“Yeah alright.”
Brian placed the acoustic guitar on the floor. He got up and swaggered into the hallway. The entire living room listened as he opened the front door and exchanged quiet words with whoever was outside.
Seconds later, footsteps approached the living room.
Brian walked in, followed by a small group of kids.
“This lot wanted to say hi,” Brian said, grinning from ear to ear. “They think there might be rock stars around these parts. I wonder what gave them that idea.”
The kids shuffled in awkwardly, not straying far from the door. There were five of them in total – four boys and a girl. They kept their heads down for the most part, smiling nervously at the floor. Five little fishes out of water, Ollie thought. They might as well have been staring at a bunch of extra-terrestrials from Mars.
“What can we do for you?” Celia asked. Like everyone else, she was clearly relieved that it hadn’t been the police at the door.
A chubby boy with strawberry blond hair spoke up. He was dressed in baggy jeans and a faded green sweatshirt. “Are you lot famous or something?” he asked.
John was reclining on the couch, trying to act cool again. “Pretty much yeah. Hey, didn’t we see you guys earlier today?”
The girl nodded. “Yeah. We saw you coming out the taxi.”
“Uber,” Brian said. “It was an Uber.”
“Are those helicopters out there for you then?” the boy asked, his thumb pointing over his shoulder. “Is it the press from London? Did they follow you out here?”
“Helicopters?” Helen said. All the colour suddenly drained from her face. “What helicopters?”
Anna giggled from the back window. “I bloody told you there were helicopters out there. Didn’t I? And you lot thought I was going loopy.”
Celia frowned. “What helicopters?” she asked. “Are you sure?”
“We’ve seen a few of them out there tonight,” the girl said. “Going back and forth. Are they for you?”
“No,” Ollie said. “They’re not for us.”
Some of the kids giggled into the back of their hands. “So you’re not famous then?” asked the chubby boy. “Not even a little bit?”
“We’re not famous yet,” John said, sounding impatient. “And I do stress yet. But we will be.”
There was an awkward silence. The five youngsters mumbled to one another while Killing Floor and their girlfriends watched with mild amusement. Ollie got the impression that the kids were disappointed because they hadn’t stumbled across a big rock star hideaway with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and an army of Playboy centrefolds swimming in a sea of cocaine.
Poor sods, Ollie thought. They’re probably bored out of their minds.
“See you later then,” the boy said, directing his little posse towards the front door.
Brian held up a peace sign. “Laters.”
When they were gone Ollie burst out laughing. As did the others.
“Did you see how quickly they buggered off when they realised we weren’t celebs?” Ollie said. “Bloody little vultures.”
“And that ladies and gentlemen,” Dave said, getting to his feet, “is why we can’t fail this weekend. I want people to give a shit when they look at me.”
“No pressure guys,” Kylie said. “None at all. Five songs. Stone cold classics the lot of them.”
Ollie sank deeper into the couch while the rest of the conversation faded into the background. Jesus. Everything was riding on these two days and perhaps the mounting pressure was the reason that the band was afraid to go to work. Drinking, smoking, arguing – it was all procrastination.
The four members of Killing Floor were on the cusp of something big. But was it greatness or was it the worst disappointment of their lives?
Ollie reached for another beer.
Chapter 3
Earlier that day…
The Uber pulled away, leaving the eight Londoners standing at the side of the road.
“Well here we are,” Celia said, looking at the house. “East Catchford is the name of the house and it’s also the name of the village.”
“Lazy,” John said. “That’s just laziness.”
They walked towards the house, dragging their hand luggage behind them on the road. As well as suitcases there were a few guitar cases and Dave had an old dirt-stained duffel bag hanging off his shoulder. The bag contained a variety of percussion instruments and every time it moved the tambourines and shakers cried out with a bright silvery rattle.
