London Under Midnight (6 page)

    'Uh?' She peered up at the man who helped her to her feet. 'What?'

    'It's going to hit them any second now. The feeding frenzy.'

    April peered at the beach where the bunch of men and women had been searching for food. They'd stopped now. Instead, they stared with a peculiar, fixed intensity at the redheaded woman as she knelt at the high tide mark. There she stuffed green seaweed into her mouth - slimy strands hung down from her lips as she fought to cram in more. The woman never noticed that she was the object of such scrutiny.

    'See?' the man told April. 'They're realizing they need something more than dirt to stop the craving.'

    Dazed, April asked, 'Why was I eating that stuff?' Even though she knew that glistening mound was mud she had the same reluctance leaving it as saying goodbye to a loved one. The sense of loss didn't seem bizarre; she even found herself rationalizing the idea of taking a handful with her, just in case the hunger returned.

    'First, it's a good idea to get away from here.' He tugged her to her feet. 'You're not like the rest. There's a different look in your eye. Your mind hasn't gone yet. Understand?'

    She didn't understand. All she could manage was to stand up straight. There, in moonlight that was bright as the noonday sun, was a man with curly black hair. He was perhaps mid-twenties and wore an expression of such concern she could have been his child that he was rescuing. When he spoke she noticed that the tips of his front teeth had been covered with gold. He had the air of someone who loved the luxuries life offered but wasn't troubled how he acquired them.

    'Yeah, I can see you've still got some human left in you,' he said. A mysterious statement that troubled her. 'You're looking at me, right? And you're telling yourself you see a gangster.'

    'I don't know you.'

    'No, you don't. Okay, I got stupid as a kid. I did time inside. But now I straighten out other kids with bad habits. Theft, drugs, self-destructing. And I read Charles Dickens because he knew poverty. But all that's for later, yeah? Because if you don't come now they're likely to start ripping you apart once they've finished with her.' Something of his alarm communicated itself to her.
Get out of here! Now!
his expression hollered loud and clear, so she followed him.

    The twenty people - people? People! - were beast-like now. They appeared to slink toward the woman who fed on green river slime as if they were panthers. Their feet made faint crunching sounds on the shingle. When one grunted, clearly feeling a ravenous hunger, the redhead looked up to see the pack closing in on her.

    The youth in the denim jacket chewed the air as if in his imagination he already chewed on firm meat. When the attack came it wasn't what April expected. The movement was a blur as the redhead launched herself to her feet, then hurled herself on the man in the yellow shirt. Sheer bloodlust made her howl at the top of her voice as she slammed her mouth against his head to bite into his skin. As if frightened to be denied their share of food the pack pounced on the man. After that, April Connor only saw the man's face two more times as the mass of people buried him. First, she saw his agonized expression as his eyes turned skyward as if to ask:
God, why me?
His mouth opened wide to reveal the teeth he'd broken when he tried to eat the pebble. Then the squirming, swarming mass of bodies covered him as they clamored to bite. The second time she saw his face was when his head broke the surface of that scrum. His attackers' teeth had ripped his face. Both his cheeks hung down at either side of his neck; they swung there; two crimson flaps.

    The mob buried the man from April's sight again as they devoured him.

    'That isn't what they need,' her rescuer panted. 'They think they want to munch down every shred of his skin, but that's because they don't really know what they want yet.' He nodded toward them. 'Once they realize that he hasn't satisfied their hunger then that's when they'll start on you. Come on.'

    Together they loped away into the trees, leaving the feeding-frenzy to rage on the moonlit beach.

    

    

    Home for Ben Ashton is an apartment in a converted warehouse by the Thames. It came recommended to him by a fellow writer by the name of Jack Constantine. Jack occupied a ritzier loft dwelling on the top floor. Ben's trio of rooms - lounge/kitchen, bedroom, bathroom - occupied part of the third floor. For a century the building had swallowed spices from the East Indies by the ton; lifting them directly from the ship, which moored alongside the wharf, then swinging them on derricks into the cavernous interior. Well, what
was
the cavernous interior of the building. Fifteen years ago it had been subdivided into individual dwellings. Even so, when nights were warm, just like this one, Ben would wake in the early hours to catch the exotic aromas of nutmeg and capsicum overlaid with those spikier scents of peppercorns.

