Eat Local

by King, Danny

  “Then zig-zag. Dodge and weave, you know, like in the films.”

  Mrs Thatcher steeled herself with a deep breath and jumped to her feet.

  Unbeknownst to her, Colonel Bingham had already ordered his men to cease firing after 18 had confirmed she had a heat signal with his thermal image detector and was therefore not one of their targets. But the farmer’s wife stuck with the plan anyway and lumbered backwards and forwards in agonisingly slow loops across the open ground to the bemusement of all those watching.

  “What is she doing?” the sniper on the southern ridge asked as he followed her with his crosshairs back and forth, back and forth, covering just about every blade of grass between them and the farm.

  “Evading our fire, it seems,” his spotter deduced.

  “Well let’s see if we can’t give her a little encouragement then, shall we,” the sniper said, squeezing his trigger three more times to splatter the ground around her and get her moving a little quicker.

  “Ooohh aarhhh, dodge and weave, dodge and weave!” Mrs Thatcher shrieked in response, jumping this way and that to sidestep the danger as best she could.

  The soldiers weren’t the only ones to witness Mrs Thatcher’s dash for freedom. Henry stood at the kitchen window and watched on dispassionately as one of their hosts stumbled and bumbled across the finishing line and into the trees at the top of the ridge.

  “Trouble?” Angel asked as she appeared at his side.

  “Possibly,” Henry replied. “But not for us.”

  Sebastian saw Mrs Thatcher make it too and bounded up and down with glee as she completed her home run.

  “I don’t believe it. She did it. She made it!”

  But Mr Thatcher, still wrapped up like a forgotten Christmas present and left unwanted in the corner of an old abandoned grotto, failed to share in the joy of his wife’s blessed deliverance and swore at Sebastian from behind his filthy gag.

  “Alright mate, don’t look at me like that. She was the one who didn’t want to wait for you, not me,” Sebastian informed him before starting on Mr Thatcher’s ropes.

  *

  The first soldier Mrs Thatcher tripped over grabbed her and took her to the Colonel for debriefing. Mrs Thatcher couldn’t believe the hub of activity she found in the forest this night. As far as the eye could see – which in this light was admittedly not that far – there were soldiers crouching, scanning the grounds, patrolling the woods and communicating with each other as they kept a watch on the farm below. The cavalry had come in their hundreds. But then again they’d done so at Little Big Horn too.

  The Colonel, now confidently chomping on a fat Cuban cigar, turned to greet Mrs Thatcher when she was brought to him.

  “Oh thank you. Thank you. You don’t know what I’ve been through,” Mrs Thatcher wheezed, ratcheting up her feminine frailties a notch or two for the Colonel’s benefit.

  “Who are you?” Bingham asked.

  “I live here. I’m Melissa Thatcher. They came tonight,” she told him, trying to decide or not whether a tactical swoon might help at this point.

  “How many of them are there?” the Colonel asked, nodding at the soldier beside her to hand her a little cup of coffee.

  Mrs Thatcher accepted the offer gratefully and gulped it down before answering. The Colonel was perfectly happy to wait for her response.

  “Six or seven maybe – and some ratty little scumbag. They’re all in it together,” she said, adding a little smoke to her answers to screen certain other facts that might come to light over the course of this evening. There were certain advantages to being the first away, namely that you could be the first to put your side of the story across. Mrs Thatcher was determined to capitalise on this advantage until a thought occurred to her. The only thing better than getting her side of the story across first was being the only one left with any sort of story to tell, so she looked at the Colonel and said; “Probably with my old man too, knowing him. He’s mad he is. Dangerous as well. Someone has to stop him.”

  The Colonel scrutinised Mrs Thatcher carefully.

  “Leave it with me,” he said, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

  *

  Mr Thatcher had shown Sebastian about as much patience as he could muster but now he was starting to annoy him. After four minutes of fiddling with his wrists all Sebastian had managed to do was somehow tighten the knots to crank up his discomfort. Now he’d turned his attention to the coils around his midriff and was trying to free Mr Thatcher by simply yanking them again and again to chafe his back to buggery.

