Blood Crazy Read online

  ‘Slatter?’

  ‘No, it’s your fairy bloody godmother, who’d you think?’

  Slatter oozed out of the shadows at the back of the barn like a bad memory. ‘So, what’s happening to him in there?’

  ‘That’s what Dave and me are going to work out. Why haven’t you left with the convoy?’

  ‘You know what? You should kill him. Pour diesel in on him through the vent in the roof, then drop a match in.’

  ‘No. We’re going to work out a way to get the door open without him killing one of us. Why aren’t you on the bus, Slatter?’

  He looked at me with those cruel eyes. It was an effort for him, but he was thinking. ‘Aten. What did your parents do to you?’

  ‘Nothing. I was out when it happened.’

  ‘Then they’ll be looking for you. When they catch you they’ll cut you to fuck.’

  ‘They’ll not find me.’

  ‘They will, Aten. They’ll follow you till the day you die.’

  ‘Yeah, and what do you know?’

  Slatter fixed his eyes on me, then pointed at the lock-up. ‘Because that mad fucker in there is my father.’

  With that, Slatter spat on the floor and walked out into the yard.

  Anyone else I’d have said I was sorry. Not Slatter: I just watched the back of his tattooed neck as he stared into space, smoking a cigarette.

  I looked through the gap into the lock-up.

  Christ Almighty. I jumped back a yard, my heart beating like a power hammer.

  When I got over the shock, I looked in again. Cautiously this time. I hadn’t expected to see that.

  Mr Creosote, Slatter senior, stood at the other side of the door. The light-bulb eyes stared back into mine. He just stood and stared, his lips twitching in a way that told me something excited him. He seemed to sense something was going to happen soon.

  ‘Nick,’ Dave strode into the barn followed sulkily by Curt. ‘Nick, Creosote’s on the move. I reckon we’ve got fifteen minutes to release the gentleman in there and get away from here. Is Tug helping?’

  ‘I don’t think he will. Did you know it’s his father in there?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. Does he want us to try and take him with us?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t want to do that. In fact, what he really wants to do is torch his old man.’

  ‘Heaven help him. Well … We haven’t time to worry about that now. Let’s just get the door open, then we can go.’

  Curt stood in the doorway looking in the direction of family Creosote. ‘They’re really shifting, Dave. They’ve made it as far as the crossroads.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Curt,’ said Dave. ‘That still gives us another ten minutes. Listen, this is what we do. Unlock the padlock – quietly – tie string to the steel pin that fits through the latch, there. Then run the string over that beam to the car. We climb in the car, I pull the string, that lifts out the pin – hey presto. Mr Creosote’s a free man. Now, who’s got the padlock key?’

  We looked at one another.

  ‘Bloody Nora!’ Curt turned white. ‘I forgot to ask Del-Coffey for it. He’s taken it with him.’

  I wanted to hit the idiot. My patience with him had already been wearing thin. That morning I had heard him laughing with some other kids as Dave made wooden crosses for the grave of the Singing Sisters and Rebecca.

  Through his loose lips Curt had chuckled. ‘I suppose now you could call them the Swinging Sisters.’

  ‘Curt, there’s a bunch of keys in the farmhouse. Fetch those. There might be a spare for the padlock.’

  Curt sweated. ‘We haven’t got time. Them crazy bastards are cutting across the fields. They’ll be here in five minutes.’

  ‘Five minutes is enough, Curt. We are still civilized – we do not leave people locked up in a cell to starve. Bring the keys.’

  Swearing, Curt ran to the house. I noticed Tug had climbed into the back of the car and sat watching us, his face expressionless.

  The mob were half a mile from us. They were climbing over a fence in a dark wave. Dave had been generous giving them five minutes to reach us. I gave them three.

  It only took a minute to tie the string to the padlock and trail it over the beam and through the open front passenger window of the car. I would drive, Dave would pull the padlock free from the safety of the car.

