*
Don swam up from unconsciousness towards sunlight. It was tough, tiring work, like throwing off a lead duvet. Shapes loomed from fuzzy oblivion: two bodies, one large and one small, and beyond them a blurred tapestry that could have only been land.
A sound escaped his throat, somewhere between a laugh and a scream. They had made it.
Through heavy-lidded eyes he could only vaguely make out Billy’s figure. But he could make out her chest—rising and falling, rising and falling…
She was alive.
Satisfied, he sank back towards blackness for a while, and rested.
At some point he began struggling up the beach on his hands and knees in a series of bursts that he would later only recall in brief flashes. Somehow, he managed to drag Billy with him, and even to return for the old man.
The inevitable happened just after the three of them had passed the tideline. He began coughing. A single throat-clearing jolt was enough to send his lungs into spasm. He hadn’t the energy to do anything but ball his hands into fists and try to keep his airway free of sputum until it had passed.
Afterwards, he laid gasping, tasting blood, not daring to move. A steady pain was pulsing through his abdomen and his head felt fuzzy, his thoughts distant and diffuse. Between the pain and the disorientating roar of the surf, he lost track of time. Staring down at the sand, he was content to remain there for as long as the day lasted.
On several occasions he oscillated between waking thoughts and vacant darkness. The world would settle into focus for a few moments before darkening, pulling away and vanishing.
After an amount of time that could have been anywhere between a few seconds and several hours, he was strong enough to sit up and look around. The boat was where he had left it down by the water, lying on its side. Their things, however, had been unloaded and set in the dry sand, such that they cast a long shadow over his body.
Billy was beside him, cross-legged in the sand, gazing at the land spread out before her and surveying the coast from end to end. When Don moved into a more dignified position, she started. “You were asleep,” she said.
“What? No, no, I was just tired. You know I get tired a lot at the moment.”
She shook her head, smiling. “You were snoring.”
“I was?” Don looked down at his spread-eagled impression in the sand, firmly set and comically accurate, a strict mould of the contours of his face. “How long?”
Billy looked stricken, and glanced at the pocket watch dangling from his belt. “I don’t know time, Daddy,” she said.
“You can tell time.” Despite his exhaustion, he kept his voice firm and pointed to the sky.
Billy glanced at the sun and hunched her shoulders, shying away from it. “I can’t,” she said.
“Of course you can.”
“I don’t like to. You can do it better with your watch. The sun isn’t as good, you said.”
Don sighed and used their piled supplies to haul himself to his feet. He took a deep breath as a pang of land sickness nauseated him. “Roughly,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “How long, roughly?”
Billy scrunched up her face. After a few hesitant stutters and false starts, she shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Don leaned against the boxes and rested his head in his hands. “Billy, I know that you can tell time. You’ve been able to do it since you could talk.”
She looked unsettled. “I don’t like to,” she said. “I like your watch. I like you to tell time.”
Don caught her glancing at the pocket watch; an intrigued, but distantly frightened look, as though she suspected that it contained untold powers, which only adults had the wisdom to wield.
Don nodded. “Alright,” he said.
She looked pleased to be rid of the conversation, and resumed scanning the coast.
Don attempted to gauge how long had passed himself. There was no question that the shadows had shifted, but the sun was still high in the sky. He decided that it couldn’t have been longer than an hour.
He approached the tideline and craned his neck, trying to peer around a distant peninsula blocking their view to the south. Besides the boat and themselves, there was nothing distinctive about the landscape at all. They alone seemed to break the landscape’s perfect symmetry, caught between the four elements of sky, sea, sand and forest.
“Where are we?” he said.
“New land,” Billy said. “It is New Land, isn’t it, Daddy?”
”I don’t know. Wherever it is, it definitely isn’t home.”
She made a noise of bemusement. “It has a name. Enger Land?”
“England.”
“That’s a funny name. I think Enger Land is better.”
Don straightened when a shadow appeared from the forest and made its way towards them. His momentary shock gave way to recognition as the old man’s unmistakable figure emerged from the shade of the treetops, stumbling and cursing his way across the sand. After what seemed like an age, he reached them. Dropping an armful of dried wood in front of them, he dusted his hands and gestured to it with a cry of satisfaction.
“What’s this?” Don said, inspecting a twisted lump of dried root.
“Fuel, dear boy.”
“Good.”
“We’ll stay here for the night. There’s no sense in wandering now. We’ll only get lost.”
Don looked around at the barren dunes. “We’ll be seen,” he said. “The beach is too open. We should move inland.”
The old man gestured to the trees. “There’s nobody there.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Past the trees, there are more trees. That forest is thick…it looks like it goes on for miles. There isn’t a break in sight.”
“So?”
