by Guy N Smith
They would never be able to get a big fat slob like his father in there. They must have made a mistake.
He soon saw that they hadn't. A black polythene bag was pulled into view, half the size of a dustbin liner, and even then it wasn't full. The man in the white coat began undoing the neck. The sergeant took a pace backwards, and seemed intrigued with the numbering system of the cupboards opposite. He didn't need to look, so he obviously wasn't going to.
‘If you can recognise anything …’ The emotionless voice of the white-coated man was stirring Benny's nausea again. His palms were damp with cold sweat. He struggled inwardly. His schemes had borne fruit. There was nothing to be afraid of. He must gloat …gloat! He told himself that he ought to spit in that bag, maybe worse. Then he looked.
There wasn't much to see. It reminded him of the time when they had kept a dog. A Labrador. Every Saturday morning Benny went to the butcher's. A tanner's worth of scraps. You got a lot for a tanner in those days. More than there was here. It looked much the same, though: mangled flesh and bone, covered with congealed blood. He peered closer. It smelled of death, but he liked it. Soundless words were on his lips.That's where your bloody banking got you in the end. I won, didn't I? You're not as big as me in any way now. I'd to like to feed you to the pigs, the street mongrels - anything that could be persuaded to eat bloody rotten flesh!
‘Well,’ the flat voice cut through his spate of silent anger. ‘do you recognise anything?’
Benny turned towards the other two.
‘Yes.’ He hoped that the excitement in his voice would go unnoticed. ‘It'shim! The hair … that ear …’
Liar! It was all mangled up.
They seemed satisfied and the policeman looked at his watch.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he smiled. ‘I'm sorry to have to put you to the ordeal, but somebody had to do it. I'll run you home.’
The funeral. It had been a week of funerals - dozens; all victims of the crash. No, Benny Wilkes' victims! He'd never thought of it in that way. The realisation thrilled him. To kill was to have power. Power greater than Russell, even. Maybe another day … but they'd got to get the funeral over first.
The small suburban church was packed Benny sat in the front pew alongside his mother. They had no other relatives, for which he was grateful. Relatives enjoyed funerals, especially the eats and booze afterwards. He couldn't make his mind up what all these people had turned up for. They weren't getting anything out of it, except the pleasure of knowing that the swine who had bounced their cheques and refused them overdrafts was at last going to his rightful place - a hole in the ground, to be filled in, and forgotten. He hated his father more than ever now. He looked at the coffin resting in front of the altar. That was a laugh. The undertakers were really pulling a con trick. A plastic bucket would have been quite sufficient to hold all that was left of Thomas Wilkes.
The service droned on. ‘Abide with Me’ and the Twenty-third Psalm were followed by the Reverend Cruikshank's address. Benny wondered why bankers and clergymen always had cherubic faces, as far as the general public was concerned, anyway.
‘A much respected colleague and a servant of God has been snatched from us …’ The vicar beamed at the congregation as though he was pleased about it too. Another liar; Benny stifled a yawn and a snigger at the same time. Everybody hated his father's guts, and he only went to church for funerals and weddings. This would be his last, though!
The sun shone weakly on to the open grave. Benny held his mother's arm. She was only wearing that veil so that nobody could see her smile. It ought to have been raining, to soak all these ghouls who were jostling for position to obtain a good view of the final proceedings.
‘Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.’
You're halfway there already, Benny reflected. Fourteen pounds of bonemeal fertilizer, more like!
Then the earth was thudding down on to the coffin with dull finality.
A dream. Or was it reality? Benny Wilkes tossed restlessly in his bed. Around him he saw the carnage. People dying, screaming. All pointing accusing fingers at him.
Murderer!
He turned his head away, but he could not shut them out. They were all around him. Hands stretching out for him, bony bloody fingers. Some were already reduced to living skeletons, the ulcerated flesh hanging down in strips, trailing behind them as they walked.
‘I didn't kill you!’ He sat up in bed, yelling out loud.
