He Runs (Part One) (11 page)

‘No man meat?’

‘No, none.’

‘You don’t eat it?’

‘I have. Once or twice. But never again. Like I heard you say, we don’t need it.’

‘You heard what I was saying?’

‘Most of it,’ she says, the redness returning to her cheeks. ‘Wouldn’t be a good landlady if I didn’t know the gossip.’

Man nods, a half-smile gracing his face, invisible to Rose.

‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘For the food.’

‘No problem. I’ll have another drink waiting for you in the bar, when you’re finished. And your room is across the hall, the one with the red door. I’ve put some clothes on the bed. They were my husbands. He was about your size.’

‘Thank you,’ repeats Man, as Rose turns and walks out of the room, her hips moving sensually with each step.

*********************

The aftertaste of food sits uneasily in Man’s mouth, his mind firing into overdrive with thoughts of man-meat contamination. He shudders as he sits on the bed, the realisation of his imminent induction into the world of cannibalism he always viewed from afar.

A light tapping secures his attention, the sound of a tiny fist hitting the bedroom door. He stands up, reaches for the silvery crescent-moon blade and moves it through his fingers until it sits just right. It is still light outside and the threadbare curtains allow slivers of the world outside into the barren room. He looks around, sees the chest of drawers and the bedside table, the piss pot jutting out from under the bed. The walls are blood red, shiny with grease in the invading sunlight.

‘Who’s there?’ asks Man as he reaches the door.

Nothing. Not a thing stirs on the other side of the wooden barrier.

‘Who the fuck’s there?’ he says, a dangerous tone in his voice.

And then he hears a giggle, the machine gun laughter of a young girl.

He opens the door slowly, the karambit ready to slice anything into strips of steak. A little girl comes into view, no more than four years old, her hair a mousey bush of curls. She wears a dirty pair of pink shorts and a flowery top, a little too big for her. She looks up at Man, at his fur-covered face and the smile that came from giggles disappears, her vivid eyes darkening with fear.

‘S-sorry!’ she mutters and runs down the corridor, looking back to make sure Man isn’t following her.

‘You always talk to little girls like that?’ asks a familiar voice.

He looks to the left of him, sees Rose standing, her eyes puzzled at the sight before her. In her arms, she holds a baby.

‘I was on the road a long time,’ says Man. ‘I’m not used to visitors.’

‘Or children, it seems.’ Her pea-green eyes thrown him a challenging glance and all he can do is smile.

‘No. No children.’

‘Did you have children?’ she asks quickly, as though the question has been sitting impatiently on her lips.

Man nods.

‘Boy or girl?’

‘A little girl.’

‘And a wife? Girlfriend?’

‘Wife.’

Her foot starts to tap, her smile arching into a smirk.

‘Well aren’t you the conversationalist!’

‘I used to be,’ he says.

‘Well I don’t believe you. Want to meet my daughter?’

He nods and walks out, tucking the blade into the waistband of the tracksuit bottoms that Rose left out for him. She also put out a baggy, red t shirt that he doesn’t like; too much material to grab hold of in a fight.

‘I see the clothes fit,’ she says.

‘Thank you,’ he replies.

She turns her body slightly into him, opening up her chest to present a swaddled baby girl with a head full of blonde curly hair and bright blue eyes. Man smiles as Rose looks up at him, and then down at her daughter. The little girl starts to cry.

A black line shoots across his vision, opens up into a screen to replay his memories. He remembers the sound of a crying babe, a ferrous smell in the air mixed with recently detonated cordite. He remembers the splitting in half of a tiny body, barely enough blood to splash back onto his face. And then everything in his world went quiet.

‘Everything okay?’ He feels a hand on his shoulder, shaking him slightly, coaxing him out of the horror-filled trance.

‘Fine,’ he manages. ‘Just bad memories. How long was I gone?’

‘A good half a minute,’ says Rose. ‘Do you want to know her name? It’s not an introduction if you don’t know her name.’

He nods.

‘It’s Lily,’ she says, a proud smile engulfing her milky face.

‘That’s beautiful,’ he replies.

‘Thank you. What was your daughter’s name?’

‘Emma. Her name was Emma. And my wife’s name was Claire and we were once very fucking happy! But they’re gone, now! Everyone is gone! All that’s left are monsters and memories and both are as bad as each other!’

Rose steps back, her face frozen in fear. He sees this and relents. The anger rose up in his belly again, an untameable entity born out of emotional wreckage.

‘I, I’m sorry,’ he says, his arms out, pleading with her. ‘I don’t like to talk about them.’

‘It’s okay,’ she says above the crying of Lily. ‘It’s okay. I understand. Pop downstairs. The pub is empty. They’ve all gone to a feast tonight. I’ll be down in a few minutes and I’ll get you a drink.’

‘That, that would be good, thank you,’ he says.

He moves to the top of the stairs and then pauses. Turns around and sees Rose looking at him.

‘It’s a shame,’ she says, ‘what’s happened to the world. A tragedy for our species.’

‘Who’s the father?’ asks Man.

Her eyes look at the ground. She is ashamed of the answer.

Man nods and turns and walks slowly down the staircase.

                            ************************

She sits opposite him, a glass of barley wine in one hand, a cigarette in the other. 

He throws her a glance every now and then, a quick survey of her features, admiring her red hair, the way she smokes her cigarette, the hypnotic swirl of blue/grey smoke that floats up into the air. Man has always liked women who smoke.

The bar is deserted, apart from two broken souls who've found each other amid the chaos.

He smokes, slowly, sucks hard on the hand-rolled fag as though he’s trying to finish it in one drag. They've been silent for quite some time.

