Breeding Ground, Page 3

Draining his large spirit in one gulp, he laughed and signalled for another, shaking his head into his empty glass. “Of course it’s not normal. How is any of this normal?”

  Confusion threw me into silence for a second, and then that same confusion made me angry. Angry and loud.

  “Then for God’s sake why did you say it? Surely you should be running some tests or something, whatever it is you do to find out what’s wrong—”

  His weathered old hand moved fast, grabbing the collar of my jacket and pulling me down so that my head was level with his. Spit hit my face as he hissed at me. “There are no tests. Not for this.” His eyes were on fire. “Do you live with your head up your arse, son? Look around you. What are you seeing? Look at the women.”

  My heart chilled in my chest. I stepped slightly backwards, letting his hand drop away, and I glanced around the room. There were no women in the bar, just a few men. Some drinking quietly, mainly by themselves, others paired in awkward silence. I didn’t get it. I couldn’t get it. What did he mean?

  He was watching me with impatience, but the anger had gone out of his voice. “You think it’s only you this is happening to? Poor Matthew Edge and Chloe Taylor?” He nodded his head in the direction of the busier side of the curved bar.

  “Look at them. This is happening to all of them. All of us. And I can’t do anything. I don’t understand it. No one does. And when I say no one, I mean no one in the whole world, Matt. We’re all just going to have to wait and see. That’s all we can do. Wait and see.”

  He pushed back his bar stool, a little unsteady on his feet, and leaving his untouched drink on the bar, left me there. The world seemed too bright as I fought to get my breath, my eyes again running over the people around me. They all looked tired. Tired and frightened, just like me. Could this really be happening to all of them? Were there women like Chloe all over town? All over the world?

  The landlord was cleaning glasses. He wasn’t much older than me, maybe midthirties, but despite his wine bar surroundings, the lifestyle was taking its toll, and he was developing the red-nosed, large-bellied look, so typical in his profession. What was his name? Bill? Bob? Something like that. I caught his eye, and tried to keep my tone light.

  “So, where’s the missus tonight?” Normally, there was a blond, trim woman darting around beside him, making sure everything was running smoothly.

  His eyes met mine for a moment before sliding away. “Upstairs. She’s not been feeling herself lately.” He moved to the far shelves and began taking bottles down to polish them. Well, whatever was wrong with his wife, he certainly wasn’t in the mood to talk about it.

  Taking a few long gulps of my beer, needing it to help calm me down, I took another look around at all the men who were concentrating on not meeting each others’ eyes in the close confines. They were nearly all over fifty. Where were the young drinkers? At home looking after their women as best they could? Shit, the doctor had given me the heebie-jeebies. Despite the emptiness of the bar, it suddenly felt claustrophobic, and leaving my half-full glass behind, I stepped back outside.

  The rain had stopped, the clouds clearing to let through some evening sunshine, but after what the doctor had said, it seemed that even that wasn’t going to lighten my mood. The world suddenly seemed different, as if I was seeing it for the first time in ages. Maybe I needed to take the plunge and do what he said. Look around me properly. Look at the women. It wasn’t as if there were any answers to be found anywhere else.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I started right there and then, on the way home. It was amazing how much detail we ignore in our day-to-day lives, how much we lazily omit seeing because we don’t think it’s important. I wondered how much longer it would have taken me to see the bigger picture of what was going on without the doctor’s prompt. I wonder how long old Judge had known. I guess I’ll never find out. I never saw him again after that.

  Beneath the clearing skies, I wandered slowly out from Market Square to the main road. Normally, I’d just turn left and walk the couple of hundred yards to the cottage, but I wasn’t ready to go back yet and I wanted to take a good look at my hometown.

  The first thing I noticed was that there were no women about. I didn’t see a single one. Stony Stratford High Street had a lot of restaurants, serving up food from all ethnic varieties, something for every taste, from Italian through Thai to Indian and back again, but each one I passed was either empty or closed. I paused for a moment, needing to try and take it all in, staring through the large glass window of The Passage to India into the unmanned darkness. My breath left a misty stain on the clean surface. Stepping back, I read the sign on the door. It said simply. CLOSED DUE TO ILLNESS.

