The monster was laughing.
Some manic noise. Unearthly.
Jeyhun’s gun clicked empty, and the monster came to a halt right in front of him...
He watched as the beast ripped the strange mask from his head and stared down at him.
He had failed.
He had failed his brother.
The monster slowly looked down at his own midriff.
Jeyhun glanced downwards, and could see blood oozing between the gloved fingers of the hand that the monster was clutching there.
He’d hit him!
But Jeyhun’s own body was also screaming with pain.
He’d been hit too.
The monster was still laughing.
Jeyhun watched as the beast slowly raised its arm, the black muzzle gullet of the gun creeping upwards until it was pointing straight into his eyes.
“Goodbye,” said the monster.
There was a flash of white-hot light.
~~~~~
The child crumpled back, stone dead, under the force of the point-blank shot. Nonetheless, Steel continued to fire bullets into the body, which jerked and twitched under the force of the impacts.
Steel was still laughing. Manic laughter.
The magazine clicked empty.
Steel dropped to his knees, and tossed the handgun up, flicking it over in midair, and catching it by its hot suppressor. Then he started to beat the kid’s lifeless face with the butt of the weapon. Cudgelling the kid’s face with big powerful swings like he was hammering at nails.
He could feel the mushy flesh and crunching bones under his makeshift metal club.
~~~~~
Ellard eased the rental car onto the side of the road. The deserted warehouse was another two hundred metres further along the road and he could see strobe-like flashes lighting up a solitary circular window high up in the building’s gable end.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself, and scrambled out of the vehicle.
This backstreet, and the surrounding run down industrial estate, was deserted. Not many cars were venturing into this part of town so late at night. Nonetheless, he ripped a black woollen balaclava down over his head, zipped up his padded khaki sports jacket, and tugged a pair of gloves on as he sprinted silently along the frontage.
The building’s main doors were secured, and looked untouched, so he continued to the far corner of the front wall where he spotted the back alleyway and single rear doorway. Glancing up and down the street he could see no-one around, so he headed to the back of the building and tried the door.
Open.
He pushed it gently open and, weapon first, entered to find the iron staircase in front of him. It was being lit with a renewed flickering fusillade of bright flashes from above and he could see all the way up to the upper landing. Not that he needed the lights to identify the location of the action: suppressed pistol reports, the crack of bullets hitting brickwork, and manic roaring laughter were also ringing out from the top of the building.
Ellard pressed on up the stairs, winding around as he climbed, until he arrived at the top of the stairs where he paused and, easing himself onto his tiptoes, peeped up out of the hole.
In the half-light he could make out, to one side of the large open space, a crumpled body lying in a rapidly expanding pool of dark blood. Some distance away, at the opposite end of the space from the stairwell, Steel was stumbling around wildly, in some strange uneven circle, apparently fumbling with a replacement magazine for his pistol. He was trying to do it one handed, his other being clutched at his midriff. The magazine wouldn’t slot home.
Suddenly Steel roared in frustration and threw the empty handgun at the circular window. The glass smashed on contact, spewing its fragments and the errant handgun into the dark night.
Ellard watched as Steel then drew a broad, evil-looking, machete from his waistband, and stood there, holding it above his head.
The man was mumbling something incoherent to himself.
“Steel! This is Deuce. Stand down.” Ellard tensed himself, ready to drop out of sight – he could recover to one of the other floors if threatened. The madman’s head flashed around and began searching for him in the murky darkness.
“I must hold position!” yelled Steel.
Ellard grimaced. His worst fears about this man were being realised. “Stand down, soldier,” Ellard kept his voice calm and assertive.
Steel fell to his knees.
“I’m coming in now,” Ellard took one, tentative, step further up the staircase. “Is the target neutralised?” he shouted.
Steel looked toward the bloody pile of rags lying on the mattress against the wall. The soldier’s expression was one of pure hatred.
“Is the target neutralised?” Ellard repeated calmly.
Steel nodded.
