Road to London: City of the Dead

IX – August 1st

When the light that seeped through the muddy windows from the watery morning sun finally woke Katrina, the first thing she noticed was the stabbing ache in her side. The pain was coming from the three long, slender objects that she had foolishly tried to rest her ribs on. Even though Israel and James had spent hours sawing and filing at the shotguns to make them lighter and less manoeuvrable, it didn’t make them any less uncomfortable to sleep on.

James had only managed to drive away from the Bettle House for about forty-five minutes before he had pulled over, claiming that driving when he was this tired was dangerous. So they’d child locked the doors and parked up in a lay-by next to some lorries whose drivers had gone to sleep two months ago and woken up as something else entirely.

When he was awake again, he’d given himself a couple of hours to wake up properly and walk around the motorway before he was prepared to get behind the wheel again. Katrina felt terribly sorry for him, it must be so hard bearing the responsibility of everyone. It wasn’t just him who was tired though. In fact Hiya-kō was the only person who looked like they were in any state to travel. While waiting for James she had taken a seat on the roof of the Land

Rover and was meditating, as she often did for many of her waking hours.
Katrina could hear the music from where she was standing, even though Hiya-kō had her ear phones plugged firmly into her skull. Katrina couldn’t be sure exactly what kind of music she was listening to but picked up on a heavy baseline and was genuinely surprised that the Japanese girl wasn’t deaf by now. One of her hands held a purple, linen cloth which she wiped back and forth across the already glistening blade of her sword while the fingers on her other hand tapped out an intricate beat on the roof of the vehicle.

Katrina listened closely to the strumming for a little while, then flinched when the engine roared into life. The seven other teenagers (excluding James who was already behind the wheel with a glum expression on his face and huge dark shadows under his eyes) shuffled back to the car and resentfully retook their places. Katrina decided that she really couldn’t be dealing with the guns again so she lay down in the foot bed area and covered herself head to toe with the blanket that she had fled the Bettle house wearing.

*****

Katrina’s head slammed into the bottom of the front seat when the Land Rover skidded to an abrupt halt. The screeching of the tires was almost deafening and the stink of burning rubber was almost overpowering. Katrina screamed loudly but stopped when kicked swiftly in the stomach by Hiya-kō. For a moment there was silence, broken only by the heavy breathing of her friends. Then a multitude of angry voices washed over her and the Land Rover. Screams and shouts of “Get the FUCK outta the car!” and “I will FUCKIN’ murk you!” were all around.

Katrina lifted her blanket slightly. From her position of the floor she could see only almost directly up though the wind screen. James had his hands on his head and to her horror she saw the snout of a revolver at almost point blank range to his face through the glass. In the rear view mirror she could also see people coming around the back of the vehicle.

Most were wearing dark hoodies with baseball caps under the hood and either balaclavas pulled over their faces or strips of cloth pulled up over their mouths. Katrina couldn’t help but think at how pointless this was in a time when there were no police to review CCTV footage of car hijackings. On their lower halves they wore branded tracksuits, some with large emblems that announced their West Ham football allegiance. All wore shiny, expensive looking Nike trainers that stuck out like a saw thumb next to the rest of their apparel.

Their clothing wasn’t the thing that alarmed Katrina, what did was the wide assortment of sinister looking weapons they held in their hands. Along with the givens like baseball bats and crowbars, some held hatchets, hammers and one assailant was even armed with a compound bow (the modern kind used in competitions).

After a hail of abuse and threatening commands, James slowly pulled the keys out of the ignition. He then cautiously took off his seatbelt and opened the car door. Conrad did the same from the passenger seat. In the rear view mirror she saw Israel and Latiwa also begin to leave by the door of the boot and she could feel Hiya-kō, Svetlana and Nathan moving about behind and above her.

Katrina began panicking, what was going on? Should she leave her hiding place and follow her friends? She remembered Hiya-kō’s attempt to silence her and respected the girl’s wishes by staying where she was, on the edge of tears. Shifting slightly she turned to the left so that she could she could see out of the door that Hiya-kō had left by. One of the men had a machete like knife to her throat at arms length.

The blade was thick and must have been at least a foot and a half long. Its brown leather sheath was strapped to his back and he was holding Hiya-kō’s cased sword in his left hand at his side by the grip. Although the lower part of his face was obscured by a scarf type strip of red material, Katrina could see from his gel spiked black hair and dark brown skin that he was probably of Indian or Pakistani descent.

She couldn’t see James or Conrad from here but she could hear them. They were talking to a boy with a harsh East London accent who sounded like he couldn’t have been any older than they were. “I SAID,” Katrina flinched and nearly yelped as what sounded like a pole or a bat slammed down on the bonnet. “Don’t you speak, unless I FUCKIN’ say so, yeah!?”
“Alright,” the second voice was Conrad’s, “we don’t want any trouble man, why don’t you just...”
“I said shut your FUCKIN’ gob yeah!?” this was followed by a low grunt as the pole/bat had obviously come into contact with Conrad’s stomach.

