I hate to do this, but . . .

It’s turned out that the new WordPress site is not everything I hoped it would be, meaning that I’m going to need to move sites again. There are a number of reasons for this. Mainly though, after having used WordPress for just a few weeks it has become apparent that in the future, certain features are going to become restrictive and not allow StoryBurner to grow in the way I want it to. For that reason I’ve shifted everything over to Blogger. It’s a shame, as I’d really rather have used WordPress.

Sorry to jerk you guys around by switching sites every other week, but it won’t happen again. Now that StoryBurner is off the ground, my thoughts have turned to how to maintain it the best, and I can be certain this time around that Blogger is the best home for this project. I figure it’s best to get everything right NOW, rather than trying to deal with these problems once I’ve poured a lot of money into advertising.

Here’s a link to the new site. Once again, sorry for being so awkward, and thanks for sticking with me through this. As some compensation, click through to the new site and you’ll see the title of the next StoryBurner novella in the sidebar. Exciting, no?

Main StoryBurner site: http://storyburnermain.blogspot.com/

“After”: http://storyburnerafter.blogspot.com/

Chapter Twenty-Two

We drive for most of the day. The car has a full tank of fuel. Lisa navigates using the battered old map book we found in the glove, flicking between the pages. Hour after hour I drive along clogged and damaged roads. More than once we have to backtrack, or find alternate routes, trying to avoid the cities.

We pass by a maggot nest, and then another. Worryingly, I can make out the shapes of eggs within the white mesh. Big, translucent shells, filled with twisted shadows.

We come to a place in the road where an electrical pylon has fallen, blocking all six lanes. I park up while Lisa skims through the mapbook, tracing the spaghetti-mess of roads with her finger to find an alternate route. Then I turn the car around and set off again.

Another time we see a flight of Creatures, but they’re in the distance and quickly swoop out of view. We pass more maggot nests–whole forests transformed into sticky white clusters of eggs and sleeping maggots. I tense up as we rumble past in the car, picturing in my head how fast the maggots move. Faster than a car, certainly.

It starts to get towards night. I drive for as long as I can without headlights, but eventually the darkness becomes complete and I cannot see far enough ahead to keep going–I don’t even want to think what would happen if we drove right into a nest. So I pull up by the side of the road.

“We’re close,” says Lisa. “Only an hour more.”

“If I turn on the lights . . .”

“We’re so close, David.”

Just her voice there beside me is enough. The urge for this to be over, for these months of danger and pain and fear to finally end is incredible. In the dark I cannot see her, but I lean over and find her face with my hands and we kiss, once, quietly. I want her to be safe forever.

Then, without another word, I flick on the headlights, start the engine and drive.

Twenty-One

I drive back and the whole way all I can think of is Lisa, frozen blue and dead in the car. Or eaten by a Creature, or any one of a dozen different fates. I turn the heater on and my fingers begin to thaw as I drive. Pins and needles shoot up my arms.

It doesn’t take long to get back to where I left Lisa. I pull up close and climb out. I can see her, hunched in the back, unmoving. When I open the door she turns to me, blinks sleepily. “David. Look, David.” It’s as though she’s sick or something, like she can’t quite focus. I help her out of the stopped car and into the warm interior of the new one, then turn the heater up as far as it will go. It hurts me how much she’s shaking.

“Are you okay?” I ask. She nods stiffly. I sit with her and hug her against me to warm her up. She’s soft and cold and trembly. I hold her hands in between mine and notice that she’s clutching a piece of paper between her fingers.

“Look what I found, David. On the dashboard.” Oddly, she’s smiling. Taking the crumpled scrap of paper I smooth it out and see that it’s a letter, hastily scrawled in blue ink.

Gina darling, it reads. I met some people. I don’t know what’s going on. You said you’d come back but it’s been three days. I can’t wait here any longer. I’m going to leave with these men. They say they have an island just off the coast. They say there’s no Creatures there. I am sorry. I have marked the island on our map. I hope you are still alive. I want to believe you are. With all my love, Simon.

I can’t take it in all at once. I have to read it twice before I can work out why Lisa’s so excited.

“There was a map in the glove compartment,” says Lisa, and she holds it up. “It’s marked, just like it says in the letter.”

“Do you think . . .?”

