Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

It's all gone. Names fly past, already robbed of meaning: Adidas, Reebok, Microsoft, BBC, ITV, Sky TV, Sony-all the brand names, all the twenty-first-century totems. They mean nothing now. Will mean nothing to anybody till whatever archaeologists of the future there might be dig them up and mount them in museums, try to decipher what they meant to us.

I can't get a handle on it. Only think of Anya, imagine her there in front of me. And there she is, sitting beside me, whole and unharmed, unmarked. Not burnt up like in my dream, but the Anya I kissed goodbye the morning before the bomb fell. There are now four of us round the fire: me, Jean, Frank and Anya. Jean holds my left hand, Anya my right. She looks at Jean's hand on mine, then up at me, raises an eyebrow. I pull my hand free of Jean's, embarrassed, caught out, almost caught cheating.

"Paul?"

I blink, and Anya's gone. But I can still feel the warmth of her hand where it held mine. Jean. Jean drove her away. I turn to shout at her, then stop myself. She was never there. Never here. It wasn't real, however real it was.

"Paul, are you okay?"

"Yes." I nod, but I'm not. God, how could I be? Come that close to raving and shouting over something that wasn't there. I'm crazy. Or going crazy. But what's crazy? What's not? What's mad and what isn't? How much more food will we find down here? And if there isn't enough to eat-how long before we start eyeing each other like that? Before we're killing each other, smashing each other's heads in with lumps of rock, roasting pieces of each other in our coal fires?

I try not to think about it, but I can't stop. What criteria will we use, to choose who lives or dies? The smaller children are of least use. Will we eat them first? But there's less meat on a nine-year-old kid than on a grown man or woman. Will it be the biggest of us, to go the furthest, last the longest, before we have to do it again? Me? Frank? Jean? Or are we of more value? In what way? We've as little idea as anyone else of what to do next. Hell, Jeff Tomlinson probably has more idea. And we're adults, we're authority, the powers that be, as far as the kids are concerned, who killed Mum and Dad and their friends and brought them down here to this. How long will the shreds and threads of our authority as teachers last? How long before they realise there are more of them than there are of us and like any who hold power, we only do so because they allow it? I see myself, my torso and an arm, all that's left, lying by the fire, flies crawling across my glazed eyes, the gnawed bones of the rest of me in the embers of the fire. Kids' famished faces, eager and greedy and animal, smeared with my blood and grease.

When are you insane? When you think about this? When you imagine it? Plan it? Or when you do it? Or is it insanity, will it be when it comes, or will it be only necessity, need, do or die? Will the mad ones be the ones who won't do it, clinging to an outmoded way, as mad in this time as worshipping the Sun God would be to the people we were last week?

Oh God.

Oh. God.

I can smell the roast pork stink that came off Mr Rutter's corpse, and saliva fills my mouth.

I'm crying. Softly. Again.

"Paul, it's alright." Jean's arms are around me. "It's alright. We've all been through so much. It's alright."

I nod, squeeze her hand. I look at Frank. "Get some sleep," he says. "You'll be okay."

We both know that's a lie. For all of us. "Frank," I say.

"Yes?"

"I still think-the kids mustn't go into the narrows again. Whatever it was in there. If it happened to me… "

"Then it could happen to anyone else." He nods. "Yes. I thought of that too. I just wanted to make sure."

That I knew it wasn't real. I nod. But, of course, I don't know. None of us can, anymore.

Taking Frank's advice, I get some sleep. It's deep and dark and blessedly silent. I wake once, and in the dim emberlight of the waning fire, someone tall is standing over me.

"Wh-"

"Sh." Anya kneels by my head. Warm light glows on her face. She strokes my forehead, my matted hair. "Sh. It's alright, Paul."

"Anya."

"Sh." She bends and kisses me: my forehead, my eyes, my cheeks, my nose, my mouth. The last, long and deep.

At last, she squeezes down next to me and huddles close, kisses me again. "It's alright, Paul. Sleep now."

Polish women, I think, are so beautiful.

And I sleep again.

In what passes for the morning, when some vague consensus of reality is established by enough of us all being awake at once, I have no idea if I was dreaming or not.

When we were journeying, searching, at least we had some momentum, a purpose, a goal, a quest. Now-now all we have is an increasingly desultory routine, with too little in it to fill the aching gaps of time in these days that aren't days and nights that aren't nights.

We hunt the lake for fish, catch two more blind bream. We consider the greenish fungus on the cave walls, and can't be sure if we dare eat it or not. Soon we'll have no choice.

Jeff T sees a rat skitter across the cavern floor and chases it, but it bolts into one of the narrows and is gone. "No," I shout as he makes to follow.

"But sir-"

"No, Jeff. It's dangerous in there."

He looks at me with a smirk playing round his lips, a smirk that says coward, weakling, but more, worse, nutter. And he was one of the good kids, respectful, obedient, yes sir no sir. Now it's a direct challenge, open insolence, and I have nothing to back me up, I daren't meet it. It could be the blow that shatters all discipline, all balance.

I look away. Jeff wanders off. He mutters something. There is muffled laughter in response. I look up, fists clenching. Jeff and a couple others smirk back at me. Jean takes my arm and draws me aside.

We catch two more bream in the lake. Have to take one of the boats out on it to find the second; only one's dumb enough to come close to shore. How many does the lake hold? And what will we do when they're all gone?

We cook and eat the fish. Hunger rumbles in us. Fish are low-calorie. We're getting weak, tireder quicker. At least it makes for an early night.

I sleep-

And am shaken awake. A boy, crying. "Sir! Sir!"

"Wh-" I sit up. Everyone's awake. "What? What?"

"It's Jeff, sir, Jeff and Mike."

Mike? Mike Rawlins, one of the smirkers. This was the other one-James? No. Jason. Jason Stanton.

Not so cocky now, I think. His face is grimy and cut and he's soaking wet. Tears have cut clean streaks down through the black coal dust on his face and his eyes are red.

"What about them? What happened?" I look around. No sign of the boys in question. Torches are lit, flashed around the cavern. "Where are they?" I demand.

For answer, Jason Stanton points a trembling hand towards the back of the cavern, and the black mouths of the narrows.

Jeff said I was crazy, apparently. A nutter, fruitcake, a screwball, a patient. And other things too. A stupid cunt, for one.

Kids, eh?

He reckoned we could catch rats for food. Not a bad plan. Good source of protein. Reckoned we could get lucky in the narrows. Asked for volunteers. Jason and Mike stepped up straight off the bat.

Jeff, of course, was the man with a plan. He had a ball of string; tied one end around a rocky outcropping near the mouth of the narrow they used. They took a torch and two of the "spears" we'd made lashing sharpened rocks to the hafts of oars. And they went a-hunting. Stupid, stupid kids.

But I can't deny a sneaking, ugly relief; the first challenger to my authority, to ours, that of the adults, is gone. The most capable. The one who sneered. Major challenge removed and an object lesson in daddy knows best. Adults are always right, because we say so. It's a lie and I've always known that, but right now I've never been so grateful for it.