Dark Winter ns-6

by Andy McNab

  I cut the call, and immediately got another series of short sharp bleeps.

  61

  The number displayed was one of the two UK numbers.

  ‘They’re checking in! They’re checking in!’

  She broke into a run, heading straight for the house. I hobbled after her, the cut in my heel widening until I felt tarmac on bone.

  I was only metres behind her as she squeezed into the gap between the van and the side door. I went straight for the front, barging into it with my shoulder. Three times I tried to ram it in, but just bounced off. I checked the windows. No good – double-glazed.

  Suzy was breaking glass. Slipping and sliding on the muddy grass I limped as fast as I could round the side to her. She had an arm through the smashed pane. Her wrist jolted upwards as she fired a round, the report drowned by the suppressor and the rain.

  She pulled her weapon away, screaming, ‘I’ve missed! He’s gone left, left, left!’

  I pushed her out of the way.

  My raincoat sleeve rode up my arm and jagged shards of glass cut into my skin as I fumbled for the lock and Suzy jostled for position, weapon up, shouting in my ear, ‘Come on! Come on! ’

  My fingers closed over a Yale. I turned it and half fell inside, my arm still in the frame as Suzy barged past, weapon up, running through the inner door.

  Almost immediately she was screaming. ‘Fucking hell! Fuck!’

  I followed her into the hallway, my mouth still filling with blood. Street-light shone through the panels either side of the front door.

  Two young dark-skinned bodies lay on the floor. Suzy must have fallen over them and was now scrabbling to get up the stairs. Her feet thumped on to the landing as a frantic shriek echoed somewhere above me.

  ‘KELLY! KELLY! I’M COMING!’

  I jumped over the bodies and took the stairs two at a time. My legs couldn’t go fast enough.

  A door was open ahead of me.

  The bathroom.

  Empty.

  Suzy was standing a few paces further down, weapon up, hammer back. It was gloomy, only the street-light filtering up from the hallway, but I could make out three or four further doors, a couple each side of the corridor. Suzy was trying to work out which one she was behind.

  I grabbed the handle of the first left and she went for the right.

  It was dark in there, but I saw movement. I dived towards it, crashing into furniture on the way. As we fell between two beds, sharpness penetrated my right thigh.

  ‘Suzy! Suzy!’

  The muscle seized up immediately, in spasm round the blade.

  We tumbled on to the floor and his hand was wrenched away, leaving it embedded. He got on top of me, his head rammed into my neck, biting, trying to get flesh.

  I smelt cologne, cigarettes, coffee, as his teeth sank into my neck.

  I bucked and kicked as I tried to reach the knife in my leg. Blood ran down the side of my neck.

  Another scream from next door. Good, she’s still breathing .

  I added a yell of my own as his head jerked away from me, taking a mouthful of my flesh with it.

  For a moment all I could hear was his grunting and growling, then Suzy’s voice. ‘Get away! Move away from her! Now!’

  Kelly’s screams took over as bodies thumped against the connecting wall.

  My fingers reached his eyes. I wanted to gouge my way through to his brain.

  He flicked his head and tried to bite my hand. I grabbed a fistful of his slippery hair, yanking it back, trying to keep his teeth away.

  The room filled with next door’s screams. I shut it out of my mind, concentrating on the knife.

  I head-butted him, and his teeth cut into my face.

  I did him again – ‘BASTARD!’ – anything to distract him as my hand stretched down again for the knife.

  Suzy was still trying to get control. ‘Let her go! Let her go!’

  My fingers closed round the hilt and I pulled.

  I screamed at him again as I pulled the blade free, then rammed it into him as hard as I could. I didn’t know where I’d hit, but he stiffened, his muscles tensing to fight the pain.

  I pulled it out and thrust it down again and again, into his back, into his arse, anywhere I could reach.

  His screams reached a crescendo as he jammed his head down on my face and tried to bite my cheek, never giving up.

  Another high-pitched scream next door.