“So? No water, no room, no animals. There’s no reason for anybody to be anywhere near here. So we’ll stay the night.”
Don thought of arguing—wanted to argue—but the old man had already set about constructing a plateau in the sand upon which to build their fire. He avoided Billy’s eye and started helping the old man without another word.
Once a nest of flames was crackling in the sand, the three of them stretched out beside it in silence, listening to the surf as the sun began its long descent. After a while, the old man brought out a small pile of bruised fruit. They cut it into slices, perhaps too thin in an effort to make it last, but it was still far from a satisfying meal.
The old man threw a spare stick into the flames and let loose a high-pitched titter. “We were aiming for Bristol, but I climbed a hill on the other side of the trees… I don’t see anything.
“I think we must have overshot. The winds were against us. They must’ve won, pulled us around the head of Cornwall and into the Channel.” He lapsed into silence, but still looked troubled.
Don waited a few moments before prompting him. “Where are we, then?”
The old man thrust out his bottom lip and shook his head. “I don’t recognise this coastline. We were drifting for a whole day.” He laughed again, but there was no humour in it. “Portsmouth? Brighton? Maybe even Hastings… I don’t know.”
He looked unsettled for a moment longer, then his face cleared, and a thin smile touched his lips. “Still, spilt milk and all that—”
Whatever that meant, Don thought.
“We’re here. That’s all that matters. We should just get some sleep and see what we find tomorrow.” He lay down and closed his eyes.
They lapsed into silence.
Don lay with his back to the sea and kept watch over the trees, unable to shake the creeping sensation that had settled along the back of his neck.
Billy sat beside him, twiddling the remains of the matchstick they had used between her fingers as her eyelids grew heavier. She inspected the charred tip, her brow furrowed, and said, “How do you make matches?”
Don smiled. “Will you ever stop asking questions?” he said.
“I don’t know. Maybe when I know everything, l
ike you and Grandpa.”
Don settled into the sand and gazed at the sky. “I have no idea how to make matches,” he said.
Billy recoiled. Her face contorted, as though she’d tasted something bitter. “What?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you know everything.”
“No.”
Billy looked at the match, offended by its existence. She turned it over in her hands and threw occasional glances in his direction. “If you don’t know how to make matches, then how do we have them?”
“We found them.”
“Who made them?”
“Others.”
Billy looked about. “Where are they?”
“Gone.”
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know.”
Billy seemed confused by the concept of there being knowledge that Don didn’t have immediate access to.
“You need phosphorus and potassium chlorate to make matches,” the old man said without warning. His eyes were closed, but his voice was strong and awake. He sounded amused by the turn of events.
Billy looked at the old man and then back to Don. “You lied?”
Don blinked, taken aback. “No.”
“You do know everything.”
“No.”
“Grandpa knows how to make matches.”
Don leaned over and pulled her towards him. “Grandpa’s older than I am, and so he knows more than I do.”
“How does he know more?”
“He asked his father questions, like I asked him questions and like you ask me questions. But I never asked him how to make matches.”
What Don failed to mention was that his father had survived the end of the Old World. Billy knew nothing of it. To her, their lives were merely the latest in an eternal struggle for survival in a world full of inanimate knickknacks.
It was better that way, and Don had done his best to safeguard her ignorance.
“Oh.” She looked at the old man, who now looked as though he could be asleep. “How old is Grandpa?”
She looked fascinated. Don suspected that, so far as she was concerned, her grandfather had been present at the creation of the world.
“Almost seventy, so far as I know.”
Billy looked horrified that the old man had been forced to live for such an inordinate length of time. “Does he know everything?”
“No, nobody knows everything.”
“But he knows a lot?”
“He’s a gifted man.”
“Who gave him his gift?”
Don’s patience was waning, and he was beginning to slip away towards sleep. “Nobody, he was born that way.”
Billy seemed to be following suit, yet her mouth continued to work, as though independent of her mind. Just when he thought she might have drifted off, she turned towards the fire and sighed. “New Land looks like home,” she said.
Don grunted, on the edge of sleep. “What were you expecting?” he said.
“I don’t know. Something different, maybe.”
A few minutes later, the pace of her breathing relaxed. She was out.
Don hauled himself into a seated position to stoke the fire, barely suppressing a coughing fit. Once certain the flames would burn for a while longer, he curled around Billy, smelling traces of lemon in her hair—her mother’s scent—as sleep overtook him.
He dreamed of better times.
THIRD INTERLUDE
The storm had descended within moments. Alex lost his footing upon the crest of the largest hill for miles and crashed to the bottom of a steep ravine. While his face was smeared with thick, stinking mud, thunder clapped above. He clung to his bag, toppling end over end, until flung face first against waterlogged rock. Gasping, he stared up at the blackened clouds as his battered body sang with fresh agony.
