by Luke Walker
He laughed at that. And the thud echoing throughout the building a few seconds before it hit the door.
We launched ourselves forward and up, eyes open, spilling the piles of books and papers. I held up a hand to silence Tom before he could speak. Another thud smashed into the door. I could only take a guess it was the woman with the hammer.
We crept to the end of the hallway. Regular thuds hit the door. The section around the handle bulged in with each hit. No doubt then. The woman with the hammer was back.
“What do we do?” Tom whispered.
Just like a moment before, my reply was immediate and honest. “When she gets in, we kill her.”
16
Ashleigh’s door lasted longer than the one opposite. On the tenth thud, the handle broke and collapsed. With another thud, the woman shoved the door open as far as she could. It hit the side of the armchair, only room enough for her to shove her bloody hammer through. She squeezed a little of her face into the gap and snarled when she saw us. She sounded no more human than an animal.
“Come on, then,” I whispered.
The woman snarled again and bashed her shoulder against the door. It pushed into the chair; the chair pushed against the bookshelves. Tom and I faced the snarling woman and all the heat in the world cooked inside my daughter’s flat.
“I think—” Tom got no further.
The woman pulled back for a second; then a huge smack hit the door. She couldn’t possibly have made such a weight against it. And when the door opened a little farther, I saw she hadn’t.
There were two men with her, both covered in gore, both wielding broken table legs as makeshift clubs.
One of the men licked blood from his lips and smashed the woman aside. He kicked at the door. Wood split. I grabbed Tom. We ran to the living room and I bellowed at Tom.
“Look up, not down. Don’t look at the green.”
With that, I pulled the curtains apart and shoved the window open as far as it would go.
“What are you doing?” Tom screamed.
“Outside. Now.”
Another flurry of kicks hit the door. We had seconds.
Tom stood on the little table and swung a leg outside. “I can’t do this, Dave. I can’t.” He was close to crying.
“You do it or we die,” I yelled.
He pulled his other leg through, gripped the frame and slid along, staring ahead, not down.
Pretending we weren’t six floors up, I boosted myself through the window and shouted at Tom to move along. He did so, shuffling farther to the left, holding the frame as tightly as he could. Thankfully, both of us were thin so we managed to fit on the ledge. Below, a constant barrage of screams and cars racing along the street hit us. The evening heat was a sticky mass in my throat, and from the corner of my eye, green mist sat not far below.
Inside Ashleigh’s flat, the door exploded. Immediately, running feet pounded towards us.
“Here they come,” I yelled. “Just hold on.”
A bloody hand punched through the window. Instinctively, I jerked back and came within a second of falling. Tom, screaming beside me, reached for my hand.
“Hold on,” I shouted.
Glass cracked in the window. One of the men banged his head on it. Splinters raced across the pane. Two of the splinters met and a chunk of glass fell to the street. Without pause, the man shoved a few of his fingers through, not caring that the glass was cutting him or that he couldn’t reach us.
“What the hell do we do?” Tom shouted.
Something grabbed my ankle.
Then pulled.
17
The world tilted, spun and then fell. The side of the building raced away from me; air parted, soft like a blanket. Then my back smashed into the building.
I was upside down.
Below, the street was a maelstrom of burning cars and running people, all of it overshadowed by the green mist.
Pain roared in my ankles and legs. Managing to lift my head an inch, I understood.
The man, the big man in the flat below Ashleigh’s, held my ankles. He was half out of his window, glaring down at me, the muscles in his arms bulging as he took my entire weight by my feet. Above him, more glass shattered and Tom was screaming my name.
The man pulled me. I struggled, then ceased doing so immediately. Six floors up. Those three words chased themselves around my head. They were the only fact in the world.
Shouting words lost below the noise and the blood rushing to my head, the man yanked me again. For a moment, I was level with the edge of the window, staring up to Tom and the people in the flat, all leaning through the holes they’d made, all screaming their rage at me. The man yanked me a third time; I slid into the flat and dropped. At once, the man’s hands hit my neck, pulled, then squeezed.
Agony raced through my neck into my head and down to my lungs. He shoved me against the wall, my kicking feet bashing into the wrecked television and coffee table. Grunting, the man shook me as if I weighed nothing, then threw me to the opposite wall. Blindly, I raised a hand at the last second. It smacked into the wall. My hand was fire. My neck and throat a roaring bellow.
Great thuds ran towards me. I took it all in within no more than two seconds: the man’s knife he’d claimed after throwing me, his arm swinging towards me and my foot below him.
I kicked up and high. By luck more than anything else, I caught him just to the side of his crotch. He overbalanced, shouting noise, and dropped his knife. I scrambled a few inches over the debris covering the floor and his hand closed over my ankle again. He twisted me around, grinning, mouth made of spit and teeth. I kicked again. That time, my target was easier. His face.
My boot smashed into his nose and upper lip. Blood exploded. He fell back, screaming either in pain or anger, and rolled into an overturned chair. I skidded into a clumsy crouching run, praying the flat was the same layout as Ashleigh’s and that the door would be open.
