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  The Days After

  A novel by

  Alistair Ballantine

  Copyright © Alistair Ballantine 2014

  The right of 'Alistair Ballantine' to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents, other than those which are public domain, are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  [email protected]

  Ordering Information:

  Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact CreateSpace.

  ISBN-13: 978-1505452242

  ISBN-10: 1505452244

  Printed in the United States of America.

  The Days After

  6th July 4

  9th July 7

  10th July 9

  11th July 12

  12th July 33

  13th July 55

  16th July 56

  17th July 61

  18th July 72

  29th July 74

  3rd August 80

  4th August 101

  12th August 102

  13th August 118

  15th August 127

  17th August 131

  18th August 135

  19th August 150

  14th December 163

  15th December 170

  16th December 176

  25th December 177

  14th January 178

  19th March 180

  20th March 187

  6th July

  She was lying outstretched in the middle of the road, ugly and old. A faded pink t-shirt tucked into blue shorts, the loop of a hiking cane wrapped around a limp wrist, freckles and moles, vitreous grape coloured veins and a small silver watch, ticking. Occasionally her left index finger twitched, the purple gloss reaching out to a thumb, not quite making it and slowly retreating. She had boring eyes, dark and brown with dilated pupils devoid of any glimmer of past incandescence; she was staring blankly into the sun with none of the jubilation of Icarus. Her mouth was open and the tip of her dry tongue was resting on her cracked bottom lip, above, her teeth, a mixture of twisting yellows and greys looked ready to bite down and piece the red flesh. A mass of brown hair cushioned her head on the tarmac and a wet fringe plastered itself onto her forehead. Dark wisps rested in the cracks above her top lip and more hair was creeping across her bloated red cheeks from her sideburns. The paramedic quickly wrestled with her head and just about managed to extend the elastic of the oxygen mask around the pillow of dark hair and blotchy skin.

  Without asking any questions I was moved on and told to return home; it was too hot to argue. I left him scratching his head and continued to walk down the sloping road towards the cottage. The stone I’d been kicking since the well in the village bounced off the crumbling tarmac into the gaps of the cattle grid, a victorious ping as it hit the steel. The rusted hinges of the wooden gate pierced the countryside as it swung shut behind me. The water I’d collected from the well was heavy but the cold was finally starting to come through my backpack. I turned the generator on, it sputtered for a moment before kicking into gear. There was no refuge from its aggressive rumble, not even in the study upstairs where the windowpanes rattled amongst peeling white paint. I could sometimes lose the sound if I found myself in an answerable question, which gladly was happening with increasing frequency as I worked my way through the accountancy textbooks piled on the desk.

  The night was short, like all the others. I stopped working when the sun disappeared behind the hill to the west. I threw something battered from the antiquated freezer into the oil aga, squeezed the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes whilst it cooked; food was a chore that I met with contempt and I paid little attention to its ingestion let alone its preparation, choosing rather to rely upon cigarettes to fill the interminable void. Each evening I tried to read for pleasure and each evening I failed, my brain clambered for relief from black text on white paper and instead sent me outside into the comforting spectrum of night. I walked down to the beach, guided by the crashing waves in the distance echoing between the hills of the valley to my left and right. There were no trees nor animals nearby, nothing but the failures of my past to obsess over, an awkward hug, a badly constructed argument, a discovered lie, until eventually the embarrassment and shame boiled over me and the words, 'I’m sorry!' or, 'Fucking idiot!' tumbled out of my mouth for no one to hear.

  I tried to litter my mind with thoughts of the woman lying in the middle of the road, she was a flash and a blur. I longed to experience profundity or at the very least a pinch of edification, but instead my mind wandered and I began to compare longing to acceptance and when I eventually retraced my thoughts back to the woman I agreed that, for me, her state could only accomplish self-serving interest. She was a memory I would pass around a dinner party or loudly tell colleagues I barely knew. I tried to think of the fear she must have been feeling, and what, if anything she was questioning whilst she was lying there, her life, her decisions, was she content, was she thinking of anyone else, or, on the cusp of death was she only thinking about herself? The questions died away with her image. She might as well have not been there, I could have made her up, she was just another lie, a presentable figment and an unpalatable truth that I would embellish and twist to further other's interest in me.

  9th July

  I ran out of ink, the exam date loomed and I rationalised an early exit from the countryside. I left the cottage behind and managed to catch a ride from a local farmer who was heading to Totnes, or thereabouts. His dog sat in the passenger seat and the man showed no sign of moving him. I threw my bag onto the back of the Jeep and awkwardly climbed over the spare tyre. The platform stank of the manure which was meshed together with loose bits of hay and embedded into the floor. The man had thick grey sideburns and I could see him through the window talking to his dog. He dropped me off on the main road and I walked a mile without any pavement to the station.

  There were train delays and the ticket office was empty. I sat on my bag on the platform reading, sweating under the midday sun and reeking of animal shit.

