“You’re okay, honey-bear. You’re going to be just fine.”
Karris’s eyes locked sternly on her husband’s through the rear-view. Do something, her pale blue irises commanded. Do something and save your family!
Ethan slapped a palm to his forehead. “You’re a useless cunt! Think, damn it, think!”
A volcanic eruption of insanity exploded inside his brain. Cells woke up. Neurons clocked on. And before his suicidal idea could flourish fully, Ethan stomped onto the accelerator, boots slamming the pedal into the floor. His arms vibrated as the taxi bulleted down the path, almost spiralling out of control. He kept his head down, eyes squeezed closed, saw white stars dancing in front of his closed lids. He swerved at the last minute before crashing into the gates and steering away from the drenched human roadblock by hitting the grass verge.
“I hope you know what you’re doing!” Karris shouted.
“Me too!” Ethan bellowed. “Keep your head down!”
“Why?”
“Just do it, Karris!”
He heard a rustling from the back of the taxi and, glancing into the rear-view mirror, he noticed the backseat was completely empty. They must be on the floor, he thought, wondering if he had finally lost his mind. A hooded youth bounced off the bonnet, coiled over the roof, hit the ground hard. Ethan didn’t even bother to look back.
Thunder roared overhead. A flash of sheet lightning illuminated everything in crisp white, bathing the horde at the gates in subtle shades of purplish blue. And in that moment – that dreadful moment – he noticed that the eyes of the hooded legion had turned white. No irises. No colour. Just the same milky whiteness of a ninety-year-old cataract sufferer. Ethan didn’t know if what he saw was a trick of the lightning or if his overworked brain had imagined the whole thing. And he wouldn’t get chance to find out.
At that precise moment, the taxi sped uncontrollably up the grass verge - skidding, sliding, swerving. Miraculously, he somehow managed to avoid crashing into a towering fern. Screaming like the Mad Hatter, Ethan’s head bounced off the roof as the car temporarily turned into a plane and left the ground, wheels spinning. They sailed through the air, bonnet crashing into the iron railings and destroying them, taking a huge chunk of the wall with it, crashing onto the other side, axles jarring, wheels hitting the road but refusing to grip. His nose cracked painfully against the dashboard, but he quickly regained control of the taxi, refusing to allow it to tip over onto its side. As all four wheels touched the ground again, they roared off into the darkness of early morning.
CHAPTER 20
It would have been much quicker to drive straight through town and follow the old viaduct back to the moors, but Ethan had already lost one vehicle to the rioting hordes tonight and, with the threat of armed soldiers patrolling the streets, he wanted to keep a safe distance between his family and the hot zones. He found a well-thumbed A-to-Z map in the glove compartment and passed it through the money-slot to Dave who quickly got to work locating an escape route. Dave followed the thin red and blue lines with his finger, using the screen of his mobile for a weak light. Ethan floored the accelerator, forcing them away from the chaotic scene at the complex.
“Where are we, Dave?”
“I’m looking. Just give me a minute, yeah?”
“Hurry up!”
“Okay… okay, I’ve found us. Right, you need to keep going straight, then take the first left at the Golden Phoenix restaurant. From there you take Barton Bridge over to Grove Lane. We can take the country lanes from there back to your house.”
“What’s Grove Lane?”
“I don’t think you have to worry about rioting there.”
“Why?”
“It’s a private road. There’s a cul-de-sac where the healthy and wealthy live.”
“They sound like perfect victims to me.”
*
Twenty minutes later and (perhaps for the first time in history) the macadam covering Grove Lane was visited by the balding tyres of a black taxi.
Ethan allowed the vehicle to roll to a complete stop in the middle of the road. Keeping the engine running, he looked at the rows of detached town houses running along both sides of the smooth road, his envious eyes forgetting about the rioting in town and, momentarily, putting his mother’s and brother’s safety on the backburner as he took in the wonderful view that his one remaining headlight revealed. This leafy slice of desirability was what it was all about; the reason he got up each morning and worked his socks off. Just so one day – one fucking day – he could give Karris and Lincoln a taste of the good life. The cars parked on the marble driveways ranged from Mercedes to BMW – and even the occasional Lamborghini. Every front lawn was immaculately groomed.
