Read Old World (The Green and Pleasant Land) Online
Authors: Oliver Kennedy
Old World (The Green and Pleasant Land) (8 page)
We are unlikely to meet you and I, and if we do no words will pass between us. I am too old to be leered at and I am too afraid to want to get to know you. They say an Englishman's home is his castle. Well I am an Englishwoman and I can assure you that my husbands castle is a facade, beneath which is the monument to fastidiousness that is my palace. A place for everything and everything in its place.
This is a nice part of town. This is a place of nods and hellos, of umbrellas hanging on arms, of responsible dog owners. This is an area in which houses have names, far grander than their inhabitants.
Harold is out. Harold does as he is told, he has gone to pick up Molly from the bus station. Her parents are worried because of all the goings on, they do not have our resolve, we did not breed it into them, we are not concerned, our lips have never been stiffer. We will weather this as we have weathered all other storms, with tea and discipline.
I dust, I dust with my old feather duster. The radio blasts out classical music, I pretend I know who the composer is, I name them as a familiar name, I may be right, I may be wrong, but I will act the former and would lie to the dead before admitting the latter. It took me a while to find this station, all my favourites have been seized by maddening fools. Worriers, the pedlars of misery and gloom. They are of our daughters generation, they are not weather beaten, but rather are beaten by the weather. Molly will be here soon, perhaps we will teach her better.
I hum to myself as I send the dust scattering to the four corners of the palace. I adjust pictures, I ensure that chairs are sitting in their three decade old carpet grooves. I clean the glass to such invisible perfection that we shall likely have flocks of birds apparently offing themselves by flying into them.
Then I stop. I switch off the radio, I kill the violins and the cellos and the trumpets. They had been superseded by frantic voices, by the naysayers and the doomseers. Fine then. I will clean in silence.
But the absence of music reveals other sounds. The helicopters, the endless drone of the watchers in the sky. Up to no good, peering down, gazing into the castles of lesser men and greater women. They have not stopped for days.
I approach the living room window. The thick red velvet curtains have been drawn for a week, Harold's insistence. Every now and then he puts his foot down, and I let him, even façades need maintaining after all. I raise a hand hesitantly and take hold of a fold of the thick dark fabric, a part of me longs to pull them back. To fill the room with sunlight and to fill my eyes with the truth of what is happening outside.
My hand drops. My ears know the truth already, and the sun does not shine today. I take in a deep breath of British determination, I fill my lungs with it and hold it for as long as I can. Things rumble up and down the street which cannot be cars. No car squeaks and thuds in that manner, only a vehicle with heavy metallic tracks can emit such a noise.
I have heard the sounds of so much breaking glass that there cannot be single window left untarnished in the neighbourhood. I have heard so many screams that the whole town must be hoarse. Every now and then gunfire bursts out, sometimes far away, sometimes from the bottom of the garden. On occasion the thunder rumbles, and it talks louder than all the rest.
Still I clean. Still I do dishes, and laundry, I iron and while I am steaming I watch the clock, I imagine Molly and Harold's footsteps up the driveway, but in my imaginings they were home long ago. But I cannot show weakness, I cannot show fear even to my own reflections, for if they see it they will know it to be true and will refuse to hide me any longer.
Then I hear a car outside. I hear an accompanying crash. I shudder at the thought of the casualties among the gnomes. The hesitant hand is brushed aside, the curtains fly back along the railings. Old Mrs Andrews across the street seems to be missing a foot. She is crying as she pulls herself through misery and down the street. The Potters battle desperately to keep the enemy from the door.
I see men in uniform running, in the wrong direction, I believe. Empty vehicles, burning houses, dead bodies, spent cartridges and broken gnomes.
The street is full of strangers, members of some strange parade, they shuffle and shamble with a twisting gait, they move as if uncomfortable in their skin, which is a pallid and maggoty affair across the board.
They see me, they move to greet me. Harold has fallen from the car, a wounded man he staggers too, but from injury as opposed to affliction. I walk quickly to the front door, I do not run, one must take ones time come the end of days, lest the sun sets too quickly on our demise.
When I open the door Harold has gone, replaced by something that looks like Harold. “Where is Molly?” I ask it. No answer comes the reply. Harold has gone grey and his eyes have begun to bleed. My attempts to slam the door are futile. Now I do run, the time for prim and proper has been and gone.
