The Stuff of Nightmares (17 page)

If they came down into the cellar …

‘How much food do you have down there?’ The Marauder’s voice was harsh, rasping.

‘About enough for six months, maybe a year,’ Carter replied.

I pursed my lips in relief. With Carter still alive maybe I stood a chance.

‘And it isn’t contaminated?’

‘Only some of it.’ Carter had informed me on my first day that none of the food was contaminated. I understood why he lied.

‘Bring us some food,’ the same voice demanded. ‘And no tricks or I’ll peel your flesh myself.’

‘I’d better go down with him, Captain. He might have weapons stashed down there,’ said another voice.

‘Good idea,’ the captain agreed. ‘Abel, make sure you watch him closely until I return. I’ll search the rest of the house. There may be others hiding, in spite of what this man says. Once we’ve eaten we’ll tie him up and you can help me fix the comms box so that we can contact the others. This building will make a good base.’

‘What about him?’ Abel asked.

‘What about him? He has no value except as a cook.’

‘He said some of the food was contaminated.’

‘He lied. If it was tainted, why would he keep it? I’ll wait until the chief arrives. He can decide what he wants to do with this one. Until then he can feed us.’

If it was down to Carter’s culinary expertise to save him, he wouldn’t stand a chance. I heard footsteps
moving
in different directions. One set came down the cellar steps, walking in my direction, then stopped.

‘If you have anything of value hidden,’ the Marauder Abel said silkily, ‘tell me where and I
may
persuade the captain to let you live.’

‘
May
don’t make it,’ Carter said.

‘
May
is all there is. Think carefully. A chance of life against no chance at all. It seems reasonable to me.’

‘That’s because you’re on the persuading side of that knife. Try seeing it from my position.’

More footsteps. I could see them now, to my left. Abel had most of his back to me. Carter was just visible beyond him. I poked my head out from the side of the top box. Carter’s face was bloody and bruised and swollen. An almost imperceptible start told me that he’d spotted me. Anxiously I licked my lips, wondering what I should do next. Carter moved closer to Abel, who rapidly backed away, waving the knife in his hand. Carter stepped forward again. I shook my head frantically. Once again Carter stepped forward and once again Abel backed away in my direction. By now the Marauder was less than a metre away from me.

‘If you move again, I’ll kill you,’ Abel said harshly.

I sidestepped the boxes and crept towards the Marauder, every bloodcell in my body screaming at me to get back, to duck down and hide. Ignoring every grain of sense I had, I moved slowly and carefully, desperate not to make a sound, but Abel must’ve heard me, or sensed me. His head whipped round. He immediately
turned
back to Carter, but although he was fast, Carter was faster. He lunged forward, throwing his arm around Abel’s neck while his other hand covered the Marauder’s mouth. Abel struggled like hell, making Carter spin so they were both facing me. Abel didn’t keep still for a single second. I stood petrified, my knife in my hand. Carter tried to get a grip around Abel’s throat and head, but every time he tried to adjust his grip, Abel tried to yell out a warning to his captain.

Carter hissed at me, ‘Do it. For God’s sake, do it. I can’t hold him much longer.’

I took a deep breath and, after briefly closing my eyes, thrust the knife into Abel’s stomach, twisting it upwards towards his heart. My hands were almost instantly wet and warm. I pulled out my knife, more reflex than considered action. I stared into Abel’s eyes, which were wide with a strange surprise. Carter let the Marauder slip to the ground. I knew he was already dead but Carter wasn’t taking any chances. He twisted the man’s neck, then pulled the body to one side of the boxes where it wouldn’t be seen. He cursed when he found that Abel, unlike most Marauders, had no gun. I looked down at the body, my heart still fearfully pounding inside me. I’d killed someone. I’d actually killed someone. Even though I knew it was us or the Marauders, I still wanted to cry.
I’d killed someone …

‘Carter, I’m going to be sick,’ I whispered, my hand over my mouth.

‘Not yet, boy,’ Carter hissed at me. ‘Wait until we’ve killed the other one.’

You had no choice, Robby
, I kept telling myself.
It was him or you
.

