‘Now, Nicholas, don’t be silly. I’m not going to hurt you.’ It was the voice my mum used when she used to cut my toe nails. ‘You want to look like John, don’t you? Lie still. Anyone would think we were trying to kill you.’
Mum held a knife in front of my face.
‘If it bothers you,’ dad said, ‘think about your favourite programme. The Munsters, isn’t it? Lie still, Nicholas, don’t wriggle like that. It’ll be over in a minute.’
No!
Stop!
I stared down at my bared chest as mum eased the blade into the skin. Dad began to whistle Ten Green Bottles through the gap in his teeth.
A red smile opened in my chest.
Not breathing, I watched her calmly cut through the chest wall. Like a plump red fruit my heart pumped there, its white roots, the arteries, disappearing into bloody meat.
Mum grasped a handful of arteries and began cutting through them as I’d seen her cut rind from bacon, snapping the tougher bits with her fingers.
Each broken artery was agony. I screamed.
‘Don’t be silly, Nicholas,’ she said. ‘Another minute and I’ll be done. Then you can join your brother. Now hold still while I cut your big one.’
Muthaaaaaaaaa…
I was sitting on the grass, grunting. When my eyes focused I saw Sarah looking down at me, her eyes wide.
‘Are you all right, Nick? I thought you were having a heart attack or something.’
I breathed deeply and rubbed my sweaty palms against the grass.
‘Can I get you anything, Nick? A drink?’
I shook my head. The pain felt real. My parents seemed real. I looked down the hillside to make sure they weren’t really there.
‘Come on,’ I said, standing. ‘Let’s get back to the car.’
‘Nick.’ She touched my arm. It was the first time she touched me. ‘Nick, are you sure you’re okay?’
I made my face smile. Inside I felt shit. ‘Yeah. Thanks. Just a stupid dream.’ I ran my hand across my chest feeling for the hole and feeling stupidly relieved that there was nothing there.
‘Was it bad?’
‘It was nothing. Forget it. Come on, I want to get back to civilization before it gets dark.’
Chapter Thirteen
The Fifty Million Dollar Rug
‘Are you sure it’s safe this way?’
‘No.’
Sarah looked out at the passing houses. Some were burning. ‘You might have been better using the by-pass.’
‘It still takes us too close to the town centre.’ I turned onto a road that linked the industrial areas with another motorway. That one, I hoped, empty. If it was we could be out of the madlands within the hour. In the back seat Anne and Vicki were half asleep.
‘Watch it,’ Sarah said. ‘They’re in the bushes.’
‘I see them.’
Alongside the road ran a six-foot mound planted with shrubs that screened the factories from the road. It was sprinkled with men and women sitting on the ridge. None looked under twenty-five.
‘What do you think they’re waiting for?’
‘The second coming … People like them to join them.’ I shot her a grim smile. ‘Or people like us.’
I dropped the speed to twenty-five. Ahead debris littered the road. A truck had ploughed off the road, gouged out a chunk of banking, then dropped on its side.
‘Jesus, just look at that,’ whispered Sarah. ‘Look at all that money.’
The security truck had cracked open like an egg. Bank notes ran across the road like a fifty million dollar rug. I drove through them sending up a spray of fifties like a speedboat cutting through the ocean.
I could have stopped and picked it up. For a minute or two I would have been a millionaire – before the crazy bastards on the bund tore me in two.
‘Nick!’
I hit the brake. ‘What?’
‘There’s a boy back there.’
Vicki shouted, ‘He’s running after us!’
Anne screamed. ‘Quick. Drive away, Nick. He’ll catch us.’
‘He’s not one of them. He’s too young.’
The boy was about fifteen. God knows where he came from, but he came leaping down the slope onto the road about a hundred yards behind us. Even from this distance you could tell he was terrified.
He ran toward us, his eyes locked on the car. His arms wind-milled, the sports jacket flapped open.
I slipped the car into reverse. I’d meet him half way.