  “I can’t get them off. They’re done up too tight,” Sebastian eventually concluded, stepping back for a fag and a think.

  Mr Thatcher chewed on his gag as he tried to say something but Sebastian couldn’t understand him.

  “What?”

  Mr Thatcher tried again, only this time with a lot more colour to his face and diatribe as he tried to direct this fuckwit to take off his gag.

  “What?” Sebastian simply said again, prompting an all-out explosion of murderous frustration from Mr Thatcher. It was a good job his hands were tied because they would’ve been around Sebastian’s throat by now if they hadn’t been.

  “Oh, hang on a minute, let me try something” Sebastian said, at last loosening Mr Thatcher’s gag to let him speak. “Now, what was it you were saying?”

  Mr Thatcher swallowed his rage. It would do him no good to berate Sebastian while he was still tied to this chair. But as soon as he was out of these ropes…

  “Just cut the bloody things off. There’s a knife over there on the work bench.”

  Sebastian looked about.

  “What workbench?”

  “Over there. That enormous great metal thing,” Mr Thatcher told him, still trying to stay calm.

  “That’s a workbench?” Sebastian said in surprise. It looked more like a giant sluice tray, with a shallow basin design and plughole at the one end.

  “Never mind about that. Just find the knife,” Mr Thatcher urged him.

  “I can’t see one. Where is it?” Sebastian replied, much to Mr Thatcher’s frustration who could see it plain as day.

  “On the work bench you big blindo. Right in front of you!” he fumed, getting steadily angrier and angrier.

  For reasons known only to Sebastian he started opening cupboards about him.

  “What, in here?” he asked, systematically going through cupboard after cupboard but finding only rucksacks and hiking boots – lots of them.

  “For God’s sake, there, it’s just there!” Mr Thatcher snapped, trying to point at the knife with his head but instead simply prompting Sebastian to open the big fridge in front of him.

  “What, in here?” Sebastian said.

  “No no no! Stay out of there!” Mr Thatcher shouted but it was too late. The door swung open, the light clicked on and the giant refrigerator revealed all.

  Sebastian was still looking for a knife so he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary at first. In fact, the light coming on had helped by making the knife glint on the edge of the workbench. He grabbed it and turned back to Mr Thatcher in triumph, expecting to see a smile of approval only to find a look of horror instead.

  “What?” Sebastian said, looking back at the rows and rows of pickle jars in the fridge when they finally registered with him.

  That’s when he saw someone staring straight back at him. The head in a jar wore the same gormless expression as Sebastian although his was not an expression of confusion but regret at trying to save a few quid by hitchhiking home instead of taking the train. All about him were his hands, feet, heart and unmentionables, bobbing up and down in different jars along with a couple of other festival goers and a geography graduate on work experience with Ordinance Survey Maps.

  “Nothing to do with me, sport. They were here when we moved in,” Mr Thatcher said sheepishly.

  *

  Colonel Bingham had gleaned just about all the intel he could out of Mrs Thatcher and now had a
clearer picture of what was going on inside the farmhouse.

  “And you’re sure that’s everything, are you?” he said, fixing her with a warm but no-nonsense smile.

  “Yes yes I told you, now please, let me go. I’ve a heart condition you know. I’m not a well woman,” she pleaded, desperate to slip away before the manure hit the fan, as she knew it was about to.

  Her debriefing had drawn quite an audience with Larousse and several others watching on with interest. Larousse was now convinced he’d hit the jackpot and had snared every vampire in the country with this operation. He knew roughly how many could operate over any given territory so the maths pointed to the obvious conclusion. In a way Larousse was heartened. No matter what the treacherous Colonel Bingham did tonight, they’d struck a blow against evil that would reverberate around the world. Larousse would be a hero. His reputation was assured. And so would Colonel Bingham’s only in a different way. Larousse would see to that, come what may.

  Colonel Bingham ushered Mrs Thatcher away from the farm and deeper into the trees. “Of course, my dear. Please, come this way.”

