‘We got married because you left. You abandoned us and it made sense to nurture our affections for each other.’ Her words came in stuttering bursts and her pale face contorted as she tried to keep her eyes open against the pain. ‘He worshipped you and his proudest moment was breaking into the Principal’s office and destroying the cane.’ She gasped and cried out as a spasm of pain wracked her body.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know why. To save you getting caned, I guessed.’
‘The bloody Principal’s cane? He’d mentioned that damn cane the other day. Stupid dolt. The Principal used his belt. The bloody buckle end and it hurt like fuck, eh?’
I laughed at my memory of Marvin, the perfect student, always up front with his hand waving to be noticed. But breaking into the Principal’s office to save my sorry arse confused the image.
The wail of the sirens suggested police, ambulance and fire crews arriving. We needed to vacate Linda’s house. Tommy stood with the shopping bag stuffed with cash and guns over his shoulder. I grabbed the keys out of the shorter man’s pocket and picked up their guns. Tommy ran for the side gate and the bag.
I stopped at the back door watching, unable to leave because words needed to be spoken. From the kitchen door I watched the girl grimacing from the pain and gasping at life. Spasms shook her body. Not so long ago the girl haunted every thought in my adolescent head and I wanted to tell her I’d grown up and was over my infatuation.
But did a dying girl need to hear my revelation? Was this a victory I needed to shove in her face?
The sirens shook me from my static state and I ran to help Tommy drag the bag to the black sedan. I pushed the fob and the car’s lights flashed and the locks popped. With the bags in the boot I threw the keys to Tommy and jumped into the passenger seat.
‘You sure?’ he said. ‘Only…’
‘Just get in and drive. I thought you liked cars?’
He slipped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He adjusted his seat, back and forth and back. With the flashing lights closing in, Tommy played with his rear view mirror.
‘Need to be thinking about leaving, Tommy.’
He put the car into second and stalled the motor. He restarted the engine and I helped him find first.
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘You really can’t drive.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
First, second now Drive
‘We need to find home pretty quick, mate,’ I said.
I tried to remain calm. Tommy checked the petrol gage and scrutinized the rear, but still we traveled at twenty and the gear stick sat in second. I ducked low in my seat trying to watch the action behind us in the side mirror. The reds and blues parked up in front of Linda’s house and men in dark clothing crouched behind cars with guns drawn. A white car appeared from the scrum of flashing lights and followed close behind our car. It looked innocuous, but Tommy hadn’t changed out of second and he’d hit the gutter twice, so the white sedan needed to pass.
‘Why do we call you Tommy the Car?’ I asked. ‘When you and I met, the night you crashed that car into the council sheds, you were driving a load of robbers from a job, weren’t you?’
‘I can nick ‘em fine, but don’t like driving so much. Just doesn’t come natural.’
The car slowed as it approached an unmarked curve in the road. ‘How can you nick cars, but not be able to drive them?’
‘I do drive just got no coordination skills. I’m much better with an automatic, but then I don’t turn corners so well and I think my eyesight’s dodgy.’
We slowed until the car jumped and coughed.
‘Clutch, Tommy.’
He changed into first, the gearbox bitching big time and accelerated round the corner.
‘Do you know the way to town? We need to dump this car soon, eh? Then decide what to do with the bag.’
‘Direction is all about intuition, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I’m sensing my way home, but without using the main roads. We’ve got to keep off the main roads. Right?’
The white sedan remained behind us. Tommy turned left into a cul-de-sac proving his intuition matched his driving skills. The white car cruised past the road.
I touched Tommy’s arm and pointed at a jeep parked beneath a tree. ‘Turn it round and park up behind the 4X4.’
We waited and watched the car reverse backward, stopping at the entrance to shine a high-powered spotlight the length of the street. I looked at Tommy and smiled, holding up my finger suggesting he not move a muscle.
The car turned into the street and cruised past our car, with Tommy and me cowering low in our seats. It turned and cruised back up to the main road, the rear lights dying as it sped away.
