Blood on the Motorway, #1

by Paul Stephenson

  Then, nothing.

  'Hello?' she called out.

  The room was completely dark. Had she passed out in her seat and been left there by inattentive cinema staff?

  She stood, and her back spasmed. She fished out her phone to check the time, feeling around the edge for the button, but it did nothing. Not even a cursory attempt to boot up before dying.

  The darkness didn't abate. She felt dizzy and confused. She kept blinking, expecting her eyes to adjust to the gloom, but there was no light. Panic started to flutter like a bewildered butterfly throughout her stomach.

  I'm going to murder Katie for leaving me here like this.

  She needed light and groped around her pockets for a lighter. She pulled one out with her keys and held it in a now trembling hand.

  The little light cut through the dark in a burst, so bright it forced her eyes shut. She tried to stand and tripped over something, then the lighter went out and she fell sideways. She reached out and found hair.

  There was someone in the next seat.

  Something is very wrong here.

  Her flesh crawled, and she pulled her hand away. All she could see was the red afterburn of the light, and she fumbled for the lighter's button.

  She took a breath, held the lighter out where her hand had been and hit the button.

  Blood, hair, a face. Eyes fixed in wild panic.

  Katie.

  She screamed and dropped the lighter, her keys with it, then turned and forced her way to the end of the aisle. She pushed past another body, feeling something wet touch her hand. Her gag reflex kicked in, but she fought back the bile and pushed on, past another set of legs, then another. She reached the end and bolted out of the screen.

  The doors opened into a light so blinding that she could see no better than inside the screen room, but instinct kicked in and she ran full pelt until she was pushing open the heavy main doors to the cinema and running into the street outside.

  Her head swam. She took in a huge lungful of air and started to sob.

  Katie.

  She looked around. The sun was just coming up, the first rays revealing a world of utter devastation.

  Bodies lay everywhere, dead eyes in their dozens staring up at the sky from blood-smeared faces. The car park was full of them. Beyond that dozens more lay dead in the road. The Mexican eatery next door was on fire, and behind the family pub next door a huge torrent of black smoke issued into the sky.

  It was too much. She emptied her stomach on the pavement, her vomit splattering just a few inches from the corpses of a couple who had died holding hands. She threw up again, and moved away, careful not to tread her beloved Converse trainers into blood or vomit.

  She couldn't process the scene in front of her. It kept going back to that seat, and the sight of her best friend dead. She thought about Katie laughing like a drain on a rollercoaster in Brighton while Jen had clung on for dear life. The same girl who had once knocked a guy out cold with a single punch in a crappy York nightclub because he wouldn't stop pestering Jen.

  Gone.

  She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie and took a deep breath.

  The road was a mess of tangled car wrecks and more corpses. There was a twenty-four-hour supermarket on the other side of it, which would mean pay phones.

  Daniel. She had to call Daniel.

  She picked her way across the road as best she could, fighting off the feeling something was going to jump out at any moment and do to her what it had done to these poor people. Every horror movie she'd ever seen suggested there could be hordes of undead round every corner. Somehow, the disconcerting silence of the scene before her was worse.

  As she passed, she chanced a look inside one of the cars. This one hadn't crashed, but there were its inhabitants, dead. The driver's hands were still on the wheel. There was a child seat in the back. Jen turned away. She couldn't look at that.

  Once she got off the road, the corpses thinned out. The supermarket lay ahead of her.

  Got to get to a phone.

  The lights inside Tesco were off, so at first she only saw one body lying down in a puddle of blood. As her eyes adjusted to the internal gloom she saw more. A lady hunched over the till at the cigarette counter. A security guard pitched forward onto his face from his little stool. A large lady shopper dead by a shopping trolley filled with cheap lager, dog food, and ready meals.

  Venturing further in, Jen spotted the payphones and ran over. She tried one, but there was no dial tone. So she tried another, then another – all the same. She thought of Daniel. She thought of her Mum and Dad. She wondered if they were trying to ring her right now, staring into useless dead telephones and thinking of her. Or were they gone too?

