National Emergency

by Jobling, James

  “There!” Ethan screamed over the clatter of the crowd. “You see it?”

  Across the road was a small takeaway. The door leading into the eatery was open, a beaded flyscreen hanging over it. There was a small throng of robed men standing in front of the shop, illuminated in shades of bright blue from the neon bulbs in the window. Ethan caught a snatched glimpse of the shop’s name – DEEP PAN EXPRESS.

  Ethan wasn’t a fan of junk food. He had never been one to gorge on curries and pizzas at the end of a busy week. He didn’t like that dreaded bloated feeling the following morning or all that garbage barricading his arteries. But he did enjoy the occasional kebab and, whenever his appetite craved a Middle Eastern treat smothered with chilli sauce, it was always Deep Pan Express he placed an order with. He was even on first name terms with the proprietor – an arrow-thin Turk named Hassam.

  “Come on!” Ethan instructed.

  “What are you thinking?” Karris asked, following her husband’s gaze across to the takeaway.

  “Safety in numbers and all that,” he replied with a shrug. Even though he had only been out in the downpour for a couple of seconds, his hair was matted to his skull. “Hassam will let me use his phone to call the police.”

  “Do you think we’ll get through?”

  Ethan shrugged again. “We are reporting a murder.”

  They slalomed through the bedlam, stopping only so he could catch his breath or readjust his hold on his son. The Pickup was now completely submerged in the sea of hoods. It rolled over onto its side… the sound of the windshield shattering breaking Ethan’s heart.

  Keeping one eye on Karris, the other on the surrounding rabble, he stepped from road to kerb, and was just about to enter the kebab shop when a lout slurping from a can of Stella lager stepped in front of them. The youth was wearing a tracksuit with the hood up, a body-warmer, and a black bandanna concealing the lower part of his face. Like a victim of Medusa, the youth stood like a statue, eyes wide, blazing, blatantly high on destruction.

  Intentionally blocking Ethan’s and Karris’s path into the kebab house, the youth refused to move. Ethan tried sidestepping him, but the teen moved with him, dancing forlornly to a ballad of disarray.

  “Can I get past, mate?” Ethan asked. He tried keeping his voice steady and outgoing.

  The yob leered at him.

  Karris stepped up beside her husband, breathing as though she was under water.

  “What you sayin’, dawg?” the youth sneered.

  “We just want to get past,” Ethan answered, his voice wavering, bordering between sociable and pleading.

  “Is this your whore?” the ruffian asked. He said this, but it sounded more like diss. He pointed a gloved finger at Karris.

  “Hey! There’s no need for that!” Ethan reprimanded. “We’re just trying to get past. That’s all.”

  “Oh, sure, I’ll let you pass,” the lout sneered. “Once she shows me those big titties.”

  A seed of detestation bloomed inside of Ethan’s stomach. Palms absorbed fingernails and, from beside him, he could hear Karris breathing shakily.

  “Go to hell,” Ethan growled.

  “You’re already there, man.”

  “Please, just let us get past,” Karris begged.

  “Show me your tits and I will.”

  Ethan stepped in front of the youth, eyes wide, top lip quivering. The screams of his son galloped a relay around his brain. Rain pelted him in a drenching blanket.

  How dare this haughty little shit insult Karris like this!

  Sensing a confrontation simmering between the two men, desperate to avoid it, Karris stepped in front of her husband and lifted her top, displaying her heaving breasts in a red lace bra. Due to circumstances, her boobs had become clammy with sweat. The young kid reached out with gloved hands and squeezed her breasts roughly.

  The seed of detestation inside of Ethan’s stomach bloomed into a thorny rose of rage.

  The youth laughed and disappeared into the crowd.

  Karris shuddered and pulled her top down.

  “Come on,” Ethan hissed, looking at the wet ground. “Let’s go.”

  Together they stepped inside the takeaway.

  CHAPTER 13

  Deep Pan Express reeked of garlic.

  It always did.

