A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  When Jack emerged from the driver, he was holding an NHS security necklace. Alice came around him and they both gazed at the front; an identification badge with the picture of a gray-haired female doctor on the front and Dr. Margaret Singh, St. Christies Hospital Trust NHS written next to it.

  “St. Christies?” Alice mused aloud. “Where do I know that from?”

  Jack’s eyes sparked into life and widened as his face contorted. He knew where.

  “Jonny,” he muttered aloud.

  83

  In the back of a paramedic van, the man with the bloodied face was being seen to by a female paramedic, the woman applying stitches to the cut on his upper arm.

  “The hospital will only want to assess you to be sure,” she was saying to him as she snipped the last of the thread. “They’ll probably just give you a once over and let you go.”

  He thanked her once she’d dressed the wound and sat while she turned around to pack her things away. With her back to him, he reached down the length of his leg and pulled a blade from his sock. She turned at the exact moment he had it in his hand and was stepping off the bed.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, a look of confusion being replaced by one of terror.

  He burst forward, sinking the knife into her guts and lifting it up, pressing his weight into her and pinning the woman against the side of the van.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her. “But I have no choice.”

  She glared at him, a look of horror twisting her face, until it twisted no more and the eyes turned blank, as though someone had switched the last light off in a house.

  When he stepped back and retracted the knife, she dropped slowly to the floor in a heap. Moving forward, he opened the door into the front of the ambulance. The driver turned sharply and widened his eyes. The killer moved the knife to the man’s throat, maneuvering himself onto the passenger seat.

  “Pull over,” he barked.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

  “No questions. Just pull over or you’re dead.”

  “Kate?”

  The killer pushed the blade into his throat, slicing into the surface of the skin. It was enough to threaten the driver to do as he was told. Not that it helped the man. The moment the vehicle was stopped, the killer pressed the knife in further and cut his throat across the windpipe. He then leaned over the struggling body, the man clawing at his neck as he choked on his own blood, and opened the door, before heaving the man with his shoulder so that he fell out of the vehicle onto the pavement outside. He then took the seat, closed the door and began driving the van towards the weapons he’d cached for himself along the way.

  84

  Jonny jumped in his chair when he heard the first gunshot ricochet through the hospital. The armed guard outside the door immediately stepped through with a worried expression.

  “Stay here, close the blinds and lock the door,” he said before taking off along the corridor in the direction the gunfire was coming from.

  As he leaped to the blinds, Jonny made out screaming and shouting. It was coming from below, far away, but getting closer, the angry snaps of an assault rifle making his heart leap every few seconds. He locked the door and turned over his shoulder to gaze at his son.

  Philip was so helpless, the machines keeping him tentatively alive, holding him in their mechanical palm as he floated between the edges of life and death. What now for him? the father thought. To survive one atrocity only to be slain by another?

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. He still hadn’t turned it off.

  “Jonny?” Jack almost shouted down the line.

  “I’m here,” he whispered back.

  “He’s coming for you.”

  “He’s already here. In the hospital.”

  “Look, there’s a fleet of armed police should be with you in a few minutes. The whole of the Met is on its way. Just hold tight and stay safe.”

  The phone went dead. Hold tight and stay safe. Easier said than done. He glanced back at Philip, at the boy’s closed eyes and restful face. He was prone. So was Jonny. A panic was overtaking the general terror that overflowed his body, the gunshots and screams seeming to surround and enclose him like a rising flood.

  Glancing between the door and his son, Jonny realized that he had to do something; couldn’t just wait here for the possibility of death. So he unlocked the door and crept outside.

  They’d been tucked away in a corner of the hospital. The door opened out onto a thin strip of corridor. Two directions open to him. He stood with his ear to the wind for a moment. Once he was sure which direction the sounds of chaos were emanating from, he walked off in that direction. His plan was simple, based on a mixture of bravery and stupidity. A simple animal plan: find the Shooter, engage him and lead him away from Philip. It would most likely mean his death, but if he could delay the killer for enough time that the police arrived before he reached Philip, then so be it.

