Finally she spotted the van and sprinted towards it, hurling the door open and jumping in behind the wheel. To her relief the keys were still in the ignition; she couldn’t remember leaving them there but that was hardly surprising given her earlier haste to get into the hospital. Her hands shook when she reached for them. It was not so much because she was having to drive again but rather because, since she had stopped moving, the reality of what she’d seen in the corridor had been given the chance to catch up with her. Lisa banished the memories from her mind. She wasn’t out of harm’s way yet and could not let herself go to pieces until she was safe.
She heard the passenger door open. The van shifted as the stranger clambered in and sat heavily on the seat. He slumped back, eyes closed, taking deep breaths. Lisa had no way of telling whether this was through fear or the after-effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. There was a fine line between breathing deeply to get oxygen into the bloodstream, displacing the carbon monoxide from the hemoglobin, and hyperventilating. She reached across him to open the window but thought better of it. Instead she turned the key. The van started first time and Lisa found the switch for the internal fan and pressed it. Cold air immediately washed over them.
She was already steering the Transit out of the car park before she thought to turn the headlamps on. The bright lights of the hospital entrance made them almost redundant but darkness swiftly took over the further away Lisa drove. When they reached the junction she turned left onto the main road and floored the accelerator, wanting to be away from that place as quickly as the engine would take her.
A metallic clinking made her glance across at the man. He was fumbling with his seatbelt, operating on instinct if nothing else. One hand holding the steering wheel, she reached over and clipped it into place. When she looked back out through the windscreen she realised the van had drifted across the central line, into the path of an oncoming car. Lisa hit the brakes and swung the wheel violently to the left. Her passenger shot forward, his body restrained only by the locking of his seatbelt.
“That should wake you up a bit,” she told him, ignoring the car driver’s furious gesticulations as he passed, leaning on the horn as he did so.
After checking the mirror to make sure there was nothing behind, or at least nothing that shouldn’t be there, she drove until she reached the roundabout where she joined the Holtford road. But she was not going back to the cottage, not directly. Somehow she was going to find the track through the woods and return to the spot where she’d last seen Alison. Okay, so that would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, now that it was dark, but what choice did she have? She hated herself for having abandoned her sister. What if Alison was lying in the woods, injured, alone and terrified, praying for help? Maybe she’d just been concussed and was wandering around, dazed, trying to find her way home. Either scenario was hopelessly optimistic. Lisa was sure no one could have survived such a violent onslaught. But while there was the slightest chance that Alison was still alive, she had at least to try.
“Where’re we going?” the man asked, only slightly slurring his words. He was far more coherent than he’d been in the hospital. Lisa frowned. In the space of an hour or so he had gone from someone who appeared close to death to one who was almost perfectly normal. It was strange. But then again, this whole night had been a lot more than just strange, so why did that surprise her?
“You’ll find out,” she said.
He fell silent for a moment. Then, “You got a name?”
“Lisa,” she said, and left it at that. She felt oddly uneasy about divulging her surname, as if that would tell him too much about her. Just because she was lumbered with him for now didn’t mean she had to open up to him. Until she knew who he was and exactly what had happened tonight she’d keep him at arms length. One thing was certain; nothing like this had ever happened to her before tonight.
“Ben Matthews. Was it you who found me?”
“Yeah.”
“You expect me to be grateful?”
She glared at him. He was mid-thirties, like her, with untidy blond hair and undeniably handsome features beneath the grime. His eyes were blue, though still heavily bloodshot. Yet how he looked was irrelevant. All she saw was a stranger who was quite likely responsible for her sister’s death. “I couldn’t care less what you think,” she said, before turning her attention back to the road.
They fell silent. Lisa drove almost on autopilot, peering at the eerie shadows caused by the Transit’s lights. There was no other traffic in sight and the world around them was ruled by darkness. It felt like the last two years had fallen away. Being behind the wheel seemed entirely natural to her now and she wondered why she had been so scared of the prospect. Then again, her life had not depended on it until now. Or maybe it was proof that time really could heal all wounds.
“There’s something I’ve got to do,” she said, more to herself than to Ben.
“Whatever.”
He sounded like he really couldn’t give a shit.
Fuck him, then. If this was her van she’d have stopped and ordered him out. But of course it was his and Lisa would rather be driving it than walking the deserted roads alone. Besides, the thought of having someone with her, even someone this sullen and resentful, was far more reassuring than the alternative. Not caring for him made her feel less guilty at the cynical way she was using him.
She cruised to a halt at a T-junction, briefly disoriented by the unfamiliar road. She had been this way often enough, but everything looked different at night. To her right she saw the distant lights of St Agnes’s Church and steered the Transit that way, following a road that was little more than a country lane. The woods were not all that far from here, a thought she found less than comforting. Outside the reach of the headlamps there was nothing but indistinct shapes, and that was out in the open. In the woods it would be far worse. Assuming she found the track, she would still have the headlights. But if Alison had wandered off into the trees, or had been carried off, Lisa would have no hope whatsoever of tracking her.