“Stay where you are, solider. We’ll get you out of here.”
“I must hold position,” Steel mumbled, head down.
“Roger that. You hold position. I’m coming to take over. To relieve you.” Ellard stepped carefully up onto the floor of the loft-space. His gun was readied and directed at the soldier.
Steel didn’t respond, or move. He knelt there, hands clenched before him. Rocking slightly back and forth.
Ellard glanced quickly around the space. It was a mess. It looked like Steel had emptied several magazines into the walls and ceiling and it looked strangely like the crumpled body of the terrorist had been savagely beaten with some form of blunt instrument?
Ellard turned back questioningly to Steel. What had he done to the target?
Steel had stopped rocking.
“Steel?”
No response.
Ellard edged closer.
“Steel?”
Still no response.
The soldier remained motionless.
Ellard edged another step forwards and glimpsed the machete handle thrusting out of the dead man’s stomach.
“Oh, f*ck!” Ellard rushed over and grabbed the soldier’s head but Steel’s lifeless body collapsed untidily onto the floor to one side.
He crouched and inspected the wound. There were multiple bullet entry holes, all slowly oozing blood across the dead soldier’s midriff. A quick glance behind the soldier confirmed what Ellard had expected – gaping exit wounds – the machete had only served to finish the inevitable.
The older man shook his head, rose and rushed over to the target. The youngster was a mess. There were multiple bullet wounds and the kid’s face was smashed to a pulp. Then Ellard spotted the boy’s backpack and, stepping carefully around the pooling blood, grabbed it. Maybe there’d be something useful inside?
He stood and scanned the empty loft-space again, and saw the answering machine on the floor next to the upturned table. He collected it and stuffed it into the backpack then, dragging the trailing telephone cable with him, rushed down the stairs and back to his waiting vehicle.
In the distance, he could hear approaching sirens.
There was no chance he could clean this level of mess up.
Not without a full team of agents, cleaners, and builders.
He needed to get clear, and quickly.
~~~~~
Barfold
I’m not sleeping very well. The bed feels too big, too empty, and I can still smell you.
Our little home is full of you, full of Lizzie, full of happy memories, full of pain... but, despite all these things, I’m glad I’m here. This was our place. Our safe haven. Our little nest.
We spent a long time getting it decorated and looking the way we wanted it to.
I gently roll my sore body over, so I’m on my side, and stretch my arm out around the ghost lying beside me.
“I love you, Iuli,” I whisper into the emptiness.
~~~~~
Berlin
Ellard called in from the car as he headed out of Berlin. “It’s a mess,” he said simply.
“Are you clear?” asked Greere, frostily.
“Yes, I heard sirens. Did someone hear the gunfire?”
“It’s not police, it’s BND. A Secret Service SWAT team. Get well clear and keep going. You did the right thing to get out.”
“I’ve got the kid’s pack, and an answering machine he was guarding. I ripped out the cable as I left. They may not notice it’s missing.”
“Amongst the dead bodies, and Steel’s bloodied arsenal, you mean?” Greere was, not unsurprisingly, bubbling on the edge of another fit of apoplexy. “Paris and Madrid have both gone dark. The kid mentioned a message in his phone call. Perhaps it’s on the machine?”
“That’s what I was wondering. I think they might have been using it to keep in contact with each other.”
“If so, the machine will not be available for the kid’s brother to listen to. At the moment he’s still in the Baltic, heading for what looks like landfall on the Polish coast. We need to try to get him tagged, before he finds out something’s happened and goes to ground too.”
Ellard pulled the rental to the side of the road and fished a tablet laptop out. “I’ll head up that way,” he said, firing up his satnav mapping application.
“Yep. Head directly to Gdansk. I’ll send Tin up to you. Meet him there. He can do it.”
“Why?” Ellard frowned. “I can do it.”
“Madrid is dark. Tin is useless there now. Give the gear to him in Gdansk and then get back here. I suspect it won’t be long before we’re ‘summoned’ about Steel and, if so, we must make doubly sure we don’t lose the trail while all the Agency bleating and chest-beating is going on. You can run Tin from here. You said he was the best of them, now it’s time to find out.”