  The only nights that restaurants closed around here were Mondays, and this was a Friday, normally a busy evening with all-you-can-eat buffets dragging people in from all over Milton Keynes. How many staff needed to be ill or have sick relatives to close a restaurant? I gazed back down the deserted street and corrected myself—to close several restaurants.

  My head rushed with blood and adrenaline, making me dizzy for a moment, and it took several deep breaths to get my feet feeling solid ground beneath them. This was crazy. Truly crazy. My face and the tips of my fingers were cold, my blood drawing back inside.

  I think, looking back, that was the worst moment for my sanity. There were worse things to come, far worse, but at least by then I knew it was nature that had gone crazy, not me. Standing there at the bottom of the high street, I felt almost as if someone had slipped a small dose of LSD into my drink, unsure of what was real or not. I’d taken the drug once and that was enough. I liked to keep a grip on reality, to believe in what I could touch and feel, not just wild imaginings. I pushed my legs to walk and I tried to calm my thinking down as I turned up Vicarage Walk, strolling past the rows of houses, some showing the flickering lights of televisions reflecting large shapes on sofas, some with their curtains drawn despite the evening light. I shoved my hands deep into my pockets to warm them.

  Maybe it was insane, but something was happening here. Silently, I listed the evidence. Chloe not eating and putting on three stone. Her personality changing. I rushed past that part in my head, not wanting to blur my thoughts with the fear I felt for her and for me. I remembered the disturbed and distracted demeanour of Mr. Brown earlier that afternoon. He’d said Peggy wasn’t feeling too well, either. Neither was Bill/Bob’s wife in The Crown. And the streets were pretty deserted. Definitely abandoned by the fairer sex, at least. And more than all that, there was the conversation with Dr. Judge. If I was going insane, then at least I had him for company. What had he said? We’ll have to wait and see. It wasn’t a comforting prospect. Not for me and Chloe and our unborn child. Maybe his lying to Chloe had been a kindness after all. I stared at the pavement, not needing to see into any more lives, and trudged forward into the falling darkness.

  Finally, I found myself outside our little cottage and quietly let myself in. I didn’t like the small wave of relief that I felt when silence greeted me and I realised that Chloe was already in bed. Getting a can of beer from the fridge, I cracked it open and went into the dark sitting room, leaving the lights off and flicking on the remote control.

  Sophie Rayworth was delivering the news, and the can stopped inches from my mouth as her image glowed in the gloom. She was at least a stone heavier than she had been the last time I’d paid her any attention. Easily. Maybe more. I wasn’t normally that great a judge of women’s weight, but recently I’d become more of an expert. And was it my imagination or did she seem distracted, a little vague? She stumbled over two lines in the few moments that I watched. Not exactly her normal slick professional self. I wondered if she’d be giving us the ten o’clock news the next day, or would that show be “closed due to sickness?”

  Turning the TV off, I leaned back into the armchair and shut my eyes, my temples throbbing with an oncoming tension headache. No great surprise there. I’m not sure how long I sat there like that in
the silent dark, but eventually my thoughts and the headache became too oppressive and I sleepily climbed the stairs to our bedroom.

  Without brushing my teeth, I peeled off my clothes as quietly as I could and climbed into bed. Chloe was sleeping curled up on her side, facing the other way as I lay on my back, gazing up at the ceiling hidden in the dark.

  “Hold me, Matt.” Her soft voice cut through my thoughts and into my heart. That was my Chloe speaking.

  Rolling next to her, I wrapped my arm around her body, ignoring its unfamiliar feel. She pulled my hand up so it was under her face.

  “I’m scared.”

  I pulled her close and said all I could that was true without admitting my own fear.

  “I love you, Chloe.”

  The next morning was Saturday. When I finally opened my bleary eyes, still heavy from a fitful night’s sleep, I realised the bed beside me was empty. Ignoring the vague thudding that was left of my headache from the night before, I called out her name, then listened for any sound of movement below. There was nothing. She’d gone out. Whether that was a good thing or bad, I didn’t know, and rather than just lie there with only my morbid thoughts for company, I decided on a hot shower to blast away the cobwebs.