  ‘KELLY, I’M COMING! KELLY!’

  He was leaking over me – our blood was burning into my eyes.

  I dug the knife into his back, keeping it there, jerking it forward, backwards, left, right. His breathing was getting laboured, but he still hung on.

  I churned my hand up and down and round in circles, any way I could. My head was over his left shoulder and I was breathing through clenched teeth as he screamed just inches from the side of my face. He tried to bite me again, then hollered into my face like an animal.

  But his bucking and writhing were less violent, his cries softer.

  Kelly’s screams bounced off the walls again, then just stopped.

  I felt as if I was drunk. I was aware of what was happening, but it was taking too long for the message to reach my brain. All I could see were bubbles of red light in front of my eyes, and starbursts of white.

  I have to get to her . . .

  Our faces were just millimetres apart when his grip loosened completely and his movements weakened to no more than a spasmodic twitching.

  My software started to kick in as I tried to focus and get up, but the raincoat was tucked underneath him. I pulled as best I could until his body slumped to one side.

  The back of my neck felt as if it could no longer hold on to my head. The starbursts and bubbles returned. I scrambled over the single bed and fell out into the darkness of the landing.

  I’m losing too much blood, I’m going down . . .

  No other noise from anywhere, just the rain on the windows.

  I stumbled to the door and reached for the handle, but I just couldn’t make my trembling hand take hold.

  I turned for the stairs, wanting to get away, but my feet just froze.

  Falling to my knees, my head against the door, I could only sob weakly as I smelt the metallic tang of blood.

  Feelings of nausea and helplessness crashed over me. ‘Kelly . . . Kelly? Suzy? Please talk to me – please. Please .’

  Why didn’t I get here quicker? I could have stopped this fucking nightmare . . .

  I didn’t want to go in. I just wanted to crawl away, pretend this wasn’t happening. But I had to.

  I started banging at the door, screaming at it, begging for an answer. ‘Suzy, open the door, please. Kelly, Kelly . . .’

  I slid to the floor, collapsing in a heap.

  But I needed to see, I needed to be sure.

  I had to go in.

  I can’t run this time . . .

  A sliver of light came from under the door. I tugged at the handle, and tried to push my way in. It wouldn’t budge.

  I pushed again, harder, and it did shift this time, but no more than a few inches. I knew why, and felt the tears roll down my face.

  My hands shook and I lost control of my breathing.

  My sight was fading. Blood dripped from my neck and leg as I pulled myself to my feet. I pushed the door again, and the dead weight behind it gave way some more.

  It was Suzy who was blocking the door. A knife had been stuck into her neck; the tip of it was just visible the other side. Her eyes were closed, but on what I could see of her face through her blood-soaked hair, she seemed to have a little private smile.

  I sank back to my knees, my vision blurred, and crawled through the gap.

  The other two lay on the double bed. Navy was slumped face down across her, the back of his white shirt red with blood from the site of the exit wound.

  ‘ Kelly, I’m here now . . . Everything’s fine, I told you I was coming . . .’

  I crawled ove
r and knelt at the edge of the bed. Tears, snot and saliva splashed off my face as I hauled at his arm with my last reserves of strength.

  Sirens were approaching. Tyres screeched to a halt outside.

  He fell to the side, half on top of me. Whimpering to myself, I kicked him off, then climbed on to the bed.

  Orders were being shouted. The front door was getting rammed.

  She lay perfectly still, as I’d seen her lie so many times when she was asleep – stretched out on her back, arms and legs out like a starfish. Except that this time there was no sucking of her bottom lip, no flickering of her eyes under their lids as she dreamed. Her head was twisted to the right, at far too unnatural an angle.

  I could hear the rear-entry team in the house now as blue lights bounced against the windows and the front door finally gave in.

  As I leaned over her, my tears fell on to her hair-covered face. I knew it was futile, but checked for a pulse anyway.

  She was dead.

