by RR Haywood
She winces, pressing closer into Paco’s back. Everyone is listening. They’re asking her questions. She can’t handle it but the question he asked is important. ‘I don’t know…they kept coming all night.’
‘Hmmm, difficult to assess,’ Reginald says. ‘But if you had to put a number?’
She thinks back to night. A series of memories that flash through her mind.
‘Over fifty…’ she says, remembering the number of shotgun shells in the box she took from the house they found. Instant grief hits. One of the children died at that house. Shot by the man inside who panicked when he saw Paco. ‘I had fifty shotgun things…’
‘Cartridges?’ Howie asks in surprise. ‘You had fifty? You shot fifty of them?’
‘None of those at the hedge were shot,’ Dave says.
‘How many were there?’ Howie asks.
‘Thirty nine.’
‘Thirty nine! Fuck me…you killed thirty nine with just two of you? How many is that? Er…fifty and thirty nine?’
‘Seriously?’ Marcy asks.
‘Eighty nine,’ Reginald says, still thinking hard. ‘Eighty nine plus fifty two here…’
‘Hundred and forty one,’ Maddox says.
‘Clever cunt…’
‘Cookey,’ Paula says, her tone warning.
‘One hundred and forty one,’ Reginald muses. ‘One hundred and forty one within twenty miles of the fort. Indeed. Yes.’ He walks off towards the interior door, thinking hard at what he read last night, at seeing Paco and Heather and now hearing one hundred and forty one were killed so close to the fort.
‘He does that,’ Marcy tells Heather. ‘He’s very intelligent though…like a genius or something.’
‘I am a genius not a something,’ Reginald mutters, walking into the hallway.
‘Coffee, my dear?’
‘Coffee? Oh gosh no…do you have Peppermint tea?’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Paula says, huffing as everyone apart from her, Maddox, Paco and Heather make a beeline for the door at hearing their favourite word. ‘Heather, come on…we’ll get you cleaned up.’
‘We can do it ourselves.’
‘Okay,’ Paula says, thinking she would love a coffee too. ‘Er…Howie? Ask them where the bathroom is and if they’ve got spare clothes for…’
‘They’ve got coffee,’ Howie shouts.
‘Yes I heard, ask them where the bathroom is and if they’ve got…’
‘Coffee,’ Howie shouts from the hallway.
‘I know where the bathroom is,’ Maddox says, seeing an opportunity. ‘I’ll take them…’
‘Nah,’ Paula says, smiling at him. ‘Where is it?’
‘I can take them.’
‘So can I. Where is it?’
‘I said I can…’
‘Now, Maddox.’
‘Upstairs. First on the right.’
‘Thank you, earn it, Maddox. It tastes better…Paco? Heather? Come with me.’
Heather guides Paco through, her hand on the small of his back. He goes forward at her touch. Understanding in his eyes at Paula nodding for them to follow her. As they reach the door Heather glances back expecting to see Maddox staring at her but he stands alone staring down at the floor instead.
‘What the…’ Paula snorts laughter at the sight of Clarence holding a fine china saucer while trying to get his finger through the handle of the matching fine china cup. ‘You alright there?’
‘Handles a bit small,’ he whispers like a bear would whisper, which isn’t whispering but more like a dull roar.
‘Fingers a bit fat more like,’ she chuckles.
‘My fingers aren’t fat,’ he says, ditching the idea of pushing his finger through to simply grab the cup and lift it to his mouth. She laughs again, the sight is ridiculous. The man is so big the cup looks like a toy.
‘Nice coffee though,’ Howie says, holding his saucer in one hand while lifting his cup with the other.
‘Another one?’ The old woman says, shoving a cup and saucer at Paula, ‘coffee, my dear?’
Paula isn’t given any choice but manages to grab the saucer before the lady turns to rush off back to the table set in the hallway now filled with more matching cups and saucers.
‘Very nice coffee,’ Clarence says, sipping delicately from his floral cup.
‘You’re a bloody bear,’ Paula laughs, still watching him.
‘I am not,’ he says with mock stiffness.
