Blood Crazy

Jonathan said, ‘Do you think she’ll outrun the dog?’

  Curt grinned. ‘She’ll have to run faster than that.’

  In the end what happened surprised them both. A hundred yards away on the lawn … the girl stopped running.

  She called the dog, got down on her knees and held it tight in her arms.

  The shock wave from the explosion cracked one of the windows.

  The Crew roared with delight. Happy days for them.

  Old man in my head, help me make this their last happy day.

  More booze, laughter …

  I was stone cold sober. I said, ‘Curt. Just let me explain. The adults are massing in the next valley. Any day – any minute now – they might attack. If they do we are dead meat.’

  ‘You’re talking a bag of shite.’ Jonathan blew out clouds of cigar smoke. ‘Them Creosotes have been there weeks. They’ve not moved out the valley … They wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it.’ I started to tell them what I’d seen since leaving Eskdale, the ruthless extinction of people like us.

  Curt’s eyes widened than narrowed. I’d hit a raw nerve. Deep down he was afraid.

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I’m not lying, Curt. Why should I lie? If we don’t do something now, this fucking minute, we’re going to die. If it comes to it, we’ll have to think of moving people out, particularly the young children and babies.’

  ‘No … No! No! No!’ Curt’s face blotched red. ‘No one leaves. We stay here. All right? All right!’

  I carried on, listing the communities wiped out by Family Creosote. Curt wasn’t listening.

  ‘Well, get a load of this, Crew. It looks as if our buddy, Nick scaremonger Aten has broken the law … Billy, get another one. Nick’s going to do the business.’

  I knew full well what he meant. After all this time, it was my turn to Carry The Can.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Carrying The Can Again

  Billy pointed a shotgun in my face as they snapped the cuff around my wrist. Attached to that, a foot long piece of chain. Attached to that the Can.

  Picture it. A sealed piece of metal pipe as thick as a cucumber and as long as your forearm from wrist to elbow. The fuse ran down another tube inside the pipe with just the tip of the fuse poking out through a small hole. No way could you rip out the fuse once it had been lit.

  I held the thing in both hands. It was as heavy as death.

  All you could do was run like Satan wanted a piece of your arse. Down the driveway, through the gates, down the road into the village and up to the church.

  Then you climbed to the top of the church tower, tipped the key out of the glass jar, unlocked the cuff and chucked the bomb as far as you could.

  Some made it, some didn’t – sometimes for a laugh Billy would short fuse the bomb. Then you didn’t get as far as the end of the drive.

  I sat there. I did not move. I showed no expression. This was it, I shouldn’t have expected any more from the bastards.

  I’d have to make the run, and unlock the pipe bomb from my wrist. If I didn’t, Sarah, my baby son, everyone would be dead within the week.

  ‘See, Nick Aten …’ Jonathan pulled deeply on the cigar, making the end glow white. ‘You brought this on yourself. If you’d toed the line you could have joined the Crew. Got yourself some nice ladies to keep you warm at night.’

  Curt smiled. ‘If you make it to the church on time – you’re welcome to join … Just make sure you run hard enough.’

  Jonathan pulled hard on the cigar again. ‘Ready, steady …’ He touched the tip of the cigar against the stub of fuse that poked from the hole. ‘… Go.’

  The fuse hissed, sparks flying, then the flame disappeared into the pipe. All I could see now was a trail of blue smoke oozing from the drilled hole.

  I licked my dry lips. ‘What if I stay here … with you? And we all watch what happens next.’

  The Crew looked at each other in alarm and started to back away.

  Jonathan stuck the cigar back in his mouth and pulled a pistol from his jacket pocket. ‘What if I blow your head off … Then we’ll watch what happens from the hotel … Now, Nick Aten, I reckon you’ve got a hundred seconds left.’

  I ran.

  The Can clutched in both hands, chain jingling, I belted in the direction of the driveway with the Crew jeering. When I reached the bushes and they could no longer see me, I cut back up across to the back of the outbuildings.

