The Collector Book One: Mana Leak (29 page)

“I know. Is he like that all the time?”

“Things have been a little…stressed of late.”

Joe nodded. He considered the space on the table where the hammer had been seconds before. “He wouldn’t have done anything…would he?”

Anne followed his gaze.

“With the hammer? No, he wouldn’t hurt a fly except to protect the kids. He’s all talk, you just have to ride it out and let him think he’s in control.” She rubbed her lower ribs. “Come on, we have to see what’s going on outside.”

“If you’re sure,” said Joe.

He followed her out of the kitchen towards the living room. Already, he heard the gasps.

3.

Frank and Jake stood at the window, faces pressed against the glass. Joe and Anne joined them side by side and looked out onto the street.

Even in the dim glow of the street lights, they saw the road squirming and writhing. Joe swallowed and squinted. The black mass covered the walls and gardens on the opposite side of the road too. Some of it broke apart and scattered.

Joe released a small cry. “Oh no…”

“What are they?” asked Anne.

“His Prowlers,” he said. “They’re back.”

He watched several of them dart around the street before joining the main group.

“They’re what got into our house.”

“What are they doing?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Joe glanced back over his shoulder. “Where’s my grandmother?”

“She’s with my mum,” said Jake. “She saw it first from upstairs and sent me down to tell you three.” He nodded to Anne. “Your kids are asleep now, which is good. Mum said it was probably for the best if they didn’t see this.”

Anne nodded. “Thanks, Jake.”

All four flinched and stepped back as a single Prowler darted for the window, claws clacking together. Its large single eye swept from side to side, scrutinizing them all. It lowered on its pencil-thin legs.

It’s going to jump
, thought Joe.
It’ll come straight through the window.

Apparently uninterested, the Prowler took one last look, turned and scuttled across the lawn to join its siblings.

“There’s so many of them,” gasped Jake. “Look how they swarm. They’re taking up half the street!”

“That’s the problem,” moaned Joe. He’d broken into a sweat at the mere sight of the Prowlers. “The numbers. As you kill one, there’s another group ready to take its place. And the speed of these things, fast bastards…”

“Incredible,” said Frank. “Look at the organisation…”

“What do you mean?” whispered Anne.

“Look closely. They aren’t just gathered together as I first thought. They’ve separated into smaller groups and look-”

He pointed to the Prowlers nearest to the house.

“There’s one twice the size stood at the front. Now look down the street.”

They all did as instructed.

“Oh shit…” said Jake.

“There are more of them,” said Anne.

“Yes. All the way down the street as far as I can see. Each one of these larger things has their own group behind it. I don’t know if these are insects are not, but they are displaying all the signs of a working colony.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Joe.

“I’ve taught some biology in my time,” Frank replied, smug. “The number of videos I’ve had to watch on bees and ants and their organisation…at least it’s coming in handy now, sort of.”

“How can that be handy?” said Jake. “I mean, we’re still stuck in here, and they’re having a fucking street party!”

“If these things adhere to the norm,” said Frank, ignoring him, “the smaller ones are the workers. They are controlled by the soldiers, probably those larger ones.”

“Still not helping!”

“Well, Jake, maybe you can tell me who controls the soldiers?”

Jake fell quiet.

“Exactly,” Frank snorted. “Imbecile. The queen controls everything, and that might be what proves useful. With ants and bees, if the queen dies, so does the nest.”

“So if we can find the queen, all the things out there might die?” pondered Anne.

“Yes, hon. That’s what I’m thinking. Has anyone seen a larger one? Larger than the ones out there?”

They all shook their heads, apart from Joe, who walked away from the window and slumped into an armchair next to the bookcase. The others stared back at him.

“Joe? Do you know something?

“I think I know what the queen is.”

“What?” demanded Jake.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yes we do,” cried Frank. “This could be important. If you know something, spit it out, McGuire.”

Joe sighed.

“
He’s
the queen. Our friend in the suit. I’ve seen how he can control them. He stood outside our house as they came pouring out. They parted like the Red Sea did for bloody Moses.”