‘You've drunk the poisoned water. That's what's the matter with you. We're all going to die!’
Hollow laughter echoed all around him, magnified in the small bedroom. Leering hateful faces. He couldn't shut them out.
‘No!No!’
He staggered from the bed and fell to the floor. Cold wet hands touched his face, fingers that wept foul odorous matter. Stinking vile death. They wanted revenge. Oh, merciful God!
Somehow he got to his feet. Skeletal grips on his legs and ankles - he kicked them away, almost fell again, and then he made it to the light switch. He only just found the strength. Click. White blinding light seared his eyeballs and sent sharp shooting pains into the depths of his brain. But he forced himself to open his eyes, gasping with relief as he saw the empty room, the stark furniture, the threadbare carpet. But he was alone. Alone! Those ghoulish creatures did not exist. He knew all along that they had only been figments of his imagination.
His entire body was bathed in sweat, cold rivulets running from his forehead down to his chin, dripping on to his saturated blue and white striped pyjamas. He swayed unsteadily, and held on to the wardrobe for support.
He was ill. But it couldn't be the weedkiller. Panic was building up inside him. He had deliberately avoided drinking the water. He had existed on canned mineral drinks. Impossible. He tried to think when he might have been in contact with water. He hadn't washed. His mother had complained about his smell. To hell with that! He didn't care if he smelled. The bank was closed until further notice. Russell and Withers wouldn't be able to reprimand him for any underarm smells. Was there anything else he had done that might have endangered his life?
Suddenly, he knew. He had cleaned his teeth. Thoroughly. As he always did. Scrubbing the back molars. Five minutes of solid brushing, just as the dentist had always advised … even swallowing some of the water.
Oh, God Almighty!
He knew that he had to have a drink. Parched as he was, he would die if he didn't. There was no more canned orangeade in the house. He had finished the last one several hours ago. It would have to be water now …
He ventured out on to the landing, stretching out an arm, fumbling for the light switch, afraid that in the darkness those vindictive souls of the dead would return to persecute him.
He breathed a sigh of relief as the low watt bulb flashed on. He cursed his father. Too bloody mean to pay for a brighter light.
He stood there. He needed to quench his burning thirst. He also wanted to be sick. Two doors yawned open before him; the toilet, its bowl seeming to hypnotise him, and the bathroom, two sets of taps glinting in the dim light from the landing.
He started towards the latter, and as he did so the constricting bile began to rise in his throat. It was as though a coal fire burned inside him, giving off putrid fumes, choking him.
Almost at a run he staggered into the tiny WC, retching. Scarlet-tinged vomit shot from his mouth like a burst geyser, splattering over the low cistern and the linoleum-covered floor. Bent double, clutching the sides of the bowl, he groaned, gurgling as he almost choked. His heaving halting momentarily, he groped for the flush. The gush of water was music in his ears, the sound of a distant waterfall on an oasis to a lost man dragging himself through the desert.
Benny Wilkes' head went into the bowl, grotesquely twisted, mouth open wide, fingers still pressing the flush lever as though fearing that the cold water might suddenly dry up.
Vaguely he heard a door open somewhere, the soft swish of material, bare feet creaking on the old floorboards.
/> ‘Benny. Benny, are you ill?’
The flush died away to a trickle. Slowly he raised himself up, turning so that he could see the figure of the woman framed against the landing light; unkempt grey hair, the face haggard, worried, a long creased nightgown covering the frail body. ‘Have you been sick, Benny?’
The same pathetic, sympathetic tones his mother had used in his childhood. His earlier fear turned to anger. Christ, what was that all over the floor, potato salad mixed with tomato ketchup? Stupid bloody questions. She was as much to blame as the old man. Never could be positive. If he'd shit all over the floor and told her it was chocolate sauce she would have believed him - simply because it was easier to do so than to face reality. Nicer. Much nicer.