Malky’s farmhouse was a pretty timber-framed building, which according to the man himself, dated back to the early eighteenth century. There were three parts to the house. The main block was a three-storey building with a separate two-storey extension attached at the side. At the north end of the main block, a small single-storey kitchen was barely visible from the road.
“Look at this place man,” Brian said, swaggering up the driveway ahead of the others. He strutted like a peacock, his long brown mane fluttering in the breeze. “Who said dreams don’t come true?”
Ollie shook his head. “Dreams come true when you own a place like this,” he said. “Not when you’re borrowing it for the weekend and have to give the keys back.”
“Listen to old grumpy bastard here,” Kylie said, giving Ollie’s arm a gentle squeeze. “We’re doing alright here guys. This is not bad for a bunch of council estate kids, landing a free weekend in a swanky old gaff like this.”
Ollie felt his girlfriend shiver in the spring breeze.
“It’s hardly the Ritz though is it?” John said, stopping outside the gate.
“And it ain’t free either,” Dave said in a firm voice. “Malky Hamilton wants five songs for this.”
“Yes Dave,” John said, with a mock salute. “I think that’s the five hundredth time you’ve said that mate.”
Ollie glanced to his left and saw a gang of kids watching the band’s arrival from further down the street. They were a scruffy lot, dressed in old sweatshirts and faded jeans. Ollie counted four boys and one girl, no older than twelve or thirteen. They were all staring up the road as if the circus had just come to town.
John did a funny sort of Quasimodo walk in their direction. “Hello children!” he yelled, his arms flopping at the sides. “What’s wrong? Have you forgotten where you parked your tractors?”
The kids exchanged puzzled looks.
“Shut up John,” Celia said, whacking her boyfriend on the back of his head. “That’s not funny.”
“Don’t piss off the locals,” Dave said. “Ain’t you lot seen Deliverance?”
Anna stood at the gate, staring at the kids like they were live exhibits on the other side of a glass cage. “God they must be bored,” she said. “Poor little mites.”
With a shrug, she followed Brian up the driveway. Anna walked like a rock and roll supermodel. Didn’t matter if she was gliding down a bus aisle, going into a café or strutting down the hallway to use the bog. The whole world was Anna’s Milan Fashion show.
Ollie was surprised to see that she’d brought a guitar case with her to Sussex. On the train down, John and Dave had whispered their concerns to Ollie about this. Did Anna think that dating the lead singer was the same thing as joining the group? Ever since she’d showed up with the case the rest of the band had been on Yoko alert. It would be interesting to see what happened later on when they switched to songwriting mode. Would Anna start chiming in with idea after idea after idea? And so on?
The kids at the side of the road were still giggling at the newcomers. It must have been quite a departure from the norm for the ‘poor mites’ seeing a gang of people that walked, talked and dressed like Mods from the 1960s. The four members of Killing Floor all had matching layered haircuts and wore Fred Perry shirts under slick suit jackets. On their feet they wore Chelsea boots with Cuban heels. The girls didn’t exactly blend in either – they wore brightly coloured summery dresses with rounded Peter Pan collars. Their hair was reminisc
ent of the pixie cuts and brow skimming bangs that were a common sight during the golden era of Mod.
“I still can’t believe this is Malky Hamilton’s house,” Dave said. “Malky Hamilton. And that he gave us the keys for the weekend.”
“Well believe it babe,” Helen said, gazing lovingly at her man. “Because it’s true and you earned it.”
Dave and Helen wrapped themselves up in a tight, loving embrace. It was one of the rare moments they both looked relaxed at the same time.
“Well are we going in or are we going to stand out here all day?” John asked.
Celia led the way to the arch-shaped door. Dropping her bag on the step, she unlocked it and reached for the handle.
“Mark my words,” John said, raising his voice as if he was giving an official speech. “People will come and visit this house because of what we do this weekend. They’ll give guided tours of this place because this is where Killing Floor wrote the songs that launched their career. This was where the legend was born. This was where our lives changed forever.”
He grinned at the others.
“It’s destiny.”
