As quickly as he’d returned, Dave was gone again.
“No!” Ollie yelled.
During this disturbance John grabbed a bong that had fallen off the coffee table. He threw it at Anna just as she was delivering the fatal blow on Dave’s head.
“Leave him alone you psycho bitch!” John said. “That’s my mate.”
The bong, which was made of glass, struck Anna clean on the forehead. She didn’t see it coming and howled in pain and surprise as she staggered backwards for a second time. This time however, she slipped on the bloody floor and toppled backwards.
“RUN!” Ollie screamed.
The four survivors sprinted out of the living room and into the hallway. Their feet thundered off the floor in a wild stampede.
They made for the front door. Kylie grabbed the metal handle and pulled.
“It’s locked,” she said, yanking it over and over again. “It’s fucking locked. Can you believe it?”
“Where’s the key?” John said, glancing over his shoulder. “For fuck’s sake where’s the key? She’ll be here in a second.”
“I don’t know,” Kylie said. “Who locked the fucking door in the first place?”
“Probably Anna,” Celia said.
Ollie felt a second wave of dizziness coming on. His body felt weak. His clothes were instantly soaked in sweat and now Ollie was drowning in it.
“Upstairs!” Celia shouted.
Ollie was being dragged towards the staircase. He almost tripped over the first step but fortunately instinct kicked in and his legs suddenly remembered what to do. He tuned into the escape, went with the flow, while at the same time he heard the sound of crashing footsteps in the downstairs hallway.
“She’s coming,” he mumbled.
Now they were on the upper landing. Moving away from the staircase, Ollie still felt like he was floating but someone had his arm – it had to be Kylie. She had the grip of a grizzly bear.
“In here,” John whispered, standing in front of a solid timber door. “Quick.”
“Ollie,” Kylie said, cupping her partner’s face with her hands. Her head was a blurry shape that danced in front of him. “Are you alright? You’re burning up love.”
“Yeah,” Ollie said, wiping the sweat off his face and blinking furiously. “I’m alright. Let’s just get out of here.”
John pushed the door open and the four of them piled inside a large bedroom. The room boasted little more than a double bed and a large wardrobe.
But there was a black key hanging off the inside of the lock.
“Lock it John,” Celia said. “Quick! Lock the door.”
John threw his body in front of the door and his fingers wrestled the key into the lock. “C’mon you bastard,” he said, his face turning bright red. Sweat gushed from his brow.
There was a snappy click. Ollie thought it sounded better than angels on floating clouds playing harps.
They stepped back from the door. Quietly.
Outside, footsteps on the upper landing crept closer.
Chapter 7
“Whose bedroom is this?” John whispered, looking around.
“It’s Malky’s,” Celia answered quietly. She was using her iPhone’s torch to cast a soft light over the dull surroundings. “This is the room he told us to stay out of, remember?”
Kylie pressed a finger to her lips “Shhhh!”
The floorboards creaked outside in the hall.
“C’mon guys,” Anna said. Her tone was bright and friendly; it was as if she hadn’t just murdered three of their friends in cold blood. It was as if they were all still mates having a jolly old knees up in the country.
She giggled.
“I should be out there whacking country squires and rosy-cheeked farmers,” Anna said. “There’s a car waiting for me not far from here. Do you know how many people I’m supposed to bump off tonight? It’s a bloody lot I can tell you. You guys aren’t helping by delaying the inevitable.”
“She’s mental,” Celia whispered, tapping a finger off her forehead.
The creaking footsteps came closer. Ollie, listening to the voice of instinct, encouraged the others to creep away from the door.
They did so just in time.
There was a loud bang that made all four of them jump. Ollie clamped his hands over his ears and spun around quickly. The handle of the bedroom door flopped sideways, revealing the appearance of a large, smoking hole in the wood. The lock itself was barely intact and as Anna barged against the door from the outside it wobbled, clearly on its last legs.
But the lock held.
“Bugger!” Anna said.
Old doors, Ollie thought. Built to last.
But no matter how tough the door was, the lock wouldn’t last much longer. Anna unleashed a vicious assault from the other side, kicking the door with such power that it sounded like Godzilla was using his head as a battering ram.
“Guys! Over ’ere.”
It was John. He’d made his way to the other side of the bedroom. Now he was grappling with the lock on a large Victorian bay window overlooking the front of the house.
“We’re going to have to jump,” he said. “We can do it, it’s only two storeys down. It’s either that or we take a bullet in the head. I know what I’m doing.”
The others hurried over and stood beside John while he battled with the window lock. There was a small lever attached on the inside and although the guitarist was putting his all behind it, the damn thing wouldn’t budge.
“It won’t give!” he said. “It’s locked or it’s broken or something. Probably hasn’t been opened for years. Oh bloody hell.”
Ollie jumped as the bedroom door made a deafening crack. The old hinges were slowly giving way to the pressure. Anna had a kick like a mule, which betrayed her supermodel skinny stature. She could easily have shot the handle again but Ollie got the distinct impression that Anna was revelling in this display of strength. As if she wanted to both impress and terrify them before killing them.