  What in the fuck is going on here?

  Tears started to come anew.

  So this is what the end of the world looks like.

  She felt numb. The large dead lady fixed her with an accusatory stare, and for a moment Jen was convinced she was about to get up.

  Pull yourself together. Whatever else, you have to be strong.

  The tears stopped. She stood up straight and looked over the rows of corpses dead at their checkouts. One of the till attendants had slumped forward onto the conveyor belt, and before it had finally cut out it had taken half her face away. There was a large red streak across the conveyor as it had looped round again and again before coming to its end. She shuddered.

  Picking up a bag, she noted the irony of its emblazoned 'Bag for Life' logo, and headed into the aisles. She might as well stock up while she was here. A calm had descended on her. Probably shock, she knew. She didn't care. She collected a few tins, some pasta, bottled water, a tin opener, and other assorted goods, throwing them absentmindedly into the bag while stepping over corpses. She made her way to the toiletries aisle.

  It's the end of the world and I'm looting tampons.

  She walked through the make-up section, with its dead perfume girls and mirrors everywhere. She caught sight of herself and saw a dark smear of red across her jeans and hoodie. Her eyes bore the tell-tale panda look of unremoved make up. Her hair was still up from the night before, but now looked like it had been dragged backwards through something thorny. To be fair she doubted even Scarlett Johanssen would be weathering this situation without looking like the bride of Frankenstein. She shrugged, and turned away.

  The bag filled, she returned to the cigarette kiosk, ignoring the dead cashier on the counter. Out of habit, she picked up a large pack of her usual cheap and cheerful brand, before remembering she wasn't paying and reaching for the classier ones.

  She walked back out into the car park. Her house was on the other side of town, and she had no means of getting there. It didn't seem likely the number six would pull up. Not driving had never been an issue with a functioning bus network and a boyfriend with a car. Now she cursed her teenage self for giving up after ten lessons. She looked around and saw one car stopped in the road with its door ajar and a corpse in the gutter beside it. The driver had gotten out to see something, and then died. Avoiding the body, she got in. She had hoped sitting behind the wheel would bring memories flooding back, but she couldn't think where to even start.

  Try turning the key, idiot.

  Ten minutes later, she was off, keeping in first gear and driving at a sedate pace. She stalled a few times, but kept going. Soon she was on the ring road, weaving in and out of wrecks, trying her best to leave corpses unblemished with tread marks. She tried the radio, but with her focus on the road she allowed herself only the most cursory of jabs. Nothing. Not even calming radio noise.

  She gradually became comfortable with second and then third gear, even picking her way through the wrecks without scraping the sides of the car by the fourth attempt. Half an hour or so later, she turned towards town, towards her house, picking up speed as she went.

  It only took a second for it to get away from her. As soon as she clipped the jutting edge of the crashed car, she knew she was in trouble.
She was going too fast for the corner. She had no idea what to do as the car swung round, so she panicked, jerking the wheel, hit the brakes and the accelerator at the same time, stabbing at everything with her feet.

  The car flipped onto its side, the airbag went off and she slammed into the side door. The air filled with white, chalky, chemical dust, and she struggled to take a breath. As soon as it had started, it was over. The car slid along its side for a moment, screaming metal noises filling Jen's head. Adrenaline pumped through her. She struggled to catch her breath. Her arm screamed pain and her ears were ringing. She tried to move, but her seatbelt was now fixed in a vice-like grip.

  The shattered windscreen was still in one piece, but the road outside was at a ninety degree angle. She pulled again at the seatbelt, trying to work the clasp of it. Her arm throbbed. She looked out the rear window.

  There were feet approaching. Two pairs at least. Shambling. The panic rose again, and she started to kick at the glass.