“Why Gdansk?”
“Tin can get there quickly. I’ll find him a seat on a scheduled flight, and confirm his arrival time shortly. I’m fairly certain that the brother won’t be planning to travel directly toward Berlin, the cell’s exit routes have been too carefully separated until now. Tin can be near the landfall before the boat gets in sometime tomorrow night.”
~~~~~
Madrid
The ringing phone startled Jack from his sleep and he rolled his naked torso, across the single bed, to grab it off the nightstand. “Tin,” he muttered croakily. The cheap hotel room, with its broken thermostat, was swelteringly hot and he could feel a trickle of sweat running down his chest.
“This is Ace. Change of plans,” said the voice.
~~~~~
Barfold
Steve’s beaten up hatchback appears at the end of the street and splutters toward me. I’m waiting in front of the house. I’ve been here for a while. Steve is late – as usual – but he isn’t entirely responsible for my lengthy loitering.
The days are proving even harder than the nights. At night, I have drugs which help to carry me into a parallel existence, where my family are still alive and where my existence is a blissfully normal cycle of too much work and too little quality-time. Then daytime comes round, at some unearthly hour, and I’m awake again, aware, and reality floods back.
The silence.
The emptiness.
I’m developing a routine, to help me get through each day. The doctors and psychologists have recommended that I structure my time. Steve kindly volunteered to help, and I was pleased when the hospital allowed him to participate in my physiotherapy. But Steve’s slot in my schedule doesn’t arrive till midmorning, and that’s a lot of long minutes away from the moment I stir. That’s a whole lot of push-ups, a whole lot of sit-ups, and a whole lot of time on the, previously dust-gathering, exercise bike and weights machine in our little garage. That’s a whole lot of time for me and Vengeance to walk out to the woods, which are a mile or so away, and for me to let loose my anger at distant drinks cans, and any other litter the local lovers choose to leave behind after their evenings of clandestine passion.
There’re also a lot less pigeons around the woods...
My anger is surprising me. I’ve never really been one for anger, or violence, or shooting pigeons. I’ve always preferred to find compromise, to seek happy solutions, to talk down antagonists, but now I find myself embracing fury and enjoying its bitter, destructive, pointlessness. The doctors say it’s only natural. “Part of the process,” they mumble sagely.
I’m not so sure.
In the kitchen, piles of hair are scattered over the floor. The result of an hour, this morning, with an electric razor and a Number Two comb. I might even try a Number One later. I’ll tidy up, when I get back later.
Steve pulls up in front of me in a thin cloud of oily smoke, and leans across to wind down the passenger window. The window gets stuck, as usual, so he shouts through the tiny gap that’s opened, “Crikey! That’s a mean haircut! You ready?”
I shake my head in mock disbelief. Steve’s one person I just can’t be angry with. He goes through this routine, every day, with the same cheeky grin plastered over his face, and with the same endless enthusiasm and happiness about him.
I pull open the door, throw my kitbag into the back and climb in. “You’re early,” I grunt sarcastically, and we drive off to the sound of his rattling engine and infectious laughter.
~~~~~
Gdansk, Poland
It was raining in Gdansk when Jack stepped out of the airport building. It was also bitterly cold. He frowned and pulled his thin jacket tighter to him as he scanned the busy roadway. He’d need to get himself a decent coat, he decided.
A nondescript grey car with German plates was making its way toward him amongst a line of taxis and other vehicles. At the wheel, he could make out Deuce’s shock of white hair. The car pulled to the kerbside and Jack nonchalantly pulled open the passenger door and climbed inside.
Deuce nodded once at him and they drove off in silence.
The car wound its way around the airport’s perimeter and then onto the main road toward the nearby city. “Where’s your stuff?” Deuce eventually asked, bluntly as usual.
