The Snake- Blog Tour
Into the killing zone.
On the pavement uniformed officers worked to get people off the streets. Kate watched their struggles in disbelief. One couple, laden down with heavy looking carrier bags, gesticulated down the street. They wanted to get home, and the officers weren’t going to let them pass.
‘Still outside?’ she said.
‘Some people think they’ll live for ever,’ said Mog.
Away to their left, a young homeless woman tried to pull a homeless guy up and away from a bench at a bus stop. She was trying to get him to his feet and away from the wide-open sky, but he was drunk and heavy in her arms.
Rick stopped by them, and she looked round, suspicious of their car and their police uniforms.
Mog wound down his window.
‘I’d get him under cover if you can,’ he said.
‘He won’t come!’ Her face was agonised, raw skin burnished red, and hardened from life in the open air. Her hair was rough tangles, and she wore a dirty camel coat with a matted fur collar. The man groaned as she pulled on his arm again. He fought her off, groaning and shouting incoherently. ‘He’s pissed. But I’m trying,’ she said, frustrated, half crying.
‘I know you are, love. Good luck.’
They drove on. Up the street, down the next street. There was not another sign of life. In the windows of the shops and takeaways, in the windows of the flats above the shops, there was no-one. Not a soul to be seen or heard, not a fight, not an argument, not a crying baby. Kate offered thanks upward without any real focus, but with a deep gratitude: the message that death was in the air above them had finally sunk in.
The car rolled forwards. Rick driving on peripheral vision, his focus on scanning every gap in the skyline to prevent their exposure. Ahead was another junction, where the protective shield of buildings would fall away, but for now they were safe.
‘527 sitrep please. We need to know which block he’s in,’ said the radio.
A burst of static, until 527 came on air to confirm they had no more information.
They rolled on. The next junction was a big one, and the main road took them across a four-lane dual carriageway.
‘Look,’ said Mog, his voice low. Ahead was a mound on the road, half on the tarmac, half on a traffic island. It looked like a big bundle of rags, maybe fallen off the back of a dustbin lorry, or slipped off the back of a junk cart.
It was a human body. Unmoving, sprawled in the same position as when it dropped to earth.
Rick stopped the car just before they entered the junction. He settled himself behind the wheel. Took one breath, two. Gathered focus, slammed the gearstick forward and revved the engine.
One second, two seconds, three, the engine roaring.
He took his foot off the clutch and the car leaped forward.
Out, into the crossroads.
One second, screaming out into the terrifying open air.
Two seconds, hurtling into the crosshatched box, the grid pinpointed by paint, like a target on the tarmac. In motion and nowhere to hide. Utterly visible, utterly exposed.
Three seconds. The junction rolling on for ever, as though the road was stretching and the building ahead receding. Anything could happen. The sky could fall down, the buildings could collapse on them, the earth could open up and drop them to an underworld where angry men with loaded guns roamed unhindered for eternity and all you could ever do was run from them.
Why was the car so slow? Why did it take so much effort and energy to claim every single yard?
They were nearly across, reaching forward for cover, yet safety still so far away, when they hit the point where she knew a bullet had flown.
They reached the place where the body lay.
Kate took it all in as they raced past. A young woman, blonde again, with a terrible wound in her chest. Again, she wore smart, office clothes, again she had that unsophisticated look. And, of course, a face that resembled Rebecca. But her wide eyes stared sightlessly at the sky, and her mouth hung open and the dark blood was drying now, thick and sticky on her clothes, glistening on the tarmac.
She knew Mog had watched the woman as she passed, and she wanted to talk about it, but if he saw how the dead woman’s face looked like Rebecca’s, he chose to keep it to himself.
Then they were across, and the first edge of the first building flashed past their windows, and they dived into the canyon of office blocks. They were past, back in blessed cover, blocked for the moment from the demon in Gaffery House, protected by thousands of tons of bricks, steel and old stone.
Rick gave a great exhalation of relief and powered down the car a little.
In that last mad rush, Kate’s heart had hardened. Fear had burst in, momentarily, before she had repelled it. Now her mouth, her eyes, were set. Implacable. Now she gripped her own carbine more tightly.
Then, echoing down the canyon of the streets, came the crack of a rifle.
‘There’s Johnny’, said Mog.
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