Authors: Tom Bale
W
endy was astonished
that Josh would speak up on Nyman’s behalf, but she was also impressed by his courage. Gabriel had been an unnerving enough presence in a busy car park this afternoon; within the confines of the holiday home, he was frankly terrifying. There was a light of pure mania in his eyes, and he radiated a sense of entitlement that was almost regal in its scope.
Judging by the way they hung on his every word, the other four were delighted to play the role of devoted followers. Ilsa and Lara she had seen before, but the two men were unfamiliar. The one who’d captured Evan was referred to as Kyle, while the other was Milo. How Gabriel had managed to recruit what might otherwise have been respectable young people, Wendy had no idea – but she knew well enough that such mysteries occurred from time to time, usually with tragic consequences.
Nyman was ordered to lie face down. He started to obey, only to lash out at Ilsa before hurling himself over the empty sofa. It was futile: Milo, Ilsa and Gabriel were on him at once.
‘You’ll suffer for this!’ Nyman raged as they forced him down on the floor. ‘You fucking lunatics, you’re gonna pay—’
‘Be quiet,’ Gabriel snapped. ‘No one wants to hear it.’
‘Please.’ Knowing about Nyman’s wife made him seem more human; Wendy felt she had to speak up on his behalf. ‘Don’t hurt him, please.’
With an irritated flick of his head, Gabriel said, ‘Cushion.’
Rob and Josh both inhaled sharply. Wendy didn’t understand why, until Ilsa took a cushion from the sofa and tossed it to Milo, who placed it against Nyman’s head.
Lara made to pass the gun to Gabriel, but he shook his head. ‘You do it.’
The girl reacted with surprise. Wendy pictured her on Thursday – the chatty, scatty blonde, peddling the fake bonhomie that had almost, but not quite, had Wendy fooled.
She was duplicitous, yes, but outright evil?
With an embarrassed little shrug, Lara stepped forward. Her expression was hard to read, but there seemed to be – God forbid – an element of pride.
‘Lara, please,’ Wendy said again. ‘You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life.’
Rob added: ‘You should shoot
him
, for Christ’s sake’ – a nod at Gabriel – ‘and give yourself a chance.’
Ignoring them, Lara skirted round Kyle, who was kneeling on Nyman’s legs. As she crouched down, Nyman gave up his frantic writhing and lay still. Wendy heard a sigh, before he murmured, ‘God bless, Mary. We’ll be together soon.’
Lara grasped the cushion with her free hand and put the muzzle against it. Wendy felt the breath catch in her lungs. Surely this wasn’t going to happen? Surely there were limits here?
The girl pulled the trigger. The noise was deafening, painful. They all cried out.
The body jumped, twitched a few times, and was still.
And Wendy understood. They all understood.
There were no limits.
T
he next half
hour or so were a blur to Rob. It took a minute for his hearing to recover from the gunshot, and while the family held one another during this time, supporting each other as best they could, no one tried to speak.
Georgia moved on to Wendy’s lap and buried her head against her mum’s neck. Evan stayed on the floor, his hands clamped over his face. Josh sat with his head tipped back, staring up at the ceiling while gripping his mother’s hand. Wendy, like Rob, was mostly gazing straight ahead, but without focusing. All of them fighting to deny the evidence of a terrible new reality.
The smell in the room was foul, a metallic stench of raw meat, blood and bodily waste. Immediately after the execution, Lara had turned to Gabriel with the expression of an eager pet, a puppy that’s learned to fetch for the first time.
‘You did well,’ Gabriel told her. Lara had looked ecstatic at this modest praise, though Rob thought he detected subtle currents of envy and resentment from the others.
Gabriel seemed content to leave them alone while he oversaw the removal of Nyman’s body. The dead man was dragged out by the ankles, leaving a hideous stain on the carpet, the blood and brain matter still wet and glistening.
Rob was aware of the front door opening and closing; he heard vehicles manoeuvring on the drive. Gabriel’s acolytes came and went, but a couple of them were present at all times, and the gun stayed with whoever was posted in the room.
It took Rob a while to appreciate just how deeply shocked they all were. Wendy was right: facing overload, the human brain simply retreats into denial
. We shouldn’t just be sitting here
, he thought,
numb to the danger we’re in.
But what can we do?
I
t was just
after ten thirty when Gabriel wandered in, chewing hungrily on a Mars bar. He whispered to Lara, who passed the gun to Kyle on her way out. It was the first time the scruffy young man had held the firearm. He looked smugly pleased, but also slightly disgruntled that it had taken so long to get to his turn. He had a surly, resentful look about him, exactly the attitude that Rob had perceived from a distance on Petersfield common.