  Outside, the sun was shining brightly and I opened the bathroom window a little, the spring breeze refreshingly cutting through the steam erupting from the hot jet of water, and despite everything, I felt my spirits rise. My headache lingered and my mouth felt as if it were covered in fur, but there was a hint of summer in the air, and that always made me feel good.

  By the time I was dressed and coming downstairs, I was whistling and sure that whatever was going on, they would be sorting it out, and before we all knew it everything would be back to normal. The rustling of plastic bags escaped from the kitchen and I followed the sound.

  My whistling stopped in the doorway, the dampness of my hair suddenly cold against my head, my scalp bristling with goose bumps.

  “Morning, Chloe.” I tried to keep my voice normal, but I heard the shake in it, and I’m sure if she cared, then she would have, too. Jesus Christ, what had happened to her? After those first two words, I just stood and stared, watching as she shuffled about the kitchen. I don’t know if she even noticed my shock. She was bigger. Much bigger than she had been yesterday, and I had to resist the urge to laugh in shock. I was scared of where that laugh would lead. Madness? I didn’t feel that far from it. Where was my Chloe in all of that excess fat and flesh? It was like looking at a nightmare distortion of the girl I loved.

  She was wearing some floral tent of a skirt that she must have just bought, pulling my jogging bottoms out of a plastic bag and tossing them carelessly on the floor by the washing machine. Had they been that tight on her that she’d had to buy new clothes? Her upper body, bloated and shapeless, was covered with a large white T-shirt. God, she looked like some tragic reject from a reality TV show, the weight ageing her before her time.

  Shaking myself, I took one of the shopping bags from her.

  “Here, let me help.”

  The bag was half-full and heavy.

  “Fridge.” Her voice had more of that gravelly tone I’d noticed the previous evening, and I nodded awkwardly, pulling open the door. She was tipping a bag onto its side, and it looked like small wrapped parcels of meat. What the hell had she been buying?

  Reaching into my carrier, I started to empty it into the fridge. More meat. I looked at the labels. Liver. Kidney. Heart. More liver. Tongue. More heart. We never ate this. Not even liver. My fingertips tingled with disgust.

  “Jesus, Chloe. What have you bought all this shit for?” Unaware of her presence next to me, I stared at the shelves that I’d filled. She must have gone to more than one butcher to get all this.

  “Couldn’t you have just got steak and sausages like normal?”

  Her growl made my skin crawl, and startled, I spun round to find myself staring at her face, pale in the reflected light of the fridge. The low animalistic snarl turned into a hiss, her mouth open, the sound coming from deep in her chest. I heard a low moan, for a moment not realising it was coming from me, frozen to the spot as I stared. My fear seemed to satisfy her, and the horrible sound ended, a twisted smile filling her face. As my headache roared back to life, sharp and nauseous, I wanted to cry. One of her front teeth was missing. Oh, Chloe. She touched my arm and I shivered inside, my stomach churning.

  “I just need some protein, Matty.” As she spoke, I caught glimpses of the black and rotting insides of her mouth, and I wanted to recoil from her, pull away, but I couldn’t.

  “For the baby. I was lucky. It was nearly all gone.” Her eyes were glowing too brightly in her pale sweaty face, and suddenly I felt tired, tired in my bones, the pain from my head running straight down into my spinal column. I needed to get out of the house, right now, straightaway. My voice seemed to be coming from far away.

  “I’m not a great fan of this kind of stuff. I’m going to go to Budgen’s to get something for me.” As excuses went, it was at least believable. There wasn’t any food in the house. I hadn’t felt much like eating recently, and when I had, I’d just grabbed a takeaway.

  She nodded approvingly before taking her hand away, and I almost fell backwards, my legs like jelly. My fingers fumbled to pick up my wallet and keys from the breakfast bar. God, my head hurt.

  Chloe was heading slowly into the sitting room as I opened the back door. She smiled unpleasantly over her shoulder. “Don’t talk to any strangers.”

  I let the closing door be my answer.

