Blood Crazy

  Slatter? There was no sign. With any luck he’d have run into Father Slatter and the pair would have cancelled one another out.

  Sarah’s cheeks still carried a flush from the night before. Every so often we’d make eye contact only to break it with secretive smiles.

  I constantly checked the rearview for the yellow mini-bus. If its exhaust was blowing blue smoke I was happy. That meant the faulty cylinder was still firing and burning oil. It wasn’t perfect but it meant Jo, the driver, had at least adequate pulling power – the mini-bus was chocker with canned vegetables as well as its five passengers.

  Before we set off Dave had tried to persuade me to ditch the Shogun and ride in the mini-bus. He told me he wasn’t happy with me driving after all those knocks on the head. I told him otherwise and belted myself into the Shogun. Shaking his head, saddened by my rebel streak, he returned to the big bus up front.

  We had been driving for twenty minutes when Sarah breathed in sharply.

  ‘My God … Here it comes …’

  In the rearview I saw a grey Rolls Royce come swerving along the road to overtake the convoy. Driving, larger than life, Mr Nightmare himself.

  ‘Tug Slatter.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘He’s found us, then. Just look at the idiot. He’s going to kill himself.’

  ‘Yip Pee,’ I said under my breath. ‘He’d be doing us a big favour if he did … Jesus, what’s he playing at?’

  Where Slatter had got the Roller from I don’t know but he was driving the car so it scraped down the full length of a stone wall, grating paint, chrome trim and mirrors off the car in a spray of debris.

  ‘Why’s he doing that?’ asked Anne.

  ‘Because he is completely mad,’ replied Sarah.

  ‘I know him of old,’ I told them. ‘He enjoys destroying property. The more someone values it the more he gets a kick from trashing it.’

  Vicki shrieked. ‘Look, he’s trying to run down the dog! Oh … He’s killed it. The rotten man killed the puppy.’

  I looked down the line of crawling vehicles. ‘He’s gone right over the top of it. He’s not hit it.’

  The puppy staggered, shaken, into the grass verge. Behind us the mini-bus stopped and Jo ran across to pick it up. She looked it over then hugged it like it was a baby before running back to the minibus.

  Slatter sped off along the road to disappear into the distance. The convoy crawled on. Rain began to fall again: huge drops like glass balls exploded on the car.

  We rolled through a small village, complete with pond and ducks and a rustic church.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Vicki, ‘look at that big cross in the churchyard. Doesn’t Jesus look funny?’

  ‘Heads down, girls,’ I said quickly. ‘And keep them down. Sarah, don’t look. It’s not worth it.’

  She turned her head the other way to watch the ducks splashing in the pond. ‘What is it?’

  I whispered, ‘When was the last time you saw Jesus wearing a wristwatch?’

  Someone had nailed their own son to the cross.

  The land changed. Hills swelled out of the fields and the trees looked wilder as we headed away from the flat agricultural lands that run from Doncaster to York. Villages got smaller, signs of civilization fewer.

  It seemed as if Family Creosote, as soon as they had finished what business they had with their sons and daughters, had simply walked away from their homes to join the mass migration.

  At a bend in the road, a neat section of fence had been chopped out. I looked along the set of tyre tracks across the turf to where a lake began. The top half of the grey Rolls Royce showed above the water.

  The convoy slowed and Slatter climbed onto the truck in front.

  ‘One day he’ll break his thick neck,’ I said, ‘or someone will do it for him.’

  The rain got heavier, crackling on the metal work around us. It made the hills look bleak.

  We reached a motorway that cut the landscape in two and saw them moving from north to south.

  It was the same as I’d seen on the motorway near Wentbridge, a river of human beings. Adult-kind were still following the call of something wonderful that we could not see.

  Sarah looked at me, her eyes wide. ‘You told me about it, but it’s fantastic. Look at them all. Look at the expressions on their faces. It’s like they’ve been promised the second coming.’

  ‘It’s scary,’ said Anne.

  Vicki pulled on her taped glasses. ‘Will mummy and daddy be down there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why do they look like that? They look like children on Christmas morning.’

  I shook my head. ‘God knows … Come on, Dave, get a move on. It’s not safe to hang around here.’

