Hotel Midnight (10 page)

‘James!’ Toran shouted. ‘You’ll have ample time to examine more Feral. For the time being, just kill the swine before their masters come.’

‘Their masters?’ I hadn’t anticipated that these creatures were merely a weapon NOT our enemy.

All along the line of battle there was a fury of activity as our people fought the red creatures – the blood-red Feral. Despite their muscular power the creatures were no match for armed warriors. Soon there was a mound of monstrous bodies running for 200 metres to my right. Our warriors weren’t invincible though. As I killed another of the creatures I saw that it had a human foot in its mouth, one that shared my characteristic of a lack of toenails.

Woody worked with me. He distracted the creatures by
snapping
at their hind legs. Once they turned their snarling faces from me I lunged in close with the axe. The blade sliced through flesh to sever arteries with uncannily little effort on my part. Was there some latent power in the weapon itself? A kind of Excalibur effect? Certainly, I’d never considered myself as possessing
unusually
powerful upper-body strength. Once struck, the creatures would slump to the ground, where I’d witness that fading of what I can only call the life light in their eyes. A dull gaze would swiftly replace the blazing glare.

With the noise, the yells, the screams, the thud of blades against bodies, there was also the pungent smell of the Feral. A malty bitter smell, that made me think of unfinished beer left in a glass overnight. Just when I’d begun to believe this battle would last forever the creatures twisted on their own axis as one, then fled back in the direction of the mountains.

‘We’ve won.’ I grinned at Toran.

‘We’ve won the first round,’ he agreed. Blood oozed from a deep scratch on his bare forearm where one of the creature’s paws had raked him. I saw his body steamed from exertion. I was
panting
, too; my body slick with perspiration.

‘The first round?’ I sucked in cold, sweet air.

‘The Feral are sent only to tire us before the main battle. Man will be here shortly.’

The name of our enemy perplexed me. ‘Man?’

‘Yes, of course.’ My Grandfather strode up. ‘
Man
.’ He wiped the blood of slain Feral from his sword with a rag. ‘Good Lord! I have to admit, James, it grieves me bitterly that your father told you nothing.’

‘Don’t start that again. My father’s a good man.’

‘He might be good. He might be guilty of not telling you the truth. But without doubt, what he
isn’t
, is a Man.’

‘Hey! I’m not taking that crap! My father’s a hundred times better than you’ll—’

‘James, listen to me. James … don’t go. Just hear what—’

‘You’re my grandfather, but I don’t have to listen to you insult my father –
your son!’

Toran caught my arm as I walked away.

‘Take your hands off me,’ I snarled, ‘or I’ll put this bloody axe through your face.’

‘Hear your grandfather out, James,’ Toran urged. ‘He’s not speaking ill. Your father isn’t a Man. Neither am I. Neither are you. We are different from Man.’

‘Oh, because of our big toes. Right.’ My voice was laced with sarcasm. ‘OK. We belong to the silly toe tribe. Now get your damn hands off me.’

‘James.’ My grandfather spoke softly now. ‘It is true. Look up into the valley. See what approaches? It looks like a dark stain on the landscape, doesn’t it? That is our sworn enemy. That is Man.’

I looked in the direction of the mountains. He was right about the dark stain. It looked like the mountains were bleeding. Now a dark mass flowed across the dull green grass.

‘The advance troops will reach us in less than ten minutes,’ he told me. ‘Then you will meet our true enemy.’

Toran checked that the spearhead was still firmly embedded in the shaft. ‘A zoologist would classify them as Primates of the genus Homo Sapiens.’

‘But that’s what we are,’ I protested.

‘We share the same physical shape. Our biology is different. Subtly different.’

Grandfather added, ‘And just like Man wiped out Cro-Magnon and the Neanderthal so they strive for our extinction, too.’

‘But I’m married to woman … a human woman.’

‘Absolutely. We conduct the war anyway we can. Even on a genetic level. We invest our genetic material in their species.’

My look of bafflement must have said it all. In turn, my
grandfather
shook his head. He glanced across to the dark stain that was thousands of enemy troops. ‘They’ll be here in a matter of minutes. As soon as you were old enough your father should have spent months teaching you about our history. I’ve got seconds. But listen, James. The Earth doesn’t consist of one ball of rock. There are many Earths side-by-side like pages in a book. In your Earth Man has colonized the planet. On this Earth we hold most of it, but as you see Man has established a bridgehead and intends to conquer this one, too … then he will exterminate us. James; they are more numerous than us. Man is winning.’

‘Then what’s the point of fighting?’

Toran flinched at my passive response. ‘You’d fight to save your family, wouldn’t you?’

‘I don’t mean to be defeatist, but if we can’t win?’

My grandfather placed his hand on my shoulder. Those
familiar
grey eyes locked on mine. ‘We fight for our species. If we don’t, then Man will burn our homes. He will slaughter our
families
.’

‘They’ll be here any minute, Grandfather,’ Toran warned.

But the old man didn’t break eye contact with me. ‘James. Whenever we can we pursue a covert war. That is why we have infiltrated your version of Earth. We intermarry so we mix our blood with them. Every so often our blood is stronger and
children
of our species are born. In your Earth, Man has forgotten all about our species so we see an opportunity of recolonizing it. To do that we have to weaken its human population. We must be subversive. Our people commit acts of sabotage there. It doesn’t matter how small. Some of us work in the media to perpetuate stories of man’s inhumanity to man. We reinforce Man’s belief that they are a self-destructive race. You might even secretly throw stones at one neighbour’s window so he will suspect another neighbour of the damage. This will foster disharmony; it will breed distrust of one’s fellow man.’