‘Coffee, my dear?’ The old woman asks, shoving a cup and saucer at Paco who stares down at her then at the cup and saucer, making no attempt to take it.
‘Coffee?’ She asks, prodding him with it while paying no heed to the blood on his body or the red eyes watching her. ‘Do you want coffee? Coffee? Coffee? Do you want coffee?’ She chirrups, stuck in a loop of dazed shock that sets Cookey off, which in turn makes Charlie chuckle and everyone else look over. ‘Coffee? Do you want coffee?’ She prods the edge of the saucer into his hand again before a thought occurs to her. ‘Do. You. Want. Coffee?’ She asks, speaking in the loud clear voice used to address Johnny Foreigner. ‘Coffee? Coffee? Do. You. Want. Coffee?’
Blowers snorts. Nick starts smiling. Mo fights the grin. Howie watches with his cup pressed to his lips.
‘Coffee? Take it, dear…take the coffee…do you want it? Do you want coffee?’
Howie starts going. Marcy glares at him but the corners of her mouth twitch as she fights the laugh.
‘I say,’ the old woman huffs. ‘Is he a spastic?’
Cookey sprays his coffee over Nick. Howie spurts his on his boots. Clarence chokes. Marcy coughs hers out.
‘Mother!’ A voice calls out in horror from a woman standing by the table loaded with cups. ‘We don’t say that word now…’
‘No? Oh dear…’ the old woman says, still pushing the cup and saucer at Paco. ‘Are. You. Retarded?’
Cookey’s gone. It’s too much. He turns round in a circle bent forward with coffee coming out his nose. Charlie sets off at the sight of him, ducking out the house to stifle her laugh. Blinky and Mo follow suit.
‘Or that!’ The woman at the table shouts. ‘I am sorry…I am so sorry,’ she rushes over, flummoxed and red in the face. ‘Mother…you are so embarrassing…’
‘Well I don’t know what I can say these days.’
‘You can’t say spastic or…’
Cookey goes down. Nick rests his head on the wall, tears rolling down his face. Howie turns into Marcy, burying his head in her hair to hide his laughing. Clarence turns away, his whole body shaking.
‘Stop it,’ the other woman whispers angrily, ‘you’re making it worse…ask his carer if he wants coffee…’
‘Carer…’ Cookey blurts as Blowers bends while laughing to help him up.
‘I’m not his carer,’ Heather says from behind Paco. Unable to stop the smile spreading across her face at the sound of everyone else laughing. She snorts a laugh and turns to see Maddox who suddenly smiles as though he gets the joke.
‘Can he have coffee, dear?’ The old woman asks, leaning round Paco to peer at Heather. ‘Coffee? Can he have coffee? Does he want coffee?’
‘Stop,’ Cookey pleads. ‘Oh fuck…’
‘Outside,’ Blowers gasps, helping him to the door. ‘Nick…go outs…go outs…’
‘Does he want coffee? Coffee?’ She chirrups again, now ramming the spilling coffee into his side.
‘Oh god,’ Nick gasps.
‘Coffee? Coffee?’
‘Out,’ Paula says, laughing as hard but trying to hide it.
‘I’ll take it,’ Heather says, reaching out to take the now half-empty cup and coffee filled saucer. The old woman beams a smile of false teeth and glazed eyes before scurrying off to the table.
‘Coffee?’ Heather asks, handing the cup out to Maddox and smiling at hearing everyone set off again.
‘Thanks,’ Maddox says, taking the cup and offering a smile while still wondering what the hell is meant to be happening.
Wit
h everyone else now occupied, Heather guides Paco to the stairs and starts going up while glancing back to see Marcy and Paula pushing and dragging the rest to the front door. It shouldn’t be funny. She shouldn’t laugh but laughing is contagious. Smiling is contagious and she goes up chuckling and shaking her head.
First door on the right. The bathroom. She goes in with Paco to a white bathroom bathed in gorgeous sunlight from the unbarred windows on the first floor. It’s so clean, gleaming even. The taps, the sink, the bath. Even the fluffy white towels are white and fluffy. She looks at the state of Paco then down to her own still filthy state with a deep sigh.