Something darted out in front of the van. Lisa made to slam on the brakes, but her foot missed, catching the edge of the accelerator instead. Ben was thrown to one side, grunting in pain as he cracked his head loudly against the side window.
“Shit!” Lisa cried out. She saw two pinpricks of reflected light in the headlights and then there was a sudden thump. This time her feet found the brake pedal and she stamped on it, frantically turning the wheel. The van juddered to a halt on the grass verge, one headlight no longer working and the other revealing only the hedge that was just a matter of feet in front of them.
“You hit something.” Ben started fumbling at the door handle.
“Leave it!” she yelled at him. Her whole body shook. Who had she been trying to fool, thinking she had a hope in hell of finding Alison? She couldn’t even drive along a deserted road without screwing up, let alone through pitch-black woods. It had been a stupid idea. There was nothing she could do, other than head straight for the cottage and bolt the doors. At least that way she would be safe until morning. The police could come out once she’d contacted them, and that would be it.
But of course that wouldn’t have been it. That could never have been it.
Hopeless cause or not, she was going to search for her sister.
“Someone might be hurt,” Ben said, and opened the door.
The bump on his head must have brought him fully to his senses, Lisa thought as she called out to him. “Since when did you care about others?”
He turned towards her. In the glow of the single headlamp his face looked deathly pale, almost haunted. “I tried to kill myself,” he said. “Nobody else.”
And then he jumped down to the roadway.
Lisa wanted to say something to him, but didn’t quite know what.
What she did know was that Ben
was wrong. Oh, no doubt he would trot out the same old argument that suicides hurt no one but themselves. They didn’t care about the feelings of those left behind. The emptiness she felt over David’s death had not diminished. Ben must have someone who loved him – his parents, a girlfriend, whatever – and they would have felt the same pain as her, had Ben succeeded.
He slammed the door shut, then disappeared round the back of the van. Lisa reached over and flipped the lock catch, then opened it again. As much as she tried to block them out her mind was filled with memories of the atrocities at the hospital. If there were any more of those ghastly things out there, he might need to get back in quickly. Her eyes scanned the night, looking for unexpected movements.
A sudden loud tap on the window next to her made her cry out in shock. It was only Ben, the darkness making him look older and even more haggard.
She wound the window down half-way. “See anything?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Oh God, no –”
“A dog. I think it’s dead. Pass me the torch from the glove compartment and I’ll check it out.”
Lisa gave a sigh of relief but inwardly berated herself for being happy that she had only killed a dog. Reaching across, she found the heavy rubber-encased torch. When she turned back with it, she found that Ben was peering into the darkness behind the van.
“What is it?”
“I thought I heard something move.”
“It might just be stunned,” she said and opened the door. As she stepped out she flicked the torch on and flashed its powerful beam around, searching for anything that might be lurking in the shadows. She watched as Ben headed towards a dark shape lying motionless in the road a short distance behind them. She shone the light in that direction without taking more than a couple of steps away from the van.
“Can you come a bit closer?” he asked, but as she moved tentatively towards him, the light flickered and died.
Lisa swore under her breath and hit the torch hard into the palm of her hand, making the flesh sting. “It’s dead,” she said, instantly regretting her use of the word.
“Shit,” Ben said, moving back towards her. “I can’t see a damn thing. Turn the van round to face this way. I should be able to see what’s what then.”
Relieved, she climbed back into the cab and took several deep breaths to calm herself before gunning the engine into life, easing the van from the grass and onto the road. At once it became apparent that the lane was too narrow to turn around in.
At the edge of the single headlamp beam she made out a farm gate, outside which the road widened by a yard or so, giving her just enough room. As she carefully manoeuvred the Transit she could see that Ben was standing some way from the dog, and she couldn’t blame him for that; a wounded animal could be dangerous.
She drove the van slowly along the road back towards him. He was closer to the dog, moving cautiously as he squatted alongside it to inspect the dark shape.
In the periphery of her vision Lisa saw an orange light on the dashboard flicker into life. By the time she could look properly it had gone. Probably a loose wire; the van was so old and so battered it was a miracle that it still ran at all.
She killed the engine and watched Ben slowly reach out. He was still for a short while. Finally he straightened and called out something that she couldn’t hear.
“What?” she said, opening her door.
“There’s an old rug in the back. See if you can find it.”
“Is the dog all right?”
“No,” Ben said. “It’s not. Neck’s broken. Must have been killed instantly. We can’t just leave it here. We’ll take it with us, report it to the police later.”
