Blood Crazy (12 page)

Sarah looked at me. ‘That told him.'

‘Yeah. He's going to have to watch that mouth doesn't run away with him.'

The convoy slid out of the retail park like a long, lumpy snake. We travelled slowly, bumper to bumper. Heads stretched out of windows looking for trouble.

We needn't have looked for it. It came soon enough.

‘Faster, Nick. They're chasing us.'

‘Hurry up!'

‘They're not chasing us, Anne … Vicki, calm down and stop jumping up like that.'

‘They're frightened, Nick,' said Sarah.

‘There's nothing to worry about. They're over a mile away. We're driving away from them.'

‘Can't you go any faster?'

Through clenched teeth, I explained, ‘Vicki, you see this long line of trucks and buses? It's a convoy. That means we can only go as fast as that truck in front.'

The convoy, nose to tail, close as dogs smelling one another's backsides, did a frustrating fifteen miles per hour. Orders from Miss Keene. She didn't want anyone being left behind. We wouldn't have left a tortoise behind at that speed.

There were ten vehicles. Every vehicle but mine carried a number from 1 to 9. Number nine was the yellow mini-bus behind me at the back of the convoy. Number 1 was the bus leading the convoy. That contained the Steering Committee. They hadn't time to fit all the vehicles with CBs otherwise we'd have had directives crackling over the speaker every 6.3 minutes.

Sometimes the convoy would suddenly stop. Twice the truck in
front shunted into the Land-Rover in front of it. What else could you expect from teenagers with a few hours' tuition?

Then we'd lumber off again, engines over-revving, gears crashing. We took a roundabout route to avoid the town centre. The houses looked abandoned now. We saw no one.

I asked Sarah, ‘What now? Have they got a plan?'

‘The plan is to find somewhere safe for the community to settle. Their experience is that they find somewhere for a couple of days then Mr Creosote finds them, then they have to run for it again.'

‘Community? They think this is permanent, then?'

‘Martin thinks so.'

‘Martin Del-Coffey. Huh, praise be to God that he was spared, eh? Hell, what's wrong now?'

‘It's Dave,' Vicki squealed. ‘He's got out of the bus. He's running away. Mr Creosote's chasing him.'

Sarah sat up. ‘He's not being chased. He's found a boy at the side of the road. He's rescuing him.'

‘There's Mr Creosote in a field over there.' Anne pointed.

‘Anne, that's a scarecrow. Uh … We're moving again.'

A pattern established itself. We'd drive along minor roads, then the convoy would bump to a stop. Dave would leg it across the road and come back with more kids. Once we stopped for a fifteen-year-old pushing his dead nephew along in a supermarket trolley. Another mile, then it was two girls on a wall. One soaked head to ankles in blood.

Once Dave ran into a house and returned carrying a half-starved five-year-old girl.

My own feelings sparked between irritation and admiration. Dave Middleton, the clean-living, church-going guy – the kind I detested. Yet he had the guts to go into houses where he could have walked into a roomful of lunatics. There was no doubting his dedication to saving everyone he could get his hands on.

We drove on. Sometimes stopping as a kid climbed on the bus up front, plucked from certain death by Saint Dave of Doncaster.

The suburbs fell away and we headed into open countryside.

Sarah stretched her neck up to see into a field. ‘There's one of the messages they mentioned.'

‘What messages?'

‘Those that Mr Creosote are making.'

In the field hundreds of bottles had been laid in lines across the turf. We were high enough to see it formed a cross. As we drove by the bottles flashed like a heliograph in the sunlight.

‘Who do you think they are trying to contact?' asked Vicki, her eyes big behind her glasses.

‘Sit down while I'm driving.'

‘They can't be trying to contact us, that's for sure,' said Anne. They are trying to kill us.'

Vicki said: ‘A girl told us that because we've been so sinful God has punished us by making our parents loony, and now they are sending these messages to God asking him to end the world.'

I wanted to say one word: Bollocks.

Sarah said gently, Those are just rumours … silly rumours.'

‘It's true. The girl said that whenever Mr Creosote speaks it's not his voice that comes out but God's.'

More bollocks. Mr and Mrs Creosote were just plain swinging through the trees gibbering like a crazy baboon. Nothing more than that.