“Destiny bollocks,” Dave said, pushing his suitcase up the driveway. “Hard bloody work, that’s what got us here. Malky Hamilton saw us gigging to a half empty room in the Plaza on a rainy Wednesday night. He saw our work ethic. Saw how tight the band was and that’s ’cos we rehearse every spare minute we have. I repeat – hard bloody work. Showing up. We made our own luck and destiny’s got nothing to do with us landing a record contract.”
“Seriously lads,” Ollie said. “We need to stop thinking about the record contract. It’s going to mess with our heads and in the end we won’t be able to write a damn thing.”
“Right,” Celia said, winking at Ollie. “That’s why you’re the brains of this organisation Ollie love.”
Celia opened the door and then stood aside, allowing the others to go in ahead of her. Anna, after picking up her guitar case off the front step, was the first one inside the house.
“Let the good times roll,” she said.
Chapter 4
The helicopters were coming in fast.
There was no mistaking what that sound was. It was the sound of rotor blades spinning in the sky. Ollie was stunned because those bloody kids had been right after all. There were helicopters out there roaming the skies of Sussex and at least one of them was closing in on East Catchford.
“Sounds like a hundred of them out there,” Celia said. She was up on her feet now like the rest of them, eyes on the roof, listening intently to what was going on out there.
“Call the police!” Helen said. She paced the living room floor, both hands pressed against the side of her head. “We need to call the police!”
Ollie felt increasingly anxious just watching her. Helen had always been a ticking time bomb of a woman and he believed that one of these days she’d spontaneously combust all over the carpet. There was only so much stress and worry the human brain could take after all and Helen had already crammed a lifetime’s worth into her twenty-five years.
“Call the police!” Helen said. “NOW! Don’t you see? It’s real. It’s really happening! They’re going to kill us.”
Brian roared with laughter.
“Are you guys serious?” he said. “Look at your faces for God’s sake. So there’s a helicopter mooching about up there. Maybe a few of them. Big deal. It’s got nothing to do with that prank on the telly.”
He surveyed the room, shaking his head.
“You actually think it’s real don’t you?” he asked. “You think the British government has declared a nationwide cull.”
Celia lit up a Marlboro Gold. Ollie thought he could see her hand trembling as she steered the lighter towards the tip. “Brian’s right,” she said, fanning the smoke away from the others. “We don’t know for sure that...”
“No!” Helen screamed. She held up a finger in the air. “Will you shut the fuck up Celia? And you too Brian, stop pretending like you don’t know what’s happening. You know, you all know!”
“You’re barking mad,” Brian said with a sad shake of the head.
“That’s not a very helpful thing to say Brian,” Kylie said.
Helen clenched her fists tight. “Don’t gaslight me Brian you dickhead. There are other noises out there too – you heard them. Those were gunshots. Real gunshots.”
“Or fireworks,” Brian said. “Okay? Just calm down love. There’s obviously some kind of show or festival going on somewhere in the county. It’s Saturday night remember? When you put that together with the BBC prank…”
He pointed at the TV. The reality show had long since ended and now there was some kind of hospital soap opera thing playing in the background.
“You’re just scared. Okay? It’s the BBC fucking with you. They’ve probably got hidden cameras in hundreds of houses all over the country and right now they’re watching people’s reaction after the cull announcement. It’s nothing but a prank, got it?”
“Yeah,” Celia said. She’d smoked the Marlboro to a stub in record time. “Yeah that makes sense. It’s like a Jeremy Beadle, Candid Camera thing innit?”
“Exactly,” Brian said. “It’s bloody sick but people will laugh it up anyway.”
Helen continued to shake her head.
“We’ve locked the door babe,” Dave said, thrusting a trunk-like arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders.
Helen chewed restlessly on her thumbnail while everyone listened to the racket outside. There was no denying that at least one helicopter was nearby. Ollie had looked through the front and back window but he hadn’t caught a glimpse of any flashing lights in the sky.
