Bleeker Hill

by Russell Mardell

  Kendrick dragged Davenport and Sullivan around a corner, through a fire exit and then down a small staircase, through a second exit and out into a long empty corridor that led to a set of double doors at the end. He pulled them on again, his heavy-handed hold making Davenport stumble and Sullivan slip out of his grasp and on to the floor. Kendrick was on him in an instant, giving no time for him to readjust, his hand in his hair, grabbing him to his feet and shoving him crudely on.

  They stopped at the doors, and Kendrick rested his head against them, turning an ear to the frame, straining to hear anything other than the rain of bullets that was pounding on the studio walls from all sides. As they all paused at the door and fought to establish their breathing again, Davenport rested a hand on Sullivan’s arm and raised his eyebrows to him, enquiring – even in this madness – as to his well-being. Sullivan had nothing to return in that moment, instead choosing to look back with little more than the dumb expression he knew he was wearing. Kendrick was squeezing his head against the slit in the door, gently pushing them apart with one expensive shoe and then stopping again, convinced he’d heard something, holding a hand to the others and then craning his head forward once more.

  Behind them the heavy footfall of Theo Maddox was rumbling their way as he thudded along the corridor with the confident stride of a lunatic king. The huge machine gun was up in front of him and Bergan and Turtle were trailing in his wake; Kleinman swinging limply over Turtle’s shoulder like wet laundry. Maddox walked through them, booted the double doors open and walked inside, his cigar smoke gathering around his head like a broken halo.

  They stepped out into a large underground car park, which opened out around them leading to a small break of light at the far end. The rest of the car park was pressed hard with a heavy darkness that felt like paperweight thunderclouds pushing down on them, making a mockery of the two orange strip lights that tried to paint each of them with a fiery glow. At the opposite end of the car park a running engine purred with the growling satisfaction of a kill fed wildcat, and Sullivan could feel Davenport’s hand on his shoulder tensing slightly, his fingers digging in. The old army utility truck – their wheels – one of the three trucks that the dear departed Baxter had procured for them with great difficulty, and a little bit of bribery, was slowly falling into view, its canvas-covered shell catching just enough light from the open entrance to give it away. Next to it the black BMW that had brought Sullivan to Bend Lane TV studios, the one Bergan had jemmied open and hotwired, was parked at an angle, the front doors open invitingly.

  ‘Let’s go, we’re nearly there.’ Kendrick hurried Davenport and Sullivan on, but Bergan was quickly in front of them, blocking their path and pushing them to the ground, deep into the shadows. ‘What the hell are you doing, Frank?’

  ‘Gate’s open.’ Bergan waved one huge slab of a hand towards the slit of light at the end of the car park, just beyond the truck. ‘Don’t move.’

  ‘Yes, I know the gate’s open, how did you want us to get out of here? Hope, will and wishing?’

  ‘If the gate is open, someone opened it, whipdick,’ Bergan snarled back.

  ‘More to the point, who turned the engine over?’ Davenport chipped in.

  ‘A valid point, Prime Minister,’ Maddox said, swinging the two rifles from his shoulder, handing one to Bergan and the other, barrel first, to Sullivan. ‘Pleased to meet you, killer.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do with that?’ Sullivan asked, his eyes meeting Maddox’s own, the hatred he couldn’t stem brimming at the surface.

  ‘Aim for the head.’

  Sullivan grabbed the rifle and swung it the right way round. ‘Whose?’

  ‘Well not yours, killer. Not yet anyway.’ Maddox smiled and started walking forward slowly, deeper into the shadows. ‘Take the truck, Frank. I will flush any stragglers.’ Bit-by-bit, the thick shadows swallowed Maddox and only the echo of his footsteps remained, the cigar smoke trailing behind him and then slowly drifting out into the damp, cold stench of the car park.

  ‘Give it to me, Sullivan.’ Kendrick’s hand was in front of him, the palm flat, the fingers clicking, and waggling. ‘Give me the rifle.’