‘Get ready to open the back door, Vicki. No, not yet. Wait until he’s – shit.’
I nearly reversed into her. An old woman had limped down the banking to stand between me and the running youth. He ran faster, arms going wildly. And I saw why. Running down the banking after him was a mob of adults.
They wanted his blood.
I began to psych myself up. The old woman wouldn’t let me reverse past her. I’d have to reverse over her. It made sense. Her eyes told me she was mad. Mad, bad and dangerous.
Into reverse. Pedal down. Bang. Easy.
Come on, Aten. Come on you soft prick.
Shit … I couldn’t do it.
I stared back at the woman, and I knew I couldn’t run the mad old bitch down.
‘Watch it, Nick. They’re coming for us.’
More crazies were running across a factory yard. A six-foot chain link fence separated them from us. Slowly they began to climb it. Soon they would be dropping down onto the road right next to us.
Behind us the youth had closed the gap to perhaps forty yards.
I rolled the car forward.
‘What are you doing, Nick? Don’t leave him behind.’
‘I’m not. But we can’t let ourselves get caught. Those lunatics will tip the car over. He’ll make it, he’s well ahead of the pack.’
The kid had got a good start – he was fast. I took the car up to five miles an hour.
As he ran his wallet flew from his jacket pocket. For a moment I thought he’d be mad enough to stop and pick it up. But he just glanced back at it bouncing in the gutter, then he looked back at the car, like a sprinter looking at the finishing tape. He didn’t shout or yell – he sank everything into running.
From the mound a fat man ran in a slow, lolloping stride. Gravity helped the man, pushing his pace faster than he’d ever make on the flat.
The man snatched at the youth.
‘Oh, God,’ Sarah’s voice punched my ear. ‘They’ve got him, they’ve got him.’
I twisted back to watch the chase.
The fat man had hold of the youth by the jacket. As I watched the youth held his arms straight back. Smoothly he slipped out of the jacket leaving the fat man holding it in his hands.
‘He’s going to make it, he’s going to make it. Come on! Come on!’ I shouted till my ears hurt.
From the passenger side came a loud crack.
I turned to see an old guy beating the window with a walking stick. He struck again and a star crack appeared.
In the back the girls screamed. They screamed again as he grabbed the handle and swung open the door.
I pumped the car forward to twenty leaving him spinning across the road to fall flat on his face.
‘Shut the door, Vicki, and lock it.’ Sarah’s face was white. ‘You too, Anne.’ Sarah opened her door as we rumbled along. ‘He’ll have to get in here with me.’
I slowed the car to five miles an hour.
The kid was tiring now. His red face screwed in pain.
Behind him the mob were gaining. He should have made it though, he really should.
For no reason on a clear stretch of road he tripped. He went down flat onto his chest, arms stretched out. I stopped the car.
It all happened too fast.
The mob were on him like a tidal wave. One second he was there, down on the ground, looking up at us, panting. Then he disappeared under a crowd that kicked, punched, ripped.
I accelerated away. Ten seconds later we could see nothing.
Sarah slammed shut her door and turned on me. ‘Stop! I said stop!’
I shook my head.
‘Stop! Help him!’
‘I can’t. It’s too late.’
‘Nick … Stop.’
‘I said – it’s too late! HE IS DEAD! OKAY?’
We drove on without speaking. In the back the girls were crying.
Chapter Fourteen
Slatter
We weren’t going to make it.
Doubt started to flow as we drove away from the boy being torn to shit on the road. Now I couldn’t stop it.
Too many things could go wrong. Too quickly we could end up like the poor bastard back there. Punctures … Engine failure … Roads blocked by barricades … Or maybe a few hundred crazies would simply pull the car apart around us.
What the hell do I do then?
There’s a chance I could outrun them. What about the two girls in the back? Would I risk chucking away my own life to save them? Maybe it was best to get rid of them as quickly as possible?
