Chapter Twenty Nine
Howard Trenton was just about to climb over the wooden fence, when the helicopter overhead swooped in low, before setting down on a large expanse of grass, just to the left of where Mary was standing with the policeman. Howard watched, in silence, as the policeman began escorting Mary towards the chopper.
“Shit… they’re going to lift her out of this fucking place.” Swore Howard, his plans thwarted once more. He watched, helplessly, as the policeman opened up the helicopter door, ushering Mary into the aircraft. Suddenly, from behind him, came a voice, low, gruff, familiar.
“Don’t move.” Ordered the voice. Howard spun around. It was Tom Grogan, armed, and standing no more than twenty feet away from the killer, his gun trained towards Howard. “Get up, slowly, and put your hands in the air, Howard.” Said the detective. Howard ignored Tom’s command. Behind him, he heard the sound of the helicopter’s rotor blades beginning to pick up speed, the chopper preparing for take off. “Did you hear me? Stand up… NOW!” Barked the detective. Tom moved a couple of steps towards Howard Trenton. Then, with lightning speed, Howard turned away from the detective, and smashed straight through the ageing wooden fence in front of him…
The policeman let off a volley of shots at the teenage serial killer, but all of them missed the target, who was sprinting towards the helicopter at a seemingly impossible speed. Tom Grogan shouted out a warning towards his colleague, who was backing away from the ascending helicopter, oblivious to Howard Trenton, who was coming up fast behind him.
“Look out! Behind you! Look out!” Shouted Tom Grogan, but the other man was unable to hear his warning, due to the loud thudding of the helicopter rotors. Howard Trenton reached the other police officer, charging him, like a small, skinny rhino, from behind. The policeman went flying forwards, onto the ground, face-first, completely taken by surprise. Howard knelt down and grabbed the policeman’s gun from him. He backed away from the fallen officer, and then aimed the weapon up at the helicopter as it slowly climbed into the sky. Howard fired the gun five times, each bullet hitting the undercarriage of the vehicle, two of them piercing the fuel tank. Thick aviation fuel began to leak from the two holes, and, for a moment, the helicopter dipped down, towards the ground, before climbing again. Howard threw the gun to the floor, and then lunged forward, his hand grabbing onto the helicopter’s skid. The chopper ascended, but this time with an enraged Howard Trenton hanging onto it…
Howard spun in a half-circle, gripping onto the skid of the helicopter as it climbed high into the air. He tried to raise his broken arm, but it was completely numb. A pain shot through his lower back, and Howard felt a fresh gush of warm blood spurt from the stab wound that he’d received the day before, courtesy of Alex Crennell. Howard tried again to raise his useless arm, but it was a waste of time. He screamed in frustration.
“Fucking work! Just fucking work!” Howard cried. How am I supposed to climb up and get into the cockpit with only one sodding arm? There was a second jolt of pain in his back, and for a split-second, Howard almost blacked out. He gripped harder onto the helicopter skid, breathing in deeply the air that rushed around him. Howard Trenton looked down, back towards the farmhouse, which was shrinking in size, the further that the helicopter drew away from it. Inside the aircraft, the pilot, unaware of Howard’s close proximity, pushed the helicopter hard, trying to gain enough height to clear the fast-approaching peak of Knighton Mountain. He turned to Mary, who was sat next to him, and smiled.
“Don’t know what’s the matter with this bloody thing tonight…. she can be a bit sluggish at times.” He said. Mary stared back at him, her eyes almost lifeless. “We’ll soon have you home, girl.” Continued the pilot. He looked ahead, as the slopes of Knighton Mountain drew closer. Come on, climb, you little bugger. The pilot worked the cyclic control of the chopper, and the helicopter continued both forwards and upwards. Then, suddenly, and rapidly, it began to lose height… and control.
The police helicopter began to judder violently, and dropped in height. The small metal space between two of the bullet holes in the fuel tank cracked open, forming one, much larger gap, that quickly began to jettison kerosene like a broken dam. Inside the chopper, the pilot struggled desperately with the controls, but it was all to no avail.