  No matter the time or if the hour belonged to day or night, the place stunk permanently of garlic. So domineering was the smell, that even the staff – dressed in red T-shirts, red aprons, and red baseball caps – catering for famished office workers with a lunchtime rumble to sedate and lonely evening diners unable to face another microwave meal for one, even they - the sparkling gold teeth amongst cavities - reeked of garlic. The more overbearing aromas of grilled meat and burnt charcoal did little to camouflage its pungency. The front and back doors were propped open all year around, yet still the stench lingered.

  Ethan pushed the beads of the flyscreen apart, driving his family towards the takeaway, hauling the human road train inside. The expected reek assaulted his nostrils straightaway. To be honest, it was a welcome alternative to smoke and disruption. Soaking wet, Ethan nodded to the terrified-looking worker behind the counter, then turned to Hassam, who was emptying the register into a cloth moneybag.

  “Hassam,” Ethan panted, stepping in front of the refrigerated counter. “I need your help.” He was surprised to see the refrigerator barren of salad and condiments. Usually there were columns of lettuce, cabbage, and sweetcorn arranged neatly beside bottles of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise.

  Why should something so minor bother me?

  Ethan didn’t know. And he wasn’t prepared to waste any time trying to find out, either.

  Harold’s dead! Your mum’s a traumatised wreck! Karris just got fondled by a fifteen-year-old schoolboy while you stood there, watching! Get your fucking head together!

  “Ethan?” Hassam was clearly surprised to see the builder out on such a dangerous night. “What are you doing here?” The proprietor walked towards the counter, and Ethan noticed he had the moneybag in one hand and a carving knife in the other. The young employee made a sound like he was about to vomit.

  “I need help, Hassam.”

  “It’s not safe to be out on the streets.”

  “Don’t I know it? I need to use your phone. I have to call the police.”

  “The police? Are you okay?”

  “Please, I really need to use your phone.”

  “It’s not working. The lines are jammed.”

  Ethan traded apprehensive glances with Karris, then lifted the hatch leading behind the counter. There was usually a metal table here used to store pizza boxes and hamburger cartons. Tonight, though, it was home to a crowbar and a baseball bat.

  Like a butterfly’s flapping wings, Ethan’s irises fluttered from the grimy linoleum beneath his boots to the finger-smudged mirrored walls where a dog-eared leaflet informed him that the rock band Rainmaker were performing at the Playpen tomorrow night. He took it all in; coils of sticky fly-tape pinned to the ceiling, hundreds of bristly corpses glued there; the digital menu board mounted over the counter. He had been to the takeaway on many occasions over the years, but he had never seen it in such a bedraggled state.

  “What are we going to do, Ethan?” Karris asked. “If the phones aren’t working, then how do we report Harold’s murder?”

  Hassam looked up, eyes wide and unblinking.

  “Look, Hassam, my stepfather was murdered tonight by arseholes just like these,” Ethan said, crooking his thumb towards the door.

  A calamity of rubber-soled feet rebounding off concrete filled the takeaway and Ethan looked towards the open door in time to see an asteroid of juvenility roil past. A young lout poked his balaclava-clad head through the beaded curtain, hurling racist abuse, his bigoted friends making monkey noises, pounding the window.

  Ethan pulled Karris towards him, wrapping her up in his thick arms. Hassam shouted something in Turkish and a carton of brown slop thumped ag
ainst the window in response. Karris yelped and Ethan felt his heart lurch.

  “You idiots! You’re destroying your own city!” Hassam shouted. He slapped the top of the glass counter in frustration. “I am sorry about your loss, Ethan. Really, I am. My cousin Raif called earlier and said these cowards broke into his store and smashed it up. Can you believe that?”

  Ethan glanced nervously over his shoulder to make sure the yobs had gone. He opened his mouth to speak, but Hassam beat him to the punch.

  “They poured vodka over his pregnant wife. They said they were going to set her on fire! What kind of bastards do such a thing? She’s a pregnant woman!” Hassam’s face contorted with rage. He looked as though somebody was tattooing his heart.

