by Simon Clark
You can become an Einstein, a mother, a father, a warrior, a leader, a messiah – anything that the situation demands. All you need is that access code.
Somewhere on my journey back here I’d found it. Changes had taken place in my head. I was a different Nick Aten now.
I looked round at the faces watching me to see what I’d do next. ‘I could murder one of those beers.’ I took one without waiting to be asked. The cronies looked at Slatter again, waiting for his lead.
Slatter spat into the fire. ‘You old bastard … I thought you were dead.’
I sensed Slatter’s change in attitude to me. The words were pure old Slatter, but the tone had altered. This was probably the nearest thing to a friendly greeting he’d come to in his life.
‘Well …’ I drank the beer in one. ‘You can see I’m alive. And I’m back for a reason.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Because you need my help.’
‘Piss off.’
‘You need my help, Slatter. And I need yours.’
‘What makes you think I’ll help you? I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.’
I opened another beer, then I told him what had happened to me. That they were in danger – the Creosotes were massing. As soon as there were enough of them, something would click in their heads, then they’d go hell for leather to kill every single one of us in Eskdale.
At first they found it hard to believe and laughed, saying that sometimes for a laugh they’d walk through the middle of the Creosotes who’d just stand or sit about and not touch them.
I asked why Slatter and his cronies were sitting up here in the yard of a wrecked farmhouse. What was wrong with the creature comforts of the hotel?
Slatter’s eyes narrowed and he gave me some crap about Curt paying them in booze and cigarettes to camp out here and keep watch.
‘If no one’s afraid of the Creosotes, who are you keeping watch on?’
‘God knows,’ said one of the cronies, and with the exception of Slatter they all laughed.
Reading between the lines I guessed Curt had got nervous of having Slatter around and bribed him to live out here.
‘Slatter. I need your help to get rid of the Creosotes.’
‘How you going to do that? There’s more than three thousand of the bastards.’
‘I was hoping you’d tell me.’
Slatter laughed.
An eighteen-year-old called Burke had been a mercenary in Africa before the sanity-crash. He said he knew weapons and explosives inside out. ‘We’ve got a garage full of Semtex. We could blast the bastards.’
‘You could if you could get them all to nicely wait in a big enough building,’ said one of the other cronies. ‘Those fuckers are spread out for two miles along the valley floor. You could blast hundreds of them but you’d not get them all.’
‘It’s as simple as this,’ I told them, ‘if we don’t wipe them out, then they’ll wipe us out … What if we use the explosive to blast as many as we can, then use guns on the rest?’
Slatter spat. ‘What, seven of us chasing thousands of the mad bastards through the forest? Sure we’d blow away hundreds, but even if they fought back with their bare hands they’d soon tear us a set of new arseholes … Think again, Aten.’
‘Maybe I’ll leave it to Martin Del-Coffey. He’ll come up with an idea.’
‘That faggot? He’d wipe their arses and try to teach them algebra.’
‘Come on, Slatter, I bet you can come up with an idea.’
‘Of course I could.’ The ugly ape face split into a grin. ‘But I’ll not tell you.’
‘There’s three hundred lives at stake. If you can—’
‘Aten. Hey, Aten, shut up, I’m talking now. D’ ya want to know something interesting?’
‘And what’s that, Slatter?’
‘That ponce father and tart mother of yours are back as well.’
I stared at him, the blood drumming though my neck.
He pulled on the cigarette, staring at me. ‘They’re hanging out with the rest of the mad bastards.’
‘Tell me something new. I already know.’
For the first time he can’t have seen the thing in my face he used to feed on: shock, surprise, fear, whatever it was – wasn’t there. He shrugged, broke eye contact and looked away.
I smiled. It felt as if I’d won my first small victory.
‘The other thing I want you to help me with,’ I said, ‘is to get rid of Curt.’
‘So, Aten, who’ll be the new leader?’
‘I will.’
‘Oh yeah … Me help you become new boss man. No way, Aten. No friggin’ way.’
