Nothing.
“I’m sorry darling,” Kylie said. “I’m so sorry. But we can’t stay here. I know you loved John – we all did, but he’s gone now. We need to think about making it through the night. There’s still three of us alive and we need to do everything we can to keep it that way. The first thing is getting out of here.”
Celia’s face was buried in the back of John’s neck. She whimpered softly as the dead man’s glassy eyes stared across the room.
“I’m not leaving him,” Celia said. Her voice was muffled and distant.
“They probably saw us Celia,” Ollie said, daring to come a little further forward. “That means there’s a good chance they’ll come back.”
Kylie stepped closer. She reached down and gently took Celia’s arm, pulling her away from John. To Ollie’s surprise, Celia didn’t resist. She found her way to her feet and even though half of her was covered in John’s blood, her eyes were clear enough to suggest she understood what was happening.
Kylie led Celia across the bedroom, one arm around the shoulder.
Ollie gazed at the lifeless shape of his dead friend on the floor. All three of his bandmates were now dead. Dead. It didn’t feel real, not yet. It was hard to comprehend that he’d never hear Brian sing again. Brian was a great singer – his blue-eyed soul voice had been reminiscent of the great Steve Marriott. That was gone now, just like Marriott’s voice had been rubbed out in a fire in 1991. And John – he’d never hear that magical and fluid guitar playing again. Dave’s muscular backbeat pulsing through the floor – that was over.
Killing Floor. It was over.
He walked past Anna, creeping downstairs behind Kylie and Celia. The old house creaked and snapped under their weight and all the space inside those four walls still felt malevolent, as if there was someone there. Someone or something, waiting for them.
Ollie slipped ahead of the girls. He led the way towards the back door, the only door in the house he knew for sure that was unlocked. They went outside, walking past the pool with Brian’s body floating face down in the water. Ollie looked. He couldn’t help himself. The body was so still and the dim glow of the tea lights added a chilling reverence to the atmosphere. It was as if the pool had turned into a shrine.
“Keep going,” Kylie said. “Go to the back of the garden. If we can slip past those hedges and trees and whatever, then I think we’ll end up on a road. Something like that. We can take it from there.”
They clambered up a small incline, forcing their way through the thick barrier of greenery that lined the edges of the back garden. It was pitch black except for the light on the iPhone. With Ollie out front, they took the downhill slope cautiously. All the sounds of death from afar accompanied their descent. After fifty metres of forcing their way through jagged, unwelcoming branches the land flattened out and they found themselves emerging onto a small country lane.
Ollie wiped his forehead dry. There was no breeze in the air, nothing refreshing to counter the internal build up of heat.
He hated this place. Hated the fucking countryside. There was nowhere to go for a start, no obvious sign of refuge. In London there’d be hundreds of places to hide out and on top of that, good people working together, trying to get the better of this sick cull. Trying to beat it. Trying to cheat death. Out here in the sticks though, it was fields and open space as far as the eye could see. Cover was minimal. Ollie, Kylie and Celia might as well have been three field mice trying to outwit a bird of prey army.
They hurried down the lane, reaching a larger road. There were no signs, no guidance. Nothing but a choice of blackness on both sides. It felt like the game was rigged to lose from the start.
“Which way now?” Kylie asked.
“I dunno,” Ollie said, checking the phone to see if a signal had returned. Nothing. He was beginning to wonder if the networks were out everywhere in the country. If the phones were out it meant people couldn’t organise. Without communications, resistance would go out with a whimper.
“No Google maps,” Kylie said, checking her own phone.
“I need to go back,” Celia said.
“You’re not going back,” Kylie said, securing her grip on her Celia’s shoulder. “When this is over we’ll go back for all of ’em.”
Celia looked around, frowning. “Where are we?” she asked.
Ollie didn’t like the vacant look in her eyes. Celia was a shell of herself, broken by grief.
“I don’t know darling,” Kylie said. “But wherever we are we need to get out of it. Find an in between place and lay low.”
