Living Death

by Graham Masterton

  They continued to drive across the wide green upland and there was nothing in sight except for a few distant farmhouses and some hazy purple hills. A few kilometres further on, however, they came to Grange. On the opposite side of the road there was a single-storey shop and post office. Behind it stood a small grey limestone church, Our Lady of the Assumption, with a graveyard populated by white marble angels and a pensive-looking figure of the Virgin Mary, as if she had forgotten where she had left the baby Jesus.

  Garret pulled the ambulance up to the single petrol pump outside the store, while the grey-haired man parked close behind him and went into the store to buy himself some cigarettes. A thin chilly wind was blowing, which made the grass by the roadside sizzle softly, but apart from the low groaning of the petrol pump and the cars and trucks which went whizzing past in both directions, there was no other sound out here at all.

  ‘Right, boy, let’s get on,’ said the grey-haired man, standing outside the store and lighting a cigarette. ‘I’d like to be in Waterford in time for something to eat. They serve up a deadly steak and onion rings at McLeary’s.’

  Milo was counting out the cash to pay for the petrol. From the other side of the ambulance Garret called out, ‘Grainne says could you buy her one of them Tayto chocolate bars with the cheese-and-onion crisps in it?’

  ‘Mother of God, have you ever tasted one of them? It’s like being sick, backwards.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, and a bottle of Tanora, too.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  When Milo had paid and given Grainne her chocolate bar and her drink, they climbed back into their vehicles and started up their engines again. Garret waited for a huge timber lorry to pass, heading west, and then he pulled out sharply across the road. What he failed to see was that a silvery-blue Subaru sports car was speeding up behind him at over 80 kph, and its driver had to brake so hard to stop it from rear-ending the ambulance that there was a shrill scream of rubber, like a Wagnerian chorus, and clouds of black smoke poured out from its tyres.

  The Subaru driver blasted his horn, and then he swerved out to overtake the ambulance and went speeding off.

  Garret hesitated for a few seconds, and then carried on driving. The grey-haired man pulled out after him, twisting around in his seat to make sure that no other vehicles were approaching from behind him.

  Milo phoned him and said, ‘Holy Saint Joseph, did you see that? I don’t know what speed he was doing, that feller, but I reckon that all of us would have needed this fecking ambulance if he’d hit us, like, do you know what I mean? What a fecking nutjob!’

  ‘Forget it,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘We don’t want any trouble at all on this run, and especially not some road traffic accident.’

  ‘Sure, but what a fecking header!’

  They had driven only another kilometre when the ambulance suddenly slowed down and came to a stop. Garret switched on its hazard lights, and the grey-haired man could see that he had opened his door and was climbing out on to the road. He drew his car to a stop and switched on his own hazard lights.

  As he got out of the driver’s seat, Milo rang again.

  ‘It’s that same fecking nutjob. He’s parked himself right in front of us, like. I mean, what the feck’s he playing at?’

  The grey-haired man quietly closed his car door and walked with a measured pace to the front of the ambulance, buttoning up his jacket as he did so. He saw that the driver of the silvery-blue Subaru had stopped right in the middle of the eastbound lane, positioning his car at an angle so it would be even more difficult for the ambulance to get past him. Several cars sped past in the opposite direction, so that the grey-haired man’s lanky fringe flapped up with every one that went past.

  The Subaru’s driver was still sitting behind the wheel. Garret was standing beside the driver’s door, but as the grey-haired man came up to him, all he could do was shrug.

  ‘What’s the form, Gar?’

  ‘I’ve told him we have two fierce sick people on board and I have to rush them to a hospital.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said if that’s the way I drive I shouldn’t be driving nobody nowhere.’

  ‘And what did you say to that?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. I’m more than minded to smash his fecking window, like, but you told us not to stir the shit so I’m keeping my bake shut and my ball-pein hammer to myself.’

  ‘Go back to the ambulance, Gar,’ said the grey-haired man, quietly, half-closing his eyes in the manner of a man used to speaking with authority.

