Blood on the Motorway

by Paul Stephenson

  'Why?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Probably wise,' Tom said.

  The candlelight showed the rough outline of the bar. Tom went over and opened a now-defunct fridge and removed three bottles. He opened them and passed both men a beer. The look of relief on the face of the bespectacled man confirmed what Tom had suspected. Despite walloping Tom in the stomach, this man was as far from a threat to them as the beer in his hand.

  Tom drank deep, savouring the harshness of the bubbles on his dry throat.

  'I'm sorry I hit you,' the man said. 'I just, well, I have no idea what's going on, and I didn't know what to do.' He struggled to keep his voice even.

  'It's okay,' Leon said, placing a hand on the man's shoulder.

  The man smiled weakly and continued. 'It was so confusing. I was here. Pretty drunk. I was dancing with a girl and I remember thinking she seemed to be into me, so the night wasn't a complete write off. Then everyone was shouting.

  'Something was going on by the doors and everyone tried to get out. I thought maybe someone had pulled out a knife or something. But there was this buzzing sound, and people were pressing around me. I remember seeing the girl, she had a nosebleed I think. She passed out.'

  He started to weep openly now, gesturing with his hands to try to articulate the moans and sobs into some kind of narrative. Tom got the general gist. He'd passed out while still in the club, and came to in the dark surrounded by bodies. For some reason, probably shock, he'd moved the corpses from the nightclub into the corridor, which explained the red carpet they'd had to climb over to get in.

  It struck Tom he'd been pretty fortunate. He'd woken up to this new world in his own home, next to someone still alive. Not alone, surrounded by bodies. He could only imagine what this man had gone through.

  All those faces.

  They sat in the bar for a while, drinking the still-cool beers. They finally got a name out of the man: Olly, a trainee estate agent. Or, he had been. Now he was a shivering wreck suffering from shock.

  'So,' Tom said. 'What now?'

  Leon shrugged in response. Olly looked at him blankly.

  'I don't much fancy staying here,' Leon said.

  'Agreed,' Tom said. 'I still want to know what the fuck is going on. But we should stay here tonight.'

  'You reckon we can lock this place up?' Leon asked.

  'Let's give it a go.'

  It didn't take them long to get the doors closed and bolted, once they'd moved a couple of obstinate bodies. They returned to the bar to nurse another drink.

  No matter which way Tom ran it in his head the never-ending unknowns made choosing a course of action nigh on impossible. As they drank, he and Leon ran through endless arguments on the merits of staying put, of getting out, of moving on or settling in somewhere. They got no closer to a conclusion.

  Olly sat and stared at his drink. He wasn't in any mental position to be able to leave this building, not until he was clear of the shock. Tom knew nothing about how to treat shock, but was reasonably sure letting it run its course was not the wisest of moves.

  What time was it? Tom felt exhausted. He eyed up one of the booths as a potential place to sleep.

  A huge boom rocked the building. They leapt to their feet. The blackened windows shook in their frames. The candlelight flickered.

  'What the fuck was that?' Leon asked.

  Tom ran for the stairwell; there must be actual functioning windows somewhere. Leon and Olly followed. Olly hadn't cleared this part of the building of bodies, and all three of them trampled over corpses in their haste. Behind the top bar was a door, beyond that an office.

  They piled in and got to the window in time to see the tail end of a huge fireball mushrooming against the night sky. Olly let out a scream.

  'It's okay,' Leon said. 'It's not a nuclear bomb. It's the tanker we passed earlier.'

  They stood in silence, watching, mesmerised.

  'Well I guess our house has gone,' Tom said.

  'I won't ever be going back for my box of vintage SNES games,' Leon said.

  'There goes my collection of Buffy comics too,' Tom replied.

  'Worse still, think of Danny's porn stash,' Leon said.

  Tom chuckled, and looked down at the street.

  'Oh shit,' he said.

  'What?'

  Tom pulled them both back from the window. In the street below them, their attention also fixed on the fireball, stood a large group. They were a motley looking bunch, numbering twenty or so. They were right outside the nightclub.

