Fallen Angels Vol 2

by Mick Norman

  The power of the slug hurled him violently back in the chair, sending it careering over on its side, knocking over the lamp, dislodging the bulb and holder.

  He was conscious of the impact, but the pain was only numbness. There was time to look down and see the spreading darkness on the front of his colours. Strangely, he was even aware of where the bullet had gone. Entering the front of his chest, it had angled upwards and out through the back of his shoulder. Normally, the exit hole from a heavy calibre bullet would be a hunk of meat bigger than your fist. But, the richochet from the desk had slowed it down, and the two wounds weren’t instant killers. But, he was bleeding fast and heavy.

  The only sound was Israel panting and giggling. A wet obscene noise. ‘I can smell a rat. I’m coming to get you! Where are you?’

  Another bullet chipped the wall behind him, spraying plaster all over him. A wandering thought of a couple of finest from a western movie came to him. From the Alamo, in fact, he grinned at the recollection, halfway aware that he was, going to die very soon. Two Texans are lying wounded, and the wave of Mexican attackers sweeps towards them. One says: “Do this mean what I think it means?” and the other replies: “It do.”.’

  He moved slightly, to ease the discomfort, and his hand brushed against the fallen light bulb.

  What happened next was so fast that you could hardly realise what it was. He closed his fingers round the light, standing up quickly. Pain almost blacked him out, but he stood there. Israel saw him at once and snapped off another shot. Yet again, it went wide, tearing the mouth out of a green-painted Eurasian lady over the mantelpiece.

  Arm back, and throw. It was the last strike in a tied innings. But, it struck Israel out. The bulb hit him on the forehead, shattering on impact.

  The noise was louder than the bullets had been. Tiny fragments of splintered glass shredded his skin, ripping his eyes to liquid pulp. His hands flew up to his ruined face, and the gun dropped to the blood-speckled carpet.

  A scream began, low in his throat, gradually rising until it reached an unbearable pitch of agony and despair. In that second or two, Gerry had scrambled across and picked up the gun. He held it, feeling its great weight, looking dispassionately at the blinded Penn.

  The air hummed close to his face, and there was a crump from across the room. A crystal vase dissolved in shards of glass. Oddly, he never heard the gun going off. He wheeled round, seeing Angela, her eyes screwed up with hatred, pointing the other gun at him for a second shot At that instant, like a dying stallion, Israel blundered forwards. The silenced gun spoke again. Gerry started to duck, realising the futility of the gesture as he made it. His eyes were on Penn, and he saw a remarkable sight.

  It was as though a trapdoor had been abruptly lifted from the inside of his skull. A chunk of bone flapped off, and there was an eruption of pink and grey and red. The bullet from Angela’s gun had hit him in the jaw, tearing upwards through his head, splashing on to the ceiling. Its impact actually lifted him off his feet, before depositing him in an ungainly and very dead heap on the carpet.

  Angela stood there like one stricken by sudden paralysis. Still holding the gun, she sat down hard in an armchair, her face blank with shock.

  Gerry tried to draw a deep breath, and found the pain was beginning to get to him. His trousers were now heavy with his own blood, and his boots slid greasily in the pool at his feet. He sighed, and the sound made Angela look up.

  She looked straight down the barrel of Israel’s gun, held steady in Gerry’s hand. His finger was white on the trigger.

  ‘No. Gerry. Please. You have to listen to me. He made me. Don’t shoot me.’

  She had forgotten that she too held a gun.

  ‘Please. I’ll do anything. Cover up for you. You can go where you like.’ The words tripped over each other like a falling crowd on an escalator.

  Gerry shook his head, genuine regret in his voice. ‘Lady, I don’t have the time.’

  And he squeezed the trigger. Once.

  Ignoring the two bodies, he went as fast as he could to the bathroom on the ground floor. He knew that he was dying, his heart pumping blood out through the holes torn in his flesh. The only chance he had was to stop those holes up. At least for the time being.