“In between place?” Ollie said.
“Yeah,” Kylie said. “Somewhere in between towns, villages and cities. In other words a place without people.”
“Like what?” Ollie asked.
“I dunno. A bloody big forest in the middle of nowhere would be nice. Climb up a tree, find a branch to perch and wait for this thing to be over.”
Ollie’s head turned sideways. His ear pricked up at the sound of tyres skidding off the road. Sounded close. Glancing down both sides of the road however, he saw nothing.
“That’s on this road,” he said. “With any luck they’re going the other way.”
No answer.
“Kylie?”
She was staring at a wall of darkness in front of her. “Yeah?”
“You alright love?”
She shook her head. “Can you imagine what it’s like in London right now Ol? My mum and sister were going out for dinner tonight together. A girl’s catch up – that sort of thing. I don’t know where they went. Ollie. What if they’re…?”
The words were cut off but the thought was still there judging by the look in her eyes.
Kylie kicked something off the side of the road and watched the night gobble it up. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
With so much going on at East Catchford, Ollie hadn’t given much thought to what his family were going through in London. It registered like a kick to the balls. “Oh fuck Kylie. Why is this happening? How’s the government gonna explain with thousands of dead bodies lying around everywhere. What are they going to say?”
“They’ll get rid of the bodies fast,” Kylie said. “If people don’t see it they’ll be more willing to move on.”
“But…”
“Just wait and see Ol.”
Ollie had never felt so helpless in all his life. Walking down the winding road, he glanced at the dim, shadowy scenery with disdain. That car he’d heard wasn’t going away. As time passed, Ollie was sure that something was on the road accelerating towards them. Every time he looked however, he saw nothing.
“Road,” he said. “Hedges. Fields. Trees. Walls. And yet amongst all that, not one single fucking sign to tell us where we are or where we’re going.”
“Stop!”
Kylie thrust an arm out, blocking both Ollie and Celia’s progress.
“What?” Ollie asked, his heart beating like a drum. “What is it now?”
“Over there,” Kylie said, pointing dead ahead. Her voice was a whisper. “There’s something lying on the road. See it? Right there in front of us.”
Ollie narrowed his eyes. “What is it?” he asked, feeling a cold sweat breaking out.
“Dunno. Celia?”
Celia’s blank eyes saw nothing. At that moment if a stiff breeze had come along it would have knocked her sideways.
“C’mon,” Kylie said, tapping Ollie’s forearm. “Let’s check it out.”
Ollie took a deep breath, trying to slow his heart down. Kylie crept forward in silence and he went with her, longing for a slice of her courage. Kylie had the torch and she cast its light upon the scattered shapes. They got closer still, bringing the beam with them until gradually it brought the grisly details into focus.
Kylie gasped. “Holy shit Ollie.” She clamped a hand over her mouth.
“What?”
“Those kids…it’s those kids who came to the house tonight. Jesus Christ, they’re dead. All of �
�em.”
Ollie’s body stiffened. He couldn’t bring himself to go any further.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
Celia was crying at their backs, whimpering John’s name. Ollie had to check and make sure she didn’t try to wander off back to Malky’s house.
“What happened?” Ollie asked, turning back to the front.
He caught a brief glimpse of the rosy-cheeked boy who’d stood in the living room. The spokesman of the group who’d asked if Killing Floor were famous. The boy’s bulbous eyes were open, glassy and lifeless.
“They were probably caught outside,” Kylie said. “Must have come down here to try and get away from the worst of it. Poor little buggers.”
She buried her face in her hands and let out a wild, muffled scream.
“Fuck! I don’t believe this is happening.”
“Don’t look at them Kylie,” Ollie said, coming forward and pulling her away from the dead children. “C’mere – we need to keep moving.”
“What do we do Ollie?” she asked. “What do we do?”
