Sufferer's Song

by Savile, Steve

  And she almost believed him. She thought she heard a hint of despair in his voice when he said her name. If she had, good.

  He started to move then, walking slowly over to the bed. He sat down. “Come out from under there, baby girl. Daddy’s getting lonely out here.”

  She shifted the spray can behind her back a second before her father leaned under the bed. His face wasn’t warped with the same rage that had been blocking his throat when he yelled. He looked upside-down normal, blood rushing to his head. She could see the difference in his eyes, the strange urgency about the way he looked at her, the hunger in them. Yes, the hunger. That was what was wrong. Daddy was frantic with hunger.

  “Come on, baby girl.”

  He reached under the bed for her impatiently. Too rough, the way he pawed at her hurt. Ellen allowed him to shimmy her out from under the bed. She tried to look small, frightened, as he hoisted her up in a too tight bear hug. He held her back at arm's length, devouring her with his hungry eyes.

  As he went to shift his grip on her hair, Ellen wriggled around against his one-handed hold and whipped her hand up, spraying deodorant into his eyes from less than a foot away. Even as he shrieked, suddenly blinded, she bucked and squirmed out from his forgotten grip and bolted out of the door and down the stairs.

  She could still hear his pained screams of “Blind! The little bitch blinded me!” as she ducked out of the front door and started racing down the street as fast as her legs would carry her – any way they wanted to take her.

  - 82 -

  Kristy French knew she had twisted her words but she hadn’t exactly promised to stay put with Barney and the others at the restaurant. She felt like a deserter wandering the streets all the same.

  Guilt quickly swept away from her mind, the empty cackle of a crazy woman driving it as she shrieked past Kristy’s hiding place. The sound was animalistic. A rioter dodged the crazy woman’s outstretched arms and scrambled against the flow of bodies with surprising agility. Kristy changed her mind immediately – it wasn’t a rioter she was watching dodge back against the tidal press of bodies, it was a little girl. She clumsily scrambled after her.

  The girl managed to wriggle out of the clutches of a brute of a man. His feral face distorted with snarling. She was wriggling and squirming like a demon, dodging people as she jogged along the side of the pavement, doing her best to keep pace with the girl. She gasped as someone struck her shoulder. Kristy span around but the tide of flesh had already carried the culprit away down the street. The jolt brought her back to her senses.

  The girl was probably running on rapidly burning out adrenaline; it couldn’t be strength keeping her going, and it couldn’t last. She was little more than a waif.

  A charging rioter sent the girl sprawling into the gutter.

  Mercifully the press gang didn’t allow him to follow up for the kill. The girl didn’t get up straight away. Running feet trampled her.

  Kristy wanted to run to her then, but held back, willing the rioters away. They weren’t all rioters, she realized suddenly. Unaffected people charged about like headless chickens, doing more damage in some cases than the targeted attacks of the pack.

  The rotor blades of a helicopter sweeping low churned up a localized gale as it veered off and away to the right, angling toward the water. The helicopter might have been mute for the difference in noise its departure made.

  Kristy took advantage of the confusion it provided to force herself a path through the crowd. She ignored their rabid expressions and garishly twisted mouths. She threw back shrieks of her own when hands reached out to snare her –

  And made it through to the rising girl’s side.

  Kristy reached out a hand of support. The girl turned and screamed in her face.

  “Shush, it’s okay honey. It’s okay. I’m one of the good guys. Let’s get out of her, though. You okay?”

  “Yeah,” the girl said, knuckling the muck and tears out of her bleary eyes. She wasn’t aware of the hurt, only falling. People trampling over her back, standing on her, and the sensation of being lifted, twisted, kicked.

  Kristy held her close, hugging her. “What’s your name, honey?” she was saying, lifting her up to carry her out of the gutter.

  That was when it started to hurt – all down one side of her body felt as though she had been used as a football. She tried to touch out some of the sorer spots, but didn’t dare.

  “Ellen Tanner,” Ellen sniffed.

  “Ellen Tanner, that’s a pretty damned fine name, I’d say. I think I’ve met your dad, Ellen.” Kristy felt the youngster stiffen at the mention of her father, calmed her and let it go. She couldn’t help wondering what nightmare had forced this little one out into the street; but she was sure it had involved her father.

  They walked back through the streets, Ellen slipping into a sort of shocked trance. Kristy kept up a constant stream of chatter. Ellen didn’t respond to anything she had to say. At every corner, she stopped and checked both ways, thinking, calculating.

  She watched the flames rearing high above the ridge of rooftops and scanned the broken streets for signs of Ben. She didn’t expect to see him, yet she couldn’t bury the hope.

  In terms of the future what was one more casualty in the pocked mess of this fortnight? She started at her reflection in the shard of rain-streaked glass lying at her feet, ground it into powder with her heel, heart sinking. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Ellen silent in tow, Kristy retraced her steps with growing despair. Her skin had begun to itch. There was a restlessness in her stomach. She tried not to think too hard about what it signified; lost love was worse for smothering the light than the night, darkness and coaxing sleep. The air was thick with smoke and vapor trails but the streets were empty. They had been since she found Ellen.