  Garret hesitated for a moment, and then walked back to the ambulance and climbed up into the driver’s seat. The grey-haired man could see that the Subaru driver was watching him out of the corner of his eye, but he stayed in his seat, his lower lip sticking out in a stubborn pout. He was bulky and broad-shouldered, with his hair close-shaved, and although he was wearing a khaki windcheater, a tattooed dragon’s claw was visible at the side of his neck, just underneath his right ear.

  The grey-haired man tapped sharply on the driver’s window with his heavy signet ring.

  ‘Open up there, will you, sham? I’d like a word.’

  The driver ignored him, but grasped his steering-wheel tightly in both hands, clearly enraged by the grey-haired man tapping on his window so hard.

  ‘I said open up there. There’s something I need to discuss with you. Besides which, you’re blocking up the whole N25. The guards will be here in a couple of minutes, boy, and you’ll be hauled in for obstruction.’

  Still the driver refused to acknowledge him. The grey-haired man waited for a few seconds, and then stood up straight and turned around, as if he were giving up his attempts to talk to the driver and intended to walk away and let him sit there and sulk for as long as he liked. As he turned, though, he swung his right leg forward and then kicked behind him like a horse, so hard that there was a loud bang and the side of the Subaru was dented with a crescent shape.

  He turned back and kicked the car again, with his toecap, and this time the driver wrenched open his door and came rearing out of his seat with his fist raised and his eyes piggy with rage.

  ‘What in the name of feck do you think you’re doing? Look at me fecking car you fecking lunatic! Come here and I’ll beat the mask off ya! Come here! Look what you’ve done! Look at them dings! That’s going to cost me a fecking fortune to get that fixed!’

  The grey-haired man took three or four steps back. Even out here with the wind blowing across the road he could smell that the driver reeked of drink.

  ‘I’ll tell you what you’d best be doing,’ he said, raising his right hand with his palm held outwards, like a priest giving a benediction. ‘You’d best be getting back in that yoke of yours and making tracks, like, as fast as you can, and forget this ever happened.’

  ‘Come here to me?’ the driver screamed at him. ‘Come here to me? Look what you’ve done to me fecking car!’

  He took three shambling steps nearer. He was at least four inches taller than the grey-haired man, and probably weighed half as much again. Underneath his khaki windcheater he was wearing a faded maroon T-shirt which left his pale hairy belly hanging out, and a pair of light green tracksuit pants, with a damp patch on them.

  ‘I’m telling you, sham, the best thing you can do is get the hell out of here,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘Better still, find yourself a layby and conk out for an hour or two. You’re totally wrecked.’

  ‘Oh, and I suppose conking out is going to fix these fecking dings in my door, is it?’ slurred the driver. ‘You fecking gobdaw.’

  He staggered forward another two steps, with both fists raised. ‘Come on,’ he challenged the grey-haired man. ‘I’ll box the fecking head off ya.’

  Milo and Garret were watching this confrontation from the front seats of the ambulance. Garret started to open his door again, as if he were going to get out and give the grey-haired man some support, but Milo said something and he closed it.

 
Although the driver was looming over him now, and was easily close enough to hit him, the grey-haired man held his ground. He stared up into the driver’s bloodshot eyes with a strange detachment, as if he were thinking about some other encounter altogether, with somebody else altogether, long ago.

  The driver was confused for a few seconds, and swayed, and almost lost his balance.

  ‘You fecking – sh—’ he began, and he failed to see the grey-haired man reach into his jacket and slide out a knife. It was double-edged, and pointed, and its blade was about thirteen centimetres long. Without any hesitation, the grey-haired man positioned it between the driver’s thighs and jabbed it upward, directly into the damp patch on his tracksuit pants.

  The driver yelped, and hopped, and reached down between his legs, because he didn’t understand at first what was happening to him. But the grey-haired man gripped the driver’s shoulder in his left hand, to give himself more leverage, and rammed the knife right up into the driver’s scrotum, between his testicles, and higher up still, piercing his perineal membrane and cutting into the suspensory ligament that supported his penis.

