped back. His grip on Bo's hand suddenly went
into spasm; Bo felt nails sinking into his flesh. Then the grip slackened
just as swiftly. Eddie opened his mouth to say something, shook his
head once and fell back through the hole, almost pulling Nick with
him. They saw his mouth welling with blood, and then a horrible
swarming as he was buried beneath dozens of bodies.
'Run,' Bo said.
They slipped and skidded along the apex, heading west, as far as
Percy Street went. At the last section of roof before they met
Rathbone Place, Bo paused to look out into the road to check their
positioning. Sarah glanced at Nick, who was watching Bo, and she
felt a strong belief that he might nip over to where Bo was
crouching and push him off the edge. His body actually swayed
towards Bo, and she couldn't persuade herself that it was just his
compensation in the teeth of a stiff winter wind. She moved quickly,
positioning herself between the two men, looking back at Nick,
whose expression was as flat as any of the slates they were standing
upon.
'Inside,' Bo said, jerking his thumb at a rooftop window beneath
them.
'Where's Dad?' Lamb asked.
'He's dead,' Bo said to her, grabbing her arm with his hand and
forcing her to look at his face. 'We go on. You come with us or you
die too. We have no time to discuss this. No time to grieve.'
'Where?' she asked, trying, and failing, to maintain the shape of
her mouth.
'South Bank. Come on.' He knelt down by the window and tried
to lever it open with his fingernails. It was locked. 'Christ. What is it
with Londoners? "Here comes the apocalypse. Hang on, let me
switch off the iron and make sure everywhere's secure. Have you got
your keys? Have you got your wallet?"'
He tore off a roof tile and started ramming it into the centre of the
glass, pausing now and then to cast nervous glances back into the
darkness above Tina's flat. Limbs were flailing at the hole; they were
slowing each other down, trying to be first on to the roof.
'We'll find a boat at the South Bank?' Lamb asked, tiny inside her
father's jacket, her face huddled against her chest.
'Yes,' Bo said, shifting to accommodate Sarah, who joined him in
trying to break the window. He shot a look at Claire. She did not
look as though she would make it to the south of Rathbone Street, let
alone the South Bank. Her skin was so tight with cold that it was
raised into pimples visible from six feet away. She was the colour of
cream on the turn. She was no longer shivering, which either meant
she had become so used to the cold that she didn't feel it, or she was
moving into the primary stages of hypothermia. She didn't hear her
mother say her name or, if she did, she neglected to respond.
'Why is she even here?' Tina asked. 'She's death on legs. She's no
fucking use.'
'She's more fucking use than you,' Bo snapped. 'Can we have less
whining and more working together, please, people? Otherwise we
will
all die.
'
Another blow, perhaps fuelled by this outburst, fractured the glass.
Sarah saw a hundred tiny reflections of her face where a moment
before there had been one. She could no longer see Bo in there. It was
as if his own blow had banished him from reality. She had to look up
from the window to confirm his presence beside her.
Bo hit the glass again. His hand went through to his elbow. He
turned to her. 'Ouch,' he said. 'That smarts.'
They kicked out the glass attached to the frame and Sarah shone
the torch inside. It appeared to be a loft conversion, an office or
study. Bo lowered himself into the room clumsily, his moist stump
flailing on the roof like a strange severed serpent as he slid inside. The
others followed quickly, Sarah bringing up the rear. She dropped into
the arms of Nick, who lowered her gently to the floor, his hand
lingering too long on her backside, his eyes trying to send her
messages that she had neither the time nor the inclination to
acknowledge.
'Try the light switch,' somebody said. The voices were so close as
to have all cadence muffled. The dark sprang back and everyone
winced. Blinking furiously, they looked around as the room took
shape. Bookshelves were rammed with paperbacks. A glass-topped
desk played host to a laptop and a pair of round-rimmed spectacles.
A poster of the pop group Sparks was Blu-Tacked to one wall
alongside photographs of children pulling faces for the camera. Old
Manchester bus timetables were stacked on a frail wooden chair. A
naked dressmaker's dummy possessed enough latent threat to
guarantee a wide space around it.
'A den,' Nick said.
'Writer,' Bo said, pointing at the rows of paperbacks bearing the
same author's name and title.
'He's got some fucking story now,' Nick said. 'Wherever he is.'
'Let's get out of here, please?' Sarah urged, moving for the door.
Bo held up his hand.
'Go slow, okay? We don't want to go storming into a wall of
teeth.'
The door gave on to a tiny landing shared only by a toilet and a
washbasin. They filed silently down the narrow staircase to the next
floor, where a plastic wash basket was filled with children's clothes.
A muddy football kit. A leotard. Socks on the floor that had been
badly aimed or poorly thrown.
There were bookshelves containing a selection of modern novels and
19th-century classics. There were vases containing powdery flowers. A
cardboard box contained unsorted newspapers, comics and magazines.
There were more books crammed into an alcove on the next landing
down, which was widening as they descended, allowing them to travel
two abreast. Blood was smeared – a failed child's handprint – on the
cream-painted wall here. Lamb's breath was coming in wild stitches. Bo
glanced back at her and saw that she was staring up at the ceiling. He
followed her gaze and stopped abruptly. Sarah said, 'My God.'
Two small bodies were hanging in the high corner above the stairs.
