Tide of Souls, page 28
Some of the things are inside the nearest farmhouse. They're in the front room. I stop and look.
They're staring at the walls, looking around the way someone waking up after a long drunk might try to take stock, to understand where he is and what's happened. Take it from me on this one; I speak from long experience.
Another stands in front of the mantelpiece, staring at the pictures along it. It picks one up, holding it upside down, its head cocked to one side.
One of the sheep-eaters looks up from its feast. It's a fresh one, not covered in the mould yet. Blood smears its face. An eye has burst; the socket glows. The other eye burns dully, like a grimy light bulb. Its clothes are soiled with blood. So are its hands. Some of the blood might be its own; in places the clothing is ripped open. Its stomach is an empty cavity. The meat it's been chewing drops out of it onto the ground.
The other sheep-eaters are staring at me too. Another stands in the farmhouse door, watching. The ones in the living room are staring out through the glass, even the one with the photograph. It falls from its hands. Glass shatters.
Stop dawdling. Stop mooning. Go. Go now.
Is that my own thought, or the message in their eyes? Or someone else, calling me? I start walking again. They part to let me through, dead flesh brushing mine. I pass without incident, but feel their eyes on my back as I walk on.
When I woke next morning, I rolled over to see Katja with her foot braced on the opposite divan, lacing up a boot. It was one of mine.
"Where did you get those?"
She looked over at me. "We're the same size," she said. "I didn't think you'd mind. You've a few pairs. Is that OK?"
"Sure." Then I noticed something else. "Your hair..."
She half-smiled and ruffled it; she'd cropped it short. "I thought it was time for a change of image."
"OK," I said, feeling stupid and slow.
Katja sat on the divan and faced me. "I want to know what you know, if I can. Not for McTarn or the others. For me. I need to make myself useful around here. Otherwise, all I'll be, sooner or later, is another hole to fuck." Her face went hard, her voice too. "And I will not go through that again." She took a deep breath and relaxed. "I'm going to McTarn now - see what else I can do to help. I can use a gun. I can fight. I think he might find that useful, don't you?"
"Yes," I mumbled. I felt betrayed. Weak. I couldn't look at her.
Then I felt her hand squeeze mine. Surprised, I looked up. "Last night," she said. "You liked that, didn't you?"
I nodded. I couldn't meet her eyes.
"I have no problem giving you what comfort I can. If that's what you want. In exchange, you tell me what you can."
"Difficult," I said. "Hurts when I try."
"Try," she said. "It's all I ask. Alright?"
"Alright," I said.
She stood, hands on hips. "How do I look?"
I almost said beautiful, then realised it was the last thing she'd want to hear. "Like someone you shouldn't mess with."
She smiled. The first real smile I'd seen her give, and it was all mine. It lit her face up, and I could see what she'd been trying to hide ever since arriving. "Good answer," she said. "See you later."
The narrow footpath leads along a twisting, sunken stream. From the banks, trees lean over the waters, branches splayed out like twisted hands, roots writhing free of the earth as if poised to strike. One has fallen in the stream. The chill waters wash and lap over it.
It's quite painful now. Every step brings fresh agony from my knees and hips.
I dig a quarter-bottle of Bell's from a pouch in the wetsuit, and take a deep swallow. The liquor burns its way down to my gut. The joint pain loses some of its edge.
Not far now.
Drinking alcohol before diving is a very stupid and dangerous thing to do. But in my case, so is diving, full stop.
But then, I'm not coming back from this one. I've always known that.
I haven't seen any of them since the farmhouse, except for a couple in the meadows below them, chasing sheep. They'll go after animals if humans aren't available. Hot blood and living flesh. Something that can sustain the existence the Brain's given them. All that energy's got to come from somewhere.
The path is clear. They must have congregated higher up. Ready for that last big push. Why are they waiting? Maybe because they know I'm coming to them. And maybe not. It'll be dark soon. That'll make it easier for them.
Katja...
I put one foot in front of the other.
Then I hear footsteps. Slow and dragging. They're coming up the path one by one. Single file. Slow, plodding steps; there's no hurry now, no sense expending energy. They're coming straight towards me.
No weapons. Except my knife. No diver leaves home without one. To cut whatever you might get fouled in. I could, maybe, get one of them with a lucky stab, in through the eye sockets, into the brain...
And the others would pull me down and tear me into pieces. Maybe better to use it on myself.
There's nowhere to go. No point, no sense in retreating. If I don't get where I'm going, it's all over. It might be anyway. No guarantees this will work.
I grip the haft of the knife. I've run long enough. Not anymore. Not anymo -
The first has reached me. Literally inches away. It stops, staring into me with empty, glowing eye-sockets. And then it steps sideways off the path and crashes into the stream.
One by one, the others do the same. They clamber along the stream and then back up onto dry land as soon as they're past me.
My luck is holding. Or something is.
I press forward, starting to laugh as they drop out of my path. A couple step aside, up against the chicken wire fence hiving the path off from the field alongside.
