
In the story I'm writing, I essentially turn this idea on its head. There's a guy, Nathan, who hates kids, not that he'd ever go that far, but he just doesn't like them. But he starts to realise that something is going on, that all children are suddenly under a great threat. And although he's the last person on Earth they'd want help from, he may in fact be that last person...
I kind of miss the way science fiction used to be. Not fab CGI and special effects, but understated suspense and tension. Scifi of old was masterful in suspense, and not necessarily telling you the whole story, because, well, why would you necessarily know? I need to read Bradbury again, early Asimov, and some Larry Niven. But in the meantime, here's the opening chapter.
When the children come
Barry Kirwan
Nathan hated children, always had. Especially babies, the way they
screamed as soon as they were born – wasn’t that enough warning of what was to
come? Little pissing, shitting, eating and crying machines. Maybe it wasn’t
just them, it was the way every woman and quite a few men on the planet went
gaga every time they saw one, lost all sense of reason. Hormones kicked in,
turned them all into Stepford freaks. And when the babies grew into toddlers
and then young kids they weren’t much better: tantrums, more screaming, whining.
How many business trips, restaurant dinners, theatre visits, you name it, got
ruined by one small, precocious and, above all, loud child and its doting,
utterly useless parents? No discipline anymore. Nathan had sure been
disciplined when he’d been a child.
He sat up, thought he heard a noise, picked up the
rifle and crept to the door, opened it slowly, then wide, so the light from his
room flooded out. They were all there, in the gym hall, sound asleep, two
hundred kids. One or two jerked occasionally, nightmaring. He didn’t blame
them. Sally, closest to his door, had kicked off the covers. He went over and
with his free hand gently pulled them back up over her shoulder, careful not to
wake her. Then he went back inside, pulled the door to without closing it
completely.
He lay the rifle next to his chair. Two magazines, not
nearly enough if they were discovered. The bed invited, but no way. He checked
his pills again. Four left. It would have to do. He tried to relax, but not too
much. He couldn’t move the kids until dawn, too risky before then. The others…
What had he been thinking before? Oh, yeah, right. How he hated kids.
All his life he’d despised them, considered them a necessary evil. After the
terrible twos, they learned first how to manipulate then divide and conquer their
parents. Their cute phase. In a pig’s eye. And sibling camaraderie – wasn’t the
story of Cain and Abel clear enough on that matter? Then there was school. He’d
been bullied, but had seen a lot worse. Kids could be utterly cruel, mini Pol
Pots, elf-like Hitlers. Once they reached nine or ten, they weren’t so bad. His
sister’s kids, Archie and Josh, had been nine and eleven. It would have been Archie’s
tenth birthday a week Tuesday. Nathan had actually bought him a present, for
the first time. Both dead now. He shuddered. Good. Negative emotions would keep
him awake.
His distaste of kids meant he’d stayed alone. All
the women he dated ultimately wanted children. And he was always clear on that.
Well, after sex anyway. A couple of them had pointed out that for a man with an
almost obsessive interest in the procreative act, it was ironic he never wanted
to see its fruition. Most said he needed help. True. But need and want aren’t
the same thing. Anyway, right now the kids next door needed it a lot more, and
irony didn’t even begin to cover the fact that he was the one protecting them.
He reached over to the table, poured another two
thumbs of whiskey and downed it in three gulps. It was a risk, might reduce the
duration of the amphetamines, but hell, he needed something. He stood up,
peered through the window into the forecourt below, checked it was empty, no parents
snooping around. The radio set was charging. He’d wake the kids at six, and
then they’d all have to move. They’d have to be quiet. For once, he was sure
they would be, because they knew, they’d seen what had happened. For once, when
it mattered most, they’d behave like the little adults he really needed them to
be. And if not, they’d all die.