‘That was close, eh? Let’s take it slowly.’ My attempt at humor brought no response from Tommy. ‘As it turned right, I suggest we turn left, eh?’ Tommy nodded and pulled out of the parking space. ‘Slow and leave the lights off for the moment.’
Tommy stalled the car as we attempted to turn left. I punched him and pointed an angry finger in his face. He got the vehicle moving, turning slow and smooth and allowing the car to pick up pace. For the first hundred yards the street remained clear, but as I relaxed, Tommy stiffened and pointed at the rear-view mirror.
‘We got a car behind us.’
‘Is it white?’
‘Dunno, but I think so.’
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Pick up the pace, but gradual, eh?’
Tommy pushed at the speed limit. His body leant forward, his eyes squinting at the path ahead. He hit forty in a thirty zone, then fifty and still they followed. We needed a sign to Ostere Bottom—Pitts Ville to those who lived there—as I figured no sane copper wanted to enter hell.
That was my plan.
The lights came on, blues and reds reflecting off the windows and the road. Tommy floored the accelerator and we surged forward, the powerful motor responding with a roar.
‘Jesus, Tommy, easy, eh?’
Tommy and the car had become one. Tommy had killed and avenged the murder of his brother. He took a late right and we headed toward a municipal park where athletes chased, kicked and caught all manner of balls. The car enjoyed grass, the rear fishtailing across the ground as we traveled the length of the pitch. A set of goal posts appeared and Tommy scored off the left upright and burst through a wooden barrier into a car park.
‘They’re hanging back, Tommy,’ I said. ‘You can go easy on the speed, eh?’
‘No way. They’s probably waiting for back up. We need to lose them.’
‘No, they’re waiting for you to crash.’ He skidded into a narrow service road running parallel to the highway allowing folk to bypass downtown Ostere.
‘Yes,’ I shouted and laughed at the coppers behind us.
‘Yes, what?’ my pessimistic partner in crime said. ‘How are we going…?’
But I wasn’t listening. I grabbed the wheel and turned onto the grass verge separating us from the highway. We mounted the dirt gutter and climbed the steep slope. Tommy held onto the door handle as the car skidded and slid on the wet grass, climbing with Tommy screaming at me to let go of the wheel.
‘Jesus, if you’d wanted to drive, why’d you give me the bloody keys?’
‘Can’t drive, but steering is easy.’
We burst through the cutest of shrubs, dodging the larger fauna to sail high off the bank and landed on the tarmac with a thud and a crazy whine from the engine. We careened across the highway before Tommy grabbed the wheel and stomped on the brake, our heads jerking forward as he parked on the hard shoulder.
‘Why’d you stop?’
‘We’re going the wrong way.’
‘How do you know which way we should be heading?’
‘Look at the cars. They’re heading in the opposite direction. We need to be over there.’ He pointed at the traffic travelling on the opposing carriageway. ‘Or turn the car round.’
The car sat on the hard shoulder with the oncoming headlights blinding ou
r vision. At the bottom of the grass hill, a good hundred yards back, two cop cars approached, traversing the grassy bank toward us. The first car couldn’t get the grip needed and tipped, rolling onto its roof and sliding to the bottom of the bank. Pursuit halted for the moment as the other car attended the coppers trapped in their upturned car.
I punched Tommy as the solution became obvious. ‘Drive. Build up speed.’
‘No!’
‘Just do it. Go, Tommy.’ I punched him on the arm. ‘Now.’
He set the car in motion. ‘Faster,’ I said. ‘Jesus, put your foot down.’ We were picking up speed, but we needed more. I reached across the car and stomped my foot on his, pushing hard on the accelerator. The car jumped forward. The engine screamed in protest. I looked up and saw the break in traffic, yanked the wheel and pointed the car toward the medium strip.
‘Hold onto your hat; we’s going that way.’
Tommy struggled to hold the wheel. He fought with me over the direction, screaming at me as he tried to wrest control of the car. I jabbed him in the ribs, yanked again at the wheel and we swerved back onto the road, traveling fast toward the oncoming traffic.
