Hungry Hearts Read online

  Danny moves in, as swift as he can but not swift enough – clumsy, strung out, reeking of the sweat of withdrawal.

  The dealer becomes aware of Danny’s presence. Looks up, his eyes black as liquorice coins, the kind Danny used to eat all the time as a young boy, running through these streets as if they were the whole wide world.

  Got any gear?

  The dealer pitches forward, towards Danny, his arms outstretched. Too late, Danny sees the knife handle sticking out of the dealer’s chest, right where the heart is. Then he remembers the rumours he heard in the pub last night, the story about Ally getting on the wrong side of some twat from Acocks Green and getting himself done over. Danny hadn’t believed it at the time; Ally was one of them lucky buggers, the type who never seem to come off too badly, who always seem to avoid disaster.

  Danny barely feels it when the teeth sink into his cheek. Only when the hands come up to claw at his face, his throat, his chest, does he realise that this is not a bout of junkie delirium. Cunt! All he wanted was a fucking fix...

  ...BEDFORD, A SHELTERED refuge for homeless girls. Janice Smythe is sick of her job, sick of her life. These ungrateful young girls, the ones she works so hard to keep safe and secure and on the right side of the law, don’t ever seem to realise how much she does for them.

  Take tonight, for instance. Every twenty minutes or so someone bangs on the front door, making a racket. The police keep saying they are unable to attend because of civil unrest elsewhere in the town centre, but advise her to keep the doors locked, the windows shut. The girls are all in their rooms, listening to their ipods or chatting on their mobile phones, not even bothered that the neighbourhood has gone mad and the sirens outside always seem to be heading in the opposite direction.

  So who’s left to sort everything out, to ensure that things are kept under control? Muggins here, that’s who! Bloody Muggins, the local doormat!

  Entering the kitchen, she goes to check the basement door. One of the girls – she thinks it was Sophie – was down there earlier, storing some of her old belongings, and the girls never think to lock the door. The basement is a point of easy access; there’s a row of small windows down there located at street level. Anyone could kick them in, bend down, and if they were small enough they might be able to squeeze through one of the gaps.

  As expected, the door is wide open. A slight breeze wafts up the stairs, bringing with it the cloying aroma of mould. Janice hates the basement. It has always scared her. The earthy odour, the sense of being buried alive.

  She closes the door, her hands shaking as she turns the key in the lock and then transfers the key to her pocket. Stupid girls: always thinking about themselves, or boys – never aware enough to consider the feelings of anyone else. She often wonders why she stays here, why she loves the girls so much.

  Shrugging her narrow shoulders, Janice turns away from the basement door, a chill reaching up to caress her spine. She shivers.

  The man who was standing behind her – who is now in fact standing right in front of her – doesn’t move. He just stands there, expressionless, not even blinking.

  Janice is suddenly cold.

  She recalls:

  The long days spent at Brighton Beach during her early childhood, growing up in Barnet, playing ball with the neighbour’s kids; her mother’s green housecoat, her dad’s old Vespa moped, her sister’s forearms, her first pet – a cat called Tony – and the way the wind sings in the eaves during a storm; the sound of rain on glass, a good tenor, cold dry cider, sausage and mash.

  In an instantaneous flash of agonising insight, she knows that she will never experience these things, these blissful memories, again.

  It has been a good life, of sorts, but also one stained with tragedy:

  Her stillborn brother, dad’s early death, her mother’s stroke; the boyfriend who hung himself when he was eighteen, spoiling her for any other man; the bank robbery in Islington when she was punched in the face; the car crash the following summer, the rape, the abortion; the rotten flowers on her nightstand; the stinging nettles she fell into on holiday last year in Cornwall.

  A good life, then – but also a bad one. A little bit of both, to balance things out, to make it like the lives of most other people.

  She has nothing to regret; nothing to fear; nothing that important to leave behind. No impact on the world, and not much really to miss, apart from the girls.

  The girls.

  Who will take care of them after she is gone?