  If I knew Jonathan he was jealous of Curt being matey with me. He wouldn’t risk me surviving this run; he’d make sure that the Can had been short fused.

  The outbuildings came up in a confused blur. Then I stood there, panting, looking round at the sheds, stables and garage not knowing what I was looking for – only hoping I’d recognize it when I saw it.

  I ran behind the boiler house.

  Come on, Aten! This thing’s going to blow you to buggery in ten seconds flat!

  I ran faster.

  Bingo!

  Behind the boiler house a heavy timber trap door was set in the earth. It was the coal shute that led down into the cellar.

  I grabbed the iron ring in the trap door and heaved until my shoulder muscles cracked. The trap door came up, rotten with age. Pray the thing holds, Aten.

  Quickly, I dropped the pipe bomb down to the full length of the chain into the shute, then I slammed back the trap door with the chain pulled tight between the iron frame of the hatchway and the trap door itself.

  Chained there, I squatted down onto the trap door. The bomb smoked away ten inches beneath my feet, separated only by three inches of one hundred year old timber planking.

  And waited.

  … And waited.

  Picturing the sparking fuse creeping closer and closer to the charge.

  I never heard the bang.

  One second I squatted there, eyes fixed on the chain as it disappeared under the trap door, the next second I lay against the boiler house wall, trying, but somehow failing to breathe.

  I coughed, pulled myself to my feet, then dropped back against the wall. My legs were shaking, my head was ringing, my feet and knees were throbbing like hell.

  I touched my forehead. When I took my fingers away they were jam red with blood.

  The trap door had been ripped off by the force of the explosion and lay ten feet from the cellar entrance. I’d been standing on that.

  Then I noticed my arm. The hairs had been scorched from my skin; from the handcuff swung five inches of blackened chain.

  Come on, Aten. This is it!

  As soon as I could, I limped back in the direction of the hotel, skirting round the far side, so I came back on the Crew’s backs.

  They were all stood there, shielding their eyes against the sun’s glare. Through the ringing in my ears, I heard them asking one another what had happened to me. They’d heard the bang for sure.

  Jonathan was chuckling and pulling excited drags on his fat dick cigar.

  I walked up to the table, picked up a bottle of the blue spirit and twisted off the top.

  As one, they spun round to look at me in amazement.

  ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,’ I said.

  Jonathan looked at the snapped chain swinging from my wrist as I lifted the bottle.

  ‘You never made it to the church … What did you do, cut the chain?’

  I smiled.

  He clenched the cigar between his teeth. ‘Bastard cheat … You’ll Carry The Can again … properly this time.’

  I walked to within a few paces of him and looked into his face behind the swirling cigar smoke. I felt a gun muzzle jabbed into my back.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But first I deserve a drink.’

  I took a deep mouthful of the blue spirit.

  Then spat it into Jonathan’s face.

  The spirit hit the cigar.

  With a pop it ignited, enclosing the bastard’s head in a brilliant orange flame. He went jerking back howling, rol
ling about on the terrace, his hair burning and melting into a cap of bubbling tar.

  Curt and the Crew just stared, mouths open, like Judgment Day was upon them.

  It could only have taken a second but it seemed to take forever.

  I swung back hard with the spirit bottle, smashing it across the nose of the guy holding the gun to my back.

  He keeled over stiff as a stick.

  Billy stood behind him. He was fumbling with the safety catch of an Uzi.

  Before he could pull back the bolt, I managed to slam five beefy punches into his face, splitting his nose, lips and eyes.

  Then I dragged him forward, wrenched the gun from his hands and shoved him down to the ground.

  It was chaos. The Crew were shouting, scared, panicking, some hiding under the table, some running. Only Curt sat watching it all in a doped-up way, completely amputated from reality.

  Two of the Crew across the table had pulled out revolvers, but as they lifted them, I squeezed the trigger of the machine gun, emptying the whole magazine at them, just hosing them down with hot metal. Minced by the bullets they dropped down dead.

  As I groped round amongst the screaming men for another gun I looked up.

  Jonathan had lifted himself up on one elbow. His two round, lidless eyes stared like white discs out of his burnt face.