‘So it’s Sunday, then – what this is about?’
The rest of the family jumped when Rob spoke. Kyle seemed about to answer, before deferring to Gabriel, who nodded.
‘You killed that man,’ Rob continued: ‘And after that, you stalked us. Followed us here.’ He waited for denials which never came.
In the silence, it was Wendy who hit on the big question: ‘But
why
, that’s what I can’t understand. Why would you do this?’
‘Because you helped him,’ Gabriel said.
‘The man in our garden? We had no choice. Anyone would have—’
‘It’s for the Leader to decide. Only the Leader.’ Kyle’s reverential whisper chilled Rob to the core. He used the word
Leader
as though it were a title, a name, as well as a description.
‘But it didn’t even save him,’ Rob said. ‘Anyway, you were trying to frame us for the death, weren’t you?’
‘That was one possibility,’ Gabriel agreed, ‘until an even better opportunity presented itself.’ He smiled. ‘This one.’
G
abriel surveyed the room
, regarding each of them in turn before staring long and hard at one person in particular. Wendy was willing him to shift his gaze.
Not her, please. Do anything to me, but not Georgia
.
Rob had picked up on the same vibe, but when he shook his head at Wendy the message was clear: Don’t come out and plead on her behalf, because that was what they fed on. Give them a hint of vulnerability and they would deliberately, sadistically exploit it.
Even after Gabriel had confirmed their worst fears – that the string of bizarre incidents this week all sprang from what had happened on Sunday – still it made no sense that they would be targeted simply for offering help to a dying man.
The door opened and Milo came in. Wendy thought she’d seen him walk past the café in Canterbury this morning, and earlier an embarrassed Georgia had described how he had got chatting to her at Heath Pond yesterday afternoon.
‘He asked me out, but I said I was going away. He reacted like he already knew, so I thought he might be something to do with Amber and those. . .’ She blushed deeply. ‘But it was this.’
Now Milo opened his fist and let Gabriel take a pill of some kind. Then he offered one to Kyle, who grinned at Wendy as he swallowed it down.
‘A long night ahead,’ he said, and asked Gabriel, ‘Are we giving them to. . .?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘We’ll keep them awake in other ways.’
He was staring at Georgia again. Wendy tensed, preparing to throw herself at his mercy, but Gabriel just muttered something and Milo dug in his pocket and came out with a handful of plastic cable ties.
Evan reacted first: ‘You’ve got a gun. You don’t need to tie us up.’
Kyle, who was nearest, immediately lashed out with an open-handed blow to Evan’s face. ‘Shut up!’ he roared. ‘You speak
only
when spoken to, understand?’
Bristling a little, Gabriel told Milo: ‘Get them all securely tied.’
‘
All
of them?’ Milo queried, as if that wasn’t the original plan.
Gabriel nodded curtly. ‘For now.’
E
van and Josh
were moved to the opposite sofa and made to sit with their hands tied behind them. Another tie was used to link their restraints, leaving them sitting awkwardly, back to back. Kyle won a laugh from Gabriel with a joke about conjoined twins.
Rob was ordered to stand and place his hands behind his back. He stayed put.
‘I want some answers. What are you doing here?’
‘You’ve been warned,’ Gabriel murmured. A nod to Milo, who snatched Rob by his hair and pulled him to his feet. Rob swung a clumsy punch but he didn’t stand a chance. As his hands were being cuffed, he regarded Wendy with a look of naked shame. Then he was shoved to the floor, and Georgia was hauled from her mother’s embrace.
‘How long are you intending to keep us like this?’ Wendy asked. ‘It’s nearly eleven o’clock. What if we need the toilet?’
‘Piss in your knickers, lady,’ Kyle muttered as he leaned towards her. Wendy recoiled at the familiar meaty smell of body odour.
‘You!’ she said with a gasp. Kyle caught her meaning and blew a sarcastic kiss. This must be the intruder who’d sneaked into the house while Lara kept her distracted out front. And then, for a time, Wendy might even have been alone there with him. . .
It was a horrifying thought – until it occurred to her that if she’d been attacked or even killed on Thursday afternoon, this probably wouldn’t be happening now.
The rest of her family would have been spared.
O
nce all five
of them were secure, Gabriel hurried out of the room, followed by Milo and Lara. Only Kyle remained, and Wendy was sure she’d heard a warning from Gabriel on his way out: ‘Don’t fuck this up.’
