by Park, J. R.
‘Oooo, that smells good,’ Knight taunted in the blackness. ‘If my tastes were more base I’d be salivating.’
Ollie got to his feet but kept low, trying his best to stay hidden in the dark.
‘You can’t hide from me, Ollie,’ Knight continued, ‘this is my domain. You and your friends stumbled into something that did not concern you. But now it does. Maybe it always did.’
Ollie felt along the floor, his hands searching for a weapon, anything with which he could use to defend himself.
‘You talk a lot,’ his courage was renewed when his fingers found Sam’s broken, blooded saw blade. ‘I never believed in fate.’
‘Fate is a simple concept, Ollie,’ Knight stalked through the darkness.
Ollie tried to keep a watchful eye on the shimmer of his shirt but it was swallowed up in the mirk; fading out of view, only to reappear again somewhere completely different, moments later.
‘I’m talking of something far more intricate. Something less tangible, but much more real,’ Knight continued.
Even following his voice was no help, its source and direction seemed to be entirely independent to the location of the glow from his clothing. Ollie held the blade in front of him, ready to attack.
‘Where’s the girl?’ Knight asked. ‘Where’s Kayleigh?’
PC Pritchard gave up on his attempts to fight over the squall of the radio’s hiss. He turned to his colleague and tried his best to hide his frustrations.
‘Still no good,’ he said, clipping the radio back onto his vest.
Aimee did not turn to face him, her focus remained on the group in the distance.
‘We need to get down there,’ she spoke with impatience. ‘I can’t wait any longer. Something’s going on. They’ve already gotten themselves into enough trouble.’
‘We could drive back to the station,’ Paul offered. ‘Get some back up that way.’
‘We’ve already wasted enough time,’ she spoke with considered authority. Her doubts of being a good cop had been washed away by the adrenalin coursing through her body. This was not the time for doubts and inaction. ‘We have to get them out of there, now.’
‘Come on, Forrest, that’s crazy talk. We’d just provoke the situation,’ PC Pritchard tried to reason with her.
‘You don’t understand, Paul,’ she turned to face him. ‘I don’t have any choice, that’s my-’
A banging on the car bonnet cut her sentence short as they both turned to see the source of the commotion.
A girl with long, auburn hair looked at the pair through the windscreen. Her face was pale white behind her glasses, her purple painted fingernails pressed into the bodywork of the car as her hands trembled, matching the shaking that possessed her entire being.
‘Kayleigh!’
‘She’s a very special girl you know?’
‘You leave her alone,’ Ollie shouted.
‘That’s not possible. Not anymore,’ Knight’s voice appeared behind him.
Ollie swung out with the saw blade, but found no target. The bloodied blade sliced through the empty air.
‘Stop hiding, you bastard,’ Ollie’s rage grew at the frustration of not getting a clean shot.
‘What makes you think I’m hiding?’ Knight stated matter-of-factly. ‘I’m right here.’
Ollie turned to see Knight stood inches from him. The large, suited man swung a fist sending the boy flying, but not before he launched the toothed blade at his attacker. The sharp teeth of the workman’s tool cut through the cloth of his jacket and dug, deep into his flesh. For a moment Knight seemed clearer in the dark, more visible, as he gripped the blade and pulled it from his arm. The sound of blood splashing on the floor echoed round the basement but Knight made no reaction to the injury.
‘You want some more of that shit?’ Ollie taunted, knowing full well he had no weapon to back up his idle threat. ‘If you don’t want any more of that you’d best let me walk out of here.’
‘You couldn’t find your way out if I let you,’ Knight mocked.
‘Yeah? I’m willing to give that a go,’ Ollie put his back against the wall and edged round the room. If he could keep the guy talking he might be able to distract him long enough to find the stairs. ‘So what are you guys? Some kind of black ops Government agency? You got that whole Men In Black/Agent Smith look down.’
‘Your Governments mean little to us,’ came the response. ‘Only their power.’
‘Not Government. Then some kind of Illuminati thing. New World Order type shit?’ Ollie made his way to the corner of the room. His fingers felt over crumbling plasterboard and thick, dust ridden cobwebs as he continued along the next wall in search of the exit.
