Die Tryin'

by Stavro Yianni

  Nick Black slowly shook his head, and then shrugged. He couldn’t make up his mind, caught in the middle of belief and disbelief. Nick XR2 cut a hand firmly across the air as if to say he didn’t believe a single word.

  Charlie’s head twitched. ‘I couldn’t give a flying fuck what you all believe,’ he stated firmly. ‘It’s the truth. And you can try and hide behind all your jewels and your cars, but it won’t work. He’s gonna get us, gonna fuck us all for what we done!’

  Suddenly, Tony’s back straightened and he marched towards Charlie.

  Both Nicks clocked what was about to happen fast enough to get a head start on him. Tony managed to grab Charlie by the coat, and pull him across the ground before Nick Black grabbed one of his shoulders and Nick XR2 the other. They both yanked Tony backwards.

  To Nick Black’s surprise, Charlie wasn’t bothered by Tony’s aggressive outburst. Instead, he actually started giving him shit. ‘What you gonna do, kill me too?’ he shouted at Tony with his bug eyes getting ever wider. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll fucking kill you if you keep talking shit about zombies!’ Tony shouted back just as the two Nicks managed to rip him off of Charlie.

  Charlie just stared at him, his eyes hot like fire. ‘It’s your fucking fault!’ he shouted, pointing his finger accusingly at Tony. ‘It’s your fault. You brought this shit on us the second you killed Marco. You see that?’ he said pointing at Taki. ‘Your fault. And when that happens to us. Your fault!’ Charlie was by now a skinny whirlwind of rage. The veins were popping out all over his neck and forehead, and his Adam’s apple was protruding harshly. His eyes were now bulging so much, Nick Black thought for a second they were gonna pop right out of his skull and dangle there. He looked psycho, like a man that had finally snapped, and Nick guessed that however much speed Charlie had bombed that night was fuelling him like lighter fluid sprayed all over a bonfire.

  The way Charlie was switching clearly affected Tony because he backed down. Nick would have laid money on him going for Charlie again, but to his surprise he didn’t. Instead he just poked a finger back at him. ‘It weren’t my fault, Charlie. It was his, talking skata about Maria. You know I don’t take that from no one. No one!’

  ‘Well, I hope you’re proud of yourself, Tony, because this is what you’ve brought down on us…’ Charlie replied.

  ‘Look! Enough!’ Nick XR2 then said, cutting his hands across the air. ‘We’ll sort this shit out later. But, right now, we are two feet away from a dead body, and we’re making enough noise to wake the fucking dead.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Nick Black said, looking from Charlie to Tony, who were both giving each other daggers. ‘You two better kiss and make up, and we better get the hell out of here pronto.’

  Nick XR2 shook his head. ‘Not before we deal with Taki.’

  ‘What?’ Nick Black asked as he walked up to Nick XR2. ‘What do you mean deal with him?’

  ‘Looks to me like he’s been pretty well dealt with already,’ Tony said out of the side of his face, still staring hard at Charlie.

  ‘Yeah, Nick. There’s nothing we can do, we better just get out of here and keep this shit under wraps,’ Nick Black said.

  Nick XR2 shook his head again. ‘Do I have to spell everything out?’ He let out a sigh. ‘If we leave him here, Old Bill find him. Then they start a murder enquiry because that’s what they do when they find dead bodies with their eyes gouged out and strange messages carved into their fucking bellies. They then look for clues. Clues like fingerprints, DNA, clothes fibres, stuff like that. But more importantly, clues like eyewitnesses. The kind of eyewitness that saw me in the church at the same time as him an hour or two before he died. The result of which has Old Bill banging on my door at 6 am, making me the prime fucking suspect, which, by de facto, makes me the mug they’ll pin it on if they don’t catch the real killer!

  Now, please excuse me if I don’t want that particular set of circumstances to play out…’

  Nick Black puffed his cheeks and looked away. ‘Fuck’s sake!’ he said with a groan. ‘What do we do then?’ he asked Nick XR2, facing him again.

  ‘We bury him,’ Charlie said, suddenly calmer now than a few minutes before. He finally broke his stare from Tony and looked at Nick Black. ‘We have to.’

  ‘Bury him?’ Nick Black echoed, his voice loaded with incredulity. ‘Bury him where, Charlie? In your mum’s back garden?’

  ‘You know where Charlie means,’ Nick XR2 said, solemn.

  Nick Black stared at him for a second. Then what they were both proposing hit him. ‘Oh, you’re fucking joking aren’t you?’