  For a delayed train, it was relatively empty and I got a window seat. I tried to sleep, hunched up in the corner, but the vibrations rattled through the plastic window into my ear. I had a ticket but no one checked it and after stopping at every station en route it finally pulled into a very busy Paddington around 10pm. All the buses were delayed, I hailed a taxi and tried my best to ignore the driver as he rabbited on about it being strange that I was leaving the countryside to come back to the city, I successfully drowned out his monotone voice by rolling down the window and listening to the wind. When we arrived in St James' Gardens he said he didn't have change and I left him with an 80% tip; he was clearly lying, I should have talked to him.

  The stale air of the empty house greeted me as I opened the front door. My father seldom came home. He had told me in the past that the house, the street and even West London were all too painful for him to be around. That every little thing reminded him
of my mother, and when he had told me, I remember nodding and saying that he should go, that mum wouldn't have wanted him to carry her around like a ghost, but in truth, he obviously just wanted to live in Monaco. I never visited him there, I didn't want to see if he had built a new life, I didn't care to think about it. He would come back to England in August and we would spend two weeks in Somerset shooting. The false proximity of the hunt suited us both.

  I picked up the post that lay on the floor and thumbed through it without comprehension. My bag slid off my relieved shoulder onto the fake marble tiles and I dragged myself upstairs to the empty bedroom that awaited me.

  I collapsed into bed and in the darkness of my eyes I could see the dying woman's face in imagined train wheels spinning on their metal track and her mouth was open and she voiced the monotonous mechanical rotations of the wheels over and over again until I eventually drifted off.

  10th July

  I awoke still lost in the lingering memory of a dream, trying to shut the light out from my eyelids and hiding under the duvet. The alarm was ringing and I felt around the bedside table to turn it off, instead, knocking a mug of hard mould onto the floor. It wasn't an alarm, outside was an ambulance, it's blue siren was spinning around and its loud whirring noise was reaching into my brain. I was glad there was something to do and without thought I pulled on my wretched clothes from the day before and left the house.

  A man was lying on the grey pavement. He was old, his skin was old, and his brown suit was old. There were some darker patches on his face, as though sometime ago he had had a skin graft from an Indian. His long nostrils twitched every now and again and his mouth was wide open as though he was struggling for air yet his breathing was slight. A small dog was tied up a meter or so away looking on, concerned. The paramedics busied themselves whilst another man and myself stood over them. A blonde woman with a soft motherly face dressed in purple ran out of a house across the road. She was frantic and holding a scarf over her mouth and with the other hand she repeatedly stabbed at the air in the direction of the upstairs window of her house and when she reached the ambulance she let loose a breathless torrent of flurried words about her sick husband and daughter. The two paramedics acknowledged her and mutely talked to one another with their eyes and then one of them stood up and accompanied her across the street. The other paramedic addressed the crowd of the two of us, enquiring if we knew the man on the floor, where he lived, and what we thought should be done about the dog. I shrugged. The man opposite muttered something about his wallet and he and the paramedic exchanged details before walking off with the confused dog. I helped lift the man onto a stretcher and then we loaded him into the back of the ambulance. I asked what was going on and started to talk about what I had seen in the countryside but he cut me off and told me to return home and stay indoors and then he left me on the street and ran across the road.

  Walking back along the pavement with the ambulance behind me, a blurred image of the man lying on the pavement combined with that of the woman from the countryside in my head and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I wanted to go back to work, I wanted to amaze people with my story of the two people I had seen on the cusp of death, how it had really made me think about life and how fleeting it was, in one moment you are fine, walking down the street, and in the next, you're gone. How such a profound experience forced me to stop and re-evaluate everything, and before I could descend any further into my imaginary depiction of my colleagues' reaction I was back in the house.

  The red light at the end of the remote shone clumsily but the TV did not react, I tried a few more times and then again on the box, nothing. I tried the lights but they too protested. I searched for the fuse box and found it in a cupboard full of junk. I flicked the large red switch but nothing changed. At a loss I sunk into the sofa pointlessly focused on the black screen in front of me. I picked up the phone to ring my dad, but without power it wasn't working and my mobile was out of battery with no way to charge it. I lit a cigarette and smoked in silence, it made me feel light-headed and weary. I submitted to the power cut and dragged my bag upstairs and carried on with my revision.

  11th July

  I woke up the next morning with a text book on my bed, I kicked it off and hazily looked out of the window, morbidly hoping to see another ambulance. There was smoke beyond the window in the distance, it was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from, if I had to guess I would say Queensway. I limply paced around the house, I ate a handful of dry cereal, it was unsatisfying; I needed proper food, I checked the cupboards but everything was years out of date, I checked the fridge which was bare except for a sticky jar of mango chutney and a half open packet of blackening ham which made me shudder.

  I opened the front door and stood on the pavement outside.

  “Harry.” A voice I recognised called out to me.

  It was my neighbour, she was leaning out of the fourth floor window of her house.

  “Hello,” I shouted back, “how are you?”