“Madrid. Station locker.” Jack felt completely exposed without his backpack but the instructions from Ace had been clear. He especially didn’t like not having his familiar Browning to hand, but there was no way he could have flown with it.
“Good...,” said Deuce.
Jack was slightly surprised at what sounded like a tacit endorsement – Deuce more normally preferred to have a go at him.
“...Kit like that is wasted on you.”
Jack grimaced – that was more like what he expected. “So what’s the mission?” he responded frostily.
“You have to meet one of the cell members, called Sergei Ebrahimi, when he finally disembarks the fishing boat he’s been travelling aboard. He’s arriving into Kołobrzeg this evening.”
“He’s been holed up in Scandinavia?”
“No. He’s been on the boat for a long time. We suspect he’s hitchhiking and didn’t realise he was going to be on board for a whole fishing trip.”
“What about Sikand?” Azat Sikand had been his allocated target in Madrid. “What’s happening to him?”
“He’s gone dark. We need this one to lead us back to him.” Jack could tell Deuce was being careful about how much he was saying. “That’s where you come in. You have to tag him, not get noticed, and then get your sorry arse out of Poland.”
“Back to Spain?”
“Wherever you like, as long as you stay in Europe.” Deuce pulled the rental off to one side of the road. “There’s a bin over there. Go and toss your jacket into it.” Jack looked at him incredulously. “Get on with it Tin, we haven’t got all day and, don’t worry your soft and tiny mind, there’re a couple of heavy jumpers and a greatcoat in the back for you. Here, in Poland, that pathetic jacket’s about as useless as you are...”
~~~~~
Barfold
I think the training went well today. All except for the part where I decked our instructor with a back kick.
That part hadn’t quite been to plan...
Fortunately, I didn’t hurt him too much, and it didn’t stop him repaying me with a couple of return whacks, later on in the sparring sessions.
I’d forgotten how much I enjoy Taekwondo as a sport. It helps that, thanks to the steroids which are seriously amping me up, I’ve nearly doubled my body weight and muscle mass, and it also helps when your nerves continue to refuse to transmit much information to your brain. Those little pops from my instructor should have left me reeling, but today, they felt like gentle pats on my midriff.
I also suspect that, if I’d really been trying, I could’ve blocked them, but discretion was being applied and, for the sake of the rest of the group, I’d decided that it was best not to rile him too much. Our instructor is a bit of a madman, and his usually perpetual bad temper is a mirror of my own more recent temperament.
Steve’s driving me home and I’m sitting, watching the outskirts of town go by through his almost-closed side window.
“Have you seen? The gypsies are back,” he says as we approach my estate – a complex geometric exercise in new-build land-parcel minimisation which perches on the edge of the, more ancient and casually distributed, medieval market town of Barfold.
I look around and can see a gaggle of eclectic vans clustered along the verge; it always makes me wonder where they find the money for the land-cruisers and SUVs that sprawl at the end of muddy churned tracks around their hovel.
“Um,” I acknowledge eloquently. Diction isn’t coming easily, the doctors say it’s unlikely I’ll ever become much of an orator. My voice has stayed very deep and my damaged vocal cords tend to spit the words out in rumbling fragments. “Long as they keep t’ themselves,” I grunt, though I doubt that the residents of sleepy Barfold’s half-timber mansions will share my feelings of benevolence.
~~~~~
Kołobrzeg, Poland
The short afternoon was fading to darkness as they drove down the multicoloured main street. Kołobrzeg wasn’t a particularly large town and Jack watched the short lines of five-storey, gable fronted, shops passing his window.
“I’m going to drop you over by the river. You can walk to the docks from there. We’re not certain exactly which dock the fishing boat will moor at, but they’re all in reasonably close proximity to each other.” Deuce glanced across at him, “Ace will stream the target’s coordinates to your cell in real time.”
“Understood.” Jack reached into the back of the car, pulled forward the second heavy jumper and started to pull it over his head. It looked like the sort of top a well-intentioned but colourblind aunt might have knitted for him, and he was pretty certain that the pattern looked vaguely like it had the word ‘COCK’ emblazoned in capitals across the front of it. Deuce had probably taken great pleasure from selecting it for him.