Behind, the man howled. I spun around, facing him. Something quick dropped past the windows, arms and legs flailing.
Screaming my own rage and fear into the chaos, I ran at the man, hit him dead center and we staggered towards the window. His arms came around me; I jerked my head up, hit his chin, and my head was an explosion.
Someone else fell by the window, a screaming figure covered in blood.
I shoved again. We both skidded on a rug and the man overbalanced. Even now, I wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t.
We fell to the broken window, the man bent against it. I drew back and punched him in the face as hard as I could. Pain in my hand competed with the pain in my head. Blood flew from his ruined nose. Screaming, sobbing, I hit him again, then kneed him in the groin.
Directly above, something screamed. I jerked back and the falling figure hit the man in the face and chest. Bones snapped. Blood sprayed. The figure from above rolled off the man and I shoved him as hard as I could.
He followed the body down to the street and both exploded into a mess of blood and broken flesh at the foot of the building.
Still sobbing, I looked up. On the ledge, Tom was a frozen statue, staring at me. More and more people were reaching for him through the gaping holes in the windows.
I tried to shout his name, but had no air. All I could do was signal for him to drop down to the ledge I leaned on. He shook his head, crying. From somewhere, I found enough air to speak.
“Jump. They’ll be on you any second.”
Again, he shook his head. Glass cracked and tiny shards fell towards the horrible mess below. I used the only tool I had left.
“Ashleigh, Tom.” How it hurt to say my daughter’s name right then. It felt as if I was inviting trouble. “You have to jump for her.”
A huge smash split the last of the window. Arms shoved through, all of them more red than white or black.
Tom screamed once. Then he jumped.
18
Tom wouldn’t let go of me once we were both inside. I had to drag the
boy through the mess of the living room to the kitchen, then push him away so I could hold my screaming hands under the cold tap until a little of the pain faded and some of the bloodstains went with it. There was nothing I could do about my clothes, though, or the stink of sweat and blood.
“This isn’t happening,” Tom muttered.
“You think like that and we’re in even more trouble.” I hissed as the cold water sank deeper into my skin. “We’re in trouble. Everybody is in trouble. We just have to deal with it. Are you injured?”
He sank to his knees and held himself.
“Tom.” I shouted it despite not wanting to make any noise.
He shook his head once.
“I need you to check the door. I think there’s furniture in front of it. Do it now, Tom.”
Tom rose and lurched to the entrance hall. “There’s a chair and stuff in front of it. It looks all right,” he called to me.
As I drew breath to tell Tom to keep it down, he jerked back and dashed into the kitchen.
“What is it?” I hissed.
“Someone’s out there,” he whispered.
I turned the tap off, wrapped my throbbing hand in a tea towel and slid towards the corridor. Tom made no move to follow. At the corner of hallway and kitchen, I listened. And heard her.
“Please. You’re in there, aren’t you? I heard you.”
A woman outside. A woman making too much noise in the corridor.
She tapped on the door and I had to be grateful she was still in control enough not to hammer at it.
“Please. Please let me in. They’re out here. I need help.”
Tom took a step towards me and the corridor and I signaled for him to stay still.
“What are you doing? We can’t leave her out there,” he breathed.
“I know. Just stay quiet.”
Treading lightly, I squeezed past the furniture and held my breath as I drew close to the door. She was right outside it, babbling for help, offering everything she had if we’d only open the door.
Tom was behind me, the weight of his eyes on me, and I wanted to tell him why. He wouldn’t have understood, though. Maybe you had to be older like me. Or maybe you had to be a dad.
“Please let me in. You have to let me in. I’m not dangerous. I’m not. I need help. I need help, okay? Please—”
She broke off. And I’d like to say my hand was reaching for the handle. But that would be a lie. A lie that agonizes me even now.
“They’re coming, please help me, oh shit, they’re coming, let me in fucking let me in let me in let me in let me—”
She had time to hammer on the door for two seconds. No more. Even so, I can hear that terrified thumping now.
A storm of running feet and wordless shouts. Then screams. And the tearing of material.
More screams.
It was a long time before they finished with her.
19
Luckily, the dead man had a roommate more our size (even more luckily for us and for him, the roommate was nowhere in sight) so we stole clothes from the missing man’s wardrobe and left our stinking, bloodstained belongings in his bedroom. At the main door, I listened, heard nothing and eased the door open.
Gatur’s people had torn the woman apart. While she still had a torso, her arms and legs were missing. They’d left her head attached. Her face, covered in more blood than I’d seen in my life, was aimed towards our door as if she still wanted to be let inside. She wouldn’t have been able to see it, though. They’d torn out her eyes.
“You should have let her in,” Tom said. They were the first words he’d spoken since several hours before. During the woman’s terrible screams, he’d returned to the kitchen and sat in a tight ball against the wall. I’d tried to bring him into a conversation but gave up after several minutes. We’d passed what was left of the night in silence broken by the sirens and screams below. After several hours, the green tinge in the air that I let myself see for no more than a second at a time abruptly vanished. The screams went with it, then returned: the awful wailing of people coming back to themselves to discover what they’d done to friends, family and strangers. By the sounds, it had been a good night’s work for Gatur the Green.
