Children of the Dust (17 page)

The path ascended steeply to the top of the hill and the stitches in his leg pulled uncomfortably. But he had left his crutch on the grass, along with the woollen undershirt and empty basket, and he was not going back. He climbed a stile in the wall that bordered the plantation, emerged on to empty moorland in the wind and sun, and pulled up his hood. Sheep grazed on the gold gorse hills before him and the valley was behind him and below, the great yellow building diminished by height, grown small among its surrounding fields.

Seen from above it was not so impressive . . . just a square-built kibbutz housing a simple rural community. Laura believed that mutation was an evolutionary step forward, but maybe it was not. He saw no evidence of an advanced society. Quite the reverse. It was simplistic and retrogressive, almost mediaeval. Technologically mutants were centuries behind the people who lived in the government bunker.

Simon felt his confidence restored. Maybe Laura was a nicer person than he, but her life style was archaic. Bucolic existence had been around for thousands of years and was non-progressive. As a species the mutants faced stagnation. They had no drive, no ambitions, no go-ahead ideas. Simple agricultural survival was not enough, and Laura had nothing to brag about, no more than he.

He brushed leaf mould and pine needles from his caftan and headed out across the moors, limping towards a group of standing stones he saw on the far skyline. He knew Harris and Sowerby had planned to go north and work their way west through the various communities, so he reasoned that if he went west and worked his way north he was bound to meet up with them. West was where the standing stones were, the way the wind came, untempered across the open empty spaces and tearing at his hood. He had to hang on to it and could feel the sun's rays burning the back of his hand.

The stones were further than he thought. He had to detour around vast areas of bog. His leg hurt and it was early evening before he reached them. He sheltered from the wind and sun in the lee of a giant upright. A spot of bright blood showed through the bandages and he was beginning to feel hungry again. He looked for the next settlement, but only a church tower showed above the western horizon.

Simon had seen no evidence of organized religion among Laura's people, but he reasoned that where there was a church there was bound to be a village. He walked slowly towards it, picking bilberries as he went. He could survive for ever out on these moors on the rich dark berries and water from the stony streams. The sun was already setting when he knelt to drink, drained of heat and dazzling his eyes. He did not know what made him glance around . . . a sensing perhaps.

The dogs were low on their bellies, pack-hunting, fanning out through the gorse and heather. Simon ran, great limping strides, not caring about the gash in his leg, not caring about anything except the fear that drove him. He had no rifle, no defence. His only hope was to outrun them, reach the church and seek sanctuary inside. But the distance was almost a mile and he knew he would never make it.

The plane seemed to fly from the sun, a snow-white glider with wings gleaming golden in the light, drifting down the thermals of windy air and dipping towards him. Lower it came, and lower, making its turn, whistling in from the northern hills, skimming the surface of the land, bending heather and grasses in a rush of speed. It passed directly behind him, between himself and the dogs, giving him space.

Simon did not stop to watch, he just went on running. And the plane stayed with him, circling and dropping, its great white presence warding off the attack. With its every approach the dogs fell back, snarled and waited, as Simon ran on. The caftan billowed. The wind whipped off his hood and the low sun burned his face, but he could not stop. He ran until his lungs were bursting, and blood soaked through the bandages, ran down his leg and stained the earth with his scent. The dogs would not give up but he made it to the church ahead of them as the white plane circled and dropped for one last time.

Simon entered the tower. The door had fallen inward, and maybe he should have gone for the main body of the church, but it was too late now. He skidded to a halt among a mess of mortar and bird droppings, mouldering hymn books and rotting shelves. Inside it was almost too dark to see and the door leading into the nave was locked. Simon spun around. He could just make out the shape of a vestry chest standing in the corner. It was solid oak but his brute strength shifted it and he hauled it across the gap of the doorway. He tore at the fallen shelves that had once held hymn books, tried to wedge them on top, a criss-cross barricade that refused to stay in place. He saw the glider heading away into the sunset. He saw white fangs and milky eyes as one dog gathered itself to spring, grabbed a fallen spar and lashed as it leapt.