Katrina wanted to curl herself into a ball and bawl but she knew that she needed to keep silent and still. She was trembling awfully though, and wasn’t sure how long she could bare to stay like this. The sound of James voice brought her back to her senses and she listened intently; “What...” he was clearly waiting to see if he too would be clubbed, “Do... You want?” The question was followed by an uncomfortable silence that instantly created an air of foreboding.
“Well we can either one of two t’ings,” The volume of the youth’s voice lowered but the tone became much more ominous. “One. We tie you up, then take your food, your fuel, your weapons...” there was a pause after this that showed how even he was ashamed to say the next bit, “and your girls.”

As soon as he heard this Conrad began screaming about the many obscene things that he would allow happening before he let “You fucking scumbags” take the girls with them. Then he was once again silenced with a couple of blows with the weapon that Katrina still couldn’t (or wouldn’t) visualise.

“Or two. We cut you into little bits, then take your shit anyway, you get me?” this time Conrad didn’t say anything. Not because he was afraid for his life but because he knew that piping up would only get him hit again. Katrina heard sobbing and recognised it as Svet. She imagined her holding Nathan, her boyfriend’s own knives held at their throats. Her thoughts drifted to Israel and Latiwa next. Strong and proud, not showing their fear to anyone, just waiting for an opportunity to rip these bastards apart.

“You’re not from here are you?” the question came from James, whose voice was alarmingly calm. There was quiet, assumedly because the query was so unexpected. After a while a defiant reply was fired back.
“You mean just cos I’m black this aint my fuckin’ country?”
“No, I mean South Wiltshire, in fact...” James’ voice had become soothing, almost hypnotic. “you’re not from this part of England at all. You sound like you’re from London, East London. Am I right?”

There was no noise following this but she could picture the boy pacing, a bemused expression on his face put there by James’ bizarre track of thought.
“Yeah man... yeah we are.” The voice had softened, as if from nostalgia. She imagined James breathing a mental sigh of relief at having worked his way into this tiny crack in the aggressor’s front.
“So, the question begs, why are you here? There must be a reason that you boys are so far from home” if James could pull this off, he might just have saved them all from the biggest shit heap they’d ever found themselves in.
“Football innit.” The statement was blunt but the violence in the voice was melting away.
“You guys are fans? On a trip?”
“Nah man...” all the hate now gone, the tone had become saddened, “West Ham, under sixteens. We’re on tour.” By now the guy sounded as if he was about to break out in tears.

“We beat Southampton two nil, and we was setting off real early like, so we could have a lie in before we played Bournemouth. But then... Then the fuckin’ bus crashed and the driver was dead and we tried to get help but everyone was fuckin’ dead ‘cept us! We got back to Southampton, and we holed out in dis place for a while, there were other people there, like our age. But...” he trailed off, probably staring into the distance while the nightmares from his past tormented his mind.

“Then they woke up... didn’t they?”
“That don’t fuckin’ matter man!” the aggression had returned slightly, but not aimed at the boys this time. “Aright. We won’t take the girls and your weapons, but man we gotta take your food and the petrol, I’m sorry man but we gotta survive too. I need to keep the boys safe man!”
“It’s ok,” James’ speech was beyond hypnotic now. It was entrancing, even Katrina felt herself being sucked into his words. “Just let us go and everything will be just fine. In fact, we’re heading to London too. You could come with us if you’d like?”

Katrina could feel Conrad’s anger at hearing this from here. There was no way he was going to stand for that but before he spoke up one of the other gang members cut in furiously. “Fuck this Will!” she heard him walking around the side of the car towards the front where “Will” and the others were standing. “You said We’d get girls man! You fuckin’ promised!”
“We can’t bruv!” protested Will, “I know I promised blud but we can’t take ‘em away!”
“Fuck it,” the second member had reached Will now and the two were deep in heated discussion. “Don’t need take ‘em wiv us, yeah?” Katrina heard snarls and rustling as Conrad struggled with invisible captors. “Jus’ give ‘em a raggin’ over dem bushes. Then we take our shit and fuck off yeah!?”

The next few minutes were a blur. Katrina thought that she was about to pass out when she heard the resigned grunt of acknowledgement from Will. She cried in silence as she heard the shrieks and whelps from the girls as they were manhandled and the shouts of rage from the boys as they were forced to look on.

She looked over out of the open door and watched with disgust as the boy holding the
machete to Hiya-kō’s throat felt her body up and down with his left hand. Her face was emotionless but Katrina could see the murder in her eyes. He had tucked her sword into his belt and Katrina saw her fingers edging towards the hilt. She shook her head as frantically as she could without drawing attention to herself. Hiya-kō saw her friend’s motion and stopped, curling her hand into a fist instead.