I keep going, because I have to.
Katja...
Quid pro quo. That was what she was offering.
Katja would give me what I needed, in exchange for the one thing I couldn't bear to do.
I sat on the divan after she'd gone, and I thought it over long and hard.
What decided it for me, in the end, was the thought of the look she might give me if I said no. Or if I said yes and broke my promise.
Despite her hard-facedness, I had an odd feeling she liked me. I didn't want to lose that.
So, about an hour after she'd gone, I began whispering to myself. I imagined Katja sat there listening, and I started telling her about the Deep Brain.
The voices began rising almost at once, and eventually I had to give up. I flopped back across the divan, moaning. My head rang and throbbed.
I lay there and breathed deep. Then, after a few minutes, I sat up and began again.
By the time Katja came back, I was exhausted and running with sweat, but I was, at least, able to utter those few words when I limped down to the Inn. I was able, at last, to tell someone else about the Deep Brain.
Death is coming. Not the most cheerful way of putting it.
I slumped into my chair afterwards, barely noticing it when Katja came to sit beside me. "Are you alright?" she asked.
I shook my head. "Managed to talk about it. A bit. Difficult. Hurts." I told her about my day. "It hurt like hell, but I managed more than I had before." The pain was bearable now. I wasn't taking directly about the subject, so it dwelt in the background with a vague suggestion of menace.
"I'm proud of you," she said. When I looked, there was something in her face, something I hadn't seen before. Respect? Something like that, maybe. She had some idea, anyway, what it cost me to speak.
She touched my hand. "Why don't you tell me something else now?"
"Like what?"
"Not about these things. Not about this Deep Brain. Tell me something about you, instead."
"Really?"
"Yes. I would like to hear."
So I started talking. I was more than a little hammered by then, so I'm not sure of all of it. I'm pretty sure it was a fairly, maudlin, rambling piece, most likely about my love life. I might have cried a little. I don't remember.
What I do remember is this: her taking my hand, stroking the back of it with her thumb. I didn't dare look up, to see her face, but I felt the warmth of her touch and thought that, perhaps, this was not an act.
I drank myself into a stupor that night, and so I didn't see much of her. Her and McTarn carried me back to the caravan. She came to see me the next morning, and held me a little while.
"Have you tried writing it down?" she asked.
"I did before," I told her. "When I sent in the report. But I destroyed my copies of it. There's nothing here." A pain unrelated to the hangover twinged at my temple.
"Perhaps you could try doing it again?"
"Perhaps."
Over the next fortnight, we spent more and more time together. After a few days, she began to volunteer information about herself. Where she'd come from, what had happened to her, the journey to Pendle. Her voice choked and halted at points; she didn't always meet my eyes, and I think once or twice she wept. Her hand was in mine throughout, and I no longer knew who was giving comfort and who was receiving it.
I make my way down the path where it rejoins the stream, and come out onto Pendle Row. The dead are shambling up; they bump and jostle me as I pass, but none of them offer any direct violence.
I step out into the road. There's more room now.
Smoke's still rising from the burned-out homes. I saw it from a long way off. The Inn is still standing, anyway.
Four of them are in the Pendle Tea Rooms as I pass, sitting at one of the tables. They look up and watch me as I pass, stepping over corpses and pieces of corpses.
The pain stabs at my joints. I sag against a wall, sinking down. The sun is sinking too. I must move on soon. And I will. But I have to rest. Just for a few minutes. I'm almost there.
Katja and I slept together for the first time about a week before she moved in with me.
I'd developed a schedule. After she'd gone for the day, I took pen and paper and wrote for as long as I could. Which usually wasn't very long. I'd have a drink, rest up, and then set to work where I left off. If I was lucky, I managed a third of a page a day.
Destroy it. Destroy it. Destroy it. I would hear a voice whispering that at least once a day, usually as the clamour of the voices rose to new, agonising heights, but always clear above them, and it was always the voice of Ellen Vannin.
But I didn't. I was, after all, used to living with pain.
I didn't talk to Katja about it. It took all my strength to focus on the subject long enough to write the day's quota down. The time I spent with her... that was for me.
"You're nearly done, aren't you?" she asked.
"About halfway," I told her. "But I'll get it finished."
She looked at me, stroked my face. I almost recoiled, it was totally unexpected. I was used to being held, to my brow being stroked as I drifted off. But this? "You are stronger than I thought," she said. "Ben..."
"Yes?"
"If you want to... you know... then we can."
I didn't know what to say. "But... but you said... I thought..."
"It would be..." she took a deep breath. "It would be because I wanted it too."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"But... you were just... I mean, for the information, to be useful..."
"Things change."
It wasn't what you'd expect. You'd expect it to be pretty special, swinging from the chandeliers kind of stuff. I mean, despite my physical state, I knew what to do. Years of experience. And Katja - well, of course, she had a lot of experience too.