  The corridor spilled out onto a much wider one. As he walked along, hospital staff and other people, some patients, came running past him, going the other way.

  “You need to run and hide,” they shouted as they came sprawling past.

  An elderly woman stood outside a room, calling for help.

  “My husband’s inside,” she cried to Jonny as he came past.

  The journalist ignored the despairing look on her face and kept going. Marching towards certain death. Many of the hospital staff were pushing people in wheelchairs, some in beds, other staff doing their best to wheel along all the machines. Jonny thought about asking one of them to help with Philip. But he’d be just as prone being wheeled along as he was static in the room.

  The sounds of sirens made it to his ears. He glanced sideways out of a window as he went by. Flashing lights and police vehicles poured into the car park, police pouring out of the doors. They were already forming a perimeter, shuffling people out and clearing the place.

  It’ll be ages before they come in and engage, Jonny thought to himself, an element of fatalism in his thinking.

  He reached the bottom of stairwell that led into a causeway of shops: Flowers by Pam, Mick’s News, Co-op Funerals. The gunshots were clear now. Not just a vibration through the brickwork but a clear and distinct sound, like the roar of some mechanical beast, the sharp noise shaking Jonny’s bones and sinking his guts in anxiety. He came across the first of the bodies. A coffee shop stood on a corner. Tables lay abandoned. Chairs tossed over and resembling the dead. An elderly woman lay on her back with a large wound to her chest, her blank eyes staring out. A man lay prostrate across the floor. He’d been hit while running. Jonny could see into the back of his head as he came past. Other bodies lay strewn about. He was too late. He heard the gunfire coming from far away. He was losing him.

  Jonny stopped and listened. Located it and began running along a corridor. A trail of blood and bodies led him onward under strip lighting. At a stairwell, he found a man holding his stomach, sitting on the bottom step, pale-faced, eyes bulging, chest going in and out at a frantic pace. He looked up at Jonny with a helpless expression as the latter went past. There was nothing the journalist could do for him.

  The Shooter was on the second floor. Jonny became frantic as he followed in the killer’s wake, finding a string of dead or dying, and realized that he was being led back to his son’s room.

  “What are you doing?” someone called out of a room behind him on the next floor. Jonny turned to see a doctor poking his head out of a door. “Come here. It’s safer.”

  Jonny didn’t reply. Merely turned around and kept going. A man came running at him the other way, constantly glancing over his shoulder, a horrified look in his eyes. He appeared not even to see Jonny as he came darting past.

  Jonny came towards the end of a corridor. The gunshots were shaking the framed pictures that hung along the walls. It was so close now. Someone ran across the end and Jonny winced as they suddenly flew forward as though an invisible car had hit t
hem from behind.

  Jonny froze to the spot. He’d never seen someone shot before. He’d seen dead. But never in his life had he seen the moment between life and death so clearly. It had stopped him in his step and he gazed in frozen horror as the man attempted to crawl forward. He wanted to run to where he was. Emerge from the corridor, turn left to where the shot had come from, and chase the killer down. But his legs wouldn’t move, mind trapped in indecision.

  “Come on,” someone said in a hushed voice, and Jonny was being pulled into a room to the side, the door being locked behind him. When he turned, he saw the armed police guard. His face was pale, and when Jonny’s mind cleared, he observed that the guard was holding his right shoulder, blood seeping through the fingers.

  “I told you to stay in the room,” he said, leaning with his back against the wall as though that was the only reason he still stood.

  “I wanted to lure him away,” Jonny explained.

  “That’s what I was doing.”

  The man grunted a laugh. Found it comical for some reason. Perhaps it was the blood loss. It made him lightheaded and gave everything a rather absurd feel. The two men gazed across the room at one another. It was a communal room; some comfortable armchairs, a cheap telly and a few children’s toys scattered about.