I left it at that. Anyway I was knackered from walking for forty-eight hours solid. I took my haversack to the barn, pulled out the sleeping bag and climbed.
Deliberately I kept awake, watching the stars through the open door – and listening to Slatter and his cronies talk around the fire.
Burke entertained them with a few dirty limericks, then they started talking about the Creosotes in the next valley.
‘Aten’s thick,’ I heard Slatter say. ‘All you have to do to get rid of those psycho bastards is stick Semtex against the wall of the dam, light the fuse, and bang … The water would wash the bastards all the way to kingdom come.’
I’d heard what I wanted to hear. Now, I could close my eyes and sleep.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Start of the Longest Day
I slept right through until eight a.m. When I’d eaten breakfast Slatter came up to me and grunted. ‘Follow me. I’ve got something to show you.’
I followed him along the spine of the hill. The grass was crisp with frost, the sun blazed in the sky and you could see for miles.
After a mile he stopped. ‘Down there.’
Along the bottom of the valley that ran parallel to Eskdale valley Creosotes sat or lay along the banks of the stream as far as I could see. At the top of the valley the dam wall ran from one side to the other in a curtain of black concrete a hundred feet high.
Slatter said, ‘Burke reckoned there were three thousand of them. There’s more now. Look … There’s another bunch coming over the hill there.’
‘So, Tug, what now?’
‘I reckon you’re right, Aten. They’re getting ready to crush them pansies in the hotel.’
‘Listen, Slatter. I’m going to tell you something now. It’s going to sound like I’m slagging you off. I’m not, this is the truth. You’re a parasite, Slatter. You hate ordinary people. But you can’t live without them. You’ve got no one out here to terrorise respect out of; there’s no one to watch you parading about and think, ‘Christ, there goes Tug Slatter – he’s a hard bastard.’ Stuck out here living in that ruin you’re like a man who’s slowly being starved to death.’
Slatter said nothing for a while, then he looked at me. ‘I reckon you’re right about that as well … You said you wanted Curt and his cretins kicking out of the hotel … When are we going to do it?’
‘Now.’
As we walked back to the farm I told him, ‘I heard what you told the others last night, about blowing the dam and drowning the Creosotes … It’s a pretty good idea. Burke says he knows about explosives. Can he do it?’
‘Yeah, he can do it.’
‘Tell him to get started then. We can’t risk another day, we’ve got to blow the wall of the dam tonight.’
‘You tell him. You’re going to be the new boss.’
Back at the yard Slatter sat on the wall and smoked cigarettes while I talked to his cronies for an hour. They were the usual sad bunch of retards, headcases, and thugs that Slatter hung out with. But they had guts and when I told them the plan they jumped around like kids who’d been told that Santa Claus was coming.
‘It’ll take a block of Semtex about the size of a house to do it.’ Burke’s voice quivered. To him this was better than sex. ‘We’ll get the JCB, dig out a pit at the base of the wall. Stack in the explosive,
then mound earth back over it. That’ll do the trick.’
‘You’ve got enough Semtex?’
‘We’ve got plenty.’
‘Good. If you get it done by nightfall we’ll blow the dam tonight at midnight. In the dark the Creosotes won’t know what’s hit them.’ I picked up the rifle. ‘There’s going to be some Creosotes who aren’t taken out by the tidal wave that’ll come thundering down that valley when we blow the dam. We’ll have to be tooled up with all the guns and ammo we can carry to finish them off.’
‘We’re going to kill all of them?’
‘By this time tomorrow those bastards are going to be extinct.’
Then this bunch of psychos cheered and whistled and slapped me on the back. Slatter watched without moving a muscle of his tattooed face.
Then his cronies hurried away to prepare for the biggest bang Eskdale had ever heard.
The time was eleven o’clock.
‘Come on,’ I said to Slatter. ‘I want to see Sarah Hayes first … Did you know I’ve got a baby son?’
‘I heard … But I didn’t believe. Pansy like you wouldn’t know where to put it.’
We both laughed as we set off down the hill toward Eskdale. Me and Slatter laughing together? Almost liking one another? Christ, surely this was a day of miracles. I only hoped the miracles kept on coming my way. This was going to be the longest day of my life.
But first I wanted to see Sarah and the baby … Our baby.
Then Slatter and me were going together to call on Curt … and make Curt an offer he could not refuse.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Just Like Old Times
Noon.
‘Nick … Hey! Nick Aten. We heard you were back. Curt wants to see you.’
Two hundred yards down the road I could see Del-Coffey’s house in the village. Sarah would be waiting for me there.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll be about an hour, I’m just going to see Sarah. You know, I’ve got a baby son now.’
‘Don’t mess Curt about, Nick. He said now. He means NOW.’
Shit. I squinted up against the sunlight at two teenage members of the Crew who sat on the ten foot high wall that enclosed the hotel grounds. They carried shot guns. They weren’t aiming them but I noticed both were pointed in my general direction.
The kid I was talking to pulled open the gate. ‘Come on, I’ll take you up there. You’ll have to leave your bag and guns in the gatehouse. I’ll have to search you as well … No, not you, Tug.’ The kid looked nervous. ‘Curt wants you to get back to Hill Top Farm. He’ll send a case of beer up for you.’
Slatter shrugged. I went inside and the gate banged shut behind me.
Looking back I saw Slatter undo his jeans belt. Nervously the gate man asked, ‘What you doing, Tug?’
‘I want a frigging dump, that’s what.’
‘There? In the road?’
‘Good a place as any … You can stand there and watch if you want.’
The gate man shook his head quickly and told me to follow him.
Shit and double shit … It’d all gone wrong. Yes, I wanted to see Sarah and my son so much I hurt inside. But also I wanted to map out some strategy with Del-Coffey to kick out Curt and the Crew.
Now I was on my own, unarmed, and that idiot Slatter was taking a crap in the road. Shit, I knew I couldn’t rely on the moron.
I breathed deeply.
‘You okay?’ asked gate man.
‘Tired. I’ve just walked eighty miles.’
‘You’re some tough shit now, aren’t you? You didn’t have those muscles when you left here. What you been doing? Body-building?’
‘Muscles? I never noticed.’
What good was muscle? I was alone now. How was I going to do anything to Curt apart from try and talk some sense into his thick skull?
Alone?
Didn’t you listen to a word I said? Bernadette could have been speaking into my ear. You’re not alone, no one’s ever alone. All you have to do is tune into that second mind inside your dense brain, Aten. He’s waiting in there to help you. He’s intelligent, he’s powerful, he’s creative. Now … Switch off … Think about something else and let him help you. Let him start piping that intuition into the front of your brain.
I tried … I looked up at the hotel building. It was a wreck now. Windows smashed, tiles missing, ivy growing wild across the walls. The grounds were littered with bottles, cans, rusting cars, the old Shogun that had saved my skin lay on its side burnt out. A dead cat rotted at the side of the driveway.
A line of children walked toward the hotel carrying cases of beer on their heads. Their eyes, looking too large for their heads, wore a dead shine. The children were beginning to starve to death.
Someone had tried to repair the break in the wall where the truck had crashed through with bits of timber, barbed wire and house doors. Never mind the big bad wolf, even one of the little piggies could huff and puff and blow that piece of crap down.
That’s it, Nick. Think about anything but what you need to do …
I only hope you’re right, Bernadette. If you’re wrong I could be as cold as that dead cat by tonight.
We walked round the back of the hotel to the swimming pool, still covered in ice, and the hotel terrace. A bonfire was burning.
Curt, Jonathan and the Crew, about twenty of them, sat round a huge table.
They were pissed. Laughing, talking, shouting.
Curt sat at the head of the table like the Queen of bleeding Sheba.
The racket cut to silence as they saw me walk up.
Curt looked like shit, a burnt-out kind of look, his eyes seemed to peer out to his left and right both at the same time.
‘Hey, hey. My old buddy, Aten. Sit down. Grab a drink!’