Sets of headlights sped toward us as car horns blared and drivers braked and tires squealed. We swerved onto the median strip, bumping and skidding across the grass as cars streamed past our vehicle. A final press of the accelerator and we burst through the grassy bank and landed on the tarmac with a serious thump.
Tommy exhaled a long drawn out expletive and looked behind us. ‘They’ve stopped and we’re alive.’
‘So go. Go, Tommy. Go!’
A sign, riddled with bullet holes, appeared in the headlights suggesting the next exit might get us somewhere near Dooms Ville, Ostere Town Center.
‘Yes, who’s the man? Homeward bound, put the kettle on.’
I sat back in my seat and punched Tommy on the arm. ‘That was a hoot.’ I lit up a cigarette and fetched a fresh cigar for Tommy. ‘Don’t ever let it be said you can’t drive. We got a shopping sack full of money and assorted guns. We’s rich, Tommy. And we have the bag and no one, not a bloody soul is giving us grief.
‘And you have avenged the brother you lost.’
‘So what now?’
‘Spend some money. Let’s go get a drink. Eat a bucket, no a trough of fried chicken. I don’t know. What do you want to do?’
‘I want to get Billy back.’
I passed him the flask as we approached the roundabout. He looked sad. ‘Yeah, sorry, but we didn’t nick enough money for a resurrection.’
Two cop cars nestled behind a billboard on the centerpiece of the roundabout with red embers burning bright in the dark interiors.
‘Almost there,’ I said. ‘What we could do is give him a good send-off, eh? And get a proper stone for his grave.’ Tommy hadn’t seen the coppers. I thought it best not to share the news. I squatted low in my seat as two sets of headlights joined our journey and matched our pace.
‘Billy will like that.’
Tommy missed the exit to town center and drove straight on toward a dead end.
‘It was left,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you take the first exit?’
I punched him hard on the arm and the car veered left clattering a line of metal bins and flushing a fox from its meal.
‘Left. It was sooo fucking left.’
Tommy leant forward in his seat staring into the darkness and revving the crap out of second gear. The police sat back, confused as to the reasons for our choice of direction. The lack of reds and blues flashing on their roofs worried me and suggested we headed toward more trouble. I feared the roadblock and Tommy’s reaction to being trapped.
‘What’s the plan?’ he said.
‘Dump the car and run. They won’t follow us into the back streets.’
‘Stunning plan. Do you know the back streets around here?’
‘No, but anything left will get us back to town.’
I looked out the window watching the dark shapes of dereliction passing the window. We traveled through a bombsite with the majority of houses collapsed into the earth. Stray, zombie-like bodies stumbled through the wreckage, crisscrossing the road, ignoring the danger Tommy’s driving represented.
Tommy had lost his driving groove. We bounced from one side of the road to the other. He’d scraped both sides of the vehicle against fences and lampposts. A community grilling their dinner on scrap metal above an oil drum sprouting flame, shouted abuse as Tommy drove close enough to threaten their dinner.
‘At the next roundabout take the last exit,’ I said. I was thinking the coppers wouldn’t follow us if we drove deeper into the ghetto. ‘You understand what I mean by last, don’t you?’
Tommy nodded and concentrated on the approaching roundabout. On the sides of the narrow road light posts stood dead and bent with knee high weeds at their base. Tommy bumped and slowed toward a large weathered billboard sitting dead center of the weed strewn island.
‘I hope you’re right because I don’t want to get caught down here. I’ve heard stories of folk straying into these parts and being eaten, barbequed alive and that’s no bloody myth, Ben.’
‘Just take the last right.’
The police stopped and their headlights faded. ‘Where are we?’ Tommy said. ‘No coppers will follow us down here. We’ll be carjacked, you beaten, me raped and all our worldly goods stolen.’
‘How we going to get carjacked? No one around here has a car that works.’
