Stone Fist

by J. D. Weston

  “Now. Go.”

  He pulled Tyler to his feet and, for a brief moment, the gunfire stopped until they were halfway across the room. Then the automatic weapons opened up again. The wooden beams that supported the floor above took the flame, and like dry grass in a breeze, the fire rushed across the ceiling, burning blues and yellows.

  Then the screams started.

  Women made a beeline for the door as Harvey and Tyler reached the stairwell, but the intruders gunned down the criminal wives where they stood. With one foot on the first step, Harvey looked back to see two men with shaved heads attacking the last remaining brother. Both of them were cut down, and they skidded face first on the broken glass across the floor.

  The flames now encircled the room. The dry, wooden, panelled walls crackled and popped as the heat intensified and the flames found fresh fuel. More than a dozen people remained alive, hiding behind furniture but too scared to run for the door.

  The remaining brother looked up at Harvey. He cocked his head at Harvey’s lack of fear, then nodded. A sign he was free to run. The man would die with his brothers.

  Harvey shoved Tyler forwards and the two men ran up the stairs and found relative cool air on their scorched faces. The public bar was empty and the pair stopped at the top of the stairs, hearing the screaming of burning men and women below.

  “I need to get my mum out,” said Tyler, forcing the sounds of the dying from his mind.

  Harvey nodded and glanced up the stairs.

  “I’ll wait for you out the back,” he said. “I’ll find us some wheels.”

  Tyler held his gaze, finding it difficult to break away, until Harvey turned to leave.

  “Don't leave without us,” said Tyler.

  Stopping in the doorway, Harvey looked back and met his eyes.

  “I won't,” he said.

  Tyler took the stairs two at a time. The door to his mum’s room was locked, so he stepped back, his adrenaline still pumping, and slammed the heel of his foot into the wood. The door crashed open with the sound of splintering wood and Tyler crouched down beside his mum.

  “Mum, it’s me,” he said. “We’ve got to go.”

  He nudged her shoulder to wake her.

  “Mum, come on, it’s me. You need to get up,” he said, and nudged her harder. Her body rocked but still, she didn't move.

  Using both hands, he gripped her shoulders and shook her.

  “Mum, the place is on fire,” he said, as the tears began to well up and his throat swelled. “Mum. Please.”

  He gripped her lifeless hand, resisting the urge to scream. Instead, he let his head fall onto her stomach.

  “Please,” he whispered, and brought her hand to his mouth to kiss the cold skin.

  “Very touching,” said a voice from behind him. The accent was familiar, but far removed from Tyler’s mind. “I think you’ll find you’re a touch too late.”

  The beast growled inside Tyler’s chest, long and guttural.

  “John said you wanted to be with her. At least now I won't have to drag your fat carcass up the stairs.”

  A flash of light pulsed behind Tyler’s eyes. He lifted his head and took a final look at his mother, wiping her loose hair from her brow and smoothing it behind her ears how she liked it.

  “Up,” said Jerry. “I haven't got all day. Some of us have trains to catch.”

  A twitch of nerves in Tyler’s neck faded when he rolled his head from side to side, stretching the muscles.

  He lay his mother’s hands on her lap then bent forward to kiss her forehead.

  The noise of a shotgun being armed cracked in the tiny room.

  “Goodbye, mum,” he said. But he found no more words to accompany them.

  The twin barrels of the shotgun touched the back of his head, hard and steely cold, like the fingers of death himself.

  With slow and deliberate movements, Tyler raised his arms and stood, then turned to find Jerry staring back at him with the cold, hard stare of a man who’d won.

  The beast smiled.

  The rear doors of the Golden Lion smashed open with the hard kick of Harvey’s boot. The bite of the freezing wind found his naked torso, but the adrenaline that flowed through him blazed like the fires of hell. He was greeted by five men who all stepped from the side door of a van with shaved heads, tattoos and bomber jackets. Each of them brandished a selection of bats and knives.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Harvey.

  “Nobody gets out alive,” said the frontman.