Nathan sat down, opened the flask of strong Italian coffee
and poured some into the whiskey glass. Two more hours. He needed to go back
over it all, get it straight in his head – it had happened so fast, barely
three days ago. So, back to the beginning. New Year’s Eve. The party. He hated
New Year’s Eve almost as much as he hated kids…
*
“Nathan, you should go, you know you should.”
His little sis lectured him. Not so little, now, of
course, with her own two kids. She was the only one who could get to him.
“Give me one good reason, Mags.”
She laughed. “I’ll give you three. One, you’re
getting grumpy. Two, you need friends – they’ll all be there, and who’s going
to look after you in your old age?”
“Maybe Archie and Josh.”
Her voice changed, plaintive. “They love you, you
know, God knows why. It’s Archie’s birthday soon, you –”
“The third reason?”
A pause, a sigh with her hand over the mouthpiece. “Lara
will be there.”
“Who the hell is Lara?”
“She’s your type.”
“Since when have
you tried to fix me up with someone? And since when do you know my type?”
“Attractive, blonde,
skinny. A little slutty, and… well, she hates children.” Mags laughed.
Nathan didn’t. But
he glanced over to his wardrobe. Maybe the dark blue shirt.
*
He did like Lara. Too much, too soon. He could already see he was going
to blow it, but didn’t care. Moth and flame, an old story. They chatted while
the large silver disco ball kaleidoscoped lights around the ballroom full of
people getting steadily drunker as they counted down the minutes to midnight.
He told her she was beautiful, and she made a face, but he couldn’t stop his
mouth. Luckily she went on a rant about families and kids, and he plunged in; it
was hot, like foreplay. At ten to midnight, she touched his arm, their first
physical contact.
“Let’s get out of
here,” she said.
As they split, Mags
caught his eye and mouthed ‘told you so,”, then ‘Happy New Year.” He could see
she meant it. Maybe for once it would be.
His apartment was a
train wreck. Lara didn’t seem to care.
“I see you have the same cleaning lady I use.” She
laughed, and then he kissed her, and they undressed each other without interrupting
that semi-drunken, sleazy kiss. Heaven. A raunchy angel. Enjoy it while it
lasts, he told himself. And he did, ditching five years that night.
Morning. Famished. Need fresh bagels. Lara agreed. “I’ll go get some,”
he said, and headed out. They hadn’t slept, and he stopped at a Starbucks to
pick up a double espresso. Streets were quiet, deserted. Fair enough, a public holiday,
everyone up late last night.
He found a bagel
shop that was open, and headed back. Checked his watch. Ten. Still eerily
quiet. A scream pierced the sky, a child’s. Not like the whining wail he loathed,
not even the shocked cry of a kid who’d just burned himself. No, this scream
had real fear in it. He’d served in Kabul. Knew the difference. He looked
around, trying to see which apartment block it had come from. Deadly quiet
again. Still no one around.
As he turned the
corner, he stopped. A young kid, maybe five, running, his face white marble,
eyes agape, arms pumping hard. The kid could run. A balding man emerged from a
doorway, shouted after him. “Johnny, come back here!” The wiry, bespectacled
man had something in his hand which he quickly pocketed in his jacket, a blade.
Stained? Nathan wasn’t sure.
The man sauntered
past Nathan. “Happy New Year,” he said, then shrugged. “Kids.” Nathan nodded
back. A few metres later, the man started jogging, but as he turned the corner,
he launched into a sprint.
Nathan stood
awhile, tried to process. In Afghanistan he’d developed an instinct for when
something wasn’t right. His platoon came to rely on it. “Is it safe to go in
there?” they’d ask. His gut would tell him. Mostly he was right. Mostly.
Where was everyone? He walked back into his
apartment building, decided to take the stairs rather than the elevator, up to
the fourth floor. He met Sally outside his door, a seven year old he knew from
downstairs. Her hair hadn’t been brushed, and she was still in her pyjamas. He’d
seen her often enough, yelled at her to stop running up and down the stairs
more than once. She held a small backpack, a furry affair that resembled a beaten-up
teddy bear. But her face was stone. Had she been crying? She lived on the
second floor. Why was she up here? She wouldn’t meet his eyes, clutched the
bear.