  ‘Jesus! Holy Jesus!’ screamed the driver. He tried to pull himself away, but the grey-haired man kept his left hand clamped on his shoulder, and forced his knife in right up to the hilt.

  ‘I told you to get out of here, didn’t I, you big mullocker?’ he said, between teeth that were clenched with effort. ‘I told you to go and sleep it off. But no, not you. You had to be fucky the ninth.’

  The driver could only stare back at him and shudder. He couldn’t fall backwards or sideways or twist himself free because the knife was buried too deeply between his legs. Not only that, he couldn’t really understand what was happening to him, because he was drunk, and his entire body was in a quivering state of shock. Five or six cars passed them by, heading west, and almost as many overtook them, heading east, but none of their occupants would have realised why these two men were standing close together, face to face. One of the men had his hand on the other man’s shoulder, and they looked as if they were doing nothing more than having a friendly conversation.

  ‘Please,’ said the driver, at last. His eyes were closed now and there were two runnels of clear snot dripping from his nose.

  ‘Please, what?’ asked the grey-haired man.

  ‘Please, will you take it out of me. Please.’

  The grey-haired man said nothing for a while, but the driver was beginning to sag now, and so he was supporting almost all of his body-weight with the knife between his legs. The damp patch on his tracksuit pants had been overwhelmed by a widening patch of blood, and the grey-haired man could feel warm blood dripping from his fingers.

  ‘If that’s what you want, sham,’ he said. ‘I thought you might have been enjoying it, like.’

  Before he withdrew the knife, though, he twisted the handle around and around, three times, so that the double-sided blade cut with a soft but audible crunching through muscle and membrane and spongy erectile tissue. Blood began to gush out more copiously now, and the grey-haired man’s right hand was smothered in it. He tugged out the knife and gave the driver a hard push backward. The driver fell heavily against the side of his car and then dropped on to the road, knocking the back of his head against the tarmac.

  The grey-haired man took out a crumpled green handkerchief and wiped his hand and his knife-blade. He looked around, his eyes narrowed, but there were no cars in sight in either direction. Then he bent over, picked up the driver’s left arm, and yanked off his gold-plated Rotary wristwatch. In the front pockets of his windcheater he found his brown leather wallet and his mobile phone, and he took them both.

  The driver’s eyes flickered open for a moment, and he muttered something like, ‘Moira?’ but then he lapsed back into unconsciousness.

  The grey-haired man walked back to the ambulance. Garret put down his window and whistled and said, ‘Feck me pink you sorted him all right!’

  ‘His own fault. He shouldn’t have been acting the flute.’

  ‘What’s the plan now?’

  ‘We keep on going,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘I’ve hobbled his watch and his phone and his wallet so the shades will assume that he was mugged by knackers, most likely, and I doubt he’ll be making any sense at all, even if he can remember what happened. What’s he going to tell them, like? “I was langers and this ambulance pissed me off so I parked myself dead in the middle of the N25 to stop it?” I’m sure he will... more-e-ya!’

  Milo lifted himself up in his seat so that he could get a better look at the driver lying in the road. ‘You haven’t, like, you know, done for him, like?’

  ‘No, I expect he’ll recover all right, although I don’t think he’ll be pleasing the ladies so much any more. Come on, let’s hit the bricks before anybody sees him there and thinks to ask themselves why there’s an ambulance here but no paramedics doing nothing to help him.’

  The grey-haired man returned to his car. The ambulance drove away and he followed it, leaving the Subaru and its driver behind them. He glanced in his rear-view mirror to make sure that there were no other vehicles approaching from the west, but once he was satisfied that this stretch of the N25 was otherwise deserted, he didn’t look again.

  *

  Less than five minutes later, the Subaru driver opened his eyes again. His head was pounding with every beat of his heart and his groin was on fire, as if somebody had maliciously tipped a shovelful of red-hot coals into his pants. He was in so much agony that he burst into tears, and let out a thin self-pitying whine. He lifted his head to try and work out where he was, but all he could see was an empty grey sky, and a few stunted trees, waving and rustling in the wind. He didn’t even realise that he was lying in the middle of the road.

