Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood)

by Wendy Maddocks

  Into that scream, Katie poured everything she had left. All that pent-up anger, every drop of fear, every ounce of hate, every last scrap of fight. She prayed – still unsure who to – that it would be enough to kill him and knew it wouldn’t.

  They didn’t give me energy, give me life, she realised as she wailed longer and louder than she thought physically possible. There was so much power in that alien, animal sound that she had to wonder if it was really coming from her. They filled me with death. The possible consequences of that were too many to even think about right now but I don’t wanna die strobed through her head like a driving dance beat.

  A broken red line folded out into the night, but slowly, so slowly. Katie fixed her gaze on the crimson line inching towards her and knew she had roughly half a second to react. It felt like an eternity though. She carried on screaming – time had either slowed down to less than a crawl or some kind of magic was constantly filling her lungs with the air she needed. The mundane physics of time, the basic biology behind respiration, none of it mattered. It was all working and that was all she cared about. The man grinned down at her, face contorted with effort and hate. She remembered how that whip carving a crimson slash through the night had drawn is’ own bright red streak in her flesh. It made her scream harder, pouring out fire. Purple-black fire but fire nonetheless. Katie raised a hand and felt time try to re-assert itself. She was running dangerously low on fuel. Crying now, but she didn’t even realise it, focussing instead on the haunted look in the killers eyes and how he was fading. Angry as hell and looking utterly homicidal, he was starting to blur at the edges.

  Katie stopped screaming as a leather ribbon, jumping with red sparks, arc down and burnt an angry red line into her palm. It tingled, she could feel it, but there was o pain. Natural anaesthetic rushed down her arm and made her hand pleasantly numb. Where the whip broke the skin, it suddenly went limp and powerless. No matter how hard the man tried to shake the object back into lethal life, it was dead. Katie held onto it and, after an instant of searing white-hot pain, everywhere she touched lost power.

  Katie used it like a pulley rope between her and the man with hate in his eyes to pull herself up. She turned her face to the ground and saw through tear-fogged eyes splatters of blood on her running shoes. Just that one chance moment of seeing a boys lifeblood on her feet and she knew what to do. He was weak now. Well, so was she. However, the adrenaline was pumping, her brain was whirling but not really moving, the end of every nerve was frazzled – sensitive as God knew what. He stalked after her, throwing the whip away in frustration. It wouldn’t do any good now. Once, it held the fury of ages. No more. He didn’t need the whip to silence this little girl. His hands, these hands that had dealt a thousand blows and pulled a hundred triggers, were the only weapons he needed. Katie turned on her heel and ran. She started the rhythmic jog she used when she wanted to lose herself on a training run.

  It’s not fast enough. Put the speed on girl. Speed!

  The bad man stomped behind her, the rage audible in his step, reached out and clamped down on her shoulder. Katie bit hard on the instinct to scream out. The time for screaming was done. The life/death/whatever that had filled her up had all drained away. Just a strand or two was clinging to her skin now, just enough to keep the rain from making her job harder. Like it was going to make any difference in a few minutes. At least I‘ll die dry. Oh, Christ, I don’t wanna die.

  It’s not time for you to join us. Where was yet? They had to say yet! Order must be restored, child.

  If anyone wanted Katie to be a kid, it might help if they backed off with all this shit! Uh-oh, she’d not only thought that but she’d said it too. Which would probably give this man a bit more sick pleasure. Maybe he already knew he was terrorising a broken-inside girl. Maybe that made it more fun.

  In one fluid movement,, she gripped his hand, twisted under it and brought her other hand underneath, making a bizarre hand sandwich. If this didn’t work then she had just placed herself in the hands of a psychopath. He was fading, only a tiny bit, still solid enough to kill if he wanted to.

  “You won’t get the chance,” she promised him and searched out his angry blue eyes. Something close to confusion and terror tinged his face. Their gazes locked down. Katie concentrated and pulled together the remaining scraps of dark power, feeling as though she was scraping vital membranes and linings from her organs. She imagined it coalescing into an uncomfortable ball deep in her stomach and then forced it up through her chest, down both her arms and through her hands into him. There wasn’t much of the darkness left. But it was so concentrated it might just be enough. No, it would be enough.

  Of course it wasn’t. He stepped back, stumbled actually. Good sign? Bad sign? Did it mean anything? Purple-black wisps crept over the man and stopped sparking as Katie watched. The sparks throbbed, grew, multiplied until his face was barely visible inside a web of dead black energy. All semblance of life long gone.

  And then he faded.

  He vanished quickly, just like before when it had seemed like something was tearing him away from this world. Only this didn’t feel quite the same – not like he was being taken away, more like he was being taken back. Somehow, on some level so high Katie couldn’t even see it, she knew that was right.

  She stood there for a few long minutes after the bad man had disappeared, positive he would come back. She realised she still had his precious badge in her hand and put it in her pocket, bending over and putting her hands on her knees to draw in some shuddering breaths whilst willing her legs to hold her up. The rain was battering her poor body now, every inch of her being was crying out for rest, a mile of bandage and enough painkiller to down a horse. There was no time to worry about that now though. “Jack!”

  He was still lying facedown on the ground, his face turned ever so slightly to one side. Falling to the ground halfway over, Katie dragged herself to that side and smoothed his short sandy hair away from his face, not managing to shift the locks the rain had plastered to his face, her fingers too clumsy to pick them away. The thrown phone lay on the ground – too far away to reach without doing that impossible moving thing again – and she knew she should use it to call for the ambulance. If it still worked. As mobile phones weren’t generally waterproof beyond a quick splash in a puddle or accidental ride in the washing machine, it was a long shot.

  “No, Jack, you can’t do this to me.”

  Blood was soaking his t-shirt, so dark it was almost black. It wasn’t pumping out of him in dramatic, heart-stopping bursts. It wasn’t even leaking out of him now. It was just smothering his back, thick and gloopy. What did that mean? That he didn’t have enough blood left for it to ooze? “It’s okay. You’re safe now.” She repeated it over and over again but it made no difference. His chest didn’t start to rise and falll as her words willed him to breathe again. He didn’t roll over, give a weak smile and murmur her name, whatever the silver screen said. He was dad, she knew it in her heart but she had the stubborn disbelief of anyone caught in that first wave of grief. Katie put her hands on his back, not caring about the blood being splashed up her arms by the rain. By this time, Katie hardly felt the storm pounding her and making her rock on tired knees. She had filled a bad man with dark power and things had turned out okay. Perhaps the same could be done for Jack. She dug down deep and tried to grab hold of anything she had left and force it into Jack. Only thee was absolutely nothing left. She tried and she tried and then she cried and she cried as nothing worked.

  “Dina, help me!” she yelled. There was no answer. Dina was not there.

  Wait.

  … a way. You must find a way. There is always a way. You must find a way. There is always…

  She fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, slumped over her cowboy and listened to those words. The last few days had been a total screw up. And now someone was dead – maybe two people - tha
t she cared about were dead. It was all her fault. If you can hear me Jack, please know that I tried.

  And then there was nothing but two still bodies on a muddy patch of waste ground in the fading storm of their lives.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN