by steve higgs
‘The ones assigned…? Hold on. What are you talking about Amanda?' There had been Police following me? For what purpose?
‘Look, Tempest. I don’t have time to argue. Quinn thought you were the most likely target for the Klowns and has been having you watched and tailed for the last few days. The two plain-clothes guys were found fifteen minutes ago in an alleyway near your office. Both had been stabbed.’
That prick Quinn. He had lied to me and set me up.
‘Amanda, you knew about this didn't you?' I demanded. I was already angry, Klowns had tried to kill me or someone I knew twice in the last few minutes, my office was destroyed, my dogs had been taken goodness knows where and now I find out that Amanda and the Police have been using me as bait. She hadn't answered. ‘Tell me the damned truth.' I shouted down the phone.
‘Tempest…' she trailed off. I disconnected. I had other things to focus on.
A scream lit the air. A few feet away a woman laughed having jumped at the sound of the scream. Her boyfriend was laughing at her. It was all very funny.
At my feet, Frank got the chest opened and showed me what he had inside. It was an arsenal. There were swords. There were knives of all sizes and shapes. There was a crossbow. There was a double-headed axe, FFS! Knuckle dusters, a taser or two. No firearms, but there was one item I was quite familiar with. I had used it just last weekend when dealing with the zombie hoard.
‘I threw that in at the last minute.’ Frank said. ‘I thought you might be pleased to see it again.’
I grinned as he handed it to me. I hefted it again, feeling the familiar weight. All I needed now was a Klown to hit with it. ‘My question, Frank, has to be, why do you have a chest full of medieval weapons under the counter of your stall?’
‘It seemed like a good idea.’ he answered with a shrug. ‘There have been so many Klown attacks, and they have come after you twice already…’
There was another scream and then another and suddenly the crowd woke up to the Klowns in their midst and started trying to get away. I heard a chainsaw somewhere. The screams were everywhere now, the crowd shoving each other in a bid to be somewhere else. The herd mentality was knocking over stalls and I saw opportunistic thieves grabbing things as they went past.
The people would be gone soon, they were running away from the Castle grounds and disappearing through the ancient North Gate in front of me. ‘Guys this is not a safe position.’ Frank and Poison were listening. ‘We need to keep the Klowns here until the people have escaped. They are after us.’
‘Why?’ asked Poison.
‘Yeah, why?’ echoed Frank.
‘Remember Obsidian the vampire-wannabe?’ The colour drained from Poison’s face as she remembered being kidnapped and drugged by him.
‘He reinvented himself as the head Klown and has been systematically going after everyone that has ever done him any wrong. At least that is what I think is happening. I am right at the top of his kill list and by association so are you two and all my other friends.’
They were both quiet for a moment, then Poison fixed me with her eyes. ‘So, what is your plan, Tempest. You always have a plan. There are a ton of them and three of us and I do not feel like getting carved up with a chainsaw tonight. Do we run?’
I looked up and around us at the crowd of people fleeing the Castle grounds. It was oddly comic to watch in that everyone was going as fast as they could but there were so many people that they mostly had to walk… so they were screaming... and not running away. Through a gap in the press of people, I saw a face I recognised. Deadface was fifty yards away staring at me. He had shucked the grey hood, but it was that fact that he was motionless that made him stand out, not the garish clothing and face paint he wore. I spotted another Klown and, now that I was looking, yet another. They were forming a perimeter around us. We needed to get away from the stall. It had poor fields of vision over what I had to now consider as the battlefield and provided zero as a defensive position. We were armed, but I had to expect the Klowns would be also, and they outnumbered us. Badly.
‘If we run, they will chase us and most likely hurt more innocent people as they try to get to us. We need to wait for the crowd to thin, then lead them away from here and into somewhere that we can defend ourselves a little better. The Police will be here soon enough and will send armed units I am sure. This is what we need to do…' I outlined a rough plan that I hoped would keep all of us alive.