  He tore up a couple of towels, and tied them in place, tightly over the double wound, pressing them in to try and check the blood. Once that was done, he walked unsteadily down the hall to the work-room. Picked up the pile of tapes and notes, and laid them together in the centre of the floor. There was a strong temptation to open the notes and read what he’d said, or slip one of the tapes on the cassette and listen to his voice telling all he knew. But, time was passing, and there was so little left.

  In the kitchen, he found a bottle of turpentine, and he poured it liberally over the pile of evidence, letting it run on to the carpet, and on the drapes. He glanced round, looking for anything else that needed doing.

  He lit a match to the soggy paper of the top notebook, watching the flame creep from page to page, the heat turning the books brown. Flames leaped to the curtains, striking over furniture.

  Almost hypnotised by the rapid spread of the fire, Gerry broke away with a conscious effort. There was one more vital effort required from his weakening body. One that offered the only chance of getting away to a sort of safety. He had to free his hog.

  The garage was a solid block, with no windows. The main doors were fold-over. Using the long blade of’ the kitchen knife, he slipped the catch, and rattled the doors up and over. The noise would probably bring the patrolling fuzz, but that would have to be.

  Although he’d carefully closed the door of the study to contain the fire, it wouldn’t take too long to break free into the rest of the house.

  There it was! The monster Harley, glittering in the pale light of the single electric bulb. He limped across to it, checking the tank and ignition. A spasm of pain hit him, and he leaned on the cool leather of the saddle, waiting for it to pass.

  Time to go.

  He switched off the garage light, opening the doors just wide enough to pass a man and a bike. Then, he went back inside the house of death. Already he could smell the stench of scorching wood, and a pall of smoke wreathed about the ground floor. In the garage there’d been a two gallon can of petrol, and he’d struggled to carry it with him.

  He splashed it liberally about, walking into the living-room with it. The bodies lay still, blood already congealing. Gerry soaked both corpses in petrol, knocking the can over in the centre of the room, and letting it slurp across the carpet.

  Finally, he walked over to the closed door of the work-room. The room where he’d spent so much of the last week and rested his hand on the woodwork. It was already hot to touch.

  Once that was open, the fire would rage through the house in a matter of minutes. He saw a thread of petrol worming its way from the living-room towards him. Unless he wanted to go up with the house ... in a bizarre way, the idea seemed attractive, and he hesitated. The pain would soon be over, and the idea of rest appealed to him. No more pain or killing. No more of anything.

  He jerked open the door, and the flames hissed out, biting at his fingers.

  ‘Fucking hell!’

  The room was an inferno, with a white-hot core of fire at its centre. Nothing remained of the furniture. The instant of opening the door fed the flames with the oxygen it craved, and it roared up, exploding out through, the windows.

  Clutching the towels to him, conscious of the blood that still seeped from his wounds, Gerry shuffled sideways, like a. crab disturbed at its feeding, towards the back door. He just made it, shutting it behind him, when the petrol caught.

  There was a mighty whoosh, and flames cracked out through the upstairs windows. Dimly above the noise of the fire, he heard shouts of alarm coming from the woods. Feeling weakness clawing him down, he walked slowly into the garage.

  Timing was crucial. He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on what he had to do. Standing in th
e shadows by the partly-opened garage door, ready for the police to come. It seemed that he stood there for an eternity, until he heard running feet crunching on the gravel of the drive.

  Holding himself upright against the wall of the garage, he watched the two policemen hammer past him, their eyes fixed on the blazing house.

  The moment they’d gone, he started to move. Leaning all his weight against it, he managed to get the heavy chopper rolling. He felt the wounds tugging and tearing, and a gush of fresh blood trickled down his chest and on down his legs. But, it was moving.

  He risked one glance over his shoulder. The building was burning fiercely, with yellow and white flames springing through all the downstairs windows. In that moment, while he watched, slates flew off the roof, and tongues of fire licked up through into the black night air. A whirlpool of red sparks spun high above him.

  There was no sign of the two policemen. He guessed they must be somewhere round the back, trying hopelessly to find some way into the inferno. Turning his back for the last time on the country home of Professor Angela Wells, Gerry pushed on down the drive.

  He was helped by the slight slope towards the road, and he was soon safe among the cool shadows of the pine trees at the bottom of the front garden.

