Sufferer's Song

by Savile, Steve

  * * * * *

  Alex rolled onto his back, idiot grin pasted across his face, a huge angry swelling already pushing through the hair around his temple. He watched her go. She couldn’t go far. Nowhere was far enough – not when he could smell her fear on the wind. No matter how far she ran she was his.

  Alex felt himself hardening again, almost at will now.

  The bitch had broken his arm, and he couldn’t see worth shit through his right eye. He was completely useless down one side.

  Walking was awkward at first, judging distances with one eye not making it any easier, but he made it onto the road. Rioters tore up the street, some screaming and shouting with one raucous voice, rolling cars and putting out windows with bricks. Glass invited to be broken. Bricks went through house windows and green houses as well as the windows of abandoned cars.

  More came in behind them, a second wave bringing fire. They set alight anything in their way. Cars burned like beacons, explosions joining the furore as a string of petrol tanks ignited.

  Alex limped down the centre of the street, casting anxious looks left and right. He had been a fool to think he could sniff her out amid all of this filth and contamination. The streets reeked of piss and blood and cleansing fire. He felt it cloying in his throat.

  Kids were setting kindling to one of the big houses along from Kingsbridge School, pouring petrol siphoned from standing cars onto the blaze to get it going with the gusto they demanded from their new found element. The thunder of the streets battered him from all sides. Cars burning. Houses ablaze. His knees were anything but steady under the barrage. He couldn’t see her. He span left to right, twisting his head, trying to focus through the heat fogs and the smoke and the night – but he could not see her.

  Where would she run?

  Where would she hide?

  He put his good hand out to steady himself. He had to catch his breath. It was difficult to swallow. Alex knew it was his asthma playing up with all of the smoke clogging his airways. It struck him as absurd that something as petty as asthma should still be capable of ruling his life when everything had changed so much.

  Not everything, he amended. She still hates me. She hates me with every ounce of her body.

  But what should it matter that Beth McCusker hated him? She was like gelatin waiting to be reshaped. She would love him again. The way Alex saw it, she had no choice but to.

  His walking slowed as he scoured the streets.

  No, she didn’t love him.

  The rain had all but died down to a drizzle and with the lights all gone down Alex listened to the wind crying out. He listened for any sign of her but heard only the angry cackling of the fire and the rabid hoots of the Kid Pack. A black wind swirled within him, carrying its own storm. His body was betraying all of the desperation he had thought lost forever. Flashes of recollection threatened to unbalance him; a body in a caravan, a knife, pain, Beth, but mostly pain.

  He clenched his good hand until he could feel the bones on the verge of cracking. Not even that could make him cry out. Alex was empty. Like the night was empty. Forget the fires, the people; they were all transitory, nothing more than flickers. The night was black-violet. A colour. Colour an empty frequency. No sounds. No life.

  Kids battered him on all sides, rushing to wherever they had to be. He could taste the fire on their minds. He caught one and yelled into the boy’s face: “Where is she?” It earned him a laugh. He let the boy go.

  There was blood and broken glass at his feet. A twisted torso hanging half-in, half-out of the driver’s door.

  The bitch hates me.

  He lumbered closer, but got too close. Alex was holding the main driver’s head up to get a look at his empty eyes when a homemade cocktail fell short of its target. The bottle broke on the road, showering the side of the car with petrol. The flame caught and roared, a blue streak that raced up the side of the car. A tongue flicked out, bridging the gap between Alex and the car, caught the vapors of the turpentine soaked deeply into the weave of his trousers.

  Alex ignited in a staggering ball of bluish fire. The spirit seemed to suck the flame into him. Alex flapped and staggered, trying desperately to put himself out but his skin was already charring. His nostrils burned, raw with the reek of his own tainted flesh. His hair suddenly exploded into a halo of fiery light. A wave of raw pain crashed over him.

  He tried to scream, knocked back by the horrible animalistic wailing tumbling out of his throat. It was impossible to see through the conflagration; his eyes would go soon, the heat taunted him, scarred him. It refused to burn out.

  “Beth! Beth! Where are you?” Alex shrieked, flailing around desperately. He staggered forward, clutching someone unlucky enough to be too close to him in an embrace of fire. The woman in his hands began screaming, struggling desperately to be free of his hold.

  She failed.

  The blazing couple began a strange stumbling dance across the road, locked together like lovers lost in the shadows of another world; ghosts burning up the streets. They were burning as though they had been dipped in a vat of wax, Alex not letting his prize slip through his fingers this late in the day.

  He looked at her through burned eyes. “Do you love me?”

  Lines of fire shot out from Alex, wrapping themselves like serpents around his blazing beloved.

  “Do . . . you love. . . me?”

  Her face began to blacken. Blinded by fire and panic she screamed, and tried to break free from the roaring furnace.

  “DO YOU LOVE ME?”

  Her body hitched and contorted as she struggled for a breath, and she gave up, her blistered hands clawing tightly at Alex Slater’s face. He squeezed back. Her eyes burned but not with love or devotion.

  No, she did not love him, and as the fire consumed them, he knew it was too late to make her.