  At least the man who will kill her has kind eyes, a nice white smile, nice cool hands...

  PART TWO

  THE HEART IS A HUNGRY HUNTER

  “I just can’t get an angle

  On this twisted love triangle”

  - Nefandor, Human Remainders

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  RICK STOOD IN the middle of the street and watched the flames as they reached towards the sky, his eyes dry from the heat and his face touched by a peculiar sensuous warmth. The kiddies play park lay behind him, hidden by shadow; the light of the fire barely reached the footpath at the base of the high wall, the top of which he’d dropped down from as he left the park.

  A small group of people stood watching the church burn. It was a new building, one of those recent houses of worship built to service contemporary housing estates. Redbrick walls and geometric enclaves; a white plaster Saviour stuck to a black plastic cross; tasteful stained glass windows depicting not scenes from the Bible but simple pretty patterns.

  Rick approached the conflagration, his hand straying to the holster on his belt. His boots crunched on broken glass. A few cars had been parked, crashed or abandoned at the roadside. The one closest to Rick contained a dead man who was slumped over the steering wheel, his hair a mess of coagulated blood and gore.

  It had stopped snowing before it had even had a chance to begin in earnest. The air remained crisp and sharp but was not yet close to freezing.

  A tall man in a shabby brown overcoat stood apart from the crowd, his hands in his pockets and a thin dog lead hanging from one wrist. He was about six feet tall but he stood with a slightly slumped posture, as if ashamed of his height. His brown hair was messy. Firelight shone on his intelligent face, creating dark hollows beneath his eyes.

  “Quite a fire,” said the man as Rick walked up to him. “It’s the prettiest thing I’ve seen in days.” His voice was on the verge of breaking.

  “Why are they burning the church?” Rick glanced at the side of the man’s sombre face, at his round cheeks and his unshaven neck. The man turned to face Rick, and for the first time he saw that there were tears in his eyes. Rick glanced at the dog lead, hanging as loose and pointless as a scarf from the man’s clenched hand.

  “These people no longer have need for churches. In case you haven’t noticed, heaven is now full and closed for business until further notification.” He flashed a grim half smile. “The dead are stranded here, with the rest of us.” He blinked. His eyes shone with a terrible sick-house brightness.

  “I see,” said Rick, not really seeing at all. He was utterly unable to understand what was going on and why these things were happening. “So they’ve turned their back on God?”

  The man shook his head, a rueful smile on his thin lips. “Oh, no. I think it’s more a case of God turning his back on them. On us. All of us.” He turned back to watch the capering yellow-gold fingers of the flames, his smile becoming a sad, strained expression, like a grimace of pain.

  “What happened to your dog?” Rick wasn’t sure why he asked the question. It was just something to say, a few empty words to fill the unearthly silence.

  “My girlfriend ate him. She died earlier this evening, from a wound sustained when we were attacked by a dead man.” Again that rueful stillborn smile flashed across his weary features. “Then she came back and ate the dog. I had to kill her when she tried to eat me, too.”

  Once again, Rick was aware of that thin, wavering line between the absurd and the horr
ific. This entire situation was like a bad cosmic joke, a trick played by bored omnipotent entities making up some kind of awful game for their own eternal amusement.

  Rick moved off as the man began to weep. He held the dog lead up to his face, his mouth, kissing it, smelling it. Then he dropped his head and let the battered leather lead fall to the ground, and walked away, shoulders slumped, feet dragging on the cracked asphalt. Rick wished him well, hoped that he found some kind of peace, that he survived.

  He paused and watched the fire for a few more moments, and when the other onlookers began to drift away he headed back towards the car he’d seen earlier, the one with the dead man sprawled behind the wheel.

  He surveyed the vehicle, noting that – as he’d first suspected – the keys were still lodged in the ignition. The windscreen was cracked, but not to the point that it had shattered completely, and it would still be possible to see perfectly well through the glass. He only hoped that the engine wasn’t damaged and there was still enough petrol in the tank to get him on his way.

