The Fear

And the next thing he knew he was fighting over the bottle with the stranger. How could it be? No time at all seemed to have passed. One moment he was alone in the middle of the building site and the next there was the stranger’s ugly face, and his bloody fingers grappling for the water. Shadowman saw that the flesh had been worn away from the father’s fingertips, which ended in yellow stubs of bone. It must have happened as he’d clawed his way relentlessly across the hard ground. The horrid bony claws rattled against the metal of the canteen as they scrabbled to get a hold.

Shadowman dragged it out of his grasp and smashed it into the side of the stranger’s head, knocking him away. He forced himself upright and staggered on, the building site slipping and sliding around in his vision … Cranes and diggers, piles of rubble, scrap, neat stacks of brightly coloured plastic pipework, deserted Portakabins.

He was able to stay on his feet longer this time and was just begi

He wasn’t fully under, though; some spark of awareness remained. He swam up out of the depths and opened his eyes. The father was creeping towards him, pulling his way along the ground, no expression on his remaining features.

Relentless.

Single-minded.

Shadowman’s eyes drooped shut.

Fight it. Wake up …

He flitted in and out of consciousness. The periods of black-out mercifully growing shorter and less intense. Each time he opened his eyes he saw that the father was a little nearer.

He had to put an end to this nightmare. He had to stop the father once and for all. He glanced around, scouring the building site for anything he could use as a weapon. At last, about five metres away, he saw what he was looking for. A tangled heap of rusted metal, made up of the twisted steel rods that were used in reinforced concrete. He took a deep breath, flopped on to his hands and knees and set off towards it, ignoring the stones and spikes that dug into him, shredding his skin further.

He got there safely, hauled himself up and began to search through the rods. Most were useless for his purpose – they were either too long or were welded to other rods to make a framework. Just as he was about to give up and search elsewhere, he tugged at a particularly sharp-ended rod and found that it was unattached. He drew it out of the stack. It was the right length. Gasping for breath, he used the pole as a walking staff and made his way back to the cement mixer, where he sat back down in his spot to wait for the father.

Soundlessly, the stranger crept closer and closer, scraping his horrid, fleshless fingers through the dirt.

‘Cme

Fetching the weapon had taken a lot out of Shadowman, and, as the father got close enough to smell, he wondered if he would have the strength to do anything more than prod him with it.

He shuddered as the father reached his feet and ran his hands possessively over them, then started to edge his way up his legs, holding on to the torn material of his trousers. His mouth hung open, dribble pooling and spilling out from either side. He was shaking his head slowly from left to right, a low moan escaping from his diseased throat.

Shadowman raised the spike, drew it back, aiming for the father’s face. Then he drove it forward with all his remaining strength and the sharp tip disappeared inside the father’s mouth.

The angle that the father was coming at him – crawling face first – meant that the rod was forced straight down his throat and into his belly. Shadowman grunted and thrust again, twisting the spike to the side, so that the father was tipped over into the dirt on his back.

He wasn’t dead. He lay there twitching and gurgling, his bony fingers groping at the spike, trying to pull it out. It was no use – a good half-metre of rod was buried inside him, like some grotesque sword-swallowing act. Shadowman didn’t have the strength to finish him off. He sat there, drifting in and out of sleep as the father slowly expired.

Gradually the light faded from the day, as if mimicking the stranger’s dimming life force. Still he hung on, though, his fingers moving gently, like spiders, on the pole.

There was a growing smell of blood and faeces, which seemed to become more acute as it grew dark and there was less to see. And as night fell Shadowman started to hear noises. Things moving about. Animals? Strangers? Children? He couldn’t know. He couldn’t stay here, though. That was for sure. Sooner or later something would come and try to eat him.

He wrestled his pack round to his front and felt inside it for his torch. He found it quickly, slid it out and snapped it on. He swore. There was a group of six strangers making their way towards him. They shielded their eyes and froze as the torch beam fell on them, behaving more like wild animals than human beings.

They were possibly part of the same bunch that had attacked Shadowman’s party at the station. Friends, if that was the right word – did strangers have friendships? – of the father he had speared. He thought he recognized one of them, a mother with no hair and several missing fingers. Her companions were weak and badly gone, but in Shadowman’s concussed state he doubted he could fight them all off. It had taken everything he had to beat the father and he once again had no weapon.

He wasn’t going to just sit here and let them do what they wanted. He climbed up the cement mixer until he was on his feet and started to walk.

Good. Not too dizzy. No spiralling yet.

The torch lit his way. He didn’t get far, though. The bald mother caught up with him, and in grabbing for his arm knocked the torch to the ground where it cut out.

He closed his eyes agin and began to cry.

He thought he’d never needed any friends. Any family. But he felt so alone now.

And then an odd thing happened. The mother gasped as a weapon struck her from behind. Shadowman heard the confused sounds of a fight. He strained to see what was going on in the darkness. As far as he could tell, another group of people was laying into the six strangers.

He was being rescued.

‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Hello …’

The fight was short and brutal. The six strangers were easily killed and then the new group came towards Shadowman, vague shapes, moving fast, organized, fit, carrying weapons and apparently well drilled. But as they got close enough for him to make out their faces in the moonlight all his hopes faded.

Not kids.

Grown-ups.

Four of them.

All fathers.

The one in front wore a Manchester United shirt. Behind him was a bare-chested father with only one arm. Next to him was a younger father wearing a business suit, a Bluetooth earpiece sticking out of one ear. Shadowman didn’t have time to get a good look at the fourth one before they were upon him.

He closed his eyes again, ready to die now, too hurt and weary to care any more, hoping it would be quick.

47

Courtney was sitting holding a candle, looking up at a life-size model of a blue whale that was suspended from the ceiling in one of the museum galleries. It was an immense dark shape and she found it hard to believe that such giant creatures existed for real. She couldn’t get her head round the idea that somewhere out there, in the scary depths of the oceans, whales like this were actually swimming around. She’d seen them on the TV, on nature programmes, but to see one like this, even though it was just a model, brought home to her just how humongous they were. The biggest creatures ever to live on planet Earth, according to the information signs. Before the disaster the blue whale was in danger of being wiped out. Now they were free to live and grow bigger and bigger in the oceans with no humans hunting them down.