  But Mrs Thatcher didn’t want an escort. All she wanted to do was unstick herself from this sticky situation and disappear just as she had always planned to do. She had a safety deposit box in Folkestone with enough money to live on comfortably for several years and the passport of someone who’d borne an uncanny resemblance to her she’d met along the way. Mrs Thatcher had kept it for just such an occasion. All she needed was a ten-minute head start and she’d be sunning herself in Albania before the week was out.

  “Thank you Colonel, but I don’t want to cause you no bother. I can find my own way from here,” she said, side stepping the Colonel and heading off in a different direction.

  Colonel Bingham once again placed a hand on Mrs Thatcher’s shoulder, only this time his grip wasn’t quite so reassuring. “I insist,” he indeed insisted.

  Mrs Thatcher felt an icy fear wash over her. The Colonel was going to slap her in chains; she knew it. She’d be found out. She’d have to answer for what she had done. Or rather, her horrible husband had done. Yes yes, she had to remember that. She’d had no choice but to go along with him otherwise she would’ve ended up like all the others. If it came to it that was the story she would tell but there was still a chance. The woods were dark and the Colonel had other fish to fry. Surely he wouldn’t worry too much about a poor little old country girl who’d never done anything to anyone.

  “Well, er… if I can just use that tree over there first,” she said, pointing into the darkness away from the Colonel. “I have been tied up half the night. Bleeding busting I am!”

  Mrs Thatcher hurried off the path and into the trees, hoping the Colonel would respect her privacy whilst she watered the bracken. She knew these woods like the back of her husband’s head (the dirty old bugger) and knew she could give David Blaine a run for his money when it came to vanishing acts.

  But the Colonel was not one to stand on propriety and followed Mrs Thatcher into the shadows. Taking out his sidearm as he went.

  *

  Mr Thatcher was still tied up in his chair as Sebastian started shimmying up the coal chute.

  “Let me out! Let me out, you bastard! Cut these ropes!” he shouted but Sebastian was more inclined to go upstairs and ask Angel for a kiss than he was to free this fruitcake.

  “And end up pickled like that lot? No thanks. You’ve got everything coming to you sunshine,” Sebastian said, wishing him a fond farewell on behalf of the vegetable drawer who were unable to speak for themselves.

  But Sebastian had clambered no more than a few feet up the chute when he heard a scream of terror that stopped him in his tracks, followed by the crack of a distant gunshot. Mrs Thatcher had left the building. Permanently.

  Whoever she’d found out there had been just as dangerous as those upstairs. Sebastian was caught between a rock and a hard place, a frying pan and a fire, and death and damnation.

  Samuel Johnson had really hit the nail on the head when he’d said, “When a man is tired of London he is tired of life”. If this was what it was like in the sticks, the Country Life set could bloody keep it.

  *

  Up on the hill Colonel Bingham strode back out of the shadows alone, holstering his sidearm once more.

  18 was aghast. He’d seen plenty of death in his time but the killing of civilians still appalled him. He would have no part of this and stepped out to berate the Colonel as he passed.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” he asked. It may have escaped the Colonel’s notice that they were in the middle of a forest but it hadn’t escaped 18’s. There was no end of trees to tie a prisoner to around here.

  The Colonel didn’t take umbrage with 18’s reaction. He’d served alongside a great many principled soldiers in his time. Each man was entitled to a conscience although more often than not those that did still lay in the paddy fields and trenches the Colonel had made it out of simply because they’d not had the stomach to do what was necessary.

  “She could’ve been in league with them,” he explained with a pragmatic shrug.

  “Could’ve? What sort of a justification is that?” 18 demanded.

  “An uncertain one, 18. Now we have certainty.”

  “You’re mad. This is madness,” 18 exclaimed.

  Colonel Bingham fixed 18 with his best Nuremberg stare and said; “This is war, 18. And you’d best decide which side you’re on – before dawn.”

