He hadn’t wanted to sell his – he’d wanted to use them. I’d looked down at my own shabby trainers, five years old and tatty through tight-fisted neglect. Worth nothing on eBay but priceless if you’ve got no shoes. Al poked a finger right through his sole and through to the other side. His socked foot hovered above the undergrowth.
‘
I’ve got another pair still in the box at home,’ he said, sitting in the car to put his trainer back on. I rolled the log into the hole, and jumped on it again to make it sit right, snapping off any smaller twigs that were left. I guided Al safely over our makeshift road repair before sitting back in the car. We headed for the golden light at the end of the tunnel of trees, but just before the fields opened up again Al spotted another hole.
‘
We’re being stupid,’ I said.
‘
Why’s that?’ Al asked.
‘
Well, I can’t go looking for a suitable lump of wood each time we come to a hole in the ground, we’ve got to recycle. Hold on, I’ll go and grab it.’
Halfway back to the log I realised that I hadn’t checked whether or not the coast was clear. Safety first - people die when they get cocky, I told myself. I raced the rest of the way and prized up the log from the ground, but as I began to drag it back to the car I heard scrabbling in the undergrowth and froze. A twig snapped; then silence. Right beside me on the other side of the low chicken wire a pile of fallen branches and dead leaves rustled - and then I saw it.
It was just a pheasant, scratching around in the dirt. I quickened my pace as much as the log would let me, ears pricked. My heart was thumping; the blood hissing in my ears. Then I heard Lou screaming for the first time in ten years of knowing her, and I was impressed to hear that she had a good set of lungs on her. As I ran closer I saw a flurry of movement in the car and Al pulling Lou from the back seat with her blouse ripped. It wasn’t long before Susie was out too and Al stood between them, shielding Lou and looking rather pale.
‘
Oi!’ I shouted, catching Susie’s attention. As she turned to face me Al lifted his leg and hoofed her in the arse, whipping her forward and cracking her head into the edge of the open door. She crumpled backwards into the dry leaves as Lou ran to the front of the car, turning to me with a look I’d not seen before; a look to go with her scream but just a few seconds late. Susie stood bolt upright. I ran towards her with the log out in front of me as she lunged at Al; I rammed it into her, catching her shoulder and spinning her round. I tried to hold onto the log but the momentum pulled my feet from under me; I loosened my grip too late and fell on top of Susie, who hadn’t missed a beat. She was grabbing me and tearing at my clothes, pulling my head towards her face. I felt Al grab a hold of my arm and begin pulling me to my feet, but she was strong. I could feel all the muscles in her arms and hands tensing into tight little beads, and she stank. I got one foot flat on the floor and heaved myself up, Al nearly pulling my arm out of its socket.
Then the log whistled past my face and connected with the underside of Susie’s chin, lifting her into the air and back against the wire fence. Lou let go of it before I had done and kept her balance; the log soared past Susie and into a fence post, the release of tension springing coils of barbed wire and thick splinters around her as she went down, tangling feet and torso. She fell backwards onto the lower chicken wire fence behind it but didn’t shriek out in pain; instead she tried to get up but the more she struggled against the barbed wire the tighter it became – only her forearms were free. A strand of wire had lashed across her face and was cutting bloodlessly into her white cheeks as she reached out to us, her arms flailing as if she was treading water, her throat bubbling. Lou sat where she had stood, dropping fat tears into the dust. Her work-mate wasn‘t going anywhere, so I knelt beside her to put an arm around her shoulders and pull her in close to me.
‘
She just went for me in the car,’ she sobbed, every intake of breath a great shuddering effort. ‘Her eyes – it didn’t look like Susie. She was going to bite me. Her teeth… She would have bitten you,’ Lou turned her face upwards to look at me - she hated how her eyes puffed up when she cried, but she was always beautiful. When she looked into my eyes like that it was as if everything was still and there was only us left in the world. She couldn’t look at Susie; instead she buried her head in my chest and eventually the tears turned into tired little sighs. I checked her over for scratches and found no breaks in the skin; just some red friction marks. When I was happy Lou was okay Al and I sat her back in the car, then stood in front of Susie as she struggled against the barbed tangle.
‘
She’s not feeling any pain. Look at her cheeks,’ I said, my legs still weak.
‘
Do you think she’s dead?’ Al asked.