  As the fireball finally faded, voices filtered up from the street, thick with Mackem accents.

  'We need to get out of here,' Tom hissed to Leon and Olly.

  'Why?' Olly asked, a look of panic on his face.

  'Because that lot are going to want to get in here for the booze, and those doors aren't going to last long. I don't much fancy being here when they come in.'

  'I'm sure it'll be fine,' Olly said. 'Why would they want to hurt us?'

  'Weren't you the one who hit me with a plank of wood?'

  'Who knows?' Leon interrupted. 'Let's not find out, eh?'

  'I'm not going anywhere,' Olly said.

  'Fine by me,' Leon mumbled.

  Tom grasped Olly. 'If you stay here, they will get in. I don't know what will happen, but I can't imagine for one second it'll be pleasant for you.'

  Olly shook off his hand. 'I'm staying. I'll be fine.'

  'Suit yourself.'

  He followed Leon, who had found another staircase, this time leading to the roof. The two of them bounded up the stairs, followed by Olly. At the top was a heavy fire escape door, which Leon opened. On the far side of the roof was their escape: a rickety looking ladder that made Tom's heart sink to look at. He looked back at Olly.

  'Last chance.'

  'I'll be fine.'

  'Good luck,' Leon said.

  They both gave him as much of a smile as they could muster and closed the door behind them. They crossed the roof as low as possible, the voices of the mob below clearer now. Leon motioned Tom over to the fire escape.

  It took Tom every ounce of effort to look over the edge of the roof to the street three floors below. He got down onto his front and gripped the edge so hard he thought the stone might come away in his hands. He wasn't about to let his lifelong aversion to heights actually kill him.

  The crowd below were now focused on the same electrical store he and Leon had tried to break into, but the shutters held, just as they had before. Tom couldn't help but feel a little vindicated that their feeble attempts had not been bested by the mob. The voices were louder now, but Tom couldn't make out much, save for the occasional barked order which seemed to emanate from one particularly large skin-headed man. Then came the call they were expecting.

  'Oi, what about Ziggy's?'

  That was all it took. The mob turned its attention to the club below them. They started to clear the corridor of bodies. It wouldn't be long now. Tom turned to Leon.

  'Okay, so we wait for them to go in, and we make our way down, yeah?' He whispered.

  Leon nodded. They watched the mob below go about their task.

  'Shit!' Leon hissed. 'We left our bags downstairs in the bar.'

  He was right. What little possessions they had were gone, including the jumpers and thick clothing they would need if they were going to make it through the night outdoors.

  'Fuck,' agreed Tom. 'We can't go back now, we'll have to figure something out.'

  Below them the doors gave way with an almighty crack. The mob had made short work of them as expected. Tom looked down as they poured into the nightclub, hoping they wouldn't think to leave sentries outside. He gave them too much credit though, the whole mob were inside the building in seconds, leaving nobody outside.

  They were down the fire escape in less than a minute, Tom's stomach lurching with every step. They got to the bottom, cast around for a direction and hit out westward, or what Tom assumed westward to be. The
y were less than twenty metres away when the shriek which wrought the air told them whatever hiding place Olly had opted for had not been a wise one. Without looking back, they ran into the cold dark night.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MARCHING TO THE HEARTBEATS

  Jen kept running, past the point she thought her lungs might burst, until she could no longer feel the heat at her back. There were no footsteps behind her. She stuck to the back alleys, not wanting to chance what might be happening on the streets.

  She slowed to a walk, her ears straining for any sound above the distant crackle of fire, but all she could hear was her own gasping breath and feet on the pavement.

  She ran out of steam and stopped, trying to catch her breath. She sat by someone's back gate and risked a look back. There was nothing behind her. She was far from the fire now; it provided little more than a red tinge to the breaking dawn.

  A body lay nearby, a lighter protruding from its hand. She went over to it and searched the pockets for the accompanying cigarette packet. She lit up and stuffed the half-full packet back into her pocket. Her head swam with a hit of nicotine and unwanted thoughts.