As he unlocked his
door, Sally’s mother shouted for her, from downstairs. Sally dashed through
Nathan’s door and stood inside, her back against the wall.
“Mr. Atkinson, is
that you? Have you seen our Sally?” She had a broad Texan accent, easy on the
ears.
Sally looked at him and shook her head once. Her
lips trembled.
Nathan shouted down the stairwell. “I think I saw
her outside, Mrs. Braithwaite, near the bagel shop.” He came inside, closed the
door, slid the latch.
Lara emerged
semi-naked from the bedroom. “Took your time. Did you have to cook the bagels
yourself?” She stopped dead as she saw Sally. “Oh… hello.”
Lara
approached, then took a step backwards. Nathan hadn’t noticed the smell until just
now, when he put the bagels on the dresser. Sally had peed herself.
“Bathroom, Sally,”
he said, pointing. “Through there. Lara … sorry, she’s seven I think, I
shouldn’t really...”
Lara glared at him.
“She’s not yours, right? Married, I can handle, but –”
“No, no. She lives
downstairs. I’ve never even had a conversation with her, except to tell her
off.”
Lara folded her
arms. “So go call her parents.”
They both heard the
shower being turned on.
“Look, this is all
a bit weird –”
“You think?”
“Something’s not
right out there, Lara. I can feel it.”
“So call the police!”
“And say what?”
“Exactly.” Lara went back into the bedroom. “Where
the hell are my shoes?”
Nathan had that
feeling in his gut, like he’d eaten something rotten. “Lara, don’t go out
there.”
She wagged a high
heel in front of him. “Give me one good reason?”
Nathan couldn’t
think of one, then again he could. “Because I can’t be alone in the apartment
with a naked seven year old.”
Lara threw the shoe
at him. He caught it. “Asshole!” She stomped to the bathroom, knocked on the
door. “Sally, are you okay in there?”
Nathan went to the
window. Mr. Braithwaite was outside at the bottom of the steps talking to three
other men. One of them was holding a piece of white cord. He twirled it
occasionally. Mrs. Braithwaite was nowhere to be seen, but others – all men, he
realised, were congregating in threes or fours at the foot of various blocks.
Lara came up behind
him, hooked her arms around his chest. “Sorry.”
Nathan put his
hands over hers. “It’s okay.”
She turned him
around. “That little girl is scared shitless. What is going on?”
He drew her to the
window, and they both peered down to street-level.
“Damned if I
know.”
Nathan had been surveying the leafy street for an hour and it struck
him. No kids anywhere. Three rubbish trucks arrived. Three? On a national holiday?
Of course, maybe to clear away the trash after the previous night’s festivities.
At least Sally had calmed down. Lara was doing a pretty good impersonation of
someone who actually liked kids, or at least knew how to relate to them. He
asked her about it when Sally went to take a nap.
“My parents were…
unkind,” she said.
In Nathan’s
experience, people who’d had awful parents rarely had the ability to emote
about it. He couldn’t, for example.
She nodded to the
window. “Is it safe to go out there?” She was smiling, but it gave him a chill,
because that’s what the platoon sergeant used to ask him. Then one day his gut
hadn’t done its job, and the sergeant and six others bought it. Nathan couldn’t
function after that. The shrink had ended up discharging him – survivor’s guilt
– but it cut deeper. To top it all, it had been a kid, a nine year old Afghan
boy in a small village, waving a battered iPhone as if to take a photo. That
alone should have alerted them; where the hell would he get an iPhone? It was
the trigger, of course. The last he’d seen of the boy was the waistcoat packed
with explosives as he raised his arms in triumph. Nathan had had a split second
chance to shoot him.