‘
Look at her. I just don’t know. That guy who got hit by the bike in Crawley; he was cut in two and just kept going at that woman’s scalp like it was a Sunday roast.’
‘
We could test the theory. You know, see if she‘s dead.’ Al rubbed his chin and looked at me sideways.
‘
How?’ I asked.
‘
Well, that bloke’s heart wasn’t helping him chew; it wasn’t pumping blood to his arms if it was sitting in the road with the rest of his guts. It could have just been lucky electrical impulses making him attack, but we’ll know for sure if Susie keeps going too once we’ve stabbed her in the heart.’ Al said simply.
‘
Once we’ve stabbed her?’ My legs were getting weaker by the minute.
‘
Well, once you’ve stabbed her actually. I thought of it, and I’ve done all the driving,’ he said.
‘
But I already know what today’s about. I don’t need to prove it.’
‘
Yes you do,’ Al was walking back to the car, ‘and I need to see it.’ He wrestled a muddy golfing umbrella from the dogs in the boot and trudged back. ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue what today’s about, but if you’re right we need to get ready. Go on.’
He offered the umbrella to me. I took it, and pointed the metal tip at Susie’s writhing body. ‘I’m right behind you. She won’t get free,’ he said confidently. I hesitated.
‘
What are you so afraid of?’ he asked me. ‘You said you thought she was dead already, so it won’t be like you’re murdering her.’
‘
Its still a bit grim though.’
He did have a point. I gritted my teeth and made contact with her chest, finding the centre of her bony chest-plate with the tip of the umbrella. I pushed. She sank back onto the splintered stump of the fence-post but still made no sound except a faint, determined wheeze.
‘
Go on, push harder. Push it through,’ Al said.
I leant on the handle with both hands and pushed again - nothing, except the sound of her spine clicking as she arched over the stump. Each push ripped a little more skin, the barbs on the wire cutting hundreds of tiny lateral slits all over her body, but there was still no blood, no cry of pain.
‘
Right through,’ Al said again.
‘
I can’t; she’s as tough as an old boot. Give us a hand.’
Al stood next to me and we put alternate hands over the end of the umbrella handle.
‘
You ready?’ I nodded.
‘
One; two; three!’
It popped through her sternum and in by two or three inches; at the same time the thickest sliver of fence post poked through the front of her belly and up, a stray splinter taking one cup of her bra and poking it into the air. She looked bent, but continued to fight the tangled tension of the wire as if nothing had happened. A well of black sludge appeared in the depression left where we had penetrated her chest, and the acrid stink of sulphur made my stomach flip. We watched her squirming like a worm on a hook for a minute before Al eventually spoke. I didn’t have the energy to make a joke about ramming the point home.
‘
Well, I’d say that’s pretty conclusive. I mean, it’s not scientific or anything, but it’s enough for me. We need to get properly tooled up.’ He pulled the umbrella out with the sound of sticky suction, wiped it clean on some dry leaves and started back for the car. ‘I’m sorry I kept driving off when you were with that kid in the car park,’ he ventured meekly, opening his door. ‘I’ll not be fucking about like that again chum.’ Lou was dozing, her black hair straggling across her face.
‘
It was quite funny, if you were inside the car maybe.’ I said. ‘But you know how it is though; we watch the movies, we know when someone’s going to get bitten - we sit there cheering. We can’t slack off now. We should agree: no checking out any wooded areas alone; no rescuing people who should have known better; no going a bit nuts and getting careless; no pressing your ear up against a door you’ve just escaped through; and no more nursing people who look a bit peaky. Next time their heads come straight off. Lou nearly got scratched by Susie back there – she just got lucky.’
‘
Susie’s had her nails filed down.’ Lou murmured distantly. ‘She’s getting new acrylic ones fitted for her twenty-first this weekend.’
For a minute or two I could still see Susie at the edge of the woods in the wing mirror, tangled in the wire and grasping at the evening sunlight as we headed off up the track before the dust clouds pulled in like stage curtains. The next hour or so was navigated in grim silence as the sun set. I couldn’t second-guess what Lou would think was worse – thinking that her husband had just killed her colleague; or knowing what Susie really was and that her teeth were still gnashing. I didn’t want to use Susie to prove to Lou that I was right about what they had become. I had to wait for Lou to come to her own conclusion.
