The Change 1: London

  Published 2017 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-094-0

  Copyright © 2017 Guy Adams

  Cover art by Pye Parr

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

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  HE WOKE TO the smell of petrol and smoke. It wasn’t the pleasant wood smoke of barbecues and winter fires, it was acidic; black curls of burning plastic and rubber. Chemical smoke. It burned the back of his throat, like trying to breathe static.

  Sitting up, he brushed dust from the chest of his coat. His face felt wet. He touched his cheek and found blood. This didn’t seem surprising, though he was in no pain and had no memory of how it had happened. Perhaps it was the idea of wounds that he was used to, like someone who has had a lot of them.

  He got to his feet, his legs aching because he’d been lying on them, trapped nerves and the bristle of pins and needles.

  The road was full of abandoned cars. Some were intact, others had blossomed into roadside flowers: petals of gouged metal and a dew frosting of shattered glass. They were nose-to to-bumper on all four lanes, stretching as far as he could see.

  To his right there was a city. The shape of it was familiar. Even though he knew very little at that moment, he still knew London.

  He bent down to look at his reflection in a wing-mirror. The blood was running from a small cut on his forehead, trickling down his face and washing the dust away en route. It gave his reflection interest, there was no other reason to look at it—it wasn’t a face he knew.

  He walked off the road, looking for somewhere to sit in the long grass of the embankment. Somewhere to get his head straight.

  Every few seconds there was the distant roar of engines, like monsters fighting one another just over the horizon. Sometimes the breeze carried the sound of shouting and laughter. Sooner or later the people making that noise were bound to head in his direction. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  He found water, a small amount collected in the rusty bowl of a stray hubcap. He dipped his fingers, meaning to clean his face, the water stung his skin and he was thankful he hadn’t tried to drink it.

  He was hot. He made to pull off the long leather coat he was wearing before deciding to check the pockets first. His fingers pulled out a small, black notebook but as he could neither eat nor drink it he dropped it to the ground and carried on searching. There was half a packet of chewing gum—the sort that came in a foil-sealed tray, like pills—nothing else. He took off the coat, sat down and popped a piece of the gum into his mouth. It was strong menthol and made the inside of his mouth cold.

  He picked up the notebook. It was old, battered and creased. He held it up to his nose and sniffed: leather. It occurred to him how ridiculous it was to know the smell of leather but not be able to recall your own name. A strap of elastic was threaded through the back cover then wrapped around the front to hold its pages shut. He snapped the elastic back and opened it up.

  This book belongs to: Howard Philips

  announced the front page. Surrounding the text were various sketches and doodles, from vague swirls to people’s faces. He turned the page.

  The Change—Notes on the New World

  It didn’t sound very interesting. If the notebook was his—and he had no reason to doubt it—the news was not good: not only was he called “Howard”, but he also wrote boring books. He read on, in the hope that things improved:

  I wasn’t there for The Change, if I had been I would be dead. Nobody who saw The Change survived, that’s why there aren’t many people left.

  I met a man once who SAID he’d seen The Change, said he’d seen ‘the Gods’ appear and begin to change stuff. But then he also used to wear dead cats on his head. He was crazy and nobody believes crazy people, not even now when there are so many of them.

  It happened on the morning of the 6th of January. People call them ‘Gods’, the creatures that appeared. They call them that not because anyone would pray to them or build a church for them, they call them that because it’s the biggest word for a thing people know.

  Howard looked up from the book at the sound of an explosion from somewhere in the distance. He looked along the road but could see nothing.

  He felt uncomfortable out in the open. It would be better to get moving.

  There was the sound of engines again, high and grating like giant mosquitoes. He put the notebook back into his coat pocket, slung the coat over his shoulder and walked onto the road.

  He wondered where all the cars had been going before there got to be so many they couldn’t go anywhere. Some people had abandoned them—presumably trying to escape whatever had driven them away on foot—but many still had occupants. Howard looked in one. On the back seat, bones were woven into one another, perhaps the rotted remnant of a hugging couple. The bone was dressed with thin flags of skin, dried sharp and tough like pet treats. The skeleton of the driver had a splintered forehead and the grey plastic of the dashboard was spattered with black gunk from which thick moss grew. Whether he had smashed his own brains out or not was impossible to tell.

  Howard didn’t look in any more cars.

  He saw a thin German Shepherd sunning itself on the hard shoulder. Its ribs protruded as far as its tongue. If it weren’t for the faint sound of panting and the tremble of breath in its belly, Howard would have thought it dead. He walked cautiously past it, expecting it to attack. Perhaps it was too weak. It growled but didn’t move, just watched him with bloodshot eyes.

  It wasn’t the only sign of life. Rats scurried between the cars, hugging the darkness beneath their chassis, fearful of the crows and ravens that circled overhead.

  One fat bird stared at Howard as he walked past. He stopped to stare back. It was perched on the roof of a car, head tilted to watch him sideways-on. Its perfect black circle of an eye gave no clue to its thoughts. He crouched down, picked up a stone and hurled it at the bird. The shot was wide, but the bird took off anyway.

