Undead at Heart (9 page)

He told them about the
helicopter crashing and the truck flying onto the road. She was impressed with
his description of how he’d skidded to a halt in the nick of time and leapt
from his car. He dismissed Nicola as a ‘typical glory-seeking American’ who had
tried to save him when he didn’t need it and who he had had to rescue in
return.

He told them about the
frying of the electrics and how he’d realised it was an EMP. And he described
the arrival of the jets and the exploding crop-field, the exodus into the
forest and the way in which he and Sam had been abandoned by the ‘unfeeling’
others. He didn’t mention Bob and Janet, and some of the things he said weren’t
quite as she remembered them, but she was sure she’d just got it wrong. It
certainly made for an exciting story and Sam realised just how much she owed
this man: her life for one thing.

When he finished his
story with their arrival at the pub, his audience looked at him, stunned. She
looked up and he was nodding sagely at them, to tell them it was true. She
turned to face them too, and copied his action.

 The man called
Alan, who had introduced himself to her as the landlord, was the first to break
the silence with a laugh. He was on his own and it soon petered out. He looked
around at the others.

“What?” His voice was
high-pitched with incredulity. “You don’t actually believe that codswallop do
y-.” He stopped, watching Bert reach into his pocket, take out a packet of
small cigars, take one from the pack and light one. “What do you think you’re
doing?” he asked, his voice, if anything, even higher. “You know there’s no
smoking in here!”

Bert drew on the cigar
and puffed out the smoke with a satisfied grunt. He waved it in front of him,
indicating Tony. “If what the lad told us, it doesn’t matter. No point worrying
about lung cancer when it’s the end of the world.”

Alan laughed again,
though this time it sounded strange. He looked round the group, appealing to
them. “Come off it, Bert. You can’t possibly buy this hogwash?”

Bert nodded, taking
another puff of his cigar before holding it up in front of Alan. “I was outside
having one of these. I saw those same helicopters flying over.
Three of them.
About a half hour ago.
Just before the lights went out.”

“What, but… but…”

“It would explain all
that noise we’ve been hearing, too,” said one of the builders. Dan, Sam seemed
to remember he’d said his name was. “I know you said it was empty
lorries
on the main road, but I haven’t really heard any
traffic for ages.”

“That’s right,” said
his younger colleague. Sam definitely remembered his name. He was Darren. His
skin was extra dark in the lightless pub, but his smile was still bright. “And
with the music and fridges and everything else off, we should be able to.”

Everyone went still
and listened, trying to hear anything from the road, but there was silence. Sam
could make out some bird song, and that was all. She felt a shiver run up her
back and from the looks of the others she wasn’t the only one to be a bit
spooked.

They all turned back
to look at Tony, who she saw was waiting expectantly. He raised his eyebrows.
“After all, why would I make something like that up? Do I look like some kind
of fantasist?
Some kind of sci-fi geek?”

“Well, you did know
about that EPM thingy,” Dan pointed out.

“EMP,” corrected Tony,
realising that he was harming his case in doing so, but unable to stop himself.
“And everyone knows about that. It was in that film.”

“That’s right, Dan, it
was.”

Sam gave Darren an
extra bright smile and he gave a surprised one back. She turned back to Tony
and saw him looking between her and the young builder with a dark question in
his eyes. She
blushed
a little and smiled even more
widely for him.

“Well, then…” Alan
broke the silence which followed this exchange. “If you’re not a geek, and
you’re not a fantasist, then what the hell do we do now?”

“Personally, I could
do with another drink,” answered Bert, raising a laugh from the company.

“Yes,” agreed Tony. “I
think that’s probably a good idea. Another drink and then we work out what to
do next. We came here looking for help, shelter, and maybe a radio or a phone
so we could find out what’s going on. Obviously we haven’t come far enough, but
I’m guessing at least one of you knows the area well enough to lead us away
from here, and away from whatever’s happening up the road, until maybe we can
find something.”

“Aye,” said Bert. Sam
was finding his thick northern accent rather soothing, as though at any moment
he would give her a boiled sweet and ruffle her hair. “
Me
and the missus walk all round here after our lunches. There’s a path out the
back which leads southeast from here. It’ll take us to the Dyson farm and, if
that ain’t far enough, we can head down the road to the village. That should do
us.”

Tony nodded. “Good.
That sounds like a plan. We’ll have another drink and then we’ll set off. We
should be safe here long enough for that,” he smiled around the group, pleased
with
himself
, but none of them were listening any
longer. While he’d been talking, he’d not been aware of the series of thumps
that were growing steadily louder. Sam could feel the vibrations of the thumps
through her stool, travelling up her spine. She turned in a full circle, trying
to work out where they were coming from.

Her question was soon
answered when, with a loud crashing and rending noise, a huge metal rod, ending
in a flat plate came crashing through the ceiling at the far end of the pub.
It had broken through the roof and the upper floor and carried on
down.
It smashed through the floor and into the cellar beneath, trailing
slates and plaster and splintered floor boards with it. She screamed and threw
herself backwards under a table, taking cover. The others were scattering, even
as the monstrous metal pole ripped itself back up, out of the pub, and
disappeared. No-one moved for a moment, then as a single group they all ran for
the back of the pub, escaping the now-sunlit wreck of the bar for the unscathed
conservatory and the car-park beyond. She emerged at the rear of the group,
blinking in the bright sun, and shielded her eyes to see what they were all
looking at. Striding away into the woods, in the direction from which she and
Tony had originally come, was what looked like a giant metal spider. A central
body the size of a small house, balanced on ten or twelve legs which sprouted
from the sides at regular intervals. Each of its articulated legs ended in a
flat plate.