  A burst of automatic gunfire could be heard from the basement below then two single shots of a handgun silenced it. A lick of flames showed itself in the stairwell then retreated, leaving behind a mask of flickering oranges and yellows as the fire crept up the stairs in its unquenchable hunger for fresh fuel.

  “I don’t think there’s much chance of that happening,” replied Harvey.

  But he was cut short as one of the men came at him with a wild swing of his bat. Harvey ducked as the bat missed his face by a few inches then reached up, grabbed the man’s arm and twisted it until the wooden weapon fell from his grip and into Harvey’s hand.

  Keeping the grip on the man’s arm, Harvey swung the bat in his left hand, familiarising himself with its weight. Then he gave the arm a final twist and pushed up until the crack of shattering bones induced agonised screams from the man. Harvey let him drop to his knees, then passed the bat to his right hand, swung it and delivered a blow to the man's head that spattered blood across his awestruck friends.

  “Now we’re equal,” said Harvey, kicking the man’s body to the ground. He rolled his head from side to side, felt the two satisfying clicks, and waited for the men to come at him, as they always did.

  And they did.

  Another man ran at him, carving a knife from side to side in long, sweeping arcs designed to break Harvey’s guard. Taking one step back, Harvey shunted the blunt end of the bat into the man’s face, stunning him long enough for Harvey to turn the blade in the man’s hand and force it into his throat. Another forceful kick with the heel of his boot sent the second man onto the first. But there was no reprise.

  All three remaining men came at Harvey, two with bats, one with a knife.

  They closed in on three sides, attacking all at once. The first swing of a bat sent Harvey ducking low where he destroyed the kneecaps of the man to his right. But the knife lunged at him while he was low in a straight stab aimed for his gut. Harvey dropped onto his back, swung up with the bat and felt the man’s wrist shatter under the blow. The last man with the bat took aim at Harvey’s legs. There was no time to move or attack and the blow found his thigh with a hard, dull stab of pain.

  The man with the broken wrist began to kick as Harvey rolled to his side, and once more, the bat found Harvey’s back. A boot connected with Harvey’s face, shattering his nose. The man with the broken wrist leaned over Harvey and peered into his eyes, looking for some kind of understanding.

  “I told you, nobody gets out alive,” he said, then spat in Harvey’s face and waved the man with the bat closer. “Finish him off, Ted.”

  Ted stepped closer. He positioned himself beside Harvey’s head then raised the bat high, coiled to deliver the hardest blow he could. Harvey braced for the hit. There was no room to move and not enough time to think. But as the man’s back reached its zenith and his face contorted to summon all his strength, the sound of shattering glass from above tore his eyes from Harvey’s head and the lifeless body of a man took him to the ground.

  With barely a pause to think, Harvey swung at the last man’s legs, rolled, then stood over him. He lifted his chin with the end of his bat then raised it for the final blow.

  A screech of brakes and the crunch of tyres on gravel a few metres away stopped him. The side door slid open. Its metallic click was loud in the now-silent night, filled only with the distant sirens of the fire brigade and police. A familiar voice called out. The voice of reason.

  “Harvey,” c
ried Melody, “get in the van.”

  He stopped and met Melody’s eyes. She was half in and half out of the van, reaching for him with a pleading gaze.

  “You don’t need to do this,” she said. Her eyes darted to the building behind him. Tiny orange sparks found the cool night air and wafted past Harvey’s face. Then, like a pack of hungry wolves, the flames reached out of the doors, searching for food to devour. “Come on.”

  Harvey stared back at the man on the ground, who waited for him to make his decision with wide, hopeful eyes.

  With a glance back into the fire and then to Melody, Harvey tossed the bat across the car park. There was something missing. A feeling. He no longer felt the warm, guttural growl of his inner beast. The desire to punish the man was further from his mind. He saw with clarity a human being lying on the ground beneath him, beaten and broken.