Kylie was standing in front of the double door wardrobe. She pulled it open and found it empty except for a chest of mahogany drawers sitting on the base ledge.
“Might be a key or something in here,” she said.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
“Fuck off you crazy bitch!” John yelled. He was giving V-signs to the door, perhaps hoping that Anna would see through the smoking hole.
Kylie was on one knee, ransacking through the drawers.
“Whoa!”
She jumped up, backing away from the wardrobe in a hurry. There was a shocked expression on her face as if she’d just found a human head sticking out of the top drawer. On top of everything else, Ollie thought, this was no time to find out that Malky Hamilton was also a top-notch serial killer.
Kylie rushed back over to the wardrobe. She reached down and pulled something out of the drawer. Then she held it aloft for everyone to see.
Ollie’s eyes bulged at the sight of the thing in her hand. “Is that what I think it is?”
Kylie was holding a glass dildo aloft like it was pervert’s magic wand. Ollie stared at the thing, thinking that it resembled a giant twisted icicle with a disturbingly sharp tip.
“Malky Hamilton,” Celia said. “The dirty bastard.”
“He’s a rock and roll manager,” John said, his fingers still grappling with the bay window lever. What did you think you were going to find in his bedroom? A copy of Simply Knitting?”
Kylie pulled out a second dildo from the top drawer. It was identical to the first one.
“Give me one of those Kylie!”
Celia hurried over and snatched a dildo out of Kylie’s hand. She held it aloft as if it was a knife and stabbed the air three times. Her eyes lit up in recognition of the lethal weapon in her hand. Kylie watched her friend and then adjusted her grip on the sex toy so that she too was now holding an improvised dagger.
“Yeah?” Celia asked.
Kylie responded with a curt nod. “Yeah.”
Celia handed Ollie her iPhone torch. Ollie took it without question.
The two women inched their way forward across the bedroom. Their steely eyes were locked on the battered door, watching and listening as Anna continued to force her way in.
THUMP-THUMP-THU…
The lock finally gave way. There was a loud bang as Anna charged into Malky’s bedroom with a look of rampant, murderous joy on her face.
Celia and Kylie were too quick for her. As the door swung open they pounced like big cats on unsuspecting prey. The element of surprise was on their side. Anna didn’t have time to full take stock of the situation before the girls charged in, knocking her off her feet. The Remington rifle flew out of Anna’s hands, skidding across the floor.
Ollie was gobsmacked.
“Kylie!”
Kylie and Celia had by now forced Anna back into the hallway. It was an ugly, brutal catfight. They were on top of the assassin, using their combined weight to pin her down. They stabbed and slashed, using the tip of the dildos to cut Anna open. It was as if both Celia and Kylie were running on autopilot, fuelled by nothing except basic survival instinct. Kill or be killed.
“Bitch!” Celia roared.
There were grunts and curses as the battle continued.
Anna fought like a trapped tigress from the bottom. But she was on the defensive all the way, deflecting blows and trying to protect her pretty face from taking damage. Her nylon pyjamas, which Ollie was now convinced was some kind of ninja suit, were cut to ribbons.
“You fucking bitch!” Celia yelled over and over again. Her face was distorted beyond recognition with anger.
John was already celebrating in the bedroom, jumping up and down like he was front row at a Rage Against the Machine concert.
“Kill the mad psycho! Kill her!”
Kylie stabbed Anna in the right shoulder – it was a deep cut and the dildo stayed lodged in the flesh while Kylie twisted it around. There were loud squelching noises. It looked like Kylie was stirring a bowl of porridge at twice the speed. Anna howled in pain and tried to wriggle free but the weight of the two women on top of her was too much.
Celia dropped the dildo. She grabbed Anna’s head and began hitting it off the floor. Badly weakened by the beating and blood loss, Anna gurgled a few words of protest and promptly blacked out.
“She’s out,” Kylie said.
Celia jumped back to her feet and grabbed Anna’s rifle off the floor. Kylie backed up and stood beside her. Both women, whose clothes were now Jackson Pollocked with blood, stared at the unconscious assassin.
“Is she dead?” Kylie asked.
“Hope so,” Celia said.
Behind them, John was still dancing for joy in front of the bay window. “YES!” he yelled. “That’s my girls. You bloody did it. You killed her. We’re going to be alright now guys, we’re going to be alright.”
“John,” Ollie said, glancing over his shoulder. “Keep the noise down will you mate?”
But John was far too excited to stop. And it was understandable too – they’d come back from being trapped inside the jaws of certain death. The rush was overwhelming. Ollie felt it too, albeit it less demonstratively than the guitarist. John stamped his feet on the floor, his eyes filling up with tears. He punched the walls hard. He’d made it. He was alive.
“Thank God,” he said, wiping his brow dry. “Oh thank God for that.”
Ollie heard a sudden noise out front. He turned around and gasped.
“Holy shit!”
The Apache came from above, dipping level with the bay window from barely thirty metres back. Its spotlight blinded everyone inside the house, flooding Malky’s bedroom with an onslaught of white light.
The drone of the helicopters had been a constant companion throughout their ordeal so far. But in the heat of the battle with Anna, no one inside the house, certainly not Ollie, had realised how close one of those flying bastards had come to East Catchford.