  I froze, he had the pistol in his hand and he was aiming it at my chest.

  Then came the noise.

  So low at first you feel it rather than hear it. A low, low pounding.

  Jonathan heard it too. Even though his face was a burnt mess I saw the look of sheer, bloody awful terror as he saw who came towards him.

  Jonathan looked at the gun as if it had turned to chocolate in his hand. He knew what was going to happen now.

  Slatter loped across the terrace, his pit boots pounding the slabs.

  Jonathan turned as he lay there, propped up on one elbow. The last thing he saw was Slatter’s boot swinging forward to crunch his chin, kicking him, non-stop express, into the evergreen gardens of eternity.

  Now the Crew were gibbering with terror as Slatter walked toward them. They kept glancing from his pit boots to Jonathan lying dead, then to Slatter’s tattooed face.

  I’m glad I wasn’t on the receiving end. The look in Slatter’s eye must have been terrible.

  ‘Put it down,’ he said to one of the Crew who carried a shotgun. The guy dropped it like it was diseased.

  ‘Now …’ Slatter stood and watched them as they cringed back from him. ‘Everyone get into the pool.’

  The Crew didn’t wait to be told twice. They ran to the pool and jumped in, the weight of their bodies breaking the ice.

  ‘Now. Wait there till I come back.’

  They all nodded frantically, shoulder deep in freezing water.

  Slatter walked back to where I stood holding a revolver to Curt’s head. The sad bastard hadn’t moved. The look on his face was a regular stew of bewilderment, surprise and fear.

  I offered Slatter a shotgun. He shook his head.

  ‘Guns are for faggots, rubber necks – and cowards … Isn’t that true, Curt?’

  Curt trembled, his flabby lips drooling spit.

  Slatter reached forward and picked another pipe bomb off the table. He snapped the cuff onto Curt’s wrist.

  ‘You’ve shit your hole, Curt.’

  Six months ago I’d have tried to stop Slatter.

  Not now. Not after I’d seen Curt and his Crew rape and torture and murder and starve this little fragment of sane humanity that’d hung grimly on while the rest of the world was dying.

  I stood back so the rest of the Crew in the pool could see.

  As Slatter lit the fuse fear drove Curt’s eyes back into focus. ‘You can’t,’ he screamed. ‘You can’t do this!’

  Slatter’s beast eyes just stared into Curt’s.

  ‘Help me! Help me!’ he yelled at the Crew shivering in the pool. They stared back, too scared to move.

  With a howl of frustration and fear Curt ran down the drive in the direction of the village, hugging the bomb to his stomach.

  I watched him go. I felt no pity. ‘Do you think he’ll make it?’

  ‘He might. He’s fast … But …’ Slatter reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silver key. ‘I got there first.’

  We waited in silence. I pictured Curt’s wild run, then climbing the stairs up the church tower, his heart feeling as if it would rip up through his throat, then Curt out on the tower roof, scrabbling about for the jar, picking it up, seeing that the key had gone, crying out in terror, maybe wishing he could turn back the clock and undo the evil he’d done and then—

  The distant explosion broke the spell.

  ‘What do you want me to do with them in the pool, Nick?’

  ‘Tell them they’ve got a choice. Those that are ready to become good citizens of Eskdale can put on dry clothes. Those that don’t, take them down into the orchard and stamp on their heads. We’ll bury them with Curt and Jonathan.’

  Chapter Sixty

  Here It Comes

  At first it was chaos – like trying to fit the pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle together without any picture on the box to help you.

  Then as I got a grip of the situation it started to come together.

  I stood in the foyer of the hotel. At two o’clock I was asking people if they would do such-and-such a thing. By two-thirty I was giving orders. And I realized people were more than happy to obey. They looked like slaves that had been kept underground – now they were out in the light and free. And what they wanted was security and order.

  Shivering in the pool, the Crew cried out that they wanted to become loyal, hard-working citizens. Suddenly all of them were saying they were as much victims of Curt as the rest and that they’d been intimidated into joining the Crew. An hour ago they were strutting gang members, hard men, now they sobbed in the freezing water like scared schoolkids.