  We were crawling along a road that ran parallel to the motorway which ran along a deep cutting below us. The grassed banks were steep but it wouldn’t take the Creosotes long to climb up to our road.

  I glanced back at the mini-bus. Happily, it still pumped out plenty of blue smoke. In the front passenger seat a girl held the rescued puppy.

  As we drove I couldn’t stop looking down at the people river. One of them stood on a car roof in the middle of the motorway. He stared south, as if he was pointing the way with his chin.

  It was as we rolled past on the road above him that his head moved abruptly, like a hawk spotting fresh prey.

  I looked down into those homicidal eyes glaring up at us and I felt a wave of liquid ice roll through me.

  ‘Hurry it up, Dave,’ I hissed, ‘they’ve spotted us.’

  Ahead the road curved to the left and up to cross over a bridge to the other side of the motorway. The lead bus followed the road round.

  Then stopped.

  Dave and Jonathan climbed out.

  ‘Idiots!’ I punched the steering wheel. ‘They can’t stop here!’

  Down on the motorway the people river had stopped flowing. When they saw us a ripple ran through them.

  At the head of the convoy Dave and Jonathan were talking and looking at something on the bridge I could not see.

  ‘Damn. Sarah. Get ready to drive if that lot down there start to climb the banking.’

  ‘Where you going? Nick. Stay here!’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m just going to kick ass. If we stay here much longer we’ll be dead.’

  Vicki and Anne let out squeals of fear.

  Swearing noisily, I ran hard to the head of the convoy.

  ‘What’s wrong? We can’t stop here.’

  ‘Well, we can’t go on.’

  ‘Like bollocks we can’t.’

  ‘Look.’

  Three burnt-out cars had shunted together on the bridge blocking the way. I kicked a stone. ‘Damn it, Dave, they’re only poxy cars!’

  ‘Nick, we’ll need everyone out to roll them clear.’

  ‘Oh yeah, and in thirty seconds they’ll be torn limb from limb. Haven’t you noticed what’s on the motorway?’

  ‘Nick, fetch Martin Del-Coffey, we’ll discuss what’s best to—’

  ‘Stuff Del-Coffey.’ I snapped. ‘We need to shift those wrecks now.’

  ‘Nick, I think—’

  ‘Button it, Dave … The pair of you, back on the bus and be ready to roll.’

  I ran back to the third truck and yanked open the door. Slatter lay on the driver’s bunk, staring at the ceiling, smoking a cigarette. I jumped on the step to the cab. And pushed the driver. ‘Get across into the passenger seat. Quick. I don’t care if you do have to sit on Curt’s knee. Do it, if you want to see dinner time … Slatter.’

  ‘Piss off, Aten. I’m busy.’

  ‘How would you like a wager?’

  ‘You’ve got nothing I want. Or nothing I can’t take from you.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I have. I’ve got a litre of vodka. And I know you’ve nothing left.’

  He raised his eyebrows in a couldn’t-care-less way. I hoped my shot in the dark was right, that he’d pissed all his booze against a tree.

  ‘Are you on, Slatter? Think you’ve
the guts?’

  ‘What we betting on?’

  ‘That you can’t use this truck to shift those cars on the bridge in the time it takes me to get back to the car.’

  Slatter slid off the bunk into the driving seat and pushed me in the chest. I fell back into the road.

  By the time I’d got to my feet he’d shifted gear and was pumping the truck forward like an armour-piercing shell. I heard Curt screaming.

  I walked backwards to the Shogun watching as the truck two-wheeled it round the bend, thundered onto the bridge and hit the cars.

  A tank couldn’t have done it better. The tangled wrecks split as easily as tangerine segments in a blast of glass and metal. The truck lumbered uphill and stopped at the top.

  I made the Shogun as the lead bus followed the truck across the bridge.

  ‘Nick. Hurry. They’re coming up the banks.’

  Sarah pointed. They were swarming up like flood water, hundreds of them.

  The convoy was slow moving off. The truck in front wasn’t moving at all. ‘Come on, come on … Jesus, has someone nailed their tyres to the road or what … Thank God for that.’

  We were moving. Not as fast as I liked but the idiots were at least rolling in the right direction.

  I glanced in the rearview at the yellow mini-bus. Then I looked ahead as we rolled up onto the bridge and—

  Bastard.

