Breeding Ground (18 page)

Katie’s attention had been grabbed by something in the kitchen, and her elfin features sprang to life. “Wow! An aga. How cool is that!” Flicking her hair over one shoulder, she jumped up and down in childish excitement. “I’ll be making coffee, if that’s all right with everyone.”

This time it was my eyebrow that rose. “No problem. You two make house. I’ll get on with the serious business of finding weapons, shall I?”

“Good man.” She winked at me before disappearing, and for a moment my heart skipped a beat. I tried to calm it down, but it was difficult. Possibly the last normal woman in the world, and she was winking at me. And she was gorgeous.

Watching us, Dave managed a wan smile. “Easy, tiger.” With his good arm he helped me off with my pack, resting it against the staircase before tapping me gently on the shoulder. “I’m only kidding, mate. It’s just nice to see some flirting going on. Shows that not everything’s changed.” He leaned against the wall, allowing space for Nigel to pass us, his pack left by the door. There were four more doors ahead of us, and after peering cautiously through the doorway he silently disappeared into one of them. The lack of screams or

162

terrified shouts led me to believe that there was nothing to be concerned about in there.

I searched Dave’s too-pale face, and the question was out before I could help myself. “So, you reckon there might be some flirting going on then? From her side?”

The belly laugh that erupted from him was enough to drag Nigel back out into the slender hallway.

“What is it? What’s going on?” His voice was irritated and he held something behind his back. Glimpsing it briefly, I had a sinking feeling it was a bottle. Dave, however, didn’t notice, still giggling to himself, his head resting against the wall. He slowly let out a sigh. “You wouldn’t get it, mate. Don’t worry about it.” When he opened his eyes again, the contempt he felt for the other man was only too visible and the moment was lost. For a moment we just stood there in awkward silence before Nigel retreated, muttering to himself.

I nodded in the direction of an oak panelled door. “I’ll start in there.” Moving away, I was suddenly glad to have a few minutes alone, the company of strangers vaguely claustrophobic, all of our fear so obvious. Our need for unity, whether we liked each other or not, was just a touch too desperate, and I couldn’t wait for the time when we could settle down and relax slightly, or at least know each other well enough to be able to be honest about our feelings. I hoped we all lived that long.

As it was, it only took a few minutes to conclude my search. The room I’d entered was more formal and better kept than what I’d seen of the rest of the house thus far: the panelling of the door carried into the walls, their darkness offset by the array of shelves

163

filled with books of various coloured spines and the deep red crushed material of the two oversized sofas on either side of the huge fireplace. It stopped me in my stride for a moment or two, its presentability too out of place in comparison with the hallway and what I’d glimpsed of the old kitchen. Perhaps the house had recently changed hands and this was the first room to get a makeover, or perhaps this was the main living and entertaining space and all efforts had been made to preserve its beauty and dignity. It was like a formal drawing room in a manor house.

Shaking myself, I started to examine the surfaces and walls more thoroughly. Musing over its existence wasn’t going to get us anywhere, and again I was reminded about how much more focussed I was going to have to become. I was supposed to be finding muchneeded weapons to protect us, but instead I’d let my mind wander off into unimportant thoughts that had no space in this new life.

I found the plain cabinet I needed behind the door, unlocked. Bingo. Sitting neatly inside, proudly polished and upright were two full-length shotguns. Slightly warily, never having handled any kind of firearm before, I pulled them free. The weight surprised me and I tensed my grip, the long barrels wobbling slightly. John appeared round the door and grinned. “You look like the Terminator. Here, give us one.”

Swivelling it round so that the stock and not the barrel was facing him, I held out my left hand. “Do you know anything about guns?”

He shook his head, and I was pleased that once he was holding it, he looked slightly nervous. “Nope. Not a thing. Are they loaded?”

“Not sure.” Fumbling with the catch at the top I

164

finally cracked it, so that the gun fell open. “Empty. Yours?”

“Empty too. Are there any shells in there?”

