It was silent now, but this time Lee didn't feel like sleeping. He had to get out and make his way home before someone found him. He didn't think he'd actually done anything wrong, but his presence might take an awful lot of explaining.

He got up and made his way to the front of the bus, gripping the solid backs of the seats as though he were on a tightrope. His legs still felt a little unsteady, though his shock on waking had sobered him somewhat. He let himself into the driver's cab, and was about to switch on the lights when he realised how stupid the action would be; after all, he didn't want to draw attention to himself. He groped on the panel, looking for a switch or lever that would open the doors, but couldn't find one. For a moment, panic surged through him. How was he going to get out? Then he found the b.u.t.ton he was looking for and pressed it.

Immediately a babble of conversation filled the bus, and Lee looked round wildly, half-expecting the empty seats to be suddenly full of people again. Realising what he had done, he pressed the b.u.t.ton and abruptly the drone of conversation ceased.

Lee felt disturbed. Why did the bus company need to record conversation? What possible purpose could it serve? Curiously he pressed the b.u.t.ton again. Conversation babbled. Suddenly scared, Lee jabbed at the b.u.t.ton, shutting it off. In the dark, silent, empty bus the voices had been eerie and unnatural.

"Pillock," Lee said to himself, as all at once he realised there would be an emergency exit at the back of the bus. He picked his way down the aisle again, pulling himself along by the jutting seats as though trying to locate his place in a dark cinema. He reached the back and groped for a catch, and sure enough there it was. He released it and the long window at the back came open with a quiet clunk.

Lee lowered himself out of the window and on to the concrete floor below. He was happy to get off the bus, but now where was he? He looked around, his eyes gradually adapting to the darkness.

He appeared to be in a huge square room, like an aircraft hangar, empty of everything but the bus he had arrived in. He felt uneasy, apprehensive: where were all the other buses? And why was this depot so featureless? Slowly he pivoted on his heels, looking for a way out. It was a few minutes before he noticed the door.

Lee walked over to it, the echo of his footsteps lost in the vastness of the depot. He felt increasingly nervous, certain now that something was wrong. This wasn't a bus depot at all; no stretch of the imagination could believe it so. Then what was it? And what was the bus doing here? Was it in for repair? Had it been stolen? Questions kept his headache company. Lee would have been happy to leave them all unanswered if only this door led outside.

But it didn't. Even before he had opened it fully, Lee knew he wasn't going to be in luck. The first thing he was aware of was a pale green glow, like something out of a science fiction film. He opened the door fully to find himself looking down a long narrow corridor. He began to feel sick again; this was like nothing he had ever seen before. The walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor seemed to be made from beaten copper, lit from above by pale green strip lighting.

Lee took a cautious step into the corridor: the gleaming dimpled walls distorted his reflections, transforming them into writhing sickly-green phantoms. The phantoms, one on either side, accompanied him as he started down.

Up ahead the corridor branched off at a right angle. Please let it lead outside, Lee breathed to himself, please, please, please.

He came to the bend in the corridor. Another corridor, identical to the first, stretched ahead. For a moment Lee felt like going back to the familiar territory of the bus, but the urge to get out of this place, to see the outside world again, was too strong. Taking a deep breath, he started forward.

This corridor was longer than the first, and, Lee felt sure, darker too. The green light seemed dense, murky, giving Lee the impression that he was heading downwards into the earth.

Nervousness and alcohol made him queasy. He forced himself to keep moving, his footsteps clanging softly on the metal floor.

Up ahead the corridor branched off to the left. Lee approached, hope and fear increasing with each step. As he got closer, the slight buzzing that came from the lights overhead seemed to grow steadily louder.

Lee reached the bend in the corridor and looked down it. Yet another corridor stretched ahead of him. For a moment he was swamped by a wave of terror and despair. He imagined himself wandering for days through corridor after corridor, eventually becoming hopelessly lost and hopelessly mad. He stood, undecided. What should he do? Go on or go back?

Two things decided him. The first was that Lee suddenly noticed the corridor ahead had doors set into the walls at regular intervals. They were made of the same beaten coppery metal as the walls, and at first glance had been unnoticeable. The second was far more sinister. From somewhere behind him came a snuffling and a snorting as though some animal were tracking him. He looked over his shoulder, and thought he could detect something way back in the murk of the corridor - a looming shadow on the walls and a pale bloated shape. Fear overcame his curiosity and he plunged into the corridor.