  Chapter Three

  Push the Sky Away

  In the glare of the mid-afternoon sun, the doll was hideous. The truck stop was abandoned, walls burnt out and boarded up, the charred contents stacked up by the side. And there, laid in front of the building, the doll.

  It looked Victorian, at least that's what the blood-flecked dress suggested to him. Or was it rust of some kind? The hand looked mauled. Some local dog had likely toyed with it before discarding it for some other chew toy. The paint on the face looked mottled and worn, the expression one of panic. From where Detective Burnett stood it was as though the doll was reacting to the scene of carnage behind her, to the charred human leg jutting out of the shrubbery, or the four corpses that lay beyond.

  It was irrelevant, unconnected to the scene, but he could not tear his gaze away from the discarded porcelain and focus on the job at hand. He turned to the uniformed officer beside him, who seemed to be struggling to retain her lunch.

  He motioned to the doll. 'Bag it.'

  The officer seemed pleased with her non-gruesome task and hurried off for an evidence bag. Burnett knelt down so his face was at eye level with the doll.

  'What did you see?' he asked it in a low voice. He heard a snigger, but as he looked up everyone looked busy.

  Fuck 'em.

  This was his fourth straight murder scene in a row, and he'd not slept in well over a day. By comparison, this lot were the new shift. They knew nothing of the things he'd seen today other than hasty rumours. Last night, today, it all blended into one.

  Officer Evidence Bag was back, so Burnett got to his feet, his knees popping, his crumpled suit looking ever more dishevelled with every movement.

  Fuck this.

  He walked over to the pile of bodies. They too were charred, the air still heavy with the stench of burnt hair and flesh. Whoever had set the fire had allowed themselves a little fun with them before lighting the match. All the ankles and hands were tied, and there were multiple stab wounds visible on less charred bits of flesh.

  He'd never known a day like it. Four bodies in the bins of a drive-through McDonalds, sprawled amid the rotting food waste, bags over their heads and eyes bulging from suffocation. Four more in an old people's home, at first glance carrying all the hallmarks of a Shipman enthusiast. Not that he could be sure until toxicology came back, of course, but he knew. Five teenagers found butchered in a car parked outside a village, the scene there so grisly that it had taken two hours just count the severed body parts and work out how many victims there were.

  Now this. He felt depleted. Like the other scenes, once you got past the barbarity there was little here to suggest much of anything, save that there was at least one sadistic bastard running around North Yorkshire.

  Two years since their last murder in the villages. He'd even had to justify his job at the last government-mandated performance review. Some trumped-up desk-bound Inspector from the County Force asked him if his talents wouldn't be better put to use helping Traffic catch idiot toffs speeding in their high-performance wankermobiles. Now he was looking at either one hell of a spree, or some kind of collective psychotic episode. Maybe he should check the water.

  He pointed to a gold bracelet on the ground, smudged with soot, and another officer bagged it. He went around the scene and took notes on a pad, but they were little more than disjointed thoughts. They might as well be haikus for all the good they'd do him. How could anyone make sense of a scene like this?

  After another hour the autumnal dusk started creeping in. The evidence had been collected, and his notes ran to six pages of meaningless shit. Someone had put up a tent and there were the first hints of a media presence, kept at bay a hundred yards away.

  Burnett growled some goodbyes to the assembled officers, then walked past the reporters and back to his car. He sank into the cool faux-leather seats and tried to collect his thoughts. Clouds started to darken the sky, and Burnett wondered if they were in for a storm. He wondered about the integrity of his crime scenes, then thought 'fuck it' and put the key in the ignition.

  His mobile rang. He stared at it for a second, dreading the thought that this might be yet another murder. Some other horrifying tragedy he would be too overwhelmed to deal with.

  He hit the green answer button.

  'Burnett,' he said, voice catching in his throat.

  'Get back here,' barked a voice, his boss. 'We've got him.'

  The line went dead.