He flicked his cellphone over and tapped the icon for its tracking application. “It’s working,” he reported after checking the map and the little green triangle which marked Ebrahimi’s position. His target was currently offshore.
“Remember: this is vital, Tin. He’s the only one with an active cellphone now. If we lose this guy then the mission’s as good as over. Do what you have to, but remember that you don’t exist here. There is no back up. If we go dark on you then...”
“I know the score,” Jack said bluntly. “I’m here for my bro’s. I’m not going to let them, or you, down.”
Deuce pulled the car to the side of the road. “See that you don’t,” he said.
~~~~~
Barfold
Someone’s banging on my front door. I’ve been ignoring the bell, which works perfectly by-the-way, but it doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect. Whoever it is, they’re being very persistent.
And irritating.
Can’t they tell that I’m busy?
Can’t they tell that I’m tidying Lizzie’s room, straightening her soft toys and changing the bedding in her cot?
I have to get it ready for later.
I have to get it ready for bedtime.
It’s part of my ‘schedule’...
Reluctantly, I pull myself to my feet and move through the evening half-light, out of Lizzie’s room and across to the front of the house where I can look down from behind our bedroom curtains. I’ll turn some lights on – in a while.
There are a couple of what look like Travellers, gypsies by another name, standing on our short driveway. A man and a woman, who appear to be whispering to each other and shaking their heads. Then they look toward my living room.
No! There are three of them! Another one was hidden, out of sight, somewhere in my front garden, beneath me, down by my front room window...
What are they up to?
How dare they peek through my windows?
The Peeping Tom is nodding to the other couple and making thumbs-up signs. Then the woman hacks up a load of phlegm and spits it onto my pathway.
Bitch.
The three of them turn and wander off, back up the street.
We chose our little house because it’s at the end of one of the side roads on the estate. It’s out of the way. It doesn’t get many people walking past it...
I watch carefully until the Travellers are out of sight.
~~~~~
Kołobrzeg
Jack shivered as he stood in the shadows of one of the warehouses which surrounded the docks. Several of the structures were still brightly lit as various boats of different sizes were loaded, or unloaded, industriously. The building that Jack huddled beneath was dark.
The big coat, two sweaters, woollen gloves and hat that Deuce had given him were all helping, but it still felt cold.
He swapped the smartphone between hands so he could thrust the cold one into his coat pocket. Through his glove, his frozen fingers touched the grip of the old, beaten up, SIG Sauer P220 pistol stowed in there. Deuce said the gun was fully functional, but the dented, black nine-millimetre had seen better days. The SIG wasn’t dissimilar to a Browning, and he’d fired several in the ranges, but he still hoped he wouldn’t have to use it; not least because Deuce had only issued it with nine rounds of ammunition.
“I’m not wasting good stuff on you,” Deuce had said matter-of-factly. “You can dispose of the piece afterwards. We don’t expect it back. Make sure it’s stripped and the parts are distributed into several locations.”
Jack shook his head angrily at the memory.
A small, nondescript, sports holdall lay at his feet. In it were the tracking devices, though he could have held all three in the palm of one hand. Clever little things. They only talked when they had to. Extremely hard to detect.
All he had to do, was plant them.
Two would be pretty straightforward.
The third would be very hard.
~~~~~
Barfold
Finally I’m in bed again, waiting for my medications to drag me off to peaceful oblivion and my loved ones. Today has felt like a long day. My ‘schedule’ hasn’t quite properly extended beyond afternoons – beyond going into Lizzie’s room.
I seem to spend a long time in there. Thinking. Trying to etch the too few memories into my mind...
Afternoons seem to be the worst.
That’s when the tears come...
I shouldn’t be here.
If only I had kept on walking.
If only I had been beside you.
