Lucy felt the hands holding her fingers tighten. Nobody said anything; to disturb the anticipation would soil whatever happened next.
The should-be-cute but now sinister-as-hell little girl spoke, in a voice that was sweet, yet somehow completely defied the situation and what they had expected from her. It was her voice, sounding from somewhere else; a recorded echo.
‘He’s not ready yet, not long now. He’ll be here soon. He says be patient, Lucy. Soon.’
It was Kirsty who slammed the door, fingers lost and fumbling as they struggled with the key. It was Dylan that screamed. Lucy was the one to faint back into her parents’ arms in a floppy child-like bundle. Her head knocked back, drowsily giving up on reality, her heart beating out a scared arrhythmia.
Save me. Save me. Save me.
Somebody wanted her.
The man from her dreams
But not the man of her dreams.
Outside, electric eyes flickered on and off, a high speed cosmos until the crowd resembled a collection a deep sea creatures, strange, and rarely seen by the gaze of man. And for good reason.
At Home With The Keenes
How soon is now?
How soon is soon?
An Hour?
A Day?
A Minute?
A Blink?
Kirsty Keene’s mind raced like the intricacies of a jet engine, the cryptic clue as to why they were here, only heeded more questions.
Soon . . .
They had pulled Lucy in by her shoulders and rested her on the sofa. Her body remained limp and floppy, useless muscles offered no fight against the gravity of the situation. They checked her eyes, which rolled lazily to the back of her head, with a torch they saw that they still dilated. She’d just fainted. The shock of the knowledge had knocked her for six that was all.
‘Who is he?’ Kirsty asked. A sickening ball of bile grew like a cancer in her stomach, as she feared the truth would be too much for her mind to digest.
‘I don’t know. I don’t care. He’s not having our daughter. I’ll make sure of that.’
‘How?’
‘We go for the car. We go now. We take Lucy and we just drive. We plough through the fucking crowd. I don’t care how many I kill.’
‘They’re still people Dylan!’
‘They’re in my way, now they can damn well get the fuck out of it!’ Dylan angered. ‘I’m not giving them a choice.’
‘Okay,’ Kirsty agreed, ‘how do we get to the car? You saw what happened to Lennon.’
‘We kill as many as we can before we even go outside. Lennon tried to go one on a hundred. We need to even the odds a little. Spread them out.’
‘How?’
‘Fire.’
‘Where will we go?’
‘North, I’m guessing everybody walked down to see us. We’ll get so far north it’ll take them a week to catch up with us.’ Dylan stroked his daughter’s head, sweeping away the thin strands of hair that had become glued to her forehead with sweat.
‘Then what, just keep driving?’
‘Anywhere’s better than here.’
‘You mean home?’
‘It’s more like a prison.’
Kirsty kept quiet. Silently she agreed with her husband, but at the back of her mind, the worst scenario played out. A man was coming for their daughter and he was going to take her away from them and do unimaginable things to her. This was a parent’s worst fear, yet it was what was about to happen to them, unless they did something about it.
But what?
Kirsty didn’t want to see the man, nor did she want to see what he planned on doing to her daughter. She wanted it all to end long before that.
Dylan stood up. He walked through to the kitchen, reluctant to leave his daughter. Kirsty relented and followed him through the utility and into the garage. He was filling a cardboard box with aerosol tins.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Having a bonfire. If you want to help, get some bottles of water and some food, bag it up and leave it by the front door. We need to travel light,’ Dylan said as he dropped a bottle of turpentine into the cardboard box.
‘You want to do this now?’
‘He is coming!’ he answered, transcending the voice of the little girl, ‘soon, you heard her. Only drunks and children tell the truth,’ he laughed to himself, dropping a roll of duct tape into the box.
‘So you’re just going to burn them?’
‘Yeah, thin them out a bit. Give us a bit more of a fighting chance.’
‘I don’t like it Dylan, all this death.’
‘It’s theirs or ours, pick a side darling. I’d rather live and fight than rollover and die.’
‘I don’t want to see any more death. Not ever.’
‘We haven’t a choice.’
‘We do.’ She had an idea in mind. A grim one.
‘Well if it involves a way of getting out of here, I’m all ears.’ He paused from filling up the box with flammable materials, turned and looked at her for an answer. Kirsty remained quiet and passive; with a bite of her bottom lip, she aimed her gaze outside. Avoiding his.
‘I want good ideas. You’re part of the solution or you’re staying behind. I’m taking Lucy with me and I’m getting in that car. I have to protect her from him. I haven’t got time to convince you to stay or go. You’ll have to make up your own mind. Don’t make me drag you out.’
Kirsty kept quiet. Dylan stood up with the box clasped to his chest and left the garage. He stopped in the utility and looked out the back door. A grey laugh opened up across his thinning cheeks. Kirsty joined him and followed his gaze.
As expected, Mrs Loughery was standing in the garden, her cheeks had sunk inwards from a few days of malnutrition, her once finely coiffured hair resembled an eagle’s nest, a pigeon sat upon her head, scratching round in the dark strands and making itself comfortable. A thick line of vile, off-white had been splattered down over her shoulder and across her sumptuous breasts. She remained unflinching even though the bird had taken a hefty dump on her.
Dylan laughed and pointed at her, then looked at Kirsty.
‘That’s why I want to get out of here. Look! They belong here now, they’re part of the damned furniture; even the birds agree for Christ sake!’ Dylan left his wife and bounded upstairs. Lucy was still unconscious on the sofa; he left her there safe for the time being. Kirsty meanwhile went to the medicine cabinet in the utility room.
Dropping his box of wares on the landing, Dylan headed up into the loft; taking the binoculars with him, he climbed onto his vantage point atop the ridge and spied on what was happening around the pit.
Smoke.
Flames.
Not from the crashed plane, but from something else. It was a fresh burn from beneath.
But nobody was moving rock and soil. The industry on the former playing field had ground to an unnerving halt.
The crowd stood around the formed crater looking in the direction of the house. Well, Lucy to be exact.
Whatever they were digging out, they had dug out. It no longer required their unique attention. Many of the group circling the pit had hands missing, some had bony stumps. Others still had hands attached, albeit missing skin was held together by thin strands of tendons and torn flesh.
They resembled famine victims, emaciated, white skulls fighting out from the skin on their faces; a holocaust convention at Madame Tussauds. They were finished, their end was nigh. Dylan could feel it. Physically they couldn’t last much longer without food or water. Their brains were obviously dead, it was a matter of time before their bodies gave up.
Unless he got to them first.
As if the hive before him was reading his mind, they began to move. From the edges of the pit, they started to part, creating a human corridor. The opening of people stepping to one side gathered direction, the expanse leading towards the house. Towards Lucy.
He was coming.
Soon.
No. Now.
; Every muscle melted to a thin, useless jelly. Kneecaps and elbows suddenly became greasy hinges. Dylan’s hand started to quake. He dropped the binoculars, his shaking, palsied fingers reached out uselessly as the lenses skittered off the roof. An air bubble formed in his head as he felt like fainting from the shock. Dylan lurched forward, lost his balance, tumbled and fell.
If this was his final moment on this earth, his last poetic words would have been,
‘Oh fuck!’
The Second Movement
By a cruel twisting sense of luck, of which he thought he didn’t deserve, Dylan Keene didn’t plummet to his doom and die at that moment. Fate had other plans in store for him, letting the feeling come back to his fingers as he rolled down the roof, enabling him to grasp onto the hole he had made through the tiles. He felt a jarring scrape. The friction from the slide broke off two fingernails from his left hand from which spurted thick, dark, blood. Tense, white fingers, slick with hot blood gripped on for dear life on the top edge of the tile around the bottom of the hole, whilst his legs dangled over the edge of the gutter, feet waving at the dumb crowd below.
