Joe Coffin Season One

by Ken Preston

  “Joe came here to rescue me,” he heard Emma say.

  “And that was something you couldn’t trust me to do, huh?” Archer said. “Coffin told me that you phoned him. Not me, not the fucking police, but you phoned him!”

  Coffin gripped the sword handle and pulled. The blade slid out, and blood dribbled down the front of the corpse. He dropped the blade on the deck, bent down and grabbed the vampire’s body, slinging it over his shoulder.

  “Hold it!” Archer shouted, stepping out of the narrowboat cabin. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Coffin sighed and dropped the vampire’s body onto the towpath. Rainwater ran down Coffin’s scarred face.

  Archer stepped up close to Coffin, having to look up to meet his gaze. “You’re like all the other big guys I’ve ever met, think you can do your own thing, and forget everybody else. But I’m a policeman, and by moving that body you’re disturbing a crime scene.”

  “You got some cuffs on you?” Coffin said.

  Archer’s hand instinctively went to his hip and then stopped. “What?”

  Coffin leaned over and unclipped the handcuffs from Archer’s belt. They were the speed cuffs, with the rigid grip in the middle, instead of the old fashioned chain. He grabbed Archer by the arm and bundled him around, twisting his arm behind his back. He snapped the cuffs onto his wrist, ratcheted them down tight.

  “Joe, what are you doing?” Emma said.

  “Get the fuck off me!” Archer shouted, as Coffin dragged him back inside the cabin.

  Archer struggled, but he had no chance. Coffin shoved him to the floor and pulled his cuffed wrist back, slipping the rigid cuffs through the handle on the oven door. He grabbed Archer’s other wrist, and snapped the cuffs over that one, too.

  “Hand me that tea towel,” Coffin said.

  Emma looked at the tea towel hanging off a hook on the wall. She looked back at Coffin.

  Sighing again, Coffin stood up and grabbed the tea towel himself. He rolled it up, and shoved it into Archer’s mouth, and tied it up tight around the back of his head. Archer whipped his head from side to side, leaning forward and straining against the cuffs. The oven door opened a fraction, and then stopped, blocked by Archer’s body.

  “If I couldn’t gag him, I would have had to kill him, just to shut him up,” Coffin said.

  Michael strained at the ropes tying him to the cabin’s table leg, snarling, snapping his teeth at Archer, who was just out of reach.

  Coffin turned his back on them both.

  Stepping back outside was like stepping into a shower. The narrowboat deck was slippy, and Coffin had to place a hand on the cabin roof as he climbed off the boat. Picking the vampire up, he slung the mud and blood splattered corpse over his shoulder and retrieved the chainsaw.

  He walked down the muddy towpath a little way and stopped.

  He turned around.

  Emma was standing on the deck of the boat, watching him.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to where it all started,” Coffin said. “Number Ninety-nine.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “It’s not going to be pretty.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “You want to help, find me some diesel, and some matches, or a lighter. We’re going to have a bonfire.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Coffin turned and continued walking along the towpath. Within a minute he was at the house. The garden fence was tall, and the gate was padlocked.

  Coffin smashed it open with one kick.

  He walked down the garden, past the tree. The house had been boarded up by the police, but nothing had been done with the cellar door, except for a new padlock. Coffin dropped the corpse on the ground, letting it slide from his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. He put the chainsaw down.

  The wooden door creaked but held under the impact of Coffin’s first attack. He raised his foot and stamped on it again. The door still held firm, but there was a louder, more satisfying creak. On the third attempt, the wood began to splinter.

  Once he had got the cellar doors open, Coffin picked up the vampire corpse and shoved it down the steps. It tumbled down, arms and legs flailing, and hit the ground with a dull splat. Coffin picked up the chainsaw and followed the corpse into the cellar. He was growing uneasy about the time.

  He had no idea how long it took for these creatures to start coming back to life, but he knew he had to act quickly.

