A Silent Death

Chapter Thirty-Three

Ana is close to hysteria. Cleland has been gone for hours, leaving her in the dark and silent world which only technology can penetrate. A world into which she has been plunged alone once more since his departure. She doesn’t know if he simply unplugged her computer, or whether he turned off power at the mains. But living without her technology now is almost like trying to breathe without oxygen.

Her distress is heightened by an increasingly pervasive and unpleasant odour. Sandro has not been over the door since early this morning, and it is just possible that he has been forced to empty his bowels somewhere in the house. In the last half-hour he has been repeatedly pushing his nose against her leg. Finding his head with her hands she has felt his anxiety. He is almost certainly whining, perhaps barking too. Though it would be so unlike him. And he is not responding to her attempts to calm him.

She gets out of her chair and feels her well-travelled path to the kitchen to fill his bowls with food and water. He follows her, but is making no attempt to eat or drink. His front paws are up now on her thighs and her waist, very nearly knocking her over. He never jumps up.

She pushes him away and speaks sharply. Something she never does. And immediately regrets it. But it must have brought a response, for she can no longer feel him within touching distance. As she makes her way in the dark to her bedroom she is terrified that somehow she might trip over him.

The odour is less invasive here. She crosses to the window and fumbles for the catch to open it. But it is already open. She can feel the hot air from outside seeping into the room, and is aware that she is having trouble breathing.

A prickle of perspiration stings her face as she makes her way into the tiny hallway at the top of the stairs. Out here the smell is much stronger. The heat is nearly overpowering, and the air seems to fibrillate almost tangibly against her skin. She feels Sandro pushing hard against her leg again and reaches down to place a hand on his upturned head. She is certain now that he is barking.

An overwhelming sense of dread slowly envelops her. Invisibly invasive, like nuclear fallout. She reaches forward and finds the handle on the door to the box room where Cristina or Nuri sometimes stay over on the fold-up single bed against the far wall.

The stench hits her immediately, like a physical blow, and it is all she can do not to be sick. A heavy scent, like rotten eggs. And something else, almost sweet, like sugared ammonia. She feels flies battering against her face. There has been a problem in here before with regular hatchings, but these are frenzied. She feels several crawl into her mouth and spits in disgust, stumbling forward waving her hands about her face. But somehow Sandro has insinuated himself between her feet and she falls heavily to the floor.

Her hip and shoulder are bruised from the fall, and it is with difficulty that she overcomes the pain to get to her hands and knees. Crawling forward now, seeking some leverage to help her back to her feet. Until her hands find something soft beneath them, smooth and abnormally cold in this heat.

The stink is so all consuming now that her olfactory senses have very nearly shut down. It has ceased to be so much an odour as a wholly engulfing sensation of fear.

With both hands she explores the planes and curves of the softness emerging from the miasma that consumes her, only now admitting that it is a body lying on the floor before her. A body from which all warmth has long since departed. Muscles stiffened by rigor mortis, skin crawling with maggots. Her trembling fingers track up along the buttons of the shirt to the neck, and the faintest stubble on the chin.

She knows the features of this face. Features etched in her memory from twenty years ago, and remembered again from only yesterday. The smooth curve of the brow, the hair thinning now across the crown. The face of the man who had come looking for her again after all these years, only to meet his fate at the hands of a psychopath. His blood sticky like glue on her hands.

Her scream is filled with horror, and pity, and pain. A cry in the dark heard by no one. Not even herself.