Joel could see squad cars, a riot van, and an ambulance in the car park. There were civilians already outside. Everyone was staring at the sky.
“Oh god,” someone said.
Joel felt like his legs would collapse underneath him.
A gigantic, dark shape lurked within the grey clouds. Bigger than a mountain, drifting in the sky directly overhead.
The ground was vibrating. Joel felt his bones stiffen. The filling in one of his molars tingled. He swallowed, fought rising nausea in his stomach. He had the urge to run away and curl up into a ball until the presence passed over.
More people emerged from the school. They moved slowly, cautiously.
“It’s not a craft,” said Magnus. “It’s not a ship. It’s a living thing. A dark mass. A presence.”
“It’s living?” Joel asked, and he was answered with a sky-cracking wail. He covered his ears, as did everyone else. The sound of its cry reverberated through his body. A deep, sombre blast of noise and the boom of air through lungs bigger than a house.
They were all insects compared to that thing.
He had thought it a sign from God.
He was wrong. This wasn’t anything to do with God. And he was in awe of the presence above him. Where was it from? Was it one of many? Were humans all over the world staring up at such colossal impossibilities and asking the same questions?
A profound terror bloomed inside him. The frayed edges of mind-snapping dread.
“That’s what I saw on Saturday night,” said Magnus.
Ralph and Joel looked at him.
“Before you found me passed out on the grass, Ralph, I saw a presence in the sky…like that thing.”
“Is it the same one?” said Joel.
“I don’t know. Could be hundreds of them.”
“Hundreds,” muttered Ralph. “Shit.”
The presence in the clouds moved away silently towards the north, rising until it vanished higher into the sky.
Joel put his hand in his pocket and touched the crucifix. But he wasn’t comforted. He had the horrid feeling that God wasn’t watching.
“Nothing will ever be the same,” said Magnus. “The world is changing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
There was a house ahead, on the right side of the road. Florence saw it before Frank did; he had been glancing over his shoulder, worried they were being followed.
“Do you think people are in the house?” asked Florence.
“Maybe. They might be able to help us.”
“There won’t be any monsters there?”
He shook his head. “I’ll look after you.”
“I hope they’ve got chocolate biscuits.”
The house was set back twenty yards from the road. A gravel driveway without a car. Tyre tracks in the damp dirt between the stones. Maybe they had evacuated. Frank kept Florence behind him. Her little footsteps on the gravel and the quiet hush of her breath.
The house was small. Red brick walls and a squat chimney. A front door framed by a wooden latticed archway.
“Maybe there’re other boys and girls in there,” Florence said. “Boys smell.”
Frank swallowed a grunted laugh. “Yeah, we certainly do.” He looked through the window into an empty kitchen. Florence watched him. He knocked on the front door.
“I don’t think they’re home,” Florence said.
Frank knocked again.
“Maybe they’re asleep,” said Florence.
“Maybe.” Frank sighed. He opened the door.
“Isn’t that rude? Are we allowed to go in there without asking?”
“It’ll be okay. Stay close. Stay quiet.”
Frank stepped into the hallway. Shadows filled the air, but they retreated from the light coming through the doorway.
“What’s that smell?” asked Florence.
“Something nasty,” Frank said, screwing up his face. Bad meat. He went into the kitchen. A framed photo of a man, a woman, a teenage boy and two younger girls. On the worktop was an electricity bill addressed to Mr David Pulver. The smell grew stronger. He saw a hamster cage with its door hanging open. The wiry metal was bent and warped.
The sound of movement in the next room. He could see a television and a unit of free-standing bookshelves; the living room. He made sure Florence was still behind him then moved to the next doorway. He looked into the room and wished he hadn’t. Patio doors let in the daylight.
Frank couldn’t speak.
He held Florence back. He made sure of that. This wasn’t to be seen by her eyes.
The air left his body. The stink of slaughter made his eyes water. The room before him drifted in-and-out of focus until it remained terribly clear to him. Too clear to ever be wiped from his memory.
“What is it?” Florence asked.
“Go back to the kitchen.”
“What is it?”
He struggled to answer her. His mouth was dry. He ran his free hand over his face. The hot stink of blood and freshly-slain meat, fat and gristle.
The walls were stained with red. Splatters from arteries and veins. The remains of bodies on a carpet waterlogged with blood and shit. Scraps of hair. The stumps of arms and legs. Torsos that were no more than stripped meat and bone. Shredded clothes and wet rags. A small ribcage. Slippery organs strewn on the floor. Chewed lumps of flesh. Broken and splintered bones that had been gnawed upon. Wet things glistened.
At the foot of an armchair was a spine. A damp pelt of hair that might have been a cat once; furred skull and empty eye sockets.
“Fuck,” Frank whispered.
The air was hot and stifling.
A small man was crouched over what remained of a naked body; a woman, judging by the long hair and lacerated breasts. He was sobbing. The lower half of his face was coated with blood. He was topless. Hairy shoulders and a pot belly. Boxer shorts. His knees, forearms, and hands were bloody.
Frank recognised the man from the photo in the kitchen.
David Pulver clasped his hands together. As he sobbed he muttered under his breath. Frank realised the man was praying.
The man looked up at Frank. His face was a mask of torture and misery. And hunger.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. The inside of his mouth was red. His tongue seemed too long. Dirty teeth. “I couldn’t help myself. I tried to stop, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.”
Frank tried to speak.
The man’s eyes were small and pathetic and remorseful. The corners of his mouth jerked. He licked his lips.
Pulver said, “Mark got away. My son. But I killed Mary and the girls. I got them. They didn’t want to die. They begged me. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to. I didn’t have a choice. Do you understand? Do you see? I didn’t have a choice.”
Pulver lowered his face to the body beneath him. He kissed his wife’s mouth slowly. He had peeled much of the skin from her face. Pulver turned his body slightly, and Frank saw the throbbing red pustules on the man’s bare back. A pale fluid was seeping from them. Pulver spoke to the woman he had butchered.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated until his voice faded into silence.
Frank raised the crowbar. Pulver looked at him.
“Please kill me,” Pulver said. “Please kill me before I change completely. There’s nothing left for me. There’s nothing left for any of us. The world is changing. We are changing.”
“What?”
“Kill me.”
Frank remained in the doorway. A tremor started in his hands and ran up his arms.
“Please kill me.”
Frank stared at the stew of scarlet slush and abattoir runoff before him. He felt his stomach muscles tighten, a wave of nausea, but there was nothing to bring up. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten.