Blood at the Premiere: A Day One Undead Adventure

by RR Haywood

  ‘Great!’

  ‘I love you, Henrietta.’

  ‘Love you, too. Come on, Bennie!’

  ‘OH MY GOD HENRIETTA SWALLOW LOVES ME.’

  ‘Dolan, I really need to talk to you…’ Henrietta whispers urgently ahead.

  ‘I don’t know which way to go,’ Dolan says, turning round. ‘I can hear people screaming in both directions.’

  ‘Let’s just go this way,’ Henrietta says, motioning to the left side.

  ‘I LOVE YOU, HENRIETTA SWALLOW.’

  ‘Love you, too, Simon. Hold that door closed.’

  ‘I WILL, HENRIETTA SWALLOW, WHO LOVES ME AND WILL KISS ME WITH TONGUES AND WHEN WE GET MARRIED I WILL HAVE INTERCOURSE SEX WITH HENRIETTA SWALLOW’S VAGINA.’

  ‘This way, quickly.’ Henrietta grabs Dolan’s wrist and starts pulling him to the side while giving a big grin down the alleyway to Simon pushing his back against the door.

  ‘DID HE SAY YES?’

  ‘HE DID,’ Henrietta shouts, ‘ER…WE’RE TRYING TO GET PHONE RECEPTION.’

  ‘OKAY, HENRIETTA SWALLOW WHO LOVES ME.’

  ‘Run…’ Henrietta urges once past the building line and out of sight of Simon.

  ‘Where? Where to?’ Dolan demands.

  ‘Just bloody run, the pair of you.’

  ‘I LOVE YOU, HENRIETTA SWALLOW…’

  Chapter Six

  Accept the death and go in peace

  She was right. Neither of them can run for more than a minute without the need to stop and bend double with hands on knees and chests heaving.

  ‘Stop drinking that,’ Henrietta says, pushing the whiskey bottle down from Bennie’s mouth as he tries to take another glug.

  ‘Stand up straight,’ she says, pulling Dolan upright, ‘open your airways, breathe in through your nose and control your breathing. Bennie, leave that whiskey alone. Stand up properly. No, Dolan. I said stand upright and breathe under control. Don’t gasp for air. Come on, we have to keep moving.’

  ‘I LOVE YOU, HENRIETTA.’

  Shit. She can still hear him bellowing in the alleyway but at least the door must still be closed.

  ‘Who the hell is that?’ Dolan asks, showing a fleeting concern for something other than his own immediate welfare.

  ‘Henri’s new fella,’ Bennie slurs, ‘Simon.’

  ‘Stalker,’ Henrietta whispers while looking round warily at the dark section of the street.

  ‘I think we have more to worry about than one of your obsessed fans, Henrietta,’ Dolan says stiffly between breathing hard.

  ‘I didn’t…’ she starts to reply but stops and nods instead. ‘Sorry, Dolan.’

  ‘We need to find help and contact the emergency services.’

  ‘Simon said it was everywhere,’ Henrietta says.

  ‘Really, Henrietta? You are trusting a stalker as a source of information. Any serious journalist will tell you the need to verify the provenance of the information.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry, Dolan,’ she says, cursing her own stupidity.

  They walk on past dark commercial buildings. Screams in the distance. An engine revving loud and sustained. Breaking glass and more screams, but the buildings are high, which warps the echo and rolling noises and ruins any chance of gaining anything other than vague directional hearing.

  ‘Do either of you know where we are?’ Dolan asks, breaking the silence.

  ‘Oh we were at that movie premier,’ Bennie says.

  ‘No. I mean where we are geographically, as in the precise location with a knowledge of which direction to take.’

  ‘No,’ Henrietta says.

  ‘I don’t know what you just said,’ Bennie says.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Dolan mutters. ‘Trapped in a fucking nightmare with a page-three girl and a village idiot.’

  ‘Henrietta ain’t a page-three girl,’ Bennie says in her defence.

  ‘I was,’ Henrietta admits quietly. ‘Long time ago.’

  Bennie looks at her in serious judgement while she stares ahead feeling a strange sense of shame. ‘So cool,’ Bennie says after careful deliberation. ‘I bet you were the best page-three girl ever, Henrietta.’

  Dolan huffs audibly, ‘And when we’ve finished discussing the finer merits of Henrietta taking her clothes off perhaps we can apply our minds to the present situation.’