  I twisted my head to look back. There was no blue smoke pumping from the mini-bus exhaust. She’d fouled her cylinder again.

  ‘Keep going, baby,’ I hissed. ‘Keep going.’

  The Shogun was over the bridge. The mini-bus followed. I could see Jo frowning; all wasn’t well, but at least she kept the motor pulling them forward. By her side the girl hugged the puppy to her breast.

  We rumbled up the hill. I looked down to the motorway. Some of the mob had reached the top of the banking and were following the road over the bridge after us. They were running.

  Sarah gripped my arm. ‘Hell, look down there.’

  Shit. Hundreds more of the mad bastards were swarming up the bank on our side. I shot a glance back at the mini-bus. Still following.

  I shifted down a gear as we hauled up the steep hill.

  Behind us the mini-bus followed, but slower. As I looked back it jerked, stopped, then began rolling back.

  ‘Jesus Christ, it’s stalled!’

  You can stand on a shore and scream at a wave to stop. Does it hell. It comes roaring up the beach to bury the sand.

  I yelled for them to stop. They didn’t. The wave of madmen swept silently over the mini-bus. It was as simple as that.

  They buried it with their bodies as they hacked at the mini-bus like it was a living monster that threatened their own lives. A side window splashed into crystals. I sat there, the Shogun crawling uphill, and I watched Jo look back at me, her hands holding the steering wheel. At her side the girl held the puppy close; she put her hand over its frightened eyes.

  Then they were all gone.

  All I could see were hundreds of men and women covering the mini-bus.

  No one spoke. Silence rang like a bell in a vacuum.

  I drove on after the convoy as it crawled toward the dark hills. The rain fell heavier. Cold filled the car.

  We were a little thread of frightened humanity crawling between a black heaven and wet earth.

  We had all seen our own futures back there, stamped to death on the road. We were without hope. All we could do was keep moving and pray to God that the death shadow that followed wouldn’t catch us – at least for a little while longer.

  The Second Part

  HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU LOST YOUR VIRGINITY?

  WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU SLEPT WITH?

  PICK FIVE WORDS TO DESCRIBE YOURSELF.

  DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?

  IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY QUESTION ANSWERED, WHAT

  WOULD IT BE?

  (EXCERPT FROM A TYPICAL CELEBRITY QUESTIONNAIRE)

  Chapter Thirty

  Do This, Because There’s No Tomorrow

  SEX. BOOZE. GUNS. DRUGS. FAST BIKES – FASTER CARS AND LOUD, LOUD, LOUD MUSIC.

  Christ! Life is fun!

  PICTURE THIS.

  A long, sizzling hot summer. Eskdale – a valley miles from anywhere, with woods and fields and meadows, and just slipping through it a cool, cool stream.

  Bang in the middle of the hillside sits the hotel. It’s a hundred years old, and has a garden so big you could graze a herd of buffalo there – and the lot is surrounded by a ten-foot-high brick wall.

  LISTEN TO THIS.

  The place is alive with three hundred shouting kids. They’re in the middle of the biggest party planet Earth has ever seen. They run round the gardens, roll on the lawns and bounce around the patio.

  Teenagers stripped of everything but their laughter splash in the outdoor pool, spray from naked bodies hitting the water flashes like diamonds in the sunlight. Couples frigging in the deep end send waves breaking across the tiled paths.

  That loud, LOUD music beats from the speakers the size of basketball players’ coffins. At the instrumental break the kids stop what they’re doing – and I mean everything they’re doing – to yell to the beat:

  NO SCHOOL!

  NO RULES!

  NO SHIT!

  YEE-OWW!!!

  And they howl like rutting werewolves.

  SMELL THIS!

  Curt’s cigar, it’s the size of a chair leg. A hundred cigarettes turning the air blue. On the lawn a pig roasts on an open fire.

  FEEL THIS!

  I’m on the Harley D, powering down the drive to the gatehouse, the wind zithering my hair, tyres drumming the cobblestones, tickling you from head to timbuch-too. Sarah sits up tight behind, burying her face into my neck and laughing until she can laugh no more. Her blonde hair blowing straight back like a pennant.