  Behind him, someone screamed. He took out his pistol and dropped into a crouch, scanning the streets and the shadowy, flame-licked houses. The scream did not come again. The people who’d been watching the fire had all gone elsewhere. He wondered if they had been the ones who’d set fire to the church, or if they’d simply turned up to watch it burn.

  Holstering the Glock, he turned once more to the car. It was a small four-wheel drive, one of those nippy little Nissan jeeps favoured by hairdressers and young sporty types. He stepped over the rubble and grabbed the dead man by the shoulder, half expecting him to spring to life and attack. The dead man did not budge. As Rick pulled him into an upright position, he noticed the wounds in his skull. The entire top half of the dead man’s head had been smashed in, the bone collapsing like egg shell to pierce the exposed brain matter and turn it into what resembled strips of shredded beef.

  He tilted the body and hefted it from the car. Straining, he then dragged the corpse a few feet away from the vehicle and shoved it into the gutter. He wiped his hands on his trouser legs, feeling that the blood of this night would never wash off. He was stained forever, destined to walk in a red shadow for the rest of his days – however long or short that might eventually prove to be.

  Rick spotted a rag tucked into a map pocket in the driver’s door. He took it out and cleaned most of the blood and matter off the steering wheel, dashboard and torn seat cover. Pausing for a moment to ensure that no one was sneaking up on him, perhaps a dead person drawn by the smell of blood, he then climbed into the car. He turned the key in the ignition and was almost overjoyed when it caught first time. The relief he felt did not last long. He had other business to attend to, and could afford no time for a self-indulgent show of emotion.

  The engine roared, healthy and eager to go. Looking at the dashboard, he saw that the tank was half full – more than enough to get him home and then a good way out of the city. All he need fear was the roads being blocked. He knew the area well enough to map out a route via the lesser known police rat-runs and backstreets, but when it came to leaving Leeds itself he expected to run into trouble on the motorway.

  He pressed his foot down on the pedal, enjoying the sound of the engine as it soared. “Come on, my sweetie,” he whispered, allowing a slight smile to twist his lips.

  Then, not even bothering to indicate or check his mirrors, he screamed out into the road and set off for home, where he hoped that Sally was waiting for him, cowering behind locked doors and barred windows, or perhaps even hiding in a closet or the cramped section of storage space beneath the kitchen counter.

  He knew that he’d taught her well. He had no doubt that Sally would do her best to maintain her own safety, and that she would have faith in him coming to get her as quickly as he could.

  The roads were empty of traffic, but he passed the occasional figure as he sped towards the city centre. Some of those he saw were raging, waving their arms in the air in unfocused acts of aggression. Others were running, looking for hiding places. Of these, only the latter caused him to doubt his flight from what he thought was the epicentre of the troubles. His sense of duty screamed at him to stop and help, to act like a police officer and do what he could. But then, with the unbidden intensity of a religious vision, he saw Sally’s face: her open lips, her wide, fearful eyes.

  Rick drove on, fighting against his training, following instead his instincts towards the one he loved – the one he had always loved, and who had saved him from himself when he’d suffered tremendous physical and mental injuries during a war he had never truly understood or entirely believed in.

  He passed the smoking, burned-out carcasses of cars and vans, the blackened spidery-shapes of wrecked motorcycles. Houses burned, too, along with shops and places of business. It seemed that these insane events had inspired within the populace a latent love of fire. Like firebugs, they’d moved across the landscape, lighting things and watching them burn. When the novelty wore off they moved on; or perhaps they fell foul of roaming bands of the hungry dead.

  Occasionally he was forced to take a different route, to circumnavigate fiery ruins or impassable pile-ups in the road. Once, while skirting a famously rough estate, he encountered a gang of youths who were, for some reason, in the process of stripping a vehicle down to its chassis. The car’s owners sat on the kerb. They were naked and shivering, too terrified to get up and flee as two boys casually urinated on them, laughing and chiding one another into further acts of depravity.