Mum called again this evening. She says I should go with her to the church. Says I should go and visit the graves. “It will help,” she says, but I don’t want to go. I don’t want to visit the graves. I want to be in the earth too. Beside you both. In the cold, hard, unforgiving ground.
I would fit in perfectly.
I am cold, hard, and unforgiving too.
~~~~~
Kołobrzeg
Sergei Ebrahimi watched as the strange Spaniard piled goulash into his mouth.
“Muy buena comida! Is good!” the Spaniard mumbled through bulging cheeks.
This tall, heavily muscled, stranger had appeared at his table, dumped his tray of food and sat himself down; all the while jabbering incoherently. Initially Sergei had thought about getting up and moving to another of the many empty tables which surrounded them, but this guy looked like he was just another sailor making the best of a few hours of shore-leave.
Sergei turned his attention back to his own plate, which was full of Kaszanka sausages and potato-and-cabbage stew. He was very hungry. This dockside eatery, with its battered plastic furniture and bright strip-lights, had been the first place he’d found after disembarking.
He’d felt unsteady walking on solid ground after so long on the boat. Food and a few moments to settle his inner ears would do him good. Then he’d walk into the town, and find the railway station.
He’d call in to Jeyhun’s machine on the way.
“Me, Fernando,” the Spaniard bellowed, prodding toward himself with his knife as he spoke.
“Sergei,” said Sergei, glancing into his uninvited eating partner’s piercing green eyes.
~~~~~
Barfold
I stand here in my dreamland and watch you and Lizzie playing at the end of the tunnel. It looks like some kind of pat-a-cake game. Lizzie is squealing with laughter. Dad and Grey Beard are looking on from one side, smiling. I can’t help but wonder why my imagination insists on conjuring up the old-boys? Perhaps it’s just that I’d like to think that you’ve got some friendly company around you?
In the background of my dream, I can hear a faint, metallic, rattling noise.
It sounds like it’s nearby.
Where’s that coming from?
It sounds like a door lock being turned.
~~~~~
Kołobrzeg
Jack watched carefully as the terrorist tucked into his sausage.
He hadn’t expected Ebrahimi to appear so young: possibly not even twenty. The youth’s chiseled, handsome, dark-skinned features lay somewhat obscured beneath several days of ragged, wispy, beard, and his straggly dark-brown hair tumbled untidily over broad shoulders. He was tall, a couple of inches shorter than Jack, but still around six feet high. Not that height mattered, being seated as they were at this dirty cafe table.
Jack knocked the salt cellar off the table with his elbow. “Mierda!” He exclaimed and bent over extravagantly to recover it from beside Ebrahimi’s backpack. Fumbling the little glass receptacle, he sent it flicking away from him and under the other man’s chair. “Collons! Get, please?” he enunciated loudly in his best bullshit, gesticulating vigorously with one arm whilst remaining hunched over out of sight.
Sergei sighed and pushed his chair back and Jack pressed the razor sharp end, of the narrow metal tube he was palming, into the double-layer fabric base of the young man’s pack. The device slid into place silently.
One down.
~~~~~
Barfold
Through the drugs and sleep I can hear noises. I’m not used to hearing noises in my dreams. This is something new, and I’m not entirely certain what it means.
Pat-a-cake continues at the end of the tunnel. Clearly you and Lizzie can’t hear the noises but Grey Beard is looking at me. His grisly face is contorted into an expression which almost looks concerned. Dad looks over too. He definitely looks concerned.
I turn away from you all and our darkened bedroom slowly resolves itself around me.
There are noises downstairs.
Someone is inside our house.
Moving around.
Is it you? Have you snuck off downstairs looking for some midnight snack?
No, of course it can’t be you... You’re lying here beside me. Sleeping peacefully.
I’d better deal with this intrusion before the noise wakes Elizabeth – it’s very hard to get her back to sleep if she’s disturbed.
I don’t want either of you disturbed.
I climb quietly out of bed, pull on my robe, and reach for Vengeance.