What you going to do, Nick? Leave them at the side of the road? Why not make it quick for them – use the knife.
No. I could find a house for them. Leave them with plenty of food, then get help.
I ran through the possibilities as I drove in the direction of the motorway which would take us south.
I was still chewing over a plan when I saw someone I knew walking up the centre of the road toward me.
I slowed the car to ten miles an hour.
There he was. Mr Nightmare himself. Another dream perhaps. No … there he was – alive and ugly.
‘Tug Slatter.’
‘Who?’
Sarah leaned forward to look at the man as we slowly rumbled toward him.
Slatter looked like he always did. Light blue denims, pit boots, shaved head swinging from side to side, cigarette in his mouth that he smoked not for pleasure but as a means of making a statement. That statement was: ‘I fucking well hate you.’
He never even looked at us as we approached.
It was only as we slowly passed that he snapped his eyes away from the road to look at me. The eye contact was short, hard and cold. The blue bird tattoos at either side of his eyes only seemed to concentrate the force of his glare.
I felt his contempt for me come in a wave as he broke eye contact.
Psycho.
I accelerated away. In ten minutes Slatter would be dead. The road would take him directly to where the loonies squatted on the bund. Slatter – dead. Those words I liked.
‘Aren’t you going to warn him?’ Sarah couldn’t believe I’d just driven by him.
‘When he sees them he’ll turn back.’
From the corner of my eye I could see her shaking her head. First I was a coward, leaving the boy to his fate. Now I was callous not warning someone I obviously knew. She was starting to hate me.
‘Why don’t you take the man with us?’ That was Vicki, her eyes all serious behind her glasses.
‘He’ll be fine. Now sit back and get some rest. We’ll be on the motorway in a minute. There’s some chocolates on the back shelf.’
‘But why won’t you let that man come with us? Those people might hurt him.’
‘He wasn’t going in our direction. The chocolates are in the blue box.’
‘Is that his name? Tug?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why do they call him Tug? Tug’s not a proper name.’
‘Jesus wept. How the hell do I know? He’s not my brother or anything.’
Sarah stabbed a look at me. ‘She’s only curious. There’s no need to be so touchy.’
‘I’m not being touchy.’
‘Why didn’t we pick him up, then? There’s room for him, for God’s sake.’
‘We don’t have an unlimited supply of fuel, Sarah. Extra weight means we use it faster … We run out … We’re stuck.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Look, Sarah … I don’t know how far we’ll have to drive to get out of the affected area. If there is something in the atmosphere that sent people insane will it start to affect us if we hang around too long?’
‘Nick Aten. You are a coward.’
That did it. The scream of the tyres stabbed my ear drums.
Sarah looked at me with those calm blue eyes. ‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see. And don’t say to me … don’t you ever damn well say to me I didn’t warn you.’
It took seconds to catch up with Tug Slatter. He heard the car but he didn’t look round.
I drove so that the passenger window would be alongside Slatter. I spat the words. ‘Sarah. Tell him to get in. No, not up front. In the back behind you. Anne, move closer to your sister.’
Sarah opened the door and asked Slatter to get in. He looked at her for a second then sat in the back. He could have been accepting a lift from his grandma for all the notice he took.
I roared back down toward the motorway, shooting glances at Slatter in the rear view. He smoked the cigarette, flicking ash onto the seat. He never acknowledged me.
For a good five minutes we drove like that. A silence so dead you could lay it out in a coffin and bury it.
In the back seat the two girls stared in awe at Slatter’s tattoos.
When the cigarette smoke made them cough Sarah opened the window an inch.
Slatter grunted. ‘Shut it.’
Sarah glanced at me. I stared ahead like a dummy. She shut the window with a loud sigh.
We drove on. I could feel the tension building like gas in a beer bottle.
Two miles to the motorway. I put my foot down. The sooner we got where we were going the better. My neck began to ache.
Sarah opened the vents on the dash.
I waited for Slatter to open his ugly mouth.