The dog was beside him moments later, yelping in distress, but her cries were barely audible over the roar of the heavens. She tugged at the hem of his trousers until he waved her away.
He groaned and turned over, staring along the ravine and out over the surrounding moorland. Naked granite boulders set in boggy fields of windswept heath were already drowned under an inch of water.
The hills were now skewed by perspective such that they bore down on him on either side, rendered monstrous cliffs.
Beneath a flash of lightning he blundered along the ravine, following the cascading rainwater. His clothes were heavy rags, clinging to his skin. His bag, having been carefully protected, was the only thing that hadn’t been ruined.
After ten minutes, through the enshrouding haze he saw the cottage. Perched atop a distant rise, visible in silhouette only, the oasis seemed to beckon him, welcoming him with open arms.
As he drew closer, the storm grew fiercer, tearing at his clothes, trying to rip him from the side of the hill. After what seemed like an eternity he left the ravine and reached the hilltop upon which the cottage rested. He approached, uncertain.
Uneven whitewashed walls, crooked beams and windows cut into diamond lites by diagonal muntins sat beneath a low, thatched roof. An encircling picket fence guarded a garden of hardy plants against the moorland, failing to quite disguise the crumbling remains of an outdoor privy. The gate flapped in the wind, dragging against a skeletal patch of feather grass, and the door had been left slightly ajar.
Alex paused. It was a stark contrast to its formerly pleasant silhouette. Up close it was decrepit, creaking, unsettled.
The dog seemed to sense his hesitation. She had ceased her yelping and stood beside him, low on her haunches, eyeing the cottage with suspicion.
He stood beyond the gate with the rain crashing down upon him and called out to the storm, “Hello!”
Only a rolling thunderclap answered.
He took a last glance around at the barren moor before pushing his way through the gate and across the threshold.
Inside, all was damp and cold and darkness. An unpleasant, musty smell filled his nose. He faced a fireplace, set against a far wall, nestled within a ring of threadbare furniture. Edging inside, he closed the door against the storm. It snapped shut with a reverberating rattle, an ugly sound that hung in the air, taunting him, jangling in the recesses of distant rooms.
Alex remained still as he acclimatised, his senses overloaded from fighting the storm. His skin danced with the ghosts of raindrops and his cheeks throbbed as blood began to return to them.
The dog, having tired of his reservations, scrambled forwards, spinning in tight circles by the fireplace, spraying the walls with rainwater. Once dry, she set about prowling the periphery of the room, sniffing each object in turn.
Alex staggered after her, leaving long streaks of mud on bowed hardwood floorboards. Besides the squelch of his footsteps and the hum of the rain against the thatch, the cottage was noiseless. He had grown used to quiet homes, but here the silence still sat awkwardly, draped like a blanket over every surface.
“Hello?” he called again. Only a cracked, uneven echo returned from the farthest rooms.
He lingered a moment longer before advancing into the living room and, satisfied that he was alone, tore his dripping jacket from his shoulders. He cast it away into the kitchen, along with his boots and pullover, and then dropped into the nearest armchair.
Exhaustion swept over him immediately. His eyes drooped despite the cold, and he sank low into the cushions. A blissful sensation swept through him, drawing him towards sleep.
He decided he would stay in the chair for a little while, rest for a minute—just a minute—and then get himself dry…
Had a scream not cut through the silence like a lance, he would have fallen asleep without another thought. But it did come, with such suddenness that he was on his feet and standing before the door of the nearest bedroom before he’d had time to do anything but utter a wordless cry.
When his weary mind caught up with his body, however, his blood ran cold. Broken and riddled with a low-pitched gargle, t
he cry was unmistakably that of a baby.
Panic, raw and primal, surged in his gut. His bones suddenly felt brittle, and bile was rising into his throat. He looked at the closed door before him, listening to the choked, screeching wail, aghast.
His hand reached for the handle of its own accord and pushed the door open. He was left looking in at a darkened room, sweat pouring from his forehead and mingling with the rainwater upon his crown.
The room was as dim and dull as the fireside, but the air was drier, and had a foul odour about it, one that tickled the back of his throat.
Panic was on the verge of overcoming him, and his legs had tensed, preparing to send him running. But then the wailing reached a new crescendo, plastering him to the spot.
Lying beside an unmade bed—upon the pillows of which rested a pair of sleeping masks and the collars of empty pyjamas—was a pine cot, smothered in a nest of blankets, from which rose a pudgy fist.
Alex approached on shaking legs. He was desperate to escape—to hurl himself back into the storm and take his chances with hypothermia—but still he approached on shaking knees, staring open-mouthed at the cot’s occupant.