Sarah's problems were more practical. The real worry is if someone falls sick. We've no medical skills. Even something like appendicitis'd be a killer now.'

‘Don't worry,' I said. The great Mr Del-Coffey will cut you open with one hand while holding a textbook in the other. No doubt composing an ode to the fall of civilization while he's at it.'

‘Martin's important to us now, Nick, and don't you forget it. Last night he said the teachers are as good as dead, we have to teach ourselves now or the human race will become extinct.'

‘Last night? You and Del-Coffey?'

‘Yes, with Rebecca and Dave – we were discussing what we must do to establish a viable community.'

‘Sounds cozy.'

She gave me a cutting look, then sat curling her hair round her fingers.

I stared at the tail lights of the truck in front trying to guess what she was thinking and knowing the painful truth. Civilization can die tomorrow but jealousy's here to stay.

* * *

We drove for another hour, looping round Doncaster. No one spoke. We stopped a couple more times. But I didn't bother to see who got on Dave's bus.

‘We're going to a farm!' Vicki's voice pierced my ear. ‘Dave's taking us to a farm.'

The convoy pulled into a farm yard. A burnt-out tractor stood in front of the barn. Dave told us to stay put while he checked the buildings. Five minutes later we got the thumbs up.

Dave loped up. ‘Nick, en route we found some older teenagers. You know all there is to know about trucks so would you mind giving them some tuition? We need more vehicles and drivers.'

We walked up to number 1 bus as the door opened and the latest batch came out blinking into the sunlight.

‘I'll introduce you to them, Nick. This is—'

As the first one stepped off the bus I knew there was a God. And that God had made up his ubiquitous mind to torment me for every sin I had ever committed.

‘Tug Slatter.'

Slatter leered through his tattoos. ‘Hello, sweetheart.'

I woke in the back seat of the car to see the note under the wiper.

Pencilled on the front of a piece of paper folded in half:
NICHOLAS ATEN
. I read the note and felt like I'd been kicked in the back.

‘Slatter. Slatter! Wake up, you bastard.'

‘Piss off, Aten.'

‘Look at this. I said look at it.'

He came out of the sleeping bag like a sullen bear. I shook the note in his face. ‘I've a good mind to shove this down your throat. With my boot.'

‘If you don't take that thing away from my face I'm going to break your bastard neck.'

He looked up. The eyes, flanked by tattooed blue birds, bore into me as aggressively as ever.

‘Aten. I don't know what the fuck you are talking about.'

‘This. You stuck it under the wiper of the Shogun.'

‘What would I want to do that for?'

‘To get at me, that's what for. Did you think I'd be stupid enough to think my parents would find me here and leave me a note?'

‘I didn't do it.'

‘Course you damn well did.'

‘Is it my handwriting?'

I knew Slatter's moron style well enough. ‘No … But that doesn't—'

‘Is it your mummy's handwriting?'

‘Of course it isn't.'

The pause was a mistake. He read doubt in my face and lay back, laughing, his hands behind his head.

‘It's not your handwriting, Slatter, but I know you got someone to do it.'

Slatter didn't reply. He stared up at the truck's ceiling. It was his usual habit of suddenly switching off as if the world and people in it had disappeared.

‘What seems to be the problem here?' The sixteen-year-old was one of Dave's church chums.

In a matter of fact way, Slatter said, ‘Fuck off.'

Bible boy fucked off.

‘Saw your mother yesterday, Aten.'

Jaw muscles tightening I glared at Slatter.

‘She looked in a bad way.' He nodded solemn. ‘She'd been shagged by the town donkey.'

It was one of his damn pointless comments designed to provoke you. I shook the note again.

‘If you do this again, I'll kill you.'

As I strode away furiously, I heard him say to himself, ‘It's a good laugh. But I didn't write the note.'

I really wanted to kill the psychotic bastard. But I had a big problem. I believed he was telling the truth.

We stood in line for breakfast which was cooked outside on camping stoves.

I carried the note in my pocket; the words I carried in my head.
Come home. Urgent news for you. Love – mum & dad

One of Slatter's sick tricks. Years of punishment had pumped a little cunning into his brain. He still had a pathological need to fight
people, but he'd learnt to provoke them so they hit first. Then he could stand there in front of the probation officer/cop/judge and say, ‘He hit me first.'