“We stick with your plan love,” Ollie said, cupping her face in his hands. Her skin was scalding hot. “A forest. We’re going to find a forest, something like that. And we’ll hide there. Jesus we’ll hide in a fucking sewer if it means staying alive. Don’t worry love, it’s going to be…”
He stopped.
Ollie stared at the road behind him. Watching, listening to the faint hum of a motor vehicle closing ground on them.
“What is it Ol?” Kylie said.
“It’s a car,” Ollie replied. “And it’s coming straight at us.”
Chapter 9
“Maybe we should get off the road,” Kylie said.
“No,” Celia said, coming back to life again. Her eyes darted back and forth between Ollie and Kylie. “We need to flag it down. We’ll ask them to take us to the nearest police station. That’s what we’ll do. Okay?”
The old Celia definitely wasn’t back. Ollie knew Celia as well as anyone and in her right mind she would never have suggested going to the police in ninety-nine percent of scenarios and certainly not this one. For reasons stretching back to her childhood, Celia wasn’t exactly a fan of law enforcement. Growing up on a council estate in East London did that to some people. And besides, Celia was smart enough to know that the police weren’t going to help anyone, not when the problem was government sanctioned mass murder.
Everything that had happened so far was legal. What were the police going to do?
It sounded like there was a freight train coming towards them.
“I say we get off the road too,” Ollie said. “Listen to that. They’re not slowing down for anyone Celia.”
“I second that,” Kylie said.
A stone wall ran along the side of the road, separating the traffic from everything else. Ollie and Kylie began to move the direction of an empty field on the other side of the wall.
“Let’s go Celia!” Kylie called out.
But Celia didn’t move. She watched the winding road that was as black as midnight one moment and then the next, was soaked in a flash of blinding white light. Two headlights were visible up ahead, then they disappeared around another corner.
Darkness.
“Celia! Get off the road.”
The headlights were back again. Bigger and brighter.
“Celia!” Ollie yelled. His hands were cupped over his mouth. “You can’t stand in the middle of the road for God’s sake. Move!”
But Celia began to walk towards the car.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “Whoever it is they’ll stop. I know they will. They’re good people…good people.”
She waved her arms in the air. “HELP! HELP US!”
Kylie was running back towards the road. Ollie felt a jolt of fear stabbing at his heart but he ran after his girlfriend, racing down the middle of the road towards Celia who was shambling along like a drugged person paddling through an ocean of mud.
Ollie reached Celia first and grabbed her by the arm. Celia yelped in protest as Kylie showed up and seized her other arm.
They dragged her towards the side of the road.
“No!” she screamed. “What are you doing? We can’t lose them. We can’t let them go!”
“That car’s not stopping for anyone,” Kylie shouted, wrestling furiously with her friend. “We’re on our own.”
“NO!”
Celia found the strength of a lioness. She yanked her arm free of Ollie’s grip and then sensing freedom, pushed Kylie off balance. Kylie toppled onto her backside at the side of the road. Her eyes were hazy with shock.
Celia raced back onto the middle of the road. Her arms sliced the air as she tried to catch the driver’s attention.
“Help us! Please!”
An avalanche of ear-splitting noise hurled itself at the grief-stricken woman. At that moment, all the other horrific sounds of the cull shrank into the background. A shower of white-yellowy light resurrected the faint lane dividers on the road. Every little bump and imperfection, the overgrown hedges, the fields on either side – everything was trapped and exposed in the net of the incoming headlights.
The car’s tyres squealed as they took the final corner. Ollie’s eardrums were on the brink of exploding.
“Get off the road!” Ollie shouted.
The horn blared angrily. It went on for what felt like days, warning Celia several times in rapid-fire succession. Even if it hadn’t it was clear the car was speeding up after the bend and that the driver had no intention of slowing down, let alone stopping.
“CELIA!” Kylie screamed.
At the last minute, Celia must have realised what was going to happen. Finally, the penny had dropped. She tried to dive out the way at the last minute and Ollie heard a swift, sickening thud as the bumper rammed into the side of her.
“Owwwwwww!”