This was what he had always wanted. This was what Karris had always deserved. He could see her now, collecting the morning paper, Bella tucked under her arm, waving at the neighbourhood paperboy wearing a backwards baseball cap, baggy cargo shorts, and a basketball vest over his bronzed body, paper sack hanging from his hip. Pedalling through wonderland, he smiled cheerily as Karris turned and almost collided with a buffed-up, better-looking, healthier version of himself, coffee flask under one arm (despite him hating its bitter taste), smiling gleaming white pearls as he strode towards a showroom BMW Pickup, complaining that he was going to be late with the aroma of a man whose bed made itself in the morning. This barrel-shaped dollop of land nestled amongst the crime and infidelity of the city was what he wanted – needed – to be a part of. Keeping you to yourself, refusing access to the meddling public and their untrained dogs and litter-dropping, chocolate-smothered children.
Jesus, you’re even beginning to think like them!
Ethan turned in his seat, one arm resting over the wheel, opened his mouth to speak when something crashed into the front passenger door with an almighty BANG!
Instinctively, Ethan jumped to one side and, as he did, the passenger window exploded. A shower of sharp daggers drenched him as nuggets of lethal shrapnel were flung all over, forcing him to raise his hands to protect his eyes. Karris cried out in either fear or pain (he didn’t know which) from the back. The trembling fingers on his left hand reached for the wheel as the fingers on his right jiggered the gear stick into first. Screeching tyres rolled the vehicle forward before another explosion smashed into the passenger door.
“Fucking hell!” Dave bellowed. “Some maniac’s shooting at us!”
Ethan squinted in the direction from which the two shots had apparently emanated, but he couldn’t see anything. He could make out the outline of a town house to his left, but there were no lights on and no indication that life existed behind those black windows.
“I don’t understand. Why would someone shoot at us!?” Karris blared.
“I don’t know! Dave, can you see anything?”
“No, but the shooter must be close.”
“Both bullets came from the left, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. Is the car okay?”
“It’s still drivable, if that’s what you mean. Stefan’s going to need a new window, though.”
“Good! Then get us out of here!”
Ethan sat upright, but as he reached for the steering wheel, he clearly heard a front door opening and heavy footfalls crunching gravel. His ears picked up the screech of a gate opening; squeaky hinges, pouring rain, the sound of a gun being broken in half and reloaded. Ethan stepped on the accelerator and sped down the road.
The explosive discharge gave chase.
The number plate was eradicated; the galloping cab was shoved further along the wet road. Ethan once again lost control of the taxi, his feet pressing down on the brake pedal despite his brain warning against it. The wheels locked, the tyres squealed, but the taxi kept going. The tyres were old, balder than Dave, and failed to grip the wet macadam. The car continued barrelling down the street with the speed of an express train and Ethan spun the wheel as though he was a DJ on an Ibiza beach during the summer festival.
“Look out!” Dave bellowed.
Ethan heard the warning, but did not see the black Range Rover until it was too late. With no other option, he applied the handbrake, praying to God that the car wouldn’t flip completely. Feet stomped the brake. Hands gripped the steering wheel. Seat belt chomped like a famished zombie into his neck - yet the black cab continued to sail disobediently across the road. Screeching, squealing, a shower of sparks rushed off its side as it clashed briefly with the Range Rover and bumped up onto the kerb, crashing bonnet-first into a brick wall.
Ethan’s head bounced off the leather steering wheel and he grimaced as his head slammed back against the headrest. A bulbous drop of blood pushed through the follicles of his eyebrow and slithered down the side of his face. The sound of pouring rain hammering the metal roof filled the taxi. It was all he could hear. It slalomed over the windscreen, making it impossible for him to see anything outside. Even if both headlights had been working, the curtain of rain wouldn’t reveal anything. All Ethan could see was the parked Range Rover and nothing more.