  “Let me dress that shoulder,” Jonny suggested.

  He stepped across the room to the man, but as he did, a gunshot resounded in the corridors outside and it felt as though it was right by their ears, the sound of the furious mechanical beast roaring in their ears.

  “I better go see,” the officer said, dragging himself away from the wall and approaching the door.

  “You can’t go out there like this,” Jonny said.

  “No other choice,” the man said as he unlocked the door.

  Jonny watched him go. Heard more gunshots roar, then a silence that appeared to last forever. That was worse. That pause. At least when you heard the gunshot, you knew how near or far you were from him, but in silence, he could be coming up right behind you and you wouldn’t know until the next volley of gunfire collided with your back.

  He went to the door and his whole body shook as he peeked gingerly around it. The guard was positioned on the corner, firing down the corridor that ran to the right, where the shot had come from earlier, the one that sent the man flying onto his front. He wasn’t crawling anymore. Lying prostrate a few feet behind the guard.

  A break in the gunfire and Jonny watched as the guard disappeared around the corner of the corridor. Some inner need urged the journalist on. Urged him to follow. It wasn’t just the chance to lure the killer from his son that pulled him onwards; it was the urge to see him. To witness firsthand his tormentor. And to look death in the face.

  The guard was halfway down a corridor, hidden in a recess behind a firehose. Jonny was on the corner behind, his eyes desperately trying to get a view of the killer.

  There he was.

  At the end, on another corner, firing back with a spray of bullets, hitting the firehose and the corner of the recess, black balaclava over his head. All Jonny saw were the eyes, the wild, glaring eyes that shimmered like flames. The assault rifle turned sharply towards him and he ducked back as bullets hit the corner of the wall and kicked up a dust cloud of plaster.

  The shooting diminished and went further away. The Shooter was on his way again. Jonny’s heart froze. He was still heading in the direction of Philip. They were on the same floor now. Sure, they were on the other side of the building, but the corridor the killer was on would eventually lead him to Jonny’s son.

  He watched the guard dash off to the end and jogged after him. When he emerged around the corner, however, his heart jumped into his throat as he saw the man receive a volley of bullets to the chest and drop down. Jonny threw himself back around the corner and shoved a hand over his mouth. He wanted to scream. To scream out and swallow the world with it. He bit into his hand to stop himself. He closed his eyes and sensed that the killer was making his way to him. That he would burst around the corner and fill him with a quick, burning blast of the gun.

  But it didn’t come.

  Shaking all over, Jonny made his way rapidly to the guard. He was lying on his back, blood trickling down the side of his mouth, eyes open, chest still moving ever so slightly, a wheezing sound emerging from his bloodied lips. He looked up at Jonny with a helpless look. It was the realization of an inevitable death.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jonny whispered down to him. “Thank you.”

  The guard reached to his right and took ahold of his gun. With the last of his strength, he offered it up to Jonny. The latter took it clumsily, having never handled a weapon before in his life and surprised by its weight when compared to the toys of his youth.

  “He’s heading towards your boy,” the man gurgled through the blood.

  Jonny flew off, never to see the man’s open eyes again. He ran along corridors in the opposite direction from the killer, hoping to head him off, ignoring the litter of bodies abandoned by their souls. Some hadn’t fled yet, the ghost still intact. They called out to him. Held their hands up as the panicked father came running past. But he had no time for them. No time for any other heroics than the ones he’d already set out on.

  When he returned to Philip’s room, the gunfire was close. He heard a commotion outside on the floor below. At the window, he spotted innumerable armed response entering the building.

  They’ll be too late, Jonny remarked to himself.

  He took up a position by the door and waited, the gun trembling in his hands. The shots outside ricocheted in his ears and each one made him jump. He heard running footsteps clacking on the linoleum outside the room. His fingers tensed around the cold metal gun and he lay one on the trigger. He didn’t close his eyes; they were wide open. The door handle began to turn and he stepped back, the gun aimed at the glass window, a curtain drawn across it so that all he saw was the outline of a large person. He would have preferred to pull the trigger now, but had to wait, just in case it was someone else.

