Mandible

by Ian Woodhead

  “Come on, you two. Out you get. We still have a job to do.” He kicked the side door. His voice sounded so loud. That unnerved him a little. It wasn't silent in the street, but pretty close. A couple of car alarms were going off somewhere and he could hear somebody crying out for help but apart from that, there wasn't any other noise. Andrew paused. No, there was something else, something real faint. It sounded like somebody clicking their fingers.

  Nelson emerged from his side then helped Tony out. The old man reached back inside, pulled out Tony's leather satchel and threw it at him. “What did I tell you earlier about keeping this with you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, sure you are.”

  Tony leaned back inside the car and pulled out a black balaclava. He placed it on his head and started to rolled it over his face when Nelson stopped him. “What the fuck are you playing at?” he demanded.

  “What? I don't want any fucking clown to see my bastard face!”

  “Come on, man. Use what little brain you have.” Nelson nodded at Andrew then tapped the side of his head. “Do you see us two donning our masks?” He held up his hand. “No don't answer that, I'll tell you. It's cos it might look a little bit suspicious to any passer-by to observe three masked individuals walking down the street heading to the bank.”

  “Don't talk to me like a retard, I know that.”

  “And yet, there you were, putting on the mask. Look, man, don't worry, there are no cameras around here and I think the locals have more important things to worry about.”

  “Cut it out, guys,” said Andrew. “Can you hear that weird noise?” Both men shook their heads. It had stopped anyway. Andrew wondered if he had imagined it. “Exactly. No sirens.”

  Nelson nodded. “Oh yeah! After what happened here, this place ought to be crawling with bizzies and firemen as well as paramedics. Makes me wonder what else has happened to warrant their absence?”

  “It doesn't matter, does it? Just means the risk factor has just decreased to almost nothing.” Andrew chuckled to himself. “I like those odds.” The Black Lotus branch they were going to hit was another two streets away. He didn't mind the short walk but after the job, they'd need another set of wheels; even with a low police presence, sauntering down the high street with bags of cash slung over their shoulder would be the height of folly. “We need a car, Tony. As quick as you like, go for something old but decent, you know what I mean?”

  The young man nodded, “Consider it done, boss. I know just where to go as well.” He tapped his satchel while glaring at Nelson. “Oh yeah, I know exactly where to go.” He spun around and ran back the way they had come.

  That clicking noise was back again. Andrew turned and ran across the road. He leaped over the chasm and stopped in front of that greengrocers. It was coming from inside that shop. None of the lights were on and the sunlight could not penetrate the gloom. He felt like over a dozen set of eyes were watching him and for the first time in years, every hair down his spine stood upright. There was something not altogether right, lurking in the darkness, something that meant him and anybody else great harm. Something not human. Andrew was almost ready to reach for his pistol and to enter the shop when the clicking abruptly vanished again. The feeling of being watched disappeared at the same time.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  Andrew sighed heavily. He wasn't sure how to answer that as he didn't really know. Maybe he'd started to hear things that weren't there, on top of having random thoughts? He turned away from the shop and walked over to where Nelson stood. Maybe the stress of what they were about to pull off was having an adverse effect on him?

  The old man stood by the edge of the chasm, leaning over and gazing down. Nelson didn't appear to be suffering from any after effects from either the crash or the tremor and he certainly didn't look in any way worried about robbing a bank. Then again, why should he? This wasn't Nelson's first hold up.

  “Why did you run off?”

  “Nothing, it was nothing. I thought I saw someone I knew. Turns out it was just a shadow. Guess I'm a little jumpy.”

  Nelson looked up. “It sure is a long way down. It feels like it goes all the way to hell. I don't think I'd like to fall in.”

  Andrew chuckled. “Oh, you think?”

  Nelson jumped across. “Hell no. It's probably where my ex-wife is, no doubt chewing off Satan's ear, the horrible bitch.” He patted Andrew on the back. “Nothing wrong with being jumpy, mate. Nothing wrong with being cautious either. Even in these weird circumstances, you need to keep your wits about you. More so now, I guess. Disasters tend to make people act funny, more unpredictable. People need a routine.”