  * * * * *

  Hunkered down in a gateway, Jack Kemp witnessed the fire bringer burnout in a far from glorious blaze.

  All the prayers in the world weren’t going to be enough to stop someone finding him sooner or later if he didn’t get himself moving. He tried to remember the layout of the village. He’d seen a payphone on the High Street, and one further along the Spine Road, maybe one of those would be working. Surely every phone in the village wasn’t linked up to the same damned junction box. Then there was the service station out along the road on the way back to the motorway. It wasn’t in use. The FOR SALE boards gave that much away. That didn’t mean he couldn’t hide there.

  But for now he had to move on.

  - 76 -

  Ben didn’t risk heading back through the village. There were other ways to skin this particular cat. He raced along the tree line and the banks of the chalk hills, taking his guide from the fires in the sky and the moonlight when it at last breached the cloud. Its wan radiance did little to lighten the way ahead. He had to slow down to a trot, then a walk, picking his way carefully as the worn out path petered out.

  It was only a matter of time before he had no choice other than to head back to the roads, he could move faster, and if he was careful with it there was a good chance he could avoid the trouble spots altogether. He picked his way up through the deforested slopes of the park, probably the strangest midnight rambler the old grounds had laid themselves open to in a long time.

  The night reflected the sound with too much clarity.

  Ben took to the streets, moving like a wraith from recess to enclave, enclave to doorway and back to recess, clinging to the anonymity of the shadows. The fear of the run was like nothing he’d ever felt before. It was exhilarating, primal, too much like having fun. It was intoxicating. He came close to running afoul of several clusters of rioting kids, and more adults shrived of their humanity. They moved with a vindictive purpose. Watching them, Ben was left with in no doubt that although they all appeared to be moving alone there was some joint purpose to their actions – it was as though they were all dancing to the same piper’s tune.

  They appear
ed to be segregating Westbrooke into quadrants without getting into each other’s way.

  He didn’t stop to think about the implications of the fallen arches. Slowing to a walk, Ben picked his way through the litter of bodies strewn across the road. It was like living in some bleak nightmare world, picking a path through the dead. Worse, though, because in this nightmare he recognized every face. He had grown up with some, been scolded by others. He stopped looking after he saw an old man with half his head missing. There was no sign of the monster behind the carnage.

  There was a wind; the trees nodded heavily on their trunks, their clutch of scaly leaves slippery with sulphurous light from the village fires.

  Sam Ash had dragged himself away from the slaughter, and was lying in a pool of his own blood. His side was riddled with maggot-like wounds caused by the spray of the shot. Mercifully, he was unconscious.

  Ben felt sick and angry. He shrugged off his wax jacket, draping it over Sam’s body, checking he was still alive. It was like action-replay time for Ben, only this time he wasn’t about to fall apart. This was his chance at getting it right and he was going to grab it with both hands. He had a weal pulse and he was breathing. There was nothing else Ben could have asked for.

  Though he wanted to do anything but, Ben forced himself to walk back through the bodies looking for survivors. There were two others, both had been shot and were in a bad way.

  He did what he could to make them comfortable, and then went back to Sam. Thinking on his feet, Ben used the policeman’s radio to contact Barney back at the restaurant.

  “Barney,” he said into the mouthpiece. A crackle of static, that burp of a connection he had heard before, and then Barney Doyle saying:

  “Ben? Ben, lad, is that you?”

  “It’s me. It’s pretty bad out here, Barn. Five dead, three wounded. No sign of the man pulling the trigger. We need medics or else we’re going to be adding three more to the fatalities. I’m heading back.”

  “I don’t know how I’m supposed to say this lad, but you might want to stay out there a while longer. That new girl of yours is just as bloody stubborn as you are. She’s gone looking for someone to help. She wouldn’t be stopped, and I couldn’t very well force her when she played the dangerous club for boys’ card. If it’s good for you to go gallivanting, it is good for her. She commandeered one of the window keys and snuck out. I’m sorry son.”

  “Nothing you could do,” he assured Doyle. He needed to think logically and keep a grip on a whole stirred up set of emotions he didn’t understand. He stared around wildly as though she might have been sneaking up on him while his back was turned – but this wasn’t some kid’s game of hide and go seek. He tried to stifle the panic rising as he ran back toward the village. He had to fight every urge that had him wanting to scream her name at the top of his lungs. The next twenty minutes of his life were lost in a frantic house to house search for a woman he had met less than a week ago and was already lost to.

  It was hell.

  - 77 -

  Search lights from the police helicopter stabbed the countryside, surveying the damage.

  “It’s like some localized war zone,” the pilot commented, banking for a closer look at the pockets of fire and violence. Cars were alight down the length of the main street and most of its subsidiaries, housing blazing like bonfires here, there and everywhere in a patchwork of fire, smoke and ash, and bodies; though from their perch in the helicopter they looked less like bodies and more like dolls.

  He wanted to keep them that way as well, at arm's length, impersonal.

  “The rioters are starting to congregate out towards the park.”

  “It’s the only place open enough. You want to take us in for a closer look?”

  “Will do,” he said, pulling sharply on the stick. The helicopter veered off to the right, arrowing in on the riot. “Hang on to your stomach.”