Doreen, Bert’s wife,
gave out a shriek and fainted. Bert tried to catch her, but was too slow and
she slumped to the ground. None of the others moved to
help,
they were all too busy watching the robotic shape disappearing into the
distance. In fact, they were too busy even to notice the other one until it
ripped down the remaining half of the pub with one of its legs and strode after
its sibling.

Nicola led and Stan
followed. He checked his watch but it had stopped along with everything else.
He seemed to have been trekking across the countryside behind this woman for
days.

The crops, whatever
they were, seemed only half-grown, and their green stalks parted easily as they
waded through them, bending and shifting then springing back into place as they
passed. The ground was soft underfoot, but easy to walk on. With the expanse of
green field and the blue sky and the warm breeze it should have been a
beautiful day. But, like the others, Stan couldn’t help hunching his shoulders
against whatever might come from the skies next.

The farm appeared
quickly, the silo rising into the air above them as they walked, and the
building, small in comparison, huddled next to it. Stan could see an array of
sheds, barns and not one, but two houses. As they got closer he could see sheep
milling and bleating in a pen next to one of the barns, and a couple of dogs
wandered aimlessly in the yard. A tractor stood at the gate leading into the
field adjacent to the one they were walking through, its engine silent.

Everything seemed
normal, except there were no people.

They reached the edge
of the field and Stan went ahead to open the gate. He held it while everyone
filed past then, following the ‘countryside code’ as he’d been taught as a
child, made sure it was shut behind them. They found themselves in the main
yard. Everything was silent. The gate had made quite a clang when Stan had shut
it, but no-one had come to investigate.

Nicola made no move to
advance further, but the whole group seemed to have started to think for
themselves, as individuals. One or two of the men wandered off towards the
barns, shouting their hellos.

The main group,
clustered around Nicola now, rather than forcing her to be the arrowhead of
their advance, wandered towards the nearest of the houses. Stan moved around
the side of the group and took the role of caller-in-chief.

His shouts bounced
back to him from the sides of the courtyard as they moved through it. Beyond
that and the other calls and shuffles emanating from their group, there was
nothing.

They reached the door
of the house, and Stan found it slightly ajar. He knocked anyway, heavy blows
which shook the door in its frame and opened it a little wider. “Hello!
Anyone home?!”

Even as he shouted,
and felt slightly embarrassed for the clichéd nature of his call, he knew that
there would be no response. He knew empty houses, and this was one of them.

Still, he called
again, “Hellooooo?”

Nothing.

He looked back towards
the group, but no-one said anything, so he faced forward once more and pushed
the door open. It was dark inside, and there was no sound at all. He could see
it was a kitchen but there was no sound coming from the fridge or the freezer.
They must still be within range of that pulse thing, he thought.

He glanced at the
others again, still receiving nothing but expectant stares. He locked eyes with
Nicola and after a moment he saw her shoulders sag and then she gave him a
slow, shallow nod. He nodded back and then turned and stepped into the house.

His boots sounded loud
on the bare floorboards in the kitchen. They made a hollow noise which
suggested that there would be a cellar underneath. He wondered for a moment if
the missing people might be hiding down there, but then realised what silly
thought that was. Who would hide in an unlit cellar during a blackout?

He knew it was a daft
thought and yet, as he stepped further into the gloom, he couldn’t get the
image out of his mind of a group of people crouching below him in the darkness,
peering at the ceiling and the booming noise coming from his boots. Or maybe
they weren’t people, but monsters, their claws reaching up towards the sound.

It wasn’t cold, but he
felt himself shiver.

He took another step,
now completely enveloped by the darkness of the house. He glanced back to make
sure the door was still open. Sunlight was streaming in, but died where it
fell.

“Hello?” he called
again, his voice surprisingly flat within the confines of the room. He raised
it, tried to break through the muffle which now seemed to surround him.
“Hello!”

There was still no
response.

His eyes were slowly
adjusting to the lack of light and he looked around the room. It was a fairly
ordinary kitchen. A large table filled the centre of the room. Fitted cupboards
and a large cooker lined the walls. There were two doors, one of which presumably
led to the rest of the house, the other to a pantry or a utility room of some
kind. 

Maybe it was the way
down to the cellar.

Despite the invitation
they presented, he didn’t want to venture any further. He turned, intending to
go back out and report, when he heard a noise behind him.

He spun round and
could just see the door which he thought led to the rest of the house swinging
slowly open. Its hinges gave a low groan, and Stan almost laughed at the
horror-movie cliché of it. 

The door swung all of
the way open before it stopped, its base grinding into a groove in the floor.
It was entirely dark beyond, and he couldn’t see anyone there. Stepping closer
was the last thing he wanted to do, but he made himself do it nonetheless,
taking one, two, three steps towards the door.

He could make out the
vague shape of someone in the doorway. As he moved further away from the
doorway, his eyes were better able to make out the shape. It looked like an old
lady, probably in her 70s or 80s.

“Hello?” he said, softly,
taking another couple of steps. “Are you okay? The power went out, but
it’s
okay, I’m not going to hurt you or anything. We were
just looking for some shelter.”

He pointed back
towards the doorway where he hoped the woman could see some of the others. He
glanced back to see if they were there and when he faced forward again, the
woman was right in front of him.