“Call the police!” Helen said. “Please.”
But several of them had tried doing that already. It was a good idea too. If some kind soul in law enforcement could just confirm to them that the BBC was indeed pranking the nation and that there was a fireworks and air show happening elsewhere in East Sussex then Killing Floor could go to work cranking out the hits and poor Helen could go to bed and save herself the trouble of a heart attack.
“I still don’t have a signal,” Kylie said, staring at her phone. “It’s as dead as disco.”
Anna placed her phone on the coffee table. “Same here.”
Helen went back to the padded cell routine of bouncing off the walls. “Shit, shit, shit! I fucking hate this place. Why the fuck did we come out here?”
“C’mon Helen,” Brian said, arms wide and going in for a hug. “Don’t be a silly cow. We’ll laugh about this in the morning, I guarantee it.”
“Fuck off Brian,” Dave snapped. “Just fuck right off.”
The roaring noise outside was getting louder.
They all stared at the roof.
“You don’t really believe this do you?” Brian asked. “Guys? You don’t think they’re actually out there killing random people to decrease the population a teensy weensy bit. Do you? This is Britain for God’s sake, we don’t do that kind of thing here. They don’t do that kind of thing anywhere.”
Ollie felt Kylie grab his arm and pull him closer to her. He squeezed up tight and her body felt rigid, like an iron bar. What Brian said made sense, of course it did. But they could all hear that noise outside – the sound of rotor blades viciously slapping thin air. And Helen was right, there were other noises too. And they did sound like gunshots.
Or was it just fireworks?
“It’s a prank,” Brian said, sounding annoyed now. “It’s a fucking prank innit?”
When nobody said anything, Brian backed away from the crowd towards the dining room.
“Alright then,” he said. “I’ll prove it. I’ll prove it’s a prank and when I’ve done that maybe we can start writing some songs yeah?”
“What are you talking about?” Ollie asked. “What are you going to do?”
Brian grinned and held his arms out wide like he was greeting the audience at a sold out Wembley Stadium. “What do you
think I’m going to do Ollie mate?” he said. “I’m going outside.”
Chapter 5
Brian marched across the living room, the proud peacock walk back on display. He held a glass of red wine in his hand as he entered the small dining area. At the back of this smaller room there was a door that opened out into the back garden.
Without hesitation, Brian walked over and grabbed the door handle.
The others hurried after him, piling into the dining room, all of them trying to squeeze through the doorway at once.
“Don’t go out there!” Helen cried out. Her eyes welled up with tears and her hands were clasped in prayer position.
“Please Brian, don’t go outside.”
Brian stopped and turned around. “It’s alright love. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Ollie stepped forward. “Maybe she’s right mate,” he said. “Might be for the best if you just stay put eh?”
“I’m just going to stand in the back garden for a few minutes,” Brian said. “Five minutes. Maybe ten. Alright? I’m going to grab some air, sip my wine and we’ll see what happens. But let me tell you what’s going to happen boys and girls. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. So you lot just wait here, roll another joint, drink another beer, do what you have to do. Dave and Helen – you put the kettle on. I’ll be back in a flash.”
If Ollie had been hoping that Anna, as Brian’s girlfriend, would be the one to talk him out of going outside, he was out of luck. Anna was every inch the bored supermodel, sitting at the dining table with her feet on her guitar case.
“Anna?” Ollie said. “Talk some sense into this daft bugger will you?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Maybe he’s right Ollie,” she said. “Maybe it’s nothing but a big joke.”
Ollie groaned in frustration.
“Door’s locked,” Brian said, pulling the handle. For a moment Ollie was hopeful that would be the end of the matter but Brian, being a determined sod, wasn’t about to give up just yet. He messed around with the lock, pulled the upper and lower bolts loose, and then with a wave to his friends, walked outside into the back garden of East Catchford.
The Dystopiaville Omnibus: A Dystopian Sci-Fi Horror Collection Page 27