  Curt came running back, panting through his loose wet lips. ‘They’ve made it as far as the bridge, Dave. It won’t be long now. I think we—’

  ‘Get in the car, please, Curt.’ Dave’s patience was out. ‘In the back seat next to Tug. Nick and I will handle it now. Try the keys, Nick, please.’

  There must have been twenty keys on the iron ring and my fingers were like frozen sausages. I pushed the first key into the padlock. Jesus, first time lucky … Shit. The key part turned but wouldn’t shift the lock mechanism. Try again, Nick.

  My blood thudded in my ears. I kept shooting glances over my shoulder at the driveway. Any minute now it would be swarming with lunatics hungry for our skin.

  ‘Don’t worry, Nick. I’ll keep a look out.’

  By key six I was ready to quit. Suddenly it seemed a pointless exercise to let the madman out – he’d only kill us if he got the chance anyway. But we were playing the game Saint Dave of Doncaster’s way. From the cell I heard a loud snort, almost the kind of noise horses make when they get excited.

  My hands shook now as I forced the next key into the slot. This is stupid, Nick. You’re going to get yourself killed … Get in the car, and drive, drive, drive, Nick. You’re going to get yourself peeled like a banana and—

  ‘Got it, thank God!’

  ‘Thank God indeed.’ Dave still sounded cool. I was sweating like a pig on its way to the bacon factory.

  ‘Now, Nick. Just release the lock. Leave the pin through the latch. Is the string still tied to it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  We ran back to the car. I revved her up as Dave climbed into the passenger seat and took up the string’s slack.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ Curt’s eyes bulged. ‘The bastards are coming up the road!’

  Slatter, sitting in the back, smoked a cigarette, and for all the notice he took of what was happening he could have been simply on his way to tea at Auntie Flo’s.

  Dave gently pulled the string. I saw the padlock jiggle. He pulled harder.

  In the back Curt yelled, ‘Get a frigging move on! They’ve nearly reached the gates!’

  I snapped back. ‘Curt. Shut it … Or you can get out and walk.’ That shut him up. He sat in the back staring at me, his loose lips shaking.

  ‘No. The wretched thing’s stuck.’ Dave gave the string a tug. ‘The padlock moved but I can’t slip it up out of the catch.’

  I made a decision. A totally damn stupid decision – but I went for it. ‘Dave. Get behind the wheel.’ I climbed out of the car.

  ‘What you doing?’

  ‘I’ll just pull the thing out and run for it. Be ready to drive as soon as I’m back in the car.’

  I don’t know if Dave said a prayer for me but I saw his lips moving before I ran back into the barn.

  Two yards from the lock-up door I saw the padlock had all but come out of the latch. I was standing with my hand out ready to lift the thing off when I heard the crash.

  The door exploded open, kicked from the other side.

  I froze still, arm stretched out. In the doorway the man stood, his light-bulb eyes burning into mine. If he’d moved then I wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  I snapped round and ran. The Shogun’s passenger door yawned wide open and I just dived for it, bouncing head first into Dave’s shoulder. He pumped the pedal and we were buzzing round the yard in a skidding turn.

  I slammed my door shut as the madman bounded out of the barn.

  I expected him to chase us, braying on the glass. Instead he sprinted across the yard and jumped onto the burned-out tractor to stand, one foot on the seat, one foot on the char
red tyre rim. He froze there, glaring at us, like some schizoid baboon, as we skidded the car round the yard and down the driveway to the road.

  We pulled out as the first Creosotes rounded the corner fifty yards away. Within seconds the car left them behind.

  I slumped in the passenger seat like a wet piece of rag.

  ‘We should be back with the convoy in a few minutes,’ said Dave, smiling. ‘You did a good job, Nick. That took a lot of courage.’

  I said nothing, but I made up my mind there and then. Whatever happens, Nick Aten. Never, ever, play the hero again.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Surprising How Quick the Rot Sets In

  ‘Nick. Look at that.’ Sarah leaned forward in her seat to get a better view. ‘We expected buildings and the fabric of civilization to decay, but I didn’t think the rot would set in so soon.’

  I looked in the direction she looked. There was a lake where no lake existed the week before.

