Конрад Уильямс - One

He thumbed through the book until he found the large predators. He had to look away from some of the pages, the ones of photographs of raptors rending their prey. The slashing talons, the hooked razor beaks. The eyes were the worst, though. Angry, feral; alien colours. Piercing. He had always been squeamish. Jane tried to imagine being the focus of that unswerving attention as an eagle came at him, claws outstretched, great wings spread in some sacrilegious cuneiform aping, but thankfully it kept sliding away at the crucial point.

He found what he was looking for. The white tail. A yellow beak. Insane, intent eyes. Even as the rain squirmed across the paper, discolouring it, he read that the sea eagle was either a dedicated loner or a loyal partner. Once hunted to extinction in Scotland, it was now mainly confined to the west coast, having been reintroduced to the countryside in the latter decades of the twentieth century. So what was it doing here, east coast, many miles south of its natural habitat? He must have made a mistake, but the diagram of the feather in the book might have been a copy of the real thing clenched between his fingers. An ornament in a hotel room. That was all. A gewgaw. A knick-knack.

It was placed there for you.

Jane dropped the feather suddenly, as if it had turned hot. He stared at it and thought about what he’d just suggested to himself, what that might mean if it was true. Then he picked it up and threaded it back through the elastic ties of his rucksack. It seemed somehow profane to leave something so beautiful to decay into this grim landscape. Gift or find, he would keep it. Perhaps it would bring him luck. At the very least it would make an exciting present for Stanley.

He walked until the low cloud definition began to increase. Shadows building. The sun going down. He remembered flights out of gloomy airfields penned down with rain. Jets jostled by weather, nosing for the cloud banks. The fog of them, dense against the windows, then the sudden break into astonishing, lovely blue. He thought now of a cloud cover without break, constantly mashing and folding against itself as it greedily smothered the world. Which way was this going? Nuclear winter or greenhouse? He realised he’d stopped walking. He was staring at the underbelly of cloud and its greasy gamut of colours. They changed as if inspired by moods. His, maybe. Industrial colours sometimes, alchemic: a range of molten smoky hues. Burnt gold, white-hot slag, the cold blue of steel. Sometimes the colours of pathology, of disease. Or mildew and smog, oil slicks and blood. They contained a look of something seriously damaged that could not be fixed. The rain that slashed out of them was muddy orange, like rust in water. He had to keep swiping the back of his gloves across the black Os of his goggles; his view was perpetually gritty, streaked. He wondered how long the rain would take to eat through the lenses.

And then he saw that he could not see because he was crying. He had to bend down, to rest on his knees, otherwise the shaking in his body was going to topple him over. He unshouldered the rucksack and let it fall to the floor. The sudden sense of liberation, the lightening at his shoulders, highlighting the claustrophobia he was feeling. He couldn’t breathe. He ripped off the bicycle mask and the goggles. The wind driving into his face was delicious. He tore off his shirt and trousers, kicked away his boots. He ran naked through the slime of dead grass, angling up along a line of rocks embedded in the mud like rotted teeth in a black gum. He was crying and screaming and howling. The jouncing glasses on their strap around his neck cracked him hard in the chin and he tumbled, off balance, fetching up three feet away from the elongated rictal skull of a sheep, its hollowed eye sockets brimming with mud and rain. His breath flew from him; he scooted back on his knees. Mud oozed through his splayed fingers, stark white against the bruised earth like fallen stars.

He stood up, the wind instantly punching into him. He felt the rain already, stinging at his flesh, tasting him. He put his hands on the barrel of the binoculars and raised them to his eyes. He performed a slow, clumsy pirouette. He never completed it.

…Hi, I’m Jane. Yeah, I know, I know, a girl’s name… but it’s my surname. My first name is aw, fuck it…… Richard Jane. Pleased to meet you. And with whom am I now engaged in conversation… with? Shit…

…Hello. My name’s Richard. Any idea what happened here? Here’s a plan. Let’s stick together…

…HOW DID YOU SURVIVE? WHO ARE YOU? HOW DID YOU FUCKING SURVIVE?

He lay on his back in the grass, desperate to sleep but unable to until they decided to rest too. And they did not look likely to be resting any time soon. He had followed them through the afternoon, deep into evening. He was shattered and suddenly making no progress. They appeared to be moving in circles, as if they had lost something on the ground that they were eager to recover. But he recognised shock and exhaustion when he saw it. He looked again now, rolling over and pressing the rubber cups of the binoculars to the goggles. They were about half a mile away, trudging through a shallow valley. Two figures in matching red waterproof jackets, hoods raised. One of them was smaller, leaner than the other. A woman? A couple? He had watched them approach farmhouses and then back off, as if too afraid of what they might see should they open a door, which suggested to Jane that they had seen human bodies. They were drifting, passive, hopeless, waiting for something to force the pace. It gave him confidence.

But he had not yet attempted to make contact. He tried to understand why. They obviously needed his help and could use some company, but he held back. Perhaps it was because he had not talked to anybody for over a week. He was mistrustful, both of the situation and the fact that he had discovered survivors where he had seen none before. Who were they to have emerged unscathed from whatever had happened? What if they were infected? What use would it be to survive a monumental disaster only to be struck down by some concomitant disease? He wasn’t thinking straight. Anything they had, he had, especially after his foolish streak earlier in the day. God knew what he’d breathed in, what had wormed its way into his pores. The mask was back on his face, complete with a fresh charcoal filter. Remember that, when you make yourself known , he thought. The vision of a man with ragged hair and ten days of beard, looking like some post-apocalyptic serial killer, would have them scarpering for the forests before he’d got within quarter of a mile of them. He must wait until the time was right. He must wait until his own fear was checked.

What he’d just considered. Post-apocalyptic. Was that what he was in the middle of now? Was that what this was? He had known all along, of course, but putting the words into the centre of his thoughts, that was something new. Maybe he was no longer grieving for his crew, for the not-knowing about his family. Maybe he was coming to terms.

Jane followed them back to a small cottage, somewhere off the B6353 according to his map. Once the cottage might have been pretty, but now the thatched roof was gone, the paint peeled, the hanging baskets scoured by flame. What was left of a woman had sunk to her knees, carrying a tray fused into her hands by immense heat, face flash-burned of any expression into a tight cellophane mask. He watched them go inside. A sign was visible through the broken glass of a window. NO VACANCIES.

He was loath to leave them now that he had found them. What if they should move on during the night? But somehow he didn’t feel this was likely. The way they had moved through the dead meadows did not speak to him of high ambition. They were lost. They were scared. He hoped. There was still that niggling doubt. They might be part of the group responsible for what had happened, if this was some kind of chemical or biological strike on the country. But that didn’t chime with any master plan he had read about in the past. Raze the UK, then invade Northumberland?