  Coffin kicked the vampire’s body into the hole and jumped down beside it. He pulled the starter cord on the chainsaw. It failed to fire up, so he pulled it again.

  The stink of diesel filled his nostrils as the chainsaw roared into life.

  * * *

  Emma found a jerry can of diesel on the narrowboat, and a box of matches in the galley. As she searched for the matches, opening the cupboards and pulling out drawers, she avoided looking at Nick. The boat moved as he kicked and bucked, trying to shout through the gag stuffed in his mouth. At least Michael had settled down, no longer straining at the rope. He was squatting on the floor, staring intently at her.

  Emma avoided looking at him as much as possible too, and she was relieved to find the matches and get off the boat.

  Outside, standing on the towpath, the rain flattening her hair to her scalp and streaming down her face, she paused.

  What the hell are you doing? You are going to end up in jail for this.

  Looking back at the narrowboat, rocking slightly as Nick struggled to free himself, she thought about going back.

  It’s not too late. Nick can cover for you, he can explain away your involvement in all of this. Or at least testify as to your good character, and your good intentions before the shit hit the fan. You were after a story, a career defining story, and your book. And then you just got sucked in too far.

  Emma snapped her head around when she heard the sound of the chainsaw roaring into life.

  Oh fuck. He’s carving up the body, and then he’s going to burn the pieces.

  It was too late to back out now. If Emma released Nick, and he got the police down here in force, what would happen? They would take Michael away, and arrest Coffin, and maybe arrest Emma too. But that still left two vampires, at a minimum, out there. Steffanie and that ancient monstrosity with her.

  The police would get organised, and go down to the club, and there would be a massacre.

  Nick didn’t realise what they were dealing with.

  Joe Coffin did.

  Putting her head down, Emma walked slowly down the towpath, her feet sloshing through the mud. Every fibre of her body seemed to be screaming at her to turn around and run away, to escape this nightmare. But she kept walking. She pushed through the gate and headed for the cellar steps.

  She paused in the garden, halfway to the cellar, and waited until the chainsaw fell silent.

  A dark shadow against the house, Coffin climbed out of the hole in the ground, looking like a monster from hell. His eyes peered from a crimson mask of dark red. The scarlet blood covered his scalp and was splattered up his arms and down his torso and legs. Raindrops hit him, and mingled with the blood, sending thin rivulets of red coursing down his body.

  Emma dropped the jerry can on the wet ground. Coffin picked it up and held out his hand, and she dropped the box of matches into it.

  He walked back to the cellar steps, down them, back into the hole where the nightmare had started, not just for Jacob and Peter, but for all of them.

  Emma followed him down the steps. Coffin twisted the cap off the jerry can and upended it, pouring the contents into the oblong hole in the cellar floor. From where she stood, Emma couldn’t see into the hole, couldn’t see Abel’s dismembered body.

  Coffin threw the jerry can away, and it rebounded off a wall and hit the ground.

  He struck a match. Held it out over the hole. Dropped it in.

  The cellar bloomed into orange light with a loud WHOOSH! as flames leapt out of the ground, lic
king at the wooden ceiling. To Emma it seemed that Coffin was dangerously close to the fire, but he didn’t step back.

  He stared at the flames, his battered, blood splattered face lit by its glow. “Let’s see you come back from that, you fucker.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Coffin flinched, looked at Emma like he’d forgotten all about her.

  “I’m going to kill them all,” Coffin said. “Steffanie, the old man, Addison, Clevon, Velvina. They’re like a plague, they need eradicating, before they can spread anymore. I’m going to chop them up into little pieces, and then I’m going to burn them, too.”

  “What about Michael?”

  Coffin gazed at Emma for a long time, the roar of Abel’s dismembered carcass burning up, and the rain beating against the sodden ground outside, the only sounds breaking the silence between them.

  Finally Coffin turned and stared back into the flickering light of the fire, as if seeking an answer in the flames.

