I am scared. On edge. Waiting for the rain.
It hasn’t always been like this.
I used to work in an office. My contract said my working hours were Monday to Friday, nine to five, but that was a joke.
Most mornings I’d be at my desk by six and I wouldn’t step away until gone nine in the evening. I had been sucked into a corporate black hole.
My nights were spent in shallow sleeps from which I would wake constantly and my mind would immediately be racing with problems I had to solve or mistakes I had made.
My days were hell.
Something had to give.
And that something was me.
I remember I was speaking to one of the managers. I can’t remember what I was saying but I do recall painfully clearly the look of disdain on the manager’s face. I saw in his expression how little he thought of me despite everything I had given to the job.
That was the proverbial final straw.
He turned his back on me and walked away, and my world fractured into moments.
I was outside the office, on the street, spilling a takeaway coffee and thinking how beautiful each dark droplet looked.
I was being approached by a policeman. He was speaking into a radio and I thought the crackling voice that replied held a message from a great power that I needed to decipher. If only I could understand what they were saying all my problems would be solved.
I was opening my eyes and being surrounded by the chaos of a packed hospital ward. A nurse smiled at me. She looked exhausted.
Over the weeks that followed the world started to knit back together and I understood what had happened to me.
There had been nothing special. No amazing messages just out of reach.
I had had a massive nervous breakdown.
The company I worked for acted sympathetic at first but soon turned the screw, pressuring me to come back.
And I wanted to. Despite everything that had happened.
So, I went back to the office. I think I lasted about an hour before I started crying uncontrollably. I was asked to leave.
I did not go back to my apartment. I used a credit card to buy a car from a second-hand dealer.
I wasn’t planning on doing this. I just found myself walking past the lot and seeing the car.
It was an absolute rust bucket, but I thought it was wonderful and I knew in a rush of emotions what I was going to do.
A few hours later I was living my impulsive, damaged dream, and driving along the open highway.
I drove for days with no destination in mind, sleeping in the car even though I hadn’t got around to buying blankets or anything like that. I would go all day, sometimes more, without eating then be possessed by hunger and pull into a diner where I’d order a dozen items off the menu and gorge myself.
I was still very ill, and no one cared – as long as my credit cards worked, I was free to do what I wanted.
After three weeks on the road, I found myself driving along the main street of a deserted town.
I’d left anything resembling a maintained road a day and a night before and my bones had been thoroughly rattled by the tracks I was heading along. I’d seen no buildings or signs, just dense woodland with the occasional glimpse of a mountain in the distance. I was happy enough. As long as I was moving and no one was hassling me, I was just keeping on going. Then, not long after dawn, the road straightened out a little and I saw buildings ahead through the undergrowth. A small, tidy gathering of what I could soon see were homes. There was a store as well and a small chapel with a graveyard by it. And not a single person in sight.
I turned off the engine. I was in the middle of the street but it was clear I was not going to cause a traffic jam.
I had a curious streak. When I was a child, this had got me into plenty of scrapes. Now the weight of work and responsibility had been lifted, this part of me had come back, and I was intrigued by this place.
Where had everyone gone?
I wanted to know.
I stepped out of the car and just stood there for a moment and listened.
There was nothing. No voices, no TVs or radios. No dogs barking.
It was wonderful. I breathed in the air and savoured the peace then set off to explore.
An empty beer bottle lay on the sidewalk. It was oppressively hot out there in the empty street and I would have given anything for a cold drink.
A fly loitering around the neck of the bottle was a kindred spirit, I figured with a wry grin.
I approached the nearest building and peered through a window. The room I was looking into had been stripped bare. There were no rugs on the floor. Brighter patches on the walls showed where pictures must have once hung.
I moved round to the door, knocked and said, “Hello, is there anyone home?”
I already knew there wasn’t but this seemed like the right thing to do. I gave it a few seconds then pushed on the door.
It wasn’t locked and swung open.
The air inside was thick with dust. A spider that I must have disturbed scurried across the ceiling. I followed it down the hallway. The rest of the rooms were empty as well, apart from a mattress that was propped against a wall.
I pulled it down onto the floor – and immediately regretted this as a cloud of dust set me off coughing and made my eyes sting.
Once I had stopped spluttering, I tested the mattress with my hand. It seemed OK by the standards of a man who had been sleeping in a car for weeks and I decided there and then I had found my bed for the night.
I smiled to myself. This was how life should be lived: free and easy.
I went back outside to see if I could rustle up some more home comforts and clues as to the whereabouts of the town’s inhabitants.
I paid a visit to half a dozen other places, including the town’s store, and found no signs of anyone being there, but I did find a jar of pickles, a packet of crackers that had been buried deep inside a cupboard and had only been a little nibbled at by rodents or some such, two bottles of soda, a woollen blanket from which I evicted a family of beetles with a couple of vigorous shakes, and a paperback book which would be my entertainment until it went dark.
The heat of earlier had intensified and I was soaked with sweat but still feeling happy with my lot as I carried my haul back to the house where the mattress waited.
I laid everything out and popped open one of the bottles and drank it down in one.
It was too early to settle down, so I decided to go see some more sights.
A handful of dark clouds had appeared in the short period I’d been inside. Could be, I figured, there was a storm on the way. Thinking how I’d welcome that for the relief from the heat it would bring, I headed towards the chapel.
Its door was bolted closed. I noticed as I tried to shake it open that the surface of the door was damaged. It looked like something had eaten away at the wood, leaving dark uneven lines and patches.
It was weird, one more small mystery for me to enjoy speculating over.
I continued past the chapel. A tree stood between the chapel and the graveyard. I noticed that the trunk had similar marks to the door to the chapel and that its leaves were also damaged. Some were riddled with holes, others were in tatters.
