Watchers in the Woods by Jan Dale
11 June 2021 { Horror }
It was dark in the woods; at least it used to be, before the 24-hour surveillance had begun. The whole place was just as bright at twelve midnight as it was on a sunny Sunday afternoon. He wasn’t too sure when it had started exactly. Now he couldn’t remember a season when everything had been normal, a time before the day he realised that they were being watched continually. The Others had done it so subtly, so gradually, imperceptibly and stealthily, that they had hardly noticed.
He left home at the usual time. He was hungry after working on the latest useless project, trying to impose some order on the chaos to which he’d been assigned. He had a large family to care for and was finding it hard work, and was continually tired. In fact he was beginning to feel quite run down. The ditch he had been digging the day before never seemed to get any bigger, and he felt he was going round and round and round, part of an endless cycle. Hooper, the overseer, was a constant shadowy presence, and he could never just get on with the job without him breathing down his neck. In fact if someone had asked, he’d have reckoned that Hooper was able to teleport himself to any given spot.
The large white box on wheels was still in the middle of the forest clearing. Some things were always clumping about inside it, and occasionally he would hear shouted instructions in a crackly squawk. There was no way he could do anything without being seen, but one night when one of the cameras malfunctioned he had had to report it to HQ and he’d caught a brief glimpse of the shadowy interior, fitted with blinking lights and sensors, and banks of flickering TV screens. He thought his chance had come, but he was roughly escorted back to the ditch. They made absolutely sure no one knew what was happening, all right.
She was worried about him, he knew, but her job was difficult enough. He tried to put a brave face on it, but they were close to breaking point. He tried to preserve some memory of earlier, happier days – a trace of them still lingered in his mind, although it was getting harder and harder to remember. He needed no help to fall asleep at night, but as he lay there he would try and concentrate, visualising their favourite place, the green tunnel in the spring, where there were orchids and Jacob’s ladder; roaming the high moors, with the big blue roof of the sky overhead and the grassy banks among the gorse. He remembered the heron, and the soaring buzzard being mobbed by angry crows. Then he would snuggle up to his family with a sudden rush of love, very carefully, trying not to wake them. He wished they had more time together. But the memories were gradually blurring in his brain, muddled with overwork, and tiredness, and just being generally downtrodden. He hated to admit it, but he would rather be dead.
She was one of the nursery staff and had to spread herself very thinly indeed. Apart from her own two, she was charged with six others of varying ages; their mothers were much younger and had been ordered to agriculture detail. They wouldn’t be young for much longer, she thought, having experienced the premature ageing process at first hand. She also felt she’d had enough – if not for the youngsters she’d have given up long ago. The only way to do this had been to run, so you’d quickly be caught and shot. The Others had soon seen the disadvantage of this, of course, and escapees were no longer shot on sight but just put in quarantine for a couple of weeks. You couldn’t survive being killed by a gun, but you could just about survive having your spirit broken. In time there’d be no spirit left, and then their job would be made so much easier.
He’d been in quarantine twice before and each time it got worse. Whenever he closed his eyes he kept on seeing the attack dogs making for his face and the hideous helmets that made the guards into faceless monsters. He knew he was likely to have hallucinations and was sure this was because they were putting something in his food, and the injections didn’t help. He was never warm enough but never cold exactly; the air was kept at the optimum uncomfortable temperature. He knew it was his duty to try and escape; he’d promised her that much. He’d always stuck to his principles, and he wasn’t going to give up now. Nor would he be silenced, because that was what they had wanted. Once the shooting had stopped, he’d been glad because it meant it was much harder to die. They just got you to where you were begging to be let out, when they arrived, giving you a bath, dousing you with some sort of powder and giving you hot food the likes of which you wouldn’t have seen for quite a while. But now he knew he’d had enough; this was last-chance saloon. He couldn’t go on any more if this didn’t work. He knew it would be well and truly the end if it didn’t come off.
As he shivered in the corner he tried to think pleasant thoughts. This was easier now he was hallucinating, but it was a desperate effort to remain sharp. He just needed to wait until the Others came, which could be at any moment.
‘Oi! Wakey, wakey!’ he shouted. ‘Nice hot bath!’
Nothing was happening. The man rattled the bars again.
‘I said, oi! You! Up!’
He tried not to breathe, feigning death. He knew they always worked in pairs. As the door clanged open, he waited for a second as McGurk and the other one approached curiously, until they were inches away from his face. It was then that he pounced, going straight for the throat, just as his fellow attacked the other man. The guards hadn’t known there were two of them. Over 26 moons they had carefully and painstakingly dug the tunnel from the outside, concealing the earth around the perimeter fence as it was already banked up there and the Others wouldn’t notice. Their patience had been tried – three false alarms, six deaths, and he had narrowly prevented an all-out strike. He didn’t blame them; some were less strong than others.
He sank his teeth into the man’s windpipe, drawing spurts of blood which sprayed out rhythmically on to the wall. The man writhed and yelled in agony, but soon went limp. His companion was also under attack, by now by both of them. He soon succumbed to their savage assault and joined McGurk on the beaten earth floor. They had no time to waste; they knew it was only a matter of time before the alarm was raised. The shouts and scuffles would have alerted the Others and in any case there were surveillance cameras everywhere. They were both very weak, but one of them grabbed McGurk’s keys, and forgoing the tunnel, they got outside without opposition.
They quickly joined the rest; everyone was at their post and the carefully detailed plan was going like clockwork. Because the Others were always in the command centre they had reckoned any threat there would be easily nipped in the bud, so they had overlooked a weak spot underneath the floor. The escapees knew two of their comrades were standing by to sever the last threads of the cables. The power went down; the signal for action. Confused shouts started to come from the box and the door flew open. Two or three armed figures ran down the steps and into the thickest part of the woods, towards the generator house. It would take at least half an hour for the emergency generator to kick in, but they needed to act quickly.
They massed in the central clearing. It looked as if the Others still left inside the command centre had locked themselves in.
‘We are here because we want an end to the nightmare,’ bellowed their leader. She slammed her fist against her chest. ‘I am proud of you. Onward, comrades!’ She led them on, into the darkness.
There was a mad rush for the Fence, and most of them were quickly on the other side. The less strong, those at the rear, wondered why the vanguard were not moving ahead as fast as they might. Suddenly they sensed a wave of panic moving through the escapees.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Why aren’t they moving faster?
‘Hurry up! Not much time left!’
Suddenly, he heard horrible screams and a deep growling noise. He became aware of a terrifying creature – or at least he thought it was, for he could only see a pair of glowing red eyes. It was soon joined by other pairs of glowing eyes, too many to count. They had pounced on the frontrunners and death had been instant.
They saw that it was hopeless.
Two of the weakest, towards the back of the mêlée, turned to each other despairingly. She said, ‘Whatever happens, remember I’ll always fucking love you.’
‘I fucking love you, too,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t give you an end to the nightmare.’
As the blackness descended he could have sworn he heard her body shatter into hundreds of pieces.
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