‘A new world? You have no idea,’ Knight sounded annoyed by this line of questioning. ‘Who we are is of little importance to you. As you are of little importance to me.’
‘Now, come on, I’m not that unimportant,’ Ollie did his best to keep the distraction going. The more time he could stall for, the more time he had to find his escape. ‘I’m a pretty mean drummer. You want to rock out? I could help you rock out. You wait until you hear my band. You’ll be loosening your tie and getting your ass down in the mosh pit. A man with your pain tolerance would do well in a wall of death.’
‘Enough of this. My amusement fades,’ Knight shouted in anger from the darkness. ‘The only death you need to be concerned with is your own!’
He didn’t stand a chance as Knight appeared, without warning, from the gloom and gripped Ollie by the throat. As he began crushing his windpipe, Knight lifted Ollie off the ground, his feet dangling helplessly in the air.
Gasping for breath, Ollie swung his legs, kicking at Knight’s ribs. His assailants frame felt as hard as stone and appeared unaffected by the counter attack. He gripped at Knight’s fingers and tried to prise them from his neck, but his digits felt strange; long and muscular with a slimy, yet bony hold. Ollie raked at the abnormal, skinless texture, realising Knight had him held by his left hand.
But that can’t be, he thought. That was the hand Sam had…
Ollie lashed out, his brain driven crazy as thoughts of the impossible swirled around his head. He clawed at Knight’s face and in doing so knocked his sunglasses to the floor. The darkness obscured the detail but despite this he could still tell something wasn’t right. There was something unnatural about the contours of Knight’s face, something he hadn’t noticed before. The way light and dark bounced off his profile, distorted and warped. The twisted shadows that collected round his eyes.
Knight pulled Ollie closer.
Oh my God, his eyes, Ollie thought as his view became clearer.
Things began to twist and bend in the gloom.
An eerie moan, like gales of wind, grew to deafening decibels.
Ollie roared with defiant courage as his body shook in violent spasms. Still held aloft by Knight, his body grew damp as blood seeped from the pores of his skin.
He tried one last time to escape the deathly clutches of the choke hold, but he was too weak. Thick, crimson liquid ran from his body, pouring from his eyes and ears. He tried to swallow only to gag on the metallic taste as it filled his throat. His eyeballs lost shape as they slowly began to liquefy, melting into a putrid mess that oozed down his cheeks. His tongue began to blister, swelling with sores that filled his mouth. The blisters expanded like vile bubbles until they burst, erupting their pus-filled contents. The taste coated his mouth and his stomach tightened. He choked on the thick, foul liquid, as it ran down his throat. He spluttered and coughed but the gag reflex did nothing to abate the torrent of fluid as it filled his lungs, drowning him in a vile cocktail of pustule discharge and silencing him forever.
Aimee leapt from the car and took hold of the young girl, pulling her into an embrace of reassurance.
Kayleigh collapsed into the Special Constable’s arms. For a moment Aimee held her, tenderly caressing her back in comfort before she pulled her out of the hug, bringing their eyes level.
‘Kayleigh, what happened?’ she asked.
‘I - I - I… He knew. He knew everything,’ Kayleigh’s words fell from a confused mind, her words fought through panicked breaths.
‘Who? What do you mean?’ Aimee tried to get some sense from her ramblings.
‘The one we got. The one Ollie’s keeping a watch on. In there,’ the distressed girl pointed to one of the crumbling buildings, across the craters and urban wasteland to the other side of the perimeter.
‘What did he know?’ Aimee enquired.
Kayleigh looked deep into the Special Constable’s eyes and momentarily calmed. ‘My dream,’ she said, sounding surprised by her own words.
‘Where’s Jake?’ Aimee asked.
‘He’s there,’ Kayleigh pointed to the distant figures in the centre, her voice quivering with a fresh onslaught of emotion. ‘He’s trying to sort this. But he can’t. You’ve got to help them!’ she said erupting into tears and crying into her comforter’s shoulder.
‘Wait, you know this girl?’ Paul asked, approaching the pair.
‘Yes, I know her. I know most of them,’ Forrest turned to Paul. ‘As much as it pains me, one of those kids is Jake Forrest, my younger brother. I have to help them.’