The dog howled and fell backward, turned tail and ran as another took its place. Again Simon lashed, a blow to its head that laid it temporarily unconscious. The other dogs circled outside among grass and gravestones. He knew they would not go away. They would stay there all night if they had to, work out a co-ordinated attack. He needed to build the barricade higher, and there was a board in the corner, leaning against the wall where the vestry chest had been. Away from the weather it had been preserved. Gold lettering on black paint told the times of weekly services. Saint Andrew's Rushfield, the church was called. Keeping an eye on the space of the doorway Simon dragged it across the room, heaved it on top of the chest. It completely blocked the doorway apart from a small gap at the top. He used the weight of his body to hold it in place and was finally safe.

Simon sat in the almost total darkness, trembling in every limb, not daring to move. The board was hard and his shoulder was jammed against it, but he knew it would hold as long as he himself did not slacken. Movement was difficult and he was already feeling sick from exertion, and when he touched the bandage on his leg it was sodden with blood, warm and sticky on his fingers, pumping more with every heartbeat. He had torn open the stitches and was likely to bleed to death.

He must have been mad to leave the settlement! Mad to walk the hills without a rifle! In this new world, grown from the dust of war, dogs had always been a danger. And there was a limit as to how long he could hole up here in this crumbling stinking tower without food or water. Dogs scrabbled at the inner door that led through to the nave of the church. Suppose, whilst they were in there, he made a run for it?

He tried to remember what he had seen outside. No village or settlement, just gravestones and a derelict vicarage, a few ruined cottages and a track leading downhill into a tangled valley with a river at the bottom. He tried to remember Sowerby's map. If that was the river Wye he had seen below, then there were no settlements nearby. They were all to the north and he was too far west, outside the area Harris and Sowerby had planned to travel. He should have turned north at the standing stones, headed for the settlement at Newington. Now he could either go back the way he had come, or make for Timperley which was somewhere down in the valley . . . a good six miles in either direction. Simon knew he would never make it. He was trapped in the tower and no one knew he was there, except for the glider pilot.

Who was it could fly a glider in these parts? Mutants had no technology so it had to come from a government bunker. Cardiff had not survived the holocaust, nor Cheltenham either. So it had to be Hereford, head-quarters of the Special Armed Services division, thirty or forty miles away. Communications had ended years ago but the Hereford bunker would still be there. Simon reckoned it would be morning before they could reach him, and the following morning if they had no trucks or petrol. But it gave him something to hope for, set a time scale for his imprisonment.

Dogs gnawed at the woodwork of the inner door. Others prowled and whined around the perimeter walls. Night birds screamed in the belfry above him as Simon settled down to wait. It was only thirty-six hours at most, he told himself, but every minute seemed endless.

Simon was gripped by a lethargy that made him feel almost comfortable, his mind drifting between sleeping and waking, gone beyond fear or pain. His shoulder had gone numb from where the signboard cut into it but he was no longer aware of that. Then a sound in the distance caused him to listen, a nickering whinny and a heavy clopping tread, some kind of large unidentifiable animal. The dogs snarled and snapped with their teeth, whined and retreated as the creature came on towards the tower and stopped outside. He could hear the creak of leather, the jangle of metal and the snort of its breath.

'Simon?' said Laura. 'Are you in there?'

In sheer relief Simon let go. The board crashed to the floor and he saw her sitting there, Laura in the moonlight with her pale hair blowing in the wind, white-robed and slender, riding a horse. He had not known horses still existed, but this one was real enough. Splotched piebald, it tossed its head and aimed a kick as the dogs approached it. Laura stroked its mane.

'This is Timms,' she said. 'He was given to us by Morgan's people who live in the north of Wales. Are you all right? I got here as fast as I could.'

'How did you find me?' Simon asked in astonishment.

'Tyler told us where you were.'

'Who's Tyler?'

'The glider pilot. Are you going to stay in there all night or will you come back to the settlement?'

I'm not coming out there with those dogs,' said Simon.

'I'll get rid of them,' Laura said.