~~~~~
Kołobrzeg
Fernando – Jack – returned as quickly as he could from the diner’s counter, slammed two bottles down onto the table and threw himself dramatically onto his plastic chair. The target looked at him quizzically but Fernando just shrugged, reached forward, grabbed the bottle nearest to him and raised it.
“Salud!” he pronounced.
Sergei Ebrahimi reached forward and tentatively grasped the gift and Jack watched the boy’s arm muscles stretching against the fabric of his tight sweater. This guy was fit. He hoped he’d dosed the beer with enough stuff.
“I must go now,” the target said – enunciating each word slowly so that Fernando would understand.
“Yes,” Jack enthused with a face-full of his most spectacular smile. “Go now! But... DRINK first!”
Ebrahimi lifted the bottle.
‘Come on,’ thought Jack.
The kid moved to put his bottle back down on the table.
“Friends!” Jack exclaimed loudly and thrust himself forwards, offering the base of his bottle across the small table. “Drinks UP!”
Sergei shrugged, smiled, chinked Jack’s bottle and drained the beer. Then he stood and pulled his jacket over his broad shoulders, picked up his pack, nodded once to the strange foreigner and walked toward the doorway.
Jack lounged in his chair, apparently disinterested, sipping on his beer. In his head, he started counting.
~~~~~
Barfold
I creep gently onto the landing. For a moment, I wonder why I’m creeping? This is my house. I don’t need to creep...
Creeping does, however, feel like it’s the right thing to be doing at the moment...
Looking down quietly into the stairwell I can see all the way to the front door. It’s open.
Torch light is flickering around in the sitting room. The inner door is also open.
Then the shadowy figure of a man emerges with a bulging dustbin bag. The bag is clinking. It looks like something heavy, and somewhat stereo-system shaped, is at the bottom of this bag, with a load of CDs piled loosely on top of it – our CDs – and finally there are some large rectangular objects. Those would be our faux silver picture frames from around the fireplace. The ones with our pictures in them. You. Me. Elizabeth. My memories.
It feels like my insides are freezing. Every thermal speck of inner humanity is frosting over. I should feel enraged. I should feel disgusted. I should be jumping up and down, or shaking, or in shock, or panicking, or crying, or shouting... I should feel something, but I don’t. Instead I watch the filthy thief, as if I’m sitting in front of some low budget TV drama, as he walks to the doorway, places my memories gently down on our front door step and then returns casually into my living room.
“The TV’s too big for us to get round to the car,” a voice whispers in the darkness.
“F*ck off,” a second deep voice mutters back gruffly. “There are no cameras on this street. No-one’ll see us. Let’s have the f*cking lot. The rich bastards won’t even miss it.”
A second man appears in the inner doorway – perhaps it’s the adrenaline pumping within my icy core but all of my senses feel sharpened and I recognise this invader as being one of the Travellers from earlier today. He too moves to the doorway, with a second bulging bin liner. They must invest in heavy duty polyethylene for their thievery: good quality plastic so their swag won’t go falling out of the bottom. They wouldn’t want a perfectly sellable DVD and satellite box to get damaged now, would they?
He deposits the bag next to the other one, turns, and propels his dirty stinking flesh back through the inner entrance to our warm nest.
I move to the top of the stairs.
~~~~~
Kołobrzeg
Jack waited for a few moments, then rose and followed Ebrahimi out into the cold night. The sky was clear and the slim moon, past zenith, cast baleful light across the thinly street-lit industrial landscape.
The boy was heading toward the river and town, following directions he had procured from Jack during their stunted conversation over dinner. The boy wasn’t to know that there was a wider, much more heavily trafficked, and substantially better lit street a hundred metres south of here. He wasn’t ever going to find out either.
Jack hurried along to close the gap. Ebrahimi was already staggering slightly.
Jack scanned the nearby buildings for darker alcoves or alleyways.
~~~~~
Barfold
Vengeance waits patiently in front of me, a thin black line of pent up fury.