‘But we need back up,’ Paul repeated. ‘They’re armed and dangerous.’
‘Look, very soon they are going to question where their man has got to, the one you killed, and that’s going to make them itchy. You stay up here with Kayleigh and keep trying to get through, get that back up arranged,’ she commanded. ‘I’ll head down there, get closer and keep a watch over things. If it starts to escalate I’ll come back to you and devise a plan. For the time being I’ll keep out of sight, I promise. I can’t just stand by while my little brother is in danger.’
‘Forrest…’ PC Pritchard felt the emotion in her voice, he knew it was useless to persuade her otherwise.
He took Kayleigh by the hand and offered gentle words of reassurance in an attempt to calm her down. Aimee surveyed the landscape, working out the best route to get close but not be seen. She was outnumbered and unarmed. Stealth was her only ally.
‘Forrest,’ PC Pritchard called out.
She turned to face him.
‘Aimee, take this,’ he threw a canister over the car, towards her.
Aimee caught the cylinder of PAVA. She remembered back to her training and the agony of being sprayed in the eyes with the incapacitating liquid. She’d never felt as much pain in her life as she did that day. Her eyes watered and itched at the excruciating memory.
‘Thanks Paul,’ she smiled, clutching the newly acquired weapon tightly in her hand.
Turning back to the group in the middle she set off to get closer, carefully keeping herself to the edges of the crumbling buildings.
‘If we get out of this, Jake,’ she muttered to herself, ‘I’m going to fucking kill you.’
Sam crumpled to the floor and screamed in agony holding his left hand by the wrist. His fingers bent at crooked angles and wept blood through jagged gashes, cut through the skin by the sharp edges of broken bones. Eleanor ran to where he lay, kneeling beside him and placing her arm around him for comfort. His face was ashen white and his body shook in her embrace.
‘Holy shit,’ she muttered, trying to keep her disgust from Sam. She looked towards Scullin and scowled.
‘At least it’s still attached,’ Scullin scoffed before turning to Jake. ‘Tell me where you’ve hidden Knight!’ he boomed. ‘Tell me where Knight and the key are!’
‘I… I…’ Jake stuttered.
‘Jake,’ Laura interrupted, her face softened as she pleaded with her lover. ‘Tell him. It’s okay. We can’t let this go on. You can put a stop to it all right now.’ Her voice cracked with the emotional weight her words possessed. ‘I love you, Jake Forrest.’
He glanced over at Eleanor who nodded with approval, agreeing with her best friend.
‘Over there,’ Jake pointed to the building they’d done their best to hide. Earlier they’d taken a snaking path to the meeting place in an attempt to conceal their tracks. How futile that seemed now. ‘In that building over there. He’s in the basement.’
Laura smiled, but her display of affection did nothing to stop Jake breaking down, crying into his hands as he allowed the guilt of betraying his friends to overwhelm him.
Scullin, Cross and King nodded to each other and reached into their jackets.
Police sirens wailed through the air, but drifted away as quickly as they came, dashing Special Constable Forrest’s hopes of assistance from her full time colleagues. Judging from the number of blues and twos that carried on the breeze as the squad cars screeched through the city this wasn’t the only pocket of town that was going to hell.
Keeping herself low to avoid detection, she made her way across the construction site that was fast resembling a war zone with its littering of damaged vehicles and dead bodies. Reaching the building that Kayleigh had pointed out, she ducked inside. There were no working lights and her eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark. She felt a chill as the Special Constable walked further into the depths of the disused shell of a building.
‘Ollie,’ she whispered. ‘Ollie, are you there? It’s Aimee, Jake’s sister. I’m here to help.’ She paused and listened but heard no response. ‘Kayleigh sent me,’ she called, stopping to listen again.
