Sinema: The Northumberland Massacre (34 page)

Carol had stopped by the refrigerator to listen to the short confrontation without looking directly at one or the other, but as Sam turned back to the sink full of soapy water, Carol’s attention turned to Jimmy. He was trembling and occasionally he would scratch at his arm or back of his hand. Jimmy had always been a social outcast in the village, much like she had become over the last couple of years with her very messy and very public break up with Steve.

She still couldn’t quite accept their situation as real; it was more like a vivid and surreal nightmare. Almost everyone she had ever known, apart from a few scattered distant family members, Bryce and Jimmy, were all dead. Steve, Big Joe, Lisa, Moe, Tess, Duncan … she just couldn’t quite get her head round it.

Maybe if she clicked her heels together, and chanted,
there’s no place like home,
maybe Glinda would allow her to wake up in her bed. God, she needed a drink. She recognised the dull throbbing behind the eyes, reaching round to the temples as the onset of a hangover. Wonderful. And, tentatively raising a hand to her mouth and breathing into it, she realised with some embarrassment that she had a bad case of dragon breath too. She needed toothpaste or vodka. One or the other.

Interrupting all their thoughts, Bryce stepped back into the room, saying, “Everything’s secure. He’s gunna have to break a window or kick a door in to get in here, so at least we’ll have warning.” Placing the rifle on the table, he added, “So now all we need is a pack of cards.”

Drying his hands on a tea towel, Sam asked, “H-how l-long do you th-th-think we’ll be st-stuck here before the p-p-police get here?” His thoughts turned to his father, gravely ill in bed only a few miles away in Blindburn.

Bryce thought about it for a moment. He hadn’t really considered how long they might have to wait; he had been more concerned with an inevitable encounter with Whitman. “Could be a day, could be three. Your guess is as good as mine. But what I do know is that you cannat lose contact with a whole village without alarms being raised eventually.”

“He’ll find us before then, won’t he?” Carol said and unconsciously hugged herself in a vain attempt to draw some comfort from somewhere. She
really
needed a drink … a bloody strong one, but she had already consumed the only alcohol she had been able to find before she had met up with the others … Larry’s brandy. At the time, deep down, she had hoped that the brandy would kill her, like the bottle of wine had killed Janet. She had never felt so alone and had wanted it all to end. Now, with all that had happened, she felt some frail kinship with her fellow three survivors, a kinship that, for now, banished all thoughts of suicide to the dark recesses of her mind. She was pretty sure that they would be revisited again sometime soon though.

“Probably,” Bryce replied, after giving the question some thought. “Whatever his game plan is, he’s gunna have to make sure there’s no one left that could recognise him. He’s gunna search high and low until he finds us. And when he does …” His voice trailed off, not wishing to finish the sentence.

“And when he does,” Jimmy continued, “we’ll gut the twat.” He pulled out his lock knife and whipped open the blade with a sharp flick of the wrist. The brief act of bravado banished his tremors momentarily.

“Put it away,” Bryce told him evenly. “If or when the time comes, we’ll fight him alreet. We’ve all got scores to settle.”

CHAPTER 14

Mi casa, su casa.

As the already poor light rapidly deteriorated with the onset of dusk, the storm steadily grew in intensity, completely obliterating any previous signs of activity. The wind had picked up to a howling gale once more, throwing an eerie beckoning moan through the deserted streets and lanes. The gusting snow had become as thick as static on a television screen, obscuring all but faint hints of what lay beyond. The Northumbria Police Land Rover stood completely covered, with drifting snow reaching the top of wheel arches. Only a slight mound on the road beside it indicated where the body of PC Bainbridge had been laid.

Several isolated lights across the village suddenly winked out as one, bathing the village in total darkness.

The standard lamp in the corner of the Herrings’ living room extinguished with them. As one, the four occupants stood up and glanced nervously around the shadowy room.

“Fuck happened?” Jimmy whispered harshly. He immediately sought the security of his lock knife and clutched it between his two trembling hands.

“Hang on,” Bryce replied and edged carefully over to the window. Easing open a slight gap, he peered into the night. He could only see the faint outlines of darkened buildings, obscured by the surging snow and claustrophobic darkness. “Looks like the power’s out across the whole village.”

“Great!” Jimmy spat, kicking out at the sofa. While opening and closing the blade of his knife, he started pacing anxiously like a caged beast. “Just bastard great, like!”

“For christsake, Jimmy,” Carol muttered. “I’ll see if I can find any candles.”

Bryce retrieved his torch and switched it on, being careful to obscure the faint beam with his hand and aim it down at the carpet. “Here, take the torch – it’s not great, but it’ll help. Sam, go with her.”

Snatching the torch, she said sternly, “I don’t need a chaperone.”

Bryce looked with sincerity into her frightened eyes and said, “Safety in numbers, pet. We should always stick together, or at least stay in twos.”

“Aye, in the horror films, when people get separated, that’s when they get picked off one by one,” Jimmy commented dryly.

Bryce glared at him. Incensed, he said, “Jesus, Jimmy! You’re a great help. You just divvent know when to shut up.” Jimmy’s shadowy form stopped and looked in his direction. His free hand moved up to his mouth and started chewing on his fingernails.

Sam stepped over to Carol and touched her shoulder gently. “C-come on, Carol.”

With the dim torchlight leading the way, Carol and Sam made their way carefully to the kitchen. Tip-toeing and conversing in short whispers, they systematically searched through the cupboards and drawers, until Carol came across a box of plain white candles and a box of extended matches.