I return to the living room and consider drawing the curtains, for quite a crowd of red eyed spectators has gathered at the watching window. They tap upon the clean, clean glass. The glass does not have my resolve, it weakens in many places forming inelegant splintered cobwebs.
Harold puts his arms around me from behind. For a moment I imagine it to be a protective gesture, an act of love and affection, I feel young again. I feel his warm breath on my neck, I turn from the window as it shatters and the audience invades the stage. I meet my own reflection and see the weakness that has always been there. Thoughts of Molly, thoughts of England fade away to less than dust. His hard teeth meet my soft neck, and I wonder what regrets await me after the meal.
Him, he is so sick that he won't know it even when he's torn limb from limb. She will though, she will feel his death, and her own, just as she seems to have felt the deaths of all those who have fallen to the cadaver.
I could tell you my name I suppose, but that wouldn't matter would it. We are both waiting for the same thing, though it will be different for each of us, you the watcher, me the sufferer. So, I guess this is the point where I tell you what I see, where I tell you how I feel. Think of long red carpeted corridors, think of the very definition of the word palatial.
Think of gold on the walls used to separate the tapestries from the portraits. Think of mirrors that could swallow you whole, think of chandeliers and crystals. Think of opulence. Now imagine what that looks like with no one around to maintain it. Imagine blood splattered here and there, think of those nice well kept carpets being marred by the impromptu barricade me and my fellows have put across the corridor. Now we are there, now we are looking at the same world.
The lights are still on because this is one of the few buildings in all of London which has backup generators to the backup generators for the actual backup generators. The corridor like most of the palace is filled with silent lions, filled with roses which never age. We have piled the chairs and tables high against the doors at the far end. I cannot see the handles but I can hear them clicking now and then as fingers lock around them, dead but still curious, they will sniff us out soon enough.
There was a time when the cool metal of the gun in my hand would comfort me, it would instil me with a sense of pride and power. Now all I can feel is the weight of it, now all it fills me with are thoughts about whether or not I might be better off using it on myself rather than what is on the other side of that door.
Behind us is the master bedroom. A sanctuary for none, a tomb for two old people, one of whom is sick enough to be dead already, the other who did not need to go out like this. Her loyalty is exemplary, her love for her husband a shining light which cannot hope to pierce the darkness outside the palace. We would expect no less from her, but still I think I am not the only household guardsman in this corridor who wishes she had shown just a little less integrity this time around.
There is a loud crash against the barricaded door. We all jump, it is not that we were idle, but now we are a little more tense. There is a part of me that wants to look around at the others, to seek some reassurance from them. But I know that cannot come to pass, all I will see in them is a reflection of myself.
Another crash, the splintering of wood. Too big to be a cadaver, I suspect one of their large cousins has come across them gathered outside the door and decided to investigate. I think I can hear sobbing from the bedroom, but I'm not certain, I try to focus on something else. I look at the writing desk overturned in front of me. I look at the ornate carving around it and the secret draws located underneath. I cannot recall which room that we requisitioned it from but it is likely to have been from one of her personal chambers. I ponder the monarchs who must have once sat here, plotting, pandering, or general meandering. I wonder if any of them ever dreamed that it would come to this, that their kingdom would one day be swallowed by darkness.
That they could have seen a time when there palace was invaded by enemies is certain, but could they have begun to imagine an enemy such as this, I think not. A third crash disturbs my reveries. Several of the piled chairs tumble down away from the door.
A dozen of us heft our weapons. We drew straws for this, but ah, we did not get the shorts ones, we got the choices, did we choose badly? It seems unlikely we will be given a chance to dwell on our fate.
There are several more loud impacts in quick succession, the doors explode inwards in many pieces and dozens of chairs fly through the air and bounce down the corridor. I think I hear a wail from the bedroom. The sound is cut short as we release the thunder. Bullets streak down the corridor into the dark portal at its end.
We pause briefly, long enough to see the line of cadavers start shuffling towards us, arms outstretched, imploring us to join them, soon enough you greedy bastards. We mow them down with ease. Still they come at us, they are fearless as they are less all else.
Like a spent cloud soon the hail of fire stops, this is our last stand. The ammunition left to us by the rest of the household battalion is embedded in the walls of this once great palace of Buckingham. Every stairwell, every dining room, every bedroom and every corridor has been a battlefield. And now we are here and have barely a bullet between us.