  Where is he?

  She knew she was tearing herself apart over an if, but she couldn’t help herself: what if he were dead? Or what if he were out there lying in a ditch somewhere dying of gunshot wounds or worse.

  When Jack Kemp staggered out of the smoke and fire of the house blazing across the T junction, handkerchief clamped over his face, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She had felt so sure it was Ben. Then she saw the figure beyond him. The fire had taken its toll on Ben Shelton, but he was alive.

  “Uncle Ben!” Ellen squealed, tugging free of Kristy’s grip. She ran across the street but fell short of throwing herself into his arms. Tears poured from his smoke stung eyes. He could barely focus on the ground he stumbled across, but he spared an affectionate smile for his friend’s little girl.

  It wasn’t until Kristy was in hugging range that she saw the forlorn little bundle in his arms; she had simply assumed that the smoke and the dust had worked into his lungs and he was having trouble breathing. It was not so.

  “A baby?” she breathed, making the statement sound like a question.

  He nodded. “I heard her crying when I was in the house. Her parents are both dead. Downstairs was already on fire when I got there,” he shrugged not knowing what else there was to say.

  - 83 -

  Johnny cornered his old man sitting in the dark, rocking slightly in his chair, zonked out to the world. The old git didn’t even wake up when there was a fucking riot going on outside.

  Un-fucking-believeable, man.

  He reeked with the stink of fags and booze. He’d thrown up on the front of his dressing gown and half wiped it off before it began congealing.

  Johnny’s head was reeling with disorientating thoughts. The voices kept on pushing, pushing him. What a fucking trip. It took everything he had to keep his hated focused on the slumbering drunk.

  Johnny hooked his fingers around the support strut of the chair and hauled it up, yanking it out from under his drunken father. He put a kick in at his temple, then crouched on top of the old man, his knee pressed hard down on his neck while he cast about looking for something to use.

  “You reek of shit, you dirty old bastard.” />
  There was a small grade screwdriver in the jar on top of the television.

  “Just the trick. Now come on, wakey wakey, daddy dearest.”

  He slapped Jeff Lisker across the face. He spat in his eyes. The old man came around groggily, his hand going to his head before his eyes opened.

  “Wha?”

  “Just wanted you conscious enough to enjoy it, cunthole.”

  Johnny rammed the blade of the screwdriver into his father’s ear, forcing it in deeper until the entire length of the steel spike was buried. Then he brought it back out and wiped it on the leg of his tatty jeans.

  Jeff Lisker spasmed and gagged, choking like a fish wrenched out of the water and left to drown in the air by a sadist.

  Johnny went through to the kitchen and washed the crap off his hands as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

  When Devlin watched him walk away from the old house in Mulberry Lane he was laughing and talking quietly to himself.

  - 84 -

  Fire joined like a blanket in the sky, stretching from horizon to horizon, the helicopter fanning a blanket of flames.

  “A dozen,” his passenger said, voicing the number he’d visualized. A dozen uniforms dead and wounded the length of the main street alone. “The vans are going to be delayed by the roadblock, best radio McKenna and let him know.”

  One hundred and fifty men coming in.

  He thanked God they were in the air, above it all.

  - 85 -

  Doyle walked into the restroom where Ben was washing the gunk off his face with handfuls of icy water. He left Ellen and the baby with Evie while he came in to freshen up.

  Bracing himself on the sink unit Ben stared at himself in the big mirror, grateful for the lack of light. He knew he looked haggard, sad and a little frantic all at the same time. He pressed out the soft flesh beneath his eyes. The only good thing about all of this mess was that it stopped him from thinking, from dwelling on things. Hell of a length to go to to forget something.

  “Yeah, I’d agree.”

  “Agree to what, lad?” Doyle asked, letting the hydraulic arm close on the door behind him.

  “Just talking to myself, Barn. Nothing to worry about. What’s happening out there?”

  “Reckon there’s over seventy of them now, and more coming from the direction of Longrigg. Christ knows what they’re waiting for. Reckon they’re either going to smoke us out or storm us.”

  “Pleasant summary, Officer Doyle.”

  “You didn’t say anything about roses, lad. And the truth’s pretty black stuff.”

  “Come on, then. I suppose we ought to be getting back out there before anyone starts worrying where we’ve got to.”

  “She’s a nice lass, Ben,” Barney Doyle said, and shrugged, smiling.

  “I think so too,” he agreed matching the smile, as the doors of the restroom crashed open. Evie looked stricken.

  “Barney, it’s Billy. You better come see.”

  Billy Rogan was strapped into a chair with a series of leather belts. He was bucking and thrashing, twisting his head and fighting to break free from his bonds. He looked crazy enough to claw his own eyes out.

  Doyle closed his fist, kissed his knuckles, said: “Sorry, Billy lad, but you’re gonna do yourself or somebody else a mischief and I ain’t gonna let that happen,” and punched him with enough force to snap his head back into a blackout.

  Alfie Meecham hadn’t left the window since he’d come inside. Occasional yelps from outside told him one more of his mutts had run afoul of the mob. He’d never felt so impotent. Watching. Listening to it happen. How would they have felt if it was their children out there? No, none of them could answer that question, could they?