  Sullivan wasted no time in a second thought and clumsily shoved the rifle into Kendrick’s waiting hand. ‘Thanks. Thank you, I…’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Kendrick’s voice carried a bounce, a lightness that had no place where they hid. ‘Stay out of sight.’ Kendrick half-stood, half-walked to the nearest pillar, leant against it and then slowly pointed the rifle out toward the black heart of the car park.

  Silence seemed to have fallen without anyone noticing. The gunfire had stopped, the screaming too. Only the sound of the truck’s engine remained, and as Bergan fed the next bullet into his rifle’s chamber the heavy clunking sound reverberated around the car park. Bergan took a step forward, Turtle right behind him, struggling with Kleinman and trying hard not to show it.

  ‘Get ready, Turtle.’

  ‘I’m there, Frank.’

  They passed Kendrick and stood at the edge of the pillar, staring out across the car park at the truck.

  ‘Too easy, Frank.’

  Bergan nodded and raised the rifle higher. In front of them the truck was starting to edge forward, the purring engine getting louder, angrier. ‘I doubt it, Turtle.’

  3

  Fear the quiet. That’s what Bergan had always told them. It was what he feared more than anything. The quiet preludes, the eerie calm, the sheer deepness of silence. He had drilled that into each of them, had taught them to respect the quiet and to fear it, and he could tell that at that very moment each of them did, though none more so, he was sure, than he himself.

  The utility truck gently curved between two pillars and began backing toward them. The tailgate was down, the darkness in the heart of the truck foreboding yet inviting. It slowed to a crawl, trundling backwards another few feet, before finally coming to a dead stop about twenty yards ahead of them. Bergan trained his rifle to the driver’s side of the cab. Next to him Kleinman was moaning and mumbling incoherent words, Turtle shifting his weight to stop from tipping over. Kendrick remained against the pillar, his rifle aiming into the car park, and next to him Davenport and Sullivan were tucked in behind, resisting the impulse to hold each other. Somewhere further into the car park, Maddox was wandering through the shadows looking for something to destroy, and all around them that damned silence hung like the worst enemy they could ever meet.

  When the face peered around from the driver’s window, it was so sudden and quick that it was a miracle Bergan didn’t plant a shot right through it. His fingers twitched, pulled on the trigger and then quickly jumped off just before connection.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ Bergan breathed into the air, as the truck’s horn sounded three times and the cubed bull-like head of Hudson stared back at them. He wasn’t smiling, not quite, but he seemed happy. He had a madman’s look of simple pleasure.

  Suddenly, as if called to action by the sound of the horn, the car park seemed to stir awake, the hanging silence breaking with the steady echo of footsteps, the slow rumble of forming human screams and then, finally, the heavy, vibrating boom of gun fire. The deep, dark corners of the car park were quickly ripped open as staccato bursts of angry colour flared out from all sides. Figures were charging forward, seemingly swarming out of the walls, massing together and coming at them as one. Maddox, tucked behind a pillar further into the car park, was firing left, then right, then back again, sweeping his machine gun fire in all directions. Figures were falling, breaking apart under his swarm of bullets, but no sooner did they disappear than another seemed to replace them. Kendrick was firing off his rifle into the darkness, shooting blind with nothing to find in the gloom, no definition or shapes, just the quick tantalising reveal that came at each burst of gunfire. The massed roar thundered through them, ate into them like they were caught in a storm cloud they couldn’t break. The sound seemed to want to cover you, suffocate you, pin yo
u to the ground.

  ‘Move!’ Bergan screamed as he sprinted to the driver’s door of the truck, yanked it open and roughly shoved Hudson to one side. A bullet shattered the side window and then more tore into the canvas.

  ‘Give me a gun! Let me kill them! I want to kill them!’ Hudson was almost bouncing in the seat, his crazy face distorted into lunatic logic, fat tongue flicking at his upper lip and one sweaty hand grabbing at the rifle now in Bergan’s lap. Bergan swung one huge hand at Hudson and swatted him into the passenger side window. Turning back to the wheel, he lurched the truck back further towards the others.

  ‘Now!’ Bergan yelled out of the truck window, as another shower of bullets peppered the steel cab. ‘We leave now! Move!’

