by Gary McMahon
McKenzie grins. His teeth are crooked. “That’s a pretty desperate plan, yer know.”
Clarke spreads his hands. “It’s all I have.”
There’s a pause, during which Clarke hears something clattering in the distance. It sounds like a metal sheet flapping around in the breeze…but the breeze has dropped, the air is still. So what’s making that noise?
“Okay,” says McKenzie, drawing his attention. “It’s a deal. We all get what we want. We go our separate ways. I like that. It’s neat an’ tidy.”
“Okay.” Clarke lowers his hands. “Let’s go back to the car and get the bag.”
McKenzie takes a step to the side. “Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? We have a truce here, of sorts. I’d hate to see yer ruin things.”
“Listen,” says Clarke. “All I want is my woman.”
“An’ the baby,” said McKenzie, smiling again.
“She told you, huh?”
The other man nods slowly. “It kind of came up. In conversation, like.”
“Martha and the baby. They’re all that means anything to me now.”
McKenzie twitches his head, indicating the direction in which Clarke came when he arrived.
Clarke turns around and starts walking back towards the gate. He keeps his pace slow, his steps short.
“Keep yer hands were I can see ’em.”
He opens his hands again and raises them to waist level, flexing the fingers.
Back through the gate, crunching along the gravel, they reach the car in less than five minutes. During the brief walk, Clarke becomes aware of something that disturbs him. He isn’t sure, but it feels like somebody is watching them. It’s like that feeling he knows from childhood in the orphanage: climbing the stairs at night, in the dark, and feeling eyes upon him, staring at his back. Turning around, there’s no one there. But that never diminishes the terror. He knows that they’re hiding somewhere.
He opens the trunk of the car, trying to make as little noise as possible. It seems right somehow; he doesn’t want to draw any attention.
“Are you alone?”
McKenzie is standing two paces away, keeping that same loose grip on the shotgun. “What do yer mean? Of course I’m alone. They’re all dead. Except you.”
Clarke reaches into the trunk and removes the bag. He places it on the roof of the car, shuts the trunk, and then picks up the bag again. “Yeah,” he says. “All dead.” He walks over to McKenzie and sets down the bag on the ground at his feet.
“You carry it,” says McKenzie. “Take it back inside. Just stay on the path, right up to where I met yer, and then turn right.”
Clarke picks up the bag. Behind McKenzie, beyond the decrepit gate and its sagging chicken-wire screen, he catches sight of movement: something fast and low to the ground is skimming across his view. By the time he’s focused on the spot, there is nothing there, Whatever it was has gone.
“What’s wrong?” The shotgun’s barrel lifts again, just a fraction.
“Nothing,” says Clarke, looking at McKenzie. “I’m just nervous. This isn’t my thing…I’m just a driver.”
McKenzie narrows his eyes. The wrinkles on his face deepen. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m the expert, here. Don’t forget that—an’ I’m not nervous at all. In fact, this is the kind of situation I fuckin’ love.” He flashes his crooked teeth.
Clarke heads back to the gate, kicking it open. Off to his left, the undergrowth rustles; in the distance, he hears a sound like someone running across the roof of one of the caravans.
“What was that?” McKenzie’s voice is low, husky.
“I don’t know. I thought I heard something earlier, but I wasn’t sure.”
“I heard it this time. Yer better not have told anyone where yer were going.”
Clarke stops, turns around. He looks McKenzie in the eye. “Who the hell do I have left to tell?”
The two men stand there, facing each other, and something passes between them. Clarke isn’t sure what it is, but the feeling is akin to a shared experience. The two men bond in that instant; they are connected by something larger than themselves.
“There’s someone out there.” McKenzie doesn’t take his eyes off Clarke’s face.
“I know.” Clarke stares back, unwilling to look away, afraid to look off to the side in case he sees something in which he doesn’t want to believe.
Metal rattles; something like a series of deep breaths wheeze close by and then fade; footsteps echo across another caravan roof.
