Guy Smith - Throwback

That was the role scavengers played in the world of death, preventing putrefaction and disease. After dark the dogs might come again, foxes too. It was the law of Nature when things got out of control.

One last look up at the dark forest on the skyline before he went back indoors. The first few snowflakes were starting to drift down. Sylvia was somewhere up there.

Maybe Jackie, too.

IT WAS morning again. Jackie stirred, instinctively clutched at the tree branches, experienced a dizzy bout of vertigo. Sickness; fear, and the fact that she had neither eaten nor drunk for almost two days.

She was going down there today, down below to where death awaited her. She either died up here slowly of starvation or gave herself up to the pack. The latter would be relatively quick. Her mind was made up.

A flap of huge wings close by, a huge brown bird taking off, gliding and settling again in a tree further away, A buzzard. It was waiting for her to die so that it could feast; it wasn't in any hurry.

She released her hold on the big bough, felt the branches beneath her starting to bow, yielding to her full weight.

Sliding, slippery . . .

She tensed as she felt herself go, closed her eyes, braced every nerve in her body for the impact. Seconds seemed an eternity. A brief flash of inexplicable memory: that face again, so smooth like Phil Winder's, eyes that were filled with sorrow, lips moving. Please don't die. Then it was gone.

She hit something soft, rolled, sprawled. A cushioned landing, she had fallen on the wild dogs, amongst them. She closed her eyes tightly. I'm not going to look, I don't want to see them. Kill me quickly.

Jackie could feel the rough hair of the dog underneath her, a still form that did not move. One of the dead ones. She was lying there waiting to die but death did not come.

It was the silence that had her opening her eyes in bewilderment. The snarling pack should have been on her by now but there was not so much as a warning growl. She should have been dragged to and fro like a rag doll caught up in a canine tug-o'-war, pulled one way then the other, teeth biting and tearing as they savaged her.

It took several seconds for understanding to filter through to her confused brain, rejecting the fact that she was not going to die. Glancing from one animal to another. She lay on the big one, the one which had hunted her, had killed her companion. Two more close by, a third by the human corpse. Another some yards away. All of them dead. The rest had gone.

For some reason the dogs had left. They had fought and feasted on human carrion, satisfied their hunger. Become bored. It didn't matter why they had left, just that they had.

Jackie sat there staring about her, noticed for the first time that it was snowing, odd patches of open ground beneath the trees already sprinkled with a soft white covering. She shook herself, sat up, still listening in case the dogs were close by but there was no sound. An empty forest, devoid of all life except that buzzard still perched in the tree.

She tried to stand but her legs were weak and she fell, crawled a few yards away from the scene of the bloody carnage. She couldn't stop here, the animals might come back or else others scenting death might appear. She had resigned herself to dying but instead she lived and now she had the will to fight again.

After some time she found she could stand, walk a few paces, holding on to low branches to support herself. It was bitterly cold and she was hungry, thirsty. Also she was a fugitive. Those who hunted her would not have given up the trail.

She followed a well-trodden path through the trees. The thick overhead evergreen foliage was preventing the ground from being covered with snow and it made travelling easier. All the same she could not remain in the forest. She had to keep moving.

It was midday when she finally emerged from the big wood, stood and looked across at snow-covered hills and valleys. It was still snowing lightly but the clouds to the west were breaking up. She knew that she had to find food and shelter before nightfall.

She headed across the ridge of hills, wary, hiding in the bushes whenever she spied other people. Once a group of five men and a woman passed within yards of her. The men were struggling to support the woman, two of them carrying her a few yards, setting her down to rest. She was coughing badly, her breath wheezing and rasping its way out of her lungs. A conference between the other three men; they were worried and Jackie thought that they looked ill, too. Eventually they moved on and once they were out of sight Jackie continued on her way. But overall she sensed that something was dreadfully wrong.

Some time later her foot caught against something, almost caused her to fall. With a start she saw that it was the body of a man that the snow had covered. She saw his face, stepped back in horror. Sunken eyes, the flesh blotched as though some disease had ravaged him, a trickle of dried blood from the open mouth.

Death was common enough, she had come to accept it as an everyday occurrence but there was something about this corpse that alarmed her. Had he been savaged by wild animals or mutilated by the fierce roving tribes then she would hardly have given him a second glance. But he had died from some inexplicable cause that had left its own mark on him; he reminded her of that woman she had seen earlier, the emaciation, the sheer hopelessness in the features. And it frightened her.

Jackie's body was warmer now but shelter and food were priorities. She remembered the comfort of the Winder farmhouse, foreign to her instincts then but she needed such a place now. And when she spied the stone cottage set back against the side of the hill below her she knew that that was where she must take refuge. She would be warm and safe in there, she had learned that certain packages and jars contained nourishing food and, above all, the tribes mostly avoided these strange dwelling-places.

She approached the cottage cautiously. A small tumbledown stone-built two-up, two-down that had fallen into a state of disrepair, the covering of snow hiding most of its structural faults. Window frames had rotted, a couple of broken panes had been repaired with brown tape. Several slates were missing off the roof and jackdaws had chipped most of the mortar out of the chimney stack. The garden gate had come off its hinges, was lying on its side.

Jackie took a direct course for the front door; it was locked. Following the wall, she peeped in at the first window she came to. The usual furniture she had come to accept, a couple of easy chairs, a sofa and a table. A fireplace with just crumpled newspapers in the grate. A table was strewn with sheets of paper and some kind of squat machine which she did not recognise; she had never seen a typewriter before. She moved on, skirted a lean-to, came to the back door. It was open an inch or two so that it creaked in the wind and the snow slanted in.

She pushed it wide, stepped over the threshold. A wave of dizziness passed over her and she flung herself on to the sofa. Sheer bliss, rolling back, stretching out. She would rest awhile and then she would find something to eat and drink. Outside the snow was thickening, beginning to plaster the windows, darkening the rooms.

In her dreams Jackie saw that man again. He was in the same room as her but somehow he always succeeded in keeping his back to her. Occasionally she glimpsed his profile but it was always in shadow.

And when finally he came to her the light was gone and she could not see him, only feel him. Strong smooth flesh that rubbed against her own, kissing her passionately and thrusting his tongue into her mouth. Sensuous fingertips doing things to her that Kuz had never done. Dominant yet gentle, loving her.