The light here was even more dingy. Lee groped his way to the nearest door and grasping the handle. Should he enter? A sudden thought, sharp and clear, crystallised in his mind: was he meant to enter? His hand, limp and sweaty, hovered over the handle. A further outbreak of snorting and snuffling, closer now, reverberated from the walls of the corridor behind him. Bracing himself, he yanked down the door handled and entered.

Immediately light blinded him. Lee threw up his hands, terrified at his sudden inability to see where he was. He felt vulnerable as a rabbit caught in the glare of headlights. Scrabbling behind him, he found the door handle and pushed, closing out the pig-like snorting from the corridor. He stayed in that position for a moment, crouched with his weight against the door, until his eyes adjusted to the light.

Little by little the glare subsided, and Lee was able to make out vague shapes. His first thought was that he was in an operating theatre, his second in an abattoir. The brightly lit room was dominated by a white man-sized slab which was streaked with blood and sc.r.a.ps of offal. The smell that hung in the air was rich and hot and sticky. Lee moved away from the door and began a cautious examination of the room, taking care not to step in the blood that lay in small pools about the floor.

The room was white-tiled, square and functional, lit from above by the same strip lighting as in the corridors, except this was white instead of green. Along one wall was a runnel supporting a row of butcher's hooks, while along another wall hung an a.s.sortment of oddly shaped implements. Lee examined them, feeling uncomfortable and afraid. There was an a.s.sortment of knives of various sizes, the blades peculiarly curved, and many tools that he couldn't put a name to. He lifted one down from its hook, a small sickle-shaped implement with a fine serrated blade. Lee was surprised at how heavy the thing was, then noticed what appeared to be a small motor inside the handle. Intrigued, he looked for a switch, found one, and turned the tool on. With a high-pitched whirr the blade began to spin, the teeth blurring together as it picked up speed. He turned the tool off, shuddering. The whirring noise reminded him of the dream he had had on the bus.

He put the tool back on its hook. Then it struck him that it might come in useful if he had to defend himself against the snorting thing outside. He reached for the blade again, then hesitated and drew his hand away. For some reason, just holding the tool gave him the creeps.

Lee tried to make sense of the situation. Maybe the bus depot backed onto a slaughterhouse, and those metal corridors that he had come through were where the animals were kept, prior to being slaughtered. It wasn't a very plausible explanation, but it was the best Lee could manage. He needed some shred of rationality to cling to.

He jumped as something soft and heavy thumped against the door. He stood still and listened. After a moment the noise came again, followed by a grunting and sniffing. The thing outside must have picked up his scent. Lee looked round wildly as the handle of the door began to turn.

He noticed what appeared to be a cupboard set into the wall beneath the butcher's hooks. He hurried across to it, praying that it wouldn't be locked. It wasn't. Lee tugged it open and dived inside, aware that behind him the snorting was growing louder as whatever it was entered the room.

He found himself in a s.p.a.ce about the size of a bathroom. It was dim, but he could make out a rack of clothes along the wall behind him. Despite his terror, he found the clothes strange and intriguing. Although in different sizes, they were all identical - pale pink body stockings, each with a dark furry hood. Lee examined them curiously. The material was odd - pliable, almost rubbery in texture, smooth in parts rough in others.

Lee turned his attention to the door as something plopped against it from outside. He held his breath as he heard the familiar terrifying sniffing and snorting, and he shrank back against the rack of clothes. Go away, he prayed silently, go away, go away. His prayers were not answered. The door handle turned and the door slowly opened inwards.

Light flooded into the room, bringing with it a whirring sound - and a nightmare. Shapes filled the doorway: grey bloated creatures, their skin as soft as dough. They had vaguely human features, though with snouts instead of noses, and stubby three-fingered hands. Lee crammed himself back against the far wall, too frightened even to scream. The creatures parted to form a tunnel, and a pet.i.te dark-haired girl appeared, holding the whirring sickle-shaped blade that Lee had examined earlier. It was Joanna.

"h.e.l.lo, Lee," she said brightly. She smiled, hugely now, and came towards him. Lee began to whimper.