  ‘Sorry, Dolan,’ Henrietta says, looking from Bennie to him.

  ‘Are you gay?’ Bennie asks, leaning to look past Henrietta.

  Dolan huffs again but adds a caustic roll of his eyes for effect. ‘Failing to show excitement at seeing nipples does not automatically render someone homosexual. Some people strive towards intellectual stimulation in an effort to rise above base feelings of lust.’

  ‘I like nipples,’ Bennie says.

  ‘Please!’ Dolan snaps. ‘Can we focus on how the hell I am going to get out of here.’

  ‘Out of London, mate?’ Bennie asks helpfully. ‘Probably a train. Which way you going?’

  ‘Henrietta, tell your friend to shut up,’ Dolan mutters darkly.

  ‘Like…train fare ain’t cheap, though,’ Bennie adds, remembering the recent past when he had to pay for everything himself.

  ‘We need a police station,’ Dolan says.

  ‘The police won’t take you out of London,’ Bennie replies, still leaning to look past Henrietta. ‘Me and my mate asked ’em for a lift home once and they told us to piss off and said they’re not a taxi service, but then my mate said he pays taxes which means they work for him…but he didn’t actually pay tax cos he didn’t have a job…but then they nicked him and took him to the cop shop, but that was round the corner from his house so, like, really they did give him a lift home.’

  ‘Henrietta,’ Dolan growls low and terse. ‘Please make that bloody twat be quiet.’

  ‘Bennie, we need to be quiet for a minute,’ Henrietta says softly.

  ‘Thank you,’ Dolan says with a scowl. ‘I think we should focus on finding a police station or at least a business that has a landline. The police have jammed the mobile networks so they have to take responsibility for the fact they have stranded professional and important people in amongst the dregs and plebs of inner-city London. Seriously, there will be hell to pay if I have to suffer another hour of this and I will take legal action if I suffer any physical injury. Actually, I will be taking legal action for the emotional distress already caused, and let me tell you something, causing emotional distress to the head of factual programming for a non-government-funded terrestrial television channel is not a good thing to do. Oh no. No, no, no. No, sir, not a wise thing to do at all. This…’ He pauses to wave his hand about at the surrounding street. ‘This will be exposed. All of it. Leaving innocent people to die in a theatre while the authorities shut down the networks? What the hell are they thinking? I’ll do a series of programmes on it…oh yes…from the root cause to the sheer incompetence of the police, the commissioner, the bloody mayor and all the way up to the bloody prime minister if I have to…’

  I could present it. I was here…I mean I am here. I could be part of that programme. This is it. This is the moment to make that step.

  She nods intently at the tirade of words spewing angrily from Dolan. Poised and ready to interject when the natural flow ends.

  ‘Make no mistake,’ Dolan says, nodding and jabbing the air with his hand emphatically, ‘I will use every researcher and every investigator to find out exactly how this bloody mess started and then…then I will shred apart every decision the authorities have made that resulted in me being in danger…’

  Now. Speak now.

  She snatches a breath. ‘I think the public have a right to know,’ she says seriously, ‘and especially from someone who witnessed it first-hand…’

  ‘A job,’ Dolan says, giving hope to her heart. ‘I will do a bloody job on the lot of them. Mark my words, I will dedicate my life to ruining every career of every bloody incompetent idiot that played a part in this debacle…’

&n
bsp; ‘Definitely. I completely agree and I think to fully reflect the, er…the intensity of the experience we are currently, er…’ She stops to think, biting her lip in thought, ‘experiencing. There should be someone presenting it who was actually here…’

  ‘Good idea,’ Dolan says quickly. ‘It needs that passion of someone tortured by the sheer barbarity of what I have been exposed to.’

  ‘I was exposed, too.’

  ‘Ha!’ Bennie laughs. ‘I wish.’

  ‘Bennie, not now,’ she says, giving him a hard glare before looking back to Dolan who nods magnanimously.

  ‘Someone who was here from the start to the finish,’ Dolan says, ‘recreating the walk we’re taking now and the valiant fight for survival as I led you to safety in the theatre then out down that side alley.’

  ‘I’d tell them how valiant you were,’ Henrietta says, looking up with hope evident on her face.

  ‘Yes,’ Dolan says gravely, deeply, full of gravitas. ‘Oh yes, this needs a special touch from someone who can portray the emotions of the event and translate that to the viewers…’

  ‘Yes,’ Henrietta says, lowering her voice a notch to portray the emotion of the event. ‘I am very expressive.’