A pair of green eyes, insectivorous in proportion, gazed up at him. The infant clasped its hands together with a blank expression on its face, blinking. Alex felt a thud deep within his chest, unable to break its gaze. Neither of them moved again for what seemed like an age, growing accustomed to each other’s presence.
The infant must have been in the cot for days, and during that time clearly hadn’t been fed, changed, or had anything to drink. On closer inspection, he saw that it was closer to a toddler than a baby. It had appeared so small at first due to dehydration; it was almost pruned, with colourless lips and sunken eye sockets. He was certain that it would be unable to move to save its life, let alone stand.
He bounded from the room in search of water. His mind was still too shocked to offer up thoughts of any clarity, but his limbs were content to operate under their own power, marching him into the kitchen to remove any containers from the cupboards. He then carried an armful out to the garden to fill in the rain.
By the time he fled back inside, he was shivering, and could do no more until he had hunted for replacement clothing. Also draping a thick duvet from the spare room over his shoulders, he proceeded to carry out his tasks with at least some semblance of comfort.
Having grown bored with exploring, the dog had slumped down on the floor beside the armchair, and watched him with faint curiosity.
In the study he found thick piles of tax returns that would be of little use to their owner now, ideal fuel. He hauled them to the living room fireplace and dumped them into the sooty grate. By the time he’d fished his matches from the depths of his bag and the flames had caught hold, the toddler’s cries had begun to weaken. The sound of its slurring, half-uttered whimpers was far worse than the previous wailing.
He stoked the flames for just long enough to be sure that they wouldn’t go out, and rushed back to the bedroom. At the sight of him, the infant’s wailing resumed. Desperation now filled its eyes, and it proceeded to work itself into a state of giddiness, crying with such force that its face turned a shade of puce.
Alex reached down and wrapped his arms around it, retching at the stench. He was shocked by how cold it was to the touch, how rubbery its skin felt against his, how feebly it held its head—how very close it was to death.
He hurried to the fireplace, where he set the child down, throwing off the duvet hanging around his shoulders and building a kind of nest in which to settle the wriggling creature. Sliding the nest along the floor until he was certain that the child wasn’t in danger of rolling into the grate, he coaxed the fire to full life and stood back.
The warmth stemmed the child’s cries, but only for a moment, during which time it glanced into the flickering flames, its eyes bulging with wonder. But then a strange expression crossed its face—perhaps as it had remembered it had a good deal more crying to do—and then resumed its wailing.
Shivering once again—the time taken to light the fire had been enough for the chill of the storm to have eaten its way to his bones—and now also cursing, Alex dashed back out into the rain. He collected as many of the filled containers as he could manage, returning with a gust of wind at his heels.
Searching the kitchen until he came across a suitable bottle complete with a plastic teat, he filled it with rainwater. He set it beside the fire to warm and took the infant into his arms, swaying it experimentally. It had no effect. The wailing continued.
It was some minutes—minutes full of mind-withering screams and hacking cries—before the water was fit to drink. When he finally pressed the bottle against its mouth, it latched onto the teat with astonishing zeal and began to squelch away, its eyes fixed upon his in an eternal stare.
He laid it back into its nest with the bottle, knowing that the peace would only last until the water ran out, and filled another from the containers, setting it beside the fire.
He changed his clothes once more and searched the bedroom until he found the child’s compartment in the wardrobe. Picking out whichever items he thought suitable, he took a pile to the living room.
He returned just as the child drained the bottle, and the wet squelching sound shifted to a dry whistle. Before the wailing could resume, he replaced the empty bottle with the new one. The squelching began in earnest once more.
Leaving the pile of clothes beside the fire, he wandered away to assess the cottage. He tried the telephone and heard nothing, no dial tone or noise of any kind, just as with every other he’d tried since…since that day.
How long had it been now? Three days? A week? More?
A laptop left on the coffee table was unresponsive to every attempt he made to bring it to life. When he shook it, he heard only a rolling hiss, and was at once certain that the innards had disintegrated into dust.
The lights, however, still worked. He wondered how long the power grid could operate on its own, without anybody to maintain it. He guessed they had a few days, maybe less.
He’d have to find some candles; it was going to get dark at night.
In the study he rifled through cheque books, utility bills and bank statements addressed to William and Martha Chadwick—who he supposed had been the ones wearing the sleep masks and pyjamas in bed before vanishing, leaving their child to wilt in its crib, alone. On the desk he found a book containing the child’s birth certificate, first handprints and suchlike. He took it into the living room and sat down in the armchair to read while the toddler rolled in the blankets, drinking in great gulps. Already, he noticed, colour had returned to its lips, and it looked a good deal stronger.