Lisa knew he was right. It must have been someone’s pet or a farm dog. Either way it would be missed. All the same, she hated the thought of having anything dead in the back of the van. Reluctantly she climbed out, walked round to the rear doors, and was relieved to find them unlocked. The idea of having to switch the headlight off to get the key made her shudder. The interior was shrouded in darkness with only the red glow of the tail-lights giving any illumination at all. She felt around. Her hand brushed against a toolbox, what felt like a waterproof coat and eventually the rug. She heaved it out and, letting it drop to the ground, dragged it around to the front of the van.
“Here,” she said.
Ben did not respond. He was looking down at the dog.
Lisa hadn’t marked him down as the type who got all emotional over dead animals, but you never could tell. Then again he must have been emotionally fraught in the first place, to have tried to kill himself. “You want this rug or not?”
“It’s moving,” he said.
“What?” Lisa moved closer. “I thought you said it was dead.”
“It was,” he answered. “I’m fucking sure of it.”
Lisa frowned. Maybe he was more than just emotionally fraught. She stood at his shoulder and gazed down at the dog as it heaved itself unsteadily upright.
There was something wrong about its movements. Lisa sidestepped, until the headlamp caught it full on. Now she could see its head hung loosely to one side and, rather than walking on all fours, it was dragging its hind legs behind it. Yet what really chilled her was the fact that it was silent except for the sound of nails scratching against the hard road surface. There no whimpers, no cries of pain as it inched itself forward, even though its lower half was a crushed and bleeding mess.
“Do something, Ben. It’s not right.” But she knew that it was far more than merely not right. This was no mortally wounded animal that needed to be put out of its misery. It was worse than that, much worse, and she wanted it to stop.
The dog’s head swivelled loosely towards her at the sound of her voice.
It began to bite, its jaws repeatedly clacking shut on nothing but air as it continued dragging itself towards her, like a blind thing searching for prey.
Ben said nothing. Instead he hurried to the back of the Transit, where Lisa could hear him searching around noisily. The dog continued its impossible progress towards her. An icy hand ran its fingers down Lisa’s spine. The animal was still several yards away from her but she could not bear to be even that close to it. She pushed up against the bonnet of the van and inched her way back to the driver’s door, unperturbed by the heat from the radiator grille, though the twisted and elongated shadow she cast as she edged past the headlight caught her unawares.
Ben emerged from behind the van as she was opening the door and climbing in. The light picked out the cold glint of metal in his hand. Lisa saw he was carrying a wheel brace. He didn’t cast a look in her direction. There was no menace in the way he held himself; no patting the brace into the palm of his hand to forewarn of his intentions. He hesitated a few feet short of the crawling figure. Then he raised the brace over his head and slammed it down onto the dog’s skull. Lisa flinched and jumped in her seat, wishing she hadn’t seen it strike yet unable to look away or to close her eyes. Ben let the bar hang limply at his side as the dog crumpled to the ground. It struggled to get up again. Ben’s body tensed and he stepped forward, bringing the brace down with ferocious force, over and over, showering the creature with blows until it was no longer recognisable as a dog. Even from inside the van Lisa could hear the wild grunts of his exertions and the wet crunch of metal on flesh and bone.
Finally he stopped. The brace slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground, the sound of it ringing out around the open fields. He rose to his feet, standing shakily beside the glistening remains of the dog, before bending over and throwing up. It did not take long for his stomach to empty its contents, given that there could not have been much in there in the first place. Ben straightened and wiped his mouth, then put his hands on his hips and arched his back. Ghostly plumes formed around his face as he stretched; Lisa guessed he was breathing
deeply to try to get rid of the taste.
Part of her wanted to get out of the van to make sure that he was all right, but another part wanted him kept safely at a distance. If whatever was going on was his fault then perhaps she would be better off without him being around. She said nothing when Ben finally climbed back into the passenger seat. There was nothing to be said right then.
Lisa reversed the van along the narrow road and turned around once more in the farm gateway so they were headed in their original direction. Her eyes flicked to the wing mirror, watching the shapeless mess in the road for as long as she could as she drove away, just to be sure that it didn’t start moving again.
“How far?” Ben asked after a silence lasting several minutes.
“Not long,” she said, reluctant to get drawn into conversation. She just wanted to concentrate on driving and finding her way back to where they had discovered the van. She wondered what would have happened if they’d left him to die. Alison would still be alive. They’d be in the cottage now, exchanging stories and laughing too loudly after too much white wine. They would never have heard of Ben Matthews.
She glanced over at him and saw that he was constantly rubbing his hands on his trouser legs as if trying to wipe them clean.
“Why did you do it?” The words came unbidden.
“You saw the state of the fucking thing. I couldn’t leave it like that.”
“I didn’t mean the dog.” Now she was sorry she’d said anything. But, as it was too late to take it back, she might as well press on. “Why did you do what you did?”
His response, when it eventually came, was resentful. “I had my reasons.”
King of All the Dead Page 4