“We have to try.”

“But we don’t know when it was written.”

“We have to try.” She’s staring fiercely at me. As she warms up in the car she stops shaking. I hold her and listen to her breathing. She says it again, and I know she’s thinking of the baby. “David, we have to try.”

Twenty

For half an hour I jog steadily down the motorway. Here a car has crashed into the central divider, its bonnet rumpled and its doors flung open wide. I crawl inside and search, but it is empty. I carry on. A mile passes, maybe more. It is hard to tell when every stretch of road looks identical to the last. Looking back, the car where I left Lisa is no longer in view. I feel a surge of loneliness.

A few cars are stopped underneath a bridge, parked at odd angles. I search them one by one, looking inside the glove compartments and under the seats for keys. No luck. Briefly I consider trying to hotwire one, but I’d have no idea where to start, and my fingers are too clumsy and numb to handle wires.

Further on I come across a silent traffic jam. I start checking cars as quickly as possible. With numb fingers I fumble at the handles. My breath comes out as clouds of mist. Car after car turns out to be empty. And then, just as I’m moving on to check another it happens.

I see the shadows skimming across the surface of the road. Then I look up and see the Creatures, swooping overhead. Three or four of them, flying in a loose formation. My heart seizes up and I throw myself into the car. As I cower there, I think furiously, they didn’t see me, they don’t know I’m here. All of a sudden I think of Lisa praying when she’s scared. Please, they didn’t see me.

It is a long while before I risk a skyward glance. The Creatures are gone, as far as I can see. I exhale a breath that it feels like I’ve been holding for hours, lean back into the seat. That is when I finally notice the keys which are hanging from the ignition.

Nineteen

We walk through the woods until the light starts to break. Grey streaks in a blue sky, lit by the rising sun. We are in the middle of nowhere, fields and stands of trees all around. The sound of birdsong is the only noise. As dawn comes on we cross yet another field and see in the distance the grey swathe of a road.

By this time we are both freezing cold and shivering uncontrollably. My hands have gone numb and it feels like there are knives stuck into my fingers. I’m worried about what cold this severe might do to the baby. I’m worried about Lisa; she keeps up, but I can tell that the weight is hurting her terribly. We hold hands as we walk, then stagger along shoulder to shoulder, and then I put an arm around her back and hold her whenever she stumbles. Her skin is frozen.

We cross the fields, crawl under fences, lurch through puddles that drench my feet in icy water. By the time we reach the road Lisa’s lips are tinged with blue and I realise that we could die out here, from this cold. Of all the ways I thought I might die . . . I can feel it inside my bones–a long, starving ache. There is a small train of cars stopped by the side of the road. We stumble over.

We climb inside the first car we come to. No keys in the ignition. I check the glove compartment, behind the sun visor and then underneath the seats. Nothing. Shivering, I get out and check the boot. A spare tire, a bundle of blankets, and a first aid kit, but still no keys. While I search Lisa is sitting uncomfortably in the back, huddled, rubbing her hands together. She’s so pale. I go to her and wrap the blankets around her shoulders.

“Thanks,” she says. “I just need to rest for a minute. The baby. . . I’ll be okay.”

“Lisa, listen . . .” I can barely get the words out I’m so cold. “I’m going to go on and find a car that we can drive, then I’m going to come back.”

“No. I’ll come with you.” She struggles to stand.

“You can’t.”

“I can. I’m coming with you.”

“You’ll damage the baby.”

She nods. “But you’re exhausted. We both are.”

“I’ll manage. Just stay here. Hide. Keep warm.” I reach out and touch her hair, smooth it away from her face. I want to give up right now. Climb into the car beside her and go to sleep forever. But the baby . . . “I’ll be back soon, okay?”

She holds my hand against the side of her face. “Don’t get hurt.”

“I won’t.”

I leave her and walk out onto the road and start to jog to keep warm. My legs scream in protest and the wind bites at my exposed skin. After a minute I realise that I am alone on the empty motorway and the urge to turn back is almost overwhelming. Everything I care about in this entire lifeless planet is sitting in that car back there at the side of the empty road.

Eighteen

Two nights later, and there is a noise outside. I was lying awake anyway, almost dozing, but the noise brings me fully awake. I listen, straining my ears to catch the smallest sound. Lisa comes awake as well and turns to me, mouthing a question. I put a finger to my lips, get up, grab the gun and go to investigate.