  Joe Coffin Season Two

  spider-man is a pussy

  Garrett Stone gazed out of the cabin window, down at the wisps of white cloud below. It was a sight he had seen many times before and he was bored with it. International air travel was, for Stone, like driving on the motorway was for everyone else. Tedious, but necessary.

  Stone returned to his meal. Braised beef in coconut milk, served on a bed of Basmati and Wild rice. Silver cutlery and bone china tableware. Eating was also tedious but necessary. Protein, carbs, vitamins and minerals, all vital not just for the continuation of life, but for the building of muscle and bone density. The beef and the coconut milk in this meal weren’t the healthiest of options considering their high fat content. But on the long-haul flights Stone liked to treat himself.

  Garrett Stone wore a smartly pressed shirt and tie, expensive cufflinks, dark trousers and black shoes. He was handsome, with a square jaw and dark eyes, and his broad, muscular frame filled his seat.

  The airline stewardess passed him, pushing her trolley and collecting dishes and cutlery. Stone smiled up at her and let her take his empty plate. She was pretty, with long hair tied back under her hat, and smooth, unblemished features. But Stone wasn’t interested. She was an identikit copy of every other airline hostess he had encountered. Some days, Stone was convinced that none of them were real. That they were Stepford Wives robots, or they were grown in a lab, all cloned from the same tissue sample.

  Not like the woman sat next to him.

  Now she was an individual.

  She wasn’t slim, but neither was she fat. What was the best way to describe her?

  Oh yes. Voluptuous.

  And she was exposing plenty of that voluptuous, olive brown skin in the simple, black dress she wore. Stone checked the screen in front of him. When they had left New York, the weather had been unseasonably mild, but not exactly warm. Of course the environmentalists had been in the news, proclaiming the end of the world yet again. Pissed Stone off every time they opened their stupid mouths. New York might be unseasonably mild but, according to the data on the live feed, Birmingham was a hell of a lot colder. A typical November day, in fact; cold and blustery and threatening even more rain than usual.

  Environmentalists weren’t mentioning that, were they?

  Stone risked another peek at the woman. Unless she had something warm to wrap up in when they landed, she was going to be bloody freezing when they left the airport.

  Stone looked away and then back again, glanced at her face. He couldn’t help himself. She was striking. Not beautiful, but handsome. His gaze swept down her neck, over her collarbone and down to her cleavage. The other striking aspect of her appearance were the tattoos. Curving, pointed black lines and shapes. Swirling over her skin and disappearing beneath the lines of her dress. The design was almost dizzying if he looked at it too much. And the more he did glance at it, the more convinced he became that it was all one design, and that most of it was hidden by her dress.

  The black lines and tiny shapes seemed to have swarmed down her arms of their own accord. Her right arm was more covered than her left. The design swept over her shoulders and down her back and chest. When he glanced down at her legs, Stone could see the tattoo emerging from beneath the hem of her dress, creeping along her thighs.

  He couldn’t make sense of it. Wanted to pull her dress down and expose her breasts and her abdomen to see the full design.

  It would be easy. One quick movement, and it would be off.

  And he was certain she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  Stone looked out of the window again, steadied his breathing. Best not to get distracted. Best not to get caught looking, too. The last thing he wanted was to create a commotion, get accused of being a lech.

  A stewardess passed by again, pushing another trolley with newspapers. Was she the same one as before? Stone couldn’t tell. The woman sitting next to him asked for a paper.

  She opened up the newspaper, the Times, and began leafing through the pages, quickly scanning the articles. Having found what she wanted, she folded the newspaper in on itself, and began reading.

  Stone glanced at her again, trying to work out what had attracted her attention. But this time she caught him looking.

  “Would you like me to buy a newspaper for you?” she said.

  Stone chuckled, held up his hands. “You got me. I’m afraid it’s a bad habit of mine, looking over people’s shoulders, see what they’re reading. Years ago, when I travelled to work by train, I managed to read a whole book by sitting next to the same woman every morning, and reading over her shoulder.”