I am proud of my brothers as they surge over the barricade with their bayonets and lay waste to the first few ranks of the endless march of the dead. I do not join them, for I made perhaps the hardest choice of all.
The bedroom door clicks shut behind me as I leave my brothers to their nobility. The gun is like lead in my hand. The sun is streaming through the windows bathing the golden four poster in the glory of the morning.
She has been crying. I see why. A prince lays dead upon the sheets. The tears are dry now, they did not last long. No words pass between us. She knows I think why I am here, but I think she knows as well as I do that I cannot accomplish the task I gave myself.
From the bedside table she draws a weapon of her own, a tiny pistol that looks almost like a toy. She nods at me and we both turn towards the door as it bursts open and foulness invades the room. A swarm of cadavers pours through the opening, but in their midst is something much larger, a king among the dead, how fitting.
The fiend scuttles across the bedroom when it sees us. Its skin is a waxy, shiny carapace, dark caramel in colour and swirling with patterns and thick black veins.
It does not pause, it does not hesitate as one of the three foot long spikes on the end of its arms punctures through my liege and pins her dead against the wall. My gun barks pitifully at the creature. In slow motion I watch another of the massive arms unfurl and curve around towards me. I am lifted and pinned alongside her, we are puppets and playthings. My lady and her protector, dead upon the wall, how did it come to this, how did old England fall?
Copyright©2013 Oliver Kennedy
All rights reserved.
Several of my fellow drifters stand nearby. They have become used to the sight of my prone form on deck. The brief respite from the nausea that the vomiting has given me has allowed the shame to flood in. They may have become used to it, but I have not, and the humiliation burns me like a red hot poker.
I get to my knees, I stare out over the iron grey waters of the North Sea. Beneath my feet is sixty five thousand tons of steel, the man made monster that was to have been the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier. But like much in the old world that was to have been, it has not come to pass. The vessel is a shell, a hastily assembled life raft to which nearly six hundred men and women are clinging with increasing desperation.
So as we lay here bobbing up and down, I look out at the winding coast of the green and pleasant land, and I think back over this bleak year of my life....
My name is Patrick Redmayne. I work, or rather I worked for a company called Pendragon Systems. We were in the defence industry, or, as we used to call it while we stood around the water cooler, the 'attack industry'. We supplied the weapons of war to any and all who were willing to wage it, to pay the toll. Business was booming, and we were too ignorant to see that we were supplying the means of our own downfall.
The military buildup by the USA and China had sent jitters through the wider pacific rim region and the world. Contracts were rolling in, tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, advanced littoral warships. The nations of the earth were watching the worlds two mightiest military powers square up to each other, and their minds turned to self preservation. Within a matter of months the tentacles of globalisation had been severed, the planet divided into paranoid armed camps, which, when they weren't busy eye-balling each other across the barbed wire, were desperately trying to combat the enemy within, the totem of our downfall, the Deathwalker virus.
Like much of the masses I sat down, idly playing with my cereal watching it all unfold on the news, watching the song of doom build to its inevitable crescendo, when it got there it broke every window in the world, it shattered glass, and steel, and bone.
My home is a town called Carlisle, to the far north of England. Sadly I was not there when it all collapsed for good. Sadly I was not with them when it all went to pot. I was ensconced in temporary housing at the Rosyth Shipyard, some portacabins huddled in the shadow of the beast.
I remember the last phone call, the usually tired and worried voice at the other end was fearful now, hysterical. In the background I could hear breaking glass, shouts of rage and pain, my son, my son, at whom do you roar. Wendy, she told me that there were familiar faces in the crowd. Familiar yet alien, neighbours of many years with crazed faces, grey skin and outstretched arms. She begged me then, she begged me for help, she begged me to be there, to live and die with her. She begged me before the phone went dead. That is that last I heard of Wendy Redmayne or my son Gideon.
I stared at the phone for a long time, until shouts and screams from the outside managed to penetrate through the wall of grief springing up around me.
You see until then much of what we'd seen, we'd seen through a screen. Clinics in the big cities that were pictures of chaos. Maddened patients, the first to have received the vaccination, with bloodied eyes, who were savaging each other, savaging the doctors and nurses around them, savaging the baton wielding police who attempted to put them down. Hospitals were like warzones in a conflict that soon spread to the streets.