  ‘Oh Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus,’ he whispered. He could feel that he was wet between his legs but he didn’t want to put his hand down there to find out why because the burning was too painful. He had never known that anything could hurt so much. He took several quivering breaths, and then he lifted his head again and tried to roll himself over on to his side. He managed it, but when his thighs pressed together he shrieked like a horrified woman.

  He lay there for a while, panting. He realised now that he was lying with his cheek against gritty grey asphalt, and he could see grass and weeds on the opposite verge, and a telegraph pole. The pain was so great that his thoughts kept jumbling up. He needed help. He remembered the ambulance. That fecking ambulance that had pulled right out in front of him and he’d nearly rammed into. But it was still an ambulance. Surely an ambulance crew wasn’t going to leave him lying here with his groin on fire like this.

  ‘Help,’ he said. Then, a little louder, ‘Help me, somebody, please, in the name of Jesus!’

  Nobody answered. The road remained empty and silent, although he thought that he could hear traffic far, far away. He listened harder. Maybe it wasn’t traffic at all. It could be nothing but the wind. Maybe he wasn’t lying in the road at all, but floating on the sea. Maybe a witch had turned the water into asphalt, like the legend of Deirdre that his Ma used to read him.

  He decided that he had to get up, or he would die. He couldn’t lie here any longer. It was already cold, and it would be growing dark very soon, and he would be freezing as well as burning.

  Whimpering, he rolled himself over on to his stomach, and then he managed to push himself up on to his knees. He tried three or four times to lift his left leg, but his crotch was too painful and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to stand up and walk. He would have to drag himself over to the side of the road. Once he had managed that, though, he could use the telegraph pole to heave himself on to his feet, and he could stand there and wave to any passing vehicles for help.

  He started to crawl on his hands and knees. Where was Ma? Why wasn’t she here to pick him up and take him upstairs to bed? But then he remembered standing in church with his mother’s coffin right in front of him and thinking how tiny it was. It was like a
child’s coffin. How could that be his mother in that tiny coffin, his dearest Ma, the same mother who used to carry him upstairs to bed?

  ‘Come on, Martin, boy, you can make it,’ he told himself, under his breath. Two long strings of transparent snot were swinging from his nostrils as he crawled, and he stopped to wipe them on his sleeve.

  When he did so, he heard a soft, deep rumbling sound, like approaching thunder, and the wind seemed to be rising in a sibilant whistle.

  Oh dear God, please don’t let it start raining on me, not on top of everything else, he thought, as the thunder came closer. I’m cold, I’m burning, I couldn’t stand to be wringing wet as well.

  If he had turned his head to the left, he would have realised that a Paddy’s Whiskey truck was speeding towards him around the long left-hand curve towards Grange. As it did so, its driver’s attention was caught by the stationary Subaru on the opposite side of the road, with its hazard lights flashing. What the driver didn’t see was the man kneeling right in front of him, as if he were a humble penitent praying to Saint John Licci, the patron saint of road accident victims.

  There was a deep, pillowy thump, and for a split second the man was thrown up against the truck driver’s windscreen, his eyes bulging, his mouth stretched open, his arms spread wide. The truck driver stamped on his brake pedal and the man went cartwheeling down the road in front of him, like a circus acrobat. He flew for more than fifty metres before he flopped on to his back, his arms and legs spread wide, but even so the truck’s front wheels came to a shuddering halt less than half a metre away from his head.

  The truck driver climbed down from his cab, so shocked that he lost his footing and stumbled. He stared down at the man lying in front of his truck, and saw that his tracksuit pants were soaked almost black with blood. Not only that, his head was skewed sideways at an impossible angle, as if he were trying to look over his shoulder at the road surface underneath him.

  The truck driver took out his iPhone and shakily prodded out 112.

  ‘Emergency. Which service?’ asked the call-taker. All the truck driver could manage to croak out was, ‘Ambulance.’