“Should have let her in,” Tom said again and moved as if to punch me. I gripped his hand and eased it down to his side.
“It wouldn’t have saved her and it would have killed us.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No, but when it comes to the risk of killing us and Ashleigh being in even more danger, then I’ll do what I have to, Tom.”
He looked at me as if my words had been easy to say. They weren’t in the slightest. The woman’s ruined, violated corpse was no more than five feet from us, blood all over the carpet and wall. All there because I hadn’t let her into the flat. Just like with Derek, I couldn’t think about it. Couldn’t admit the woman would have had a chance if I’d let her in. I could only believe this horror was what life was. Kill or be killed. Damn or be damned.
I wanted to explain to Tom. Tell him nothing mattered to me other than protecting Ashleigh. Tell him listening to the woman’s scream and murder was as horrendous for me as it’d been for him. Tell him I was a good guy, really.
Instead of any of that, I simply told him to follow me and keep quiet.
Carrying our meager weapons and a bag of food I’d snatched from the dead man’s cupboards, we walked to the stairs and descended. Several of the large windows forming the front of the building had been smashed; we crossed piles of glass and puddles of blood, in silence. Even though I didn’t want to see outside, I had to look.
Bodies covered the road and pavements. Not one of the shops and businesses was left unscathed—doors smashed in, windows broken, several still burning. And all around, weeping, shuffling people grieving for either what they’d done or what had been done.
We reached the second floor before we encountered any other bodies. They lay where they’d been killed, a few makeshift weapons lying with them. Doors to the flats were wrecked pieces of wood. Somewhere, someone sobbed without seeming to pause for breath.
“Keep going,” Tom said. His face was slack, his mouth hanging open. “For Ashleigh, right?”
Not liking the lack of emotion in his voice, I nodded. We walked to the first floor, passed another window and I swore.
Outside, two police cars were parked on the other side of the road. I’d missed them in my scan of the street a moment before. The police were trying to get people away from the bodies. Four coppers against dozens of scared, grief-stricken people. We had minutes before things got ugly.
“Quickly,” I said.
We jogged down the last set of stairs and to the main entrance. At once, the noise from outside reached us, a mix of shouts, of bellowed orders from the police to get back, to go home, and growing from somewhere in the distance, the howl of sirens.
We kept our heads down and headed to the van. Someone yelled at us. We kept walking, Tom fishing for his keys. The van was where we’d left it, two of the windows broken and a car, still smoldering, crashed into its side. Thankfully, the car looked as if it’d hit our van by accident. Skid marks stained the road and there was little damage to the van.
We got in and saw them at the same time. The ten or eleven people rounding the corner, all of them carrying bats and knives and chunks of wood. They saw the police and rushed to them, screaming their rage.
“Gatur’s gone,” Tom yelled. “She’s—”
“They’re not affected. They’re just angry.” I hit his arm. “Drive, Tom.”
He made no move to do so. The police were firing at the sprinting group, dropping three or four of them. The others kept coming, weapons swinging. The people who’d been milling about the street either ducked or ran. But some didn’t. Some grabbed whatever they could use as a weapon and ran at the four coppers—the targets for their fury and their grief. And while the green mist of Gatur had left, I imagine that bitch was well pleased with
the results of her influence.
The police fell below the onslaught, clubbed and stabbed and hacked to the ground. It was all over in seconds.
“Tom,” I whispered. “We need to go right now.”
The shouting had stopped. The only sound was the steady crackle of the fires. All around us was a held breath.
“Tom.”
A man from the group who’d come round the corner pushed at a woman from the other group. Even now, I have no idea why. Maybe he was just after an excuse.
The two groups fell on another just as they had with the police. Blood and screams flew in all directions. At the other end of the road, two more police cars appeared. One skidded, stopping right outside Ashleigh’s block. The other kept going, aimed straight at the fighting mass of people.
“Tom, fucking drive, will you?”
He stabbed the key at the ignition as the police car hit the people, scattering broken bodies up high to come crashing down. Tom spun us around, wheels screaming. He didn’t move fast enough. I had time enough to see the remaining people dash to the police car and time to hear the gunfire begin.
20
We drove through the center of Norwich, most of it destroyed by its own population during the night, and headed to the suburbs. The three-mile journey took over an hour as we had to skirt around abandoned vehicles, take side streets and avoid the police cleaning up the mess as much as we could. Conversation was sparse during our journey; Tom told me where we were going when I asked, but said little more. I gave up and did my best not to see the bodies on the pavement and made no move to turn the news on. What could it have told me I didn’t already know? Gatur the Green had come and done what she did. Now she was gone and we had to pick up the pieces.
Tom took us to one of the few nice parts of the city still remaining and pulled up outside a family restaurant, the sort of place I hadn’t seen in years. All mock Tudor front and wide car park beside it, not one of the three vehicles burned out.