  Dolan stops to fix Henrietta with a look of intense purpose, his dark eyes blazing with self-righteous anger. ‘You are right.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘I will present this programme.’

  ‘Thank you…what?’

  ‘Me. I am the only person that can tell the British public exactly what has happened. I’ll go in front of the camera…’

  She pauses, holding breath and hardly daring to show any reaction. ‘You could,’ she says carefully. ‘Or perhaps someone else? Someone the British public already know…’

  ‘Like who?’ he asks with a puzzled sneer.

  She shrugs, nonchalant, treading carefully on the ice so thin and ready to crack but sometimes you have just got to take that leap of faith. ‘Me,’ she says, holding eye contact. ‘I could do it.’

  ‘You?’ Dolan asks, pulling his head back and ready to dismiss the awful idea with a caustic comment but for once his tongue holds still. A brief, deep silence. His eyes narrow with a minute movement and she watches him closely, reading the thoughts showing so clear on his face. She got him out of the theatre. She saved him once and this night isn’t over. They have no idea where they are or what’s going on. No access to phones, police or a way out. It’s all there. His thoughts gauging and assessing. An executive at work deciding the best course of action to suit his own needs. ‘Interesting,’ he says, purposefully quiet. The challenge is there. The deal ready to be struck and he speaks openly, ‘Get me out of here safely and we’ll see.’

  Her response is instant. ‘I will.’ No hesitation. No thinking needed to be done or terms discussed. A chance of a lifetime to present something of such magnitude with the backing of the industry’s most influential person in the field of serious programming. A moment in time captured with Henri and Dolan staring at each other intently with subtle messages being passed by eyes narrowing and heads inclining, while in the distance people scream as they die and suffer. One noise becomes clearer than all the others. The engine they heard revving is suddenly closer and closing the distance. Their heads snap over to look down the straight road to the point in the bend that sweeps the road out of view.

  Henrietta’s senses are already ramped up from taking in every nuance Dolan was displaying and that hyper awareness switches as she gains directional hearing to the sound of the diesel engine stuck in low gear being funnelled down the high-fronted buildings towards them.

  That heightened vigilance notices the bend in the road is tight but the sound is of an engine approaching at speed and something is wrong. The engine is stuck in a low gear but speed is being applied. She stares at the bend gauging the width of the road, the high step of the kerb and the two flashing bollards on the narrow strip of central reservation of the pedestrian crossing. The engine is diesel. Diesel engines are used by larger commercial vehicles and larger commercial vehicles don’t do well in corners when they’re going fast. A hundred or more variables translate from vision and hearing to send a message to her brain.

  Her left hand shoots out hard to grab a fistful of Dolan’s collar and already she lunges right to body slam Bennie away while dragging Dolan with her. The two men yelp in alarm at the suddenness of the motion, at being grabbed and yanked and now propelled across the road.

  Light floods the bend. Headlights on full beam. The engine screaming as the van comes barrelling into the bend with a snatched glimpse of the driver with blood smeared on his hands and face. She sees the wild, panicked look in his eyes as he tries to turn the wheel but the speed is too great. The van is too high-sided. The centre of mass is too distorted from the unbalanced load of tools and heavy equipment in the back.

  A combination of events. The front wheels turn to navigate the bend but the van is too long and going too fast to allow the turn to be completed. The front driver’s-side wheel hits the first flashing bollard in the narrow strip of the central reservation and enough force is generated in the impact to shunt the van over a few inches into the path of the lamp post embedded into the concrete of the central strip. The metal stem of the lamp post is shorn off at the root, pinging the stem out in front of the vehicle with a speed greater than that of the van. It flies ahead swooshing through the air into the space vacated by a grabbed and yanked Dolan. The van hits the second bollard, shunting it over another few inches. The back end slews round, hitting the high kerb and forcing the vehicle to bounce back into the road as the driver pulls on the steering wheel too hard. It starts to fishtail with the driver fighting to straighten the wheels, but he oversteers and the momentum of swing forces the passenger-side wheels to leave the ground. The van seemingly holds on two wheels with a second of perfect balance. The load in the rear shifts, forcing the centre of mass to ruin the perfection of poise held by the Transit and with a huge thud the van slams down onto its side. Sheer momentum forces the vehicle to continue the journey with hard metal screeching over hard tarmac that sends plumes of bright sparks shooting out behind. The noise is awful, like a wounded beast wailing from the pain at being felled. The engine still runs, the driver keeps his foot pressed down in panic that forces the wheels to keep turning. That tiny friction gained slews the heavy rear end out and through metal railings that ping off one after the other, smashing through plate-glass windows of shops and buildings and all the time the horn trumpets out, adding to the cacophony of sound.