A plastic smack from below confirmed the notion that he’d hit one of the unfortunates below with the dropped binoculars.
He didn’t turn to look; instead he edged his knee up and wriggled back onto the roof. Once clinging safely to the roof hole, he breathed a sigh of welcome relief then looked at the ends of his fingers, shaking the accumulated blood from the tips. He winced. Deep red droplets rained down, soaking into the lichen decorated, rough grain of the tiles. The tips of his fingers throbbed and pulsated as blood was fed out into the air. The nail on his middle finger was missing, whilst a jagged half remained triumphantly on his ring finger, proud, though gory.
Whilst Dylan had being preoccupied with his wound, the crowd before him, the mass that had gathered outside his front door was splitting like a cell, dividing to become two parts. Everybody edged out of the way to construct a corridor lined by people.
Dylan adjusted his gaze and squinted. Through the swirling mists of smoke and redness of the fire came a figure highlighted against the backdrop. The injured fingertips were forgotten, the pain lost to a vision.
It was real.
He was real.
The stranger was coming towards the house.
He was coming towards the house.
Soon he would be here.
Maybe a hundred metres away, walking slowly.
He . . .
Soon . . .
‘Oh fuck . . .’
Behind Every Good Man . . .
Scramble would have been a good word to describe the way in which Dylan moved from the roof onto the landing, moving so fast he came close to adding another injury to his numerous faults, nearly breaking a leg as he jumped/fell from the attic on to the landing.
He picked up his box of tricks and moved to the landing window overlooking the crowd, swinging it wide open to face his attentive audience.
Taking a can of fly spray and a strip of torn off duct tape, Dylan taped the button down, and tossed the quickly emptying can into the crowd, not too close to the car. He repeated this with some peach air freshener, oven cleaner and a tin of deodorant.
Christ, if I had more time I could clear a few more.
He tossed the contents of the box outside into the centre of the front garden crowd, keeping behind the bottle of turpentine and a thin rip of cardboard he had torn from the box. Again, the shaking fingers came back as he twisted the top off the turpentine.
He watched as across the road, the old man who had waited and watched in the rain so diligently stepped out from behind the stalled bus full of stinking passengers. The corridor of people was getting closer, creeping yet surging like a stalking predator. The Stranger from the pit was also getting closer, half way across the field now. The figure was clearer now.
Dylan rammed the strip of cardboard into the open neck of eye wateringly fragrant turpentine.
Lennon had helpfully left his lighter on the windowsill, as if strangely before death, he knew this moment was coming, aiding the fight of the future.
Dylan struck up the Zippo and held it to the cardboard wick, the flame munching upwards as it took hold. He watched for a second ensuring it was sufficiently lit, then tossed it into the centre of the garden crowd, down to where the hissing aerosol canisters lay in wait.
The explosion was instantaneous, a bright, flushing bark of light then the flame spreading out beneath and atop the crowd as the turpentine spilt out. No one screamed. They just stood and burned. The first canister ignited a few seconds later, ignited the escaping aerosol, turning it into a rocket that shot off towards the garden wall. It ricocheted around the lawn crowd, igniting their clothes further. Moments later the other canisters ignited, causing similar mayhem as the high pressure containers ignited and zig-zagged amongst the crowd. The front garden was now ablaze, the hungry stench of burning flesh and hair offended Dylan’s nostrils. He gagged and pulled the window shut, this time pocketing the lighter before heading downstairs, Lucy still in her prone faint shape upon the sofa. Dylan bent down and slapped her hard and sharp on the cheek. She jarred awake and alert with wide-eyed shock.
‘Kirsty!’ he shouted through to the kitchen, ‘we’re going!’
He got no answer. A subtle hint of sickly sweetness hit his nose, replacing the stinking human inferno outside.
‘What’s wrong . . .’ Lucy said as she stirred back to consciousness. Then as she saw the fiery wall in the front garden, ‘Jesus Christ, Dad! What did you do?’