  - 86 -

  The attack, when it came, was brutally direct and so very, very quick.

  They threw bodies at the door, hoping to force their way in through the sheer weight of numbers.

  There was no strategy to the assault.

  That bought the defenders precious time.

  - 87 -

  “Noooooo!”

  Both Ben and Doyle spun around to see what had triggered Ellen’s scream. Kristy was closest to the window she was pointing at. She went over to check it out, show Ellen there was nothing to be scared of –

  Just as Daniel Tanner’s wild, screaming face slammed up against the glass.

  Kristy recoiled in shock; Ellen shrieked again. The others watched in horror as Daniel beat his fists against the glass screaming: “Let me in! Let me in for Christ’s sake! They’re going to kill me!”

  As hard as it was, Ben shook his head. “No. No,” he stared wildly at his friend, and tried to convince himself that it wasn’t his friend, not really, and focused on Ellen’s sketchy description of what he had done to Sarah and Kathleen, and looked back at the doors again in horror as a crowd of outsiders hit it in a charge.

  Doyle was saying a litany of Hail Mary’s as he ran to shore up the doors. The first to squeeze through was a skinny woman clutching a wooden axe. One of the diners (Doyle recognized him as Steve Fry, one of the teachers from the local comp) jammed a steak knife into her throat.

  “Oh God, oh God.”

  Suddenly everyone in the dining area seemed to be at the doors. A kid charged the door with his head. An arm reached in. Ben hurled himself across the gap, slammed the door on the grasping arm, snapped it back, pulled the owner through while Doyle and Steve strengthened the door. While they got it closed and locked, Ben pulled a screwdriver from his waistband and wedged it up under the kid’s ribs.

  Ben recognized him; that was the worst part. Simon, one of the older kids who used to help Mike down at the garage. He knew then, if he hadn’t known before, that this wasn’t pretend. This was as horribly real as it got.

  Lives were being thrown away.

  And what was he doing?

  He looked at Simon’s body at his feet. What had he done to deserve a screwdriver up through his ribs?

  What was his crime?

  - 88 -

  “They’ve got trouble,” the radio operator told Andy McKenna, wiping an anxious hand across his mouth as he spoke. “Someone’s laid roadblocks at the Arches. They can’t get the vans in. Fourteen units are coming in on foot. One staying back to clear the way for the fire brigade and the ambulances coming in behind. The reports I am picking up from the helicopter suggest the rioters are regrouping by the lake, and are currently beseiging Doyle’s restaurant down there. I think we’re pretty much at the mercy of the mob ‘til the men get through, sir.”

  McKenna was trying not to think about what would happen between now and the reinforcements getting through. Not thinking was the one universal skill that could be applied as a survival skill. McKenna closed his eyes. Just do what you have to do, he told himself.

  “Issue warnings to the brigade concerning the possibility of volatile chemicals in the paper mill and spillage from the surrounding areas. Casualty count?”

  “Twenty seven men not responding to their radios at the last roll call, sir. That’s not including any walking wounded.”

  “Jesus,” McKenna put his hands together in the universal gesture of prayer, a habit he had developed when he was thinking things through that would have been best left forgotten. He squashed the thought. “Have the remaining men regroup. I want to co-ordinate confinement measures with the men coming in. Raise their officer in charge.”

  - 89 -

  It wasn’t the darkness that scared him, not with one hundred and forty friends at his side, but the elemental dance of death cavorting along the same night time street duty had him walking.

  God alone knew what deceits were lined up amid the burning hulks. What traps had been laid? He thought of all the bad Vietnam movies he’d ever seen where mantraps came fizzing out of the forest – the darkness – to impale the unfortunate taking point, and sincerely wished he hadn’t.

  He could hear the others talking, low-grade stuff, what they’d lined up for the n
ight, girls they wished would, stuff they had planned for tomorrow and the next day. A lot of it was talk of the future, people reassuring themselves that no matter what happened on the other side of those felled trees, there would be tomorrow’s to live out those plans, meet those girls that maybe would . . .

  The wind wailed with the banshee voice of the dead; that was how it sounded in his ears. Smoke, dust and ashes marked the mouth of the village. A cascade of junk, shattered television sets and stereo equipment, the tangled and melted plastics of ghetto-blasters and radios, rags of clothes. And everywhere there were more smashed cars and bodies buried in the wreckage, and parts of bodies, arms and legs protruding from the debris as stiffly as the limbs of department store dummies.

  The fires extended all the way along what had been the High Street, in all directions, glowing like bloody rubies behind veils of smoke, dust and ashes. The height and heat of the conflagration blazed brightest from the shell of the old school building to the east. The panorama of destruction was incomprehensibly horrific and numbing because of it. His mind reached the limit of its ability to soak up, accept and process the visual messages it was receiving, generating the shock factor and began churning out inanities like what color his wife’s hair was and what her favorite food was and how much she hated cricket; little things, fragments to pull sanity out of the wreckage.

  - 90 -

  A woman’s head shattered the window.