The gun cupboard was pretty bare once the weapons themselves had been taken out, with no drawers or hidden compartments. So maybe that’s why the farmer had left it unlocked. Without the bullets, they were pretty harmless. Still, I doubted the gun lobby would have been pleased with this guy. “Nothing.”

“There’s a dead cat in the dining room.” Dave’s face was sweating slightly again as he joined us, but he seemed to be ignoring his pain pretty well for now. “Nigel found one in the den as well. Nothing apparently wrong with them. Just dead where they’re sitting. Weird. Oh, good. You found some guns.”

John disappeared, no doubt his teenage curiosity engaged by the mysteriously dead pets. As much as I was fond of cats, however, the shells were still my main priority.

“Yeah, but no bullets. I’ll go upstairs and have a look. My money’s on them being in the bedroom. I’ll be back in a minute.” Resting the gun against the wall, I went back into the hallway and took the uneven stairs two at a time. Despite knowing that the others were just below me, when I reached the landing and stared at the various doorways spread out ahead I felt a moment of unease that wasn’t helped by the creaking of the old floorboards under my feet.

Unhooking the aerosol from the belt of my trousers, I pulled a lighter from my pocket before checking in each of the rooms. The bathroom was clean and cold and I thanked God that the shower curtain was pulled neatly open and not drawn across the bath, leaving me to wonder what could be hiding behind it.

165

There was a small, sparsely decorated third bedroom, and at the end of the corridor were three more rooms, two without enough clutter to be lived in, and the master bedroom, where the missing occupier obviously lived. A large double bed was covered with a perhaps homemade patchwork quilt, and there was a chair by the window, over which some working clothes had been slung rather than put away in the oversized oak wardrobe. The washing basket was overflowing slightly and I was glad to see no evidence of a woman living here. The dressing table top was free of lipstick and perfume, as the bathroom had been.

I was about to start rummaging when a noise from across the corridor caught my attention, freezing me. I turned around slowly, my heart once again thumping hard. The corridor was empty. Despite the urge I felt to run back down the stairs, I crossed the landing and peered into the large spare room. For a moment there was nothing, and then I heard it again. A crumbling sound.

Keeping against the wall, suddenly very much believing in monsters under the bed, I slid round to the other side of the double to see what was causing it. The sound of dust hitting tiles came again, and this time I could see, with relief, what was causing it. Against the far wall was a small fireplace, probably directly above the one that dominated the lounge on the lower floor, and small bits of soot were coming down from the inside and landing in the grate, the clumps scattering as they hit the hard ground. Small flecks of dark dust had spread on the carpet. Smiling slightly, the muscles in my shoulders relaxed a little. The wind was whipping up again outside and the storm the previous night had probably loosened some of the muck

166

collecting in there. Or birds had taken refuge in it. They still seemed to be surviving pretty well. Not like the cats.

Turning away, I padded back into the main bedroom. There were two bedside cabinets and I pulled open and peered in both. In one was a selection of magazines and videos mainly aimed at the male marketplace, and the other was empty. Ignoring the clutter on the small shelf below the bedroom mirror I pulled open both top drawers of the large chest. One held neatly folded underwear and paired socks, but it was the other one that made me smile. There were four large boxes of cartridges, and lifting the lid to check if they were full, my grin stretched to see the metal gleaming back at me.

“Got them!” I yelled, pulling the boxes free and stacking them.

It was then that I caught a glimpse of something moving in the reflection from the mirror. A quick, darting action as something crossed the corridor. Putting the final box down and picking up the large can of hairspray I’d momentarily let go, I slowly turned round, knowing what was going to be there, and praying to God that I was wrong.

Blocking the doorway, about a foot inside the room, it hissed, some of its awful shiny surface covered in black dust, suddenly leaving me in no doubt as to what had been disturbing the soot in the chimney, those red eyes all focussed on me as they shone. Raising itself up onto its rear legs, it waved the others almost delicately forward, as if it were reaching out to embrace me. My mouth falling open in horrified disgust, I stared at its revolting underbelly. I thought I was becoming hardened to their physical presence, but

167

that illusion fell away as my eyes tried to take in the sight of the monster’s guts: a moving mass of suckers, peering through from a smooth pearlescent coating that would no doubt work like a foreskin, pulling back to allow those greedy mouths access to whatever they sought. I tried to call out, to get help, but as if in an awful dream, I couldn’t get any sound out of my throat.