'So what's your story?' asks Rose nonchalantly, her tone bypassing the awkwardness of silence.

'Which one?' is Man's reply.

'The last few months will do.'

'The last few months? That's quite a story. I'm not sure we have the time.'

'Sod off then!' she says with a smirk on her face, a playful fire illuminating her pea-green eyes. 'If you're not going to entertain me, you can get the bloody hell out.'

Man forces a smile, the kind of smile he feels trying to escape from inside him. 

'Okay,' he says. 'First things first, you should know that I'm a wanted man!'

'A wanted man? Interesting! Like an outlaw?'

'Not quite. There are men chasing me. They want to torture me and rape me and eventually part my head from my neck.'

'What did you do?'

'Revenge. That is all I did.' Man takes a slow sip of his beer, scratches at his beard and notices small flakes of dandruff fall to the floor like macabre confetti. 'I lived in a village once. A settlement quite like this. Except we didn't eat people. We hunted animals, provided for the women and children. It's at the village where I found Claire. She was widowed during the War of Tribes. A frail thing when I first saw her, holding a child so tight to her chest that I thought she would crush it.’

‘So she wasn’t your daughter?’

‘She wasn’t. But I loved her any way. Her and her mother.’

‘So what happened to them?’ asks Rose, her eyes brimming with interest.

‘They were killed. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have…’ Man trails off, lost in the darkest memory he could ever fathom.

‘Who killed them?’

‘I was supposed to be protecting them, I…’ A tear emerges in Man’s eye and he rubs it away. Pulls another cigarette out of his pocket, lights it and inhales.

‘Who was it?’ asks Rose.

‘The men who are hunting me. They raped her, then cut her throat. Then they threw the child to the dogs.’

Rose’s face contorts into a wrinkled ball, her expression baring the marks of horror.

‘What did you do to them?’

‘I killed one of them. A man called Ross. Never knew his last name. No one did. And then I cut his head off and threw it through Smith’s window.’

‘Jesus!’

‘It certainly got their attention.’

‘Who’s Smith?’ she says as she lights another cigarette and swills back the rest of her wine.

‘He was the leader. Like Mick, only not as fat.’

‘Why did they rape her?’ she asks, her voice quivering with the anticipation of horrors.

‘Because she was beautiful.’ He sits back, calmer now, the thought of her face acting as the soothing elixir. Her hair, long and brown with her ears poking through like an exquisite little elf. Her eyes were dark blue, her lips cherry red. She looked innocent, the kind of girl he instantly wanted to protect. His heart fell into his stomach the day she wandered into the town.

‘So,’ says Rose, waking Man from his memory, ‘what happened after that?’

‘I ran. Been running for months. I remember it was snowing, January I guess, and that Ross’ headless corpse turned the white ground around him red. I stole his dog, Hound I called it, and took his back pack and his blade, the karambit I keep, and headed north. A couple of times they came after me, but I managed to get away. Hound was killed a few weeks back, their most recent attempt on my life. And they also killed a little girl, not much older than your daughter.’

He sits back, finishes his beer and walks to the bar to retrieve another. As he moves he looks up at the ceiling, the lights hanging from cobweb laden plaster, faux stained glass shade cocooning them, accentuating their brightness.

'This might have been a nice pub,' he says out loud, thoughts forming into words before he can control their slippage. 

'I try my best,' she says. 

He laughs and turns to her, walks hazily with his beer, mindful not to spill any in his merry state. 

'I bet you've got some questions for me,' says Rose.

'A couple. Mick answered the rest.'

'Mick's a liar,' she blurts out, her lips curling into a venomous beak.

'A liar? What did he lie about?'

'Eating people! There was no siege. He fed you a pack of lies.’

'So what happened?'

'A man came by, a month or so after I got here. He wore a brown cloak and walked with a giant staff. He looked like some sort of wizard or something. Mick offered him sanctuary, brought him in. The man claimed to be a messenger from God.'

'From God?'

'Yeah. That's what he said. We were all starving and Mick, well, he became very religious after the darkness set in. A lot of us did. He took his beliefs, his hatred of the Muslims, and focused it on a higher power.'

'So what did this messenger from God say?' Man shifts in his seat, his attention peaking. He lights another cigarette, feels the smoke tighten his lungs, a precursor to a violent cough.

'Daniel. His name was Daniel.'

'What did Daniel say, then?'

'He claimed that God had told him that Mick was destined for great things. To lead a revival of our species, of our creed. And in order to do that he could do whatever he had to.'

'And that translated into eating people?'

'I'm not finished,' she warns, her eyes firing. 'Daniel told Mick of the ancient tribes of the Amazon who survived for so long during times of colonisation and deforestation, and their key to power. It was eating their enemies.'

'Are those people I saw outside his enemies?' asks Man.

'They never used to be.'

'So what happened to Daniel?'

'He left. One day. Without a trace. Mick took it as sign from the almighty God.’

'So Mick thinks he was a saint or...'

'An angel.'

Man tuts loudly, making sure his unflinching disapproval of fairy tale religion is clearly understood.

'You don't believe that?' he asks.

'It's all piss and vinegar to me! I just live here. It's better than living out there!' She points to the windows, the dirt lining adding more protection from the outside world.

'It's all piss and vinegar,' Man repeats, 'I like that. It's always been piss and vinegar! People, cattle, fucking herds turned to religion all those hundreds of years ago because their lives were shit and they were easily manipulated. This world, this whole universe is cyclical. It's all coming around again. All the yarns and folk stories about saints and sinners, gods and angels. I thought that had died out along with the electricity.’