But it was different from that. More hesitant. This wasn't about her giving some punter his money's worth, or me showing what a stud I was. We undressed slowly and carefully. I folded back the sheets on the divan and climbed under them; Katja followed. We just lay there for a while, facing each other. I could feel the brush of her bare skin against mine.
"Kiss me."
I leant forward and put my lips to hers. I felt rusty, out of practice. Clumsy. Her too. Kissing was one thing she wasn't into. Each of us was afraid to make the first move, to start things, because we'd been something else before and that wasn't what we wanted to be now.
But once we started, we got there in the end. And, yes. It was good.
Jesus Christ.
It's almost dark. There should be lights coming on in the street. If this was the world we used to live in. But the only lights are from the figures walking up the road.
I stand. Joints scream in pain like rusty hinges. Start walking. Nearly there.
I reach the end of Pendle Row. Cross the bridge onto Barley Road. The road from the village descends and finally disappears, down into the water below. Dead men and women clamber out onto it and totter past me. Dead children. Further out, the converted mill sticks up; beyond it, the top of a drowned white house.
No dead animals, though. Odd. They'll kill and eat animals, and an infected bite'll kill a beast, but it won't come back. I don't know why.
This is it, then.
The night before they destroyed Roughlee, the sea-sounds woke me. Katja was a soft, warm weight beside me on the divan, but I knew we weren't alone.
Above the bed, a dark shadow moving.
Above the bed, two dim green points of light.
Above the bed, the figure leaning down, the glow brightening, and Ellen's grey and rotting face coming down out of the dark, blackened lips peeled back for a snarling kiss.
"Ben."
I screamed. Katja woke. The room was empty. But all I could do was babble it, over and over and over again.
"Ellen. Ellen Vannin. She's found me."
I pull off the boots. Put on the flippers.
I walk down into the water. It laps coldly around my ankles. I can hear the sound of the sea breaking, hear voices moaning and crying. The water rises to my knees, to my thighs, my groin - Fuck! My bollocks have just imploded - then my waist, my chest.
I wet the diving mask and pull it over my eyes and nose, making sure the seal is watertight. Check my tanks.
"Ellen?" I shout it. "Ellen. I'm coming."
And I put the mouthpiece in and for the last time in my life, I dive.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I unclip the diver's light from my belt and shine it ahead as I swim across the flooded road. The surface recedes, further and further above.
Eyes glow in the murk. Then the torch picks out their faces. They swim up, fast. One collides with me, sending me flying into the path of another, and for an instant I think they're turning on me. But they're not. They go past.
I'm feeling the pressure now. The pain begins. Up above me, dark bodies rise through the water, eyes green pinpricks, aiming for the dim, dying light above.
Ellen? Ellen? Where are you? I'm coming to you. This is what you wanted. Isn't it?
Ellen?
"Ben..."
Katja's eyes, bright with tears.
Outside, gunfire. McTarn and the others are further down, making a last attempt to hold the dead back. It's not going to work. We all know that. Why even try?
Because we have to. Because to give in goes against everything we are.
But giving in is what I'm talking about doing.
"You can't," she says.
"I have to," I tell her.
"You don't even know it'll work."
"If it doesn't, we'll be no worse off."
She wipes her eyes. "We'd be together. Don't you want that, at least?"
I take her hands. She pulls them out of my grip. "You know I do."
"Then -"
"I've got to try. It's what McTarn and the others came for."
"Fuck them."
"They came here because they thought I might have an answer. Well, I didn't. I don't now. Just an idea that might work."
"And it'll kill you."
"If it doesn't, those things will. If it does work, some of us might make it." I take her hands again. "You might."
Her eyes squeeze shut. Her lips peel back from her teeth and her head dips forward. "You bastard. God damn you, you bastard."
I grip her hands tightly. She grips back. There is nothing I can say that will stop it hurting. But that's the way of it.
"I'm tired of being a coward, Katja."
"You're not."
"Yes, I am. If I'd gone with Ellen, back at the start, none of this might have happened."
"That's stupid."
"If I'd gone with her, the floods might not have come. Or at least, not - what came with it. All I've done, all my fucking life, is run and hide. And I'm tired of it. Katja, I've got to try."
I hold my arms out to her.
And for the first time, it's me who comforts her.
Ellen?
Is it too late? There's no answer.
From down in the depths comes the breaking of waves. And the voices. Screaming and crying out.
don't want to die
bastards up there in the
air and the light still
breathing
mother
father
brother
sister
my daughter
my son
I strike out. Pressure. Pain. Deeper. Go deeper.
I don't have long. And I don't know what to do. I'm accepting an offer that might not even still be valid.
Ellen?
The valley floor lies open below. Up ahead is the white house.
"Ben?"
I know that voice.
"Ben."
She steps into view, outside the white house. An arm extends, beckons. And then she disappears inside.
I strike down and as I do -
The voices explode into my skull like a grenade bursting, my barriers going down. I can't see straight - can't because I'm not seeing through my own eyes anymore.