She strips the remains of her clothes off, tugging the t shirt over her head to cast it aside, instantly forgetting to be careful. She chuckles again at the thing that happened downstairs and the old woman.
‘That was funny,’ she tells Paco who smiles because she is smiling. ‘Come on, strip…clothes off.’
Only a few days ago Paco wouldn’t respond to anything she asked but would stand and wait for her to do it for him. Not that he was actually waiting as that implied a level of understanding, and he didn’t understand anything. Now he does grasp the thing needed to be done and starts pulling his top off. From habit, and forgetting he can now do it himself, she moves to his belt and starts unbuckling it to undo his button and flies. His form is familiar to her now. She’s scrubbed him clean countless times and washed the shit from his arse too. She’s showered in front of him, gone to the toilet and shared pretty much the whole of their lives for nine solid days. They have kissed once. At the point of being trapped at the hedge when all hope was gone and she had to know, she needed to know before they died, what his love was. Was he a guard dog or a man?
He was a man and he kissed her like a man kisses a woman. He kissed her with passion and love that made her heart soar and wish for life more than any other time before.
‘Boots,’ she says, unlacing the first to tug it off. ‘What am I doing?’ she asks, staring up at him with a suspicious look. ‘You can bloody do it now…go on…’
Paco smiles but doesn’t move.
‘Paco,’ she says firmly, folding her arms. ‘You can undress yourself.’
Paco smiles but still doesn’t move.
She tuts but smiles at the expression in his eyes. ‘Right fine, come on then…’ she drops back down to tug his boots off and pull his filthy trousers round his ankles so he can step free. ‘I’m not doing your boxers,’ she tells him firmly. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m not. Paco, I said no. Really?’ she asks when he lifts his arms to hold them over his head as though showing he won’t do it himself. ‘You’re playing on this…you were talking last night. I heard you…what’s my name? Go on…what’s my name? Say my name and I’ll pull your boxers off for you.’
‘Ether…’
‘You shit,’ she says, laughing as she says it. ‘Right fine, come here then. You’ve slept with like seven thousand women you dirty sod…don’t think I’m falling for it. Right, have a wash then. Oh for love of…Paco, you can do it. I’ve seen you wash…’ She berates him while twisting the shower on over the bath. Cold water jets out, thundering down into the huge cast iron tub. ‘You get in first,’ she says, nodding at him to get in. He goes willingly, stepping over the edge to get under the flow without a flicker of reaction at the cold water hitting his body. He turns as he goes to keep Heather in sight, his eyes always watching her, tracking her movements as he listens to her voice. She strips off, wincing at the smell of her own body and the filthy state of her bra and knickers. Everything is ruined. The last two days have been worse than hell and the emotions of what they had to do are too recent, too fresh and too strong to deal with. Instead she sighs, huffs and chats on then notices Paco standing unmoving under the flow. She stops to raise an eyebrow at him, folds her arms and adopts an unamused expression. He looks back at her and to anyone else his expression would be devoid of emotion but she can read him now and knows exactly what he is doing.
She clambers in with a tut, grabs the bottle of shower gel from the side and tells him to turn round. ‘Oh you can do that alright,’ she says at the very second she realises this is the first time in her life she has ever showered with another human being. She is naked in a shower with Paco, who is also naked. Is it different now they’ve kissed? She muses on the subject while reaching to soap his back and starts using her hands to rub the gore and dirt away. She’d had relationships before, albeit exceptionally short ones and she isn’t a virgin. She’d had sex four times. All of them were awful experiences and she only did it on the belief that she should give the man sex or he’d find it somewhere else. She couldn’t stand anyone touching her, let alone a man. She couldn’t stand being looked at or spoken to and as she got older so those phobias got worse until she retreated from life to live like a shadow that planned everything to avoid being near someone else. Now she is naked in a shower with a famous movie actor who was a self-confessed sex addict and has probably slept with like nine hundred women. Funny how life goes.