“Fuck. We’re going down.” He whispered. Realising that there was absolutel nothing he could do, the pilot turned to Mary Broderick. “Close your eyes.” He said to her. Mary didn’t react at all; a small portion of her consciousness realised what was about to happen, but somehow, it didn’t seem to matter any more. Mary ignored the pilot, and continued to stare out of the cockpit, towards the grey-black slopes of Knighton Mountain, that were approaching fast. Not far beneath Mary, Howard Trenton twisted and turned, hanging on to the helicopter skid for dear life. He made one, last, desperate attempt to move his broken arm. Nothing. Another pain hit him, this one coursing through the whole length of his body. Howard felt his lungs cease to function. He gasped for air, just as Alfie Whitehouse had done, a few weeks earlier, but there was nothing. Howard felt his heart hammer brutally against his chest, and then stop. This caused Howard to relinquish his grip on the helicopter skid. For a few short moments, his body plummetted down, towards the rocks that lay below him. By the time that Howard Trenton hit the craggy surface of Knighton Mountain, he was already dead. His body, completely broken, lay face down, in-between two large boulders. Howard stared down at the ground beneath him, one eye a dull, dirty yellow, the other pale blue. A few feet away, amongst a sparse clump of mountain grass, was a yellow contact-lens, that Howard had purchased online, just a few months earlier.
***
The police helicopter collided with Knighton Mountain just a few seconds after Howard hit the rocks. Both Mary Broderick, and the pilot, died quickly, the pair of them crushed, and engulged in flames, instantaneously. All that Mary really sensed was a dull, overbearing thud, together with a heat so intense that it was, in a way, almost beautiful, before a whiteness, all-encompassing, grasped at her soul and took it away forever, wrenching it from this world, and to another, far better place; a place where someone like Howard Trenton would never be able to follow her. As the wreckage of the helicopter burned brightly on the southern slope of Knighton Mountain, a creature, with dull yellow eyes, it’s body bent down and hunched on all fours, watched, with a vague interest, from the edges of Skerrington Forest, before turning away and scampering sidewards, heading back into the safety of the undergrowth and trees. Back to the place that it considered to be its home.
***
The young woman was carried, on a stretcher, from Lee-Hill farmhouse by two paramedics, with a third person - a policeman - steadying and assisting them as they negotiated their way down a small gravel track, and towards a waiting ambulance. As the paramedics and their patient disappeared around a hedged bend, and out of view, two more police officers remained outside the farmhouse, standing close to the cordoned-off front door of the farmhouse. One of the police officers, a thirty one year old woman called Petra Morris, looked over in the general direction of the ambulance.
“I know that girl. Her name’s Shark. I’ve seen her around Coldsleet, usually down at the Stagecoach pub. She’s a regular there.” Said Petra. Her colleague, a burly, tall, dark-haired newcomer to Coldsleet constabulary called Carl Henry, looked at Petra, with curiosity in his eyes.
“Her name’s Shark?” He asked. “I take it that’s just a nickname?” Petra shrugged her shoulders.
“I’ve never really given it much thought.” She replied.
Shark Mako stared up at the roof of the ambulance, then turned her head to the left. A kind-faced, thin lady was smiling at her, and holding Shark’s hand.
“It shouldn’t take us too long to reach the hospital, love, once we get back onto the main road. How are you feeling?” Asked the woman.
“Like I’m coming out of deep-freeze… I feel like a fucking ice-lolly!” Shark managed to joke. The thin lady smiled.
“No. Just my friends.” Replied Shark, with a terrible sadness in her voice. There was a silence for a few moments, and then the female paramedic softly squeezed Shark’s hand.
“My love, do you remember anything about what happened in that bedroom? How you came to be frozen like that?” She asked, with curiosity.
“I was attacked.” Shark replied, calmly. “I was attacked by Howard Trenton, and I was probably raped too.” She elaborated. Shark half-smiled at the paramedic, and then turned away from the woman, staring back up towards the ambulance roof. For just a few short seconds, Shark’s eyes turned a dirty-yellow in colour.
The End.
About the Author
Mark C Sutton is an author from the West Midlands, whose work tends to focus on the darker side of human nature, albeit with a humourous slant. Mark has lived in both the West Midlands, and North Wales. He now resides in the Black Country, together with his wife, two sons, and two irritating cats, one of whom is called ‘Squeaky Dracula Cohen’.
The Black Pathway Page 29