    Ben lay flat on his bed that right at that moment seemed as big and as desolate and as lonely as the Gobi desert. He stared into the shadows as his clock-radio burned a forlorn 2:47 a.m. at him. Usually he slept well but meeting April Connor had unsettled him. He murmured to himself, 'They do say you only regret the things you didn't do; not what you did.' He clicked his tongue. 'You're feeling sorry for yourself again, mush.' He closed his eyes and told himself, sleep, soon you can get up and start hunting for Raj's phantom graffiti artist. His eyes flicked open again. The assignment of the century, he thought. Ben Ashton, investigative journalist, finds kid who sprays funny slogan on walls. He groaned. Crap assignment, good money, stop complaining. He ran his fingers through his hair. Five seconds later he sat upright in bed. 'Okay, Ben, my old china, what's keeping you awake?' he asked himself. He knew the answer. April Connor. When he saw her arm-in-arm with the fabulously blond Trajan it hurt like having a red-hot poker rammed into a place that had never seen the light of day before. He took a deep breath. That piquant aroma of spices reached into his nostrils from where it had seeped into the brickwork long ago. 'Right, Ben. Shall we take it from the top?' He groaned. 'Not this again. Not a list of my failings. Why do you do this to yourself?' He climbed out of bed and began to pace while he recited his old litany. 'First off, you talk to yourself too much. Why do you do that, Ben? Because you are lonely. And why are you lonely? I'm lonely because I let April Connor slip through my fingers. We were best friends; only when I lost touch with her did I realize, first class, gold-plated idiot that I am, that I loved her. Satisfied?' He folded his arms as he gazed out of the window. The lights from the far bank painted luminous streaks on the surface of the river. 'You loved her; lost her; and she never even knew. There, that's my confession.' He found it hard to leave the litany at that. He tried to be flippant, but bitter currents crept into it. He stared up at the full moon as it floated there above London. It could have been the vast orb of a godlike eye, gazing coldly down at one Ben Ashton, magazine writer, lonely soul.
You blew it, Ben, didn't you? For the first time in your life you find the woman that suited you… You let her go without finding out how she felt about you.

    'Shut up, Moon.' He smiled, although he recognized the sadness. 'What do planetary bodies know about human feelings?' He leaned forward until his head touched the glass. Below him the street light illuminated a stretch of the river. Its surface dimpled, while a small whirlpool that formed around a mooring post seemed to be busily in the process of drowning the reflection of the moon. A branch drifted by. After that, an assortment of fast-food packaging: fragments of polystyrene, plastic bags, newspapers. The tide was ebbing so it quickened the flow of the river. For the next few hours the current would rush its flotsam downstream, away from London and toward the sea.

    After a moment staring at this aquatic convoy heading eastward Ben said to himself, 'You've got two choices. Either forget April. Or find her. Tell her exactly how you feel. The thing is, if it's the latter option you've got to move fast.' A sense that he stood at a crossroads in his life stole over him. 'Remember what they say, you only regret the things you
don't
do…'

    As he stared out at a night-time London illuminated by the full moon, a barge surged along the waterway. Some prankster had decided that vast steel flank too much like a blank canvas to be resisted. Painted there were these words and symbols:

    

    
VAMPIRE SHARKZ

    ☺
They're coming to get you
☺

    

    

    'Why don't you answer me?'

    'You're not asking the right questions.'

    'What's your name? Why are we here?' She caught the man by the elbow. 'They seem good enough questions to me.'

    'Keep moving,' came his reply. 'If you want to live, you'll follow me and you'll shut up.'

    'Why?'

    'Because if they hear you they'll catch you, then they'll tear you up like they tore up the guy in the yellow shirt. Understand?'