  Slatter told them to get out, get changed, then obey every single order I gave – to the letter. Pathetically grateful, they scrambled out and ran back to the hotel.

  Word went ahead that Slatter was roaming loose in the grounds like one of the old gods – one of the vengeful kind.

  What was left of the Crew dropped their guns before he even reached them and raced to congratulate me as their new leader, and how they’d waited for this to happen and how much they hated Curt, blah, blah, blah …

  Mid-afternoon Del-Coffey came loping up the driveway, shoe laces still trailing. He couldn’t believe I was there. For five minutes he talked no sense, grinning, laughing, and shaking my hand over and over.

  ‘Nick, you’re all right, you’re all right! What happened to you? Your head’s bleeding. I heard Curt and Jonathan are dead. It’s unbelievable, everyone’s over the moon – it – it’s like we were dead – now we’ve come back to life again … Hell, it’s great to see you …’

  Between this I managed to shoot out orders. ‘Ben … go down to the gatehouse please. You’ll find a rifle, a handgun and a green haversack down there. Bring them up here to me. And be careful with the bag.’

  Del-Coffey looked round amazed at the happy faces of kids from four to nineteen charging about on errands or just running to find others to share the news and slap one another on the back.

  In the corner two of the servant girls were using brass candlesticks to beat one of the Crew members around the head.

  Del-Coffey was astonished. ‘What are those two doing?’

  ‘It’s called revenge. There’s going to be more of that in the next few days. And whoever wants to pay those sadists back gets my blessing … Hey. You, you were one of the Crew, weren’t you?’

  The guy stopped dead in his tracks, his hair still wet from the pool. ‘Yes, sir.’ He trembled.

  ‘Get the rest of the Crew together,’ I told him, ‘Then you can cook these kids you’ve shit on for the last six months a meal – no, make it a feast. And you, or your old buddies, don’t eat
a crumb until these kids can’t eat another thing. Got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  As he started to walk away I couldn’t stop myself grinning mischievously as I said, ‘And remember, wherever you are, whatever you do, Slatter is always watching you.’

  The ex-thug ran like he was scalded.

  Del-Coffey shook his head in wonder. ‘What happened to the old Nick Aten? You look as if you were born to be king.’

  ‘You know about computer software … Well, I bought some new software for up here.’ I tapped my head.

  Del-Coffey looked puzzled.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s a long story.’ I pulled Bernadette’s book from the haversack. ‘Do you believe in God, Del-Coffey?’

  The puzzled look deepened. ‘No.’

  ‘Good. You can be our first bishop … Now, listen. Did you get my message from Murphy?’

  ‘No. Our transmitter’s bust. I couldn’t fix it.’

  ‘Shit … You don’t know about the Creosotes, then? And what’s been happening to communities like this all over the world?’

  ‘No. The Creosotes are harmless now; we can see—’

  ‘Sarah. Where’s Sarah now, and the baby?’

  ‘The baby’s being looked after by Sarah’s sisters at my house in the village. Sarah’s helping out at the hospital.’

  ‘What hospital?’

  Del-Coffey explained Curt didn’t want sick people in the hotel or even the village. A pub up the road had been roped in to serve as a hospital. ‘She’s there with Kitty right now.’

  I said, ‘Listen. It’s not safe now. The Creosotes are … Hey, what the hell’s this?’

  At that moment I was mobbed by dozens of kids, shaking my hand and patting my arms and back; all of them talking at once in excited voices.

  Del-Coffey was forced back by the crowds. Grinning, he shouted over the racket, ‘What’s it like to be popular?’

  Me? I couldn’t stop smiling. ‘Weird … Damn weird.’

  Half an hour later we were sitting drinking coffee and eating cake.

  We were talking about what we had to do. Sarah’s absence was nagging away at the back of my mind but there was a mountain of work to get through. Del-Coffey filled me in on what supplies the Community had to live on, that the fuel was long gone, no electricity. No vehicles worked. In short the place was a mess.