DEATHLOOP (51 page)

“Zack Fortune on the straight and narrow is a contradiction in terms.”

“Someone’s eating fire outside,” said Sam, with a little smile.

“Yes, out of sheer boredom I expect,” said Clarissa.

“And Zack’s going to make a speech, you don’t want to miss that.”

“He hates making speeches.”

“I told him he had to.”

“Well count me out.”

Sam gave her one of his looks. “He’ll expect us to be there you know he will,” he said, flinging an arm round her and giving her shoulder a squeeze.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” she said, begrudgingly relenting.

“We’ve got to let him go, Clarissa,” said Sam, quietly, looking straight at her, then he stood up and left the room.

Zack was standing precariously on a chair at the river bank, waiting as Justin herded up the guests and called for a bit of hush. He saw Sam striding over from the cottage, noticeably without Clarissa, and delayed the start of his speech until he had bowled up.

“Okay, well thanks everyone for turning up. Good to see you all…” said Zack, looking stumped, then after a little nod and a smile from Sam, he struggled on. “We’re here because… well not that long ago I met someone called Veronica French who has unwisely agreed to take me on…”

“
She doesn’t know what she’s let herself in for!
” shouted Justin, which got a lot of knowing laughs, although Bill remained stony faced.

“I think she does actually, which makes her decision even more bewildering,” said Zack, eliciting a predictable response, “but I can’t tell you how happy she makes me…”

As Zack continued to ramble on, Clarissa, still ensconced upstairs was just about to head off and join the others when she was drawn to the window by the noise of a revving engine. Light was fading, and looking out over the front garden she saw a transit van skidding up and down outside. The van did a few turns, then it headed straight for the picket fence and ploughed over it, careering over the herbaceous borders and heading straight up the path.

“
Oh my God
,” said Clarissa, out loud, automatically.

There was a horrendous smash as the surreal piece of massive clanking machinery rammed itself against the porch, then backed up, then rammed itself again causing the front window to shatter and fall out of its frame before the van was thrown into reverse and went off ploughing over the lawn and the fence the way it came. Clarissa watched the devastation in a daze, aware of a sudden curious silence from outside, then the hushed voices getting louder as they spread out over the back garden in an invisible wave and swarmed inside. She heard Sam’s footsteps on the stairs, and turned to face him as he burst in.

“What happened? What’s going on?”

“It was Susan,” said Clarissa, “in a transit van of all things.”

Now Zack was there, looking anxious, closing the bedroom door behind him.

“It was Susan, Zack,” Clarissa said once more, “I’m sorry.”

Although Zack, Veronica, Sam and Tracy tried to put a brave face on things, encouraging people to stay, Susan’s party trick was so unsettling, despite everyone’s best efforts, things ground to an uncertain halt and before long most people had left.

Veronica’s family were still there looking grave, Bill noticeably on the verge of losing his temper, speaking with Sam who was trying to play the whole thing down. Upstairs, Zack and Veronica were sitting on their bed together, but noticeably three feet apart.

“She’s never going to stop, is she? This is it now, this is our life.”

“She is going to stop because I’m going to make her bloody stop.”

“No, Zack, what are you going to do?” she said, grabbing his arm. “You can’t drive like this, you’ll have an accident.”

Zack pulled himself free, bolted from the room, and raced down stairs. Bill stepped into the hall as the front door slammed, accosting Veronica as she made her way down towards him.

“Where the hell’s he gone now?”

“For the police, I think,” said Veronica, vaguely.

“We’ve rung for the police, they’re on their way. He’s scarpered, that’s what he’s done, a rat deserting a sinking ship!”

“
Stop it, Bill
,” said Sylvie, in a loud stage whisper as she joined them in the hall, “
just stop all this
.”

“You can’t stay here now with this malarkey going on, pack your bags, you’re coming to the hotel with us,” said Bill leading the trio back into the living room. Veronica shot a glance over at Miriam, picking food from the table like a fastidious vulture, looking more cheerful than she had all day.

“Good idea,” said Sam, “we’ll sort everything out here.”

