Vampires Overhead (17 page)

‘Oh, mister,’ Janet said reproachfully.

‘And don’t mister me. Let’s make a start.’

I led the way out of the gates on to the road, and before we had gone very far in silence, apologized to them.

‘I’m sorry, Janet. Didn’t mind, did you, Bingen? Sorry.’

And then I walked on swiftly, while they followed slowly behind, for it was better, I thought, for us to have a sort of advance guard that we might be the less likely to run unexpectedly into danger. Intermittently, I glanced back at them, and they waved. They seemed to get on well together.

The sun beat down hotly, even though so early, and it seemed almost as though the Vampires had brought with them from their habitat the tropical warmth they desired. The sky was brassy, void of clouds, Vampires, but fixed into my mind was the fact that tonight ought to see us ensconced in some place which would be a permanent shelter, a place from where we could look forth and see approaching peril, plan to the future, with food and water close to hand. If the place we made for sufficed our needs, all was well, but, if it did not, then I’d have to leave Janet and Bingen there, while I searched around for another which did. And the idea of leaving Bingen alone with the girl was not pleasing to me.

Heat made the going hard, and I turned to see how Janet was making it. She was all right apparently, for she had relieved Bingen of some of his luggage and smiled cheerily at me, waving me on. The brown baked earth with its covering of ash crumbled beneath my feet, and between the houses I was glad to get on the smooth road surface again. Where the roads were asphalted we could not use them, for they were hot, melting with a haze of blue smoke hanging about, smelling of tar, and as I walked I wondered what nourishment the Vampires could have gained from the tarry roads. I had hoped that isolated houses would have stood to give us shelter and food, but one after another we passed them, razed to the ground, with gables standing precariously about heaped bricks in little plots of ground that one were gay with flowers and now were grey with ashes. From inspecting one of these, I returned to the road to receive a startled cry from Bingen.

‘Look out, Garry! Garry! There’s one! Up there!’ he pointed.

He ran, with Janet, hastily towards me, and close together we waited, staring into the sky, watching it drop down towards us. Diagonally from the east it came, silently, on spiralling wings, noiselessly, like a great black owl. One solitary Vampire!

Fluttering down to a height of perhaps twenty feet above our heads, it ceased descending to hang practically motionless in the air with tentacled wings beating so slowly one could barely discern any movement. Vertically, it hung there, seeming to scan the horizon, and then slowly turned until it lay horizontally, staring down at us.

‘Oh, Garry. Drive it away.’

With that little cry Janet slumped to the road in a faint, and Bingen knelt over her, his eyes fixed upwards.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ I told them, and while I spoke my eyes were glancing about, not on the thing hovering above, but watching for others. Not one could I see. Not another one. ‘I’ll have a pot at it.’

Six cartridges I shot, and the Vampire ignored them, even though four of the bullets tore its wings, for through the leathery ligament I could see four jagged pieces of blue sky.

‘Only waste of ammunition,’ I said. ‘Wait a bit. I’ll have another go at it.’

Some yards away, by the roadside, was a pile of flints. I went towards it, and the thing appeared, in some weird manner, to divide its attention impersonally between myself walking backwards to the stones, and Bingen bending over the crouching girl, but it did not move.

Flint after flint I flung, hitting and missing alternately, but it was so unconscious of the stones thudding against its body, despite my efforts, that I almost laughed. It was so futile. Moved jerkily in the air, by force of the jagged flints striking, it made no attempt to evade them.

‘Oh, we’ll leave it alone. It can’t hurt us,’ I said at last. ‘Is Janet better, Bingen?’

‘She’s better. Be all right in a minute. Can’t you drive that thing away?’

‘Have a try yourself.’

‘Perhaps you won’t be quite so cocky about them after you’ve had a few of them fastened on to you,’ Bingen remonstrated.

‘Sorry, Bingen, but it can’t hurt. Let it stay there. If it comes down, we’ll deal with it. Dab some water out of the bottle on her face.’

But as I bent, with Bingen, over the girl, her eyes opened, and she smiled up at us, shuddering when she saw the Vampire above, until I interposed my body between them.

‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance,’ she said shakily. ‘I’m better now. I won’t faint again, I promise you. Let me get up.’

‘Sure you’re all right?’ I grinned at Bingen. ‘Everybody’s hanging around here apologizing to each other. You apologize to me, and then we’ll all have begged each other’s pardons. Come on. Let’s move on.’

We walked along the road without looking back, and I had an uncanny feeling of that Vampire hovering there, watching us go, like a well-gorged man watching the remains of a meal being carried from the room, knowing that when he is hungry once more a short walk to the larder will re-bring it within his grasp. When at last I did look back, it hung unstirring, in the same position, so far as I could see, staring after us. And among the houses we left behind I thought I saw some movement.

‘Can you see anything back there, Bingen?’

‘No, and, what’s more, I don’t want to. Let’s get out of here.’

But I stood looking back. It might have been that little fat man in the ridiculous bowler with the ridiculous umbrella moving among the ruins. Vividly to me came a thought of him solemnly doffing his hat to the black Vampire hovering above and saying, ‘God’s wrath! But there, excuse me, I must be off to the office.’ And I could imagine the thing staring down at him with bleak incomprehension. . . . Ugh!

‘We’ll all keep together from now on,’ Bingen greeted me when I turned to them again. ‘It’s no use separating.’

