Chapter 4, Change
An alarm went off as Raj broke the shop window. Lucy and I stood guard outside as he rushed in, several minutes passed before we saw the first of them, staggering down the high street in our direction. “They're coming” Lucy shouted into the shop. Raj emerged a few moments later carrying several heavily laden bags of shopping. A few dozen cadavers were heading our way, we easily outpaced them up the clear street before ducking down an underpass.
As we went through it I saw graffiti and cobwebs. I wonder what had become of the humans who wrote the words, young residents of the town who even now might be staggering after them. I did not have to wonder about the spinners of the webs, for they sat there still in the dark underpass, their many eyes observing dispassionately those of us who ran for our lives.
We'd been here a couple of days now and were beginning to get into a routine. Hertford was not a large town, but there was enough room for us to be able to outrun most of the cadavers we came across whilst on foraging runs.
We ran through the church yard and through the thick wooden doors into the church. The doors slammed shut and the heavy bar fell into place. Out of breath we sunk to the floor and examined the fruits of Raj's labour.
Tins of beans, tins of soup, tins of things I don't recognise, fair fare but nothing to write home about. Not that there would anyone to read about it if I did. Raj and Lucy tuck into some food. I leave them to it and make my way up the steps. We were fortunate that this church had a tall bell tower which reared high above the town. From it both sides of the steep valley and the town which wound its way along the river could be seen.
I look out over Hertford as I have done many times in the days we've been here. There are plenty of cadavers roaming the town, some in gangs, some solitary figures. Every now and then I see someone like us. Small groups of survivors who make smash and grab runs into the abandoned supermarkets and eateries. How long this kind of lifestyle can go on I do not know, eventually we will have leached everything from the town. The groups do as we do, the pull out of the town and flee back to their holdfasts, to their houses and flats, to their fortified positions beyond the reach of the grey hands.
I sigh as I hear footsteps making their way up the tower to meet me. It is not that I am ungrateful to them for getting me this far, but I find myself increasingly detached from them. I have a feeling that I am far more suited to this world than I realised I would have been. Lucy and Raj, they are a symbol of the world which has gone, I hear them sometimes, idly talking about rescue, and hope, and rebuilding. I do not engage them on such matters, once again I will not shatter the dreams of others without a solid dream of my own to take their place, which I do not have, just inklings, just sensations.
“Hey luvvie I brought you some soup” says Lucy squeezing past the giant bell and crouching down beside me. “Thank you” says I to her as she passes me the mug of cold tomato soup.
“See anything interesting?” says my freckled friend looking out over the town.
“More of the same, still plenty of people in town, running, hiding.”
“Yeah” mused Lucy, “Maybe we'll see if we can meet up with some up them, would you like that?” she asks me. I shrug and look at her.
“I don't know if that's a good idea Lucy” says I.
“Why not luv?” she replies. I consider my answer carefully.
“We don't know who we might meet.” Lucy looks surprised.
“Just people like us Annabel, people trying to survive, trying to weather the storm.”
I shake my head.
“It isn't a storm Lucy, it's the way things are, and I don't think that there are many people like us left, a lot of the people who have survived, are hard people, the only kind of people who could have survived.” She regards me for a few moments before chuckling and mussing up my long brown hair. “You are way too serious for one so young Annabel Benyion, we don't know what the futures going to be.”
With that she gets up and leaves. I return to my pondering of the town. Here I spend the rest of the day. As the light fades I look to the centre of town. There is an old castle there, within the castle grounds there sits a mound that must have once been the motte. There stands atop the motte a lonely figure, not a cadaver for they cannot contain themselves to be still so long. This is a living being, and though he is far away I shrink back further into the shadow of the bell tower, for I am sure that he is staring right at me.
The hour is late. The stars twinkle through the stained glass. What has woken me? Suddenly a hand clamps over my mouth. I see Raj lifting a finger to his lips, I nod and he releases me from his grip and proceeds to do the same to Lucy. I can hear a noise from close to the front of the church. Very, very slowly I sit up. Our camp, such as it is, sits between two pews at the front of the church near the pulpit.
At the rear of the church near the large doors I can see figures moving around. They do not move like cadavers, they are looking with too great a purpose to be of the dead. A finger taps me on the shoulder and makes me jump. Raj indicates to follow and I do so with Lucy in tow.
We head to a reception room at the very front of the church. As quietly as possible Raj closes the door leaving a tiny gap through which he spies. I glance around the sparsely furnished room. On a wooden table at its centre sits a book. By the starlight I cannot make out the words in the book, but I suspect this to be the wedding registry, where the people who loved each other pledged that love before their god.
I tiptoe over to Raj and kneel down next to him. When suddenly a human eye appears in the tiny gap betwixt the door and the frame. I scream and jump back as a foot kicks the door and sends it flying open striking Raj in the face as it does.
A track suit wearing man enters. There is a look about him, a desperate look, a look of resolve. I glance at Lucy, my words about the nature of the people who have survived are coming to the forefront of both our minds. “Hiding in the dark eh” says the man. As he moves into the room I see he has a knife. A sinking, churning fear grips me. There is nothing to stop him any more, the beast in him has broken free of the chains which held it in life.