“It’s not safe,” he
replied to Lara.
She mock-frowned.
“You’re not one of those paranoid guys are you? Back from the war, can’t
forget, all that stuff?” Her frown and its underlying smile vanished. “Oh shit,
you are, aren’t you? I mean, you’ve been over there.”
He nodded.
She grew serious
and cautious at the same time, as if she’d just stepped on a land mine and was
trying to figure how to ease her way off without it exploding.
“Listen, Nathan, I’m going to prove it’s okay. I’m
going outside. I have mace in my bag and I can always call the police. We can’t
stay cooped up here. Call me later.”
“Lara, I’m okay,
but… it really is weird out there. No kids, anywhere.”
She gave him a
look, and he knew that anything else he said was going to sound nuts. Maybe it
was all in his head. He’d only recently come off the pills, earlier than the
doc had prescribed.
“Tell you what,”
she said, upbeat. “I’ll come back in an hour with some lunch, if I can find
anything open. We can take Sally downstairs, and then you and I can finish what
we started.”
The idea of more
sex did make him feel better. She was right. He was over-reacting.
There was a knock
on the door, and they both stared at each other. Nathan went over. “Who is it?”
“It’s the police. Open
up please.”
Nathan walked back
to the window. Sure enough, a police car was parked a little way up the street.
Must have just arrived. He went back to the door.
Lara frowned. “There’s no way police would come
looking for a kid after only an hour.“ She held up her forefinger and dashed to
the spare bedroom.
Nathan stalled. “What’s
this about?”
“Please open up, sir.”
Nathan thought
about trying to hide Sally, but it seemed ridiculous. “Just a minute, let me
put some clothes on, I’ve been sleeping in late.” As soon as he said it he
regretted it; Mrs. Braithwaite already knew he’d been out earlier. He waited
another thirty seconds then opened the door.
Two police officers,
one male, one female, stood there, looking like normal Manhattan cops. Mr.
Braithwaite was right behind them.
“Have you seen
Sally, this little girl?” They held up a photo. Nathan felt himself about to
flush; he’d never been good at lying.
Lara saved him.
“She was here earlier. Said she’d wet the bed, was afraid she’d get a scolding.
We sent her back downstairs an hour ago.”
“And you are…?” The
policewoman asked.
“Lara Engels, we,
uh, Nathan and I met last night at the Ball over at Ninth and Forster.” She
hooked her arm in his and leaned on him. “He’s my New Year’s resolution.”
Nathan was
impressed.
“Mind if we take a
look around?” the policeman asked.
Lara tugged Nathan
out of the policeman’s way, and he followed her lead. “Of course, it’s a bit
untidy, you know.” As Mr. Braithwaite went to follow the two officers, Lara moved
into his pathway, blocking him.
“Sorry,” she said. “We
really thought she was going straight home. You must be worried sick.”
Nathan didn’t
understand what she was doing until he watched Braithwaite’s reaction. His face
spoke of many things, but concern for his daughter wasn’t one of them. For a
flash his upper lip curled. Nathan knew that look well enough. Not anger or
frustration; something deeper, more sinister. Disgust.
Lara maintained
physical contact with Nathan, still blocking the entrance, while the officers
did a thorough search, opening every cupboard and window. They came back to the
doorway.
“Well, thank you
for your time, Mr. Atkinson. We’ll continue our search.”
Nathan closed the
door. They waited until the footfalls receded down the stairs.
“Where is she?”
“Gone,” Lara said.
“Fire escape all the way down to the underground car park. Your car, to be
precise.”
“But how…” He
glanced at the small table where his car keys had been. Gone, too.
He surveyed Lara.
“So, you’re starting to –”
“Something’s not right.
We need to take Sally somewhere safe, but where?”
He thought about
all the friends he could call, which took about twenty seconds. Useless. Then
the obvious solution rose up before him. “Mags,” he said. “She’ll know what to
do.”
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