National Emergency
A Novel by
James Jobling
Copyright © 2016 by James Jobling and Back Road Books
All Rights Reserved
Cover layout and design by © David Phee
www.southmanchesterartdesign.com
This edition published 2016 by Back Road Books
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.
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FOREWORD
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
NATIONAL EMERGENCY II
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BIOGRAPHY
FOREWORD
When it comes down to it, this Jobling guy and myself didn’t have the chance encounter that most writers have. From the moment that I first met him and embarrassed myself by pressing him with a trust exercise, I thought he was a right prick. And, I’m sure you’ll not gasp or giggle when I tell you that after ten long, long… long years, my opinion remains the same!
It was back when I was an artist that myself and this Jobling guy would often talk about stories and the like, and he would explain his ideas to me with such detail and with a film-director-like precision, that I was often wowed by his ability to give such an amazing mental image of what he wanted me to see. And then there was me.
I was/am the kind of guy who’ll only ever gush to himself… with you being in earshot, hearing me go on about, “It’ll have this… and then this happens… then this girl… with this power who can jump and maim and slash”.
And so on and on and, you know… on.
Because whereas my mind is most comfortable in the realm of awkward perversions (let’s give that an oo-er), this Jobling guy’s mind feels more at home in the parallel realm of urban darkness. A place in the mind where even myself and my twisted soul are too afraid to tread. His ideas come from that horrible patch of grey matter which deals with the part of the world that I do my very best to avoid - almost to the point of shutting it out completely. And that is the realm of Reality.
NATIONAL EMERGENCY revolves around a piece of this Reality that, like many of us, I have very little idea as to what part of the brain creates such functions. Feeling angry is one thing, sure. However, the whole act of rioting seems a little like cutting your nose off to spite your face. Much like that poor gentleman who set himself on fire to prevent tanks from advancing. As truly tragic as that was, if I was going to do something to somebody to get a point across, I wouldn’t walk out of my house and pick up a brick, spin on my heel, then proceed to smash my neighbour’s windows. Nor would I run to a shop to burn it down or steal. No matter who has wronged you, no matter what has transpired, neither your neighbour nor the shop owner are the reason why you’re rioting. Damaging property and hurting everybody BUT the people you are angry at doesn’t seem that intelligent to me. Am I right? Up there. Top row. Yes? No?
The thing is, this Jobling guy’s brilliant way of bringing horror to the page has made me enjoy a story based in a world that I am not comfortable with. Not comfortable at all. And, as odd as it feels to say/write this, I want to see how much further into the darkness he can go… and experience the hell he felt which led to him writing this.
Jake Oldroyd
author of
BOUNCE CITY
PART 1
PROLOGUE
The pain was unbearable.
She had been in labour now for over eleven hours, straight through the night, her anxious husband beside her every step of the way. Silently, he was going to pieces. But he was determined to remain strong for her; his nerve unwavering. As dawn broke on another bleak and rainy Wednesday morning, the baby’s head finally engaged and the power of the contractions pushed it deeper into her pelvis.
An hour-and-a-half later – after thirty-five weeks of pregnancy – the midwife placed a beautiful little boy into his mother’s arms. Pregnancy had been strenuously exhausting for the both, discouraging either parent from wanting more children in the future, but he was here; naked, squirming, smeared with blood and vernix, screaming his tiny lungs up his tiny gullet. Their son had finally arrived. The father blubbered as the midwife congratulated him for surviving such a challenging night. She had been convinced he was going to pass out during the epidural. A nurse swaddled the baby in a towel and capped his head with a hat.
The midwife clamped and cut the umbilical cord, severing it from the placenta. And, with mother and son locking eyes and falling in love, the nurse rushed the baby into assessment. The husband mopped his wife’s forehead with kisses and stroked her face, reassuring her, thanking her, before slipping out of the delivery suite to ring his mother as further contractions caused his wife to give birth for the second time, evicting the placenta from her gaping womb.
Inside the warming unit, the nurse suctioned the newborn’s nose and mouth clear. She checked his heart rate, muscle responses, weighed him, then pierced the skin on the baby’s thigh with a syringe. She thumbed the plunger down, administering a clear fluid into the screaming baby. Afterwards, she set the syringe aside, wrapping the child up in a towel and delivering the bundle-of-joy to his proud parents.
A burly porter in green overalls smiled cheerfully as they wheeled the new parents past him into the recovery suite. He quickly began the task of picking up bloody bedsheets and sodden towels, disposing of them in his cart. He pushed open the swinging doors leading into the assessment unit and sighed loudly. He hated this part of the job. No, that wasn’t correct; he despised it. Scratching his baldhead, he held the injection between his thumb and forefinger and studied the vial. The words printed on the front simply read TK-214.
The porter shook his head, dropped the used syringe, along with the empty glass vial, into the waste bucket, and began cleaning the room.