  ‘Where else can we put him?’ Nick XR2 asked.

  ‘Nick. It’s fucking night time,’ Nick Black said pointing to the sky. ‘And the cemetery’s closed.’

  ‘There’s a back way in,’ Charlie stated.

  ‘How do you know?’ Nick Black asked.

  ‘I just know,’ Charlie replied.

  ‘We’ve got no other choice,’ Nick XR2 reasserted. ‘We can’t leave him here. We’ve got to hide his body, and we’ve got the perfect place to do it.’

  ‘But…Marco’s there…’ Nick Black said in a weak voice, and he could feel just how weak it was. He realised he would probably never get over what happened in that mausoleum the other day, now they wanted to literally dig it all up again for God’s sake?

  ‘There’s still enough room in that tomb, and besides, it’ll give us a chance to prove to Charlie there’s no such thing as zombies,’ Nick XR2 stated.

  Nick Black let out a small moan. ‘Do we have to?’

  ‘Do you see another choice? If you’ve got a better idea, then please share it with the group. But, I’ve got to push you, ’cos we’re a little short of time here.’

  Nick Black paused. ‘What do you think, Tone?’ he then asked.

  Tony shrugged. ‘It’s gotta be done.’

  ‘We’re in this shit together, Nick,’ Nick XR2 reminded him.

  ‘He’s right, Nick,’ Charlie said. ‘No matter what happened, and what’s gonna happen from here on out, we’re in this as one. We have to be or we fall separate.’

  Nick Black grabbed his cheeks, feeling like the world was closing in on him. He clenched his fists together and shook them at the sky. ‘This is going from bad to worse!’ he said in an angry voice. ‘When’s this shit gonna end?’

  ‘We just gotta mop up some remaining skata, and then everything will be sweet,’ Nick XR2 said. ‘And as long as we keep our traps shut, we’ll get through this, believe me,’ he added, placing a friendly hand on Nick Black’s shoulder.

  Nick Black just hung his head and stared at his trainers. They were old and battered. He wanted a spliff. A nice fat reefer to take him away from this shit.

  Maybe this isn’t really happening, an optimistic voice rang in his mind. Maybe it’s just a bad trip, the brown acid.

  But, then again, maybe it was all real. Very fucking real.

  He nodded his head, and then glanced up at the others. ‘Let’s do it.’

  NINE

  They put Taki in the boot of Nick XR2’s Ford XR2.

  Nick laid some old clothes samples on the boot floor, hoping to keep the blood off his upholstery. They each grabbed a limb, and heaved him up. Nick Black had an arm, trying his best to arc his head back, thinking at any moment he was going to throw up again. He couldn’t even lay eyes on the dead bloke in his hands, feeling like some kind of butcher shifting hunks of meat round his kitchen—Leatherface lugging body parts around his den.

  The scent of fresh blood intermixed with feelings of fear and revulsion suddenly hit Nick Black in the head like a sledgehammer; he wretched, causing him to lose his grip on Taki. This triggered a domino effect—Charlie tripped as he took on the weight Nick Black left behind, which in turn caused Tony to stumble, causing Nick XR2 to actually drop Taki’s leg and fall forwards; he hit the ground with a grunt. Nick XR2 huffed as he picked himself up, first dusting off his trousers at the knees, then his han
ds. He took in a long deep breath to compose himself. Even though XR2 kept his cool, Nick Black could see the repressed anger in his eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ Nick Black mustered from his crouched position, a long string of saliva inching its way to the ground from his mouth like a spider on the first weave of its web.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Nick XR2 replied in a restrained voice. ‘Shit’s fucked up. But, it’s gotta be done. So get yourself together, and let’s go.’

  Nick Black began nodding. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took in a deep breath himself, gearing up for another lift.

  ‘We’re almost to the car,’ Tony said, and when Nick Black looked round, he saw XR2’s beckoning boot just a few feet away.

  ‘Yeah, it’s just this… You’d think I’d be used to it by now,’ Nick Black said humourlessly.

  ‘Well, you better get used to it quickly, ’cos there’ll be a lot more of this to come, believe me,’ Charlie said, and the hair on the back of Nick Black’s neck sprang to attention.

  ‘Shut up, Charlie!’ Nick XR2 snapped. Charlie went to speak again, and Nick XR2 held up his hand. ‘Ah! Enough!’ he said.

  Charlie let out a low growl before he shut his mouth.