“Everybody okay?” he slurred.
“No,” Dave spluttered from the back. “I think I’ve shit myself.”
“If you have, it’ll be a fifty quid fine!”
From the back of the taxi, on hands and knees, forehead resting against the same rubber runner that thousands of feet had trampled on over the years and where hundreds of inebriated passengers had vomited and spoiled themselves, Dave Hardcastle rose. He wasn’t bleeding, he wasn’t injured. Karris climbed on the backseat, still clutching their terrified son in her arms. They looked frightened and startled, but they weren’t hurt. And that was the main thing. Dave flopped one of the spring seats down and crashed onto it. He massaged the base of his neck, wincing. “Why would somebody want to shoot at us? We weren’t causing any trouble.”
“Are you okay?”
“A little whiplash.”
“Told you to wear your seatbelt.” Fumbling fingers gripped the door handle and shoved it open. “Lincoln okay?”
“He’s fine, aren’t you, honey-bear?” Karris answered, stroking her son’s ruffled hair. “Don’t go outside, Ethan. The shooter might still be in the street.”
“I hope he is,” Ethan whispered through clenched teeth. Fingers tightened around the hammer. Boots swapped steering panel for saturated pavement. Ethan slipped drunkenly from the taxi, trembling hands reaching for the sturdiness of the pillar of a great British society – the red post-box – to stop him sprawling on his arse.
Thank God I didn’t smash into that!
Downstairs lights were burning in the house whose front wall he had just demolished, but nobody came out. Apparently, nobody cared about the commotion. A skip loaded with rubbish sat in the gated driveway. Ethan could see two padlocks fastened to a bulky chain. In such an upmarket area, the tamper-proof gates looked as out of place as an orange hat in Greenville. Ethan could see three or four silhouettes at the window, peeping around lace curtains. He raised his arms in the closest he could come to an apology.
“My Lord,” Dave whispered, keeping his voice low. “What the hell happened here?”
Ethan spun at the sound of his brother’s voice, ribs throbbing, head pounding, and saw Dave standing on the opposite side of the cab. He was slack-jawed, staring disbelievingly at a lamppost on the opposite side of the road.
How could it have come to this? How could they have allowed it to come to this?
Ethan was no virgin to modern society. Like everybody, he had heard the sickening stories about crime on train stations, and in pubs, trams, takeaways, buses, shopping malls, all committed by the youth of today. He had heard of organised gangs creating trouble, going to bullet-blasting war with other gangs; had heard of postcode battles, but none of it had ever infringed on his life. Trouble had never come knocking at his front door. And that’s the way he liked it. Society may very well be in a blender, but it was not his fault. And it shouldn’t be up to him to turn the blender off. Dennison Asaria had not been dead for twenty-four hours yet, but inside of Ethan’s fast-throbbing heart, something told him this whole thing was nothing to do with the teenager’s death anymore. And it probably never was. Daryl Duncan had been right – this was war.
The kid was dead, of course, no doubt about that. They had hung him from the lamppost, hands tied behind his back. His tongue protruded from bluish lips. The knot around his neck had been hastily tied, as if Jack Ketch had returned from the grave for one final execution. The sight of the youngster’s purple, bloated face made Ethan want to vomit. He must have only been around eleven or twelve years-old, and had probably never even been kissed by a girl. Yet somebody had murdered him and left his poor corpse hanging like a prized pig in the pouring rain. The kid had emptied his bowels as his final breath had been strangled from his screaming lungs.
“Hey, what’s that?” Dave said, pointing at the wringing wet boy.
Ethan took another step forward, now close enough to reach up and touch the trainers laced to the dead kid’s feet. There was a piece of sopping wet cardboard stapled to the front of the boy’s coat. The overhead glow from the lamp revealed the wordsNO LOOTERS hastily scribbled in marker pen.
“My Lord,” Dave breathed. “The poor boy must have been terrified.”
“You think our friend with the itchy trigger finger had anything to do with it?”
“He faced a fair trial,” a voice boomed from behind both men. “The jury found the defendant unanimously guilty.”