‘No! I’ll go in front as before,’ I insisted. ‘With me scouting ahead, there’ll be less likelihood of running into something we can avoid. You come along afterwards, but you needn’t keep so far behind this time.’

I did not want the girl to come unwarned upon the piles of bodies we constantly passed. I wondered why, in most cases, the people had managed to die together in crowds. Some human characteristic brought them together to avoid dying alone.
y
et, if there is one thing a man must do alone, it is to die by himself. Queer! One’s sheer panic, two’s fear, four’s courage . . . and all’s food for the Vampires!

At noon, with the sun directly overhead, we called a halt to sit and eat our frugal lunch in the shadow of a rubble wall which topped one side of a ditch running by the roadside. We ate, and lay upon the sloping side of the bone-dry ditch silently, at least I was, contemplating unbelievingly the events of the past few days, speculating on the future. Janet, with an arm under her curls, was at the bottom of the ditch, while Bingen and I were higher, where we could see along the road.

‘Both the bottles are empty, Bingen. They’ll have to be filled as soon as we can.
This heat is queer for England! Now if it were Cairo . . .!’

‘Queer! Can you tell me anything nowadays that isn’t queer?’

‘No. I suppose I can’t.’

‘How much farther is this place we’re going to?’

‘I think you can see it from here.’ I sat erect and shaded my eyes to stare. ‘Away to the south-west. That line of blue hills against the sky. They’ll be Churley Hills, I fancy. We should be there this evening. Hope we get there before dark. Whether or no we’ll find the cottages as I remember them, I couldn’t say. Hope so. Shall be glad to get where I can have a long sleep. This sun is making me drowsy.’

‘Look! Garry! Look!’

Janet’s voice, holding terror, jerked both of us to our feet, but even as I jumped up I remember how foolishly glad I felt that on each occasion when Janet was frightened she called upon my name rather than Bingen’s, and I was ashamed to think about it, even as I thought.

‘We’re done! We’re done!’ Bingen cried. ‘They’ve got us!’

‘Don’t be a fool.’

From out of the very blue there dropped upon us a close clustered group of Vampires!

As the solitary one had done, so did these, descending near to earth, and then hovering above, to turn and stare down at us. Momentarily, I could not move, standing looking upwards with gaping mouth. I felt Bingen slide to the bottom of the ditch, and when I did glance down he was crouched close to Janet, with his head buried in his arms. And Janet had placed a hand protectingly about him!
h
e quivered, jerked suddenly into a sitting position, and his eyes fixed in panic. His chin sagged to let a thin sobbing scream from his parched throat. I could not help him, for I waited for the things to fall . . . drop on to us.

Janet looked at me, her lips moving, then she crawled to hide beneath my arms, and her movement, as though loosening springs in his body, lifted Bingen to his feet. He mouthed noiselessly at the sky and then he was gone.

I could not call him back.

Helplessly, with my arms about the shaking figure of Janet, I watched him go, running swiftly, foolishly, along the ditch, with outstretched hands and clutching fingers. His eyes must have been closed, for he ran blindly, bumping, staggering from side to side. Out of the ditch he climbed as though by accident, and it seemed for some seconds tried to run through the stone wall, for he kicked and pushed at it before clambering over, out of sight.

Above, the Vampires hung, and if some of those terrible eyes followed the screaming, blindly fleeing figure of Bingen, they did not move to follow. My arms tightened about Janet. I tried to crouch over her, wanted to bury my head in her frock, but I had to stare upwards, waiting . . . waiting. Seconds dragged into minutes. They did not stir. I regained a little courage, ventured to whisper.

‘I believe we’re safe. I don’t think they’re going to come any lower. Anyway, there isn’t too many for me to deal with.’ Too many! What chance would we have stood if that crowd had dropped! My arm tightened about her. ‘Try not to faint. I’d want you to help if they . . .’

‘I think I’m all right.’ From my shoulder under the tangled mass of dark curls came the reply softly, so softly that I scarce could hear. It gave me courage, strength. She whispered again. ‘I’ll try to help but . . . I just can’t look at them.’

‘They don’t mean to touch us. They’d have done it before now, and Bingen’s gone.’ Janet jerked panically as I whispered, and I reassured her quickly, afraid of hysteria. ‘I don’t mean they’ve . . . He got away safely. They didn’t go after him. They aren’t going to touch him.’

Stooping to whisper, my gaze fell from above, and when I looked up again the Vampires were moving. I pushed Janet to the bottom of the ditch, stood erect, ashamed to have been crouching afraid, and a savage exultation thrilled my veins from the close contact of her, until I realized the hovering Vampires were moving . . . and moving upwards. They were going!

I did not speak until certain, then I called to Janet.

‘They’re going away! They’re going!’

Vertically into the air, as though drawn up by invisible strings, they went, ascending rapidly, leaving one behind, and that solitary one stayed motionless with ribbed wings twisting minutely. Fainter and fainter the rest faded from black to grey, merging into the intense blue of the heavens, and were gone. But one was left. It could not harm us. If only it would descend low enough for me to swing at it with the sword; but there it stayed, some twenty or thirty feet above, lying horizontally, staring downwards, and for one heart-stilling moment I wondered whether it stayed to trail us; whether the one that had watched us before had communicated with its kind; whether, having found us, they had gone off, leaving one to watch until they wanted food. I laughed. It was too incredible.

‘What is the matter?’ Janet’s voice asked quickly at the unexpected sound, and she looked up at me wonderingly.