  Nick XR2 pointed down at Taki’s crumpled body. ‘Now, pick him up.’

  Charlie did as he was told. He bent down and snatched up Taki’s leg again. The rest took up their respective limbs and pulled Taki back up off the ground. Collectively they edged towards the waiting car.

  ‘He’s much heavier than Marco,’ Tony said in a voice that was eerily calm and calculating, devoid of any emotion.

  ‘He’s fatter than Marco was,’ Charlie said in an equally blasé voice. ‘Fatter they are, the heavier they are.’

  ‘It’s all those fucking loukoumades his mum kept stuffing down his throat!’ Nick XR2 said in between wheezes.

  Tony let out a laugh.

  ‘Maybe,’ Charlie pondered. ‘Mind you, dead weight is much heavier because gravity’s working on it.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Nick XR2 said. ‘It’s like those sacks full of clothes I deliver for my dad. Put one of them on both shoulders and you’ll know about dead weight,’

  ‘Sacks of clothes ain’t shit compared to this, re!’ Tony stated. ‘This fucker must be twenty stone!’

  ‘I’d say around twelve,’ said Charlie.

  ‘You’re having a laugh twelve,’ Nick XR2 scoffed. ‘He was at least fourteen, most probably sixteen.’

  ‘Fucking feels it!’ said Tony, groaning as he shuffled across.

  ‘Feels like less than that to me,’ argued Charlie. ‘My arms ain’t hurting. I reckon between eleven and thirteen, give or take, mind you—’

  ‘I can’t fucking believe you lot!’ Nick Black snapped. ‘We’re lugging Taki’s dead body to the boot of a car, and all you lot can do is shoot the shit about how much he weighed when he was breathing!’

  ‘We’re just talking, re,’ Tony said.

  ‘Is this the fucking the time for it though, Tone?’

  ‘All right, enough!’ Nick XR2 said sternly. ‘We’ll drop him again if we start fighting and I ain’t got the energy to pick him up a third time. Let’s just shut up and get him in the car.’

  They fell silent, and edged closer towards the boot.

  ‘No more than fifteen anyway…’ Nick Black said quietly, almost to himself.

  ‘Now who’s talking?’ asked Tony straight after.

  Nick Black responded with a dirty look; Tony was grinning.

  Finally, they got to the boot and they dumped Taki in, causing the back bumper of Nick’s car to bounce up and down like it had suddenly come to life and was bopping to a sweet tune. It came to a stop a couple of inches above the rear wheels.

  Tony breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank fuck for that!’

  Nick XR2 gave him a look of ‘you ain’t wrong there,’ and dusted his hands. ‘Right, everyone get in.’

  Nick XR2 closed up the boot and made his way round to the driver’s seat. He got in and shut the door, and for the first time since the moment they all first laid on eyes on Taki’s body, everything was silent.

  Nick Black was in the back seat with Charlie. When Nick turned to face him, Charlie was just staring out of the windscreen with an absent look on his face, his eyes black craters in the gloom. His face seemed to hang off his skull, almost like it were melting. He looked resigned. And by the way he was talking back there, Nick knew he almost certainly believed he was resigned to his fate. To their fate.

  He turned to face Nick Black, almost as if he could feel his eyes burning on him. ‘We’re all fucked, you know?’ he said in a flat voice, neither his eyes nor the resigned look on his face changing.

  ‘No one’s fucked,’ Nick XR2 said into his rear view mirror, but aiming his words at Charlie. ‘We’ll sort this skata out. Now, no more superstitious voodoo crap. At least till morning. Okay?’

  Charlie sighed. ‘Yes boss!’ he said and saluted the rear view mirror.

  Tony was riding shotgun, sitting upright in his seat like he had a rod rammed up his backside. Who knew what was going on inside his head? Nick Black pondered. Charlie was right—it was Tony that triggered off this set of events. Whether Marco really did that to Taki or not, Nick had a good hunch that if Tony hadn’t taken Marco’s life, none of this would be happening.

  He wondered if Tony himself realised that.

  Nick XR2 started up the engine and flicked on his lights. They illuminated the long alleyway they were in, showing them only brick walls, bushes and dirt. Just as he started to reverse out, a cat darted out of the glare of his lights and dived into a bush. Nick XR2 rolled around the back of the church and stopped at the end of the lane running parallel to it. Nick Black had a final look at the church. It was more eerie than ever. Dark, imposing and brooding. He shivered and turned back to see Charlie on the edge of his seat, staring blankly out of the windscreen, mumbling something to himself. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound positive.