Frank’s head bowed.

“Which helps us none,” he said. “It’s back to square one, the same problem as before.”

They looked back to the window, except for Joe, who sat with his head in his hands.

“It looks like an army to me,” said Anne. “The generals preparing their platoons, sorting rank.”

“What for?” asked Jake, eyes remaining fixed on the seething blanket of twitching black bodies.

“Preparing to attack,” she said quietly.

They stood watching the Prowlers in silence for a moment longer. Frank finally spoke, breaking them out of their horrified trance.

“I’m going to fix the window, and I think I’d better do the rest of the upstairs too.”

Joe lifted his head and studied Frank. The man trembled. Seemed the sight of the gathering Prowlers had scared him into Joe’s way of thinking.

“Joe, can you secure down here? Use anything you need.”

“Even the table?” He smirked.

Frank frowned. “Yes, anything. Jake, you stay and help him.”

“No,” moaned the teenager. “I want to help you upstairs. I don’t want to be too far from my mum.”

“Fine,” sighed Frank. “You come with me. Anne, you stay and help Joe as best you can. Don’t carry anything too heavy though; remember you’ve just banged your head.”

“We should get the barricades up as fast as we can,” said Joe, standing. “We can always go back and strengthen them later.” He glanced at the window. “They look restless out there.”

“Agreed,” said Frank. “Yell if anything changes.” He held up his hammer. “Let’s get to it.”

4.

The house became a hive of hurried activity for the next half an hour.

Joe fished a screwdriver from the tool box and removed the doors by the hinges. Two covered the large bay windows in the living room. He used a rolling pin from Anne to knock the nails in. He wished he still had the hammer; the rolling pin barely did the job. He took the time to cut some small holes in the wood.

“Why are you doing that?” Anne asked.

“So we can see what’s going on outside.”

Joe sawed the legs off the dining table and nailed up the table top as one solid block. As he hastily carried out the survival carpentry, Anne busied herself by blocking off all the smaller routes into the house. A moderately new house with an electric fire meant no chimney: one less thing to worry about. She blocked an extractor vent in the kitchen with old clothes. After the details Joe told her about the Prowlers, she worried about them slashing their way through and packed the clothes tighter. She taped the downstairs toilet closed and placed heavy books over the plug hole in the sinks. Joe asked her about the sinks, and she simply replied
we don’t know what they’re capable of
. His face paled for a moment before he nodded and returned to hammering up wood.

The kitchen became Anne’s armoury of sorts. Trying to keep busy, she laid out all possible weapons on the work surface. The granite-style top was soon covered in knives, the table legs, cans of cleaning aerosols, and whatever else seemed marginally useful. She filled pans with water and left them on the cooker hobs to boil, while a set of barbecue forks were placed under the grill, their wooden hands sticking out.

“If those things try to get in,” she explained to Joe, “and I think we know it’s only a matter of time, I want to be ready. We don’t have any guns. We don’t even have so much as a baseball bat. All we have is here, but it’s waiting.”

He pointed to the pans.

“What’s the deal with all this? And the forks under the grill?”

“More defence,” she said. “If any of his things dare show their face in here, they’ll get a pan of boiling hot water to greet them. As for these -” She lifted one of the forks out by its handle and held it up. The tip smoked slightly. “Well, why not?”

Somehow, Joe managed to laugh. He’d known Anne only a short time, and she’d instantly come across as a motherly figure, a carer who wanted to watch over her flock. Now he was part of that, his grandmother and the Deans too. He noticed how Anne had fussed and rushed about earlier, fetching them clothes, trying to get them clean, making drinks and offering food. He’d been amazed at how well she handled the extreme situation. Now, a storm was coming, and she wanted to be sure they survived it. Joe never would’ve thought that this soft spoken and delicate figure, whose hair hung messily around her face and whose cheeks flushed slightly when she laughed, would have such an eye for domestic weaponry.

“Joe? You okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You went a bit funny for a few seconds. Thought you’d spaced out on me there.”

“No no, I’m all right. Maybe it’s just the lack of sleep.”

Her smile fell to a look of deep concern.