From just behind me I heard a voice. ‘Need a hand, fellas?’ asked Big Ben nonchalantly. Poison, Frank and I turned as one to find him leaning against the upright of the stall. He was grinning and had on his black combat gear. ‘I thought I might find you here.’
‘Ben where did you come from?’ I asked, disbelief that he was here in my voice.
‘I was on a date with a couple of girls.’ A couple of girls. Obviously. ‘The bar we were in was evacuated because of a fire a couple of doors along, which turned out to be your office. I guessed that you would be here somewhere and most likely in trouble, so I sent the girls home, grabbed my gear from the boot of my car and grabbed an extra set of armour for you.’ He lifted his right arm and chucked a set of black Kevlar body armour over to me.
‘You, my friend. Are a sight for sore eyes.’ Big Ben. Six feet seven inches of well trained, muscular, barely suppressed violence. ‘How’s the wound?’
‘For now, it is insignificant.' he replied. I knew what he meant, I felt the same way about my ribs. We were in a fight whether we liked it or not, the Klowns would use our injuries against us if they knew about them so we might as well ignore them and get on with the job.
‘Hey, that’s Jagjit.’ said Frank, pointing.
We followed his indication. Sure enough, Jagjit was hurriedly escorting Alice away from all the danger. She had a large fluffy toy tucked under her right arm. Big Ben went after him, calling that he would be back in a minute.
The crowd of people was almost gone. Thankfully the Klowns, visible here and there, were mostly ignoring everyone else. They were here for us. A few bewildered souls, those less mobile or less able were still heading away from the area we were in. Soon it would be just us and the Klowns, which meant they were contained. The Police would be here soon enough, so all we had to do was hold them off or keep them here for a short while.
‘We should move, yes?' asked Poison. She was dressed in her usual style of black, tight, distressed clothing with layers to keep her warm. The fringe of her black hair was cut at an improbable angle to sweep from left to right over her eyes with a band of bright blue running beneath the upper layer so that it peeked out here and there as her hair moved. It looked to be a costly effect to achieve. She looked good though. Tough and athletic and somehow at home with the short swords she had in each hand. Next to her, Frank was still rooting through the chest of weapons trying to find something he liked. The shield he had used was strapped to his left forearm already like a knight. I half expected him to pull out some chain mail and a giant mace. Instead, he selected a double-headed axe.
‘Yes, Poison. We should move. Get one of the buildings to our backs.’
I could hear sirens in the distance. Lots of them.
Good.
‘Hold on, Tempest.’ called Frank from the floor. ‘This might be useful.’ I looked down and sure enough Frank was hauling several sets of chain mail from the bottom of the chest and he had a couple of steel helmets to go with it. The helmets looked to have been designed in the twelfth century with the steel extending down over the cheeks and neck and a bar that came down over the nose. They looked heavy.
Poison took a chain mail and slipped it over her head and arms.
‘Tempest Michaels.’ Deadface called out loudly to me.
Frank, Poison and I all looked in the same direction. He had our attention. ‘It is time to die.’
Then the Klowns came. The Police or anyone else who might have been able to help us were somewhere else still. I heard a chainsaw, it might even be two chainsaws,
coming towards us and could see at least twenty Klowns. The numbers were not good.
I threw the front counter of the stall out of our way. It clattered upside-down, scattering comic books which flapped in the light breeze as we stepped over them. The Klowns were walking slowly towards us, closing the circle. We were in the middle of it. Time to change that.
With a battle cry, I ran to my right dragging Poison and Frank with me. There were alleyways all over the old part of Rochester. We just needed to get to the Cathedral and we could get into a position that was at least defendable.
Ahead of us were Klowns. They had formed a circle of sorts so no matter which direction we went there would be some of them in our way. Their intention had most likely been to corral us and close the circle so that Deadface could either kill us himself or watch us being killed. By attacking them instead, we changed the game. The Klowns were starting to react though. We were running straight towards one of them but to his left and right were two more that were less than ten metres away. All of them were moving in our direction but it was only these three that I needed to get through to escape the circle. What we could not afford was to get caught up fighting them for more than a few seconds or the horde would descend on us.