Celia rolled around on her back on top of the faded lane markers. Meanwhile the car fled into the distance, unrepentant and faster than ever.
Kylie was on her way towards Celia when Ollie grabbed a hold of her arm.
“What are you doing?” Kylie asked. She looked at her boyfriend like he was a crazy man for holding her back.
“It’s not over,” Ollie said.
“The car? It’s gone.”
He shook his head. Ollie’s keen sense of hearing had picked up on something else as soon as the fleeing car and its flat out engine had fizzled out. Something bigger. Something faster. The scream of its spinning rotor blades had been lost in the immediacy of the speeding car. Now they were front and centre.
Ollie shoved Kylie to the ground as soon as the helicopter cleared the steep incline at their backs. The spotlight chewed up the landscape.
He looked up.
It was another black Boeing Apache, a favourite of the military as Dave had informed them earlier. Ollie had seen Apaches before on YouTube videos. They were pretty much a flying tank with machine guns and missiles but surprisingly from what Ollie had seen so far tonight, the favoured method of killing was to use human snipers. Controlled, precise execution over carnage. The machine guns had been used, but sparingly. Ollie’s cynical and only guess was that the government didn’t want to destroy the natural landscape, as well as countless homes and businesses. That shit cost money to repair.
The helicopter swooped low, spinning sharply to the left as if it was on the brink of following the fleeing car. Ollie’s heart sang with relief. It was after the car, not them.
Thank God.
But the Apache lingered overhead for a second. Its jerky movement reminded Ollie of something bobbing on the surface of a choppy ocean.
The spotlight landed on Celia.
“Don’t move Celia,” Ollie said. “They might not see you.”
Of course he was trying to fool himself. He’d left Celia out there to die but if he’d let Kylie run out there she would have been under that spotlight too.
Celi
a, who had somehow managed to get back to her feet, stared up into the light. Her face was cloudy and confused. She staggered forward, reaching for the helicopter.
“You killed John!” she screamed at the Apache. “You killed my John!”
“Oh Jesus!” Kylie said. “She’s going to get ripped to pieces.”
Ollie saw a tiny figure leaning out the back of the tandem cockpit. “No,” he whispered. “Let her go. She’s just one person. Let her go you bastard.”
There was a single crack of gunfire. It was like a baseball bat slapping off the inside of Ollie’s skull.
Celia collapsed into a grassy verge that extended from the wall. Ollie thought he saw her body twitch.
Kylie turned around and buried her face deep in Ollie’s chest. She felt heavy, like there were kettlebells attached to her limbs.
“Oh God Ollie. They’re dead. They’re all dead.”
Ollie stroked Kylie’s blonde hair, which was hard and speckled with dry blood. He watched as the Apache ascended then twirled around once in the sky as if taking a victory bow. Then it took off in pursuit of the car.
It flew low, its head tilted at an impossible angle.
Chapter 10
Ollie grabbed Celia’s arms while Kylie took the legs. They lifted her up gently and carried her into the nearby field in silence. Ollie was surprised at how light she was; it felt like he was carrying empty garments.
On the other side of the wall they laid her down on the grass, tucking her body in tight at the base to conceal her from anyone on the road. Kylie removed Celia’s jacket and placed it over her friend’s face. Before she was covered up, Ollie closed Celia’s eyes over. He insisted on doing it although he didn’t know why.
They sat on the grass listening to the distant chaos. It sounded like East Sussex was hosting a regular carnival of madness somewhere out there. Ollie listened to every shrill cry, to every sudden bang, to every crash, and all the while it felt like he was sinking into a deep state of numbness. Shouldn’t he be crying? Shouldn’t he be angry? Shouldn’t he be something? Five of his friends were dead. Was he giving into the cull? Had he, Ollie Davis, the last survivor of Killing Floor, conformed to the madness of government sponsored mass slaughter?
The Dystopiaville Omnibus: A Dystopian Sci-Fi Horror Collection Page 30