Edging close to the door I peer into the car park. The shape of our car glows palely in the moonlight. A fuel tanker sits abandoned by the pumps. The motorway stretches off into the distance beyond it and . . . there. A tall, dark, inhuman shape. It moves. Taller than a person and lithe and bladed. The stink of Creature washes over me.

Panic. Sheer, unbridled panic. I feel like I’m having a heart attack, like the air I’m breathing in is not actually reaching my lungs. I run back through the station to Lisa, who has got up and is listening, face pale and eyes wide.

“We have to go,” I whisper.

“Now?”

“Yes. There’s one outside, by the car. We’ll have to go on foot.” This is it, I’m sure. We are about to die. My time has come, finally, after all those months. And under the panic I feel a kind of sadness, that we should have come all this way, survived all this time, only to die like everyone else.

I help Lisa through the darkened station, into the kitchens and out through a side door. The world outside is cold and sodden with dew. I strain to listen again, peering off into the dark, but I cannot see any movement. Is it still there in the car park? Has it sensed us yet?

We take off, scrambling up a slight bank, and then down the other side into some fields. Ploughed earth stretches off ahead of us. There is a wire fence, which we run into without even seeing. I step over, then help Lisa. We set off across the field, blind, tripping through divots and ruts. I take out the gun, squeeze it so hard the grip marks my hand.

We walk about a mile before we stop. Before I stop, because I can’t catch the breath to walk any further. I crouch down, the gun loose now in my hand. I’m shaking so much that I almost drop it. Shaking and shivering, the adrenaline gone cold inside me. Lisa kneels down awkwardly on the ground and holds my shoulders.

“We have to keep moving,” she says gently. I nod. She takes my hand and leads me off.

Seventeen

It is night and neither of us can sleep. We are sitting in the middle of a fast food restaurant with a fire burning in a metal bin on the floor between us. The heat washes over my face and arms, bright against the cold. It is the only light within miles of this place. Maybe the only light on the surface of the earth. Lisa is shifting around uncomfortably, occasionally getting up to pace back and forth.

She sits down once more and says, “It’s going to happen you know.” She rests her hands on her bump. “I can’t stop it. I thought it would stop, with all of this going on. I thought it wouldn’t be possible. What if something goes wrong . . .” She seems to lose track of what she’s saying here. I get up and hug her and she pushes the crown of her head into the base of my neck. For a while, she cries.

“Do you know when?” I ask eventually.

“Soon.” She sniffs. “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. We’ll figure something out. We’ll be okay.” I look at the bright heart of the fire. I can’t imagine having a child with us; something so fragile and new. In fact, I can’t even see how we’re going to get past the birth. It’s like a solid wall that we’re flying towards too fast to stop. All these nagging thoughts in my head: what if something goes wrong? What if Lisa dies? If that happens I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t face being alone again. I can’t face this.

“Everything will be okay,” I say. She nods and I hug her again. I think she believes me, even though I don’t really believe myself.

Sixteen

Winter arrives in the span of a week. I find that I never truly appreciated what cold was before, back before the Cataclysm when my life was lived with central heating. Each morning the jeep ices up, and each morning I fear that it will not start. The roads are slick and slow to travel and the stations are cold as tombs. We have to have fires. Small ones, built of paper and torn-up cardboard boxes. I imagine a flying Creature sensing the glow from miles away, turning its eyeless face towards us and swooping down to kill and eat.

For that matter, there are more of the Creatures now. Every so often we see a flight of the winged ones going overhead. And there are maggot nests out in the country, strung up between trees or tented over traffic jams. Gradually the monsters are leaving the city.

Lisa spends most of each day sat uncomfortably across the back seats. Sometimes she snaps at me when I ask if she’s okay, then apologises later. Hormones, she says. At night I sleep and dream, and the dreams are nightmares.

The first is the same as before. Me and Sharon running through the panicked crowds on that London street. Only this time I cannot quite see her face–maybe it has faded in my memory a little. When I look, I am not sure who it is running with–Sharon or Lisa–or who is snatched away from me when the Creatures come.

