The Hunted (18 page)

Malik was really laughing, his voice loud in the cramped space under the tree. Ella pictured the army men laughing; they must have sounded like this. She was hurt at first: she thought Malik was laughing at her. Slowly, though, she melted and then joined in, her own high little voice cutting through his great roar.

‘Oh, Ella,’ he said at last. ‘I haven’t laughed this much since … well, since those nights with the lads. You’re right. Everyone I meet does seem to come to a bad end, don’t they? Dr Catell and the kids in his surgery, Susannah and Andy. Tyler … Waggers and Mike and Brian and Tomasz and Roy. They were tough. They held out for a long, long time. Fighting the illness. Trying different drugs and different plants, anything they could think of to keep it away. Nothing worked, or at least nothing did anything more than slow it down. They couldn’t shoot it or trap it, or sneak up on it and stab it with a hunting knife. Weak or strong, short or tall or fat or thin, it got you in the end, if you were old enough.

‘Mike was the first to go. As the days passed, he talked less and less, and when he did talk it didn’t always make sense. And then one night he went berserk, kicked the fire all over the yard, cut poor Roy who couldn’t get out of
the way, all the time ranting about something none of us could understand. Next night he was very quiet and just before we turned in for bed he took Tomasz aside for a long, intense chat. And Tomasz nodded and the two of them left the farmyard and went out into the fields, and later we heard a single shot. And Mike never came back.

‘I knew what had happened.
Military-style
. One clean shot to the back of the head. You’d think they wouldn’t laugh so much after that, but if anything they just laughed more. Brian had even made a joke about it as Tomasz and Mike had left. Whispered, “He’s just going outside and may be some time.”’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Ella.

‘Oh, it’s a famous saying,’ said Malik. ‘From Captain Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic, where they all died. They were stuck in a tent in the snow, freezing cold and the food was running out, and one of them, Captain Oates, who was wounded, sacrificed himself, said, “I’m just going outside and may be some time.” Walked out of the tent and was never seen again. It became their catchphrase after that, the lads. Whenever their time was up, one of them would say it and the others would know.

‘About two weeks after Mike died Brian said it and Tomasz took him out into the field. It was Tomasz who was the next to go. He was from somewhere in Eastern Europe. He had an accent. He’d been a builder of some sort, I think. Made most of the platforms in the trees and things. He was younger than the others, with fair hair, and he was very strong and fit, always showing off, doing push-ups and stuff. Never took anything very seriously. And one night he tried to kill Waggers, just suddenly
turned on him, eyes red, foaming at the mouth, snarling like a beast.

‘Waggers was screaming for help and Roy couldn’t do anything because he didn’t have his gun with him. It was next to me. So I shot Tomasz. Roy had taught me how to use the gun. Wasn’t such a clean death. Not military-style at all. Took four shots, but I put him down. Waggers was quite badly hurt. I helped Roy to patch him up and bandage him, but I think his wounds weakened his immune system. He got bad real quick after that and Roy smothered him in his sleep with a pillow.

‘So now it was just me and Roy. As I said, he was my favourite. Roy Peachy. I liked that name. He was big and a bit fat, with a great red beard and a rolling, booming voice. Before his wound he must have been a really physical guy, crashing and roaring around like a bear. Now he was just a wounded bear. He reminded me of Brian Blessed.’

‘Who?’

‘Never mind. Doesn’t matter. But he was fun, and funny, and he was the one who looked after me the most, even though he had this horrible wound that wouldn’t heal. Right in his … well, his
groin
. He held out for a lot longer than the others. I’d help him to the river. That seemed to keep him going. Something to do. A bit like you helping me along. Under one arm, him hopping and shouting out with the pain.

‘It was late autumn. Winter was coming and he fussed all over me, telling me how hard it was going to be and making sure I was prepared. I had to do everything now, which was a good way of learning. I slaughtered the pig. I couldn’t feed it through the winter, but it could feed me. That was how Roy put it. He taught me to smoke the
meat and to salt it. He went over and over what to do with the chickens, how all the traps worked, how to catch fish – that was his favourite part, he loved fishing. It was like he was the last adult and he was trying to pass on all the knowledge and information that humans had stored up.

‘But each day he got a little weaker and a little less focused. He’d drift off. Staring at nothing. Stop talking halfway through a word. Coughing all the time, and sneezing and sweating. He got twitchy. Would suddenly laugh at nothing and then get scared or sad. Drinking more and more. Sometimes I’d watch him when he didn’t know I was looking, and he’d be talking to himself. Eventually he couldn’t leave the farm. He was too weak. So I put him upstairs in the farmhouse where he’d be safe. It got so I hated to be in there with him, listening to him shouting and screaming and muttering all through the night, screeching with laughter. I moved into the barn, left him alone in the house.