  I dragged her to the edge of the bed and gathered her in my arms, trying to hold her as best I could as I stumbled back towards the doorway.

  I placed Kelly gently beside Suzy, as the rooms below were cleared. They would be coming up the stairs soon, NBC kit and respirators on, weapons up.

  I pulled the knife out of Suzy’s neck and threw it at the wall, then lay down between them, gathering their ragdoll heads in my arms and pulling them on to my chest.

  With their foreheads touching, I buried my face in their hair.

  62

  Hunting Bear Path

  Thursday 17 July, 11:12 hrs

  A plume of black smoke belched from the JCB’s exhaust as it lined itself up on the corner of the house, churning the recently cut lawn beneath its giant wheels. Sunlight glinted on its steel bucket as the arm rose to first-floor level, then began to extend.

  I folded Kelly’s well-creased letter into the photo page of her passport, and took another look at her face. Fuck knows how many times I’d done that since collecting the Vectra before Geoff could get back from the Gulf and find the wrong car in his garage.

  Josh’s expression was unreadable behind his mirrored shades. He turned to the woman the other side of him and muttered, ‘Looks like a scorpion’s tail.’ Mrs Billman said something back, but I didn’t catch it above the digger’s roar. We were the only three this close to the house. The other neighbours were clustered on the road, too respectful to come further up the drive.

  The bucket seemed to hesitate a second or two, then jerked forward. Mrs Billman raised her camera as steel crashed against weatherboarding. She’d asked if we minded her taking a photo or two, and how could we say no? It was a big occasion for the community. It wasn’t every day they got to buy a house for peanuts and then demolish it. The landscapers would be coming in soon to replace it with a fun park, complete with rubber floor and drinking fountain.

  The whole house seemed to shudder, then Kev and Marsha’s bedroom wall surrendered to the sound of splintering wood and breaking glass. It had taken a while for me to decide to come and see this, but I’d known I had to. I needed to see this fucking nightmare through to the end.

  I had brought Kelly back to the US the day her grandparents were cremated in Bromley, following the tragic gas leak at their bungalow. I didn’t know if Carmen’s sister had managed to make it over from Australia.

  Josh had buried Kelly alongside the rest of her family. It was his first official engagement. There was standing room only in the church. I didn’t know whether she’d have been proud or embarrassed.

  I recognized the principal’s secretary and her maths teacher, and I met her friend Vronnie afterwards. She’d looked strangely serene: I assumed she was fucked out of her head on Vicodin.

  The funeral itself didn’t matter that much to me. I’d said my goodbyes as we lay there on the bedroom floor. In time I’d probably get a few words added to the stone, but I didn’t really know what yet.

  The undertakers had managed to make her look so peaceful: her hands were folded across her chest, and it was hard to believe she wasn’t just sleeping. As I sat beside her coffin and read out her letter, I’d half expected her to open her eyes, grab it out of my hands and say, ‘Hey, chill. Just kidding.’

  The bucket scooped out a big chunk of roof and dumped it to one side, then the arm extended again and began gnawing away at a wall. Mrs Billman started to cry, and I looked down and kicked a stone to the edge of the drive.

  The tube was running again, and London was back to normal, whatever normal was, these days. The Manhattan number had led George straight to the US ASU. They were lifted with twelve intact bottles, and were probably floating down the Hudson within hours.

  My injuries were going to take a while to heal, but at least I was alive. I supposed that was a good thing.

  There were more splintering noises and I looked up at what was left of the house. The whole roof and upstairs section had been flattened, and the bucket was at work on the ground floor. They’d said it would only take an hour or two to demolish; the carting away would take the time. They didn’t know the half of it.

  Josh had played the game and not asked how any of them had really died. He knew better than to ask. I’d given him all the proceeds of the house sale, and told him it was a down payment on my place in heaven.