I thought he was going to start firing questions but he continued a conversation with Jonathan who sat on his left hand side. It was something scintillating because they leaned toward one another, heads nearly touching, chuckling themselves breathless.
A sixteen-year-old girl came up to me as I sat down.
Even though the temperature couldn’t have lifted its belly above zero centigrade she wore a cut down T-shirt, mini-skirt and sandals. Her hands and feet were blue. A smile was nailed to her red mouth but her eyes bled sheer bloody agony.
‘Refreshment, sir?’
My hatred for Curt turned from simmering to boiling.
The girl looked down at the tray she carried: there were bottles, cans, cigars and bowls of multi-coloured pills. ‘The blue spirit is very warming,’ she said, ‘but it’s neat alcohol so you might want to mix it with a beer if you’re not used to it.’
From the smell rolling out of the jug of blue spirit I guessed it was the same stuff that I’d used before now to clean engine parts. These guys were out of their fucking mind.
‘Sir?’
‘A beer … Just a beer. Thanks.’
Jonathan, pulling on a huge cigar, turned to look at me. ‘Nick. Everyone reckoned you’d kicked us into touch. We were all saying you thought you were too good for us.’
‘That’s right.’ Curt looked at me with his splayed eyes. ‘We were pretty cut up about it. We had people out looking for you.’
‘I was kidnapped,’ I explained, ‘by my parents. Along with Trousers.’
‘So we found out … Where’s Trousers now?’
‘He’s dead …’ I was going to give them the whole story about the mass crucifixion; my intuition sang a different song. ‘I killed him.’
‘You killed him?’ Curt and his Crew exchanged surprised looks.
‘You’re all right,’ said Curt gratefully. ‘I always said you should have joined the Crew. Look at the benefits.’ He waved his hand, taking in the table full of food, booze and drugs, and the servant girls shivering in tart make-up and mini-skirts.
‘Curt,’ I said, ‘the reason I got back here as quickly as I did is to warn you. You won’t know this but the—’
‘Warn me? Warn me what
?’
‘You don’t realize the danger we’re in. Now that—’
‘Danger? Warning? We’re in no danger, are we, Jonno? No, Nick. We’re as safe as frigging houses …’
‘But, there’s—’
‘Shush, Nick. Tell me later. It’s party time. And we’ve laid on some entertainments for you. We’ve got some buckets of water. These girls want to take part in a wet T-shirt competition, don’t you, girls?’
‘Yes, Curt.’ The girls shivered and desperately, desperately smiled. Their lives depended on it.
‘Do you want to see the wet T-shirt competition, Nick?’
‘No. I want—’
‘Today, Nick Aten’s the boss … Oi, Billy, bring out the two bitches. It’s time we did it to them.’
I sat there and made myself feel like concrete. These pathetic sadists wanted to watch my face as I watched whatever they’d planned. Already I’d seen them touching the servant girls’ bare legs with cigarettes, then howling with laughter as they jumped. The girls never screamed. Their pained smiles did not budge.
A seventeen-year-old girl was brought out along with a labrador. It whimpered and leaned against the legs of the girl.
One of the Crew kicked the dog then pulled it from the girl who began to cry.
I grew cold inside, as they strapped one of the steel pipes packed with explosive onto the dog’s back.
Jonathan grinned. ‘Watch this, Nick … Carrying the can with a difference … Clever, eh? The dog belongs to the girl. They love one another, together all the time. You know, she even made it a Christmas card.’
Inevitability set in like a truck going over the edge of a cliff. All you could do was sit and watch the tragedy happen.
With his cigar, Jonathan lit the fuse on the pipe strapped to the dog’s back.
‘Go on, girl – run!’ shouted Curt.
The girl ran. Then they released the dog. It ran after her.
It was a grotesque twist of what you see in the local park. A girl and her dog running together. The girl runs fast. The dog runs faster. They dodge backwards and forwards around the trees. The dog wags its tail; its pink tongue flaps out of its mouth. Excited barks.