Mandibles clacking, the widow hissed, a loose spray emerging with the sound, and with sweating hands I finally managed some movement of my own, squirting the can and squeezing down on the lighter. Nothing happened. The flint clicked, but no flames erupted. “Shit, shit, shit…” With slippery fingers, I tried to keep my grip and flick the small lever down again.

Dropping itself back down, the widow took a slow step forward, as if sensing its advantage.

“Help me, pleeeaseesssss…”

The words sounded wet and in no way human, but rang clear in my head. A chill ran up from my spine and through my guts as I stared in horror, my fingers freezing on the nozzle of the can.

The widow took another step towards me and paused, the words coming again, seeming to ooze out from its surface rather than out from its moving mandibles.

“Help me… pleeeaseeesssss!”

Lost in fear and confusion, my brain desperately tried to work, grasping at what I was hearing. What did it want? Did it want me to kill it? How could I help? Suddenly, as I stared into that bank of redness, the cold truth washed over me. They were the words the man in the cafe had spoken, that he had so desperately tried to spit out at me, the words that I had

168

ignored and run so hard and fast away from. A low moan escaped from me. But how could it know? How could it possibly know? As those foul legs crept closer to me, I stared into those awful pinprick pupils at the depths of it tumourous eyes and saw something new there, something other than rage. It was taunting me. It was enjoying my fear. More importantly, it was enjoying my shame. That sense of victory glowing from it, it crouched, preparing to attack, to finish its destruction of me.

“You fucking bitch.” Rage at the memory of that poor bastard eaten alive on that sofa, and rage at the poor bastard that had been me, running terrified, awash with crushing guilt, gave me the incentive I needed, and holding the can out directly I pushed the nozzle down and firmly ran my finger over the lighter.

The widow leapt into the roar of the flame, screeching as it realised, and I stepped backwards, the ledge beneath the mirror digging sharply into my back as I cowered away, taking all my resolve to keep my arms forward, burning it.

The flame I was producing was nowhere near enough for the job, and although I had stopped the creature mid-flight and sent it to the floor, it twisted angrily there, darting around the flame, trying to get to me, lashing out with its limbs, hisses and squeals escaping from it. The fire from the can was fading, getting thinner, and the nozzle was hot between my fingers. Part of the widow was burning, but instinctively I could tell that it still had enough energy to kill me before I could destroy it.

Through the smoke and madness another shadow filled the doorway, and my heart leapt. John was there, flame erupting from his own large can, raising the

169

widow’s hiss to a shriek as its rear legs caught fire. With the creature distracted, I reached for the dressing table, my fingers fumbling into one of the boxes, grabbing desperately at some of the cartridges. Two within my grasp, I turned and launched them at the creature, not sure what, if anything, was going to happen. As soon as the metal had flown free of my hands, I squeezed back down on the lighter, sending the remains of my aerosol fire to help John’s.

One cartridge fell redundant on the carpet and rolled under the bed, but the second exploded like a firework, making me instinctively recoil, the power of it taking two of the widow’s legs off, and for the first time I heard agony in its wail, and what I hoped was fear. My own heart surged with the thought of surviving.

Unable to move, it lashed out with its remaining legs, squirming on the floor, until eventually the hissing died and it stopped moving. On the other side of the room John kept on burning it until the surface of its body popped and melted, all those alien eyes melting into one. The smell that erupted from it was like that we had encountered coming out of the scout hut. For a few moments we both just stopped and held our breath, as if waiting for it to leap back to life.

“Jesus.” John was panting, his eyes shaking slightly.

“Cheers, mate.” Dropping my can, I picked up the boxes of shells. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”