She slid from the horse's back. The dogs were only a few yards from her, gleaming eyes and teeth showing white in the moonlight. She turned to face them, inviting them to attack. But they kept their distance, and she raised her hand, pointed away to the midnight hills. 'Go!' she said. And the dogs obeyed her, sank on their bellies and slunk away. She was stronger than they were. Stronger in her mind. And stronger than Simon too. He went giddy the moment he moved and collapsed on the ground.

When he came to he was lying among the litter on the dirty floor. Single-handed Laura had shifted the heavy chest from the doorway, and a candle in a jam jar shed a flickering light, gleamed in the horse's eyes outside and showed Laura kneeling beside him with a blood-soaked dressing in her hand.

'That was stupid!' she said. 'A stupid thing to do!
Why
did you do it? Why run away from us? You had only to say you wanted to leave and we would have given you Timms, gone with you, shown you the way! You might have died if Tyler hadn't spotted you. Don't you care what happens to you? Are we so ugly and repulsive you couldn't even bear to spend a few days with us? What's wrong with us, Simon? What's wrong with
me?'

Simon sat with his back against the wall. There was
nothing
wrong with Laura. She was a wonderful, beautiful person. Strands of her hair were the colour of moonlight and she might have been human. But her eyes were white and on her arms the pale fur shone with sheen. There was nothing wrong with that either, except that Simon could not accept it. He could not forget she was a mutant. He tried to explain.

'There's nothing wrong with you. It's me who's wrong. I'm prejudiced, I suppose. One hundred per cent human. It's
in me and I can't change myself. I don't measure up to you and I never will.'

'In other words you have an inferiority complex?'

'It's how you make me feel,' said Simon. 

'We don't mean to,' Laura said worriedly. 'We respect what you are, just as we respect all forms of life. You're sacred, Simon. Everything is.'

'But I can't buy that quasi religious bullshit!' 'Surely it's axiomatic?' said Laura.

'Axio-what?'

'A self-evident universally accepted truth.' 

'Since when?'

'Since, failing to see it, your kind engineered a nuclear war and almost destroyed everything.'

'That's what I mean!' Simon said furiously. 'That's what it all boils down to! The sins of my fathers! I've inherited what they did, a madman on the road to extinction! I'm a member of a redundant species, don't you see? I've got no future, and I've got no purpose, and I don't need you to spell it out. I know I'm useless! I've been getting the message loud and clear from the moment I met you. Well, thanks for the lesson, but I'm not staying around to have it rubbed in!' 

Laura said nothing, went outside, took a compress and bandage from the saddle bag and rebound his leg. She gave him bread and cheese, water from a leather canteen, and the woollen shirt to wear beneath his caftan. Then she put on her over-gown, blew out the candle and waited for him to struggle to his feet
.
By now she had learned not to help him. 

'Where do you want to go?' she asked. 

'How the hell would I know?' Simon snapped. 

'I'll take you to Timperley,' she decided. 

'That's miles away!' 

'You can ride the horse.'

'I don't know
how
to ride a horse!'

'All you need to do is sit on his back,' said Laura. 'Surely even
you
can manage that much?'

Timms was loaded with bed-rolls and blankets, standing patiently as Simon attempted to mount. But his leg felt dead, unable to support him, unable to provide the necessary thrust. This time Laura was bound to help him, slim fingers clutching his waist. And something boosted him, some huge force propelling him upward until he was suddenly sitting astride and looking down on her.

'How did you do that?' he asked in surprise. 

'I eat spinach,' said Laura. 'Like the legendary Pop-Eye the Sailor blind Kate used to watch on television.' 

'Who the hell was he?' Simon asked. 

Without bothering to reply Laura caught hold of the rein and led Timms from the churchyard as Simon swayed and steadied himself, gripped with his knees and clung to the saddle. He expected to take the track to the valley but instead they stayed on the high ground, and the moon on the river made a silver ribbon in the darkness below. Trees shivered on the wooded slopes, unreal and glittering, like the landscape of a dream. It had all gone dreamlike, and a girl with white-gold hair was leading him on through timeless distances under the vast expanse of starry sky in a world he did not know.