As if on cue we approached an upturned car with its windows spurting flames. The bodies warming their hands refused to move and forced Tommy to drive into the deep dirt gutter. Our car received a beating, the angry mob looking for more fuel to stoke their fire. We pulled away at a snail’s pace and approached the next roundabout with Tommy bemoaning the dark, the state of the road and the frigid temperature. Another police car loitered, skulking in the shadows, its battered side facing us, the white of its flank lit up by our headlights. It flashed its lights as we drove past, then put on its blues and reds and gave chase.
‘Straight ahead!’ I yelled.
Tommy gunned the car after he took my suggested exit.
The flashing lights followed. Their siren screamed and I kept whacking Tommy to up the pace.
‘Left, Left, left,’ I said, hitting him to emphasize each word.
We barreled along a narrow road, facing oncoming bodies and an angry symphony of abuse, until Tommy braked, swerved and entered a narrow laneway, dirt topped with craterous ruts. He crashed the car against a rusted shed, the bonnet buckling with the force. Before the engine died Tommy ejected from his seat and ran.
‘Bastard!’ I screamed. He sprinted the narrow road and disappeared into the dark as if the devil lusted his promised soul. I grabbed my backpack and strapped it to my shoulders before popping the boot and dragging the bags out of its dark sour interior. Bright lights spotted my actions, but the coppers had parked, a good hundred yards short of my position and showed no interest in pursuit.
I heaved the bag away from the car and buried our existence in the dark derelict confines of a rubble-strewn shop. The spot light searched the street, sending shadows to flush me from my cover.
Piss off,’ I shouted into the night, but the dark sucked the heart from my intent.
I heard their radios crackling and voices talking, but the coppers engine roared. I scrabbled to the crumbled ledge of a window and watched two butts sail out the windows and the red tail lights fade as the car left me to experience hell on my own.
I pulled my flask from my coat and took a tug before lighting up a cigarette from the pack I’d found on the cars dash. Shadows flitted in the darkness. Alien noises filtered through the night. My resting place offered protection from the wind, but not the frigid weather. I wrapped my coat tight and took another slug of cognac, wondering what part of Ostere Tommy had dumped me. A man with a bag lacked options. Man with two bags and a whacking great big carryall needed to settle his finances and thank
the lord for whatever time might be left to him. But I lived and I had drink and cigarettes and a bag full of guns and money. It was all good.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Black hats come calling
I slept with a gun in my hand. My head leant against the half wall of the abandoned shop and hessian sacks, doubled with a grubby tarpaulin, covered my body. Noises, cries and screams ensured an erratic night’s sleep, but no one threatened my corner. As the dark leached to gray, bodies appeared, pottering in the rubble, scavenging for items to eat or sell. I remained bunkered in my corner through the day smoking the Black Hats cigarettes and sipping on my cognac and sleeping in fitful sessions. Hunger forced me to gnaw at the stale bread in my pack, waiting for the dark to return.
Once the night blackened the day, I emerged from my nest and stretched taut muscles. I found an old, rusted supermarket trolley to transport my bags and headed in the opposite direction Tommy trod, gambling on his appalling sense of direction being wrong.
Cats spat at my approach and foxes stalked my heels. Manic fires danced in the backs of derelict buildings and screams broke the night while voices shouted in anger. Shadows ran from nowhere, crisscrossing the road and whispered voices sounded from above as footsteps matched whatever pace I tread. A light mist wafted and swirled through the lane I traveled, carrying the aroma of meat turned rancid.
The beacon above the town hall stood out bright in the night and offered me a path out of the ghetto. As I drew closer, the red glared stronger and the power of the Man became a problem. Spotlights from hovering helicopters raked the streets and left me cowering with my back flattened to walls. A foot patrol crossed my path, chanting and marching loud and proud and jeeps full of khaki with guns panning left and right controlled the intersections.
I hit Tilly’s well past mealtime and hoped she’d left me scraps to pick over, but black sedans hogged the narrow lane. Tilly appeared to be hosting a troop of Black Hats, which made no sense. The light post stood dead outside her house. I parked the trolley behind the wall at the end of her street and hid behind a thick gnarled lamp post and lit up a cigarette.
No More Heroes-#1 Dystopian Thriller Heroes Series Page 23