  A flash of electric blue light fluttered into the takeaway. Ethan turned on his heels, hoping against hope to see a wave of armoured goliaths boring through the abusive crowd. But the thunderous belch of an air-horn literally extinguished his hopes of liberation. The fire engine was motionless - just standing in the middle of the rampaging horde - a seemingly endless supply of bricks bouncing off its side.

  Ethan pressed himself against the wall as something bounced off the window of the shop. His heart was pounding, lungs working overtime. All around the wedged fire engine, cars and wheelie bins burned. Yet the red protagonist refused to evict a single fire-fighter to combat the flames. Ethan poked his head through the beaded curtain and counted about fifteen burning cars in the wasteland.

  He stepped back from the doorway when he spotted a flock of youngsters marching towards the shop, shouting, screaming, threatening, making rude hand gestures. Ethan closed the door and sealed them inside, cursing when he realised there was no way of locking them out. He was about to ask for the key when one of the hooligans launched something against the window. Thankfully, the glass didn’t break. But the noise it made testified under oath that it wasn’t prepared to sustain such abuse.

  The looters managed to crank the driver’s door of the fire engine open, and they plucked the poor driver out like giblets, tossing him into the rioting crowd as though the name on the back of his flight-jacket read Reginald Denny.

  Mortified, Ethan watched the group punch and kick him beneath their rubber hooves. Another fire-fighter heroically leapt to his companion’s aid … but was unceremoniously floored by a metal pipe to the jaw. He crumpled to the ground, yellow hat rolling free.

  A barrage of clenched fists slapped against the window of Deep Pan Express. Ethan backed away, tripping over his own feet, landing on the filthy linoleum. The door handle started to turn, and Ethan forced himself to spring forward, scrambling on hands and knees, throwing his entire body against the PVC door. It slammed shut with a perforating bang.

  “Take Lincoln out back!” Ethan ordered. Gloved hands pounded the glass above his head. The left side of his face and body pressed against the door, but even then, he barely managed to keep the rabble out in the rain.

  “What about you?” Karris screamed as she moved behind the counter.

  “I’ll be fine!” he hoped. “Hassam, where’s the key?”

  Hassam was standing behind the counter, looking like a D-Day veteran returning to the Normandy beaches for the first time; eyes wide, hands clenched together, fingers entwined like star-struck lovers on a midsummer’s night. The hinge keeping his mouth closed released its final screw and his jaw dropped open. He glanced nervously towards the crowbar.

  Out in the pouring rain, the wrecking crew renewed their efforts to gain entry.

  “I need that key!”

  Karris raced past a line of industrial ovens and disappeared into the storeroom. She returned a second later, face flushed, hair crimped with perspiration. “There’s a backdoor!”

  Thank God for that! We’ll be able to take the backstreets to Dave’s flat!

  His entire body rattled as hands grabbed hold of him, shoving him forward. Instinctively, he pushed back, barging the partition painfully on groping fingers, fear topping up his reserves. It was no good, though. They were nearly inside.

  What the hell do they want? What the hell will they do?

  A young boy – about five years older than Lincoln – practically tunnelled his way beneath their legs and almost made it inside. Hassam and his employee jumped over the counter just in time, though, smashing the door closed. The thug screamed, caught like a trout in a net. He was squashed between the door and the jamb. A medley of gloved hands ceaselessly tried retrieving him.

  “Help me!” he pleaded. “Help me, please!”

  Hassam and his worker applied more pressure. Ethan looked down, a raindrop of guilt saturating him. The kid (and that’s what he was) was red-faced, breathing like a stuck pig, the door shoving deeper into his ribs and making him cry in agony. Hassam pulled a ring of keys from his trousers and pushed one into the lock, even though the door wasn’t completely closed.

  The air-horn mounted to the fire truck belched again.

  A flurry of lawbreakers stampeded from the opposite end of the high street, carrying trainers, jewellery, and whatever else they could, ploughing straight into the human roadblock outside of the kebab shop. The outburst of lawlessness had urged all colours and creeds to become embroiled in the anarchy. Ethan gritted his teeth and glanced over at his crying wife and son.

  “When I pull the door open I want you to drag him inside,” Ethan said to Hassam.

  The owner of the takeaway stared at his loyal customer as though he had just propositioned him for sex. “What?”