And as the creatures held him down, he suddenly realised what those pale pink things on the rack really were.

[Originally published in Final Shadows, 1991. Then in Kimota 2, Summer 1995].

HOME COMFORTS.

by Peter Crowther.

The sign comes up on our right. Merrydale, it says, 4 miles.

I look across at Melanie, her face set to the windscreen and bathed a faint green in the dashboard light. Her mouth moves around, saying nothing in particular, just chewing syllables. Quiet.

The turning comes up quicker than I expected in the gloom and I almost miss it, spinning the wheel into the gravel and earth at the side of the road, watching the headlights wash across trees and earth and the last far-off gleams of the sun going down. Rain washes the windows and runs down in thick rivulets that the single wiper can't easily clear. For a second I think we're going to get stuck, but the wheels, skidding noisily just the one time, catch on something solid and the Old Dodge jumps back onto the road. Now we can see a tree-lined lane in front of us, stretching down a hill. No Streetlights, No noise. No signs of life.

Never any signs of life.

"Maybe here, honey," I whisper to Melanie, placing a hand that she once recognised gently on her knee. "Maybe this is the place." I put the hand back onto the steering wheel. There had been no response to it.

We start down the lane.

A few minutes later we roll onto a main street that must have once looked like something out of a Sat.u.r.day Evening Post cover. Now it looks as lost and forlorn as we must look, drifting into town through the mud and the rain, our bellies empty of food, eyes empty of warmth, minds empty of compa.s.sion.

I check the gas gauge. It's low.

"Gonna have to get some gas, honey," I tell Melanie, though I know she isn't listening. I s.n.a.t.c.h a sideways glance and see her head making those staccato movements as she checks the storefronts and the barn doors, and we roll on down the road to what looks like it might be, or maybe once was, the Merrydale town centre.

Up ahead there's the remnants of a picket fence surrounding a square of overgrown gra.s.s. Behind the square is a wooden walkway, its slats sticking up into the night-time sky, and a general store, a barber shop and a couple of others I can't make out. The windows are smashed in, a couple of them boarded over and the wood pulled open. The darkness behind the wood is absolute. A pure colour. Complete black.

Round back of the square, to the left, I see a Texaco sign swinging in the wind. In my head I hear its rusty whine, like a baby left too long by itself, all hoa.r.s.e and cried out, dried up of tears and pa.s.sion. I pull off the main drag, into the shade of the buildings, and the rain seems to ease off. I drive around the square and now I see the garage. There's an old DeSoto, tyres flat, windows smashed, parked half in and half out the station window where once a kid, or maybe some old guy who'd spent his whole life in Merrydale, would sit listening to the ball game or the Wednesday night fight or rap music, watching, and waiting for cars and customers.

Suddenly the rain seems more insistent, wetter, relentless. The night looks darker and colder and even less hopeful. But we left hope, Melanie and me, a long way and a long time back.

I park the Dodge and get out. As I open the door, Melanie grabs my arm and shakes her head, groaning. She points into the back seat, "It's okay, honey, it's okay," I tell her. "I'm just gonna see if there's any gas in those pumps, is all." But no, she won't have it. She hangs onto my jacket, fingers white, eyes wide and staring. I tell her okay, and I reach in back for a couple of the stakes. Lift the old strapped hammer and shrug it over my head and my right shoulder so it sits around me like a gun. And I step out into Merrydale.

The wind is whistling and the rain coming down in intermittent sheets. A few steps away from the car and I'm soaked.

The pumps are smashed up, the nozzles removed and cast across the forecourt. I walk over to the DeSoto, look inside. There's a mummified body on the back seat. It's a woman. She doesn't have any eyes, just black, staring sockets. Her clothes are pulled up and her scrawny b.r.e.a.s.t.s exposed... her pants are down, legs pulled wide apart. For a second I think maybe I saw something move down there... something small with a long tail... but I convince myself it's just the clouds across the moon making shadows. Something I don't want to feel turns around inside me, calls to me to let me know it's still there. I take a look back at my car. Melanie is hunched forward in her seat, nose against the windscreen, watching me through the rain. I smile and shrug, walk away from the DeSoto to the pumps.

On closer inspection I see that I might be able to put one of them back together. I glance around to make sure I'm still okay and then crouch down, lay the wooden stakes on the pavement, pick up the nozzle, and heft it to the pump. It just needs s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g in again. I do that.