‘You mean we have a programme of vandalism and negative propaganda?’

‘And murder and fraud and spreading infectious diseases. They’re like these.’ The old man raised his sword. ‘They’re all weapons. We use every single one at our disposal to prevent our extinction.’

‘Here they come.’ Toran gripped the spear in both hands.

A hundred metres away I saw the first wave of men approach. They were armed with swords, too. In another Earth, in another time, were my people fighting Man with guns?

My grandfather stood back; he still fixed me with that
steel-hard
gaze. ‘So, James, are you ready to fight?’

I nodded. Then raised my axe in readiness of the first onslaught.

The old man took the axe from me. ‘Then go home. Kill your wife and son. Burn down your house.’

‘What?’

‘Your son has not inherited your gene. Kill them both. Then move on. Change your identity. Find a new wife. Make her
pregnant
. You’re an archeologist. Write history books about humans massacring each other. Write about warplanes bombing cities. Describe torture chambers. Minefields. Gas chambers. Make Man wade through an ocean of his own cruelty. Undermine society. Do what you can to weaken them before we invade.’

Arrows flew from our lines. I saw a hundred attackers fall writhing, screaming; blood gushing from their wounds. Behind those dying were thousands more men howling for our
destruction
.

‘James, go home.’

Toran glanced back at me. ‘Do as he says. Fight for our people there!’

The yells of the attackers came in a wave of fury. I saw the bloodlust in their eyes.

‘James! In the name of our ancestors, go home!’

That’s when I did run. It was a dreamlike race back through the forest. There was no way I could find my way back to the house. I knew that. Instead, I followed Woody, my Dalmatian dog. Unerringly, he sped along invisible paths marked by the scent of our earlier journey to the edge of the forest and the battlefield beyond.

The battle?

Did we win? Did we lose?

How can I know? That’s another world.

At last I staggered clear of the trees. The house stood just a few paces away. Woody already sat at the back door his nose almost touching the woodwork as he waited to be let inside. Groggy with exhaustion now, I opened the door. Woody rushed across the kitchen to gulp water from the bowl as if he’d just walked across a desert. Not that I was far behind. Pulling a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, I thirstily downed it in great panting sucks. The moment I finished I thought about the forest. I imagined those wild men who had attacked my people. I pictured them tracking me home. Then bursting through the door.

I ran at the door to lock it. Through the glass I saw the sun rising over the meadow. The only trees within thirty metres of the house were our apple trees. When I swung open the door to step outside I realized the heavy scents of the forest were gone. Woody joined me to check out the garden. And it was just our old garden again. A lawn in need of mowing. Our orchard. A line of roses against the garage wall. Admar’s swing caught the warm breeze. It swayed gently. In the distance the first bus of the day trundled along the road to the village. This was a typical peaceful summer’s morning in Mill Bank Road, Thorpe Sneaton, in a county whose acres outnumber the words of The Bible.

When I walked through the hallway I recalled what my
grandfather
had told me as we stood awaiting the onslaught: ‘…
go
home. Kill your wife and son. Burn down your house.’

I began to climb the stairs to where Piet and Admar lay
sleeping
. I’d left my muddy footwear in the kitchen. So in the morning light I noticed my big toes sink into the carpet. My distinctive toes. My ‘silly-toes’ – which is, as I’ve already said, a corruption of Shillito. The skin of the big toes without nails was shiny, smooth; the regimental badge of my kind.

Kill your wife
…
kill your son
…
burn down your house
….

Slowly, I eased open the bedroom door. Then I whispered, ‘Piet? Are you awake?’

When Jackie Vorliss saw the horse’s head that was as dark as death itself rise up behind her daughter she wanted to cry out to Caitlin to run for her life.

Jackie held the mic in her hand, her thumb on the talk-button, watching her daughter on the closed-circuit TV screen. All around the teenager, the deserted supermarket formed a gloomy cavern that swarmed with half-seen shadows, while air-conditioning fans sent un-mouthed whispers murmuring and sighing across canyons of dead aisles to haunt those distant corners. Slowly, Caitlin moved along the aisle of a thousand cereal packets toward
cardboard
cut-outs that had become shadowy humped figures laced with menace.

Jackie tried again; only the scream couldn’t force its way through her throat. Her vocal chords had knotted tight. She stopped breathing; her heart thudded with a doom-laden rhythm to slam inside her skull.
Run, Caitlin!
The words blazed inside her, but she could no more speak them than dig her hands into cold grave soil and raise her husband from the dead.

On screen three her daughter was in close up. Her long hair tied back in a neat pony. Her eyes, catching what little light there was, looked as if they’d caught fire.

Screen six. The overhead cam high in the supermarket roof looked down as if through the eyes of a hovering vulture. There’s Caitlin walking slowly. Behind her, a pulpy shadow, closing all the time. A dark horse’s head rising above the tiled supermarket floor, something submarine breaking the surface from whatever depths it called its lair.

Closer, closer.

Run, Caitlin!

Formed from an uncanny
post-mortem
darkness, the horse’s head bobbed eerily along the aisle; faster now; homing in on the seventeen-year-old girl.

Close up on camera two: head height. Caitlin, still unaware of what stalked her, shivered as if cold fingers fumbled down her spine. She folded her arms across her breasts.

Caitlin, run!