The birth certificate named the child as James William Chadwick. He flipped through the baby book to find a large, colour photograph of the toddler bundled into the arms of a beaming couple in their forties. Together, they all smiled giddily out at him.
James Chadwick spat the empty bottle from his lips and belched explosively. He smacked his lips for a while and then, after some reflection, began wailing once more. His skin regained its vile puce colour within moments.
The dog seemed as annoyed by the noise as Alex. Groaning, it rose to its feet and slumped away to the bedroom in search of quiet.
Alex steeled himself and approached James, kneeling down beside the fire. Taking a gulp of air, he unfastened the boy’s rotten nappy, praying that his shaking fingers wouldn’t slip. James refused to help his chances, and wriggled in his grip, screaming all the while.
After being changed, dressed in fresh clothes and given yet another bottle of water, James promptly urinated. Hydrated and warmed, he now screamed only louder and seemed on the verge of struggling from the nest of duvets to run rampant.
Alex dashed away to the refrigerator, and was pushing his way through its contents, throwing aside pieces of pungent cheese and curdled yoghurt, before he realised that the box was at room temperature. It was just as broken as the
phone and computer.
He cursed and began opening cupboards at random, staring at tins of corned beef and bottles of ketchup with a sinking heart.
There didn’t seem to be any baby food. Of course there would be, somewhere. But how long would it take to find?
“Do you eat food?” he shouted over the roar of the rain.
The toddler glared at him and then returned to its busy schedule of rolling and screaming.
“Food,” Alex repeated, dragging out the syllable until the consonants were lost in a sea of supplementary vowels. “Fooooood?”
Again, James appeared nonplussed by the sound of his voice. This time he didn’t even stop crying to listen.
A banana eventually became the most serviceable meal to Alex’s eyes, mashed viciously with the back of a spoon and spilled into a bowl. After having the pap placed before him, James wasted no time in placing his hand into the bowl and smearing its innards across his cheeks and past his gums.
The screaming, it seemed, had ceased for the time being. Alex collapsed onto the floorboards beside him and let loose a long sigh. With his hands extended out towards the fire, he slowly warmed himself on the living room floor. Once the chill had left his bones, he sat forwards to observe James finish the banana paste.
James smacked his lips together and sucked on his fingers with glazed, satisfied eyes.
Alex couldn’t help but smile at the clumsy and yet deliberate way in which he conducted himself, as though great intelligence was concealed behind the blankness of his features.
Overcome by sudden and all-consuming affection, he leaned towards the boy and muttered into his ear, “Hello, James. I’m Alex.”
IX
Billy stared into the light of the fire. Grandpa was singing to her. Her eyes lolled, half-closed, and her heart seemed to beat to the rhythm of his voice:
“Oranges and lemons, Say the bells of St. Clement’s…”
She sank further towards sleep. Her lips formed the silent words, ‘You owe me three farthings’ in perfect unison with those he sang aloud. The blankets enveloped her, and within moments she was barely aware of anything else. She was on the verge of sleep when her stomach rumbled explosively.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
Daddy’s tired sigh rang out from somewhere nearby. “I know, we’re all hungry, Billy. We have to save our food. We don’t know when we’ll be able to get more.”
Billy nodded, but her stomach kept grumbling nonetheless. “We need to get more soon,” she said.
“I know. There isn’t any here.”
She didn’t understand. Food had grown all over the place back at home. She had collected her own breakfast from the berry bushes behind their house since she had been able to walk.
Not this year, though. This year there had been none. They had gone hungry—so hungry that there hadn’t been enough to go around for the four of them, not enough by half. Billy had been scared, not just by how Daddy and Grandpa would leave home for days to find them a meal, but by Ma.
Ma had started sneaking her food away at mealtimes. After dark, she’d come to Billy’s room and force her to eat it. Eat it all.
Billy had begged her to stop, to take it back—to eat just a spoonful herself.
But she hadn’t stopped. She had forced Billy to eat every bite, day after day. When Daddy had asked why she was getting so thin, she had lied—lied to his face. Billy knew that had hurt her bad. She had seen her crying after telling a lie one morning. As the winter had worn on, and the forests had turned black, she had forked over her share again and again, wasting away before Billy’s eyes.
When she had finally gotten sick, she had been too weak to put up much of a fight.
Billy’s heart ached, just as it had done each day since they had buried Ma in the barley fields behind their house. But tonight her rumbling stomach hurt just as much as the heartache. Maybe more.
New Land seemed to have even less food than home. In fact, she had seen none at all. She, Daddy and Grandpa had been walking since dawn, having left the beach and headed inland, and seen nothing but abandoned towns, rotten crops, and bones.
She no longer dared guess how far they had come.
“Where has it all gone?” she asked.