CHAPTER 1
For Christ’s sake, I need this like I need a fucking bullet in my head!
Ethan Hardcastle recognised the two cars parked in his driveway as soon as he pulled over – his mother and her loser of a boyfriend’s beaten-to-shit Ford, and his brother’s Honda (which, only the previous evening, Lee had confided had not passed its MOT). Ethan sat behind the steering wheel for a few frustrating seconds, staring out through the windscreen, praying to God, praying to Buddha, praying to whichever mystical entity who oversaw this spinning blue marble that what he was seeing was nothing more than a mirage brought on by the trauma of turning forty that morning.
He even closed his eyes, wondering just what the hell his wife, Karris, had been thinking about by marking the occasion with a gathering, then blinked them open. His heart deflated when he saw the two cars still p
arked there. With a weary sigh, he turned off the engine, opened the door of his BMW Pickup, and climbed out. Gravel crunched noisily beneath the soles of his boots as he walked around the back of the truck.
He stretched his broad back and thick arms, hearing the joints pop (a certification that he was indeed growing old) and stifled a yawn with his gloved hand. The Pickup was loaded with the timber he needed to begin work on the conservatory. Karris had been pecking his head in about it since the dawn of time, or so it felt, and he considered unloading it before entering the house.
It’ll only take a couple of minutes to stack up in the garage. Plus, Nathan needs the Pickup empty for that Blackpool job tomorrow.
Before he got the chance to get started, though, the front door opened and his wife for the past eight years stepped onto the porch; a bowl of salad tucked under one arm, a worried scowl on her beautiful face.
Ethan pulled his short-sleeved shirt off and balled it up, tossing it into the bed of lumber at the rear of the Pickup. He walked towards Karris with his hands on his hips and his head hung low. Ascending the two steps leading into the lattice framework encasing her, he pecked her on the forehead, stepped back and nodded towards the two cars parked behind him.
“Please don’t be mad, baby,” Karris squirmed. She pushed a hand through the waterfall of blonde hair gushing beyond her shoulders. She had her extensions in. Ethan loved it when she wore her extensions. “Your Mum rang last week,” she continued, “said we should do something special for your fortieth. She wanted to throw you a surprise birthday party with all your family, friends, a cake, buffet, banner, balloons, a DJ, the whole shebang!”
Ethan grunted and something resembling a smile creased his stubbly features. “And how did you know that wasn’t exactly what I wanted?”
“Because, sweetheart, I’m your wife and I know your idea of a good night is drinking a cold beer whilst I straddle you in bed.” She leant forward and gave him a generous glimpse of her colliding cleavage, giggling like a schoolgirl.
Ethan smiled widely. “If you know this, then why have you invited my mother over?”
She placed a finely-manicured hand on his sculptured chest, just above his beating heart, and grabbed a handful of his grubby vest. “Come on, it’s only for a couple of hours, misery guts. Besides, I’ve even invited a few of your drinking buddies over. If you’re a good boy, I’ll let you unwrap your present in the kitchen afterwards.”
“What exactly is my present?” Ethan asked, liking the sound of where this was going.
“Me,” she giggled, running tantalising fingers over the crotch of his jeans. He went hard immediately.
A police helicopter surged through the dreary clouds above, hovering momentarily over the bungalow, the pilot scrutinising the property below and running accusatory eyes over them before soaring higher into the gloomy heavens. Ethan stepped back, considered the sky and, shielding his eyes with the back of his hand from the burning orb, squinted at the chopper. It wasn’t your typical May evening - it was cloudy, if anything - but the sun still sat dead-centre in the middle of the faded blue sky; proud, boastful, throbbing heat into a creeping night.
“I wonder what that’s about.” Ethan said.
Karris poked her head out and followed his gaze. “I don’t know.” She shifted the salad bowl from one arm to the other. “There was some trouble this morning.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed.
“No, honey, I don’t mean here. A black teenager died in police custody this morning in London. It’s been all over the news today. He died of head trauma apparently, but the police are refusing to say how or what caused his death. They won’t even release his body.”
“What? That’s disgusting,” Ethan said, blobs of black floaters dancing in front of his eyes. “When the hell will they learn?”
“I don’t know.”
“I guess that explains why the M6 was backed up all the way to Macclesfield then.”
Karris nodded, and Ethan entered their home, closing the front door behind him, untying his boots, and kicking them off. He was no prude, but the carpets were practically brand new. If he dirtied them now, it would cost a tiny fortune to hire a carpet-cleaner later.
He walked down the hall leading to the front room, stopping to straighten a skewed frame containing a Superman comic. Ethan had been an avid fan of comic books since childhood; a hobby at first, persisting through his teenage years, then growing into a full-blown obsession by adulthood. Original Marvel and DC framed treasures, that he had purchased online or from eBay, covered his entire hallway. It was something his friends repeatedly ribbed him about but Ethan didn’t care. To him, owning the very first edition of Batman or Spiderman, watching them develop into the multi-million pound franchises they were today, was spellbinding. Comics had always been an unremitting presence throughout his early years; hours of endless pleasure created from nothing more than ink, speech bubbles, and imagination. He was proud of his collection. One day his son, Lincoln, would inherit the lot.