  Nick XR2 glanced both ways. A car popped out of nowhere and zoomed past them faster than a joyrider being chased by a black helicopter. It was gone before it even arrived.

  ‘Fucking pissheads!’ Tony said, his voice laced with disgust. ‘Gonna kill someone, the malakes.’

  ‘Sooner the odd speeder than roads chock-a-block with traffic,’ Nick XR2 replied.

  ‘Let’s hope they’re empty like this all the way,’ Nick Black said, scrutinising the road ahead, which was completely clear. Not a soul in sight. Apart from Taki’s…a voice in his head said. He did his best to brush it off.

  ‘Here we go,’ Nick XR2 said as he slowly rolled out onto the street.

  And off they went.

  Nick Black sat back, and pulled out his unfinished spliff from his pocket. Right then he needed it, needed Mary Jane to come rub his head and soothe his stress. Mary Jane loved him, and he loved her. It was a match made in Heaven.

  Like where Taki is… or did he go to Hell?

  And it was those stupid thoughts that he wanted to shut down, to let MJ come and wash them away in her blissful tide of pleasure.

  He placed the spliff in between his lips and sparked it up. He wound down the window, and took a long, long drag. MJ swooped up into his mind and washed away the bad thoughts, forcing his eyelids shut like they were blinds covering the windows of his soul. The madness of the last couple of hours, shit, the last few days suddenly seemed like a million miles away, something that no longer mattered. He rode with the smoothness of the car on London’s potholed roads, Charlie’s inane mumblings to his right now sounding like sweet birdsong.

  He took in a deep breath and savoured—

  ‘No smoking in my car!’

  Nick Black’s eyes snapped open again and the first thing he saw were Nick XR2’s dagger like slits for eyes through the rear view, digging into him like icicles.

  Nick Black sat up in his seat. ‘You got a fucking dead body in your boot, leaking blood all over the place and yo
u’re worried about a bit of smoke?’ he replied and turned his mouth downwards as if to say ‘WTF?’

  ‘Yeah, well, I can’t smell him from here,’ Nick XR2 replied.

  ‘Not yet you can’t,’ Charlie said in an uneasy voice, like he wanted to make a joke, but at the same time knew it wasn’t the time nor place. He had a crooked smile hanging on his face that vanished once he clocked Nick Black’s unamused mug staring hotly back at him. He looked away and out of the windscreen again.

  Nick Black turned his attention back to Nick XR2.

  ‘Look, Niko. In the past week, I’ve found out that one of my best mates is a stone cold killer, and the other is in contact with the dead. So, excuse me if I need to ‘chill out’ a little, all right? I mean, shit, I need to prepare myself for when you reveal whatever your deep rooted secret is!’

  Nick XR2 slammed on the brakes, making them all jump forwards in their seats. ‘And what’s yours?’ he answered angrily.

  Nick Black glanced up to see that Nick XR2 staring at him through the rear view again, dark fire burning in his wide eyes. Nick Black felt a rush of hot anger emanate from that glare, which at one point he thought was going to burn through his very soul. Nick XR2 was pissed and deadly serious, and when he got pissed, it was for a good reason.

  Nick Black sighed. ‘Fine,’ he said, and chucked his unfinished spliff out the window before winding it back up. ‘Happy now?’

  Nick XR2 finally removed his stare from the rear view and started driving again, verifying to Nick Black that he was. Nick Black looked away, out of the window, and shook his head. If Nick Theo knew how much he needed that joint, he wouldn’t give a shit about his car, he would put his friend’s needs before his fucking car. Nick Black wanted so badly just to tap him on the head and say ‘hello? It’s just a piece of petrol guzzling metal that is only good for polluting the world we live in. It ain’t a person, ain’t a living breathing thing!’ But, the way Nick Theodorou acted, you’d be hard pushed not to believe it was.

  It was like nothing he had—

  A flash of blue then wiped across Nick Black’s vision, triggering off a panic alarm deep inside his subconscious. His conscious mind went momentarily blank and he found himself sitting upright in his seat, a frown of confusion emerging on his face. When he heard Nick XR2 say ‘shhhit!’ in a long, drawn out and angry voice before he smashed his steering wheel with his fist, followed by that flash of blue lighting up the car again—this time stronger and longer—his numbed mind pieced the jigsaw together in an instant. He saw Tony spin his head around the edge of his seat to get a look out the back window. His wide eyes gave the game away.