“Well come on, Veronica, let’s get going,” said Bill, ignoring him.

“Bill, I said stop it, please, this is difficult enough.”

“I don’t want to go to the hotel.”

“Well you can’t stay here with that lunatic on the loose.”

“I want to go home, Miriam can take me.”

“Miriam is going nowhere, she’s drunk.”

“We’ll take you,” said Sam, “Clarissa’s driving.”

It was half past seven as the Mercedes streaked along the A40 towards town, setting off every speed camera it passed, but Zack didn’t know what time it was, or what day, or what month, nor did he care. Everyone had urged caution, but he was sick of listening to other people, they weren’t at the butt end of all this. He had done with the guilt, now he was free to deal with this stupidity once and for all.

It was only when Zack reached Stoke Newington did he realise that his mad dash had been completely unnecessary. Susan was probably still negotiating B roads on the pretty route back to town, or maybe linking up with her one friend Hannah for an excited de-briefing over a cheap bottle of wine. Zack had no real plan or scheme, nor did he know what he would say to Susan when he saw her, he just had to do something to get her to drop this ridiculous vendetta. He left the Mercedes a couple of blocks away and running back, dived into the kebab shop paying for a coffee he had no intention of drinking and perching at the window seat which gave him a good view of Susan’s front door.

Twenty minutes later there was still no sign, but there was someone else he recognized… Jacob, every one of his pockets bulging with scrunched up plastic carrier bags as he trudged home from one of his seek and find missions. Zack sprinted from the kebab shop, zigzagging through traffic, causing cars to swerve and hooters to sound, he was over the street in a few paces and intercepting him on the step.

“All right, mate? I’m Zack, Susan’s friend…”

Avoiding eye contact, Jacob opened up and Zack followed him inside. Jacob waited for Zack to walk past him and start up the stairs before unlocking his door, but even up on Susan’s landing, Zack could hear him burrowing his way through the plastic avalanche that met him in his hallway before locking up by shooting dead bolts in place. Zack ran up another few stairs and sat down. The timer switch clicked off leaving him in darkness. He leant his head against the banisters and closed his eyes.

Two hours later he heard the front door open and close and this time Zack recognized her footfall straight away, clicking across the ceramic tiles, then cushioned by the threadbare runner on the stairs. As soon as Susan stepped into her flat, he jumped the six steps to her landing and pushed his way in behind her, slamming the door, as Susan shot forward with a little scream, putting as much distance between them as she could. She climbed up onto the bed and sat cross legged as usual, making herself very small.

“Okay, Susan,” said Zack, eventually, “you’ve had your mad half hour, now stop this before it gets serious, before someone dies. You could have killed someone today, like you could have killed Veronica or complete strangers in Bellini’s.”

“Veronica fell, I had nothing to do with that.”

“So what were you doing there?”

“I was warning her about you of course.”

“Okay, now listen to this… if you come anywhere near me or Veronica again…”

“I won’t stop, whatever you do, you’re wasting your time with all this.”

“Move on for Christ sake, Susan, get a life!”

“You
are
my life…” she said, romantically.

“No I am not,” he said, right up against the bed now and leaning over her, “and you know why I am not your life? Because you’re a destructive, manipulative loser… so barren and so bankrupt that you find pleasure only in other people’s distress. You’re a witch, and I want nothing more to do with you.”

There were five seconds of stalemate, then, like a cat, Susan sprang up, scratching his face, pulling his hair, biting his ear. The attack was so sudden, and so instantly ferocious, Susan had done a fair bit of damage before Zack made any attempt to defend himself. She grabbed an old chair, cracking it against his body, his head. Zack managed to wrench the chair from her and with his other hand grabbed her by the scalp struggling to keep her at arm’s length, but she was still shrieking and kicking, and swiping and punching and spitting.

Zack threw Susan back onto the bed, but when she grabbed a bread knife from under her pillow and came at him with it, he shot out of the room, frightened by the anger that consumed him, frightened he might lose control, then racing downstairs he was out of the house and turning off towards the main road when he lost pace, like his battery was about to cut out, his lungs on standby, as two cars rammed into each other, doors ripped off in the collision, and started to spin.