  The mess I’d left behind in the UK had been cleaned up by the Yes Man and Yvette with their usual efficiency. Suzy was cremated in Kent, after a fatal crash on the M20. No other vehicles were involved. Apparently a steel bar went straight through her neck, killing her instantly. It was a well-attended affair and I lost myself easily enough at the back of the chapel. I saw the Golf Club doing the same, and we had a few words. She told me they’d known she was pregnant, but had been waiting for her to tell them, just in case she chose to abort. Either way, she would still have got permanent cadre.

  Geoff was flown back from the Gulf. He’d have known the accident was nonsense, but also that there wasn’t a fucking thing he could do about it. He, too, knew it was always better not to ask questions. I left the service as he stood up to say a few words about his wife and unborn daughter. It looked as though the Golf Club had had enough as well, because we stepped out on to the pavement together.

  Sundance and Trainers seemed to have kept themselves busy since that last night in London. Simon had been car-jacked and killed in Namibia as he drove from the airport to meet his family. All the thieves took was his camera. According to some papers, an unnamed doctor had come forward and announced that he’d been treating him for some months, for depression. I felt sorry for his kids, but you can’t fuck about with information like that. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t warned him.

  The de-luxe colonial was fast becoming a pile of debris. I turned to Josh and saw a tear roll down from under his sunglasses. I checked traser; it was nearly eleven fifty. ‘I’ve had enough, mate. Fancy going?’

  We said our goodbyes to Mrs Billman and started down the drive. She said she’d contact us with details of the opening ceremony for the park, and we nodded, but I knew neither of us would be going.

  Josh was aching to talk. ‘Hey, listen, man, why don’t you stay for the night – maybe a little longer, long as you want? You don’t look too good. You could sleep in her room . . .’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. I’d rather just go back to the apartment. I’m only just recovering from six years of Pocahontas – I don’t want a headful of Eminem for the next six . . .’

  The community might be getting a swing park but they wouldn’t be using Kelly’s as one of them. We got to the Dodge and checked that the dismantled lumps of wood, the chains and the tyre were lashed tight on the back.

  ‘What you going to do with it, man?’

  ‘Don’t know yet, just keep it in your garage, I suppose, until I think of something. I just wanted to keep it, that’s all.’

  ‘No problem, man. I hear you.’

  We climbed into the gas-guzzler, and as it roared into l
ife I took my last look. I was never coming back. I’d done everything I needed, these past few months – apart from sorting myself out, of course.

  Josh hit the main and headed home to Laurel. ‘So, what you going to do in that apartment of yours? Just bang your head against the wall? C’mon, why not stay, just for the night?’

  ‘I’m thinking about going away for a few months. Don’t know why. I just want to pack, get a few things organized . . .’

  He gave that all-knowing nod. He knew very well why I was going, and where.

  The digger might have knocked the house down, but it couldn’t erase the video. And now I had a couple of new sequences to add to the collection. A good few more cold and sweaty nights lay ahead if I didn’t get my life of shit together. I’d thought a lot about going back to Dr Hughes. The zoo gates had really burst open this time, and the animals were going wild. Maybe she could help me.

  The dash clock said 11:58 as I got out my cell and checked the signal.

  Josh was impressed. ‘You getting the hang of those things at last?’

  ‘Just expecting a call, that’s all.’

  Dead on midday, my cell rang. When George gave a time, he carved it in stone. ‘That house business go OK, son?’

  ‘Yeah, left a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Good. I can’t let you go to England. Strange things can happen in therapy. The security risk is too great.’

  My body slumped. Even admitting you needed help was a fight.

  ‘But here’s the deal, son. There’s someone I know here. He’s a good man and understands work situations like ours. Hey, he’s even helped me in the past. And you’ll be getting the benefit of that pension fund earlier than you thought. The guy’s exorbitant.’

  ‘Thanks, George.’

  ‘No need, son. The fact is, I still haven’t found anyone better. And you aren’t quite dead yet.’

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  Document ID: 9a7d3971-b1b3-4183-b80a-a933931e2ef7

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  Document creation date: 26.5.2012

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