  “We don’t have a choice. We’re going to kill him if he stays stuck there for much longer.”

  “That’s his fucking problem!”

  “Think about it, yeah? He’s stuck between the door and the wall, right? That’s going to provide them with an advantage. They’ll get in.”

  “I don’t want him in my shop!”

  “Better one than fifty!”

  Ethan nodded, and they reluctantly pulled back the door a fraction, catching the horde by surprise. They pulled the youth—kicking, screaming, and spitting—into the shop before all three men charged the door closed. With trembling fingers, he turned the key. A loud click confirmed the door was secured.

  The lout climbed to his knees, dregs of adrenaline now being replaced by fear as he realised that he was trapped and outnumbered. Holding battered (possibly broken) ribs and with bloody saliva dribbling over his scraped chin, the youth nervously glanced around for a possible escape route. Ethan felt his stomach churn and his testicles lift when he watched the boy, still determined to be a man, despite the tears gluing his eyelids together and trickling down his flushed cheeks.

  The builder released a heavy breath and allowed his head to press against the cool glass of the door.

  “What… what do we do… now?” Hassam panted. He was bent at the hip, head down, breathing haggardly, hands resting on his knees. He looked and sounded as though he had just finished a global marathon.

  “I don’t know,” Ethan confessed breathlessly. “I suppose we wait for the police to show up. There’s nothing else we can do.”

  “Wait for the police to show up?” Hassam laughed sarcastically. “Have you not listened to a fucking thing I’ve said? There are no police!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No police!” Enraged wolves growl less. “Not anymore! They’ve been recalled to their stations!” Hassam slipped behind the counter and dusted himself down, mopping beads of sweat from his forehead with a grubby handkerchief and mumbling in Turkish. Ethan watched him yank the door of the cooler open and pull out a can of cola, closing the door with his stick-thin hip. “And what are we supposed to do with him?” He pointed towards the sniffing youth, but the question was directed at Ethan.

  Stepping behind the counter and accepting his son, Ethan kissed Lincoln’s head, reassuring the toddler that everything was going to be fine. He then stared Hassam directly in the eye. “I don’t know. I don’t have any answers.”

  “I told you that I d
idn’t want him in my shop!” Hassam said. He uncapped the cola with a loud tzzzz, cursing as fizzy soda ejaculated all over his hand.

  The roaring crowd surrounding the shop dispersed down the high street, apparently accepting the loss of one of their own and moving on to cause more disruption. The crowd clapped and cheered when they came across a petrified Turkish man on the verge of a heart attack, sprinting down the street with his nose streaming with blood. Strangely, he had no trousers on. His shirt was maroon with blood, ashen with smoke and, aside from that, he was naked. His shirttails flowed like a superhero’s cape as he ran down the street, one hand clearing a path through the mocking crowd, the other trying to cover his manhood. Ethan unlocked the door with the attentiveness of a crocodile tamer and stepped into the deluge. The crying yobbo with the bruised ribs moved forward - sensing possible freedom. Hassam pushed him back.

  “Hey!” Ethan bellowed. “Over here! Over here!” He waved his arms above his head as though he was landing a Boeing aeroplane.

  The scared-stiff Turk stopped running and, gasping for breath, looked towards Ethan. He reminded the builder of a frightened rabbit having just heard the first bloodcurdling bark of a hunting dog.

  “Hurry up!” Ethan shouted. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth to make his voice louder. “Hurry up before they come back!”

  Hassam shoved past Ethan and stepped into the downpour, dragging the youth by the scruff of his coat. Glaring at Ethan, he shoved the lad squarely between the shoulder blades and pushed him out into the storm. Ethan frowned, but the kid looked even more shocked. Quickly erecting his hood, the kid splashed his way towards his comrades and, after going no further than a couple of yards, he stopped, refilled to the brim with arrogance, and saluted the two men with his middle finger. The owner of Deep Pan Express looked over at the Turk and shouted something in their native tongue. The semi-naked man hesitated for no more than a split-second before replying with one word and disappearing down a frightfully black alley.