Crossbow and Quarrel

            I opened my eyes for the second time, but this time I didn’t have the headache. That, at least, was something. I knew straight away that I wasn’t in my bed, and I shifted my body, relieved to find that I could move. I ached all down my left side, but I was alive, and I hadn’t been buried under my house. Looking down, I saw that I was dressed in my normal tracksuit trousers and a plain black t-shirt that I was fairly sure I didn’t own. My own trainers were on my feet, and I wondered why I hadn’t arrived here dressed as I had when I’d been in bed. Groaning, I got to my feet.

            I was in the Dump still, that much was obvious, but wasn’t anywhere near my house. I was at a crossroads near the centre of town, and it was night time. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the town had changed pretty drastically. The houses around me were broken, the walls caved in or fallen outwards to spray the street with rubble. A fire burned in one of the nearest ones, and my first thought was that I was in war zone. But there was no sound of gunfire or anything else- the street was silent and motionless in all four directions.

            Below me the tarmac I had awakened on was cracked and broken, the odd shoot of grass pushing up here and there. But that grass was blackened, and there were scorch marks all along the road. It was almost as if someone had let off a bomb here some time ago. The space where I had lain down was a small crater of slightly depressed tarmac. It looked like just the sort of thing that a bomb would cause- or a meteorite. Whatever had happened here had been messy.

            I admit that I was a bit confused at this point, but I hadn’t really given any thought to my family or my friends as of yet. The man had said that they escaped the house, but he had also said that the whole of time and space would have ‘shakedown.’ I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded big and messy. In other words, I should have been really worried, but I wasn’t. Nothing had really sunk in yet- though there was hell of waiting list.

            I didn’t get any further with my thinking because at that moment, something happened to drive all thoughts of the deal I’d made out of my head. On the top floor of the nearest house there was a brief cry, and then the window exploded outwards in shower of broken glass. And falling within the wreckage there was something else…

            It landed on all fours and I froze in disbelief. I might still be in the Dump, but the thing in front of me, the thing that had dropped two storeys without any ill-effects, was from somewhere else entirely.

            The first thing that struck me about it was its skin. Nothing in nature had skin like that, for it wasn’t normal skin. It wasn’t scale, or fur, or chitin, or anything else I could name. It was green and knobbly like toxic muesli, as if the creature was just a mass of green boils and spines. And it was a dark green, almost black in the flickering firelight, covering the creature entirely apart from the savage black claws and teeth. Yellow eyes burned above a nightmarish and stunted snout, the mouth filled with black daggers. It stood at about the height of a large dog; say a St Bernard or an Alsatian. The back legs seemed closer together than the front legs, but they were thicker and more powerful. When the beast crouched, as it was doing now, the rear was raised high above the weaker front section. I had no doubt that it could move quickly, and no idea how to escape or kill it.

            It was then that the cry sounded in the top window, the window from which the creature had come. I just caught the words, words shouted out in a human voice.

‘Shoot it, damn you!’

And someone did. Something shot down from behind me, scything over my head towards the creature, it dodged, the thing clattering on the tarmac, and then the creature shrieked. As it opened its mouth I say the array of twisted teeth, and wondered what creature needed that kind of teeth. That wasn’t natural. And that shriek wasn’t natural either, for my teeth rang in my mouth as that high-pitched cry echoed around the square. Another object fired down from above- this time from the first window- and stuck in the creature’s shoulder. I gasped- it was an arrow, or maybe a crossbow quarrel.

The beast screamed, and then went for me. I swore and unfroze, life coming back into my legs as I realised for the second time in recent moments that I was going to die. Like I said, nothing concentrates the mind like imminent death. I turned and ran, knowing that it would be on me in a second. A second quarrel lanced past me from the window above, and I prayed that it would slow my pursuer. I was making for the nearest door, hoping like Hell that it was unlocked. There was another shriek behind me, and I could real the rancid breath on the back of my neck…

I dove for the door, the door that was scant metres away. There was a noise like a gunshot and it burst open. A figure stood there, a figure carrying a small but familiar looking crossbow. The weapon discharged, the bolt shooting past my shoulder just as I barged past the figure, and dove into the room beyond, turning as I hit the dusty carpet floor.

There was another shriek, and I looked up, breathing heavily, to see the beast reel back as the quarrel embedded itself in its chest. There were several more sticking out of its back and sides like grim spines, and I marvelled that the thing was still alive. I could see two more figures striding across the road from the other side, reloading their weapons as they did so. The beast wasn’t moving anymore, and the nearest figure calmly eased back the cocking lever on his weapon.