  And there he was. Masked, over six feet and broad chested. He was like a giant shadow, standing in the doorway dressed all in black, including the mask over his face. His eyes glared at Jonny and he smiled: the bastard actually smiled at him. Jonny pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. His heart froze. The gun was dead; no more than a cold, heavy weight in his hand. He tried again, but the trigger was limp and did nothing. Was it broken?

  “The clip on the side of the handle,” the killer advised him.

  Feeling as though he was rapidly shrinking, Jonny flicked the clip and pulled the trigger. The killer flew back. The shot hit him in the center of the chest. Three blasts, then the gun went dead again.

  After innumerable clicks, Jonny’s finger caught in a trance and willing new bullets to fly from the end, he stopped firing. The killer was slumped on the floor across the corridor, having been blasted back from the doorway. Jonny approached him slowly, keeping the useless gun aimed on him. The man’s eyes were closed, head slumped between his shoulders, hands at his sides, legs spread out front, the assault rifle beside him.

  Shaking all over, his body threatening to jerk itself into a full seizure, Jonny reached forward and took hold of the balaclava. But as he did, the body moved sharply and something hit his thigh, the whole leg lighting up with severe pain like burning electricity. He keeled to the side, letting go of the mask, and fell to the floor. Clutching the leg and crying out in agony, the knife having hit the bone, Jonny could do no more than lie there. The killer got up and stood over him, holding the bloody hunting knife that he’d stabbed the leg with. Jonny, pale-faced, gazed up at him with a helpless expression. The killer returned the knife to his belt, picked his assault rifle up, placing it over his shoulder, and grabbed Jonny by the foot. His leg screamed in pain as the killer then dragged him into the hospital room.

  “You should have aimed for my head,” the masked man remarked as he pulled Jonny into the middle of his s
on’s hospital room. Jonny tried to reach up, grab the guy, but each time he did, the pain in his leg threatened to send him into unconsciousness. When the killer dropped his foot, he quickly flipped the rifle into his hands and shot Jonny once in each leg to make sure he couldn’t get up. The journalist screamed out in agony, the strength in his body rapidly disappearing, so that all he could do was lie on his side, gazing at the killer as he went over to his son. “Do you know what chaos is, Jonny?” the killer asked as he took his knife and placed it over the unconscious Philip’s throat.

  Jonny didn’t answer. Every ounce of strength was going into staying awake, his body feeling like it could float away any second, the pain in his legs rising and covering his whole body.

  “Chaos is life, Jonny,” the killer went on. “Like our planet, we were born in chaos. A chaos beyond our control. Do you feel it? Feel the complete randomness of it all. Me and you, here, this is random. Since the day we were born, we’ve been on a collision course to this very moment. I meant it on the phone when I said sorry. The human part of me feels sorry. But there’s a part of me that’s far stronger that simply isn’t sorry. That understands the true nature of things and understands that there is nothing actually precious in a life. We are born astride a grave. Death is rebirth. The dead the slaves of the living.”

  “Why me?” came weakly from Jonny’s mouth.

  “I chose you because I liked your books. I read them all as a teenager. But I could tell that the writer of them was always curious but never truly knowing. Always a layman on the outside, looking in. You wrote about victims and families and killers as though they were something other to you. I always wanted you to experience true misery and pain. To know it. To have suffered and know suffering, you will have built a tremendous understanding of your craft. I tell you, Jonny, I’ll make you a much better writer.”

  And that was the moment he stared into Jonny Cockburn’s eyes and slid the knife across his son’s throat. The nineteen-year-old coughed and spluttered, his head juddering underneath the oxygen mask. The monitors flatlined and the alarm went off. Jonny was overwhelmed with misery and it was the final blow that sunk him into unconsciousness.