A young woman fired out of one of the cars like a fleshy comet, landing at Zack’s feet with a crunching thud. He watched her sprawl to stillness, every one of her movements slightly out of alignment with the one a split second before. Her head lolled from the end of a broken neck and blood sprayed out over her chin. She held out rigid arms towards him. “
Take me, Zachariah, guide me through
,” she said. Then her mouth stretched into a monkey grin and her flesh waxed and shone as death dropped like the final curtain - eternity waiting in the wings.

A passing ambulance stopped, its back doors flung open, uniformed medics spilling from inside examining the corpse for signs of life, but their sagging gestures suggested it was futile because life had already checked out.

This time Zack’s release was swift. He was breathing again and movement swept up from his feet unlocking ankles, knees, hips. He turned back, raced the two blocks to his car and jumped in, throwing the wheel he skidded out onto the road and there was the ambulance off in the distance its blue light flashing. Zack sped along behind it through roads lined with streaks and blobs of light, neon colours, but misshapen, stretched and elongated, throbbing with energy from secret underground wires and cables that ran in mystifying tangles beneath weary feet, bursting out above open ground triumphantly, like vivid flowers, proudly competitive and wanting only to be the best.

The ambulance made no sound, its engine was silent, and although its wheels were displacing recent puddles of rain, cocooned inside his car, to Zack, the ambulance and the world itself for that matter, was mute.

Right outside the hospital, Zack watched the ambulance pull up and the doors swing open. Strangers climbed out surrounding a small boy sitting strapped onto a stretcher, carried like a little king on his throne, the centre piece in a procession. Zack leapt from the car and flew after them asking where the woman had gone,
insisting
they tell him where she was. A woman was put into the ambulance, not a child, and Zack needed to find her. She was dead he knew that but where was she? No one could help, and no one was interested in helping either so Zack burst through swing doors, flew down flights of stairs and raced along echoing halls as wide as airport runways, completely devoid of life.

He had followed
an
ambulance but not
the
ambulance, so where was the other one? And which hospital was this? Had he been here before? Should he know this place? A sign pointed to ‘Morgue’ and he was almost there when he saw her.

The young nurse crossed a desolate waiting area and turned off out of sight. No needle in her arm this time, no gurgle in her throat, no dying pallor in her cheeks, just sparkling eyes and glowing skin. Zack opened his mouth to shout but no sound came out. He ran to catch her up, her quick, easy, seductive movements at odds with the labouring sloth he remembered in her last moments of life. She pushed through heavy service doors and as he dashed outside to follow her an intense light struck him, blinding him momentarily.

When focus returned he scanned the empty parking bay, the bank of tall out buildings that loomed up in every direction dwarfing him. There was a flutter of movement off in the distance as the girl ran up steps to the road. Zack raced to the steps and took them two at a time and there she was already way off down the hill. He tried to increase his pace when he saw her stop, turn off along a small path, and then she was gone.

Zack shot forwards to reach the path and flew down it, but in his frantic determination to find her, turning one way and another he plunged down a steep bank, scrappy bushes breaking his fall. He was beside a rail track now and sound was back with a vengeance, he covered his ears with his arms, desperate to repel its invasion as the roar of two trains, gaily abandoned, hurtled towards each other on the same track.

The two trains crashed head on, their carriages flipping up behind like Mexican waves, tipping off their rails and then falling onto their sides like crippled dinosaurs, slowly slewing to ungainly, smoking calm.

Next came the shrieks as body parts arced towards him, like grotesque, giant hailstones, fingers, hands and arms adorned with rings and chains, (simple testimony to the worthlessness of wealth), single torn off legs with their hopeful shoes laced up neatly, heads, like blood spattered globes, their eyes still open absorbing the shock of being severed, their once beating hearts made redundant now, freed from servitude, halted by their blood’s desertion, flying and trickling off excitedly in liberation. Then came the choir… the sound of the trains colliding was nothing to this, a cacophony of voices all screaming his name.