‘I should go back to bed if I were you,’ her voice quavered. ‘It's the reaction of your father's … accident … the funeral … and … all these people dying in the city.’
Suddenly, his strength returned, and he discovered that he could stand up. But his mind was fogged. He couldn't think clearly.
‘Accident, did you say?’ He fixed his glazed eyes on her, noting the way she stepped back a pace. Delighting in seeing her hands clasping the material of her nightdress, crumpling it up into a ball in her agitation.
‘Yes … accident.’ Her voice seemed distant, almost a whisper. ‘Your father's accident.’
‘It was no accident,’ he tried to shout, but only a hoarse croak came from his trembling lips.
‘Whatever do you mean, Benjamin?’
‘I killed him,’ he laughed, and it came out as a rattle. ‘I made sure that the old sod got what he ought to've got years ago. I fixed the car so that it would crash.’
‘You're ill.’ Her eyes were staring, her whole frame shaking, forcing herself to believe what she wished, but somehow knowing that her son spoke the truth. ‘You don't know what you're saying, Benjamin. You're ill, just like thousands of other people in Birmingham.’
‘Yes, I'm ill -’ he took a step towards her but it's not just because of the poisoned water. It's because of that old bugger, your husband.And you!’
‘You don't know what you're saying.’
‘Oh, yes, I do. And it should've been said a long time ago. Only I never had the guts until now. You did ashe wanted. Helped him to persecute me. Sent me away to public school because it looked good. Put me in the fucking bank …’
‘Your language!’ she shrieked.
‘It'll get worse before we're through,’ he rasped, advancing steadily on her. ‘It's time to finish with the so-called niceties of life, as everybody else is finding out. A good clear out so that people can start again. Like the plague. Only there's a few of us who won't be around when it's all over. ‘Like you and me!’
‘You're mad. Ill.’
Mrs Wilkes turned towards the head of the stairs, but her son's outstretched fingers entwined in the folds of her nightdress and yanked her back. Her terrified features were within inches of his, wincing as she smelled his foetid, diseased breath. The stench was overpowering, and she fell into his arms in a half-faint.
‘Without you two dominating me all my life I'd've been miles away from this place,’ he hissed. ‘But as it is I'm still here. A prisoner.And now we're both going to die together!’
She tried to scream, but his tightening grip around her throat checked the cry before it rose. Her eyes bulged like organ stops, and every vein in her forehead stood out, knotted and purple. Her head was slowly being forced back, and a red haze shimmered in front of her. Benny's features were those of a demented stone gargoyle, the evil expression captured at its peak.
She slumped forward, unconsciousness merging into death, held upright in a grip of malevolence.
It was some minutes before Benny Wilkes released her, turning away even as her lifeless body tumbled down the stairs, sprawling at the bottom like a child's cast-off rag doll.
Already he had forgotten her in his dash back across the landing. This time he ignored the toilet and stumbled into the bathroom. He did not even trouble to fumble for the light pull. Water! Cold and clear it gushed from the tap on to his extended tongue.
In the semi-darkness those spirits of the damned returned, cursing him, mocking him. The city of the dead was rising up from a communal grave, a million faces, decomposing, pointing at one another, and then at him.
You did this to us, Benny Wilkes. May your body suffer as ours have done, and your soul writhe in the torment of a living hell along with ours.
He fell to the floor, unable to draw breath. He was drowning, floating in an endless black depth. His brain was swelling, his skull bulging under the pressure.
And the hands of the dead reached up to drag him down still further.
Chapter 8
Ron Blythe first noticed the girl in the crowded snack bar in Lozells. There was something about her which he found attractive in spite of her dishevelled appearance. Her creased blue blouse and stained jeans seemed to lend themselves to her figure, outlining and emphasising the curves in the right places.
Dark short hair; thin, rather than slim; tall, only an inch or two shorter than himself, her hazel eyes were black rimmed, her features beautifully proportioned. But she slumped forward in grief, head in hands, a glass of coke untouched on the bar in front of her.
