Old World (The Green and Pleasant Land) (2 page)

It's a fish. Or rather it's half a fish. The poor bugger has already been half consumed by the thing which emerges with the fish in its maw. A cadaver. Grey, bloody skin. A dead thing which doesn't know it's dead. Who it may have been is irrelevant these days. It and it's kind have eaten apart the world and now it's eating my god damned fish.

The slow, shuffling thing walks up out of the water towards me, my sons shout warnings from behind me, Sue just gasps and her heart beats so loud I think can hear it from twenty feet away, or maybe it's my own heart and I am no longer able to distinguish between the two. I don't move, too sullen, too morbid. I realise then the false hope that my contentment had given me. I can hear the boys running across the patio behind me, they wouldn't be in time, it was only a couple of feet away.

As its shadow falls over me I look up into the cadavers eyes, eyes which once bloomed with the ambition of a mortal man. There is no beauty there. Once maybe, but now, now those orbs are torn, ripped up by bulging capillaries which have shed their blood and made it look as if the thing has been weeping. But those sanguine tears, laced over dead skin do not fool me, it is as incapable of crying as it is of anything else besides killing and eating.

In a blur of motion I sweep up the machete that's sticking up out of the ground beside me, in a heartbeat the blade cleaves clean through the skull of the person who used to be. Grey matter flies here and there, what little blood is left splatters onto the long grass. Bits of dead thing float away across the surface of the lake. The cadaver falls back into the water and is gone from sight within moments until only red ripples remain. I look down at the half eaten fish at my feet. Damn.

“Are you feeling better?”

The patient did not answer. The patient thrashed on the table. The man in the white coat moved to the other side. He administered some more medicine.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked again.

The patient did not answer. The patient could not answer. The patient struggled feebly against the restraints. The man in the white coat administered an extra large helping of medicine. This elicited an audible response. Not words. It is hard to form words when your tongue has been severed by a half a hundred cuts from a rusty scalpel. No, no words would escape the patient, but he managed a low guttural retching sound, an attempt at a scream perhaps, or an unutterable curse maybe.

The man in the white coat moved around the table continuing to administer healthy doses of the medicine. The patient cried a lot, when he wasn't trying to scream or spit blood and bits of tongue at the face of the man in the white coat.

At one point he who held the medicine stopped and pulled off his protective face mask. His kindly green eyes held a feigned concern, he smiled a cold old smile. “Are you feeling better? Are you feeling better? Are you feeling better?”

The patient did not answer. The patient could not answer. He could only watch as the blade plunged home again and again, as his lifeblood filled the slippery surface of the metallic table on which he lay, before dripping to the floor like a slow red rain.

Eventually the man in the white coat moved away from him, to another table, another of the many patients in the room, but still he could hear the soft voice asking the same question over and over and over..”Are you feeling better”

Ellie had a cough. When she'd been younger she'd got coughs and we used to worry. Me and Sue would lay together listening to her coughing through the wall, we would chew our nails and we would worry and then we would take her to the doctor. There was nowhere to take her now. So we just lay there and listened and worried.

Following the attack from the cadaver in the lake the air of relaxation which had settled upon us over the winter months disappeared. We were again held in a state of constant vigilance. There were more cadaver attacks, perhaps they'd been there through the winter but the ice which had covered the lake prevented them from surfacing? who knows. But now the sun was shining longer and warmer and we noticed more deathwalkers than we did before, not enough to make us move on, just enough to keep us permanently on edge, constant fear will get to you after a time.

And now we had Ellie's cough to worry about. I can hear it right this moment, making its way down through the floorboards, assailing my position as a responsible parent, but there was no one to take her to any more, no doctors and nurses, so all I could do was listen to a cough which more and more was starting to sound like mocking laughter.

Sue was going around blowing out the candles. It turns out that the dearly departed Mrs Robinson was a big fan of candles as well as earl grey tea. And not cheap candles which burn themselves out of existence in a couple of hours, the old dame had a horde of big, fat, tallow candles, the kind that can hold back the darkness for days and days and yet barely break into a waxy sweat.

