Nailed by the Heart (34 page)

"What
good will that do us if we're like Wainwright, Fox and the rest?
Zombies?"

Tony
began to walk toward the steps. "We need to make preparations.
All the villagers know what they have to do."

Chris
hissed, "We're back to sacrifice again-that primitive crap."

"Primitive
yes, crap no. These people know what they have to do. Yes, sacrifice.
No, Chris, not because I told them, but because they know
instinctively what to do. It's born inside of us. Like a baby's born
with the inbred ability to mimic its parents, so it can learn to talk
and hold a spoon. We're born knowing about the need to sacrifice.
Don't fight it, Chris. Allow it to flow up from your unconscious. Ask
David. He'll know. Children do. Ask him if he's destroyed any of his
favorite toys lately and not known why. Ask him, Chris. Ask him,
Ruth."

Chris
remembered David leaving his favorite comics and toys on a rock for
the sea.

"You're
talking crap, Tony. Look, we need to keep this place safe." He
turned to the elder Hodgson men. They were farmers. Down to earth.
Pigs and muck were their lives. Chris appealed to them.

"You'll
help keep guard, won't you?"

Their
eyes shied away. He realized they had swallowed Tony Gateman's
get-ready-for-the-coming-of-the-olde-worlde-pagan-god sales talk.

"You'll
help, won't you?"

"Oh,
aye." John Hodgson glanced at his brother. "Aye, we'll
help."

Chris
turned back to Tony to ask him again, but the little Londoner was
walking down the steps as quickly as he could.

But
Tony was right about the growing tension.

Chris
heard raised voices coming from one of the seafort rooms. Arguments
were springing up among the villagers like fires spontaneously
igniting on a dry moor.

He
passed the Major pacing restlessly about the courtyard with Mac. The
dog turned in circles, pawed the cobbles, its claws scratching
noisily, coughing out highpitched yelps.

One
of the Hodgson boys sat astride his motorbike. Chris watched him
start it, then sit there pointlessly revving it. The dog yelped
louder. The sound of the revving motor would provoke more arguments.

Chris,
tense, tapped the long shaft of the hammer against his leg.

The
pressure was building. There was no safety valve. Something would
have to burst soon.

That
night the dead who should have stayed dead came back. Chris watched
them emerge from the dense blanket of mist, to stalk the sands.
Wainwright looked crooked now. Fox was beginning to swell like his
brother. The little drowned boy ran ahead of them.

Dotted
here and there, kneeling on the beach, the Saf Dar stared at the
seafort, milk-white eyes gleaming unnaturally bright in the dark.

He
had told himself over and over that the Saf Dar were stupid,
animal-like things, following some residual craving for death and
mutilation.

Now
he wasn't so sure.

Yes,
they still hated. But their eyes seemed to glint with a sinister
intelligence.

Yes,
they had stood and allowed themselves to be burnt and blasted by
shotguns. But it hadn't hurt them. No, they were not stupid; just
confident.

All
they needed to do was sit there patiently on the sands.

When
the time was ready to kill. ...

Then
they would kill.

And
no fucker on earth would get in their way.

He
walked around the top of the seafort walls. John Hodgson, shotgun in
hand, nodded a greeting, then turned back to watch the figures
walking through the mist.

This
time Wainwright, the Foxes and their kind did not stop and cry in
agonized voices; they walked right up to the gates.

Then
they battered at them with their bare hands. Close up he could see
the tumorous growths that erupted from their flesh.

He
ran down to the courtyard, to watch as the gates rattled and shook as
they were battered and shoved by more than twenty dead/alive men from
the other side.

Bolts
and padlock shivered as the gates swung inward an inch then sprang
back. If the gates should give way, thought Chris, there's nothing
between those things and my wife and son but me.

Just
what the hell could I do?

I
wouldn't even be able to die a martyr. I would end up like Wainwright
or one of those raw bastard things that were a mess of human flesh
and shellfish.

He
walked toward the trembling gates. If he reached out to push them
back it would be a futile gesture. But anything was better than this
morbid impotence.

He
stood there, feeling the shocks transmitted through the wood shiver
up his arms like a series of rapid electric shocks. He pictured the
bare fists, palms, swollen knuckles cracking against the thick
timbers. Did they feel anything? Did they want to turn and run for a
home that might no longer even exist? They were held there only by
the will of the Saf Dar. Forced to do things they did not want to do.

Once
more Chris felt his mind slipping.

Was
he inside, an ordinary man, with a wife, and one son, holding the
doors, knowing he had no chance of keeping them shut if the bolts
should snap?

Or
was he outside, bare feet on cold stone, beating with his bare hands
(look, look, they are changing every day now, bigger and bigger,
tighter and tighter, veins bulging out like knotted ropes through the
backs), beating the gates with bare hands, wanting to get in, to drag
out those soft-bodied people, with their cool, cool skins; throw them
at the red men on the beach who rule. ...

Making
our minds turn and turn faster and faster so we don't know where to
run. One minute wanting to run home; the next to grab and beat and
kill the men and women in the stone house on the beach. ...