With the door firmly shut, Kyle hefted the gun in his hand and regarded it with something like awe. He walked slowly around the room, examining his prisoners, all now securely bound with their arms behind them. Tied together, the twins were struggling to get comfortable on the sofa. Rob, Wendy and Georgia sat on the floor, a few feet apart. Wendy tried wriggling closer to Georgia, but Kyle barked at her to stay put.
‘So what happens now?’ Rob asked.
Kyle ignored him.
‘Okay, blank me, just like you did on Sunday. But I don’t see why you can’t explain the purpose of all this.’
Rob was avoiding eye contact with Wendy, but she did her best to mouth: ‘Don’t goad him.’
Then Evan protested: ‘We’ve done nothing to deserve this.’
‘Forget it, Ev,’ his brother said. ‘Anyway, it’s clear he’s just the monkey.’
Glowering, Kyle sat down by the door and rested the gun in his lap, the barrel pointing in their direction. From upstairs there was a series of heavy thumps and a loud scraping noise, as if furniture was being moved. Rob asked what they were doing, but to no avail.
After a minute or two, Evan said, ‘So why follow Gabriel? What do you get out of it?’
Kyle coloured slightly, and aimed his gaze at a point just above their heads.
‘It’s because they’re weak,’ Josh said. ‘Inadequate personalities.’
‘Anyone can see that Gabriel’s a dick,’ Georgia said, and this, at last, provoked a response.
‘He’s a visionary,’ Kyle insisted. ‘It’s not for the likes of you to understand. You’re worthless.’
‘A visionary?’ Rob repeated, incredulously. ‘Explain that to us. Tell us what you mean.’
‘He knows what’s coming. The signs are everywhere, but most people are too dumb to see it.’ Kyle made a noise in his throat, a little gulp of emotion. ‘When the next crash happens, they’ll be lambs to the slaughter.’
Rob snorted. ‘So where did he find you lot? And how did he persuade you to buy into it?’
‘We didn’t have to be persuaded. We were proud to be chosen.’
‘What Gabriel has done is simple enough,’ Josh said, addressing his family as if Kyle wasn’t there. ‘You gather up a group of needy, pitiful outcasts and give them a sense of belonging. Once they’ve been suitably brainwashed, they’re little more than automatons. Poor Kyle here has all the free will and initiative of a toaster.’
This was Josh at his most annoyingly supercilious, and the intention was clearly to irritate Kyle to the point where he revealed more than he should. A dangerous strategy, in Wendy’s view, but for now it seemed to be working.
‘There’s a firestorm coming,’ he told them, his tone deadly serious. ‘When the next financial crisis hits, there’ll be no government rescue. No banks means no money. No money and society will fall apart. Thanks to Gabriel, a few of us
will
be prepared for that. A chosen few, ready to do whatever it takes to survive.’
He stood up, his limbs jerky and restless, and took a couple of steps towards Josh, waving the gun as if he desperately wanted to use it.
‘Because we’ll have practised, you see? We alone will be ruthless enough to survive in the chaos.’
‘So that’s all we are to you, then?’ Rob asked. ‘A trial run?’
Wendy didn’t want to go in this direction, for Georgia’s sake, although it seemed ridiculous to worry about shielding the girl from the truth. Right now they had to face up to it.
She said, ‘Did you steal a laptop from our house?’
Kyle nodded readily. ‘That changed everything. Until then, we were playing a long game. Befriend you, if we could. Scare you. Mess with your heads. But then we learned about this place—’
‘How?’ Wendy shook her head in dismay. ‘The hard drive was wiped.’
Kyle sniggered, and Josh tutted sadly. ‘Nothing’s ever deleted, Mum.’
‘Ilsa recovered the data,’ Kyle said. ‘She found a document with passwords, including one for Hotmail. We read your emails and found this address.’
Wendy shut her eyes. She recalled sending the details to a builder, a couple of years ago, when they were getting quotes for some maintenance work.
‘Let me get this right,’ Rob said. ‘We were. . . “chosen” for this, just because the guy went to our garden? And you followed him, right? That’s why you were watching, out on the common?’
Kyle gave a surly nod, but seemed reluctant to elaborate.
‘All we did was call an ambulance—’ Wendy began, but Rob spoke over her.
‘You didn’t send him to us?’ He sounded animated, as if seized by an idea.
‘No,’ Kyle snapped, now looking furious.
‘In that case, he must have escaped.’
‘You just shut up!’ Kyle swung the gun in front of Rob’s face, the barrel missing by less than an inch. ‘Not another word, or I’ll cut you wide open.’
Rob had ducked back to avoid contact, but now he thrust himself forward again, as if daring Kyle to strike.
‘Go on, admit it. He escaped – because you screwed up!’