I can hear them shuffling into position and then they emerge. Well, the first one does – the one I didn’t recognise. He has his hands behind his back and our large, black plastic, plasma screen stretches into the inner doorway behind him. His comrade must be holding the other end.
I pull the carbon shaft back, feeling its cool rigidity sliding over my left forefinger until the barb touches my flesh. Vengeance creaks slightly, like a far distant coffin lid being prized upwards by some vampire-hunting hero.
The thief hears the noise, looks up, and freezes.
“What the f*ck,” his friend grumbles angrily from within the living room.
The foremost thief turns his head toward the living room doorway. “We’ve got company,” he mutters. I’d expected him to sound surprised or angry at being discovered, but this guy just sounds casual, like he’s in the right and I’m the one who’s in the wrong. Like it’s me that’s in their home, not the other way round.
He stoops and calmly puts his end of the television on the floor and the plasma’s extreme angle is then slowly corrected as the other man puts his end down too.
“Listen Mister,” he starts, and the other one appears in the lounge doorway. “Let’s just make sure nothing stupid happens here, right.” He doesn’t sound at all concerned. If anything, I’d say his tone is bordering on threatening. I gently let the tension back out of the cord, feeling the carbon shaft gently returning forward – I’m not at my best when I hold the draw for too long. “We’ll just be off with this load of old junk, and you say nothing about it, right.”
The second one chips in, “Yep, you just take yourself back to bed like a good little boy ’n we’ll piss off out of here and forget all about you. Then, in the morning, you can call your insurance people and get yourself some nice new stuff.”
“And then we won’t have to do anything nasty to you, or pop back here from time to time just to make sure you’re behaving, right.”
Most definitely threatening.
I’m amazed at how calm I feel. No, I’m more than calm, I feel free for the first time since the bomb. As I face potential injury, and maybe even death, I feel enlivened. I realise, in one split second, that I really don’t care. Not one iota. Live or die, there’s nothing I’m afraid of any more. I can feel my mouth twisting into a genuine smile of pleasure.
The one nearest the front door stoops to pick up our television again.
“Not a good idea,” I grunt deeply.
He stands angrily and spins to face me. “Listen f*ck-wit,” he rasps. “We know exactly where you live, right? We’ll be round every f*cking day and night, to do your sorry f*cking head in, till you wish you’d never been born. Want some of that? Eh?”
I smile down on them: unequivocal, merciless, anger personified. I feel no emotional attachment whatsoever for the creatures in front of me. In another life – a happier life – I would likely have been empathic – live and let live – we all have to find our own way to make it through, etcetera – but this is not a happier life.
Some other so-called fellow human being has changed all of that.
The thief continues unabashed, “Got a missus, eh? Yeah, I know, I’ve seen the picture of the kid too. Let’s be very clear, right. It’s not just you at risk here. Anything happens to us, anything at all, and we’ll hurt them too, right. We’re a big group. There are lots of us. Is it really worth it, big man? For the sake of a few things and an insurance claim?” The carbon slides slowly over my finger. “I’ll happily hurt anyone, me. I’ll happily hurt a f*ck-wit like you, or your missus, or your kid...”
And that will be his last thought: he is not going to threaten my loved ones.
Those will be the last words he will ever utter: he is not going to steal our precious memories.
That is the last, malicious, unnecessary burst of oxygen and energy that the shriveled malignant piece of human detritus will ever waste as my steel-tipped carbon shaft blasts its way into his wrinkly eye socket and smashes through his head, thrusting him bodily down and backwards and pinning his lifeless form neatly to the inside of my doorframe.
“Wha...,” manages the second as I pull the next shaft slickly from the quiver strapped to my back, notch it, pull, and loose in less than a second. With a mighty crack and a thump he collapses backwards and his heels drag the plasma over with a secondary clump.
I watch impassively as the second man’s leg twitches a couple of times in the darkness, then it goes still.
“Bullseye,” I mutter to myself, then wander downstairs, collect the two bags from my doorstep and pull the front door closed.
~~~~~