There was a silence, during which she refused to look away from the fire. The campsite was full of ominous, angular shapes, spread in a recess at the edge of an endless stretch of lifeless meadows.
“I don’t know,” Daddy said.
Billy hugged her knees closer and sighed, settling back into her bundle of blankets. Grandpa said nothing for a while, and then began to sing once more, quietly at first but then louder, until eventually he was back in full swing, as though nothing had happened:
“When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey…”
Billy continued to mime the words along with him as she once again sank towards a black abyss, her hunger almost forgotten in the wake of his gentle voice.
After a while, Daddy joined in. At first, he was quiet like Grandpa had been, and his voice was rough—his coughing had made his voice hoarse as the day had worn on—but after only a few moments he too sang merrily, and Billy smiled.
She soon stopped miming and sang along with them, watching the blood-red ghosts of dancing flames through her closed eyelids. Together, the three of them overwhelmed the crackling of the fire, the singing of the insects, and the barren whistle of New Land’s winds; they could have been back at home, where they belonged. There were no meadows, no foreign skyline, and no hunger. Just the three of them, and their singing.
After all their tunes had run their course, their voices petered out until, once again, Grandpa sang alone. His tone, however, was undiminished. Billy wondered for how long he could go on before even he tired of it, but then remembered that Grandpa was so old that, to him, years were probably like minutes.
She hoped that it wouldn’t be years before Oranges and Lemons stopped filling her ears.
Sleep still eluded her. Occasionally she fell towards it in great swooping dives, but would return to wakefulness at the last moment. Something other than her empty stomach was keeping her awake, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.
After a while she turned onto her back and looked up at the night sky.
The stars twinkled and fizzed above like fireflies. She wondered how many people had looked upon them in times past, and how many were doing so at that very moment.
There was a rustling in the grass nearby, and then a shadow crept up and lay down in the grass beside her. Daddy’s distinctive cheekbones were cast in silhouette against the sky. She snuggled against his chest and looked back at the heavens while Grandpa continued to sing.
“What are they?” she whispered.
“Stars?”
“Yes.”
He uttered a formless grunt, and cleared his throat. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It means that I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
On the other side of the fire, Grandpa stopped singing Oranges and Lemons, and began to mutter the words of Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
“Is he drunk?” Billy asked.
“No, he’s just old.”
“Does he know what stars are?”
“Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky…”
Daddy shuffled in the grass—Billy suspected that he was looking at Grandpa over the fire—and then settled beside her again. “Probably,” he said.
“Should we ask him?”
“I think we should just let him sing. We’ll ask him another time.”
“Okay.” As Billy stared at the stars, she began to see the outlines of bunnies and dragons in their midst. Then a thought occurred to her. She turned to Daddy, whose face was a black mask against the glow of the fire, and said, “Where does Grandpa get his songs?”
Even though it was dark, she knew he was laughing at her. “I’ll eat my hat on the
day you stop asking questions,” he said.
“Why would you eat your hat?”
Instead of answering, Daddy only laughed harder. He didn’t stop until he was wheezing. “It’s a figure of speech,” he said finally.
“Where did it come from? I’ve never heard that one before.”
Daddy sniffed and raised his hands. “Where does anything come from? What you know, you got from me, and what I know I got from Grandpa, and so on.”
Billy leaned back, dissatisfied. From the words ‘so on’, all she could surmise was that Grandpa had simply been gifted with every shred of knowledge at the beginning of time. It was the only way that made sense.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are…,” Grandpa muttered, and grew silent.
Daddy looped an arm over her, and the two of them enjoyed a brief lull, during which only the sound of their breathing and the crackling of the fire reached their ears.
And then Grandpa started over with Oranges and Lemons, apparently resigned to go on until dawn—or until they gagged him.
“Are we going to find some food soon?” Billy asked.
Daddy was quiet for a long time, allowing Grandpa’s singing to fill the silence.
“Daddy?”
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “I promise.”
“We’ll find food?”
He ruffled her hair. “Of course we will!”
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
Billy nodded. A weight had lifted from her chest. She now thought only of Grandpa’s words, and how firmly Daddy’s arm was coiled around her. As she finally fell towards the depths of sleep, the faintest cosy warmth burned in her belly.
Then the attack came. Had it not been for Grandpa’s abrupt silence, she would have had no warning. So close to black oblivion, she had very little sense of it. In one moment she was curled up on the floor, the next she was flung into the air. Then she was running and screaming. In a single moment, from peaceful silence to the deafening score of battle.
“DONALD!” Grandpa roared.
In the darkness, Billy waved her arms wildly, blinded. The fire was the only source of light, flickering somewhere in her peripheral vision, its embers having spilled into the grass. Figures darted before it, black profiles outlined against the dying conflagration. Somewhere in the darkness, people were fighting for their lives.