“Yeah,” Karris said, derailing his train of thought. “The poor boy’s family have called for a rally. They are marching from Levine Square and straight into the city. Police are on the scene already, making sure nothing kicks off.”
Ethan rolled his eyes.
Karris smiled. “They have riot police at their disposal, too.”
“Good thing,” Ethan said, nodding towards the closed door concealing his family and friends. “We may need them.”
CHAPTER 2
“Happy birthday, son.”
Ethan grimaced as he heard the familiar voice, but the gesture went unseen because he had his head buried in the refrigerator. Sighing jadedly, he grabbed a bottle of beer by the neck and pulled it out, slamming the door closed.
“How are you doing, Harry?”
Harold Singleton smiled crookedly. He was puffing on a roll-up, pale blue smoke wafting into the air. Nicotine-caked fingers slipped through his shoulder-length dark hair, the greasy mop looking as though a shower hadn’t fumigated it in months. When he spoke, the vile stench emanating from the man’s mouth made Ethan want to bleach his nostrils.
“Can’t complain,” Harold said, nibbling ravenously on a chicken drumstick. Having clearly ignored the stack of paper plates on the buffet table, Ethan watched his mother’s boyfriend wipe his slippery fingers on the bottom of his Hawaiian shirt. “Well, I can complain,” Harold continued, his smile revealing yellow calcified thorns, “but your bloody mother never listens.”
Ethan placed the unopened bottle of beer on the draining board and propped himself against the sink, head down, staring at the polished beams of the kitchen floor. Silently, he hoped this little confrontation wouldn’t go on for too long. Ethan didn’t hate his mother’s choice of partner. Nor did he dislike him. As far as Ethan was aware, Harold Singleton treated his mother with as much respect and decorum that any former heroin addict could muster.
He had never blacked her eye or broke her nose or put her in hospital just because his tea wasn’t on the table when he’d finally returned from the pub. Which is more than could be said for Ethan’s own father (not to mention the countless other lawbreaking, heart-breaking scoundrels she had dated over the years). There was no denying that Harold was a slob. For Harold Singleton, hanging around his bedsit all day, drinking cider, smoking weed, betting on horses, and being a general drain on society was a way of life. His mother could do better - a lot better – and she certainly deserved better. But that didn’t mean Harold was a particularly bad person, though, did it? Ethan didn’t think so. He folded his thick arms across his wide chest and continued to look at the floor.
“So then, how’s business, son?” Harold asked. The butt of the cigarette was placed between his lips and he inhaled hard, seemingly relishing the suffocating goodness expanding within his lungs. Ethan gritted his teeth as he watched ash drop to the carpet.
“Not too bad, Harry,” Ethan answered, refusing to make eye contact. “I’ve been up Mac
clesfield all week working on a conservatory. The journey’s a bitch, but it pays the bills, right?” Ethan finally cracked open the beer and raised it to his lips. “What about you, Harry? Still looking for work?”
“Chance would be a fine thing, son,” Harold said, chewing anxiously on an overgrown fingernail. “Back’s still giving me gyp, you see?” He placed a hand against his spine and winced as he stretched.
Second thoughts, you’re not much different from my old man, after all.
“While we’re talking about work,” Harold said, taking a final drag on the cigarette and dropping it into an empty coffee mug on the side. Ethan inhaled a gust of oxygen up his nostrils, chewing manically on the insides of his mouth. “I was wondering if you could loan me twenty quid… only until I get my giro next week. Gas and electric’s off, you see? I was promised a windfall but it didn’t happen. Can you believe that?”
“No, I can’t believe it,” Ethan answered.
“I’ll pay you back, obviously. Just need a little something to see me and your mother through.”
Ethan pulled out his wallet and, unclasping it, he removed two twenties and handed the money to Harold. The old lush tried snatching the cash away, but Ethan held tightly on.
“Not for drugs or booze, Harry.”
Harold shook his head, virtually salivating. “No, of course not.”
“And you pay me back.”
“Of course, of course.”
Ethan released the money and watched Harold stuff it into his grimy jeans.
“Thank you, son.”
“I’m not your fucking son.”
Smiling crookedly, Harold backed off as though he’d just got his stinking hands on the Queen’s Crown. Ethan shook his head and walked out of the room, leaving his mother’s boyfriend drooling over the money. Of course, Ethan knew he’d waste it at the bookies later, but he was too tired to particularly care. He pushed open the door leading into the dining room and breathed a sigh of relief when he found it empty. A TV mounted on the wall was playing on mute… and what he saw made his blood freeze.
National Emergency Page 1