Kill,
kill, kill, kill, kill. ... We want to force our fingers inside your
bodies Kill... kill...

Home
... go home. ... want to go home. ...

Chris
blinked the sweat from his eyes. Why was he pushing the seafort
gates? There was nothing there.

Then
he remembered. The dead had been there trying to force their way in.

He
dropped his aching arms and shook his head. It felt as if he had
woken from a dream.

Flexing
his stiff fingers, he went back to the caravan and to bed, beside his
sleeping wife and son.

Even
though Chris was not sure whether he was fully awake or not, a vivid
dream streamed through his head.

"They're
in ... they're in ... they're in. ..."

Someone
shouted, their voice echoing off the walls of the seafort.

The
Saf Dar moved as smoothly and silently as panthers through the open
gates.

For
what seemed hours he ran around the seafort looking for David and
Ruth. Anger burned into him like splashes of molten metal on bare
skin. Why hadn't he planned a hiding place in the seafort?

The
Saf Dar breaking in... It was inevitable. He should have known. He
should have made some kind of bolt-hole in the cellar. David would
have shown him where.

But
why had David gone down there?

"David
... David, where are you?"

David
knew all about what lay in the mysterious cellar beneath the
seafort. For some reason Chris had never been able to go down there.
He should have.

He
was running in his pajamas through the labyrinth of passages. Then he
was out in the open air, mist rolling like surf through the open
gates.

The
car. In the car sat David and Ruth. Just as they would when they were
going to the shops. David in the back reading a comic, Ruth patiently
wearing the seatbelt.

He
tried to shout but he couldn't.

He
ran to the car, started the engine.

The
tide was out as he drove the car furiously out through the gates and
along the causeway. No. The coast road is blocked.

All
he could do was drive up and down the beach, skidding the car into
tight turns before he reached the boulders that blocked the northern
end of the beach. Then south toward Out-Butterwick where the stream
cut through the sand. Too deep for the car to cross. He would drive
back.

While
he drove, they were safe. The Saf Dar would not catch them. He
glanced back at David, still reading the comic; then across to Ruth
at his side, combing her hair.

Chris
ached inside. He wanted to tell them how much danger they were in;
and how much he loved them. But he had to focus all his concentration
on the expanse of sand in front of him-avoid the rocks, avoid the
deep pools of sea water; avoid the men standing on the beach.

The
needle on the gauge dropped lower and lower into the red. The engine
choked away, leaving the car to coast, its tyres rumbling across hard
ridges of sand. Slower, slower. ...

Slower...

Stop.

Lock
the doors. ... close the windows. ... They're coming. ...

No
escape now.

They're
crowding around the car. Red, bulging faces pressed to the windows,
pressing harder. Harder until stars appear in the glass as it cracks
beneath their pushing faces. Those thick red hands reaching into
where. ...

"Chris.
... Wake up."

Chris
jerked up, his heart cracking into his ribs like a power hammer.

"You
all right?"

"He
saw his wife's silhouette in the gloom, dark hair falling forward;
her fingers stroked his forehead.

"Yes
... Just a dream. I'll be all right. Lie down and get some sleep."

Chris
lay back, the sweat turning chilly on his face.

Only
a dream...

It
seemed more like a premonition.

"Now
... Listen to me. Every one of you. There's no reason for anyone to
get hurt, if we're all careful; don't do anything stupid. We will all
get out of here safely."

The
Major held up his finger to emphasize the point. Then he continued
with a story of some jungle campaign in Asia.

They
were standing on the walkway that ran around the seawall.

Tom
and John Hodgson were there, with Tony Gateman (he was a reluctant
participant) and Ruth. Chris had been explaining how they would lower
buckets on lines to fill them with sea water. Then the Major had
ambled up, holster belt still around his thin waist, the dog bringing
up the rear. The old man looked tired and more confused than ever.
You could hardly blame the poor sod, thought Chris, sleeping on stone
floors, and with dwindling rations of food, some of which he must
have shared with the dog.

"We
need to mount the machine-guns. Here and here." The old soldier
pointed. "I'll see that the quartermaster issues each man with
hand grenades."

This
was largely a replay of what the Major had said to Chris a couple of
days before.

Chris
wanted to say there were no machine-guns, no hand grenades, no
flame-throwers, no platoon of highly trained commandos. There were
three shotguns, the Major's old revolver, which might not even work,
three ancient cannon that had been used for fence-posts for a hundred
years, and twenty frightened villagers. Most over fifty. Some sick.
And certainly one senile old soldier.

"Now
what you civilians have got to do is keep your heads down. Those
beggars are damn good with a rifle. They'll be sniping at us from the
dunes yonder. Now if I can find Corporal White, I'll have him whistle
up the artillery and they can put down a pattern of twenty-pounders.
That'll spoil their aim a bit, eh?"

Chris
noticed the Reverend Reed waiting conspicuously at the end of the
walkway. Odd, because he rarely made it up onto the wall. Usually too
pissed.

Even
more unusually the man carried a large black book that could only
have been the Bible.