Melanie knocks on the windscreen. She's telling me to get the stakes. I wave and she stops knocking. Then I pick up the stakes and jam them inside my jacket pocket. The pump gun lever seems to be stuck, so I give it a tap with the hammer to free it up. I give it a gentle squeeze and nothing happens. Squeeze it some more. Still nothing. I curse my stupidity. No electricity. Just before I wrench the nozzle back out again, I see the crank-bolt on the side of the pump. Of course! There had to be a way to get the gas moving manually in such an out-of-the-way place. I look around on the floor for something to use, but there isn't anything. I lay the nozzle down and walk back to the Dodge.

Melanie leans over and lifts the catch. I pull the door open and crouch down beside the car. "Honey," I say, real soft and slow, so she won't start to panic on me, "I'm gonna go into the filling station, get a wrench or something to crank up some gas."

She shakes her head.

I reach over and take her small white hand in mine, stroke it once or twice. "Melanie, honey, we need gasoline. I have to try. Now you just sit tight right here and I'll be back before you know it." She blinks at me like she doesn't believe it. For a second I see how much she looks like her mother. How much she looks like my beloved Mary. But her memory seems tainted now.

I stand up and slam the door, turn my back on them, on Melanie and Mary. Walk over to the office.

Most of the gla.s.s is gone, littered across the inside of the room. In back there's a sign saying Washroom, but I ignore the privacy it promises. Near the counter is a comic book stand, no comic books in it, and a book rack with no books. Down on the floor I see a dog-eared paperback all puffed out with water damage. I pick it up and read the cover. It shows a baseball and a bat. Gone To Glory. Guy called Robert Irving or Irvine... I can't make it out. Something about it being "a Moroni traveller mystery." I toss it back onto the floor and slide across the counter to where the pump controls lay covered in dust and dirt.

From the other side of the counter I can see the Dodge. I give a wave to Melanie, but she isn't looking my way. I see her profile. Watch her 11 years turn into 34 years, see her face turn from a girl into a woman. I jerk my hands up to my face and jam fingers into my eyes, stop the thoughts.

It would be so easy to just walk out of the office, walk out of the filling station, take it on the lam from beautiful, downtown Merrydale and hightail it up to the Interstate, catch a ride on a truck heading for St. Louis or maybe Kansas City, chew the fat with one of the good-ol'-boy truck-drivin' boys while we listen to some sounds on his radio or shout back yells and thoughts at the voices that come over the CB... and, outside, the night speeds by us and he offers me some of his sandwiches and maybe a slug of Lone Star beer he's had cooling in the box beneath his seat. And he pulls his old steam whistle that honks into the darkness, lets everyone know we're alive... and we're comin' !

I take the hands away.

There are no trucks on the Interstate. There are no sounds on the radio, no voices on the CB, no ham on rye and no cold beers. There're just a few survivors and a few drinkers. Guy back in Racktown, little place due south of Columbus, had told me that there weren't too many drinkers left, he figured. He hadn't seen one in more than a year. That maybe it was all over now and it's time to rebuild.

I tell Melanie what the guy said. "Now ain't that just the best news you've heard all year?" I ask her. But she doesn't respond. Guy watches her and then asks me if she's okay. "Sure she's okay," I tell him, "Sure she's okay." And Melanie just stares ahead, past the old man, watching the road out of Racktown across the state of Ohio and into Indiana, next stop Indianapolis and, after that, Springfield, Illinois and, after that...

Melanie can see me now. I wave at her and she waves back at me. The wave looks strange, woodenlike.

The old guy's voice comes back into my head.

"So what's wrong with her, then?" he says. "She your daughter?" I nod back to him and smile, proudlike. "Yep," I tell him. "So what's wrong with her?" he asks me again.

"She's been hurt," I tell him.

"Hurt?" he asks. "Yeah," I tell him. "Drinker got her." I say it real low so that Melanie can't hear me too well. "Back home, Macon, guy got her in the house and..." I let my voice trail and let him figure the rest. "That's what we're doin' now, her and me," I tell him. "Trackin' that b.a.s.t.a.r.d down."

He shakes his head in my memory.