“Move,” says McKenzie, glancing around, inspecting the darkness. “Now.”
Clarke doesn’t need telling twice. He begins to walk quickly along the gravel path, glancing left and then right, hoping he won’t see anything moving towards them through the knee-high scrub grass. He remembers the large man who came running out of the building last night, lowering his gun and watching intently as Clarke drove away. There was a sense of stillness about the man that seemed somehow misplaced, as if everything was just a performance.
“Go right.”
He obeys McKenzie’s order, following a narrow track towards what looks like a small cluster of warehouse buildings: steel frames, shuttered windows, undamaged by the decade-old fire. To one side of the warehouses, almost lost in shadow, there stands a row of old floodlights—the old-fashioned type they used to have at evening football matches.
“These buildings were built a few years ago,” says McKenzie. “Never been used by whoever owns ’em. They’ve been empty ever since, apart from a few dodgy pikies storin’ their ill-gotten gains and keepin’ the electrics going. Blame the recession. Everythin’s been shuttin’ down, closin’ up.”
They are almost at the first building when whatever has been watching them explodes like a force of nature from out of the trees.
Clarke hears a sound like trees being torn up at the roots, followed by a low, guttural growl, and then everything else is drowned out by the din of McKenzie’s screams. He spins around, losing his footing and going down onto the hard ground. He has time as he falls to see McKenzie raise the shotgun and pull the trigger.
The large, thin shape with oversized hands and a misshapen head is illuminated briefly, like a series of still Polaroid images, in the shotgun’s flare: a huge, open mouth filled with too many teeth; sunken black eyes, a flattish snout. The blast numbs Clarke’s ears and all subsequent sound is muffled. He scrambles on the ground, trying to regain his footing, and the hulking figure bounds quickly away, shocked, vanishes back into the darkness between the trees.
McKenzie is screaming something at him but he can’t make out the words. He manages to get back to his feet and starts to run after the other man, not daring to look back in case he gets a better look at the thing that attacked them.
McKenzie hauls open a side door and Clarke bundles in after him. Both men struggle for a few seconds to shut the door and McKenzie slides a metal bolt into place. He’s still holding the shotgun in one hand. The end of the barrel is smoking. Clarke can smell burning; it singes the hair in his nostrils, filling his head with the aroma of smoke, an olfactory echo of the fire that killed all those people here ten years ago.
“What the hell was that?” Clarke asks the question but isn’t sure if he really wants an answer.
“I have no fuckin’ idea.” McKenzie is breathing hard. His face is damp with sweat and his eyes are wide, the pupils fully dilated. He steps back, away from Clarke, and raises the shotgun. “But if yer know what’s out there, tell me now or I’ll kill yer.” His hands are steady; the barrel doesn’t waver.
“Whatever that thing is,” says Clarke, “it’s fuck-all to do with me.” He leans back against the door, trying to shift back down through the gears and get a grip on the situation. Everything is moving too fast. He needs to slow down and ride these sharp corners or risk losing control entirely. He reaches behind him for the gun in his belt.
“Come on,” says McKenzie, nodding along the corridor. “This way.”
Clarke stays his hand, moves it back round in front of him. “Is she in there?”
“Yeah. You lead the way. No funny shit or I’ll blow yer a new orifice.”
Clarke turns and peers along the narrow corridor. The sides are sheet metal riveted to the steel and prefabricated concrete structure. Lights are strung along the ceiling but only about a third of them work. Pools of illumination give way to thick shadow.
“Start walking.”
He obeys the voice and takes a few steps along the corridor, mindful of the walls so close on either side of him. Whatever the hell is out there might just be keeping pace with him on the other side, sniffing for his scent. He makes a fist and presses his fingernails into his palm just to divert his attention from what he can’t see. He needs to focus on the inside of this building and wait for an opportunity to do what he came here for.