I had covered twenty metres and was almost upon the first Klown. He looked familiar like maybe he was one of those that had attacked me last Saturday night. He was about my height and weight though and he was just standing his ground trying to look tough when he should have been backing off. Had he done so the two Klowns from his left and right would converge on us as we reached him. Instead, I closed the distance with Poison and Frank on my heels and watched with glee as Big Ben and Jagjit hit him over the head with a steel trash bin. He had been raising his arm to swing at me with the machete he was holding, the chaps came from behind him at a run with the bin, their timing perfect as we were able to continue running with no break in our pace at all as the Klown crumpled unconscious on the floor.
There was yelling behind us. I risked a glance over my shoulder. The Klowns were all converging on us, but the circle they had tried to trap us in had placed those on the far side almost fifty metres away from where we now were. They were running but we had several seconds before we would be outnumbered.
I changed the tactic again. I wanted to attack.
‘Ben. Go right!' I shouted, grabbing Frank and Poison and pushing them along with me. The five of us suddenly had Klowns to our front all coming our way one at a time. The Klowns behind us would be a problem soon enough but not so soon that we could not pick a few off.
It was time to even the numbers a little.
The first Klown had his face painted into a cruel and twisted expression that looked like someone had roughly sewn his mouth and eyes shut. He had a blade in each hand and heavy workman's boots on. He was a big man, heavy around the shoulders and chest and he was running at us. Our change in direction caught him off guard though as without warning the gap he was trying to close disappeared. Big Ben punched him in the face before he could even raise his knives, then barrelled through him sending him to the ground where Jagjit kicked him square in the side of his head.
The next Klown saw what had happened and came to a halt, but it was far too late to avoid the blunt force trauma of Big Ben. The Klown had a baseball bat that he managed to swing, only to find that Big Ben caught it with one massive hand. Right on his shoulder, I will admit that I took great pleasure in trying to remove the Klown's head with my own weapon.
‘Wow.’ Said Big Ben. ‘What is that?’
‘This little thing?’ I asked hefting the three-foot rounded bat. I turned it over in my hands to reveal the words running down the length of it.
Zombie Twatting Stick.
‘Frank had it in his apocalypse survival kit.’ I explained. Big Ben nodded his approval and it was time to deal with the next Klown.
They appeared content to continue running into us despite what had already happened to three of their number. The next was no different but the gaps were now closing so this would have to be the last one. I heard a war-cry from behind and glanced to see two more Klowns finally converging on our position from the other direction.
I slapped Big Ben on the shoulder and peeled off to deal with them. We had a few seconds before we needed to change direction once more and leave the remaining Klowns to follow behind us. As I turned around, I found Frank and Poison ahead of me with their weapons up. The two Klowns, one with a stupid blue wig, one completely bald, both had bats which they were holding above their heads to smash down. They were also out of shape and out of breath and easy pickings. Not that I got to do anything to them. There was a blur of motion as the tiny, yet graceful Poison spun her short swords in a series of arcs before their oncoming faces. Perhaps realising they were about to be turned into mincemeat, and no longer imbued with the bravado they felt when they had lots of their brethren around them, they screeched to a halt. Both were looking at Poison who was still swishing her swords and failed to see Frank and Jagjit. The pair of them hit the Klowns in the face, Frank with the end of his battle-axe and Jagjit with a discarded bat he had collected from one of the other fallen Klowns. Both men went down with a spray of blood from their faces. The team was being remarkably polite about whacking the Klowns. We would have been well within our rights to maim or kill them as they would most probably do to us if we allowed ourselves to be caught. Real violence like that though leaves a mental scar and overcoming the natural urge to not cut chunks off of people takes quite a bit of motivation. Plus, it would make our explanation to the Police far more complicated, so it was for the best that we left them injured or unconscious but alive.
The once spread out circle of Klowns was now nearly upon us as one converging hoard. We had taken care of half a dozen or more, but it still left us outnumbered by better than two to one.