  “Why did Tony give you that look?”

  “The slap, I reckon.” Nelson looked back towards where their car lay. “I shouldn't have hit the boy but it was instinctive. If I hadn't got his hands off the wheel, we might have all ended up having tea with my ex-wife. Even so, I still shouldn't have hit him. I guess I'm not immune to all this unpredictable behaviour either.” He shrugged. “Still, he'll get over it.”

  “Oh yeah? That's not what you said back at the house.”

  “Back then, I'd have said anything to stop you from cleaning me out.”

  Andrew grinned back, not believing a word the old man said. “The significant amount of money that we get from this job ought to cheer him up.” He still remembered the kid giving him the same look when he bent his finger back. Apparently it was the same look which put the kid behind bars in the first place.

  The story went that Tony and his current girlfriend had just left a takeaway when a group of teenagers blocked their path. One of the group, the largest one, demanded that Tony should hand the kebab to his brother while he took possession of Tony's pretty blond girlfriend. When the kid didn't move, apparently this gorilla then made the fatal mistake of reaching for the girl's purse. Tony responded by pulling a knife out of his back pocket and slamming the business end into the kid's guts.

  The only reason why Tony didn't end up with attempted murder was solely because the knife missed all his vital organs and the girlfriend swore blind that Tony had wrestled the knife out of the gorilla's hands and the stabbing had been an accident. If he had been in the same situation, it's likely that Andrew would have killed them all.

  The pair reached the designated street at the same time as Andrew picked out another noise. This one he did recognise. There was a car heading towards them. “Is that Tony?”

  Nelson nodded. “From the way that the idiot is driving? Yeah, I reckon so.”

  A small blue hatchback sped along the road, its tyres dangerously close to the edge of that chasm. Andrew swore blind that the damn thing sped up the moment the driver caught sight of them. Nelson even took a couple of steps closer to the corner of the old stone building as the small car raced towards them but at the last moment, the driver applied the brakes and screeched to a halt beside the kerb.

  “Could you have made any more fucking noise?” Andrew hissed, when Tony climbed out of the driver's side.

  “Do we put our masks on now?”

  “Shut it, Tony.” Nelson patted down his own bag of tricks then turned to Andrew. “Okay. I'm ready. Let’s do this...”

  Andrew pulled him away from the kerb just as two suited men ran screaming from the bank. They ran straight across the road, just managing to leap across the chasm at the last minute due to the pair continuously looking over their shoulders. Just like the woman before, these jokers were acting like something was chasing them.

  “What the fuck are they running from?”

  Andrew couldn’t answer Tony's question, nor did he bother. As far as he was concerned, it meant two fewer people to worry about. He ran over the road and stopped by the bank's entrance. Unlike the street, the interior was equipped with cameras yet none of them had been positioned to capture the entrance or the exterior. That seems a little odd but it's not like he intended to complain. Andrew took out his own balaclava. “Are you set?” The
others too masked up and pulled out their weapons while Andrew unzipped his canvas holdall and pulled out an ancient sawn-off shotgun. Behind his mask, he saw Nelson's eyes widen. He hadn't told anybody about this baby.

  In fact, both Andrew and Tony were the first people, aside from him, to see this for over ten years. He had actually found this back when he'd been all sweet and innocent, with its shells, buried at the back of a barn which once belonged to the Henderson family. Maybe not that sweet and innocent. Andrew certainly had enough sense to know that the gun wasn't legal and that bad men must have hidden it in the barn to pick up at a later date.

  Andrew ran into the bank, grinning from ear to ear. The moment he held this gun, Andrew craved to be one of those bad men and now, here he was. “Nobody move a fucking muscle!” he yelled.