Cautiously Aimee, headed down the stairs to the basement. As she reached the bottom her footsteps made the sound of gentle splashing, like she was walking though puddles. Crouching down, she dipped her fingers in to the liquid and brought the tips to her nostrils. Peering through the darkness she caught sight of several large objects littering the floor. An unsettling feeling gripped her stomach as her mind dwelt on what those objects might be. Moving closer to one of them she made out the shape of five digits; a set of fingers connected to a hand and arm. She traced the severed arm to its toned bicep and made out the familiar tattoo that snaked down it. The abstract image of Marilyn Monroe smiled in the darkness. The image’s hat normally came across Ollie’s shoulder and onto his chest, but a savage tear of flesh had cut the hat in two. Its frayed edges wept with the same liquid that covered the floor.
‘Oh God, Ollie,’ Aimee quietly gasped in horror.
The room was filled with his blood and the ground littered with limbs, his limbs; parts of his body brutally pulled to pieces and torn from each other by…
By what?
Could a man do this?
A blow to the side of her head sent the young Special Constable reeling. She looked back to the source of the attack and briefly saw a man, dressed in a suit with dark hair and dark sunglasses. He walked backwards into the shadow, his features enveloped by the black of the room.
Aimee squinted, searching for her mysterious attacker.
Another blow landed square in her back, knocking her to the wall. Before she could defend herself she was punched again, just below her ribs. Aimee yelled in pain. Wet, slender fingers took hold of the back of her neck sending a curious sensation through her body; a wave of chills that proceeded a creeping numbness. The feeling oozed like treacle through her muscles, making her gasp as a sensation of drowning took hold of her senses.
Forrest thrust her elbow backwards into his arm, dislodging Knight’s grip and freeing herself from the debilitating unease. Spinning round, she kicked out, hitting his knee, and although abnormally solid, his leg folded as her heavy boot caught it. Knight fell forward, receiving another boot to his stomach.
‘You sick fuck,’ Aimee scolded as she watched him drop to the floor.
She kicked out again, but this time Knight caught her foot as he unleashed an earnest scream that twisted her stomach in fear. Losing balance from the ear splitting shriek, Aimee was thrown forwards, landing in a crumpled heap.
The sound of running footsteps echoed through the basement as Knight sprinted towards the downed Constable. Catching sight of his raised fist, Aimee rolled, narrowly avoiding his knuckle
s as they crashed down. Just dodging the blow, she felt the ground beneath her crack as his iron-like fist hit the concrete floor.
How strong is this guy? she thought. What kind of drugs is he taking?
Forrest scrambled to her feet and hid behind a pillar, keeping her body as tight to the wall as she could.
The room descended into silence. A stillness, pregnant with danger, filled the air.
‘You can’t hide in the dark,’ Knight warned. ‘I am the dark.’
His voice drifted from a place unknown, then drifted off again, swallowed up by the oppressive hush.
In the distance, Aimee heard the sound of a baby crying. As the wailing grew louder it was joined by another, then another. More and more screaming babies called out in the darkness, a chorus of bawling infants floated on the air like a nightmarish melody.
A chill crept over her skin.
Understanding the sensation, Aimee ducked and avoided Knight’s punch as it swung towards her. Staying low she kicked at the back of his knees and watched him drop to the floor. Standing up, she ripped off his sunglasses and clutched her PAVA spray. Exposed as they were, his eyes seemed to faintly glow, shimmering with the subtlety of a lake’s surface on a moonless night. The abnormal beauty of this vision halted Aimee for a moment, mesmerising her with a nightmarish eloquence. Fighting through the hypnotic wonder, she quickly came to her senses and unleashed a dose of PAVA spray into his face. The liquid filled his eyes, burning them with a searing pain.
‘This is for Andy Osborne, you bastard,’ Aimee’s anger dripped with a vengeful satisfaction.
Knight howled in pain as the cocktail of chemicals worked their effect, watched over by the grimacing Special Constable.
‘And this is for Ollie, you piece of shit,’ she screamed before kicking him in the face.
Teeth flew from his mouth as he fell backwards, landing on the angled legs of the upturned chair. Forrest seized the moment and ran at Knight, slamming a boot into his chest. The metal poles of the chair legs pierced his flesh and drove deep into his body amid agonizing screams. Not content, Aimee stamped on his torso again and again, slowly driving the chair legs, inch by inch, further into his body. The basement echoed with the sound of crunching bone as the chair legs cracked against the inside of his rib cage before tearing through his flesh and protruding out the other side.