  ‘We’ve had some heavy rain,’ I said, slowing as the brake lights of the truck in front flashed red. ‘I didn’t think we’d had that much.’

  ‘Doncaster’s fairly low lying so there are lots of pumping stations dotted about to get rid of the water that accumulates in the drains.’

  ‘So, no electricity, no pumps pumping.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it. A lot of the land around Doncaster is reverting to swamp.’

  ‘Look at the church,’ cried Anne from the back seat.

  Vicki jumped up to look. ‘It’s like a boat, all surrounded by water.’

  ‘It looks as if we’re going to get a taste of it now,’ I said slowing the Shogun. ‘Lift up your feet so they don’t get wet.’

  I was joking but it was close. Ahead the road was flooded up to the axles. We ploughed through it more than a hundred yards before reaching the dry road at the other side. Just then I’d seen a glimpse of the shape of things to come. It might take years but leaf falls, floods, soil erosion, plant growth would eventually make the roads vanish from the face of the Earth.

  We joined the Selby Road and headed north. We saw no one. In the back the girls fell asleep. In low voices Sarah and I talked.

  ‘It’s going to be dark before we reach Eskdale,’ I said.

  ‘We won’t try and do it in one day. Dave plans to camp for the night once we’re away from the major towns.’

  ‘Sarah, do they know what killed Rebecca?’

  She shrugged. ‘Martin’s sure it wasn’t contagious. The two that went with her are fine. The guess is that it was some kind of blood poisoning from the cut on her finger.’

  ‘Talk about babes in the damn wood. We don’t know anything, do we? Probably your average GP would have diagnosed what was wrong with Rebecca and saved her bloody life with an injection. I mean, are we going to blunder round dying of ’flu and measles and rickets?’

  ‘We’re going to have to learn, Nick.’

  ‘Maybe what we will learn is that we don’t have a hope in hell … I keep thinking what those two girls did in the barn. Had they the right idea? Quit while you’re still healthy. In five years time are we going to be covered in lice and boils and be digging in the shit for worms to eat?’

  Her voice was small. ‘I don’t know, Nick. We can only try.’

  Reaching Eskdale should have been a pleasant drive through the countryside. Now it had become a dangerous journey through a new world I called the Madlands.

  We were just kids who didn’t know shit. The place was lousy with madmen who, given half a chance, would strip the skin from our faces. We’d no weapons, and even if we had we wouldn’t know how to fire the damn things.

  The world was just plain mad, bad and dangerous. And I was scared. My eyes darted from left to right just looking for monsters to jump out and gobble us whole. Even at rest stops when I closed my eyes all I saw was the mad staring light-bulb eyes of Slatter’s father, or the Singing Sisters gliding out of the darkness with golden halos. Then the ear-stabbing crack of the ropes snapping tight.

  ‘Nick … Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you want me to drive? You look on edge.’

  ‘I’m okay. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. I was just telling you there’s another one of the patterns made by the Creosotes in the field across there. It looks like a stick man made out of foil plates.’

  I shivered, goose bumps raised like boils on my arms. ‘I don’t know about you, Sarah, but I’m just about ready to believe in this Creosote-communicating-with-God business.’

  ‘I know the feeling. It’s because we’re frightened. We start looking for simple answers. Martin Del-Coffey said: Take away civilization from a man and you aren’t left with a man without civilization, you are left with a completely different animal.’

  ‘It’ll take more than a teeny philosopher to get us out of this crap in one piece.’

  ‘It will take more than that, Nick. But we have to remember not to allow fear to take control of us. Martin said we must be aware strange things will happen to us mentally. We’ve all gone through a harrowing ordeal, we’ve seen terrible things, people literally torn to pieces. We’re frightened. For a while we are going to live in constant danger. It’s inevitable that more of us will die. Consequently we will become more irrational, we are likely to become extremely superstitious; probably even paranoid.’

  ‘What’s that mean? Paranoid?’

  ‘In a nutshell, we’re going to be afraid of our shadow. And we’re likely to irrationally blame people, even things, for our misfortunes, like the Nazis blamed the Jews for all their problems and how the—’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like Del-Coffey.’