Scientists pondered, prevaricated and gesticulated. They did not provide any answers, they contradicted themselves with every other statement. There was a famous tussle at the united nations, world leaders and foreign ministers brawling like common thugs in the grand chamber of the UN. That was while the networks were still up, but it wasn't too long after that the world went dark.
So you see we were witnesses night after night to scenes of civil chaos punctuated by generic footage of military buildups in many of the worlds flashpoints and border zones. We carried on working, though I don't know why, the top brass of the UK military seemed just as content to carry on as the board of Pendragon systems were. But there comes a point when even the stiffest of upper lips must tremble, when even the most stubborn of lions must be brought low. For the thousands of workers at the Rosyth shipyard, that day was August 19th 2014, the last day I spoke with my wife.
I ran from the portacabin to see what all the noise was about. At the far end of the dock I could see a large crowd of people pushing at the thick iron gates, I could see soldiers pointing guns, some of them fired into the air but it did not seem to have any affect on the desperate souls straining to get in. I started to walk towards them. I wondered what fear would cause people to face down armed soldiers in such a way. Then I looked beyond the crowd, to the hills above Rosyth.
The hills were alive with what looked like people, but they did not move with the haste of prey, but with the shuffling gait of the new world predators. For the last few days the UK's major population centres had been experiencing surges in the numbers of those infected with the Deathwalker virus. And as me and my colleagues spent the morning glaring at screens and shivering despite the summer sun, it turned out that the population of Dunfermline, which had turned pretty much overnight, had descended on Rosyth and added its populous to their numbers.
The desperate crowds at our front gate were those few who'd managed to get out, sadly they assumed that the military protected shipyard would provide some salvation for them. They were wrong, as pointed barrels and the no nonsense commands of the soldiers indicated.
When the hill wanderers reached the rear of the crowd the screams rang out like sirens. The infection rippled through the crowd along a surge of blood and flailing limbs like some sort of perverse Mexican wave.
Then came the breaking point. The fence gave way. A nervous soldier fired a confident bullet, dozens more of it's fellows followed it, racing into bodies with the reckless abandon of hot lead. Sirens rang out as hundreds of figures raced into the shipyard, some of them were alive, some were not. It became evident that the gate guards and their rapidly diminishing amounts of ammunition were not going to be sufficient to hold back the horde, I was glad to see I was not the only one to turn and run.
Above the din of the crowd I was aware of helicopters coming in low, I heard the rattling boom of chaingun cannons and the sounds of shredding metal, cracking concrete and tearing flesh. The carrier seemed to represent a beacon of safety and we swarmed towards it like ants. I was only a couple of metres from a boarding ramp when a form reared up in front of me and knocked me to the floor.
This was my first up close and personal encounter with a deathwalker. Though humanoid in shape the stark absence of humanity was apparent on a number of levels. From its mouth there poured a frothy mixture of blood and white saliva, it's skin was grey except for the veins which stood out as thick black lines which criss-crossed the figure from head to toe. The eyes were dull red orbs devoid of anything but hunger and hate.
Its head shook from side to side and it screeched a piercing scream that sounded like a long undulating 'nooooooo' sound. As the cadaver was about to descend on me a lead pipe from behind smashed right through its head covering me with splatter. As the beast fell to the side I saw Lars Eriksson smile grimly at me. He gave me a thumbs up and looked about to speak when a pair of hands encircled his head. Long fingers with sharp nails penetrated his temples and sank deep into his skull behind the eyes.
Lars screamed in pain and fell to his knees at which point the cadaver bit hungrily into the top of his head pulling off chunks of skin and hair in its determination to reach the brain of my friend and saviour.
To this day I spare him a thought every now and then. But on that day there was no time for sorrow, I got up and I carried on running. The gangplank I'd been aiming for had been knocked into the churning water beside the carrier, I saw a few resourceful fellows shimmying up the long anchor chains and decided to join them.
As I pulled myself up the chain I became aware of the vibrations emanating along it. The eight newly installed diesel turbines had been fired up and were only moments away from being engaged to propel the carrier and those clambering onto to it to safety. I finally pulled myself up the last couple of feet and grabbed the deck rolling over onto it with a brief sense of satisfaction.
