Vampires Overhead (14 page)

‘Seems then, it’s up to me.’ I thought rapidly, pulling meditatively on the oars when we threatened to drift closer to the burning oil. ‘Let’s weigh things up. We want a refuge from those things if they should come back. We want food, water, and to find other survivors. To try to pick on a direction that would bring us to other people would be striking off blindly anywhere. What we want is some definite objective with sanctuary at the end of the trail. That means we want somewhere with something like our tunnel or a cave.’

‘We can’t go back to the tunnel,’ Bingen said foolishly.

‘A cave. Let me think. Once I took a bus out to the country past Croydon. What was the name of the place? Churley. That was it! Churley Hills. I remember, in the middle of the hills about half a dozen cottages in a valley.’

‘What good will they be to us?’ Bingen scoffed. ‘We want some dug-out, or pit, or something.’

‘Oh, don’t I know it! Wait a minute. The gardens of those cottages ran right back into a cliff, and in the cliff they had got caves cut. Served as stores or coal-houses, or something. If the whole of the country is like this,’ I waved a hand round the boat, ‘we might be able to live in the cottages, they were stone, unless my memory fails me, and dive for the caves if necessary. If neither of you can suggest anything better, I’ll pull in to the bank and we’ll make a start.’

‘Let’s go away from here,’ Bingen urged. ‘You want to get away from here too, don’t you, Janet?’

‘I want to, but I should like to try and find out where Dad and Mother are,’ she said. ‘But I’ll go where you say.’

‘There isn’t a chance in a thousand of finding your people right away,’ I told her. ‘Later on, when the things have gone, and folks start appearing from wherever they’ve got to, then we can have a look round for them.’

Bingen, in the bows with a length of timber ready to fend off burning driftwood, nudged me and nodded towards the sky. Again I saw a cloud of Vampires. We did not drop to the bottom of the boat for fear of alarming Janet, but we watched anxiously, until we saw they moved away from us, and then I pulled once again on the oars, and Bingen turned back to his task of watching the water ahead. We neared the bank.

‘Wait a minute, Garry,’ Bingen called. ‘There’s something in the water. Looks like a cash-box. Pull a bit to the left while I see what’s in it.’

‘Don’t be foolish. What’s the use of money to us?’ I demurred, but bent over the side of the boat, and as it seemed interesting, pulled the dinghy closer. ‘Fish it out then, and be quick.’

Among some broken ships’ timbers littered with sodden clothing, supported upon the wood, there floated a black box, with corners strongly reinforced by iron bands. Bingen brought it aboard with a heave.

‘Shan’t be a minute, it’s nearly open now. May be some worthwhile stuff in it.’

The lid wrenched open, and he pulled out handfuls of wet papers—books, what I think was a ship’s log, a handful of coins, and several charts. Bingen was disappointed, but when I saw what lay at the bottom I leant forward excitedly. Two Colt revolvers and a small waterproof package of what looked like ammunition.

‘Give me those guns. Open the packet to see if they are cartridges, and find out if they’re dry.’

Taking the guns, I spun cylinders and broke them. They were wet, but otherwise in good condition. I dried them carefully upon my trousers.

‘The ammo’ seems all right,’ Bingen told me, and handed over some cartridges.

‘I think maybe these’ll be of more use to us than a dozen boxes of gold. They may be useless against the Vampires, but if nearly all the people have been wiped out, there’ll probably be gangs about, and it’ll be every man for himself.’ I loaded the guns and gave one to Bingen, sticking the other in the waistband of my trousers. ‘Ah! That gives me a comforting feeling of security, jammed against my side.’

The dinghy ran ashore upon a mud flat, and making sure the ground would bear me, I waded past the mud, tethered the boat to a clump of marsh grass, and returned to carry the girl ashore. Bingen, I saw, had made ready to do that, and I grinned at him when later he clambered from the boat and, taking another course, stumbled deep in the water to his armpits.

‘Trouble is, with you your behind’s too close to the ground,’ I called to him. And while he struggled in the mud and water, whispered quickly to the girl. ‘Bingen is quite all right, but he’s a bit of a  . . . Oh, I dunno, he’s a bit of a ladykiller. You don’t want to be too chummy with him. Understand?’

‘I think so, mister,’ Janet answered. ‘But I think he is all right, really.’

‘Of course he is, but, well, I suppose you’re not old enough to understand. But anyway, don’t flirt with him. You understand that?’

‘Old enough? . . . Why . . .’ and then she glanced from me and called to Bingen when he landed floundering and swearing softly, ‘Are you all right, mister?’

‘Mister?’ Bingen raised eyebrows at her and grinned at me. ‘Mister! You aren’t on a boat now. There’s no misters here. Call me Bingen, the same as this long-legged camel does.’

‘We’ll all have time to make friends properly and call each other pet names later on,’ I cut in. ‘Now we are ashore, the best thing we can do is to get moving towards Churley, and move quickly. As it is, I doubt whether we’ll get there tonight. And we want to get some sort of a caboose to settle in before it’s dark. Come on.’

We went winding among the tufted clumps of tall grass and hummocks of the swampy marshlands, towards where a cluster of buildings indicated a road. The damp grass over which we passed was hardly burned, but everywhere ash had fallen, so that we were almost deceived into walking upon the hidden stagnant water. Somehow, the fact that we had a definite objective cheered us, and, reaching the road, we set off briskly.

‘If we see anything better on the road than the caves I remember at Churley, we’ll stay there, but anyway, it seems we’ll have to find some place for tonight.’