  “That’s the kind of thing that will get you in trouble one day.”

  Her voice was rich and warm, with a slight husk to it.

  “That’s a lovely accent you have,” Stone said. “Let me guess, Louisiana?”

  “Pretty good,” she said. “Although, over the years, I’ve lived everywhere you can imagine, and some places you can’t.”

  “Sounds intriguing,” Stone said. “A woman of mystery, but I like it.” He held out his hand. “I’m Garrett.”

  The woman smiled and took his hand. Stone had expected her palm to be warm, hot even, although he couldn’t have explained why. But her touch was cool, and she shook his hand lightly.

  “Leola,” she said, and smiled.

  “Pleased to meet you, Leola,” Stone replied. “So, what will you be doing in England? Business or pleasure?”

  “You sound just like passport control. Is that your job?”

  Stone laughed. “No, although I do work in the defence sector. If I could tell you the capacity in which I work, and what I actually do, I would, but a lot of it is very sensitive, classified stuff.”

  “Now you’re the one who is sounding mysterious,” Leola said.

  “No, not really. I just don’t want to bore you, that’s all.”

  Stone noticed that Leola had folded her newspaper up, one hand resting on it. All the signals he was receiving from her indicated that she was interested in him, that she wanted to talk.

  Here we go again, Stone thought. He’d promised himself, and Lucy, that he wouldn’t. But what the hell. You only got one life, right?

  “Where in Louisiana do you live?” he said.

  “New Orleans, the capital of Mardi gras.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  Leola smiled, and nodded slowly. “Oh yes, it’s always fun.”

  “And what do you do?”

  Leola turned and gave Stone the full force of her gaze.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “There you go with that woman of mystery thing again. Who would have thought it, that two random strangers could meet on a flight, and have professions so mysterious they couldn’t tell one another what they did?”

  “Maybe that is a mystery in itself. Or maybe we are both simply being careful.”

  Stone shifted in his seat. That dress really was too much. Such a thin layer of cotton, to do the job of covering
her nakedness. Definitely not wearing a bra. And now Stone found himself wondering if she was even wearing any underwear.

  “You know, I hate mysteries, and I have a violent aversion to being left in the dark.”

  “Is that what makes you so good at your job?” Leola said.

  Stone laughed. “How do you know I’m any good at my job?”

  Leola raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Working in the defence sector, flying 1st class, the expensive clothes you’re wearing? I’d be surprised if you weren’t.”

  Stone resisted the urge to tug at his collar. That would be a dead giveaway to his discomfort. Not that he was unhappy with the sensations coursing through his nerve endings right now, just that it was a slightly inappropriate setting to be this aroused.

  “With those deductive powers of yours, you must be a detective,” he said, trying to shift his focus away from the attractions of Leola’s body.

  Leola chuckled, shook her head.

  “You really are going to make me guess, aren’t you?” Stone’s hand was lying on the armrest, just inches from Leola’s left thigh. With one swift movement, he could have lifted the hem of her dress, found out for sure if she was wearing any underwear or not. “Let’s see, you can’t tell me what you do because it’s so fantastical I wouldn’t believe you, and you also have to be careful who you tell. It’s obvious. You’re a secret agent, working for the American government, right?”

  Leola flashed him a full on smile, bright white teeth a contrast to her brown skin. “You’re way off base.”

  “But if you are a secret agent, you’d deny it,” Stone said. “So how can I trust you?”

  “You will just have to take my word for it.”

  “All right, let me think. Maybe you’re an ultra-rich, billionaire playgirl, come to the UK to buy it up, and use us as your sex slaves.”

  Leola tilted her head back, and laughed. “And that’s why I’m travelling with the common people, when really I should be flying here in my own private jet.”

  “Hmm, good point,” Stone replied. “I know, you’re a superhero, on the way to the UK to save the world from an English, eccentric, supervillain.”