“Got some,” she whispered with relief.

“G—” Sam stopped abruptly. A distorted outline of a figure passed fleetingly by the window. His heart started racing and his mouth suddenly ran dry. Backing up towards the doorway and pointing, he stammered, “W-w-w-w—”

Frowning, Carol turned to the window and instinctively retreated in Sam’s direction. “You see someone?”

“Y-y-y-yes!”

For a moment they both held their breath in the quiet darkness. Carol extinguished the torch and shoved it into her pocket. Their hearts were beating hard and fast, the pressure causing their ears to throb hotly, and seemingly loud enough to betray their presence. All became still and the seconds stretched out in front of them until …

The door handle moved with an audible click.

Sam gasped and, trembling, took another step back towards the open doorway. Carol, her legs suddenly feeling like jelly beneath her weight, stopped and thrust out a hand to the worktop beside her. Her fingers fumbled in the gloom for a weapon … anything. The candles in her other hand clicked together softly with the shuddering of her body.

The handle stopped moving.

Within the confines of his own head, Sam’s laboured breathing sounded like a freight train. He wanted desperately to shout out to Bryce, but his dry mouth refused to cooperate. Instead, his eyes hunted through the gloom, searching, like Carol, for a weapon of some kind.

As his eyes spied a knife rack in the corner, the door burst open with a piercing crack, causing both Carol and Sam to cry out and the former to scatter the candles and matches up into the air. The dark, looming figure who had shouldered the door open stepped inside.

Carol’s free hand grabbed an object and instantly hurled it towards the intruder as Sam made a desperate dash towards the knives.

The mug hit Wright with a glancing blow across the forehead, causing him to let out an involuntary yowl. “Police! Stop right there!” One hand held his baton defensively out in front of him as the other, with his torch, shot up to his injured face.

Mitchell pushed past his dazed colleague, similarly brandishing his own baton and torch, the beam dancing across the walls and the two frightened occupants.

As Sam grabbed one of the knives, Bryce and Jimmy rushed in from the hall. Carol had instinctively grabbed a second mug and held it above her head ready to throw.

With Bryce aiming the Bassett and Mitchell aiming a glaring torch beam at one another, and everyone brandishing weapons of one description or another, everyone paused for a few disquieting seconds, unsure what to do.

Mitchell broke the spell. “Detectives Mitchell and Wright. Northumbria Police CID.”

“Oh my God!” Carol cried out with a mixture of joy and relief. She cast the mug, skidding, back onto the worktop and, putting the hand to her mouth, said, “God, sorry!”

Rubbing his forehead, Wright said, “Don’t worry, love. Under the circumstances I’m not gonna do you for assaulting a police officer.”

Lowering the rifle, Bryce said, “It’s Whitman. The murdering bastard’s gone on a rampage.”

“Well, that substantiates what we were suspecting,” Wright said. “You’re the first survivors we’ve come across. And we’ve come across a lot of people.” He chose his words carefully.

“H-have you c-cordoned off the v-v-village?”

“Yeah, you cannat let this twat get away,” Jimmy added. “He’ll leg it if he sees the likes of you, like.”

Before replying, Mitchell gently pushed the door closed, applying a little force to squeeze it back into the frame. Then he turned to them with a concerned look on his face. “Things aren’t quite that simple.”

Placing the knife onto the worktop with a shaking hand, Sam said, “W-w-what does th-th-that mean?”

“Divvent tell us it’s just you two?” Bryce asked with more than a hint of anger. He looked from one officer to the other. Their faces were grim and revealed more than any words could.

“’Fraid so, chief,” Wright said, leaning against the refrigerator and pulling out his cigarettes and
Zippo
. Lighting one, he said, “Mobiles aren’t working and he took out the radio in the Lanny.” He didn’t think it appropriate to elaborate on poor Bainbridge.

“Took
out
?” Jimmy snapped, his voice crackling over the last word. “What is this wanker? Rambo? The fuckin’ Terminator?”

“Calm down, young’un,” Mitchell said. “We’re overdue by a couple of hours already, so questions are being asked and suspicion is being raised. I’m confident that additional units will already be on the way.”

Ignoring the confrontation, Mitchell continued. “First, we need to know everything you know. We know bits and pieces, so hopefully you guys can fill in a few blanks.”

“Can I take one of ’em?” Jimmy asked with a nod to Wright’s smoking cigarette. With mild irritation, Wright offered the packet around and was even more irritated when both Bryce and Carol accepted too.

Between Bryce, Carol and Jimmy, the three of them hurriedly explained the recent events to the two officers, broken only by the occasional
uh-huh
or a brief request for clarification.

Once they had finished, Mitchell poured himself a glass of water at the sink and took a long, satisfying drink. Then, turning to the waiting audience, he said, “That information will help us a lot.” His eyes settled on Bryce’s rifle. “Now, I see you’re armed and, at this stage, I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’ve got a permit for that. What we’re going to need is for you four to hole up here while we continue our search for Whitman and any other survivors.”

“Don’t worry about us, mate. We’ve got sharp sticks. He’s not gettin’ nowhere.” Wright flicked the stub of his cigarette into the sink and smiled; it said, ‘
just let him fucking try
’. He then took the glass from Mitchell and finished off its contents.

“You better take the rifle then,” Bryce said with marked trepidation.

Both Jimmy and Carol opened their mouths to protest, but Mitchell silenced them with a wave of his hand. “No, I wouldn’t be comfortable leaving you without a weapon. We’ll be fine – we’re working methodically house to house. We’re trained professionals.”