Homecoming

Where do you go when you have nowhere else left to go?

I went home.

Not to the place that I had most recently made my home, that place had failed on one of the measures of a home. It was no longer safe.

So, I made my way back to the place I grew up.

They said you should never go back. I’m not sure who they were and what the premise of this advice was. You do what you have to do is my retort to them. 

Maybe I was resorting to the only thing I knew. I was fresh out of ideas and my head wasn’t going to provide me with much of anything right now. It needed a rest and so did I.

I rode home. I figured it was as good a way to travel as any. I took my time and I went by the back roads and I kept my wits about me. You have to when you ride. Riding has always induced a big wide grin, but the only time I smiled on this ride was when I thought of one of the biker maxims, ride like everyone is out to kill you, it’s the only way to stay alive.

Maybe that maxim was why I chose to ride. The bike had dual purpose tread, but I doubted it had gone off-road ever in its life. I needed that option, but as it was, the roads treated me well and I only left the tarmac twice. 

I took this as a good sign and I allowed the seed of hope to unfurl and peep out of the soil. I knew this was a foolish endeavour, but I did not have the heart to crush that seed. I didn’t see the point.

The sun was giving up as I returned to my home town. Truth be told, it isn’t a town, not by a long shot. It’s a village and that suited me fine right now.

I’ve visited this place regularly, but not as regularly as I’d like and certainly not as regularly as my folks would like. That’s before I get to my siblings. They seem to think I should make all the effort with them.

Why?

Because I moved away, not them.

Only, that isn’t the real reason. That’s an excuse they glued on top of the real reason, and the real reason is they hate me. Not so you would know though. Their hatred is low-level, it’s an ingrained habit. They were taught to hate me from an early age. It was my mother’s way of evening the playing field, what with me being the eldest and having all the advantages of going first and breaking new ground. 

It took me a long, long time to suss this hatred of theirs out. My folks are oblivious to it. Oh, they nod as I tell them there isn’t anything I can do about it, and it’s all down to my siblings to  move on from being ten year olds, but I know that they are not listening, and if I need any further proof of their deaf ears, it’s when they beseech me to make more of an effort. 

I’ve been there and done that, nothing was ever good enough. Eventually I realised that I was as dumb as the moth above my bed, bashing its head over and over on the hot lightbulb. So I stopped trying so hard. My efforts only hurt me and they were a waste of everyone’s time. I quit leading that particular horse to water and I got reports via my folks of how bad I was for not trying with my brother and sister. They actively thwarted everything I did, and yet they wanted to see me try harder? 

Why?

Because I’m the eldest and it’s what I’m supposed to do as far as they are concerned.

I dunno what they told their kids, but I don’t think I even got to be the black sheep of the family. 

Still, it took me a long while to see what they were doing for what it really was. They didn’t know me. They never took the time to look at who it was that was stood before them, instead they projected their own notion of what I was on to me and they behaved in hateful ways towards that. It took me an age to see it for what it was, because I was nearly as bad as them. I didn’t want to engage with the reality of it. 

I’d liked to say that it was empowering when I spoke my truth and called it out. That it freed me. I’d like to, but that would be a lie. It hurt was all it did. I suppose it did free up some time and effort that I could have devoted to a more rewarding pursuit, but I’m far from perfect and I probably just used that time to surf the apps on my phone or to watch that bulb-bashing moth. I couldn’t tell you what I did, it’s all just sugar for the mind.

Or at least it was.

I don’t miss it one bit.

Do I miss my brother and sister? Sure I do. Not them, like I told you, they’re hateful towards me and I don’t hold with the notion that you keep your enemies close. That’s ridiculous, just ask anyone who woke up one day to the revelation that the person sharing their bed is some sort of psychopath.

Don’t scoff at that. There was a lot of that about. More than you would know. Unless of course you were the one in every… oh, I’d say ten, who was charmed and lied to and fell prey to a game that put them in a cerebral tailspin. Once you’re dizzy, they keep you dizzy and that’s when the chaos leaks in.

Not that any of that matters anymore, chaos has found other ways to make its way into the world.