‘I got used to it in there, with the sky above me, and I got used to being able to hear everything that was going on in the outside world. Birds in the trees, dogs in the fields, grown-ups coming past. Roy screaming. I felt at home there. I really was becoming half wild. Somehow Roy was holding on. Days went past. I’d go out in the day – I didn’t need to stay hidden from the light like grown-ups – wandering in the fields and woods, fishing in the lakes. Keeping out of Roy’s way. We ate together and that was about it. He stopped talking too eventually. We were like two animals sharing a kill.

‘One morning I went down to the lakes at Virginia Water. You remember where those weird sort of Roman ruins are? It was beautiful. The sun was just coming up and
I undressed and washed myself. Something I never did. Took all my filthy, crusty clothes off and washed them too. And for the first time since the attack I saw myself naked, reflected in the water. Saw what my body looked like. It was awful. I was this broken thing. I was tempted not to get dressed again, to wade out into the lake and go under. I don’t know, water always does that to me. Like it’s calling to me. “Malik … Malik … Come to me, let me give you rest …”’ He gave a little snort of laughter.

‘But I’d made a deal with Roy, you see? Promised him I’d sort him out before he went totally sick. So I told the water to get lost. When I got back later, I assumed Roy was asleep. The sun was high in the sky. But as I was sitting in the yard, reading a book, I heard something, and there he was, crawling across the ground, dragging his legs behind him, a look of pure murder on his face. The sun was burning into him. His skin was all red and blistered, and there were boils on him like you see on the really sick ones. They’d come up fast, hadn’t been there the day before. I backed away from him. It wasn’t difficult. I mean, he could only move slowly. And then I realized he was guarding something. He’d got it into his sick mind that he needed to protect the tank that they’d buried. The big metal barrel thing that they’d never told me what was inside. He was sort of lying on top of it.

‘As I watched him, the look on his face went away. First his expression went blank, then sad, then he seemed to recognize me. He smiled and I went to him. Crouched down. He was trying to say something. I could just hear the words.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Ella.

‘“I’m just going outside and may be some time.”’

‘Before I killed Roy, though, I had to know something. And I wanted to let him know something. So I spoke to him for the first time. I asked him a question.’

‘What did you ask?’

‘I just asked him what was in the barrel and what it was for. He really smiled then, came alive. Laughed. Like a little kid. Happy for me, I guess. Pleased to be alive. Just like the old days, the old Roy. Told me it was full of petrol. But they’d been paranoid that somebody would want to steal it, so they’d been keeping it secret and guarding it all this time.

‘I helped him up and I moved him into the shade.

‘“It’s yours now,” he said. “All this. The whole world is yours. Don’t muck it up like we did.”

‘I hugged him and he said I was a sly one. “Always knew you were holding out on us,” he said. “Now you stay alive for me, yeah? Make things right again.”

‘I told him I would and I thanked him for everything and that made him happy and then I shot him.’

‘You must have been sad,’ said Ella.

‘I was alone,’ said Malik. ‘I knew that much. And I wasn’t well again. I don’t know if it was from swimming in the cold water, or the stress of losing Roy, but I could feel
it coming back. I lost a few days. Couldn’t remember anything after. Still can’t. Just odd, weird flashes. Horrible things. And when I got my senses back I was lying curled up on the floor in the room of the farmhouse where Roy had been sleeping and there was this sort of weird shrine thing there. I must’ve built it. Wasn’t anybody else around. There were all these candles, and some little action figures, army types, God knows where I got them from. And Roy’s gun, in pieces, all broken up and arranged in a pattern. Some dead birds and animals bones tied together. Bowls of beer and whisky, petrol. Some odd random words in what looked like red paint. Feathers and fur and food. And right in the middle, sitting there grinning at me, was Roy’s head. I had a nasty flashback. Of cutting it off with one of the butcher’s knives we’d used on the pig. Dragging the rest of his body out into the field for the dogs.

‘Why I’d done all this I had no idea, no memory of it at all. It looked sick. Evil. I set fire to it all. Nearly burned the whole house down, except it started raining and that put it out. Didn’t want to go back in there, but the next day some grown-ups got into the yard while I was resetting the traps and I had to put them down, and I was so cross I whacked all their heads off and without really thinking I took them into the house and upstairs and put them next to the burnt remains of Roy’s head. And since then, well …’

‘I saw it,’ said Ella.