  Howard met his first human being half an hour later.

  His hair and beard were so long that Howard was uncertain whether the man was wearing anything else. He was cooking a raven—perhaps the same one he had seen earlier—on a spit. Its eyes wept milky tears into the flames where they hissed to steam.

  The man waved him over.

  Howard pulled his coat on—easier to run if the man turned out to be dangerous—and walked over to the small fire.

  The man gave him a smile with less teeth than sincerity. ‘You’re not one of them,’ he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction Howard had come from. It was a statement rather than a question and needed no answer, which was good as Howard had no idea whether he was ‘one of them’ or not. ‘No oil,’ the man continued, ‘they always have oil,’ he waved his hand over his face, ‘like Indian war paint.’

  The man wasn’t as old as Howard had assumed by his hair and beard, maybe only in his thirties, but his voice was strange, foreign. ‘I do not like them,’ the man said, ‘they are too much with their clang, boom, steam…’ He turned the raven on its spit, a high-pitched whine emana
ting from its belly as gasses escaped in the heat. ‘I do not believe we should draw attention to ourselves, not anymore… stay quiet, stay safe…’ He pointed to the ground next to him. ‘Sit down, I kill only black birds, you are too big for my fire.’

  Howard sat down.

  ‘You eat?’ the man asked.

  ‘Please, if you can spare it.’ Howard replied, ‘I haven’t eaten for…’ He realised he had no idea how long it had been.

  The man nodded. ‘We will share.’ He lifted the bird from the flames and reached behind him for a knife. ‘You should not eat with a person whose name you do not know,’ he said as he held the point of the spit against the ground and began to cut. ‘My name’s Teodor.’

  ‘Howard.’

  The man passed him a wedge of crisp meat. ‘Eat then, Howard.’

  So he did.

  After their meal, the man showed no interest in talking. He simply lay back in the grass of the hard shoulder and closed his eyes. Howard watched the man start to doze, pulled the notebook out of his pocket and flicked to where he had stopped reading.

  So… how do we even know the little bit we do? From those who saw the events second-hand, through photographs or video footage. This was enough to send them mad, but not enough to kill them. As I said before, the world now has a LOT of crazy people in it. Some THINGS appeared in the skies (and the water, I have heard lots of stories of monsters in the sea). They changed our world. Nobody knows HOW. Nobody knows WHY. Nobody cares either, it’s the least of our worries. Waking up one morning to find the streets filled with dead people and lunatics was bad, what followed was WORSE.

  There are monsters now. Impossible things everywhere you look. Everything we used to take for granted as either ‘real’ or ‘fantasy’ has changed. ANYTHING can be out there now, anything at all…

  Howard closed the book, it wasn’t helping to have his own voice—assuming it was him that had written those words—tell him how hopeless everything was.

  Teodor was snoring loudly. Flies buzzed around the forest of his beard looking for bits of meat in its branches. The sun was getting low in the sky and the sound of distant motors was building in the distance. He felt twitchy. He had been sat still too long.

  He got to his feet, meaning to sneak away. Teodor was a light sleeper though.

  ‘You do not travel at night,’ he said, opening one eye to look at Howard. ‘The night-time is about danger. Find somewhere dark and safe, the back of a car, whatever… but get off the road and stay off it until dawn.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Howard felt guilty sneaking off, but Teodor didn’t seem concerned. He closed his one eye and fell silent again.

  Howard walked quickly between the cars. He was relieved to notice the sound of engines getting quieter. Whoever it was (‘with their clang. boom, steam…’) they didn’t seem to be heading in his direction.

  As the light faded he chose a small, white van as a good place to rest. He opened the back and checked it was completely empty (he didn’t want to wake up with a rat gnawing his cheek). Looking around, making sure nobody was in sight, he climbed in and closed the door behind him. He doubted he would sleep but put his coat on the floor and tried to get comfortable.

  He did sleep.

  The next thing he knew, he was in complete darkness and surrounded by the roar of motorbike engines. There was laughter and shouting, and Howard pictured mad faces in the shine of headlights, howling at the terrifying things this new world had shown them. He covered himself with his coat, hoping to hide from anyone curious enough to shine a light through the rear windows. Nobody did and eventually the riders moved on.

  He woke again later, but this time it wasn’t motorbike engines that had disturbed him. Something was moving outside the van. He could hear a vehicle: not as loud as the bikes but the definite hiss and thump of moving motor parts, the faint grinding of metal, of cogs and gears. There was a wet sound too, just underneath the mechanical bump and grind, like wet meat slapping together.

  Howard lay as still as he could, even though there was a cramp in his calf from his awkward position. ‘The night-time is dangerous,’ Teodor had said. Perhaps whatever stood outside was why.

  Eventually it moved off and Howard stretched his legs, careful not to shake the van with the movement. He tried to find a more comfortable position and, after a while, returned to sleep.