Strictly speaking, I’m not supposed to travel. That was the advice when the pandemic hit. Advice made law. They used the same powers they’d had for the previous pandemic. Pretty unlucky that another virus followed hot on the heels of the first. That it seemed to sweep in through Europe this time, left everyone feeling really uneasy.

Could they have done this?

I think maybe they did, but it backfired. Literally it did, because the virus swept in all directions and was indiscriminate in its utter efficiency.

I sometimes wonder whether this was another attempt to level things up. Nukes were never a good idea. Destroying the planet was sheer idiocy and the stuff of nightmares. Whereas wiping out the majority of a nation, leaving things to settle down for a bit and then riding tanks into uncontested territory was a much better plan.

If it had gone to plan.

If my own mother can stuff up her family and then conveniently forget doing so, then what hope does a nation state have? I know why my folks forgot what they did. Yeah, dearest Daddy is just as bad, it happened on his watch. He allowed it to happen under his nose, so he’s just as responsible. They don’t remember, because it didn’t happen to them. They’re OK and it doesn’t really matter.

It only matters to me.

My siblings think it matters to them, but I don’t matter to them, so what is it that matters to them? What of substance matters? Them being right? Their self-inflicted and self-perpetuated hurt? I just wish they’d get off that ride and stop kidding themselves. But how few of us actually do that? Instead we go around and around and around.

Much the same as I think this virus will. I don’t think it will stop until we are all gone. Maybe the scientist that cultivated this one knew what she was about. Knew that it would mutate and rid this world of the biggest problem it has ever had. Never mind waiting for another meteor to reset things. This tiny nugget will do for us the same as the big one did for the dinosaurs.

Round and round we go. The only way the ride stops is when your heart stops, but even that isn’t a guarantee, not anymore it isn’t.

I go round and round the village. I stay on my ‘bike and ride past my objective. The place is eerily quiet. Villages have a reputation for that, but that’s a relative concept. There are layers of sound to a village and its absence is disconcerting. 

I see nothing. No movement anyway. That is even more disconcerting. There is always traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian. Dogs don’t walk themselves. 

I stop my bike on the road and drop the side stand. I toy with leaving the key in the ignition and the engine running, but I dismiss this and turn the thing off and pocket the key. I need the fuel and there is something comforting in having the key in my possession. 

Old habits die hard.

I leave my helmet on as I walk down the drive to the house I grew up in. The front door is shut. I take this as a positive. I walk down the side of the house and enter via the side door. This door is also shut, but unlocked. I have the key for it in any case, so I was always going to get in.

The house itself is empty. Neither of my folks are in. Their car is sitting in the drive, but this doesn’t mean as much as it once did. I take my helmet off now and pull my ear plugs out. I stand in the living room and listen. The rhythms of this home are no more and it is rendered a house. 

I sigh, I don’t know what it was that I expected and this outcome is not my worst case. I think I was hankering after a best case. Maybe I’ve not moved on from when I was just ten years old either. My folks are the umbrella that allows me to hide from my mortality. I use them as my shield and I kid myself that everything is going to be OK.

I have to will myself to move and I make my way upstairs. The toilet is up here and I need to use it, but not before I check the bedrooms. They are all empty. Having checked them all, I look down at my feet guiltily, I’m wearing my shoes upstairs and breaking one of my folk’s rules.

Locking the bathroom door, I use the loo. I stare at that lock and remember my dad knocking on the door throughout my teens. However much I planned a bath and asked in advance, his bladder ruined any me-time in this particular room. I don’t think I ever had any me-time in this house. Not really. I could now. It’s quiet now, but it isn’t peaceful and I could never relax here. Not now.

I finish up and go downstairs. I’m relieved to discover the water is still running and I drink deeply, refilling the same glass several times. That will do me for now. I take another full glass and I go back to the living room and sit on the sofa. 

My folks are gone. They most likely went to my sister’s. I revise that conclusion. They could just as easily be at my brother’s.

Or they could be right here in this village. That thought makes me shiver and I’m up on my feet checking both doors and all the windows to ensure they are locked shut. The last of the light is having a sad, final hurrah and the night will come soon. 