We'd planted vegetables in the garden, we'd turned the house into a castle, we scavenged, we inventoried, we decapitated and we survived. Cough, cough, cough. I was sitting staring deep into flame which earnestly danced this way and that to avoid scrutiny when she spoke. “Rob” said my wife, my darling Sue.

There comes a point, when you have been with someone so long, when so many sentences and feelings have passed between you that even with the space of a single word you can hear a hundred different meanings based on the tiniest alterations of inflection. There is the “Rob” that she would say if she wanted me to help with the drying up. There is the “Rob” she would say if she wanted me to help with a crossword puzzle. Then there was this “Rob”, the one she'd just said, the one I hated, the one that contained all the fear.

My machete never left my side these days. It came to hand as easily now as say a pen or a mobile phone had done before. I joined her by the kitchen window. She'd just blown the candle out and a thin wisp of smoke was rising up and bumping against the glass as it slowly dissipated and became one with the universe. I put a comforting hand on a shaking shoulder, I looked out into the garden to try and spy what made my lady love tremble so.

Something moved out there, between us and the lake lapping gently at the shore. The problem was that this wasn't cadaver movement. For all their horrific nature the maggot men are slow and easy to despatch provided they don't get the drop on you. This was different, this shadow did not shuffle or shamble it's way mindlessly through the bushes. It seemed to jump and leap with speed, it looked like a squat bulbous thing which bent the darkness to its form and scurried here and there with a malign yet unpredictable purpose.

“Wake the boys” whispered Sue.

“Let them sleep” came my foolhardy response.

“Rob” she said. This was the 'Rob' that was half plead half command, this was the Rob that had been the cause of many disagreements, it was the 'Rob' which overruled me and I was often glad it did. I crept quickly and quietly up stairs which desired to creak but could not such was my knowledge of their weak points. The boys were together whereas my coughing girl had a room all of her own. I laid a hand on Zak who was instantly awake, we sleep lightly these days, Mac was roused from his slumber a few moments later.

“There is something in the garden” I whispered. My heart soared with pride at their response, Zak was eighteen and Mac four years younger, but there was no fear, they nodded and drew meat cleavers and knives from beneath their pillows before following me downstairs.

Sue had maintained a vigil by the window. “Still there?” I asked. She nodded.

“Still there, trampling through the tomato vines” she said, sounding mightily offended that our night-time visitor was causing damage to the cherry plumbs.

“Graveborn?” asked Mac in a voice that became less a boys and more a man's every day. “I don't think so, it's moving too fast, and it looks..” Sue hesitated “Different, not right somehow”. We all spent some time peering out into the darkness catching the occasional glimpse of what is what out there, however a waning moon was shedding little light this night and there was only so much we were going to be able to descry from inside.

Though I was confident that all the entrances to the house were well protected I was not comfortable letting that thing have free reign outside. I pondered for a only a few moment more. Cough, cough, cough.

“Zak, with me, Mac stay here with your mother” No objections, no arguments, just obedience, it was the only thing which had kept us alive at times. We removed the barricade from the side entrance of the house together, Zak and I slipped out into the darkness, the door closed behind us and I heard the scraping of tables and chairs being moved back up against it.

We crept almost on all fours around the side of the house and into the back garden, my ears were attuned to the sounds of the night, none of which seemed untoward. We moved slowly to the vegetable patch, I felt squashed tomatoes as my fingers grazed the ground. I stood up to get a better look around. Then came the attack.

This was definitely no cadaver, it leapt out of nowhere with incredible speed and flexibility. I lost my balance and went down under the weight of it, I lost my grip on the machete and turned as I fell pushing the bulbous thing away from me. It's skin did not feel cold and lifeless like the cadavers, it was warm, hot to the touch even, it seemed to writhe and pulsate beneath my grip. Zak shouted as he bulldozed into my attacker, knocking it from on top of me before it had a chance to sink in tooth and claw.