  ‘But don’t you see he’s right? He’s trying to make us understand what will happen to us. It’s like you get ’flu and your doctor tells you what symptoms to expect. Fever, aches, weakness. We’re going through nothing short of a nightmare. There’ll be a psychological impact on us with its own symptoms – superstition, irrational fears, paranoia. But if we know the symptoms we can deal with them.’

  I asked her suddenly. ‘Are you on the Steering Committee?’

  ‘Yes. I am.’

  ‘You’re Rebecca’s replacement?’

  ‘No … Dave asked me, that’s all.’

  We drove in silence for the next twenty minutes. Then without apparent reason the convoy stopped suddenly.

  A minute later Dave came springing down the line of vehicles.

  ‘Nick … We’ve a problem.’

  I followed him back to one of the trucks. One glance at the steam hissing from beneath the cab told me what was wrong.

  ‘The radiator hose has split,’ I said. ‘I told you it was cracked when I was checking the vehicles back at the farm.’

  ‘Can you do anything with it, Nick?’

  ‘It depends how bad it is. Like I said, we’ve no spares. What you can do is get me a couple of eggs.’

  ‘Eggs?’

  ‘It’s okay, Dave, I don’t want to eat them. If the hose isn’t completely ruptured I’ll crack the eggs into the radiator and they’ll seal the leak. With luck that’ll get us as far as the hotel.’

  He went to get the eggs while I lifted the flap. Steam billowed out around the convoy. The hose wasn’t beyond the point of no return yet. While it cooled I grabbed a couple of buckets and went in search of water.

  ‘We’re not far from the River Ouse,’ Dave told me. ‘It’s just across that field there. Do you need any help?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ The truth was I wanted some time by myself. The suicide of the girls was beginning to bite.

  I pushed through the gap in the hedge and crossed the field to the river. It took just seconds to fill the buckets but I grabbed a few minutes to sit on a rock and watch the water go by.

  The river was a good fifty yards wide. Birds swooped down low over it to peck midges from the air. Somewhere a fish jumped with a splash. The peace was relaxing and as the minutes passed the world didn�
��t seem so frightening any more. I began to look forward to reaching the hotel. Maybe I would end up sharing a room with Sarah.

  As I stared at the water I heard the whistle.

  I knew that sound. My head came up sharply, my eyes searched the far banking until I saw them. A man and woman stood there at the edge of the river looking back across at me.

  Dad waved. ‘Nick! Where on Earth have you been? We’ve been looking for you for days!’

  A bullet couldn’t have winded me more.

  ‘Nick,’ called mum. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ My voice felt as if it didn’t belong to me. ‘I’m okay. What about you? Are you—’

  ‘Nick, we can’t hear you properly. Work your way downstream and cross at the bridge.’ They began to walk along the far bank, waving me to follow.

  ‘Hurry up, Nick,’ shouted mum. ‘We can’t wait here.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ I called. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘We can’t talk now. We’ve got to go.’

  ‘But what on Earth’s happened? Dad … Dad …’

  They didn’t stop. Mum looked back and shouted. ‘Have you heard the news, Nick? It’s marvellous, isn’t it?’

  ‘What news? Mum … Dad … Come back, I don’t know where you’re going. Come back!’

  As I followed them through the bushes alongside the bank I nearly ran smack into Curt.

  ‘What’s wrong, Nick? Why you running?’

  ‘I’m following them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Those, on the other side.’

  ‘Why? They’re Creosotes, they’ll kill you.’

  ‘They’re not damn Creosotes, they’re my parents.’

  He looked at me, scared. Just then I looked pretty wild and he must have wondered if I’d gone over the edge into the wonderful world of Creosotedom too.

  ‘Dave … Dave sent me to find you, Nick. They need to get going. There are some Creosotes following us back up the road. Another ten minutes and they’ll be here.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  He stood and stared at me, his lips flapping.

  ‘I said piss off!’

  Just then I wanted to feel my fist smack into that Sloppy Joe mouth. I snarled and made a run at him.