They were misshapen, bent into unnatural postures by the force of the
glue that had been bound around them, coating them with a syrupy
white residue. Halfway up one of the 'ropes' that was suspending
them was a confusion of hair and flesh. An arm was caught up in that
knot, along with what looked like a jawbone. The bodies turned on
their bindings, and into the silence created by the group's shock, they
heard the creak of tensions being released. They moved on. In the
living room on the ground floor they found the parents sitting naked
against the wall, sealed together with more of that strange resin, their
heads bowed, arms resting against their knees. But for the holes in
their heads, the teeth marks and tears in their abdomens, they looked
as if they were meditating.
In the kitchen, shinbones were stacked like so much firewood.
There was a human head on top of the fridge, a note to buy more
matches pinned to its desiccated cheek. Sarah moved slowly through
the dead centre of the room anxious not to touch anything. Her
breath felt extremely cold in her lungs. She saw a painting of a
marigold on the wall; a photograph of a man in the driver's seat of a
sports car, laughing.
Nick's voice was so dry with fright that for a moment, Bo didn't
recognise it. 'What is that stuff?' he asked, reaching out a hand to
touch the glue that bound the dead to each other and the wall.
'It's to keep the bodies fresh,' Bo said. 'Ideally they want to keep
them alive. They'll paralyse them –'
'Paralyse them?' Nick said, rediscovering his punch and truculence.
'How?'
'With a stinger.'
'A
stinger
? What the fuck
are
these people?'
'They're not people.'
'They look like people. A fucking
stinger.
'
'The stinger is designed to keep them alive, but to put them out of
action.'
'Why?'
'So that they can lay eggs in the body.'
Lamb was whimpering. Tina turned to Bo. 'Do you have to talk
about this now? Isn't it all bad enough without you giving us a
biology lesson? I mean, what does it matter that we know? What the
hell does it matter?'
'It matters to me,' Sarah said. 'I want to know what we're up
against.'
'We're going to die,' Nick hissed, then shut his eyes as Lamb began
to cry. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'
Sarah said, 'So they keep the body alive, as food for the eggs when
they hatch?'
'That's right.'
'So what's the story with Claire? How come she's mobile?'
Everybody turned her way. Her skin contained a blue tinge. Dark
shadows clung to her face like horror paint. She bore their appraisal
stoically, staring back at them as if addressing a challenge. She made
to speak, but didn't seem to have the strength to carry a sentence to
its end.
Bo said, 'She's not like the others. She's the vanguard for the
second wave. She's carrying a Queen in her. They wanted her to be
able to get back to where she came from. To a place with lots of
people.'
'Lots of food,' Sarah said.
'Then we have to kill her,' Nick said. His voice was matter-of-fact,
like that of a child who has just worked out a problem for himself.
'That's not going to happen,' Bo said. 'She can help us. With her,
we might be able to clean up this mess. As soon as she begins to warm
up, she'll be detectable. The place will be swarming.' His words
faltered. Suddenly he went down on one knee and blurted a black
gruel of vomit and blood. Sarah rushed to his side and held him at the
point when it seemed he must keel over. She was shocked by how
light he was, how thin and hot. Although only having met him
recently, she felt as wounded by his apparent weakness as if she were
his sister. This was a dying man. If anything, the metamorphosis he
was fearing, and battling against, was what was keeping him alive.
She helped him to his feet and assisted him to a chair. He sat down
with a sigh that rattled out of him. Lamb had switched on a TV. The
signal was deteriorating, but through it they could make out shaky
pictures of people fleeing and screaming. Then white noise as the
cameraman dropped his equipment, presumably to allow him to run
faster.
'They're everywhere,' Lamb said.
'A fucking stinger,' Nick said. 'What about Bo? Has he got a
stinger?'
'No,' Bo said. 'I'm the navigator. I've been laying down routes for
them to follow. Unconsciously, I should add. I'm still learning about
my place in all this. I'm trying to make things right.'
'We should go,' Lamb said. Her voice was the only solid thing
about her. She looked as if she might disintegrate. She looked like
something created from a thousand butterflies. 'This place, it looks
like a larder to me. They might decide to return to feed.'
They moved to the front door where Nick checked the street. The
pub opposite seemed busy. Shadows moved in the ochre windows.
The light was soft, welcoming, innocent.
'We have to believe they are everywhere,' Bo said. 'Nowhere is safe
now.'
They filed along Rathbone Place to Oxford Street, which they
crossed as swiftly as they were able. Despite the great buildings on the
north and south sides of the street, Sarah felt painfully exposed, more
so even than when she had been on the beach at Southwold. Off to
Centre Point to her left and Oxford Circus to her right, the street was
deserted. There were no faces in the shop windows, no sounds of
traffic or music from the Soho pubs and clubs where there was
usually a beery, bawdy cacophony.
They passed into Soho Square, staying on the path, until they
reached the small mock Tudor house at its centre. Tina and Lamb
brought up the rear.
'Keep going,' Bo said. 'We don't stop. We stop, we die.'
'Let's run,' Nick said. 'I'd be happier if we were fucking running.
All this creeping about ... Christ.'
Claire was trying to say something but Bo put out a hand to quiet
her. 'Just relax,' he said. 'Don't get excited. We can't run because that
would raise your body temperature. But try to breathe normally.'
'Breathe normally, he says,' Nick sneered. '
You
try breathing
normally with half your clothes off and your heart beating like –'
'SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!' Sarah was shocked
to find herself reacting in this way, especially as she felt so serene
inside. She was with her daughter, they were still alive. She realised
she was making a big mistake when she felt Lamb's hand on her arm
and saw a glimmer of panic sweep across Bo's features.