As it rolled away, Zak helped me to my feet and handed me one of the spare knives from his belt. At that moment the waning moon managed to free itself from the restricting cloak of the clouds, even in the slim silver light of the crescent I was able to see it. My heart almost stopped before proceeding to beat faster than it had before. This wasn't a cadaver, this wasn't anything that I'd seen or heard of or even imagined before.

There was no time to lose, we both rushed in, the thing launched another of its leaping attacks, this time I ducked slashing up at it as the form sailed over the top of me, it had barely landed when Zaks meat cleaver thudded into it. A horrifying scream pierced the night, a clunky bulging fist on the end of an elongated bony arm lashed out and sent my son sprawling to the ground clutching his chest in pain.

I threw the knife, I'd never been much of a knife thrower in the before times but practise makes perfect and there had been plenty of practise on the road. Though the creature was squat and bulky I still outmatched it for size. As it was trying to remove the knife which was solidly embedded in it I seized the meat cleaver still jutting from its back and then jumped onto top of the writing mass forcing it to the floor.

The gurgling screams echoed out into the darkness as I continued to hammer the cleaver into flesh and bone, the mist had descended again, as I continued to strike I saw images of Greg, flashes of my friend, I saw him underneath me pleading with me stop the attack, but I did not, I brought the blade down repeatedly until he was in pieces. The screaming stopped, the thing was not moving any more. I looked up at the house, I could see two faint silhouettes at the kitchen window.

I pulled the thing down to the lake and rolled its body into the water, making a mental note to remove fish from the menu entirely.

I grabbed Zak and we headed back to the side door where we already heard scraping as the barricade was being moved, the screaming could well have attracted cadavers and it would not do well to be caught out in the dark by a horde.

We made our way inside and Sue hugged me despite the blood soaked shirt.

“A cadaver?” she asked.

“Yes” I replied quickly cutting Zak off and giving him a look that spoke volumes. He looked surprised but nodded in agreement at my lie.

“Only a little one, possibly not long turned and that's why it moved like that” I said. Sue nodded and forced a smile, she knew I was lying but she also knew that I would not do so without reason.

“Lets all get some sleep, we can go over what happened in the morning” They didn't take much convincing, Sue kissed me before tiptoeing up the stairs after the boys. I would see her soon. First I sat and poured myself a large helping of Mrs Robinsons whiskey. I sat and drank until my heart rate slowed and the panic abated. I thought about what I'd seen in those moments of moonlight, a creature from a nightmare, there had been no face, no legs, just arms, lots of long spindly arms around a fat round body, like some warped spider. Where the hell it screamed from I had no idea. One thing was for certain, alive or dead it was certainly not human.

I continued to drink, later than I had intended but still I could not bring myself to surrender to sleep. It was the wee small hours when I took Mrs Robinsons old ham radio down from the shelf and started to cycle through the static. I did this often, a couple of times a week, kidding myself that maybe the world out there had come back to life and was waiting for us to rejoin it.

I listened to the static for a time until suddenly the dial clicked onto silence, it was a mid range FM frequency, but gone was the familiar hissing. Maybe I'd had too much whiskey, maybe the radio was knackered. I leaned in close to the speaker, I could hear something and the longer I listened the more convinced I became that I could hear breathing, when a voice spoke I nearly jumped out of my skin. There it was, clear, concise, and soft reaching across the radio waves, a voice asking a question over and over again, “Are you feeling better?”.

More time passed, decisions weighed heavily upon me. Sue wanted to move, to find help for Ellie who grew paler by the day and whose cough grew into a spectre more threatening than any cadaver. I wanted to go and find help also, but there was nowhere to go, after seeing the world fall to pieces I could not responsibly believe that it had sewn itself back together in such a short space of time.

Everyday I scanned the radio waves, finding nothing but that strange station with the question repeated over and over, mixed in with occasional bursts of manic laughter and the sound of blade on blade. I kept that discovery of the station to myself, it seemed the kind of revelation that would only add to the worry.