With the girl between us we must have seemed a queer trinity. Bingen, smothered in mud, trousers torn, and shirt-sleeves rolled above hairy arms, rifle slung over his shoulder and a revolver thrust into his trousers, a stubbly beard turning him from a modern driver of a brewer’s van into an old-time buccaneer; and myself, much in the same state. The girl, slim and dainty, between us two ruffians, with curls free in the wind, in a blue jersey and skirt that was soiled and creased.

‘Bingen, I’m carrying the bag as well as the ammunition. I think we’ll divide it and I’m going to fire a couple of shots to see if the guns are all right.’

The cartridges shared equally, I fired a round from Bingen’s pistol and then, taking as a target a heap of bricks some fifty yards down the road where a small building had stood, I shot and watched red dust fly from the striking bullets. The shots reverberated curiously in the silence. Echoes died, and we smiled at each other, satisfied with the results, and then we were jerked into alertness.

From the tumbled building there boomed a terrible cursing voice, unnaturally deep, with the thundering shakiness that comes from an overloaded radio loudspeaker. It cursed monotonously, without expression, like a cracked gramophone record repeating the same phrases tonelessly.

Janet whitened, crouched close to me, and Bingen stood protectingly before her. I stared at the place from where the unbelievable voice boomed, and then nudged Bingen.

‘For God’s sake go and see what it is,’ he nodded. ‘I’ll look after the girl.’

I walked slowly forward.

The small building had been, evidently, some sort of meter house or power station, for a twisted welter of pipes ran diverging into it. Ashes swirled about my feet as I clambered over the fallen brickwork, and that weird, bull voice resounded in the silence, thundering a ceaseless stream of cursing blasphemy. Amid the ruins I searched, and then, from beneath one of the tanks to the left, I saw the legs of a man. Or the legs of what had once been a man!

A strongly riveted boiler or tank, with a small circular opening in the side, and from this opening protruded the legs. On the other side, as I bent over to see, there was a smaller hole, where some connection had broken away, and through this there protruded the remains of a hand and wrist.

I understood!

He had dived for the tank from Vampires, but had been unable to pull the whole of his body into safety. The hand had been thrust into the smaller aperture to close it. His voice in that tank had been amplified into a booming horror. Gingerly, I pulled him out into the ashes floating about. From between his snarling white lips dropped, in a whisper now that he was in the open, an unceasing stream of filth. His body, sheltered in the tank, was untouched, but his legs to the thighs, where they had been uncovered, and one wrist and hand . . .! The Vampires had been at work. His sagging dry skin was punctured with innumerable tiny red pin pricks. He did not know that I had pulled him free, did not know anything. But for the voice, thin and shrill now, he was dead. How long he had been there like that, how long he might have lived like that, I could not guess, but living . . . he was dead. I shot him through the head.

‘Let’s get on,’ I said, and had to lick dry lips to speak as I motioned Janet and Bingen forward. ‘We’ll get on.’

‘But the shot,’ Bingen asked, but stopped when he saw my face. ‘All right! All right!’

Janet was silent, watching me anxiously, and I tried to smile at her.

‘Wasn’t anything. Nothing to worry about.’

To us now the open country, rather than the dusty road and its edging ruins, appealed, and we travelled across the fields. Thoughts of fleeing from a concerted attack of things which had done that to the man back in the ruins, into the red embers of some burning building, were appalling. Out here, we would have a sporting chance. From the crest of a hill we stared back, and I saw that the place where the man had been was a sewage farm. An appropriate place! We went on, skirting some large town which I think was Woolwich, and hurried on at our best pace towards Churley, guessing at the direction.

‘We won’t get there before nightfall. Keep your eye open for some place that looks good enough to camp down for the night.’

‘I feel pretty hungry,’ Bingen grumbled. ‘Could do with some of that stuff we left in the barge.’

‘And a pretty daft couple of fools we were to leave it there,’ I said savagely. And then, concerned at the expression on Janet’s face, added quickly, ‘But never mind. Soon we’ll find somewhere that hasn’t been burned too much, and there’s bound to be grub.’

Leaving Janet and Bingen, I went ahead, following the road, but keeping it at some distance, and waved back to them to detour that she might be spared the sight of a huddled crowd of people lying by a burned tree in the corner of a field. Climbing to the heights of a sort of downland, I could see across the countryside, and look down on razed towns. Away to the horizon was a misty pall of grey, and here and there still flamed isolated villages, sending up to the heavens, as though in mute prayer, streamers of blue smoke. Hardly discernible it was, but I think, away from roads and houses, the grass and trees retained slight traces of their natural colour, so that I grew hopeful we might find the land lush and green when we left the towns far behind.

I searched the country, while behind me, Janet and Bingen struggled up the long slope. I watched them for a moment. The girl was beginning to tire, and Bingen aided her. And then my attention was distracted from them.

Shadows on the ground before me were the first indications I had of danger, and I shot a glance upwards.

High above, a crowd of Vampires dropped out of the sky. For a split second I stared at them, and then turned to scan the open country despairingly. Like a terrified rabbit I ran to and fro on the ridge, and down below Bingen and the girl watched me helplessly. I yelled and pointed upwards, and they began to run, scrambling, slipping on the ash-covered turf. I left them, and ran, frantically, peering here and there for refuge, and foolishly, they ran with me, down at the bottom of the slope, instead of climbing for the crest.

The downs dropped sheer away into a deep cutting, and, sliding down, I saw at the bottom a shallow indentation. Here was a place! I heaved and struggled with a boulder, and then another, to bar the opening, and while I struggled they were upon me. As I bent, one of the things settled on my back. I threw it off. Another clamped tightly to my leg. I kicked it away, and then, with the shelter ready, forced my way through the Vampires huddling about me up the cliff with fingers tearing at slipping gravel. They climbed, with me, fluttering above in little excited jumps and dropping on to me. Before I reached the top I began to call breathlessly.