  Hudson seized his moment with Bergan distracted and grabbed the rifle from his lap. Swinging around in the seat and kicking open the passenger door, he fired off the first shot into the darkness before his feet even touched the floor. Turtle was at the tailgate now, tilting Kleinman over it before clumsily pulling himself up to join him. Turtle didn’t even spare Hudson a glance as he ran past him at the tailgate and unleashed another two shots into the car park before jumping into the waiting BMW, reaching under the wheel and fumbling at the exposed wires.

  A jagged shard flew off the pillar and hit Kendrick, cutting a cheek. He stumbled backwards, spinning around, his hands flying to his face as he landed in Davenport’s arms. Davenport was tugging him to the ground, wrestling him down and hugging him and Sullivan close.

  ‘My face! Not my face!’ Kendrick was gibbering, his hands smoothing over the cut and coming away blood red. Across from them another rifle shot sounded, ushering forth a delirious whooping from Hudson as the BMW’s engine fired and the ex-jailer of Thinwater prison brought his weight down on the accelerator, quickly moving through the gears and ploughing the car forward towards the oncoming hoards, screaming like a madman from the window.

  ‘Sullivan! Get off your arse!’ Bergan’s voice blasted from inside the truck.

  ‘Get them in the back! Move!’ Turtle screamed.

  Sullivan pulled Davenport up by his collar, shoving him forward towards Turtle’s waiting grasp. Kendrick was still in a state of shock at the blood on his hands and terrified for the mark on his face, and he struggled and fought as Sullivan turned his attention on to him, yanking him up by his suit jacket lapels. His weedy, short arms flailing around in a windmill of panic.

  Bergan was starting to edge the truck forward, pumping the bite. ‘Get in! Move it!’

  Sullivan followed Kendrick over the tailgate just as more bullets tore through the canvas covering. Across the car park Maddox started to retreat, firing low and ducking back to the nearest pillar, trying to weave a safe passage to the truck. Bergan lifted his foot from the clutch and the truck started to gather speed, the engine snarling in front of them. Maddox backed further away and unleashed the rest of the magazine before discarding the machine gun and turning, running flat out towards the departing truck.

  Hudson had made one circle of the car park and was coming back for seconds. Figures pinged off the car as he mowed through the nearest crowd of people, others were sucked under the car and squashed, or thrust head first into the bonnet, and yet more still managed to mount the car and were hanging from the windscreen and the roof. Hudson didn’t seem to care, didn’t seem to want to see anyone, charging the car on in a series of crazy, improvised turns, weaving in and out of pillars and taking corners as fast as he could. He was a joyrider on one last fix, delirious and sucking on the high. He didn’t see the figure crawl in through the sunroof, nor did he feel the hands on him until it was too late. The car swerved expertly past one more pillar and then thudded pathetically into the next, the airbag blowing up in Hudson’s face and pinning him to the seat. Figures were at the car doors instantly, yanking them open, they were smashing windows and crawling through, and Hudson was screaming into the big white balloon pressed into his face. The car was swamped, outside and inside, and Hudson was steadily blocked from view.

  Maddox was about twenty feet from the truck and gaining. Bergan moved up another gear and they shot out of the gate and into the meagre light, only a shade brighter than what they had left. Sullivan found himself at the tailgate, silently volunteered to be the one to offer Maddox a helping hand up, being the only one not now cowering on the floor of the truck, and as Maddox’s hand came to him, as the burly brutes expectant look came and then slowly fell away, Sullivan found himself backing off, looking down at Maddox and shaking his head.

  What was left of the enemy were now coming out of the car park; scattered clusters of rag-tag clothes and gaunt, ghostly bodies, and across from them even more were running out from the front of the studios, joining their tribe, returning to their flock. Maddox wasn’t stopping, and he wasn’t losing ground. Those brilliant blue eyes seemed to wash white as they looked back up at Sullivan, and the mouth beneath it pulled into a grimace.

  The truck picked up the road in front of the studio and began scything through the carnage of the earlier battle, ploughing over bodies fallen to Maddox’s gunfire, scattered limbs catching under the tyres and slowing them, threatening to stop them, and then as the truck pitched over the flattened electric fence, bounced up and broadsided a fencepost, it slowed just enough for Maddox to jump on to the tailgate, haul himself over and then punch Sullivan square in the face.