  The van slides gently past Henrietta, who is still holding the other two in a tight grip, and as it comes to rest so the horn ends, the engine cuts out and the tinkle of glass from a window broken by the projectile railing shatters to the ground. A silence follows and one that is profound, deep and disturbing.

  Smells of chemicals, burning rubber and fuel hit Henrietta. She stares dumbly at the filthy galvanised steel of the van underside and the pipes of the exhaust system sagging slowly down. The front wheels are buckled, dented and ruined beyond use. Thick, viscous liquids pump out over the road bathed in bright red from the tail lights gleaming stark and bright. A spark and a sizzle of electrics, the indicators start strobing and the reversing light flashes on and off. Another sizzle and the crackle of electrics shorting out. A spark from the light cluster bright and solitary arcs into the air but as it fades to die so more start coming out. A few at first, then more and more until they plume up to cascade down like a Catherine wheel gone wrong.

  Pure instinct kicks in. Henrietta runs towards the van, going wide round the back while covering her head in protection from the sparks flying out. She gets to the cab and sees the shattered windscreen is still held in place, showing a distorted view of a man inside screaming in fear. She kicks barefooted, thinking the screen will yield instantly on impact, but the toughened glass holds intact. She slams her heel in again and again, forcing more fractures and spiderwebs to form across the surface, b
ut it refuses to shatter.

  The sparks come harder, silently spurting out across the road towards the fluids leaking from the van that run along the camber of the road towards the rear end.

  ‘GET ME OUT,’ the driver screams in full panic, slamming himself into the windscreen. Henrietta kicks again but the thing holds fast. ‘GET ME OUT, GET ME OUT.’ The words screamed over and again by a voice cracking and hoarse with pain and terror.

  She spins on the spot looking for something to use, but only the heavy stem of the lamp post lies nearby.

  ‘Go up,’ Henrietta shouts at the windscreen pointing at the passenger door that’s now a hatch above his head. ‘Open the door…up…UP…LOOK UP…’

  ‘GET ME OUT.’

  ‘LOOK UP…THE DOOR…GET THROUGH THE DOOR.’

  Through the fractured glass she gains a view of the driver slamming a hand into his own forehead as the panic grips him hard. Sickeningly pale and his eyes look huge with the red blood so stark on his white skin. Standing in his cab staring unseeing at the windscreen. His mind unable to compute the instructions given but still he screams until the words become a stream of unintelligible sounds, like those of a child. He sinks down onto his knees as the shock renders his limbs useless. Thick tears roll fast down his face as the abstract surrealness of his own mortality looms closer. His mind prepares him for the worst. His brain shuts down conscious thought to let his mind fill with images of family, friends, his wife and his children. Of warm places and warm thoughts. An act of self-protection to ward off the horror of the moment, and as though drowning he feels a rush of warmth spreading through his body. He sinks down, gibbering without heed to the danger. He is trapped and there is blood so he must be bleeding. He must be dying. Go quietly. Die peacefully. Accept the death and go in peace.

  Harmless small chunks of glass rain down on him as Henrietta’s elbow hammers through the window.

  ‘GET UP…’

  The sparks soar from the light clusters. Each one a tiny firework of light that Dolan and Bennie watch, mesmerised and rooted to the spot from across the pavement. Those sparks mostly die as they plummet, but not all. A few land to sizzle out. A few more hit the liquids and die in the coolant and waters. A few, as with all things in life, push further and try harder to exist for longer and land in the pools of flammable liquids. The heavy machinery in the back of the van runs from petrol-driven generators now ruptured and leaking to mix on the road. One spark. One single, solitary spark that goes higher and contains more mass, which enables it to burn longer and glow brighter and retain more heat. When it lands it ignites the petrol, which burns in a pool of blue flames that runs to join the diesels and oils. Thicker smoke wafts up. The heat increases and still Dolan and Bennie stay motionless and still as they watch the colours of the flames dance yellow, orange and blue. An assault of the senses overwhelming what they can absorb and process.