All the time we had been running, I had been directing us towards the North Gate where we would exit the Castle grounds and be back where there were alleys to slip down. The tightness of the alleyways meant that the Klowns would only be able to get to us one or two at a time. The general area was also where I was certain the Police would come from. The Klowns were only a few metres behind us as we turned right onto the High Street. Frank's shop was just to our left around the corner. My office was dead ahead and I could see light from the flames playing off the white walls of the Elizabethan buildings as ahead there were firefighters tackling it.
Then, as we ran through the dark shadow of the stone gate a flare went off just to our left and then a half heartbeat later another to our right.
‘Quickly, all of you get behind me.’ Instructed Lyndon Parrish. He was standing in our path wearing a robe and looking surprisingly calm, as if oblivious or unconcerned about the madness chasing us. In his right hand was another flare which he lit as we reached him. ‘Quick, Frank. Get them beyond the circle markings.’
We had not broken our pace and would be behind him in a second. The Klowns were right on our heels though and would carve this fool into pieces, I was sure of it.
‘Lyndon, they are just men and they are armed.’ I yelled grabbing his arm.
He shook me off and I wasn't going to hang around. Frank looked like he might though until I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him with me. He had too little body weight to resist. We left Lyndon behind us as we turned onto the High Street.
Lyndon was bellowing Latin incantations at the top of his lungs. As I watched he took a few steps backward, allowing the Klowns to come at him then stuck the flare's burning end to the floor. A brief explosion followed which hurt my eyes with its brightness. Something on the floor had ignited in an elaborate pattern all around and between where the Klowns were.
The flash stunned the Klowns, leaving them stationary and looking bewildered. In front of them, Lyndon had his hands held aloft still screaming indecipherable phrases. But he ended with, ‘You are trapped, foul hell-spawn. Now I will banish you.'
With a flourish of his arms, h
e opened his mouth to speak. A claw hammer sailed out from the midst of the Klowns and hit him square in the forehead. He went over backward and lay still.
It broke the spell for us and for the Klowns. Everyone started running again as one. Them trying to catch us. Me trying to lead my friends away.
‘There, on the left.' I yelled as we ran. The others saw what I was pointing to and one by one ducked down a tiny gap between two buildings. It was barely wide enough for Big Ben's shoulders so would most certainly stop the Klowns from coming at us as a mob. Equally, it meant that we were only able to fight them pretty much one to one. I was last to enter the alleyway, thankful for the refuge it offered. Only then did I realise my awful mistake. The alley was a dead end.
Emphasis on dead.
I squashed my panic down. If the Klowns had any guns they would have used them by now, so we just had blunt weapons and knives to fend off until the Police came. The sirens were getting closer, the sound difficult to pinpoint in the confines of the alley. I sounded though as if the Police had driven past us and were going away. The sound was getting quieter.
‘Did I just hear the Police drive straight past?’ asked Frank, expressing the worry the rest of us felt.
I had no time to be concerned about that now though as the first Klown came around the edge of the building at speed. He was moving so fast he careened into the wall of the building on the far side as he entered and bounced off - directly into my bat which I swung upwards to connect under his chin. I had been expecting the first one to be caught off guard so had waited right at the entrance to the alley and suckered him as he appeared.
He fell out of the alley and into the street as a warning to the next in line who slammed on the brakes. Two, then three, then multiple faces appeared to block off the end of the alley. We were trapped. Pinned in by my poor judgement.
The Klowns were not attacking and I wondered why for a very short moment until I heard the reason. From just out of sight a chainsaw started up, and then another. The Klowns at the front parted to let the two chainsaw-wielding maniacs enter. They came at me slowly. I hefted the bat, genuinely scared. Between us, we had no weapon that was long enough to hit the Klowns without getting too close to the chainsaws. If I threw my bat at either one of them, it might hit but was unlikely to do enough damage and would then be lost. I took an involuntary step back. They were grinning.