I stood and looked out over the naval yard. I was witnessing first hand the end of the world as we knew it. Thousands of cadavers now swarmed across the buildings and along the pier. When their prey reached the edge of the dock many chose to simply throw themselves in to the water and take their chances in the deep.
Grenades were hurled and sent up red plumes like flares here and there. A few lone soldiers stood firing coolly into the crowd until their ammunition was spent and they became one with the enemy.
Around eight helicopters had landed on the deck of the carrier. Heavy weapons had been deployed around the edge of the vessel and were busy carving a path of destruction through the ranks of the cadavers which was soon filled with more of the same. Eventually the lone figure who stood at the prow of the ship gave his consent, a command was radioed through to the bridge. The engines bellowed and the chains and guide cables protested as the ship wrenched itself from its holdings and plunged out into the waters of the north sea.
I watched in mute horror as we sailed from the shipyard. There were still thousands of people left, many of them lined the edges of the dock and cried as they watched salvation ploughing through the waves away from them. Men, women and children huddled in smaller and smaller numbers as the army of the dead recruited them into its ranks against their will. Smaller and smaller they got, the shuffling, shambling figures who inhabited the Rosyth shipyard. As we bobbed up and down in the open water, I felt a sickness to my core that was little to do with the sea...
And now I am here. Wondering the metal halls of our floating home. I have stepped off the edge of the earth and this is where I landed, this is certainly not my world, and though they look like my people they are alien in their notions and their intent. I am not sure what is worse. Those early days when we were filled with the dread of not knowing, or these modern times, when we are accustomed to our fate, to the long slow decline we suffer until the sea claims us.
As I make my way up to the command centre I exchange nods with similarly dead eyed fellow prisoners. In the early days, amidst the chaos and the smoke we could conjure illusions of what might be. But the now is advanced in its ages, and has shown us the truth of our demise.
My role in construction of the carrier was concerned with the engineering of the ships advanced weapons and communication systems. As such I had been designated some sort of impromptu 'chief technical officer'. It is for that reason that I am allowed on the command deck and am invited to take part in the weekly meetings of the ships senior officers.
I do not say much, it seems to me that the talking is done by those who still have hope. Less and less is said each week, there will come a time I think when we will all just sit around in silence waiting to sink.
At the start of the crisis this room was a neat orderly command centre. Manned around the clock by an advanced team of communications officers who would bring in up to the minute information on the state of play in the United Kingdom and the wider world. Captain Skellen, the ranking officer on board would coordinate with his team, lending what limited assistance he could to regular forces on the ground battling against the outbreak.
As time went by there was less and less to communicate, fewer battles, not because we were winning, but because the military had been decimated by the conflict and was waging the war with ever dwindling manpower. Then came the big one, the Battle of London. The militaries last ditch attempt to regain control of the capital. For five days we listened to the screams of the dying over the radio. Then it all went quiet, we heard nothing more from the land, satellite communications went offline, we were alone.
Now the command room is a mess. It reeks of stale swear, cigars and liqueur. The shiny console screens are dark, the room is filled with the essence of defeat and despair. As I take my seat in the shadows I look around at the dishevelled officer core who sit and mumble to each other and to themselves.
Just in front of the captains chair I see an open file the contents of which immediately pique my interest. The report inside is entitled 'Provisional theory's on the nature of the Morphid threat'. Morphids, a name which was whispered more and more these days. It had become evident as the conflict waged that we fought not only the dead but other equally foul foes.
Wild ideas circulated about their origins, about the confluence of the deathwalker virus mixed with high levels of radiation. Whatever their source the presence of the Morphids was undeniable, malformed creatures, some which seemed to be hybrid of man and beast, some which seemed to have no discernible earthly origin. Their numbers had grown considerably, to the extent that the foraging missions we launched were entirely prohibited from entering the southern counties due to the extent of the infestation.
I glanced down the document, noting a few designations for the various types of Morphids; the many armed Genglers, Devils Dogs and Vulturion. But my prying ceased when Captain Skellen entered the command centre, closing the file as he sat down. There was an air of excitement about the man, a feverish enthusiasm which had been absent for many months.
The Captain briefed us on a new mission. A three copter squad would fly further west than we'd gone before, the objective, the Brampton Barracks. At the name my attention focused, my heart began to race. The barracks was only about thirty miles outside Carlisle, thirty miles from home, from them. As the Captain rambled on about the potential benefits to be gained from the stores at Brampton I spoke.