  Harvey stepped away. He could hear Melody and Reg calling to him from Reg’s van. But their voices were no match for his thoughts as they sought to ease the beast inside him. He clung to the side of the van, felt Melody’s hands clawing for him to climb inside, and heard the growing wails of the approaching emergency services.

  He tore himself away from Melody, but locked eyes with her in the firelight.

  “Tyler,” said Harvey. “I can’t leave him.” He felt her grip loosen as he stepped back towards the fire. He turned and was about to launch himself through the flaming doorway when, from inside, he heard the snapping of wood and breaking of glass.

  A figure appeared, lit briefly by the angry flickering of flames and framed in the centre of the burning doorway. A heavy foot smashed the burning doors from their hinges, and they fell to the ground beside the group of men who had attacked Harvey and now writhed on the cold, hard ground.

  From the flames, with the body of a woman lying limp in his strong arms, stepped Tyler. He emerged from the fire like the devil himself, his face a picture of hate, love and loss. It was a face Harvey had worn for many years.

  18

  Swan Song

  “Lay her down here,” said the woman in the back, taking control. She moved aside and let Tyler lay his mother on the carpeted floor of the Volkswagen van.

  “We need to go,” said the man at the wheel. Beside him sat another woman. She had a laptop on her legs and the screen showed a live satellite view of the area with icons closing in on one place.

  The Golden Ring.

  “In the van,” said Harvey, and shoved him inside. “Go, go, go, Reg.” Harvey stepped in and slid the door closed. He knelt beside Tyler’s mum, refusing to meet Tyler’s stare.

  The van roared into life. It slid sideways out of the pub car park onto the wet tarmac, and Reg fought to hold on. Tyler found a handhold but couldn’t tear his eyes from his mum’s dead body as it rolled from side to side with the movement of the van.

  “Get us somewhere safe, Reg,” said Harvey, as the woman tried to find a pulse on Tyler’s mum. She looked up at Harvey, and offered him a faint shake of her head as if shielding the news from Tyler.

  “It’s okay,” said Tyler. “I know. She’s been dead for a while.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, as she pulled a blanket from the small couch beside her. “You did a brave thing to get her out of there.”

  “No,” said Tyler. “Don’t cover her. Please. I want to see her. For a while, at least.”

  “How did you even find me, Melody?” asked Harvey. “I left my phone at the restaurant so you couldn’t find me.”

  The woman in the front passenger seat turned to face the rear and found Harvey staring back at her.

  “Easy,” she said. “We just followed the trail of death and destruction. The police found a body in an old disused power station in South London. I found the satellite feed and video footage and saw you leaving with two men. I took the license plate of the car you got into and tracked its inbuilt GPS to the Golden Ring.”

  Harvey stared back at her in disbelief.

  “You know you two really are made for each other?” he said. “Jess, how about you use those skills and get us somewhere far, far away.”

  They sped from Plaistow and slowed when they reached the relative safety of Silvertown’s backstreets. The engine quietened and the sirens faded away, leaving only Tyler’s occasional heavy exhales as he sought to make sense of the situation.

  Suddenly, the car behind flicked on its full beam headlights, filling the interior of the small van with harsh light.

  “Who’s that?” asked Reg, squinting as the car grew closer and nudged into the back of the van. Reg barely maintained control and took the side mirrors off a row of parked cars in a spray of orange sparks.

  “Open the rear door,” said Harvey, searching for a weapon of some kind as the car once more smashed into the back of the van.

  But as much as Tyler tried, the door wouldn’t budge. The hits from the car had wedged it closed.

  “Left turn coming up,” said Reg. “Hold on.”

  A squeal of tyres, piercing and shrill, filled the van as it lurched to one side at the limits of its stability. Harvey wrenched open the side door as the car came in for one last hit, a hit that would topple the van. But Harvey launched himself onto the front of the car, as the van careened around the corner, taking out two more parked cars and barely making the turn.

  The van rolled to a stop as everyone inside looked back in horror. The speeding car had made no attempt to turn or stop. It smashed through the two parked cars, tore down an iron safety barrier onto wasteland and launched off a pile of rubble. Its engine roared and the wheels span uselessly before the front of the car plunged into the inky-black water of the River Thames.