“If you’re tired, don’t hesitate to get your head down for a few hours. There’s another bed free upstairs if you…”

“Seriously, Anne, I’ll be okay. Besides, I don’t think I could sleep with what’s going on out there.”

Anne nodded. “Maybe we should go back to the living room, see what’s going on. It’s been a while since we checked.”

“I don’t think anything’s changed. I presume Frank and Jake are keeping watch upstairs too, and they’ve remained quiet.”

“But still, Joe,” she reached out and squeezed his arm just below his shoulder. “Let’s go and check.”

“Ladies first.”

He motioned to the former kitchen door, now just a rectangular hole in the wall. Anne performed a small curtsey, her smiled returning, and walked past him and out into the hall.

5.

Joe walked into the living room. Anne already stood by one of the peepholes in the door over the window, her face close to the jagged edge. She bent over slightly, and Joe stared at the way her jeans stretched across her rump. He coughed and pulled his gaze upwards, feeling a flash of guilt.

“What’s going on out there?” he asked.

“The same, really. You okay?”

“Just nerves I guess,” he replied and cleared his throat.

“There’s a lot more of them,” she said. “There must be hundreds now, at least.”

Joe joined her, peering through the next hole. He inhaled her sweet scent, a wisp of summer in the middle of this cold night. Her fragrance made him think of meadows and flowers in full bloom. He wondered what perfume she wore.

Outside, many more Prowlers loitered in Penny Crescent. The gathering swarm covered the entire street and spread up the Dean house, the frontage now a twitching mass of black.

“Christ,” whispered Joe. “I hope that’s all of them. Imagine if that’s only a fraction of how many he’s got running around the place.”

Anne murmured in agreement.

Joe glanced to his side and saw how her breasts hung down from her tilted body, resting against her top.

This is just the situation
, he thought, looking away.
My body wanting one last-

“Think we’d better tell them upstairs?” asked Anne.

Joe nodded. “They might not have noticed yet. They haven’t called us or anything.”

Anne pulled herself away from the roughly cut hole and strode to the bottom of the stairs.

“Frank?” she shouted, keeping her voice calm and steady. “Can you come down here for a minute?”

Frank said something, probably to Jake.

“Coming,” he called. His footsteps pounded the stairs.

“I think you should take a look at this,” Anne said, guiding him into the living room.

Joe acknowledged Frank with a small, respectful nod, which he considered the best course of action; Frank seemed calm and rational, and Joe aimed to keep him that way.

Anne gestured towards one of the other holes in the wood. “Take a look. See what’s out there.”

Quiet, Frank leaned over and lowered his eyes to the opening.

“Your ranking theory is still holding,” said Joe. “There might be more of them, but they’re still forming groups. If you look closely at the ones covering the Deans’ house-”

“It’s okay,” said Frank suddenly, pulling away from the hole like it had burst into flames. “I’ve seen enough.”

He faced away from the boarded up window and rubbed his head.

“I’m going for a drink. Anybody want one?” he sighed.

Anne and Joe declined.

Without another word, Frank drifted out of the room and towards the kitchen.

“Is he okay?” asked Joe.

“I think the penny’s dropped,” said Anne, her eyes sparkling. “It’s just with Frank…physics is his life. I know how pathetic that sounds, but it’s what he’s good at, what he enjoys. He’d be a fantastic teacher if it wasn’t for the kids.”

She smiled as a single tear journeyed from the corner of her eye to the curve of her jaw.

Joe had the sudden desire to take her in his arms.

“All this,” she said waving an arm towards the window, “is just getting too much for him. It’s not the physical threat, more the mental. His reality, the thing he believes in so much, is slipping away. Killing machines, disfigured monsters and the things out there can’t be put into a formula or be easily explained within his logic.”

Joe headed over to the book case and scanned some of the covers:
The Physics of the Ancients, The Real Einstein, Force and Momentum: a Working Study
. Every book had some branch of physics in its title, and the bottom shelf was packed full of
World of Physics
magazines. It reminded Joe of his grandmother’s obsession with the occult.