We ploughed on over the spine of the Downs, Al taking a tight left turn signposted as Monarch’s Way. He turned the radio on, and we found that all the BBC stations carried a static-laden recorded message of a woman with a clipped accent repeating:
‘
This is a test of the national alert and information system. Stand by. Stand by. Around the ragged rock, the ragged rascal ran. Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was white as snow. Fee fi fo fum; I smell the blood of an Englishman,’ followed by a string of electronic tones of increasing pitch, before the message began again. It sounded like it was recorded in the fifties and gave me the serious willies. There were one or two stations still playing music, but Al reckoned they were recorded sets. The only human voice we heard was French – we often got very strong radio signals from the continent between the Downs and the sea. He sounded frantic, desperate. A plea for help sounds the same in any language.
The night brought a clean freshness to the air up above the towns, and the road soon improved. After crossing over a properly surfaced country road and into fields again we were soon at a gate. This was Upper Beeding.
Al eased out onto a terraced street, the orange glow of civilisation clinging to the air like fog. Several cars had been pushed to the side of the road, their occupants long gone; strips of cloth hung from a bush and blankets dotted the tarmac. On our left the convent school was on fire, orange sparks dancing around the roof timbers which were splayed out like an opened ribcage. Then we heard a human voice.
‘
Shush! Al, stop the car.’ It was a man’s voice, not screaming but shouting words. Al slowed up, but continued west through the abandoned streets. Lou was the first to see him, and let out a gasp. A wire-haired silhouette stood on a street corner.
‘
They walk! They walk!’
We drove closer and he turned round, but not to us - he seemed oblivious to the car. In the streetlamp-orange light I saw his dusty clothes and bloodied hands and something around his neck. It was only when we were right up to him, close enough that we could see his eyes unfocused but wild that I caught sight of a vicar’s dog-collar which had come loose and lay wagging like an accusing finger. I shuddered, and thought for the first time that day of my parents.
‘
Where are my mum and dad?’ I asked quietly. Al’s head snapped round.
‘
You alright chum?’ he asked, concerned.
‘
Yeah fine, I was just asking Lou.’ I replied.
‘
It sounded like you were going a bit mental there. Don’t freak me out.’
‘
Aren’t they on holiday in Bristol seeing your brother?’ Lou asked, perching her chin on my shoulder. Birthdays and anniversaries; anything made from fabric; tickets and passports, I thought. I felt guilty that I hadn’t phoned my old dear earlier, when the phones had been working. They should have been second on my list after Lou. Surely I wouldn’t have just forgotten about them? The sickness had started up north, so if it was here in the south it was definitely in Bristol too. I felt all of a sudden like I’d lost a member of the group, like my parents had been with us all day. I wasn’t used to missing them.
We found the entrance to Monarch’s Way again and carried on as the track imperceptibly curled toward the coast. I could see fires pinpricking the towns, brighter than the street lights which halted at the blackness of the sea. Al had turned off his headlights a while ago and our eyes were now used to the night, with a half-moon that shone as brilliantly as the stars. The only thing we saw was a figure in a field, a man sitting cross-legged with a lamb on his lap. The animal’s feet were in the air and its belly was empty, blood black in the moonlight. It either didn’t care we were there due to the fresh meat in its hand; or it didn’t make the connection that there was more flesh available inside our car. How would you lose a connection like that? How long would it take you to forget what cars were? What would it take for you to forget what cars were? None of us even mentioned him; we’d seen bigger things that day.
Looming on the horizon, standing over the surrounding hills, was Cissbury Ring. We’d all been walking the dogs up there just the weekend before and had found it pretty much deserted in the sweltering sun. All I could remember from school field trips up there, on the highest hill for miles around, was that people had been mining for flint on the top as far back as five thousand years ago. Iron Age settlers also enjoyed the hill’s natural vantage point, and had remoulded the mile-round hill as a fort with a deep ditch and steep fortifications made from the surrounding chalk. It was used for farming and as a trading post for a bit after that, until the bloody Romans took it over for another three hundred years or so. They would have loved the golf course. Various inhabitants of my island had used Cissbury Ring ever since to escape further invasions; from the Saxons, Angles and Jutes (who took over from the Romans); the Normans (who took over from the Saxons, but were considered Vikings only a hundred years or so beforehand); to the Allied Forces of World War Two (who in turn were descended from Iron Age miners, Roman centurions, Saxon raiders, Viking warriors, Norman barons and your pick of half a dozen other battle-hardened tribes).