  - 78 -

  Doyle looked at the clock on the wall. Ben Shelton was taking his time. The longer he took the less likely it was he’d make it back through the streets in one piece.

  “Oh, great, just flippin’ great.”

  He tried to raise him again on the police radio, but he wasn’t answering. Doyle had visions of him breaking down the doors of every house he passed, screaming her name into the darkness. He knew Ben; he didn’t think he was that far off the mark.

  He turned back to his window vigil, only this time there was something to see. Two figures were coming at each other across the expanse of car-park. Both had things in their hands, one was easy to identify: a shotgun. It sent a terrible shiver the length of Doyle’s spine. The other he had to strain to make out, but it looked like . . . a dog.

  The shotgun came up, aimed at the dog carrier’s face.

  “Jesus God Almighty,” Doyle moaned. He couldn’t bear to watch. Beside him, Evie turned her back; this kind of horror she didn’t need to see, it was more than enough that it happened. “This idiot hero stuff must be contagious,” Doyle muttered and pushed his way through to the kitchen. “I know I’m too damned old to be playing cops and robbers, but I just can’t stand around and watch.”

  He scanned the work surfaces for something heavy, something he could use. He discounted the knives, choosing instead the wooden block they were set in. He had no intention of killing anyone. He went back through to the window, weighing the block of wood in his clenched fist. He had no idea what he was going to do with it but he knew he couldn’t stand around and watch cold-blooded murder. That’s what it was, or would be if he didn’t intervene. These streets were his protectorate. If he didn’t try to help the dog carrier, no one else would.

  Like a freeze-frame on a video, they didn’t appear to have moved. The shotgun wavered between the dog carrier’s face and his chest. Of course, that was a lie; the balance of the confrontation was changing. It had become a curious sort of stand-off. A pack of mangy dogs were circling the pair. Of the two, Doyle reckoned the guy with the gun (was it Billy Rogan out there?) looked the more spooked.

  He started pulling back the upended table barricades, “Someone give me a hand with these.”

  The diner he had set to checking the windows hurried forward to lend a hand. “Thanks, fella. Now, I want you to do as I say. Lock the door behind me. Keep all of the doors and windows locked, and most importantly of all, do not let anybody in here.”

  “No one in,” the diner nodded.

  “I’m serious. No one. Christ, I am getting too old for this kind of shit.”

  - 79 -

  “Put the gun down, Billy son- Yer dain’t wanna shoot ol’ Alfie fulla holes now do yer?”

  “Been waiting for Pops, Alfie. Been lookin’ for him because I’ve got summink real important to teach him, see. Have you seen him?”

  “No, son. I ain’t seen that piece of shit fer a long time. But I have seen yer policeman friend. I can see ‘im now, creepin’ down the stairs. Don’t turn around lad, and no one will get hurt.”

  “Keep the mutts back, Alfie. Keep ‘em back or so help me, I’ll shoot you like I shot the others back there.”

  “I’ll keep em back son, don’t you fret. I don’t wanna be filled with lead no more’n you wanna fill me with it by the looks of yer.”

  “They hate me now.”

  “No one hates you, son.”

  “They do, Alfie. Where’s Pops? Got to find Pops. Got to teach him good,” Billy sounded rattled, uncertain. Scared.

  “Take it easy, Billy lad. Take it real easy. Why don’t you put the gun down ‘n give ol’ Nosy a pet, eh? Nosy don’t hate yer no more’n I do.”

  “Got to find Pops. You don’t understand. You don’t. I’ve got to find him so I can teach him. I’ve got to –”

  - 80 -

  Just one more step, lad. One more. Don’t look around. Don’t look –

  Doyle brought the full weight of the kinife block down on the back of Billy’s head, knocking him out cold. The wooden block hit him above the ear. The impact snapped his
head sideways. His grip on the shotgun loosened and the gun fell from his hands, both barrels discharging in to the floor as Billy crumpled.

  “Did yer kill him?” Alfie asked, rubbing at his thick grey beard.

  Doyle shook his head. “Just knocked him out.”

  “Thanks. I mean . . . that weren’t Billy. Not really. He ain’t a bad lad.”

  “Half the damn town’s gone Night of the Living Dead on us,” Doyle grumbled sourly. He knew that when the numbness dissolved he was going to start hurting but with all of the dignity he could muster he hoisted Billy Rogan’s unconscious body and walked stiffly across the car-park and up the stairs into the restaurant. All of a sudden his life had become much more simplified: “I need belts or something else to tie him up.”

  - 81 -

  He was waiting.

  Standing in the doorway, back lit in the dark. It didn’t look as though he had moved since he had last called her name and gone banging around the house. Nearly ten minutes ago.

  He just stood there in the doorway, waiting.

  Ellen desperately needed to pee, but she wasn’t moving from her hiding place under the bed. She held the spray can in her right hand, up at her chest, her forefinger on top of the nozzle.

  “Ellen, baby, I know you are in there,” he called to her, but she lay still, biting on her lower lip. “It’s okay angel. It’s okay. It’s only daddy. Daddy’s back. The bad man has gone away now. Daddy’s back. Everything’s going to be okay now.”