Amidst the din, Billy stumbled and screamed, “Daddy!” Her sobbing voice fell short in the cacophony, a mere overtone to the chaos.
A towering body rushed by, so close that a gust of air whistled against her ears. A moment later there was a thump somewhere in the dark as it impacted something unseen. She could hear Daddy shouting, but couldn’t tell what he was saying.
She wandered into the darkness with her hands stretched out before her, blinded further by tears that sprung from her eyes in torrential rivers. She managed only a few steps before another body passed close by, this time colliding with her and sending her flying through the air. She crashed into the grass while a horrible smell filled her nostrils: unwashed skin and rotten breath.
She was standing again almost immediately, groping thin air once more. She skirted the edge of the fire, which was by now dying in the dirt, blinking as her night vision began to develop.
The scuffling had grown quieter, but she could sense that she was in no less danger. As the night came into focus, she began to see the outlines of half a dozen figures, struggling on the ground. There was no way to tell one from another.
“Daddy!” she screamed.
At the sound of her voice, one of the figures looked up. A moment later it was struck across the head by the figure beneath it and toppled into the grass. The victor stumbled to his feet and dashed towards her, arms outstretched.
Billy recoiled and flailed before the figure’s shadowed mask resolved into the angular profile of Daddy’s face. A wordless cry escaped her mouth as she flung herself into his arms. “Where’s Grandpa?” she stammered.
Two people lay unmoving in the grass, but three more still struggled and thrashed some distance away. Grandpa was in there somewhere, but there was no telling which figure was his. Daddy took hold of her shoulders and turned her head so that she stared into his eyes.
“You stay here,” he said.
“But—”
“You stay!”
She nodded, and he dived headlong into the fray. From then on any distinguishing features blurred into nothing more than a stifled struggle between shadows.
“Daddy! Grandpa!” she wailed.
But this time her cries didn’t bring Daddy running back. After half a minute, somebody else toppled into the grass, but by that time one of the fallen figures had regained its footing. The fight continued with equal ferocity.
From her left came Grandpa’s voice, “Donald!”
From her right, Daddy’s choked reply, “Dad!”
In the darkness, a woman shrieked, momentarily visible as she flew over the fire’s remains. She crashed into the grass and moved no more.
The odds had turned, and the fight broke. Four of the figures had bunched together, flailing on the ground. Two others remained in the grass, unmoving.
Two further shadows dragged each other to their feet and dashed to the side. Once clear, they paused and turned to her. “Billy!”
She ran to them, skirting the fallen menaces. Strong arms gripped her, Daddy’s face flashed somewhere above, and then she was being dragged through the grass.
Grandpa puffed alongside—a single bag slung over his shoulder—but he soon fell behind, limping badly. He stopped and started, faltering, and could then only take a few steps at a time.
Daddy let go of Billy and ran back to him, looping an arm over his shoulder and hauling him along. Billy ran alongside them, crying, and Daddy hushed her as they crashed into the forest at the meadow’s edge.
At the very same moment the moon crested the horizon, and the first of its silver beams thrust through the canopy, throwing their cover of darkness to the wind. Billy tripped over the roots of trees and ducked beneath overhanging branches, struggling to keep pace. The forest, now dressed in a steely veil, was dark and yet blinding, gnarled and terrifying.
Behind them, their attackers plunged into the trees’ midst and gave chase, taking far less care with how much noise they made, breaking fronds and branches in great swathes. It sounded as though a great, grumbling monster was in pursuit.
With Grandpa’s limp slowing them down, they would be caught in moments. Already Billy could feel a creeping along the back of her neck.
Daddy jabbed her chest and pointed towards a rocky outcrop, silver-white in the glare of a dense patch of moonbeams. It was cragged and riddled with fissures, in such a way that its shadowed crevices would make ideal hiding places. He gripped her arm and plucked her into the air, planting her feet atop the nearest rock. She leapt out upon the archipelago of boulders and bluffs, painfully aware that one slip would break her ankle, and headed towards the deepest cleft in sight.
Grandpa scrambled after her while Daddy glanced over his shoulder at the approaching shadows. “Hurry up!” he whispered.
The three of them bounded towards the cleft, which turned out to be at least six feet deep, and wedged themselves in place. In the sudden stillness their exhalations were deafening.
Billy tried to slow her thundering heart and wiped cold rivers of tears from her cheeks. “Daddy!” she whimpered. He hushed her, but she couldn’t help it. Terror was rising in her chest in waves. “Daddy!”
He took hold of her arm and held it tight. The fear burned lower—just enough to let her take control of herself.
