UniteDead Kingdom. Stuart Irving Irving
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this year since everyone started getting the news on their clothes, so it can’t be that. Claire looked down at her arm. It looked like some sort of news alert but the picture was fuzzy and kept jumping. Probably another update on The Caliphate or the Mediterranean invasion or the battle for the former Argentina. The carnage overseas is perpetual - why can’t people just get on? she thought wearily.
Her sleep-filled eyes struggled to take in the disrupted signal so she looked up to the front of the shop again. The tiny shutter holes were still blocked by the same person. He or she was not even attempting to approach the front door, but just standing in front of the shutters. How annoying! A car alarm sounded outside and just as quickly switched off. Another blare of a distant fire engine pierced the morning quiet. Then she heard a scream and some shouting but it just as quickly stopped. London!
Claire was about to investigate but just then Molly appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Her face looked pale, her hair dishevelled and she was still partially dressed. Claire looked away again with a barely disguised contempt.
“Sorry, Claire, you know how I get in the morning, I was up late last night watching protestors riot in—”
“Ssh Molly.” Claire interrupted with a finger at her mouth. “There’s noise in the street and someone just standing right outside the shop.”
“So what! For god sake, probably just waiting to meet someone. What was the big worry to open the shop if you’re just going to stand there getting spooked by shadows?”
Claire didn't respond and just tried to listen. She thought she heard someone groaning.
“Oh for god sake Claire, I’ll just ask him if he has exact change for whatever he wants. I take it you haven’t set-up the till.” Molly strode forwards to the door. A couple of police car sirens roared past outside.
The last throwaway remark jolted Claire out of her scrutiny of the person outside. She now stared in disbelief at the back of Molly’s head as Molly opened the inner door that lead to the front entrance of the shop.
“Self-entitled bitch,” Claire cursed under her breath. She immediately regretted saying it but she was seething. Molly had again tried to turn the situation to her advantage by acting as if Claire hadn't been pulling her weight. She ground her teeth and strode in the darkness towards the till at the back of the shop. On the way she stubbed her toe on a crate of tins and yelped in a mixture of anger and pain. Claire felt tears welling up in abject frustration. Ouch! What a shitty day and it wasn’t even 7.30 in the morning. She went behind the till and started to initiate the settings to connect it to the network. The outer front door slammed shut behind Molly and Claire heard her sister’s voice outside. She couldn’t tell what Molly was saying, it was too muffled through the glass and metal. But she could tell from the tone that there was concern in her voice. There was another very brief siren outside and the sound of a crash. Claire jumped and thought Shit, what is going on out there? She craned her head to the right so she could see down one aisle from behind the till to the front of the store. She could see the figure move slowly past the various small holes in the shutters towards the front door where Molly was.
Why didn’t he or she say anything in response to Molly?
There was silence for a second and then Claire thought she heard a gasp. As she moved from behind the till she heard a scuffle and a scream. Molly’s scream. Claire’s blood ran cold as she gasped and shouted Molly’s name whilst hurtling down the aisle towards her. Just two seconds later she got to the inner front door and heard Molly scream again but more distant this time. Had Molly run away? Claire thought. She could barely catch a breath as the fear of what had happened outside to make her scream clutched at her. Had some bastard tried to molest her? As she opened the inner door, she looked down and grabbed the aluminium baseball bat that was left out each morning since they had been running the shop. Bromley’s increasing gentrification hadn’t placated their Dad’s fears about robbers. How Claire thanked him now as she lifted it above her head and yanked open the outer front door to confront Molly’s attacker.
It was broad daylight outside. South-East London had woken to a beautiful spring day. But it was the only beautiful thing about it. Claire slowly lowered her right hand holding the bat. She stared in disbelief at the flame-ridden chaos in the street, the multiple vehicle pile-ups and the people being attacked. And then saw at the tall man in a suit shuffling away from her. About thirty metres beyond him Molly was running in terror, looking back over her shoulder, face contorted at the suited man walking towards her. What is her fucking problem? Claire, thought, in relief that she was OK and annoyance that she was so squeamish.
“MOLLY, COME BACK!” Claire shouted, her sister now a good fifty metres away. She kept on running into the mayhem of the main road. But the suited man stopped shuffling towards Molly and slowly spun round to face the source of the shout. Claire saw his injuries for the first time and mouthed the word ‘fuck’ and stepped back towards the door. He was drenched in blood from the neck to the waist of his black pin-striped suit. His trousers were bizarrely blemish free as if he had sustained the injuries lying down and had stayed there until the blood congealed on his chest.
His frost grey eyes stared right at Claire. He had a completely blank stare like a near-comatose drunk. Underneath that, his face was a nightmare. The end of his nose was flattened to a pulp and spread across both cheeks. The top of his mouth was caved in, revealing mushy gums and fragments of teeth. Beneath that, his lower jaw looked almost completely torn off and he was wearing it like a mashed tendon and bone necklace. The centrepiece of his gruesome jewellery was a long, blackened tongue flopping about on his upper chest, as if were a blood-smeared fish in its death-throws. He shuffled towards her, flopping his tongue about as if just in time for dinner. Claire, in a mixture of shock, panic and revulsion, turned to her right and vomited on the pavement.
She wiped her face and said, “What’s wrong with you? Y-you can’t be alive! What the fuck is going ON!” She was just about to run past this nightmare to catch up with Molly, then to his right she saw a nurse and a semi-naked, middle-aged man walk past a recently crashed ambulance and turn towards her. They walked in that same slow relentless gate. The man looked uninjured but the nurse had three large unmistakable bullet holes in her chest. Then slightly behind them a man in a medic’s uniform dragged his torso across the pavement with one leg missing and the other connected to him with spaghetti-sized tendons.
Claire gasped and realised she was crying and felt a distant sensation that she had wet herself too. She dropped the baseball bat and hurriedly went back inside, bolting the door. She howled in frustration at her sister running away and not circling back, and prayed that she was safe from whatever that was outside. It would be another five weeks before she accepted that it was the last time she would ever see her alive.
Once hurriedly back inside the shop she heard a thump at the front door and heard them groaning, then slowly, forcefully banging on the shutters. She rushed up the stairs, frantically tapping on her sleeve. Molly didn't answer. She tried again, and again. She tried another number. She got through and a bleary voice said: -
“Hi, sis, whassup?”
“Kevin! I’ve lost Molly,” said Claire, and started sobbing …
Chapter 8: Domestic Violence
Half an hour later Joe Cheung, 49, stood frozen at the top of the stairs in his brother-in-law’s house listening to a series of terrifying voice mails he’d received throughout the night. Struggling not to panic he walked quickly down the stairs then the hallway to the kitchen to find his wife, Marsha. She turned round to see him as he entered, her smile evaporating in seconds when she saw his face. Just then, an arm reached in through the open side-door and grabbed her, pulling her into the drive-way.
Before he could move a muscle to help he was grabbed from the side. Joe pushed away to release the grip but he and the unseen assailant both twisted and lost balance, falling against the kitchen cupboards and on to the tiled floor. He heard the screams of his wife outside. Joe wriggled free and scrambled away from the attacker. It was a large Indian man in his fifties in a painter and decorators outfit with bulging watery eyes and a horrific bite mark on his neck.