Night time is when they come out. They’re sensitive to the light, but I wonder how long that will last. There will be further adaptations and changes. I’ve stopped calling them mutations, that doesn’t sound right. It did at first when those affected by the virus were rendered down into something feral and animalistic, but not quite at the level of animals themselves. There was something blunt, dull and dumb about those people back then, and that was a time of true chaos and death.

They’ve changed since then. They are no longer the lumpen things that got them called zombies. Not anymore they’re not. I don’t know whether the weakest or most unsuitable were culled in a concerted strategy leaving the more suitable and intelligent of them, but as they all seem to have woken back up and developed into something more intelligent, well, my punt at a theory is that they went through some sort of phase.

There may be more phases and if there are, I don’t think there will be room on this planet for the good old fashioned homo sapiens. We had it coming, I suppose. After all, we killed off the other species that were most like us. We seemed to have a habit of killing that which reminded us most of ourselves. Our biggest threat is us, but we go into full-scale denial over such things. 

That’s why we didn’t see it coming.

I see it coming now though, and maybe that’s why I came back to this place.

I stand at the window looking out at the village. I’m standing in complete darkness. I don’t even know whether the lights work, but I’m not about to broadcast my presence to the entire village. 

Turns out that I don’t need to.

She walks down the drive of my folk’s house like it’s the most natural thing to do. I stand and I watch her and the years fall away. She even looks like she did back then. She looks like she was frozen in time, awaiting this moment.

Aunty Kate.

She wasn’t a real aunt. This was something people did as a mark of respect. All my folk’s adult friends were my aunties and uncles. Kate lived four doors down and I had such a thing for her. I never stopped having a thing for her. It was embarrassing really, and I am sure she knew.

Well, it looks like she knows now.

I try to compose myself. 

It is remarkable the changes those who contracted the virus have gone through. To begin with they seemed unaware of themselves and were easy to spot because they became more and more dirty and unkempt. Now I see Kate for one of them because she’s too good to be true. She’s better than her former self. Not perfect exactly, that’s the frightening bit. She’s an idealised version of herself. At least that should be frightening, but I don’t feel frightened. 

I don’t feel.

What’s wrong with me?

I try to look away, but I’m transfixed. 

There was a time when she was all that I ever wanted, and that time is now.

I sense others of her kind, gathered deeper in the dark. I feel them watching us. Watching this play out.

Kate disappears from view and I have a sudden feeling of pain and emptiness, the dream I allowed myself is no more and there is no going back to sleep to resume it. That isn’t how…

There is a knock at the door. 

Could it be her?

My hand is shaking as I unlock the door.

She is standing there before me and I am overwhelmed with all the feelings I had way back then. All of them.

How is this happening? I reconciled myself to this when I left this place. I moved on, and in time I saw it for what it was. An impossible, lust-fuelled dream. The Kate that I lusted after and thought that I was in love with, never existed…

“Are you going to let me in then?” she smiles a smile that is just for me. The smile I fantasised about all those years ago. 

I melt.

I nod dumbly and let her in. She takes my hand and pulls me urgently inside. Dragging me to the living room and down onto the floor. She straddles me and leans forwards and the scant light from the moon goes out as her face eclipses it. Her lips find mine and I sigh into her mouth as we kiss the kiss I always wanted. I wanted her and I wanted this and now it is happening and my head is swimming at the wonderful urgency of it all.

I barely register her hands on my wrists and the way she pins me, nor do I register the fact that we are no longer alone. Our kiss goes on and on and I feel her moving against me and I am helpless in the moment. Breathless as she eventually breaks from our kiss and her lips find my neck. My back arches with the thrill of her touch.

And then she bites down.

They join her then.

The scene is a scene I have seen played out so many times. I never understood what was happening. Not really I didn’t. Those early, filthy and feral creatures entrapping their prey and that prey neither running or fighting. 

It was like they had given up, even before the fight had begun.

I never for a moment thought that the victim saw something that I didn’t. Did they choose to see something different? To deny the reality of their situation and instead project something more palatable for them so they could more readily accept the inevitable?

I suppose I’ll never know.

What I will know is when the survivors are ripe and ready. 

They will all succumb in the end, it’s just a matter of time. They will all give in and see the light that only they can see. Then they will cease to be.

Every last one of them.