  What the fuck do I do now? My home is gone. My city is gone.

  It wouldn't be long until the fires caught up with her. For a split second, the thought occurred to her that maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing, after all. Her body ached so much that the thought of moving filled her with more dread than the abstract concept of burning to death. She sat there for hours, watching the sun creep over the horizon, hazy over the heat of the fires.

  The fires never came. They seemed to find their natural edge and moved no further in her direction. In the daylight the alleyway regained a sense of normalcy, her corpse friend the only sign of something out of the ordinary.

  From somewhere, she found the resolve to stand, and in doing so seemed to shake off her fugue state. She stretched her limbs out, each one of her joints popping as she did so.

  She looked around. Going back the way she had come was not an option, but beyond that she had no real idea where she was, the streets leading off the alleyway unfamiliar in their bland suburban anonymity. She weighed up her options.

  Try not to pick a way filled with murderous mobs, deadly fires, or dragons.

  She stepped out of the back alley and into a street. There were no signs of the chaos she'd seen, but she immediately felt watched. What there was plenty of was bodies. The first two she came to was an elderly couple in matching dressing gowns who made Jen's heart pang for her parents.

  There were survivors out there, she knew that much, and out here on the open streets she had a definite sense of eyes on her, the sensation sending her hair into attention overdrive. She didn't want to look afraid for her audience, so kept her pace to a brisk walk. She wanted to break into a run, to get the hell away, but she doubted she could manage even a hundred metres without collapsing.

  She was halfway down the street when she heard a small quiet voice.

  'Hey, psst,' it said, and Jen's eyes darted to the source. Huddled in a gap between two houses was a scruffy looking girl, her clothes grubby and her dark hair bushy and unkempt. Jen looked around but saw nobody else. She looked at the girl again, who beckoned her, her finger to her lips.

  'Come here,' she hissed. Jen hesitated. The girl beckoned again, terrified.

  Jen started towards her. As she moved, a loud crack rang out above. A window shattered, scattering glass. Another crack, and this time Jen felt something whoosh past. The girl had turned and ducked into an alley between two houses. Jen turned on her heels and sprinted after her, as another crack rang out and something thudded off the hood of a nearby car. She hoped they didn’t work out how to aim.

  She felt exposed as she dived between the two buildings. She fell to the ground, arm skidding along the concrete and leaving a bloody stripe up her coat sleeve. She got up and saw the girl dart through a gate at the end of the alleyway. She followed, and found herself in a messy back yard, scattered with old toys and plastic gnomes.

  'What the fuck was that?' Jen asked her.

  'There's a boy in one of the houses across the street, he's been taking pot-shots at me with a crossbow,' she said, voice full of fear.

  'What the hell for?'

  'It's that loser, Rich, from number 28. He bought it a few months back on the internet, but his parents confiscated it from him. I guess he got it back.'

  'You know this little shit?' Jen asked, sizing the girl up again. She guessed she couldn't be more than fifteen.

  'We go to school together,' she said. 'Or, we did.' The girl's eyes glazed over and Jen felt a sudden urge to gather the girl up and run away with her.

  The walls around the terrace were high, and there was no back gate to the garden other than the one they'd come through, back into the firing range.

  'Shit,' she said, under her breath. 'What's your name?' she asked, still looking around for options.

  'I'm Mira,' the girl replied.

  'I'm Jen.' They shook hands.

  An odd look crossed the girl's face. 'Sorry,' she said, and backed away.

  Jen's heart sank. The gate burst open, and at the same time the back door to the house she'd paid no attention to opened. Two boys, only children themselves, appeared. They stood either side of her, weapons pointing at her head. One, baby-faced, dead-eyed and terrifying, held a crossbow in front of a smirking face. The other, an older boy with a mop of black hair, maybe a tad older than Mira, had what Jen hoped was nothing stronger than an air rifle pointed at her back. He had the good grace to look embarrassed by his actions, but not enough to lower the weapon.