Clarke walks slowly along the corridor. He hears McKenzie’s boots grinding against the grubby concrete floor. The floor is littered with debris: stones, pieces of timber, empty beer cans, torn newspapers and magazines, empty boxes and packing crates. He keeps his gaze fixed up ahead, beyond the weak lights. A doorway manifests in the gloom; it’s even narrower than the corridor, and darker: a thin black rectangle.
“That’s it,” says McKenzie. “Just keep goin’ through there.”
As he walks, Clarke becomes aware of a presence nearby. He isn’t sure how or why he notices it, but there is definitely something other than McKenzie in close proximity. Then the scraping starts. It sounds like fingernails being dragged along the outside of the wall, long, sharp talons raking the metal cladding.
“It’s still out there.”
McKenzie ignores him, but he can hear the man’s breathing as it turns deeper, more ragged.
He emerges into a large open space. Along the walls are piles of random boxes, black plastic bin bags filled with trash, and—oddly—several naked mannequins leaning like drunks against the corrugated metal lining.
To his left, a metal staircase leads up to a mezzanine platform or walkway several feet above his head—this secondary level is basically a gantry that runs along each wall, with another similar staircase situated to his right.
He glances towards the center of the space and spots the chair. It’s an ordinary kitchen chair, with a rigid back, and tied into it with ropes is a figure with a brown sack covering its head.
“Martha?” He knows it’s her. Who else could it be?
“Careful, Zeddo…remember who’s got the gun.”
He wants to reach back and slip his fingers under his jacket for his own gun, turn and fire. But that kind of move only ever works in the movies. In real life, he’ll be taken down before he even has the weapon in his hand.
Clarke starts walking again, towards the chair. He doesn’t panic. That would be stupid. He needs to remain calm, to keep his hands on the wheel and steer this thing along whatever road appears up ahead of him. Then, when the time comes, he will act.
“That’s right. Just be cool.” McKenzie’s boots crunch again on the floor as he walks. He is a heavy, odd-shaped man—short, compact, with wide shoulders but a strangely narrow build—and he moves with a curious lack of grace. Unarmed, Clarke thinks he could take the bastard. With the shotgun, he presents a huge threat.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s me.” He kneels down and runs his hands over her body: her arms, her legs, and her belly, where their child is growing. She doesn’t move.
He turns around, still on his knees. “If you’ve killed her…”
“Don’t be so fuckin’ silly. I want a neat resolution to all this. The last thing I need is some vengeful lover on my back, tryin’ to kill me. This is a fair trade. You get her, I get the money. Everythin’s cool; everybody’s happy as clams.” He’s smiling but it doesn’t touch his eyes.
Clarke stares at him, trying to gauge his mental state. Did he kill Oakes, or was that someone else? Perhaps those occultists who were in the middle of a drug deal when McKenzie and his trigger-happy idiots started shooting up their place?
If McKenzie is even half the psycho Clarke initially suspected, he would have already killed Martha and blown off Clarke’s head as soon as he saw the moneybag. But he didn’t. They are still alive…at least he thinks they are; Martha still hasn’t moved.
“She’s fine,” says McKenzie, as if reading his mind. “I drugged her. It should be wearin’ off soon. To be honest, I’m surprised she isn’t already awake and screamin’ the damn place down.” The smile; it’s still there. Taut, humorless.
Martha begins to move. Her right leg twitches, her head jerks to one side, and she starts to moan—a low, pained sound that Clarke is nevertheless grateful to hear.
“It’s me,” he says again, grabbing her arm. “Don’t be scared.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice is muffled under the sack. “He came for me and I couldn’t do anything…couldn’t fight…no good.”
“Hush, now. It’s fine. Everything’s okay. He just wants the money.” He turns around again, facing McKenzie. “Can I at least take the fucking sack off her head?”
“Aye, sure. Be my guest.”
He turns back to Martha, reaches up, and removes the sack. Her face is pale and puffy; she’s been crying. Her eyes are wide and white, the pupils tiny. She blinks, getting used to the meager light. “Sorry,” she says again, smiling weakly.