The thought helped some, but not much. I swallowed hard, then went on swallowing until the bile that kept filling my mouth stayed down. We crept up the steps to the kitchen, where Carter armed himself with a knife in either hand. I wiped my sticky red hands on a rag that was probably supposed to be a tea towel. I kept wiping them – still faintly red but now dry – on my jacket as we crept upstairs, staying away from the middle of each step to avoid the creaks and groans of the wood beneath our feet. I’d never been upstairs, but I was too frightened to be curious. The captain was moving about in one of the rooms. Carter turned to me, pointing at himself.

‘Your bedroom?’ I mouthed silently.

He nodded. Quickly but silently he moved to the other side of the open door. He pointed at me, then inside his room, indicating that I should go in first. I mean, sod that for a game of soldiers! I shook my head angrily, not impressed with his idea of using me for bait. Carter started making threatening faces. I shook my head again, but he looked like he was about to leap across to where I was standing and throttle me, so I tiptoed into the room when the captain had his back to me, hoping that Carter’s plan was a good one. The man was searching through an old-fashioned chest of drawers, snorting with disgust when all he
found
were clothes – and not terribly clean ones at that.

A floorboard creaked under my foot and I froze. Too late. The captain turned sharply. One look at me and he rapidly reached for the gun around his waist. In a heartbeat it was out of his belt and already moving upwards, pointing towards my chest. And I couldn’t move. All I could do was watch death rush inexorably towards me. But something whizzed past me and I watched as, almost in slow motion, the captain clutched at the knife that had just sliced its way into his chest, before crashing to the ground. Carter didn’t wait for me. He ran over, relieving the captain of his gun before turning furiously back to me.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing? Were you going to stand there and watch him kill you?’

I didn’t speak until I was sure I wasn’t going to disgrace myself by throwing up. ‘Sod off, Carter!’ I snapped. ‘I knew you had my back.’

‘You shouldn’t’ve relied on that. Suppose I didn’t?’

‘But you did. So what’s the problem?’

‘You are, Robby. When’re you going to learn that you can’t rely on anyone but yourself? You can’t trust anyone else.’

‘I trust you.’

‘More fool you then,’ Carter snapped. ‘Now I want the truth. How much longer is the rain going to last?’

‘Another twenty-four hours.’ I sighed. ‘Then I’ll be on my way.’

Silence.

‘I promise, this time tomorrow the rain will’ve stopped.’

‘Look …’ Carter seemed uncomfortable. ‘You don’t have to go tomorrow. You can stay an extra few days if you like.’

Surprise widened my eyes as I stared at him. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll take you up on that. I’d rather wait until the Marauders have moved on.’

‘Fair enough.’ Carter’s face grew hard. ‘But you still sleep downstairs, and no tricks. This time I’ll be sleeping with a gun.’

‘Well, when you blow your foot off or worse, don’t look to me for sympathy,’ I said.

Carter smiled reluctantly. We stripped the dead man of his overalls, then went down into the cellar and stripped off Abel’s too. Carter repaired the front door with some wood from the cellar, using one of the Marauder overalls as protection from the driving rain.

The next few hours were tense. Even though we closed the shutters, we didn’t dare risk lighting any of the candles and we moved about as little as possible. At every moment I expected to hear a bang at the door or a window shattering. We hardly spoke. Dinner was kidney beans in chilli sauce, warmed up but not really heated on a camper stove. My sleep that night was fitful and fretful but at last the morning came. And no more Marauders. I hoped that the two dead men were an advance scouting party, or maybe a breakaway group.

Next day we waited for a few hours after the rain
had
finally stopped, then buried the bodies behind the house. By the time we’d finished I was in a state. I was smelly and dirty and longed to take off my damned strappings. I hadn’t dared loosen them during the previous night, fearing the arrival of more Marauders. It seemed to me that I’d spent most of my time in Carter’s house afraid for one reason or another.

Two days after the rain had stopped, Carter and I walked for over an hour to the nearest river. I didn’t want to go with him but he insisted. I dreaded getting there. Totally unselfconscious, Carter stripped naked and jumped into the icy water.

‘Come on in then. The water’s lovely!’

‘I … er … I think one of us should be on guard in case the Marauders haven’t moved on yet,’ I suggested.