  A weeping woman stared at Rick as he passed, her eyes pleading. Her male companion stared at his feet, piss running down his face and neck to pool in the gutter. Resisting the urge to lean out of the window and start shooting, Rick kept moving. The youths hurled bricks and pieces of wood at the speeding Nissan.

  He regretted not stopping to help those people for the rest of his life.

  Rick witnessed the dead, too, moving like ghosts – or demons – through the strange fire-lit darkness to scavenge scraps of burned meat, plunder abandoned corpses, and chase down ill-hidden victims. A few of them stumbled like drunkards, their movements clumsy and uncoordinated. Others ran at speed, nimble and graceful, and displaying great strength and agility. Most fell between these two extremes, walking stiffly yet unhindered and searching the night for food. He noted the differences in posture, movement and physicality for future study: when he had the chance, he’d try to examine why the dead did not stick to an established set of physical characteristics.

  The journey was tricky but not impossible. Vast tracts of the city lay in darkness, while other areas remained brightly lit, possibly by flames. His speed ranged from a slow crawl through debris-lined avenues to a foot-down sprint along wide, empty boulevards. He kept away from the inner ring road, expecting it to be blocked. As long as he remained focused, and kept his mind alert, he would make it home before daylight.

  Sally beckoned to him like a needy ghost. He saw her standing on every street corner and crouching in every shadow. Her presence was a constant; her need was like a drug. The only thing on his mind was her safety. If he failed to get to her before anything happened, before their home came under attack from either the living or the dead... then he was lost; lost forever.

  “I’m coming,” he muttered under his breath, barely aware of doing so. “I’m coming for you. I’ll get there. I promise.”

  The canal sparkled like a ribbon of diseased body fluid, tracing a putrid course from the morgue slab to the drain. He stared straight ahead, his eyes picking out the apartment block against a black slab of sky. The lights were out – like a lot of the lights around the city, other than the constant sparks and flashes from the many fires that washed the skyline like hellish searchlights. His eyes were drawn to these lurid bright smears in the otherwise darkling sky; huge smudged sections of flickering red-gold illumination.

  He swung the Nissan into the parking area under the apartments, jumping out and running across the cold concrete s
urface towards the locked doors. He searched his pocket for his swipe card, and then barged into the building, drawing his gun and heading for the stairs. The doors clicked gently shut behind him.

  Something made a soft thudding sound behind a closed door; a voice called out from the floor above; gentle sobs echoed along the hallway to his left, then abruptly ceased.

  Due to its isolated location by the mostly ornamental channel that branched off the main canal, the apartment was a relatively safe base. Away from the rough areas, set back from the main roads, it had always been a quiet retreat from the chaos of the city; yet the city began in earnest just opposite, across the canal, where office blocks towered over the narrow stretch of water.

  If the apartment block had been situated a mile or so to the east or west, it might have come under attack. As it stood, the place seemed intact. There were no tell-tale signs of forced entry, nor could Rick smell smoke or – worse still – blood.

  Rick moved up the stairs, remembering Hutch’s messy demise. The memory hurt, just like most of his memories, and he pushed it aside for later. Shadows stirred ahead of him, curling strands and shuddering bulges of blackness. Turning the corner at the top of the stairs, he continued upwards, climbing through the heart of the building.

  Finally he stood on his and Sally’s floor. The landing was empty, its perspective seeming weirdly telescopic in the darkness, making it look like a constricting throat. Rick blinked, shook his head to dispel the illusion. Then he walked slowly forward, heading for his own door.

  His heart dropped like a stone when he saw the open door. His hands began to shake as they clutched the gun. He was suddenly unable to move any farther along the landing; his legs seized, the muscles turning to hardening slabs of concrete. He heard Hutch’s dying breath hissing through shattered lips; he felt the blast of an explosive charge in the dry desert heat; he heard the firewatcher’s voice as he spoke of God abandoning his people; and once again he watched the twitching corpses in the Dead Rooms as they got up and walked, attacking his unit.