  The open-top Porsche we’re racing skids into the orchard, smacks into a tree, knocks apples down like rain. Jonathan spills his beer and rolls out laughing in a stream of apples.

  I shout back over the engine, ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Starved!’

  ‘Let’s go bite some hot pig.’ I ride up through the trees by the statues of Eros and Artemis, up the lawn to the mother of all barbies. We rip the pig and get stuck into the hot juicy meat.

  ‘Trouser’s going to have to stop screwing,’ I said as the seventeen-year-old came staggering out of the bushes, pulling up the gold trousers that gave him his name. ‘The twat can hardly walk.’

  Grinning, he held up eight fingers.

  ‘Eight today?’ I shook a handful of steaming pig at him. ‘Aye, and the rest.’

  We left the Harley Davison for someone else to ride and walked back to the pool where bottles and cans were set out on tables along with buckets full of cigars, cigarettes, pills – the full nine yards.

  ‘Oh, baby … Oh, bay-beeee …’ Curt looked as if he was going to say something vital about the survival of homo sapiens but his eyes glazed and he collapsed back onto the sun lounger, the cigar resting on his stomach. When it burnt through his Zippo T-shirt he yelped and rolled off into the pool.

  ‘Hey, Nick … me old buddy, Nick Aten.’ Big amiable smile plastered on his face, Boxer, a giant with a dandelion clock fuzz of black hair dropped one of his paws onto my head. ‘How you doing?’

  ‘I’m doing fine, Boxer.’

  ‘Listen, Nick, mate. What you gone and done with your buddy, Slatter?’

  ‘Slatter! My buddy? You’ve got to be kidding … Hey, pass a can, no, not Buds, the Special Brew … No, thank Jesus and his merry men, I haven’t set eyes on Slatter in a fortnight.’

  Boxer chuckled, well sozzled. ‘He’s a bloody weird one, isn’t he? It’s like trying to hold a conversation with that statue over there … Good tattoos though. I’d have ’em done like those but they don’t show up with skin this colour. Listen, listen, Nick, mate, when we’ve sobered up after this one … D’ ya want to come with me and Jonathan and what’
s-iss-name to get some more ammo for the Kalashnikov? Christ, I didn’t think I’d be able to say that, I’m well gone … Kalashnikov. Yeah, do fancy it, if … if your lady love’ll let you go …’ He chuckled and patted my head in his friendly big giant kind of way.

  Sarah smiled. ‘Only if you look after him this time. I don’t call camping out in the nearest bar you come to for three days an effective supply-finding expedition.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for Curt dropping his cigar down the back seat of the car and setting it on fire we’d have been back the same day … Oh, blimey, here comes Jonathan. What’s he got this time? Nick! Get down! He’s aiming for your head!’

  Jonathan had made it back from the Porsche with a load of apples in his T-shirt. He lobbed them like hand grenades at me. They fell short into the pool, one bouncing on the head, Newton-style, of a youth kissing a girl. They never even noticed.

  With a wild laugh Jonathan jumped in the pool. He surfaced, shouting, ‘You know this is a great way to wash your clothes. Now for spin dry.’ He hauled himself out of the pool and went whirling away across the lawn, spinning water drops from his outstretched arms.

  Sarah and I sat side by side watching the revel. Overhead the sky turned deep blue as the sun floated down to the hills. Music beat up the air. There was wall to wall talking, laughing, eating, drinking. Two hooligans arm wrestled, naked seventeen-year-old girls ran through the wood, Simon was spitting whisky into the barbecue. It burst into balls of flame that singed his eyebrows. He did it again.

  Behind us half a dozen thirteen-year-old boys were tattooing each others’ noses and cheekbones with the Red Indian Brave look that was the numero uno at the moment.

  The music hit the instrumental link, to the rhythm everyone chanted:

  NO SCHOOLS!

  NO RULES!

  NO SHIT!

  YEE-OWOWOW …

  Then the music abruptly cut, and there was ear-bruising silence.

  Pause, then: ‘Jesus Christ … Not again …’

  ‘That’s the tenth time in three days …’

  ‘Eleven.’

  ‘Where’s Dave?’

  ‘Someone get Dave freaking Middleton. What’s he playing at?’

  ‘Curt was saying that he cuts the generator deliberately.’