‘Yeah,’ said Malik. ‘I know. I could tell by the way you looked at me back there. It was a crazy thing at first, a fever thing, and then it became a sort of, I don’t know, like a compulsion. I had to do it. Felt like it gave me some control over the world. Got so that every time I killed a
grown-up I’d cut off their head and put it in the farmhouse. It’s mad, I know. But then I
am
mad.’

‘Why do you kill so many of them?’ Ella asked.

‘It’s my job. I’m the hunter and they’re the hunted.’

‘Really? Is that all?’

‘No. It’s because of what Roy said, I guess, about making the world clean again, about getting rid of the old world, the grown-ups. Making it right and making it so that we can build something new, something better. And because … Well, as I said,
because I’m mad
, I suppose. Mad at the world for what it did to me. And just plain mad. The mad killer. But it doesn’t make me any happier. It can’t change what I am.’

‘You’re a good person,’ said Ella. ‘I know you are.’

‘Am I? I try not to think about it. It’s just one day to the next, get by, stay alive. I scraped through the winter after Roy died. Trying to remember everything he’d taught me. Nearly starved to death, nearly froze to death, nearly killed by dogs, nearly poisoned by eating the wrong plants, nearly wiped out by the fever that kept coming back. And then I noticed that the days were getting longer. It was getting warmer. Life was coming back to the world. And I should’ve been happy, glad to be alive, but the water was always calling to me … “Jump in the river and drown, Malik. Goodnight, Irene. Over and out.”’

‘Who’s Irene?’ Ella asked, confused.

‘Oh, it’s this song,’ said Malik. ‘The lads used to sing it when they were drunk. Waggers on his out-of-tune guitar. Tomasz sitting on this wooden crate and banging it like a drum.
Goodnight, Irene
. They were always singing it. I know it off by heart now. I always wanted to join in, but I couldn’t.’

‘Sing me a bit,’ said Ella. ‘I like songs.’

‘Really? Seriously?’

‘Yes. Really …’

So Malik began to sing, his voice weak and broken, but getting stronger the more he sang. It was a simple tune and Ella was able to join in on the choruses quite quickly.

Irene, good
n-i-ight
, Irene, goodnight,

Goodnight, Irene, goodnight, Irene,

I’ll see you in my dreams.

 

Last Saturday night I got married,

Me and my wife settled down,

Now me and my wife we’re parted,

I’m gonna take another stroll downtown.

 

Irene, good
n-i-ight
, Irene, goodnight,

Goodnight, Irene, goodnight, Irene,

I’ll see you in my dreams.

 

I love Irene, God knows I do,

I’ll love her till the seas run dry,

But if Irene turns her back on me,

I’m gonna take morphine and die.

 

Irene, good
ni-i-ght
, Irene, goodnight,

Goodnight, Irene, goodnight, Irene,

I’ll see you in my dreams.

 

Sometimes I live in the country,

Sometimes I live in town,

Sometimes I have a great notion

To jump in the river and drown …

Malik stopped. Let Ella sing the last chorus. And then there was silence. Until Malik’s voice came quiet in the darkness.

‘That night, when I rescued you,’ he said. ‘When I was down by the river, ready to jump in, the words were going round in my head. The river calling to me. I was at my lowest just then, before I met you. I so wanted to jump in.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I told you before. The grown-ups came. More of them. I got their scent and …’

‘No,’ said Ella. ‘That’s not it. Why didn’t you jump in
really
?’

‘I’ve always thought there was a very thin line,’ said Malik. ‘Between doing it and not doing it – but there wasn’t. It’s a thick line, and it’s a line I just couldn’t cross. I guess some of us are wired for survival. We carry on. And now, the thing is, you’ve given me a reason to carry on, Ella. I don’t want to jump in the river any more. I don’t want to be an animal any more. I want to return to the world. You showed me that it isn’t only full of bad things. Bad people.’

‘From now on it’s all going to be all right,’ said Ella, and Malik laughed.

‘I hope you’re right,’ he said.

‘I’m right,’ she said. ‘I’m going to make you well and we’re going to rebuild the farm and we’ll live there like proper farmers. I’ll plant flowers and we’ll have a donkey, and another goat. I like goats. And we’ll find a pig somewhere and make sausages out of him.’

‘You’ve got it all thought out, haven’t you?’

‘Yes. I have.’