  The morning fell through the windows of the van and he woke with an ache in his back. He shuffled to the back doors, lifted the lock and catch and stepped out onto the road. Stretching, he felt tendons pop back into place all along his spine.

  He turned around and saw a thick, red rope that had fallen between the doors. It was Teodor’s beard, slick with blood. The man’s dead eyes looked down on him from a nest of matted hair.

  The rest of the body was nowhere in sight.

  Chapter Two

  HE RAN, HIS head empty of everything except the urge to keep moving.

  The cars stretched on, all different colours and sizes; expensive cars, cheap cars… Who knew there were so many cars?

  Short of breath, he stopped running and leaned forward, hands on his knees. His stomach churned and he knew he was going to be sick. He went to the side of the road and threw up into the thick grass alongside the hard shoulder. His eyes watered as his stomach emptied, convulsing repeatedly until there was nothing left to heave. He dropped down to his knees, trying to catch a breath, rubbed at his eyes and spat the foul taste from his mouth.

  Behind him there was the rustle of wings. He thought of the raven he had eaten, and shivered.

  He got to his feet and turned to see not a raven but a pigeon, pacing on the roof of the car closest to him. Its fat throat wobbled as it cooed. Howard watched it march up and down the roof, its gnarled talons clicking on the metal. The cooing grew louder and, looking beyond the pigeon in front of him, he began to see more and more on the cars around him. They were on the roofs and bonnets or perching on the wing mirrors. Hundreds of them, all fixing him with their little black eyes.

  Suddenly, they took to the air. The sound of hundreds of wings beating at the same time was like the cracking of a whip. Howard’s nerve broke and he turned and ran.

  The first wave, maybe fifty birds, curled past him before turning back. He held his hands in front of his face as they flew straight at him. Their beaks tore at the backs of his hands and yanked at his hair. Then they were gone, circling back up into the sky.

  For a second, Howard just stood there, feeling the heat of his own wounds as the blood began to flow along his wrists and into the sleeves of his shirt. He could hear the birds circling above him, preparing to attack again.

  The second wave came from the rear and sent him rolling between the cars. He pulled himself under the closest, a red Volvo that looked like it could withstand most things life might throw at it. It had survived an apocalyptic event, after all, what were a few homicidal pigeons compared to that?

  The flock landed above him. There was the ruffle of feathers and the low warble of countless quivering throats. A few birds dropped to the ground, peering under the car at him. One of them cocked its head to one side and stared, almost comically confused, at him.

  There was something unusual about it, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Its eyes were perhaps a little too large. They were fat and black and looked ready to burst. Its beak was particularly jagged, like the blade of a bread knife, but Howard guessed that was only natural if you pecked at people and cars. Its feathers were ruffled and untidy but, again, that wasn’t what made it look wrong, there was something else, something he couldn’t quite… there!… something was moving beneath the plumage… beneath the skin. The thin tail of a black worm poked from its open mouth before being sucked back in like a strand of spaghetti.

  It walked under the car and pecked at his hand. He smacked it as hard as he could. The bird flapped its wings in anger, bouncing between the ground and the underside of the car before making it back into the open air and fl
ying away. Its fear didn’t spread to the others. One by one they hopped under the car with him. He could feel their beaks pecking at his ankles, his thighs, working their way up. The few that found their way to his bleeding hands began to pull at the strands of loose skin. This was no good, he needed proper cover, he needed to be inside a car not under one. Which meant he needed to risk going back out in the open.

  A pigeon crept close again, pecking at his hand. With a growl he grabbed at it and was so surprised to feel his fingers sink into its gelatinous belly that he nearly let go of it. It tilted its head back and screeched. Thrashing black tendrils burst from its mouth and whipped at the air. Howard flung it away, satisfied to hear a dull crump as it collided with the hubcap of a nearby car. He didn’t know what to make of them. It was as if another creature entirely was wearing the bird as a disguise. This was not a good world to wake up in.

  He windmilled his arms and legs, lashing out at the creatures to buy some room, then slid into the open, rolling to his feet. The beating of wings was almost instantly behind him but he had to hope that they would want to attack him in a wide arc, gathering momentum with which to add strength to their beaks and talons. That momentum would take time to build.

  He scanned the row of cars ahead of him as he ran, trying to decide which looked the strongest. So many had broken windows, doors hanging off. He needed something intact, something strong. The wings grew louder.

  He could see the car he wanted, a people carrier that looked more intact than most. He fixed a stare on the black handle of the rear door as the birds pushed the wind before them, ruffling his hair. Closer, closer, closer…He dropped to a skid, his boots kicking up a cloud of dust as the birds shot past him. They turned in the air. Some were too slow, he heard them punch into the cars on either side, a sound like hail on a tin roof as their beaks punctured metal. He jumped to his feet and grabbed at the door handle. It was locked. With a shout of desperation he tried the driver’s door, no good. He peered through the dirty glass at the shadows of bodies inside and began to kick at the door in anger. The pigeon-things swooped towards him and he dropped to his haunches, arms over his head, screwing his eyes shut as they came at him.