As I looked up, towards the canopy, I realised something else was not right here.
There was no birdsong.
I had embraced the silence of the town and had put this down to all the people being gone.
But where were the birds?
Perhaps, I told myself, they had left because this tree, and the others around here, were diseased. That would explain the bark and the leaves.
One unusual thing explained, I continued into the graveyard – where I was confronted with a new oddity.
The graves were all empty.
A couple of dozen headstones still stood but the ground in front of them was disturbed, leaving open wounds in the earth. That was how I thought of it as I went from grave to grave.
My mind chased answers to this around without success.
Had the townsfolk taken the remains of their dearly departed with them when they left?
If they had, why were there coffins in some of the newer looking graves? Coffins which looked like their lids had been forced open.
I started to feel cold despite the heat.
Something was wrong, and I decided not to spend the night.
I hurried back to my car.
Overhead, the clouds were spreading and they looked heavy with rain. There was definitely a storm coming.
I increased my pace.
I had almost made it to my car when through the corner of my eye I noticed a movement in one of the houses I had not yet explored. A person had walked past an open window.
I wasn’t alone after all.
This made me feel worse.
I felt vulnerable and exposed. A stranger in a strange place.
“Hey!” I hollered. “I’m just passing through. I mean no harm.”
A reply came straight back:
“Get out of here or you’ll be sorry.”
The voice came from inside the house, and now I could see the barrel pointing at me from its open doorway, the shape of a man emerging.
He was old and rake thin and had dark red patches on his face and hands. It was clear, though, that he meant what he said.
My guts tightening, I held my hands up, moving slow so he could see what I was doing. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll leave now.”
He spat on the ground. “You do, that boy. Cos if you don’t, I’ll be the least of your problems.”
Even though I was genuinely afraid, I couldn’t help myself. My natural curiosity sparked back into life, and I asked, “What do you mean?”
He kept the barrel aimed straight between my eyes as he said, “This town, and the land, and everything hereabouts is twisted out of shape. It started when the chemical plant was built and started pumping out fumes. People got sick and our crops decayed in the ground. Then the rain started to burn. It just irritated at first but it’s got worse and worse. Well, the town-folk that could moved away. The rest withered and died. There’s just me now. I buried the last of my neighbours with my own hands less than a month ago.”
He spat again and I could see that his hands were shaking.
“And now,” he continued, “You need to leave before they smell you. They know to leave me alone. Know, I’ll blast them. But you, you’re fresh meat.”
I was lost for words at this and was just standing there and staring at the old man when something stung me on the cheek.
I swore and tried to see what had done it but couldn’t see any bugs. I did notice a few fat rain drops landing on the dusty road, the first of the breaking storm.
Then another sharp pain bit into the skin of my left ear. I carefully felt at it.
It was wet.
I remembered what the old man had said about the rain burning.
“Is the rain like this because of the pollution?” I asked him – but he wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was looking over my shoulder.
I spun round to see what had got his attention.
It was a nightmare.
A shuffling, groaning procession of bodies from which the flesh had rotted away. The eye sockets of some were empty and they clawed at the air with their hands.
Others stared at me, their mouths hanging open in grotesque smiles.
Around their feet, fragments of what had once been men and women crawled and dragged themselves along the ground. A skeletal arm pulled itself forwards with its bony fingertips. A skull attached to a spine wriggled like a snake. Single bones scurried towards me like swarming insects.
The old man’s words flashed back into my mind:
… you’re fresh meat.
Bile rose into the back of my mouth.
I turned to look at the old man. He was backing away, the barrel now pointing at the approaching things, at what was left of bodies after death and time have had their way.
He continued until he was inside and out of sight.
Leaving me on my own in this town where it seemed even death had been twisted out of shape, and the dead had returned from the grave.
They were coming closer, would be on me in moments.
I grabbed the car door, pulled it open and hurried inside. More rain had struck me but it was still just the occasional droplet falling, and the fear pulsing through my body had pushed the pain to one side.
Inside the car I hesitated for a moment as I looked at the raw red patch covering the back of one of my hands, then I reached into my pocket and found the car keys.
I tried to get them into the ignition but my hand was shaking too badly and I dropped the keys.
As I did, something slammed onto the front window.
It was one of them. It was sprawled over the bonnet, and I watched in horror as it slammed its hand against the windscreen again.
Drops of rain speckled the glass around where it struck.
Another of them had hold of the door handle and was trying to pull it open. I punched the lock closed just in time, then reached blindly down onto the floor, trying to retrieve the keys.
I was surrounded now. They were clambering onto the roof, scraping and punching.
I found the keys, and somehow managed to start the engine, but I couldn’t move the car. There were too many of them.
A crack appeared in the windscreen, and then another.
In seconds it would give and they would on me, tearing at me with the sharp bones of their fingers and their teeth.
I wept and begged for help as the creatures raged and the rain began to fall heavily.
As a cloudburst was unleashed.
They began to scream in mindless terror as the rain bit into them, into their flesh where it remained, searing it from bone, and where there was only bone, the rain bit into that, burning, destroying.
Helpless before the power of the rainstorm, they started to fall away from the car.
I slammed my foot down on the accelerator and sped away, careering back along the track which had brought me to this outpost of hell.
I did not look back and one thought kept replaying in my mind: The rain had saved me.
The damage to my skin on the back of my hand and the other places the acid rain struck me has healed well in the months that have passed since then. They are the only physical scars of what happened to me that day and I am living back in the city.
The memories will never leave me though, and my mind constantly creates shadows filled with horrors, with the walking dead, lusting after me, reaching out, surrounding me.
It is only when it rains, that I feel safe.
And now the storm that has been building for hours is breaking. The first drops are hitting the window, mirrored by my tears of relief.