  His grin fell off his face and his voice faltered when he found out the only people in the large foyer were his crew. He ran over to the glass counters and peered over. As far as he could see, there was nobody hiding under the wood panelling. Andrew's heart started beating even faster when he saw the door leading into the room behind the counter stood ajar. "Shit," he muttered. Those two men weren’t customers. They must work here!

  Nelson joined him. “I don't like this. I mean, I know there's been tremors and there's a huge crack in the ground but that shouldn't make people run like their lives depended on it.”

  “Or something was chasing them,” added Andrew.

  Tony grabbed the edge of the door. “What do we do now?”

  Andrew pulled the door wider then pulled open a metal litter bin to make sure it wouldn't swing shut. He didn’t think it would but he wasn’t going to take any chances. “What do you think we're going to do, you idiot? Nothing has changed, apart from this situation has made our operation so much easier. Nelson, find the safe and do your stuff.” He turned to Tony. “You need to bring the car right up to the entrance and stay there. Keep the motor running and stay frosty. No nodding off! This won't take any time at all.”

  The two men went about their allocated tasks, leaving him to collect the banknotes from the tills. If Tony was unable to get into the safe then whatever he found needed splitting three ways. He hoped that there'd be enough to warrant such a risky venture. Although Tony had boasted that he could open any bank safe, Andrew still had his doubts. He had heard whispers whilst inside that the man wasn't all that he was cracked up to be, that the only reason why Tony hadn't been sprung was because he'd fucked up a job in London. A job which a certain family was depending on in order to pay some outstanding debts.

  It really was a wonder that Tony had lived at all and it was that alone which had given him the confidence to approach the old bastard in the first place. After all, if he really was as crap as the rumours suggested then the family would have simply put a bullet in his head.

  He made a beeline for the first till draw, noting that it was already open. This discrepancy should have triggered even more internal alarm bells but it all went out of the window when he saw how much was in there. The damn thing was stuffed with notes. The next two till drawers were in the same condition. Andrew's alarm bells only sounded again when he spotted the blood. It wasn't just the occasional spatter. The stuff was everywhere. It honestly looked like someone had opened a vein and aimed it at the walls.

  “What happened in here?” he asked. There were two more till drawers to check but to do that, Andrew needed to splash through all that mess. Natural greed got the better of him though. The quicker he got this done, the faster they'd all get out of this fucking abattoir. The stink had started to get to him too. Andrew held his breath, then splashed his way across the drenched carpet, feeling his bile rising when he noticed that it wasn't just blood down there. He saw indescribable lumps of fuck knows what floating through that thick mess.

  The two remaining till drawers were almost empty which proved to him what happened when your eyes got bigger than your belly. He retreated, doing his best to wipe off as much mess as he could.

  Andrew knew full well the amount of danger he was putting himself in. Whatever had made this mess obviously wasn't part of the usual wildlife to be seen around town, that's for fucking sure, yet he couldn't figure out why he wasn't running in the opposite direction, following those two bank tellers. He pushed this enigma to the back of his mind, zipped up the holdall, slung it over his shoulder and ventured further into the building in search of Nelson.

  It didn't take him long to find the old man, as he was in the immediate corridor, flattened against the wall. Nelson was not alone either. Another suited man crouched at Nelson's feet. The mid-twenty blond individual didn't even look up when he stopped in front of the two. Andrew guessed he was too busy staring at the buff carpet and shaking to notice that the man holding a gun had been joined by another gun-wielding masked man. It then dawned on him that Nelson no longer wore his balaclava. What the hell was he playing at?

  Before Andrew could get a single word out, his companion gestured not to make a noise. He snapped his arm forward, curled his fingers around Andrew's left tit and pushed him against the same wall, then pointed towards the open doorway, directly opposite Nelson and his new friend.

  His annoyance at discovering that one of the crew had shown his face melted away when he saw what was inside that other room. He lifted the shotgun, only for Nelson to frantically shake his head.

  “There's more than one in there,” he hissed.