  Only the idling rumble of the van’s engine could be heard as everyone took in the sight and feared the worst.

  Tyler was up and out of the van before anybody spoke. Inside him, as he ran, a warm, familiar feeling clawed its way from the very pit of his stomach, through his chest and found solace in Tyler’s mind.

  The car was gone, completely submerged. Only the headlights shone with fading enthusiasm, which then disappeared as the car sank to the river’s depths.

  Tyler pulled off his top mid-run. He threw it to the side and began to kick off his trainers when Melody tackled him to the ground.

  “No,” she said. “Don’t be stupid.”

  But he rolled her away and sprang to his feet, just before Reg and Jess took him down in a joint effort. He struggled, but Melody joined them, and together, they pinned him down.

  Inside, the beast roared. It kicked out at Reg, sending him flying backwards. Melody dove on top of Tyler’s free leg as the beast threw Jess away like a rag doll. But as he reached for Melody, she twisted his leg. A pulse of anger flashed through his eyes and he kicked out violently.

  Melody was ready for it. She moved to one side, collected both legs and bound them together with her belt. Tyler lay face down, his legs forced up and back by Melody’s surprising strength. His face was forced into the mud and gravel.

  “Let him go,” she said, her face beside his. His arms tensed with the raging beast inside him, seeking a way out. But it was futile. “Let him go.”

  A coolness washed over his face, leaving only burning tears behind his eyes as the beast sank back to the depths. His muscles relaxed and grief overcame him. With the anger gone, Melody released her belt and dropped down beside him. He rolled to one side to look at her. Reg and the other girl stood on the river bank calling out Harvey’s name. But Melody seemed content to sit with her legs tucked up to her chest with her arms wrapped around them.

  “Let him go,” she whispered once more, as if the words she had spoken had been shared for them both.

  A dark sky loomed ahead and in front, lit only by the ambience of a hundred million lights scattered across the City of London and beyond. At the peripherals of his vision, the world passed like looped scenery and faded away before any focus of vision determined its nature, purpose or identity.

  Travelling at the whi
m and mercy of the moonlit tides, with only the breath in his body to keep him afloat, he lay calm and still and contemplated life itself in waves of guilt, loss and shame. Each memory held the touch of an angel. Each was a step closer to heaven and the closing of heavy, dark doors.

  A searing pain jabbed at his leg, but there was no need to reach down. He’d felt the sharp shard of bone split his skin the moment the car had hit the water. The current was strong and, for a brief moment, he considered using his arms to take him to the shore. But a warm feeling of closure accompanied the idea of floating out to sea. To be swallowed whole by nature’s most fearsome weapon. To die silently beneath a sky of stars.

  The river widened as it neared the estuary and its shallow waves rushed up onto the nearby mud flats then broke with a rhythmic percussion. Two strong hands hauled him from the water and onto the deep muddy banks where they dropped him beside a rotted, wooden post that maybe, one day, in a time long forgotten, formed part of a jetty. Now it sat alone, exposed by the moon and its tides, waiting for the river to return to full height.

  He closed his eyes, and as the cold wind rushed across the River Thames, sending his body into uncontrollable spasms of shivers, he was lulled to somewhere warm. It was a memory of fire and death, where distant screams hung like haunted voices, and chaos ensued at the centre of a rioting mass of charred and burnt human forms.

  But it was warm.

  He woke to the kiss of lapping water by his side while behind him, two heavy boots slipped and stomped in the thick, dark mud. Any inquisitive thoughts as to who, why or how succumbed to his desire to let the river wash him away along with the guilt, loss and shame that still stained his thoughts. The devil’s hand still warmed his shoulder while the rest of him succumbed to shivers.

  “You don’t need to do this,” he said, as a leather belt was passed around his neck and fastened with two sharp jerks to bring it tight. “You should have left me in the river. I’m ready for it.”