‘Turn round,’ she soaps his face, smiling at him when he bends down so she can reach his head. The water runs pink and dark from the blood and dirt. Pooling round their feet to stain the once gleaming bath. She cleans his neck, moving gently to avoid damaging the injuries that have already healed so much since she met him. The skin is fusing back together so quickly. She can still see the outline of the puncture marks made by the dog but even they’re closing over far faster than normal. She realises, on once again musing over his injuries, that she now has a chance to try and find out why he is the way he is, and why she was bitten and didn’t turn. Those people said they were bitten too. They said they are immune, but then that man with the red medic bag and bow went to say something else but the others cut him off, and who was that small man with the glasses? Mr Howie said one of their team was trying to figure it out. That must be him. He didn’t have a gun but a bag that looked like it was filled with books.
She cleans his shoulders, arms and chest and down to his legs while trying to convince herself she should stay and find out what she can while also knowing she wants only to go and be away from everyone. Before they found the children, she and Paco simply walked every day and found somewhere to stay at night. Paco could deal with any infected that came near them and in turn she kept him fed and clean. Those days were special. Beautiful. She wants only that. To walk with him and find old barns to sleep in at night.
That isn’t right though. Paco is special. She’s seen how many he can kill, and with ease too. One of them said she and Paco killed thirty nine at the hedge and she knows most of those would have been by Paco. He was bitten, infected but something in him seems to be fighting it off while leaving him with immense strength and an ability to heal and seemingly not feel pain. Like he is part them and part human, or something else entirely. Did he pass something to her to make her immune? Why didn’t she turn then fight the infection like he did?
She freezes at his touch. So absorbed in her thoughts that she didn’t see him reaching forward to lay his hands on her shoulders. She blinks up at him and smiles. Paco would never hurt her. She knows that for fact. She feels his touch on her skin as he starts rubbing as though trying to clean her. An intense look of focus in his eyes. Her mouth opens in surprise that he can form the connection of what she just did for him and do it back to her.
‘Hands.’
He pulls away from her, opening his hands so she can pour shower gel into his palms. He stares for a second as though unsure what the gel is before reaching back out to start rubbing her shoulders again.
‘Do my back?’ She asks quietly, still stunned at him trying to clean her. She turns on the spot and steps back before glancing over her shoulder to watch him intently. He carries on rubbing but so gently, like he is afraid of hurting her. She smiles and faces forward, closing her eyes at the never before felt sensation of someone else washing her back. It feels divine. Better than divine. It’s amazing. He goes lower
as she eases back a touch to increase the pressure on his hands. ‘You won’t hurt me,’ she murmurs.
He washes her back. Paco Maguire washes her back. Another human being that is a man who is naked is washing her back and she doesn’t feel the urge to stab him in the face with a pen.
He goes lower, moving down her spine and out to the sides. Rubbing gently. She feels him step closer, reaching round to open his hands in front of her. She can feel his penis touching her. She swallows and exhales while spurting the gel into his hands. He steps back and carries on. His penis just touched her. She’s washed it before but that was different. This is bordering on being erotic.
His hands work steadily down to her bum cheeks. She swallows again and blinks, thinking that she will feel repulsed but it’s nice. My god it’s so nice. She lets the breath go and relaxes into it. Feeling his hands work down her thighs to her calves. A hand on her shoulder. She turns to face him. His hands open. She pours more gel. He reaches out and washes her face. She closes her eyes, feeling his fingers brush lightly over her skin then down to her neck. She’s seen him snap bones with his bare hands. She’s seen him throw big men like they were made of paper and those hands now move like silk down to her chest.
She swallows again at the first feel of his hands on her breasts. The borderline eroticism increases. He washes as gently as before. Rubbing to remove the dirt and moving down to her stomach. She licks her lips, breathing slightly harder. Her face flushes but her eyes remain closed. He washes her stomach, her hips and down over her groin to her legs once more. Again she lets the breath go, fighting the urge inside and the heat that seems to be building in her stomach. Not her stomach. Lower down. Down there. Oh my.
She opens her eyes when he stands up. He is finished. He smiles. She smiles back. A moment frozen in time until she spots his groin.
‘Paco!’
He blinks in surprise at her tone.
‘Put that away right now.’
He doesn’t know what he should put away.
‘Look at the bloody size of it…oh my god, Paco…you’ve got a bloody erection…’