‘He’s coming, we’re going. Now!’
Lucy jumped up alert and frightened, for once listening to her father in the first instant.
As Dylan grabbed one of the makeshift spears from the kitchen table, he found why his wife didn’t answer him.
The empty packets of various painkillers, sleeping pills, aspirin and paracetamol alongside the finished off bottle of rum, led him to the obvious conclusion that she’d taken an overdose. Kirsty was slumped in the corner of the kitchen; a line of dark dribble escaped her mouth, seeping like syrup from her twisted head.
A slow rise in her chest showed that she was still breathing.
‘Shit, shit, shit, shit . . . oh shit, Kirst, why, why?’ Dylan knelt down next to her, he slapped her cheek as he had Lucy’s. She wasn’t coming round anytime soon.
This was her escape.
Death.
The Bitch. The stupid selfish Bitch. Not now, please not now, not the Baby!
Anything to shelter her eyes from witnessing whatever that monster had planned for his daughter. Death. Sweet, selfish death.
‘You don’t get away that easily Kirsty,’ Dylan said, lifting his wife’s head to face his. Taking his middle and index fingers, he shoved them as far as he could down into her throat. This was his first thought in effort to purge the poisons that were infiltrating his wife’s body.
It felt warm and wet, strangely pleasant, her teeth scraped his fingers as her gag reflex kicked in, then a tide of sweet brown liquid spurted out from her mouth, little half dissolved pills clinging to the sweet rum like flotsam.
‘What’s happened to Mum? What have you done?’ Lucy asked from behind.
‘She’s poorly, get her some water,’ he said an instant before sticking his fingers in again to remove any further poison from her system. Kirsty let out a choking heave and vomited again, projecting further this time, splattering Dylan’s chest.
‘That’s better darling, get it all out.’ Dylan patted his wife between the shoulder blades
He turned to Lucy, ‘get some water in her. I’m off to warm up the car and have a word with the neighbours.’
Lucy nodded, strange emotions shredding through her discombobulated nervous system. She grabbed a bottle of water and tended to her rousing mother.
Dylan picked up a makeshift spear constructed from a bread knife the mop handle then headed to the front door with dire purpose.
He . . .
As he had hoped, the fire had thinned the crowd. Some had collapsed after their musculature had burnt away, failing to support their weakening weight any further against gravity and the hungry gnawing of the fire.
Knowing what had to be done to get where he wanted to be, Dylan let the red mist wash over him, a warm, welcoming tide to bask in his murderous rage.
No more Mister Nice Guy, as the saying goes.
The red mist thickened, becoming an impenetrable ink that clouded his vision. Is this a prelude to violence? He asked himself. Is this what the mind does; draws a curtain to shade the mind from the horrors it allows the body to commit? That’s what murderers say in court in their defence; I don’t remember. I don’t remember doing it. I don’t remember a thing. . .
The curtain was fixed, inhibiting Dylan the sight to see through his own mind. The strain of the situation, a want to avenge his brother’s death, the abject fear for his family’s wellbeing all added up and multiplied against each other, equalling this state of mind where he now found himself.
Dylan Keene lost it, not caring whether or not he ever got it back.
He stabbed without remorse, or conscience, or guilt, holding onto a sense of grim determination of right over wrong, or a wrong over an even greater wrong; the possible demise of his family. It took less than thirty seconds, armed with only the spear (to distance himself from the Starers’ bizarre, electric, exploding touch) to pierce the hearts of the bloodstained little girl, (whose voice had been used to transmit that sinister message from he, who was yet to be named), the remaining paramedic and about ten of his fire blackened neighbours that had besieged his family.
I am not a murderer.
All is fair in love and war.
He closed his eyes tight before each impact, trying his best to lessen the burn upon his memory. The less he remembered about this day, the better. He wasn’t a monster. He took no pleasure in this.
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