  Jen turned to Mira, whose face looked to be experiencing every emotion known to teenage girl-kind. 'So much for the sisterhood,' she said, anger starting to replace fear. She turned to the grinning one. 'What do you want?'

  'Your stuff,' the boy said. His voice was cold.

  'I don't have any stuff,' Jen replied.

  She couldn't help it, she felt more affronted than anything else. The two boys exchanged unsure glances.

  'We want your stuff,' the grinning boy affirmed.

  Jen shrugged.

  'Doesn't change the fact that I don't have anything.'

  'Search her,' the younger boy barked at Mira, who shot him a look like she'd been asked to do her homework. Jen fought back a laugh. The girl huffed and came over.

  Jen held her arms out. Mira patted her down half-heartedly.

  'She's not got nothing,' she said.

  'See,' Jen said. 'Maybe next time you run your little trap you might want to see if your quarry is actually carrying something worth stealing, eh?'

  'Thanks for the advice,' the boy said.

  Jen noticed he didn't lower his weapon.

  'Can I go now then?' she asked.

  'Not yet,' said the younger boy. Her stomach turned. She looked into those eyes again. This was no child. This was a predator.

  'I've got nothing you want,' she said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. The finger on the crossbow tightened.

  'Rich!' Mira cried, but the boy carried on staring straight at Jen. She fixed the stare right back.

  'Let's go in the house, shall we?'

  If I go in that house, I don't think I'll be coming out again.

  She moved. There was no other choice. Her eyes never left the crossbow. Its aim never wavered from her throat. Once they were inside, the demeanour of the boy Mira had called Rich changed. Immediately he was more at ease, laughing and letting his guard down. This was his house, he felt safe here in his domain.

  He strode over to the table. There were empty beer cans, a half-drunk bottle of peach schnapps, and dozens of packs of cigarettes, all half empty. Rich picked up a beer and opened it, then sank into a chair. The other boy and Mira both looked like they wanted to run out as fast as she did. She glanced around at the walls, covered in pictures of Rich in less psychotic times, with doting parents smiling and laughing and posing. What they would make of this s
cene? Would they recoil in horror at their little angel's actions, or have their worst fears confirmed?

  'Where are your parents?' she asked.

  None of the children replied, but their reactions spoke volumes. Mira's eyes filled with tears, the older boy looked at his feet, and Rich smiled an unsettling smile.

  Rich held up the crossbow again, waving it generally in Jen's direction, her heart giving a little involuntary leap every time its trajectory passed over her. Rich saw a slight flinch and gave an appreciative little half smile.

  I really don't like this little prick.

  'Mira, chuck us a cig,' he shouted.

  Mira threw him a packet and fumbled for a lighter. Jen saw the terror in the young girl's face and forgave her. She looked at the other boy, who stood silent, holding the air rifle close to his chest. Bigger than the younger boy, but every bit as terrified as Mira. Jen could understand that, but noted him as the wild card.

  'What about you, you got any cigs?' Rich asked her.

  'No,' she lied.

  'I think I'll check for myself,' he replied, the smirk back on his face. The other boy and Mira both stared at their shoes. Rich got up from his chair and moved towards her.

  He sidled up to her, and she looked into his eyes.

  'Let me check you over,' he said, his free arm caressing her side, moving upwards. He cupped her breast. His face was a few inches below hers, and he moved the point of the crossbow bolt under her chin, the steel cold against her skin. Then he moved the crossbow down. The smirk remained. He didn't fear her. That was his mistake.

  She whipped her head forward with as much force as she could muster. Even with the height difference, she managed to connect her forehead with the bridge of his nose, and watched his expression change as he fell. She swung her left fist hard into his cheek. He slammed into an expensive-looking dresser, the side of his head cracking against the wood. He fell to the ground.

  She remembered the other two, and wheeled round in anticipation of an attack, but they both stood dumbfounded.

  They stared at each other a moment. She picked up the crossbow. She had no idea how to use it, but figured it was better off in her hands. She looked back at the body on the floor. Had she killed a child?