  *

  Sebastian climbed down from the coal chute and examined his options. He could either get shot outside, eaten inside or pickled where he was. All things considered he should’ve probably known Vanessa was never into him for normal reasons. A woman like than and a lad like him? He should’ve stuck with the girl in the kebab shop. She might not have been much to look at but at least she’d never tried to kill him. And she always gave him extra meat on the side. In more ways than one.

  “We’d been together almost twenty years, her and me. She didn’t deserve that,” Mr Thatcher lamented, still tied where he had been all night, in his chair.

  “I’m sorry,” Sebastian said, genuinely meaning it. Even serial killers had feelings.

  Mr Thatcher chewed his lip for a bit then appealed to the only person in the world who was in a position to help him. “Please, I’m asking you as one human being to another, cut these ropes and let me go.”

  Sebastian opened the fridge to look at Mr Thatcher’s collection of backpackers and shook his head. “I’m sorry mate, I can’t do that.”

  The sympathy angle exhausted, Mr Thatcher decided to try and different approach.

  “Look, it wasn’t me, honest. It was the wife. I loved her and but I couldn’t stop her. Fucking nuts she was.”

  “Every marriage has its difficulties,” Sebastian sympathised, pulling a cigarette out of his packet and slipping it between his lips.

  “I should cocoa,” Mr Thatcher agreed, putting it mildly. “So, will you let us go?”

  Sebastian lit his cigarette.

  “Nope.”

  At that moment a bullet streaked across the fields, hit the side of the barn, bounced into the coal chute and ricocheted around the cellar until it found a pair of testicles to obliterate. Fortunately for Sebastian they weren’t his, but a pair Mrs Thatcher had been saving for later, but it made Sebastian’s eyes water nevertheless as he was showered with white vinegar and broken glass.

  “What now?” he said, as the gunfire started up again in earnest.

  CHAPTER 17

  Colonel Bingham had ordered his men to open fire immediately at the first signs of movement and the front door swinging open had reignited the hostilities.

  The six surviving Coven members had dashed out to take cover in the front garden. The idea was to break as one, in one direction, and overwhelm their attackers until they breeched a section of line. If just one of them could get beyond the enemy and disappear, they could then double back and pick them off at will
. They might not get them all but they would certainly get enough to allow the others to join the fray.

  And then what?

  And then it would be a free-for-all in the darkness and Henry and his friends would back themselves all night long with that kind of advantage.

  Colonel Bingham was acutely aware of the dangers and ordered his men to converge on three sides and push them back into the house. The result was a firestorm of lead that whizzed and cracked all around the Coven’s heads.

  Henry crouched behind a roller that had been left to rust in the middle of the lawn and called to Angel who was sheltering behind a dead tree.

  “Once more unto the breach, dear friends? Once more.”

  Angel smiled and looked to Vanessa to her left who was hugging the slate wall. “Or close up the wall with our English dead.”

  Vanessa nodded back. “In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man.” She now looked to Boniface who was steeling himself behind a tin pigsty and urged him to pick up the baton.

  Boniface looked back at her.

  “What?”

  Vanessa merely repeated her line. “In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man.”

  Boniface snorted and pulled a face. “I’m not doing it,” he said, jumping out from behind the sty and charging up the hill. “Come on you bastards!”

  “I told you,” Angel said, shaking her head in sadness. “No fun and no sense of occasion.”

  They broke in twos, with Henry and Angel running for the stables while Vanessa and Chen made for the chicken sheds. They all knew to make for the big old skeletal oak tree silhouetted on the crest of the ridge and there they would fight their way through the soldiers, soaking up every bullet in their arsenal if need be but driving on. It would sting and it would slow them down but it wouldn’t stop them.

  Henry covered Angel with short bursts then ran ahead, only for Angel to return the compliment, and in no time at all they’d crossed much of the open ground between their attackers and the farm.

  Vanessa and Chen were also making headway, with Chen leading the charge while Vanessa covered the rear. Two soldiers ran out of the darkness to intercept them and shot them through with both clips. Ordinarily this would’ve been enough to neutralise any enemy but Vanessa and Chen were only stung. They rolled in the mud screaming and cursing mortal man, then returned fire, knocking the heads off both as they sprinted in for the kill.