The second nightmare is a new one. In it, Lisa has had the baby, and I am holding it in my arms. It is small and heavy, and instead of eyes, it has the armoured red face of a Creature, and blood-coloured skin and teeth that smile blackly at me before springing wide open and lunging forward.

Fifteen

After that I never leave the gun behind again. I check it over thoroughly the next time we stop. I don’t know how to clean it properly, but I remove as much dirt as possible, check the movement of the safety catch, reload the bullets. I want to test fire it, to make sure that I know what to do should it ever come down to using it for real. But even here in the countryside I cannot be sure that we are safe, that the sound of the shot will not draw lurking Creatures near.

I always make sure I check each place we stop. While Lisa waits in the car I creep inside, cautious and frantic, my heart in my mouth, the gun in my hands.

Another few weeks go by, and Lisa is more pregnant than ever. We sleep close together at night. Her back hurts sometimes, and in the mornings she is almost always sick. I feel useless, because I can’t help her with this, can’t do anything. All I can do is keep the gun close and ready, and survive.

One night I wake and hear her praying. I turn over, watch until she’s done. She is kneeling with her eyes shut and her hands together, her lips barely moving as she forms the words.

When she’s finished, I say, “I didn’t know you were Christian.”

She jumps, bites her lip. Then she shrugs. She puts her hands on her bump. “I’m not. Not really. My mother . . .” A pause, then she goes on, “my mother used to pray sometimes. It helps me. When I’m scared, you know? It feels good, to think there’s someone listening.”

I nod. “Are you scared, still?”

“Sometimes. Not always. I was before. Before I met you I was terrified all the time.”

I think of telling her I was going to kill myself, but I don’t. I decide right now that this is a secret that I will keep as long as I’m alive. “I’m scared too,” I say. “If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know where I’d be.”

We sit looking at each other for a minute. She has a nice face, Lisa does, even under the sweat and dirt of the last few months.

Just then her eyes go wide and she says, “oh.” She sits up straight. “It kicked.”

At first I don’t know what she’s talking about, but then she takes my hand and holds it against the swell of her belly. I feel a tiny movement, a tiny, internal push. And it is real and alive and growing inside her. We stare at each other, caught in this strange moment. One that doesn’t seem to belong, here in the silence and the dark of a dying world.

Fourteen

It’s a station just like any other. We’ve done this a dozen times before. As we pull into the car park I make a mental note to siphon more fuel; the gauge shows that we still have half a tank remaining, but it is better to be safe. The place is comprised of a Little Chef and petrol station. A body rests in the grass by the roadside, dried to leather and hollow beneath its clothes. We ignore it, climb out and go inside. The place smells musty and rank, but no worse than anywhere else that we’ve stayed.

“I’m going to look for food,” says Lisa as she heads off towards the restaurant. I wander towards the bathrooms; sometimes there will be water still held in the pipes, which we can use to refill our empty bottles. It is dark, and I’ve left the torch in the car along with the gun and our bags. I’ll bring then in later before we sleep.

I kick my way through the debris scattered on the floor and push open the door to the bathroom. In the slice of light it lets out I see what is lying at the far end of the main corridor. My heart stops.

The wall at the far end of the station has been sheared away–whether by a stray meteor or a wandering Creature I cannot say. It has been replaced by the white skin of a Creature nest, and within its papery walls I see the grotesque, inflated body of a maggot monster. Its sides move and stretch as it breathes. It must be sleeping, otherwise I would be dead already. I can see the red wet of its mouth, its glistening mouthparts, clutching sluggishly in its endless quest for food.

For a full minute I don’t move. Adrenaline floods me. How could I possibly have been so careless as to leave the gun behind? Then I bolt, moving as quietly as I can, through the station. I find Lisa in the kitchens of the restaurant.

“What?” She catches sight of the look on my face. “Are you okay?”

“Shh . . .” I put a finger to my lips. I grab her hand and take her outside to where we left the car. We climb in without a word. I’m shaking, and Lisa is white faced–she knows something bad must be happening. Any moment I keep expecting the thing to come stampeding out and kill us, but it doesn’t. And then we’re in the car and wheeling around, speeding away as quick as we can.

A mile down the road I tell her what I saw. She looks like she’s about to be sick. “I thought we were safe,” she says. I know what she means. For a while back then, I’d almost forgotten.