My heart was thumping away like anything and I could feel my throat closing over. One of the far figures lifted his weapon, but the nearest one put up a hand.

‘Don’t Tom,’ he said, that voice again familiar. ‘Waste of ammo, ain’t it?’

He placed his own weapon reverently on the ground and drew the largest knife I had ever seen. It must have been a machete, with the long blade and silvered edge. The beast was lying on its side, but as he approached it lunged at him with vicious mouth wide open. He dodged and brought his knife down with a sickening, meaty crunch. Green blood spurted from the severed neck, and he wiped it from his knife on the knobbly hide before sheathing it once more.

Seeing me he stopped, and let out a grunt of surprise. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘Is that Michael Jacobs? Well bugger me!’

            He pulled away the headscarf that obscured his face, revealing a boy about a year older than I, with grey eyes and wild dark hair. He looked surprised to find there, but not as surprised as I was to see him carrying a crossbow and killing monsters. His name, as I knew it, was Daniel Jones, and I had seen only the day before forcing Thomas Quinn to eat an ink cartridge. But he looked older, a year older, and I shook my head slowly. Something wasn’t right.

            A few minutes later I was sitting in a derelict sitting room with three people from my school, the meaning of the stranger’s words slowly dawning on me. Daniel Jones, Thomas Quinn and his sister Sarah, all looked older than when I had last seen them, which was, as Daniel explained, because they were. I wasn’t just missing a few hours between my deal with the stranger and my awakening; I was missing a whole year. And these people had changed form when I had last seen them, from what to me had only been the day before.

            I remembered Daniel as bit of a bully, and I remembered Tom as one of his victims, a scrawny kid like me but without my talent for avoiding confrontations. But here Tom looked to Dan for leadership, as did his twin sister. Dan had a hard streak in him, something that had come to the surface in this new world. And while I hadn’t really got on with him back at school, a friendly face was really welcome at this point. Especially as he had probably saved my life.

            All three of them were dressed in faded jeans and t-shirts, and they wore old trainers. But they had strips of black cloths wound around their arms and they all wore black motorcycle gloves, not to mention headscarves. They had unwound the black clothes and the headscarves, but when they were wrapped up they exposed no skin at all. Thinking back to the vicious teeth on that creature I wasn’t surprised. Now that I had calmed down, I recognised the crossbows as the sporting models that had been hung on the wall of the sports shop next to the rack of air rifles and shotguns. The quarrels had a home made look, and I wondered how often they got used.

            ‘Where have you been?’ asked Daniel, as soon as we were indoors, and sitting down on the faded sofa. Tom stood by the door, his weapon at the ready, and from his easy stance I reckoned that this was a usual thing, this guard duty.

            ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The last thing I remember is my ceiling falling in that morning, and then I woke up out there, and then that…creature came.’ I shuddered; pleased that I hadn’t had to tell I direct lie. The stranger’s words were fresh in my mind, and he had said to tell no-one about the deal.

            Jones grinned humourlessly. ‘You didn’t miss much,’ he said. ‘Only what some reckon was the end of the world. Most of us, we just call it the Twist. About two days after your house collapsed, though come to think of it, they didn’t find your body before it all went funny. One minute we’re in school talking about how you died, the next minute everything is…changing.’

            I frowned, fear rising inside me. ‘And my family?’ I demanded. ‘Where are they?’ Dan glanced at Sarah, who looked uncomfortable.

            ‘I’m sorry, Mike,’ she said sadly. ‘We don’t know. Nearly all the adults around here just disappeared with the Twist, and some of the children as well. One or two are still left, but no families, not that we can tell. For all we know, they could all be dead- all of them.’

            Tom looked around sharply. ‘They aren’t,’ he said quickly. ‘We’d know, Sarah, we’d know if they were. They could have moved elsewhere been scattered around, we don’t know. There’s no reason to think that they’re dead! Mike isn’t is he? Maybe they’ll wake up in town too!’

            I felt a little guilty then, for I was pretty sure I was a special case, that no one else had made a deal with the stranger. I actually felt relieved about my family, for after what the Stranger had said about the ‘fabric of time and space’ I had thought of all kinds of worse things that simply disappearing. If there was no trace then they had been moved, and if they had moved then they were probably still alive. I really didn’t want to think about any other possibilities, and so I didn’t. It’s amazing what you can shut off in your head when you need to. Hanging over me was that order from the stranger- to do the right thing. How would I know what the right thing was?

            Sighing, I looked Dan in the eyes. ‘I think you’d better tell me everything,’ I said, and he nodded, smiling faintly.

            ‘I think I better had.’