‘Good idea,’ Carter called back. ‘I’ll get clean then act as lookout while you have a swim.’

How was I going to get out of this one? Carter dived down into the water and disappeared. I lay down on the riverbank, closing my eyes against the sunshine. I kept remembering the look on Abel’s face when I stabbed him …

I must’ve drifted off to sleep because when I opened my eyes, Carter was kneeling over me and I instinctively knew that he’d been there for a while. I stared at him, wondering anxiously at the angry, sombre look on his face. Oh my God! He didn’t know, did he? He hadn’t guessed?

‘What’s the matter?’ I frowned, uncertain.

Carter’s breathing was deep, audible. He stood up
quickly
and strode off towards the house. I opened my mouth to call him back – after all, he was supposed to act as lookout while I swam – but then I thought better of it. This way was much safer. It was OK - he didn’t know or he would’ve said something. Eagerly I watched him leave. Now I could bathe in peace and without having to reveal the truth to him. Even my fear of the Marauders faded into insignificance at the prospect of taking off my strappings at last. I undressed, then washed the strappings and padding and left them on large rocks by the riverbank to dry. I rinsed Abel’s blood off my jacket and then jumped into the river, my knife still in my hand. The water was so freezing it stole my breath away – but it was wonderful. Luckily, only the rain was lethal. Once the rain stopped, after about an hour the water reverted to ‘normal’ and was safe again.

Mum once tried to explain the science of it to me, but I didn’t really understand. Science was never my strongest subject. It had been some new chemical weapon designed by X to wipe out Y. Only the weapon, unlike the faction that made it, hadn’t been quite so choosy and had entered the upper atmosphere, spreading around the country and maybe beyond. Mum told me the chemicals were only neutralized after a certain period of time at ground level. So those of us who were left watched the rain and waited for the day when the man-made chemical would be burned out or washed down or made safe in some way. But in the meantime no one went out in the
rain
. I still remembered when the rain wasn’t my enemy. I didn’t even have to close my eyes to see myself walking, dancing, singing in the rain. I swam to and fro, the knife between my teeth. After at least half an hour I clambered out and got dressed, reluctantly restrapping my chest and wrapping the damp padding around my waist. After that I headed back to the house.

The days fell into a semi-regular pattern. I went to the river every morning, either making an excuse not to accompany Carter or going by myself when he didn’t want to go at all – which was usually the case. I did all the cooking and Carter did what he called the cleaning, which wasn’t worth much. We played cards and chess, at which I got better and Carter got worse. Sometimes I’d look up from the chessboard to find him watching me, the strangest expression on his face and his mind obviously not on the game. Such was life for about three weeks. Easy in an uneasy sort of way. I knew I should move on but my life had taken on some semblance of normality and I was loath to give it up. My stay with Carter was close to being the longest time I’d ever spent in one place since the civil war began.

One evening I asked him, ‘Why don’t you have any books of your own? The way you read and re-read my books, I would’ve thought you’d be surrounded by them.’ I sighed inwardly as Carter’s face took on the same hateful, vengeful expression it always did when he was about to mention his wife.

‘The back room used to be full of them. Shelf after shelf of books.’

‘What happened to them?’ I asked. The back room was totally empty.

‘My wife made a bonfire of them. I was meant to be away for two days but I came back early and caught her burning the last batch.’

‘Why on earth did she do that?’ I asked, scandalized. Books were now like gold dust. In fact, books and gems were the new country-wide currency. No one valued anything else.

‘Apparently I cared more about my books than I did about her. So she and her lover decided to teach me a lesson.’

‘What happened?’

‘I got this scar on my face.’

My blood ran colder. I wanted to ask what had happened to his wife and her lover but I was afraid of the answer so for once I kept my mouth shut. As if guessing my thoughts, Carter smiled – a hard, bitter smile. I looked away.

On good days Carter would talk to me. But sometimes it was as if he couldn’t bear to even look at me, to be in the same room as me. He would disappear out of the house after gruffly asking if it was going to rain. Then I wouldn’t see him for hours. We still played chess, but when Carter was in a mood I never spoke. He inevitably became furious with me when I talked too much. It took me longer than it should have to realize what the problem was. Carter was lonely, so
lonely
he was only just beginning to realize it himself.