  He drove back through the winding country lanes at a ridiculous speed, wishing he had flashing lights to tell everyone to get the fuck out of his way. He got back to the station as the sky started to bruise.

  'Jade, what happened?' he demanded of the desk clerk, as he burst through the doors.

  'Got picked up by a uniform.' Her words came out too fast for Burnett to take in. Nothing this exciting had happened in years. 'Covered head-to-toe in blood, he was, just said he wanted to confess.'

  'Where is he?' Burnett asked, his head swimming with relief, anger, and sleep-deprived nausea. He never got the chance to put the cuffs on. He hadn't caught him.

  'Interrogation three,' she said.

  Burnett flashed her a quick smile and a 'good work officer' before storming through the doors. He liked Jade. The only other gay in the village. He still remembered their shock at seeing each other in the Pink Pony in York. At least they'd always had someone to share a taxi with back if they struck out.

  Chief Inspector Thornton waited for him. 'You've had a busy day,' he growled. 'It's about to get rougher. He's dancing around admitting to the lot, but I want a full and detailed confession, on tape. I want to know who has helped him, why he did it, and have enough to lock him up even if the forensics come back telling me it was Bruce Fucking Forsyth who did it. Got it?'

  Burnett nodded.

  'Good,' Thornton continued. 'Don't fuck it up.'

  With that endorsement ringing in his ears, Burnett opened the door to the interrogation room.

  He sat down and looked at the man opposite. If he had to choose a word it would be… unassuming. Smallish man. Glasses. Mid-twenties at a guess.

  Burnett performed the necessary taped introductions, while the man sat in front of him in silence. He looked eager, happy almost. Burnett felt his stomach sink.

  'For the record, can I take your name?' Burnett asked.

  'I have many names, Detective. You can call me Shiva. Or Oppenheimer.' The voice was so high and reedy as to be comical.

  'I see,' Burnett replied. 'You are the destroyer of worlds are you?'

  'You can judge that for yourself.'

  The voice was calm, but Burnett was in no mood to rise to the bait.

  'Okay. Can you tell me why you are here today?'

  'Why? Because I have done some very bad things, Officer. I deserve to be punished.' The prisoner smirked as he said this. It took a mammoth effort on Burnett's part not to reach over and punch the smug bastard right on the nose.

  'Bad things? Can you tell me what bad things you have
done?'

  'Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Detective. I just didn't want you to die knowing that you hadn't caught me.' He paused for effect. 'I can be quite generous like that.'

  'So you think I'm going to die then?'

  'Not just you,' the prisoner replied. 'Everyone.'

  'I see,' Burnett said. 'What about you?'

  'I'm not going to die.'

  'Oh. Why?'

  'You might call it divine providence, or you might call it the hand of the other team. I call it blind luck.'

  Burnett shook his head. He wasn't even sure this was his killer. Perhaps some deluded fool who'd tipped cows' blood over himself in a desperate bid for attention. A waste of his fucking time.

  'Well, let's put that aside for a moment, shall we?' Burnett said, conscious of the crowd who would be gathered to watch this on the station CCTV. 'Let's go back to the very bad things you have done.'

  'I'm sorry, Officer. I'm not sure we have time,' the prisoner replied, looking at the wall-mounted clock.

  Burnett heard a rumble, deep enough to shake the walls. There was a commotion outside the door, angry shouts and people running about.

  'Tick tock,' the man said, appraising him with a serene look of expectation. The booming rumble continued, and Burnett felt a sudden sharp pain arc its way across his brain. He looked at the man.

  'Wait there, you smug little prick,' he said, and went over to the door. He knocked. Nobody answered. He tried the handle but it wouldn't budge.

  He pounded on the door again. His head felt like someone had driven a wedge into it. He blinked to try and focus, but everything swam in front of him. The door opened, but as it did, he lost his footing and fell to the floor. He blinked again, but the world slipped further away.

  He was dimly aware of something moving past him, above him, and two words whispered into his ear.