The car tyres drummed the cats’ eyes, the speedo rested on fifty, the gauge showed the tank three-quarters full. If the car had been fitted with an occupant stress gauge its needle would have been kissing the red.
I glanced into the rearview. Slatter was staring at me. When they lock onto you, those eyes punch you in the gut.
The silence was going to break one way or another, so I decided to be the one to do it. Maybe after all this shit Slatter would be forced to see the world in a new light. Not a planet full of men waiting to be kicked or women waiting to be screwed.
Without looking back I said, ‘I’m heading south. We’re getting out of the affected area.’
No reply. Not even a sign he’d heard me. Press on, Nick. I introduced the girls. I told him what had happened to me. Slatter said nothing. I finished off repeating that I reckoned it best to drive south. ‘We should be out of it in a couple of hours.’
‘You’re wasting your time.’ Slatter’s voice was flat.
‘Why?’
‘Let me drive.’
‘Why on Earth should I?’
‘Because you drive like a girl.’
‘My car. I’m driving. Tug, you said I’m wasting my time driving south. Why’s that? What do you know?’
‘Because it’s like this everywhere. Stupid twat.’
Sarah and her sisters watched the conversation like spectators at a tennis match, eyes flicking from one man to the other.
‘Slatter, how the hell do you know?’
‘I just do, that’s all.’
‘So, where were you going? You’d have got yourself killed if I hadn’t picked you up.’
He shrugged, not interested.
I stopped myself shouting. ‘I’m still driving south – it’s worth a try.’
‘Your time, your petrol, you damn well waste it.’
‘It’s better than going back to Doncaster. Have you seen the place, Tug? Dead people in the streets. It’s full of lunatics waiting to kill you. It’s a mess.’
‘Nothing’s changed much then, has it? It’s always been a bastard dump.’
‘Jesus Christ, Tug, isn’t there anything that worries you?’
&nbs
p; ‘Yeah.’
‘What?’
‘You calling me Tug. I don’t like to hear my name come out of the mouth of a faggot.’
‘Shit … I don’t believe you, Slatter. The world’s gone insane; civilization’s just hit the fan – and all you want to do is pick a fight.’
‘Fight? I don’t need to fight you. You’re a streak of piss.’
I clenched my jaw so tight it ached.
‘Aten. I want to drive.’
‘No way, Slatter. NO WAY.’
‘Take me back to Doncaster.’
‘This is my car. We go where I say.’
‘Where’s that, then? You don’t know, do you? You haven’t got that tart of a mother to tell you what to do.’
‘I know where I’m going … I’m going south.’
‘Suit yourself.’
We were hitting sixty when he opened the door and started to get out.
Anne’s and Vicki’s screams fused with the sound of the tyres as I crunched the brake. Slatter was out of the car before we even stopped. Lighting another cigarette he walked back the way we’d come, head swinging from side to side.
My hatred for the bastard ran deeper than I’d felt anything before. Under my breath I hissed, ‘Don’t mention it, Slatter. I don’t need thanks for saving your frigging skin. Any time … pal.’
As I drove away I wound down the window to shift the cigarette smoke, and the smell of Slatter.
‘He’s not a real person, is he?’ asked Anne. ‘I think he’s got to be a monster.’
‘You’re right.’ I laughed with the sheer relief of getting shut of him. ‘He’s a monster all right.’
Vicki said, ‘He frightened me.’
‘Me too.’ Sarah looked at me. Her eyes softened – it was the nearest thing to an apology. ‘Who is Tug Slatter, Nick?’
‘A nobody. Forget him. Now where’s those chocolates? I’m starving.’
Slatter was going back into the jaws of death in Doncaster. He’d be cold by suppertime.
But I knew right then as I drove down the slip road onto the deserted motorway that if I’d dropped Slatter off at the gates of hell he’d walk right through it.
And walk out the other side, smoking a cigarette, and looking as if he’d made the place his own.