Then Raj is on his feet. The knife lunges forward, but my smiling friend blocks it, with surprising skill he twists the attackers arm forcing him to drop the blade. Then, three short sharp punches later and the assailant falls back through the doorway. As quick as a flash Raj and Lucy drag the wooden table in front of the door. No sooner has it settled into place that a banging on the door starts.
Swearing, shouting voices echo from the outside it. Raj and Lucy are struggling to hold them back. The pounding on the door is constant. I lift my hands to my ears to block it out. I step back away from them towards the fireplace. I find myself huddling down and pushing myself back, back into the sooty hole where it has been many months since a fire burned.
Do you believe in fate? Believe me now when I tell you that there are more destinies than stars, and one of them has just reached out to me.
A ring of iron sits on the wall on the inside of the fireplace. It calls to me, I reach up and take a hold of the cool metal, the heat of the fireplace is a distant memory to it, but the secret it holds is not. I turn the ring and to my surprise the wall inside the fireplace gives way to reveal a dark passage.
I look out under the lintel. They are being pushed back inch by inch. For a moment I truly ponder leaving them, but only for a moment, an instant of dishonour amongst many hours of something quite the opposite.
“Lucy, Raj” I shout for all my worth, “In here, quickly.” There is something in my voice, the note of insistent urgency I have struck resonates with them. They give one last mighty shove back against the door before running into the fireplace. They follow blindly into the darkness, it will not be the last time. Though there may come a day when they regret not staying in that room and facing the human threat.
The stone doorway which let us through swings shut effortlessly with barely a brush of my hand. The noise of our attackers is
instantly muffled. Though a part of me fears what will happen if they find the secret passageway, a deeper part of me knows they will not, that the ring and the door were presented to me and only me, and that for another it will be as if they did not exist at all.
A chorus of heavy breathing. It's the adrenaline I guess. We did not run far, but we ran with fear. “Annabel, where are we?” asks Raj.
“I don't know” says I trying to track his location in the utter pitch black of the tunnel.
“Perhaps it's an old priests hole” says Lucy.
“A what?” says Raj.
“A priests hole, an escape route for priests fleeing from persecution.”
“Well” said Raj, despite the gloom I could tell he was smiling.
“Well what?” said Lucy.
“Well, I'm just amazed that history lessons have come in useful for something.”
“I'm a great teacher” says Lucy, again, the crossed arms and cross looks are implied by the darkness.
“You are” says Raj.
“And History is a great subject to teach.”
“It really is” says Raj. I don't have to be able to see to get a face full of the sarcasm rolling of his tongue. Lucy chooses not to respond vocally, but I suspect some hand gestures may have turned the black air blue.
“We need to move on” I say. I don't know why, but something is drawing me down the long tunnel through which I can feel a gentle night breeze blowing.
“Lead on chief” says Raj. I start to feel may way down the tunnel. Without thinking I reach back and locate Lucy's outstretched hand in the dark, I know that she is linked with Raj, and together we proceed down the tunnel.
It sloped downwards at first. I was half afraid that my feet would find a huge precipice and that we would be able to go no further. I tapped in front with each and every step but alas there did not seem to be any pits waiting for us. In fact as we went along my mind conjured many images of all the maladies that might just be sitting around in the dark waiting for me to tread on them. But not a squeak or growl did I hear, cobwebs, yes there were cobwebs galore, but that was to be expected, for what old tunnel in the dark would be complete without a cast of spiders.
The stone is cold and ever so smooth, I cannot tell if it was made that way, or if it has seen the passing of so many searching hands that they have worn it down over time. Either way I am not convinced by Lucy's priests hole theory. This is a Church of England, priests holes were predominantly the realm of catholic churches. I won't mention it though, this does not seem like the kind of time to be scoring points against teacher.
I am uncertain for how much time we have been going down and along, but all of a sudden the dark is not so total. I can see a hand in front of my face, I can see two shadows bobbing along behind me. And slowly but surely there comes to my eyes a faint, glowing orange light.
We emerge into a large underground chamber. Six lanterns flicker without smoke in the walls. The chamber is around twenty metres across. There's a broken table, several piles of straw, a bookshelf bereft of books, and a fireplace which burns happily without intervention from mortal hands.
We look at each other and the chamber in wonder. Several other passages lead away from it, similarly clad in darkness as the way down which we had just come. The walls are smooth stone but the roof is earth and I can see tiny roots here and there hanging down like spindly stalactites.
Lucy and Raj are talking, and gasping in amazed awe at what we have found. But I have no time for awe, something is calling to me, something that speaks louder than the utterances of my friends or the crackling of the fire.
By some force I am drawn across the the room to the bookshelf. I was wrong, it is not lacking in books. A single tome sits there, as my hands touch the ancient leather cover I feel an electrical crackle that is not altogether unpleasant, it is but one of a number of sensations, the predominant one being a feeling that I am being greeted by the oldest of friends. The golden writing on the front is faded but still legible.
The Raven and the Wolf
A tale of real fiction by Atticus Faraday
As my hands turn the pages it feels like I am parting a sea somewhere, and all the majesty that lay beneath the water comes flooding my way.
'If you have found me then I am glad, though what's on these pages may make you sad'
Without a word I go to the fireplace. I sit and I begin to read.