  4

  They drove the city out in silence, the broken shells of houses and offices, factories and warehouses, finally falling away to wide stretches of snow-splattered wastelands and fields. They passed burnt out cars and swerved around bodies. They drove through a small village where the dead had been stacked on to a large pyre. A priest was standing to one side offering prayer. He signalled to them as they passed and assured them that the Party loved them. He was given no such assurance. At the far end of the village a barn, half standing, presented passers with a giant poster of Edward Davenport. He looked young, handsome, dynamic and thrusting, a stark contrast to the man he was now; a matinee idol at a midnight show. Beyond the barn a snow-caked field was dotted with the fallen carcases of cows; crows scattering, seemingly from inside their torn bellies, as the truck passed them.

  The snow was coming down at a steady speed, the feeble windscreen wipers brushing the gathering flakes aside with increasing ineffectiveness, the torn canvas shell of the truck offering little protection to those in the back, huddled up, their coats and jackets zipped up and pulled close. The sharp winter wind was a thousand little spikes firing in from the back of the truck, through the sides, the roof and every conceivable empty space.

  Kleinman lay under a makeshift duvet of coats, drifting in and out of consciousness, mumbling words, moaning strange sounds and then falling back to nothing. The others sat around him in a circle, staring down, nothing to say, flashing intermittent looks to each other, hoping another would break the silence. Only Maddox sat apart from them, leaning against the tailgate, staring out at where they had just been, sucking deep on a cigar and fondling a rifle. It was he who finally broke the silence, and after he did, everyone else found themselves wishing the silence back.

  ‘He’s dead,’ was all he said, spitting the words out through the corner of his mouth free from cigar.

  ‘No he isn’t,’ Turtle returned, not looking up.

  ‘Kleinman is still alive, Theo.’ Davenport said in a low whisper. ‘I will thank you for keeping such statements to yourself.’

  ‘Nah,’ Maddox said in a casual, laconic drawl, his eyes returning to the view behind them, and then to the cold, unforgiving sky above. ‘He’s dead.’

  The truck started to circle around, stop, and then begin a slow ascent, crawling steeply and then pulling off to the left. From the back of the truck the road seemed to dangle beneath them like a tail before feeding back out. They had reached the start of the valley into Bleeker Hill and the terrain was getting worse, the tyres sliding on slick ice patches as they picked between and trundled over sm
atterings of rock and felled branches.

  Bergan was sighing and growling in the driver’s seat, the odd swear word tossed into the silences between. The truck skidded wildly as they crested the first hill, the rear right tyre slamming hard against a rock, and then Bergan was moving down a gear and trying to hold the truck as it began to move down the other side.

  Two smaller hills followed, and then finally the road broke into a long plateau, a snake line running between huge valley walls to their right and a sheer drop to their left, and the truck settled into a slow crawl. Turtle moved away from the others and clambered over into the cab, plonking himself down next to Bergan, and on seeing the drop just beyond his door, fastened his seatbelt as tight as he could.

  ‘How far, Frank?’ Turtle asked, fiddling in vain with the heater on the dash, which had long since given up the ghost.

  ‘Half a day, maybe more. Somewhere you need to be?’

  Turtle leant forward and tapped the fuel gauge with an index finger; it was already in the red. Bergan spared it a look and simply nodded.

  Kendrick shuffled from the group in the back of the truck and leant against the cab, staring out at each man in turn, delicately stroking the cut on his face and then the beard growing beneath it. ‘Weapons. What we got?’

  ‘I’m out,’ Turtle said from behind him. ‘Frankie too.’

  ‘Theo?’

  Maddox didn’t respond, didn’t look back into the truck, merely raised the rifle slightly and continued puffing on his cigar.

  ‘Is that it?’ Davenport said, straightening himself and rubbing at his back. ‘Do we have nothing else?’

  ‘There’s weaponry at the safe house. The point team carried enough to level a small country.’

  ‘Wonderful. If we get there, that will be wonderful. Wouldn’t you say, Joe?’