The heady stink of rotting mulch and mildew swam around her, clawing at the delicate flesh at the top of her nose, and something that moved too fast and had too many legs was crawling along her thigh.
But now she scarcely noticed. All her attention was focused on the darkness beyond their hiding place.
Less tha
n a minute later, their pursuers arrived at the outcrop. The group of shadows skidded to a halt at the lip of a sharp decline—which lay just beyond the rocks, leading some fifty feet down to an empty streambed—and bent double, catching their breath and cursing.
Billy made not a sound. Her lungs burned, begging for air, but she resisted the urge to gasp—though that did nothing to stop her heart pounding in her chest. Beside her, she sensed Daddy and Grandpa holding their breath. Together, they peered at the steaming shadows as kittens would spy a prowling fox.
As their attackers regained their composure, they began to scan the streambed and the forest beyond. But they didn’t throw a single glance in the direction of the outcrop.
There was a moment when Billy thought they had escaped, a moment in which elation and relief dared to flare up amidst the terror.
But then Daddy’s grip upon her arm became vice-like, hard enough to make her wince. In the moonlight, his darkened features were furrowed and his eyes were wide with horror. Billy nudged him to get his attention, but he had begun to shake.
And then, to Billy’s disbelief, he coughed explosively. His grip upon her arm paralysed her. During the ensuing seconds she could only watch while he bent double and set about great bellowing gargles.
“Don!” Grandpa hissed.
Billy watched as Daddy clamped his hands over his mouth to stifle the sound, but it was far too late. The attackers had turned towards the outcrop and dropped into feline stances, half-crouched amidst the chrome-plated woodland.
“Come out!” sang a high, feminine voice, almost sweet, and yet chilling, without a trace of feeling. Another bout of Daddy’s coughing answered.
The shadows began to creep forwards, as though sensing weakness. The manner in which they moved pulled a string deep in Billy’s mind, one that sensed something unmistakably predatory.
“We know you’re there.” The woman again, her voice a chilling jeer.
Daddy was holding his chest, groaning. His grip on Billy’s arm had redoubled, and Billy was forced to bite her lip to stop herself crying out. He bent low and gasped while the shadows grew closer.
“Donald, run,” Grandpa said. His voice was no longer a whisper. He swung the bag down from his shoulder and pressed it into Daddy’s lap, patting him on the shoulder.
“We can’t,” Daddy gasped. “Your leg.”
But as he spoke, Grandpa was climbing out from the fissure, onto the cragged bluffs. Before Daddy or Billy could utter a word of protest, he gave a huge roar and surged towards the looming pursuers, who merely stood in his path, stunned. He spread his arms and caught them all in his reach. Colliding with them at chest level, he sent them all hurtling over the lip of the hill.
“Dad!” Daddy cried. He was on his feet and had climbed to the other side of the rocks before Billy had had time to react at all. He skidded to a halt at the precipitous edge and bellowed down at the streambed.
From below came Grandpa’s voice, weak and stifled, “Run!”
Billy now stood beside Daddy, but had no memory of having moved from the outcrop; everything was being blurred by instinct and terror. Together, the two of them searched for Grandpa amongst the darkness.
As they watched, the shadows materialised below and proceeded to race over the moonlit streambed. They converged on a huddled figure, and seconds later Grandpa’s voice filled the air once more. This time, however, he yelled only in pain.
“DA—!” Daddy bellowed, but his voice caught in his throat and he doubled over, wheezing as another coughing fit overtook him.
“We have to help him!” Billy shrieked, and leapt over the lip of the hill. For a moment she felt wind on her face as she fell into blackness, but then she ground to a halt in midair, held aloft by Daddy’s arms. She thrashed and kicked in his grasp, squealing in protest as she was lifted back to even ground.
“Donald!” Grandpa wailed. By now he was crying out every other moment, and his voice was slurred. “Run! Take Billy! Run!”
After a further moment of crying out, Daddy stopped.
Billy continued to thrash, shouting for him to help her save Grandpa from the shadows. But instead he slowly stepped back from the decline, and whispered in her ear, “We have to go.”
Billy saw silver tears glowing on his cheeks.
“No! No, we go down. We have to get Grandpa!”
He didn’t answer. He only looked at her, and in that moment Billy realised that there would be no saving anyone.
She flailed in his grasp, but could do nothing against his iron grip. He was lifting their bag from the crevice and heading back towards the campsite. All the while, she twisted and kicked beneath him, hauled backwards through the dirt by her collar.
She wailed at the sound of Grandpa crying out in the night as monstrous shadows stamped at his body. “Daddy, what are you doing? We have to go back! Grandpa—Daddy, no, wait, please—GRANDPA!”
Her screams echoed in the forest for a long time.