Blythe watched her carefully, scanning the other occupants of the small windowed room at the same time. Total dejection all round. Ordinary men and women. Some would live, others would die. All of them intent on obtaining their daily quota of liquid refreshment in the safest possible way: canned and bottled drinks.
Outside, a soldier stood on the pavement, alert, glancing alternately up and down the street and into the cafe, rifle cradled beneath his arm. Without the patrolling forces, the drink riots would have been more widespread than they already were. Prices would have escalated to astronomic heights. As it was, the penalty for overcharging by vendors in the city was a minimum of five years' imprisonment. The hoarding of drinks was also illegal. You could purchase one litre per person at any of the shops remaining open. There was nothing to prevent anyone from going from shop to shop, but if you were apprehended with more than the allowance on your person … Pubs and cafes were allowed to serve customers with up to one pint of any liquid processed outside Birmingham. The peacekeeping forces patrolled between these places, watching for any illegal sales or any signs of trouble.
The government had promised to bring in supplies of uncontaminated water as soon as possible. They needed time to organise; roads, railways, and Elmdon Airport had to be cleared first. A matter of a day or two. Without the fires and subsequent explosions it would have been done by now. A day or two at the most - so they said.
Blythe found himself looking at the girl again. A man had joined her. Possibly it was her husband, he thought at first. No, she wasn't wearing a wedding ring although that was nothing to go by these days. Her boyfriend? The man was edging his stool closer to hers; big and raw boned, wearing greasy overalls, the colour of his skin denoting a mixture of Asiatic and European blood. His arm went up and around her waist.
‘Don't you dare touch me!’ She reacted instantly, her hand pushing his arm away, recoiling so that she almost fell off her stool.
He muttered something, laughed, and made another move to embrace her. This time her hand came up, hard and fast, the back of it striking him full across the face with a loud crack.
‘Keep your filthy hands off me!’
Slowly and deliberately he rubbed his face with his hand, his eyes narrowing. Everybody was watching, but nobody moved. These days one did not interfere in such matters.
‘Sister, you gotta be taught a lesson.’ He leaned forward, and before she could take any further evasive action he had seized her by the wrists, dragging her struggling body towards his.
Ron Blythe was moving instinctively, closing in on the grappling pair before he had time to think about it. His powerful outstretched hands seized the other, one chopping movement severing the hold on t
he girl, the other grasping the man by the neck of the overalls. The stool swayed. The man clutched at Blythe to save himself from falling backwards. For one second they clinched on a precarious point of balance and then both toppled over, landing on the floor, Ron Blythe uppermost.
‘You interfering bastard!’ the big fellow cursed and swung a blow which landed on Blythe's shoulder. ‘I'll teach you. I'll …’
People were shouting, backing away, huddling together, frightened. The bell on the door rang loudly, and a commanding irate figure burst into the snack bar, rifle at the ready.
‘What the hell's going on?’ the soldier shouted at the struggling men on the floor, and a faint smile appeared on his lips. Action. He had been getting bored. Nothing much had happened around Lozells today. His bullying instinct thrilled to the prospect, and he strode forward, reversing his weapon so that he held it by the barrel, swinging the stock up above his shoulder.
He picked his first target, a curly-haired head.Crunch! The blow was swift and accurate, and Ron Blythe who had a distinct advantage over his adversary, fingers squeezing the other's windpipe, lurched forward as the sickening blow struck him. He fell face downwards, and lay still.
The half-caste was quick to take advantage of the sudden intervention. Rolling sideways, he struggled to a kneeling position and, as the rifle descended once more, flung up an arm to protect his head. There was a cracking sound as solid wood and bone met; a cry of pain, but the injured man knew that he could expect no mercy, even with a broken arm. Somehow he got to his feet and leapt backwards in the same movement.
There were some empty glasses on the bar. The fingers of his uninjured hand closed around one, and as the soldier advanced on him he flung it with every ounce of strength that he could muster.