    His words took some of the heat out of April Connor's anger, so she followed this man with the gold-tipped teeth along a path that wove through clumps of willow. Above her, the unnatural moon still burned down as brilliantly as any sun.

    'Why is the moon so bright, then?'

    He put his fingers to his lips and kept walking: a rapid, purposeful walk. Although she didn't know where they were going exactly she realized they'd cut across the island, and even though it couldn't have been more than a hundred yards wide by a couple of hundred long - nothing but a sandbank with a few clumps of trees and bushes - April could no longer see the water. Or that mob on the beach.

    After a few moments the stranger asked, 'Hungry?'

    'I thought talking was forbidden?'

    'We're as far away as we're going to get from your friends, but keep it low, okay?'

    'They're not my friends.'

    'They're nobody's friends now.'

    'That's cryptic.'

    'I asked if you were hungry?'

    'Ravenous. Have you got any food?'

    'Nothing
you'd
like to eat,' he snapped.

    'I don't always eat mud.'

    'I'm not talking about mud.'

    'Look, what's your name?'

    He paused. 'My name?'

    'Can't you remember it, either?'

    'I've got it back now, but it doesn't feel as if it belongs to me.' He gave a grim smile. Those gold-tipped incisors glinted. 'For the record, I'm called Carter.'

    'Why the record?'

    'Names don't mean anything round here.'

    'They do to me. I'm April Connor.' She held out her hand. 'Mr Carter.'

    He stared at her hand. 'Carter Vaughn. No mister. Still hungry?'

    She nodded. 'To the point of nausea.'

    'They all get like that, April.' He shook her hand. 'That's why you ate dirt, and the others ate stones, then they decided that the big guy should become dinner.'

    'Why did they choose him?'

    'Juiciest. Start walking.'

    She walked in silence for a moment until they reached another shoreline. This one was deserted; the falling tide revealed a stretch of sand that ran out a hundred yards or so. The pains in her stomach flared up again. A sickening spasm that fluidly transformed itself into raging hunger that attacked her veins as much as her stomach.

    April talked to distract herself from the hunger. 'What's this place called?'

    'As far as I know it doesn't have a name.' When he saw the anxiety in her face he smiled. 'Okay, I know you want answers. I call it Willow Island. On account of…' He pulled at the fronds of a willow. 'And Rat Island would do. There's hundreds of the little buggers.'

    'I've been calling it the Isle of the Dead.' She rubbed her stomach. 'It seemed apt.'

    'Yeah, that's a good one, too.'

    'But how did I end up out here in the ocean?'

    'Ocean? This is the River Thames. When it's daylight you can make out Gravesend upstream.'

    The vastness of the twinkling water astounded her. 'But it's huge. I can't see the bank.'

    'That's because it's low-lying. Also we're down near the end of the estuary. Is it getting bad?'

    'Uh?'

    'The hunger?'

    She pressed her lips together as she nodded. Images of cooked meats seared through her - chops, steaks, rib roast, hams, hamburgers, you name it.

    'This is when mud starts looking like Sunday dinner, doesn't it?'

    Again she could only nod as painful cramps snapped her stomach muscles tight. In another effort to distract her she spat out another question. 'How did we get here, Carter?'

    'You know how, April. You know exactly how.'

    'I was attacked. Thrown in the river… from the embankment near Westminster.' She found it hard to speak, the pain was so intense. 'You?'

    'You were bitten on the waist. See the bite mark on my wrist? I thought I was helping some homeless kid in a park. He nearly chewed my hand off, then dumped me in the water at Woolwich. I drifted down with the tide like the rest.'

    'I don't understand…' The pain grew worse.

    'What is there to understand? It's the way it is. All we can do is keep away from the headcases, they get so hungry they'll eat anything. See those teeth marks in the tree trunk?'

    April eyed the trunk of the willow. The bark resembled bacon - or at least it did right then. She saw how satisfying it would be to sink her teeth into the flesh of the tree.

    'Don't try it.' Carter guessed what she was thinking. 'You'll only break your teeth.'