  Dimly, in the distance away to his left, he could hear the first high notes of fire engines. Coming too late. There would be nothing that they or anyone else could do now.

  He couldn’t be sure whether he was imagining it, or whether the eastern sky really was showing the slightest signs of paling. There didn’t seem to be enough breath left to get the rest of the way. A speckle of blue light showed the first engine was nearly on him. Using the last of his energy, he tugged the Harley into the side of the road, into the shadows.

  Screaming like a wounded dinosaur, headlights ripping the black into tatters, the scarlet fire engine roared past him. Now was the time. While everyone was listening to that din, and people were shouting and running around. Now was the time when there might be a chance that they wouldn’t notice the note of a single motorcycle, idling away down the lane.

  When he swung his leg over the saddle, the stab of pain nearly made him vomit. It felt as though there was a lot of broken bits of bone floating around inside his chest, ripping at his lungs.

  One last stroke of luck came his way. The road down to the right, towards the white cottage, was almost entirely downhill. It was easy to get her rolling, and slip in the gear. Despite its week’s neglect, it caught first time, and he felt the familiar vibration running up his thighs from the powerful engine.

  Behind him, the noise and light faded away. It seemed to him that it had all been some kind of weird dream. As he grew weaker, the last shreds of the scopolamine fought their way back to the surface, taking over his mind. Bringing in the phantoms of the past, to ride along with him.

  His lips moved: ‘To market, to market, to kill the fat pig, home again, home again, home again, home again ...’

  It seemed as though all the old brothers were there, urging him along that half mile of deserted country road. To the left! was Brenda, a tender smile on her face, her long hair blowing, free in the wind. Priest, unknowable emotions in that saturnine face, with good old Kafka at his elbow.

  The hog rocked from side to side, clipping the long grass at the edge of the lane. In his weariness and weakness, Gerry almost went past the gate to the house. But, he blinked open and skidded to a halt.

  It was getting lighter.

  Like the mist on a summer river, the ghosts of the past left him, and he was alone. The gate stood open, and he merely had to wheel the hog gently through, and lay it down on the trim front lawn.

  As he laid the bike down, he toppled forward on his face lying there in the coolness, feeling the wetness of the dew on his cheeks. He felt very tired, arid there no longer seemed to be a good reason why he should ever bother to get up again,

  There was the sound of a door opening.

  Footsteps.

  First on a path, then muffled by grass.

  Although it took an enormous effort, he opened his eyes, seeing a pair of feet near his head. He felt a hand, or hands, softly turning him over. An exclamation of shock, quickly cut short.

  There was a face looking down at him. A face he knew, Gerry smiled at it.

  ‘Hello Rupert. I’ve come back for that job you talked about.’

  Beyond him, the first light of the rising sun peered over the Shropshire hills, gleaming off the polished chrome of the Harley-Davidson.

  Gerry saw it.

  And closed his eyes.

  Nineteen – A Restless Farewell

  This poem, based on Shelley’s Adonais, appeared in The Times newspaper in the mid-summer of 198— signed with the initials R.C., and headed simply For The Friends Of G.V.’

  Peace, peace! He is not dead, he does not sleep

  He has awakened from the dream of life.

  While we, who slowly walk our weary road

  Must journey on without the hope of light.

  For he is resting from this caverned world

  Alone, we travel on without him now

  And deeper seems our solitary dark.

  But, when he wishes, he will come again,

  Rejoicing with us, while our grey again turns green.

  Who mourns, who mourns for this single rider?

  His last great run, alone, was for us all.

  So now, a’wearied at the end of day

  He lays him down and slips into his rest,

  Like a young diver, into cool, green depths,

  Plunges from the noisesome, sad old world.

  Take care, for he will watch you where you ride

  And come to join you, laughing at your side.

  Above us, a free hawk bursts the chains from the sky.

  FALLEN ANGELS Volume Two:

  GUARDIAN ANGELS

  ANGELS ON MY MIND

  By Mick Norman

  First Published by New English Library in 1974

  First Smashwords Edition: December 2016

  Copyright © 1974, 2016 by Mick Norman

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover image © 2016 by Tony Masero

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

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