  Andrew had absolutely no idea what was inside that other room, only that whatever it was, the damn thing was big. A dog maybe, or even a pig? He slapped Nelson's hand off him and inched closer towards the older man, trying to make as little noise as possible. Andrew trusted Nelson's advice. He was also aware that of all the years he had known the man, he had never shown the slightest hint of fear. Until now, that is. Nelson was clearly scared of whatever lay in that other room. He might not be shaking as much as Jelly Boy down there but it was definitely there.

  “More than one what, Nelson?” he replied.

  Jelly Boy began to sob before his companion had chance to respond. “Oh, God. They are nightmares. Fucking nightmares!” He stared straight at Andrew. “You've got to help me. Get me out of here!”

  Jelly Boy's voice had risen in volume with each word spoken. By the time he reached the end of the sentence, the damn fool was fair shouting and no amount of kicking from Nelson could shut him up.

  In the end, Nelson didn't have to describe Jelly Boy's nightmares as one of them pushed its way through the opening. Andrew's mind had some trouble with actually believing his eyes. “You have got to be fucking shitting me,” he muttered. This had to be somebody's idea of a joke. Since when did beetles ever grow to the size of a small pony? That notion soon vanished when he spotted its curved fangs, both already thick with blood.

  Andrew knew he had found the architect of the carnage he had seen in that other room. Nelson threw himself in front of Jelly Boy and fired off two shots. The reports in the confined space almost blew out his ears but it did nothing to the huge beetle. Its shell must be too thick for the bullets to penetrate.

  “Do something!” screamed the man.

  Andrew dropped to his knees, slammed the stock into his shoulder, aimed the weapon at the monster's underside and fired. The blast literally tore off the back of the creature, covering the walls, ceiling and the two other men with sloppy black gore and bits of carapace.

  “Don't look so fucking happy with yourself, man.” Nelson wiped several lumps of gore off his face, reached over the insect corpse and pulled Andrew to his feet. “There's another two in that room!”

  Jelly Boy scarpered and Nelson chased after him. “Where the fuck are you going?” Andrew ran after the pair of them, acutely aware that they were moving further away from their car. He also knew that the old man wasn't wrong about the dead thing not being alone. Andrew glanced behind him. Two more giant beetle creatures were fighting amongst themselves. Andrew guessed that the winner got to eat their dead friend.

/>   He swung the gun around just in case those huge things decided they preferred human meat over the flesh of their own kind.

  Nelson paused beside another open door then returned to Andrew's position. “Come on. Stop fucking dawdling. We have to shift our arses!”

  He was about to bollock the idiot for running in the wrong direction but Nelson had already left him. “Just typical.” Andrew turned around and saw the victor was indeed tucking into the dead beetle. The thing had managed to flip the corpse onto its back. It buried its head deep into the ruined underbelly while four of its six legs attempted to stop the corpse from rocking as it fed.

  That monster was not concerned with feasting on its dead buddy to give a shit about Andrew but that sure as fuck didn't apply to the loser. It hadn't fared well in the battle, losing two legs along with a fracture running down one side of its smooth brown shell but, even injured, the thing craved food! It wasn't that much of an idiot to tackle the other beetle. Then again, why should it when other tastier morsels were within distance? It squeezed past the thing that had hurt it, scuttling a little faster when the victor's head lifted from under the syrupy yellow mess but once the loser had crossed the threshold, the victor once more plunged its head back into the corpse.

  Andrew backed away, keeping the shotgun trained at the thing’s head. He only had one cartridge left in the chamber and knew that if that shot did little damage then he might as well kiss his arse goodbye. Not that he thought he'd have time to kiss it, those things were fast!

  “I think I've found us a way out.”

  Thank Christ for that, Nelson had come back. The old man stood beside him. He trained his pistol at the advancing beetle while he held the bank clerk's neck with the other. Fresh blood streamed down the side of his face, bubbling out from a long cut above the man's eye.

  Nelson noticed his gaze. “He shouldn't have run away.”

  Andrew shrugged. The old man had a point. “You found an escape route?”

  “Yeah, Damien here was kind enough to point out an employee's entrance which leads into the market.”