He strokes her face. Standing, he kisses her on the side of her head. Her hair tastes sweaty. “Don’t be stupid. It wasn’t your fault. I should’ve got us out of here right away.”
“Sorry to break up the heartfelt reunion.” McKenzie steps forward, the shotgun raised to chest level. His finger is resting on the trigger. “Just in case you’ve forgotten, we seem to have ourselves a wee problem here.”
Clarke looks down at Martha. He can see where McKenzie has cut off a hunk of her blonde hair; can see the pinkish scalp beneath. He turns back to McKenzie. “Yes, you’re right.”
Something starts banging on the warehouse walls. The noise is loud, like a series of gunshots. The walls rattle; dust is disturbed inside the storage space. McKenzie turns his head in the direction of the sounds and Clarke takes his chance. Ignoring the commotion, he reaches back and pulls out the handgun. His hands are steady; his wrists locked. He points the gun at McKenzie’s leg and pulls the trigger. No pause for thought. No time to change his mind. Just like driving.
The sound of the gunshot is lost amidst the clamor, and McKenzie looks startled as he goes down, dropping the shotgun as his legs give way beneath him. Clarke acts quickly, running across the floor to kick the weapon out of reach. It skids across the dusty concrete, spinning end over end.
“Bastard,” says McKenzie. He grips his thigh, inches above the knee. Blood has spurted and is now slowing to a gentle pumping flow. He’s gritting his teeth. He presses down on the wound, trying to stem the blood flow. “I need to stop this bleedin’.”
Clarke takes a step backwards. Nods.
McKenzie uses his free hand to release his belt buckle and unthread the belt from the loops in his jeans. He wraps the belt around his thigh, an inch or two above the wound, and tightens it as much as he dares. The color drains out of his cheeks. His eyelids flutter. He finishes tying the tourniquet and throws back his head, breathing hard. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
The banging on the walls has stopped.
“Who’s out there?” Martha sounds terrified.
“I don’t know,” says Clarke, turning and walking towards her. He tries to undo the knots in the rope but they are too tight. He leaves her where she is and inspects the immediate area, looking for something to use as a cutting tool—a packing knife, a piece of metal with a sharp edge…anything.
McKenzie sits on the floor with his eyes closed, trying not to vomit.
Clarke spots a Stanley knife on top of a packing crate. He snatches it up and moves quickly back to where Martha is sitting. He cuts the rope, sawing through the hemp close to the knots. Within sec
onds, she’s free. She rubs her wrists, stretches her arms, and stands shakily, like a newborn foal. She discards the remaining ropes and walks unsteadily towards McKenzie. “Cunt,” she says, softly, and then she kicks him in the side of the head. He hits the ground without saying a word.
Time seems to stop right then. Clarke is standing with his gun in one hand and the small knife in the other; Martha is standing over Clarke’s inert form, breathing as if she’s just run a marathon, hands resting on her thighs, back bent at a slight angle; McKenzie is flat on the ground, just beginning to stir.
“I suppose I deserved that,” says McKenzie, sitting up. He spits out thick, ropey blood. The side of his face is dirty where it made contact with the floor. He rubs at his cheek, scowling.
“Don’t ever touch my hair again,” says Martha, before turning away and walking over to where the shotgun is lying on the floor. She picks it up, checks to make sure the thing is loaded, and holds it in the crook of her arm, like a baby.
Outside, something begins to bellow.
The sound is reminiscent of a lion’s roar, but deeper, more resonant, as if it is burrowing beneath Clarke’s skin. He’s never heard anything like it before, and never wants to again. It’s the sound of fury, the song of deep nights and dark, empty spaces. The cries make him feel as if his bladder might burst.
“Fuckin’ hell,” says McKenzie. “That isn’t human.”
“It doesn’t sound like any animal I know of.” Clarke forces himself to walk, heading towards the nearest wall. The roaring noise trails off, becoming a hoarse, ragged croaking. Then the thing runs its claws once more across the walls, as if it is toying with them, tormenting its prey.
Prey, he thinks. That’s exactly what we are.