  I didn’t find the spring air quite so revitalizing anymore, and rather than going down to the small supermarket, I decided to walk up to the big Tesco in Wolverton, a mile and half away. The confines of Stony Stratford—so long a comfort zone in my life—were becoming claustrophobic, and I turned my back on it, my feet heavy in my trainers. Half my head was numb with pain, but it thankfully eased as I finally passed under the old bridge that signalled the boundary of the town, and I took in several deep breaths, relieved to have my thinking clear.

  The streets were quiet, the odd car or bike passing me, but no sign of any other pedestrians. I’d seen a couple of people moving around Stony, but it seemed that no one was strolling up to Wolverton this Saturday morning apart from me. On either side of the road were fields, and they seemed to watch me silently as I trudged up the mild incline. Although my headache seemed to be going, I was sweating with exhaustion. How could I be so tired? There was too much strange shit happening way too fast for me to keep up.

  Pushing myself onwards, I did my best to ignore the pain in my limbs. There was just too much to think about already, and at least the jabbing, sharp attacks to my head were going.

  By the time I got into the old railway town I was recovering slightly, but my soul still ached at the sight of the nearly empty supermarket car park. I laughed pathetically at my lack of surprise and stepped through the sliding doors into the cool, brightly lit store. As the door shut behind me, my headache dropped away a little more; it was still there, but it was at least tolerable.

  Picking up a basket from the tall stack at the entrance, I began to wander up and down the empty aisles, the tinny music filtering from above adding to the eeriness of the ghost town atmosphere. I felt like I was shopping in the middle of the night, not eleven-thirty on a Saturday morning. My shoes whispered noisily as I walked, my eyes no doubt as wide as a child’s.

  The meat counters were all pretty much empty, some vac-packed bacon and frankfurters left unwanted on the shelves, the machinery humming hungrily as it kept them cool. Staring into the sterile shelving, hopelessness seeped into me. It seemed that Chloe wasn’t the only one wanting protein today. I didn’t care about the lack of meat. I found that since Chloe came home, I’d gone off the stuff. In fact, I wasn’t sure that I was going to have an appetite for anything much in the near future.

  The deli and cheese counter were closed and although there were no “due to illness” si
gns up, it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Not that there were many geniuses out and about to do the math. Going past the chiller, I took out a pizza and put it in the basket, adding two pints of milk. The sight of all this food was making my stomach turn, the image of Chloe’s rotting mouth making unwelcome visits in my mind, but I couldn’t go home with nothing. The idea of doing anything that might upset my girlfriend didn’t appeal to me.

  Turning away from the endless mountains of food, I headed into the toiletries section and grabbed two packets of paracetamol and the same of ibuprofen. There weren’t many left on the shelf. It seemed that meat wasn’t the only product in demand on this unusual weekend. Not wanting to wait until I’d paid for them, I ripped into the paracetamol and dry-swallowed a couple.

  “Matt. Hi.”

  Jesus. The sudden voice jolted my jangled nerves. The pale face next to me attempted a smile and it took me a moment to place it, before it came to me. Mark. God, I hadn’t seen him in ages. He lived just round the corner from here and we’d been to school together. We also used to play in the Stony pool league together. He wasn’t a bad player and a good laugh to boot. He wasn’t looking so amusing now, his eyes strained and bloodshot. I squeezed his shoulder.

  “Hey, mate. How are you?” I glanced down and saw that his shopping basket was almost identical to mine. One meal’s worth of food, tea bags and painkillers.

  “You got a headache, too?”

  He nodded very slowly, his mouth twitching slightly, as if he had to force the words out. “Shelley’s not well.”

  Now there was a surprise. “Neither’s Chloe.” My own head pounded a bit harder. “You want to talk about it?” I stared at him, waiting for an answer. It was about time someone started talking about it, and it may as well be us over a cool beer.

  Mark’s hand shot to his head as he flinched, and the nod I was sure had been coming stopped. Leaning forward, he whispered painfully.

  “Maybe later. Maybe when she’s asleep.” His face contorted slightly again. “It doesn’t hurt so much then.” Wobbling, he almost lost his balance and I grabbed him, keeping him on his feet.