She flattened herself against the floor when she heard the noise of someone coming up to the car, opening up the petrol cap, popping in a long tube and beginning to siphon the fuel which they’d siphoned themselves only a few days previously. He was standing there for about a minute, his head peering through the glass at the blanket under which she was hidden.

Out of the corner of her eye Katrina saw something in the rear view mirror. She looked directly into it and saw a lanky ginger boy trying to drag Svetlana away from the spot where she was standing. She was in tears and wailing but Nathan, restrained as he was, had his head down and was doing nothing to try and break free.
When he finally had Svet under control the boy pushed her against the boot of the car and

Katrina saw him grin wickedly. He began undoing his belt (obviously not patient enough to wrestle his prize over to ‘dem bushes’) when behind him, Nathan gracefully whipped his arms out of the lock they’d been placed in, wrenched his own Ghurkha knife out of the boy’s loosened belt and hacked his head off in one clean swipe.

Unable to stop herself, Katrina screamed. But even over the sound of her own bellowing she heard the thud as the head hit the floor, then the rain like pitter patter of blood spaying onto the roof of the land rover. Another scream, masculine and far louder than hers, caught her attention. She looked out of the open door to see the Indian boy clutching at a severed wrist. Blood was pumping out of the stump in powerful throbs and the hand was still twitching meekly on the tarmac.

Hiya-kō’s sword was back in her hands, raised. After a few seconds of appreciating her victim’s anguish she finished him off by opening his throat with a strike too fast to see. The scream ended and the body fell on top on the hand, a dark pool quickly spreading from beneath it. There were the tell tale sounds of similar skirmishes all around her. Shouts and wails and thuds and cracks everywhere.

Suddenly the air was split with a deafening boom. Through the windscreen she saw Will’s smoking pistol held high in the air. Everyone stopped, transfixed by fear at the noise. Katrina raised her head off the floor of the car enough to see Will’s other hand across his chest. There was a small blade protruding from his shoulder and a patch of blood was growing steadily from its handle. She recognised it as Conrad’s Swiss Army Knife and realised that he must have stuck it there during the chaos.

She edged a little higher and saw Conrad held to his knees, a kitchen knife under his chin and a hammer to the back off his head. Will was breathing deeply and sweat was pouring uncontrollably from his forehead. The gun came down until it was level with Conrad’s face. Katrina gasped and her heart nearly stopped in her chest. “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!?” Will cried. There really were tears in his eyes now, more from shock than from the pain of being stabbed. “I SAID I’D FUCKIN’ LET YOU GO! WHY DID YOU KILL THEM!?” The two boys holding Conrad dragged him to his feet. One pulled apart his jaws and Will stuck the barrel of the revolver between his teeth. He was about to break down, Katrina could see it in his eyes. This was far more than he’d ever gambled on. A muffled; “Fuck. You.” came from Conrad’s throat. It was defiance to the end. The mild tempered American boy reduced to pure rage for his last moments on this Earth.

Katrina didn’t even bother to try and hide herself anymore. It was only down to Nathan’s bloody vengeance that she hadn’t been spotted by now. In the confusion everybody had forgotten about the mysterious scream. She rooted around herself for anything that could save the boy she loved. What she found was the last thing she ever wanted to hold in her arms, but she had no choice.

She scrabbled with the shotgun, searching for the tiny leaver that would turn it from docile, to deadly. The first one she tried separated the weapon into two, useless halves. Wasting no time she snatched the second one off the floor, found the safety switch and jabbed it off.
Outside she could hear Will about to snap. In his dismay he hadn’t noticed her scurrying around but it wouldn’t be long. “NO FUCK YOU MAN! FUCK YOU!” which was followed by a series of lines that meant nothing to anyone and were more gibberish than anything else. Mindless blubbering.

Next, hands shaking with stress, Katrina ripped open the box of twelve bore shells, spilling most of them over the floor. She took the first two she could grab, used the latch to open up the breach of the Sawnoff and rammed both cartridges in with one hand (a manoeuvre that would later make Conrad extremely proud of her).

Despite it being physically impossible for her to hear it from here, the click of the hammer on Will’s handgun being pulled back rang in her ears louder than the shot it inevitably preceded. As soon as the gun was cocked Katrina swung it wildly towards the wind mirror. It was a good job the barrel had been taken off or this would have been a fatally slow process. In slow motion she saw Will turn his head towards her. For a fraction of an instant Will’s eyes widened when he saw what she was holding. Her mouth opened and a battle cry sprang forth. The muzzle exploded in a roar of flame and sparks as both barrels emptied through the glass. It shattered like a sheet of glittering ice as the haze of death erupted towards its target.