"Look," I say to him. And I reach over to pull Melanie's scarf down from her neck. They're still there, on her neck, the bruises. Both sides. "Skin ain't broke, " the old guy says. "No, " I agree," and that right there is the one almighty blessing. " And I pull up the scarf again. Melanie doesn't move, she just stares at the road. "But she got broke in other places," I tell him sadly. As if on cue, Melanie clasps her hands on her lap and draws her knees tight together.

"Trackin' him down, you say?"

"Right in one, " I say. I take a sip of the lemonade he's given us. It tastes like I always figured champagne would taste, little bubbles tickling my face as I drink.

"Like a detective on an old TV show, " he says. I grunt, thinking back to television shows, "You got any idea which way he's headin' ? " he says.

I shake my head.

The old guy nods. " Happened back in Georgia, you say?"

"I say."

" Long ways, " he says.

I nod in agreement and look up at the sun, squinting.

"Long ways for such fresh-lookin' bruises," he mutters, and shakes his head giving Melanie the once-over, looking down at her tiny, clasped hands. "Funny," he carries on, "I ain't never heard of a drinker doin' that."

Pretty soon after that we got back inside the Dodge, Melanie and me, and we rode on out of Racktown, Melanie has settled some now, I see, my mind coming back to the filling station office. Now that she can see me.

I try to cast my mind back to before the sickness, before the "drinking" plague... the plague made that AIDS thing seem like a summer cold. It's like a dream to me now.

And I think back to Mary. In my mind I watch her getting sick. Lord knows where she got it from, or who gave it to her. She just got it. I think back to how we kept her locked up during the night-time, when it was dark, and she was thirsty, thinking maybe it would just wear itself out, the sickness, like a fever. And how, during the daylight hours, we kept her safe and warm and dark. She had lost all recollection of who she was early on, become just like an animal. And Melanie and me we fed her the occasional animal I caught out in the woods. Let her drink to her heart's content.

But old man Snapes caught on to how he never saw Mary during the day. I told him she was sick with the flu - there was one going around at the time, which was a big help. But after a while most everyone else who'd caught it was getting better and Mary still didn't make an appearance.

I shake my head at the memory, but it's all churned up now and I have to run it through.

I think back to the night when they came for her. Old man Snapes and Corley Waters and a couple of boys I hadn't seen before. Knocked on the door, large as life, like they were making a social call, and then pushed past me and Melanie with their stakes and their hammers.

"Where is she, Jake?" Corley Waters shouts. I don't say anything, just grab hold of Melanie and glance at the bedroom door. They see the bolts, of course. And they go in, close the door behind them.

But we heard it, Melanie and me. We heard every thud and every scream.

A few minutes later, they drag her out in a sheet, blood all over it, and a few of the stakes are still in her. "You shoulda told us, Jake," old man Snapes says to me. His eyes look sad and tired as they look everywhere but right at me. "Woulda been easier."

And then they left, leaving the house quiet and still.

Melanie doesn't say a word. She just walks to the bedroom door and pulls it closed, pushes the bolts home.

Somewhere behind me I hear a noise.

I spin around and stare into the gloom.

Back away from the counter, the office lets onto a corridor with a door at the end. The noise came from in there. I glance back outside and wave at Melanie. She gives me that dull wave again, like a puppet, someone working her strings.

I creep slowly away from the window, into the corridor and towards the door. I hear it again, softer this time.

My hand is shaking as it reaches out for the handle, tests it, and finds it moves. I turn it all the way and push gently. As it opens, I can hear more noises now. Seems there's a whole lot of little sounds but, with the door closed, I can only hear the heavier ones. I get my head up against it and look inside.

It's light in there. The light is coming from a candle that flickers in the little breezes and drafts that find their way into the back room. It's a storage room... or was once. There's a whole line of shelving made out of metal scaffolding. On the shelves are a load of boxes and clothes, some hanging there on hangers. The room is done out like a home. On the floor, in front of the candle, a man is cleaning something. It's an animal. Looks like he's preparing something to eat. I can't make out what it is but I see a tail. Then I know why the woman's been left in the DeSoto. Bait.

Next to the man a woman is lying across some blankets and carpets. They're about 30 years old, maybe younger.

I watch the man.

I see him smile at the woman.

He smiles at her the way I used to smile at Mary.