  “I'm great, how are you?” She replied in her gregarious manner.

  “I'm excellent, thank you.”

  “That is great.” She shouted, grinning, her thick golden blonde hair hanging over her left shoulder.

  “Good to see you.”

  “You too.”

  “Can I come in, not sure the neighbours fancy listening to our conversation.”

  “They should be so lucky!” She yelled to her left and right laughing. “Yes, of course you can come in, I’ll be right down.”

  I jogged across the street and impatiently waited for her to appear, but I made sure to lean against the wall and look away, relaxed.

  She swung open the door, “Oh my god, can you believe what's going on?” She beckoned me inside. “Come in, come in, can you believe it?” She seemed frantic.

  “No.” I declared. “What are you talking about?”

  “What?” She replied.

  “What?” I replied to her in what was quickly becoming a frustrating conversation.

  “Are you serious? You haven't seen the news? You haven't heard what's going on?”

  “No.”

  “How?”

  “Please can you stop! Just tell me what it is?”

  “All the people dying?” She asked, confused by my blank response. “The things, like, crawling out of people?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How do you not know this?” She asked in utter disbelief at my ignorance.

  “Umm,” I muttered, “I've seen a couple of people collapsed in the street.” I tried to sound less oblivious. “Where’s your mum? Are you okay?”

  I put my hand on her shoulder, I was confused as to whether I should be showing concern for her as from what I could tell she was more excited than anything else.

  “Yeah I’m fine, mum’s in France with Paul. I haven’t heard from her though, I’ve tried but now the phone isn't working and I don't have any signal on my mobile. Come down, come down I’ve got some coffee and stuff.”

  She took me by the hand and led me downstairs which wasn't necessary as all of the houses in the square were identical architecturally, only differentiated by the decoration and clutter; the walls were slightly off-white, almost cream, littered with old, overly colourful photographs in black frames capturing terrible hair and dated clothing.

  “You'll have to forgive me, I’ve been in the countryside for weeks. I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “I can't believe you didn't see the news.” She drummed again, and it was really getting annoying. ”It's all dying, I mean, people are getting sick, all of them. Here, do you want a cigarette? Do you still smoke?” Jessica emptied the box of cigarettes on the kitchen table, snatched at two and held them in her fingertips. “Also I’ve made some coffee, I’ll pour you some, how do you take it? Shit, sorry, stupid question, sorry, you’re still allergic to milk right? Oh it's fine actually, it's soy milk.” She shakily emptied the cafetiere i
nto a tea cup.

  The coffee was cold and what should have been sediment was floating at the top, speckling the caramel coloured liquid.

  I asked for a light and rescued the cigarette from her trembling hand and looked around at the room I had once been so familiar with. Her kitchen reminded me of a Spanish holiday home. The terracotta tiles on the floor looked dusty, the kitchen cabinets were all cream with brown knobs and the surfaces were a thick yew wood. It looked like there would have been a pungent smell of cheese and ham circulating was it not for the plume of cigarette smoke hovering above Jessica.

  We sat opposite each other for a couple of hours. Jessica's face enunciated each word that came from her lips. Her elegant fingers pulled cigarette after cigarette to and from her mouth, which proceeded to bounce around as she enthusiastically spoke. Her elbows rested on the wooden island and she leant over them as she talked. Her face was soft, uncorrupted from fierce angles. Her two front teeth hung behind her smile, always just about visible. Her skin was pale but healthy, and when she caught me starring at her or she felt she had said something embarrassing she would laugh downwards between her elbows, turn pink and the blue in her eyes would glisten before she wiped the tears.

  She told me about the week that I had apparently missed, trying to sound as sincere as she could but blushing every few minutes in frustration of how ridiculous she realised she sounded, and I teased her, winding her up even more, reminding her of the words that she had just spoken, to which she would playfully laugh and tell me to, “Shush.”

  From what I could grasp, which was difficult due to the erratic description of the long list of bizarre events that I was somehow completely oblivious to. A week or so ago, some people started dying with no explanation. They would first lose their sight which ostensibly resulted in countless accidents. The motorways had been blocked by wreckages since day two. After the loss of sight, within minutes, or in some cases hours of being blind, the person would collapse in paralysis. This caused further accidents: kitchens caught fire, smokers dropped cigarettes onto furniture and industrial estates erupted into flames across the country. Even worse than all of that is what Jessica had told me first but was the final event. After the paralysis and the blindness, approximately five hours, the internal organs undergo a metamorphosis beneath the skin. The rib cage and then the skin is corroded away from inside the chest and a mass of internal body matter then appears to physically crawl out, leaving behind a gaping hole, a chest devoid of all its substance. Once clear of the body, this thing, is dark red in colour and looks like a large beating heart. It forms itself into a circular type mass, about one foot in diameter and half that in height. This mass of organs then crawls around the floor trying to attack any other living thing. Jessica's words not mine, “It morphs around part of you and it has this kind of acid that eats away at your skin and then it sucks all your blood out.”