Ethan and Dave turned and saw an old man standing in the middle of the road. He was wearing a full-length riding coat buttoned over his tall frame, black Stetson proudly sitting atop pure silver hair, impeccably clean shaved. He appeared to be in either his late sixties or early seventies, but much more agile on his feet than their mother was. Ethan’s eyes dropped down to the double-barrel shotgun he was holding. Thunder bellowed from the black heavens.
“Found guilty, you say?” Ethan placed the hammer on show, displaying it to the gunman. “What was his punishment?”
“I believe you know the answer to your own question.”
“You killed him.”
“He was found guilty.”
“And what was his crime, exactly?”
“Murder in the first degree.”
Ethan looked at Dave. Dave looked at Ethan.
The muzzle of the shotgun was lowered slightly.
“Are you the shithead that tried shooting us?” Ethan roared over the windswept rain.
“Sorry about that.”
“Sorry about that? You’re sorry? Look, sunshine, you could have blown my fucking head off back then!”
“I saw you pull over in the road. I thought you might have been friends or relatives of him.” He poked the shotgun towards the dead boy. “I have been on watch most of the night. We had some trouble here earlier.”
“The whole country has had some form of trouble or another. My stepfather was beaten to death by these scumbags. I don’t know whether my mother, brother, and friend are still alive. But I’m not going about blowing people’s heads off!”
“Eth, calm down,” Dave warned.
“No, Dave, I won’t calm down. And neither should you. He could have killed you tonight. He could have killed all of us!”
“I am truly sorry that I opened fire. Really, I am. My name is Earl Topinka. I live right there across the road.” The old man took another step forward. The huge barrel of the shotgun was now trained on the soaking wet floor, but that did very little to stop Dave’s bowels from liquefying. Earl looked at the swaying corpse and scratched his smooth chin thoughtfully.
“What did he do?” Dave asked.
“My next-door neighbour, an old lady called Mavis Albinson, was sleeping tonight despite the rioting in town. My wife and I had been keeping a close eye on her; it’s just that type of neighbourhood. At around one o’clock this morning, this bastard broke into her house. Mavis has lived on her own since her husband died of stomach cancer a few y
ears ago. This thief,” he nodded towards the dead kid, “had already pocketed much of Mavis’s jewellery – including Lenny’s George Cross – but that wasn’t enough for the vicious little swine. He barged into her bedroom, waking Mavis up, almost giving the poor woman a heart attack, and kicked her to death. My wife and I heard poor Mavis’s screams from our house but, by the time I managed to break the door down, it was far too late for the old girl. I found her – an eighty-three-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer – with a knitting needle stabbed in each eye. The little bastard was urinating on her as I battered my way in.”
“So you hung him?”
“Not straight away. My neighbours and I conducted a fair trial.”
“And you found him guilty?”
“That’s correct.”
“And his sentence was death?”
“We believe it was the right choice.”
Ethan turned when he heard retching and gagging coming from the taxi. A second later, the door was pushed open. Karris practically dragged Lincoln out as he spewed the contents of his stomach all over the drenched pavement. A yellow puddle of vomit - partially digested food marinated in lashings of stomach juice, stinking like rotten eggs and vinegar - pooled up in front of his Fireman Sam slippers. Lincoln coughed and dry-heaved. Karris gently rubbed his back, promising him he was going to be okay. Ethan went to approach his son when the shotgun was raised and aimed at Lincoln.
“You have a child with you?” said Earl. He sounded genuinely shocked - as though he had just discovered another man’s car parked in his driveway. “You brought a child here?”
“He’s my son!” Ethan roared. He craved to reach out and grab the barrel of the shotgun, divert it away from Lincoln, wrap it around this old fucker’s neck if he could, but he didn’t want to make any sudden movement that he may live – or not - to regret. Instead, he dropped the hammer on the ground, holding up his hands to prove he was no threat. Karris looked on, absolutely terrified.
“You need to leave right now,” Earl barked. “You need to get in your car and leave and never come back. And you need to take him with you.”
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