Two sharp shots pierced the glass.
Ollie grabbed Kylie and pulled her to the ground. He covered her body while a shower of glass fragments landed on the back of his head.
Two more shots. Three. Four.
Looking up, Ollie was horrified to see the dim outline of John’s body jerking furiously as it was riddled with bullets.
Celia screamed. She was on the floor but made to get up at the sight of her lover being shot to pieces. Ollie scurried over and grabbed a hold of her before she could get started. Kylie came over to help and they held her down as she howled in protest.
“JOHN!”
She reached a hand towards her mangled lover.
“He’s gone,” Ollie yelled, pressing all his weight on her. “He’s gone Celia.”
The shooting stopped as quickly as it had started. The blinding spotlight floated away from Malky Hamilton’s bedroom, leaving John’s blood-splattered corpse lying in darkness on the floor.
Ollie grabbed the iPhone torch. He pointed it at his friend.
John’s dead eyes were now staring into empty space. Ollie winced, recalling the words of the young man as he’d entered the house that afternoon, his head full of dreams.
Mark my words. 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.
Chapter 8
Celia thrashed around on the floor like a shark caught in a net.
Ollie and Kylie continued to pin her down even though the helicopter was gone and the room had been plunged back into semi-darkness. But they could still hear it out there, buzzing like a giant insect. Moving on towards its next kill.
But Celia didn’t care whether it was there or not – she fought back against Ollie and Kylie as if they were holding her down on the railway track in the path of an incoming freight train.
“Let go of me!”
Eventually they had to let her go. Ollie and Kylie released their grip on Celia and she sprang onto her hands and knees. She crawled towards John’s bloody corpse, tears spilling from her eyes.
Ollie ran a hand through his sweaty brown hair. He glanced towards the shattered bay window listening to the sound of gunshots that sounded like fireworks. And screams – those were definitely screams he could hear.
“What have they done to you?” Celia asked, sobbing over the body of John. “What have they done to my man?”
Kylie grabbed Ollie’s arm. She was gasping for breath. “We need to get out of here,” she said. “We need to get away from this house.”
“Wouldn’t we be safer hiding out here?” Ollie asked. “That’s at least two helicopters that have been and gone so far. We’ve got Anna under control. Surely the worst is over, no?”
Kylie shook her head. “They’ll come back,” she said. “They must have seen us both times and if they know how many people are in the house they know where to go if they run out of people to kill. Maybe they’ll even land next time.”
Ollie edged away from the puddle of blood that was creeping over the floor towards him.
“So…?”
“So we run.”
“Where to?” Ollie asked.
“Anywhere but here.”
“What about Anna?”
Kylie pointed to the phone in Ollie’s hand. “Give me some light will you?”
She climbed back to her feet, staring at the broken window as if weary of the possibility of another helicopter making a sudden appearance. Ollie followed her back over to Malky’s sex drawer, the torchlight leading the way. With a sigh, Kylie interlocked her fingers, pulled them back and made that snapping noise that Ollie hated so much.
She dived in, rummaging through the drawers, throwing all kinds of kinky monstrosities – whips, studded underwear, masks and more – onto the floor behind her.
“What are you looking for?” Ollie sai
d. He regretted asking the question almost immediately.
“A-ha,” Kylie said, pulling out a pair of pink fluffy handcuffs from the middle drawer. She turned back to Ollie, holding the cuffs in between her forefinger and thumb as if they were a pair of old long johns she’d just fished out of a manky canal.
“Bingo.”
“Cuffs?” Ollie asked.
“Yep,” Kylie said.
“What are you going to do with them?”
“Watch and learn Ollie.”
She went into the hallway and grabbing Anna by the arms, dragged her back into the bedroom and steered her towards the radiator. A small blood trail marked the route on the floor. Kylie knelt down, locking one fluffy handcuff around Anna’s right wrist. The other she clamped around the temperature valve.
“You ain’t going nowhere love,” Kylie said, admiring her handiwork. “You can rot here as far as I’m concerned.”
“Is she alive?” Ollie asked.
“I don’t care,” Kylie said in cold, emotionless voice.
They heard movement behind them. Glass fragments being squashed on the floor. Turning around they saw Celia curling up to John and at first glance they could have been taking a nap together. With focus came horror. Ollie shivered at the sight of his friend’s skinny body, which had been ripped to shreds and appeared to be floating in a shallow pool of dark blood. So was Celia, but she didn’t seem to care. She was now spooning her dead lover.
“We need to go,” Kylie said, nudging Ollie in the ribs. “And that means we need to get her moving.”
“Okay.”
They both crept towards the horrendous spooning scene, but Ollie could only go so far without feeling the need to puke or pass out. There was a terrible smell in the bedroom, like smoke intermingled with the stench of rotten fruit. It was going right up his nose. That, along with the faint reek of the scented candles from downstairs, was more than his sense of smell could take.
Ollie gagged. Kylie put a hand out, instructing him to keep back.
“Celia,” she said, tiptoeing forward alone.
The Dystopiaville Omnibus: A Dystopian Sci-Fi Horror Collection Page 29