Worse than feeling the victim of Slatter's sadism was doubt. Was the note genuine? The notes I'd seen at home. A piece of paper folded against the kettle:
Nicholas
. Then the message:
Nick. Gone shopping. Meat pie for you. Love
–
mum
. Or something like that. Of course the handwriting was different but there was something about the rhythm of the message that was the same.

‘Eggs and beans?'

I nodded and took my plate back to the car. I could be home and back in an hour. It wouldn't be that dangerous. Pull up to the house in Lawn Avenue, stay in the car, sound the horn – see what happens then.

Dave walked up like he'd got springs in his plimsolls. He asked me to check on one of the Land-Rovers after I'd eaten. Rebecca Keene and two church buddies were going to drive across country to a remote hotel. ‘It's near where St Timothy's have their summer camp. If the hotel's deserted we'll move there. We'll have good accommodation, kitchens, fresh water supplies. That'll come from the stream. There's trout this big in there. We'll be able to build a thriving community.' Dave enthused while I thought about driving back home. I could feel the shape of the folded paper in my back pocket, maybe—

‘Nick … Nick, can you do that for me?'

‘Uh, what do you want me to do?'

‘You're our mechanical expert. Can you check number 2 Land-Rover's engine and tyres?'

Rebecca and her companions were away by nine. Normally they could have been there and back in five hours, but Rebecca wouldn't risk driving faster than twenty-five. On the roads farm animals roamed wild. You hit a cow at fifty, you wreck the car.

I asked around if anyone'd seen Slatter putting the note under the wiper. No one had. Slatter had taken himself up into the hayloft in the barn. There he sat, dangling his pit boots above everyone's heads while drinking from a bottle of vodka. A sixteen-year-old girl had got the hots for him and danced behind him talking non-stop.

She'd have to watch it. Once an old girlfriend of his had said
something hadn't liked and he'd rammed his hand inside her mouth and tried to pull out her tongue.

When Slatter started spitting vodka on the people below they moved outside. If this went on I wondered if Dave would try kicking Slatter out of the community.

Sarah was helping younger girls boil water on the camping stove out in the yard, her long blonde hair tied back.

‘What do you make of this?' I handed her the note.

She read it then looked at me, her blue eyes trying to gauge my feelings. ‘What do
you
make of it, Nick? Practical joke?'

‘Yeah.'

‘A sick one. Was it Slatter?'

‘It's not his handwriting, but he probably put someone up to it.'

‘What did you intend doing with this?' She held up the note.

‘I'd like to nail it to something solid – Slatter's forehead, for instance.'

‘Forget it, Nick.' Her voice was gentle and touched some part inside of me. She twisted the note into a spill and lit it from the stove. As the flame neared her fingers she dropped it on the ground. Then she kissed me on the cheek while squeezing my forearm between her two hands.

‘It's not worth fighting over, Nick. If you'd take my advice keep well away from Slatter. He's digging himself into a hole anyway. Yesterday he headbutted Simon because he saw him reading a Bible. A couple more incidents like that and the Steering Committee are going to order him out.'

‘Excuse me.' Dave's voice sang out across the yard. ‘Boys, girls, ladies, gentlemen … Can I have everyone's attention, please?'

We shuffled round to the middle of the yard so we could see him standing there in the back of a pickup, smiling, his arms out in a communal embrace.

Slatter was nowhere in sight.

‘You probably know by now that Rebecca, Luke and Clifford are on their way to the Esk Hotel in Eskdale. I don't know if you know the area but it lies in a beautiful valley with forests, meadows, and a stream fed by mountain springs. Rebecca's going to find out if it's safe for us to move up there. If it is we should be in our new home by tomorrow. The hotel is a converted country mansion with nearly
fifty bedrooms, so we can all live under one roof together. There's a huge dining room with a minstrel's gallery. I know you'll all like it there. However.' He held up a finger, his face serious. ‘It will be no picnic. The disaster that has befallen us is enormous. We face great danger. Not just from the mentally ill adults but from natural threats to our survival – hunger and disease. Yes, there might be places that haven't been affected by the madness. Yes, we might be rescued. But we can't rely on that. We must be prepared to survive alone. As if we are the only people alive on Earth.'