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Chapter 74 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 75 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 76 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 77 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 78 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 79 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 80 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 81 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 82 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 83 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 84 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 85 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 86 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 87 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 88 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 89 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 90 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 91 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 92 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 93 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 94 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 95 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 96 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 97 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 98 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 99 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 100 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 101 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 102 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 103 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 104 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 105 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 106 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 107 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 108 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Sometimes, I like to just sit on the tube, travelling from station to station. The station, then the tunnel, then the station. Over and over.
The white. The black.
I never look directly at anyone; I always look at them in the windows. See them reflected in the dark of the machine.
Sometimes, when the noise in my head threatens to make me snowbound, I just travel the tube, tuning everything out. Leaning my head against the connecting door. Feeling the vibration. Feeling the ghosts move through me. Waiting for it all to stop.
1 (#ulink_d41308d5-ee1f-5b98-8232-6759f1f9e58d)
The boys pile onto the tube, all drop-crotch trousers, and Jafaican whine. Their eyes are hard and shiny from too much speed laced with too little mephedrone. Their clothes scream outsider whilst looking desperate to fit in. They want to be seen separate, but together. Little boys in grown-up bodies, confused and broken by a society they can’t keep up with, and so try to laugh at instead. It’s pathetic really. If they weren’t so dangerous I might try to take them home and mother them.
But me, a mother? I don’t think so. The last time I was a mother I was fourteen, and it worked out just fine for about fifteen minutes.
There are six of them, these boys. The youngest is maybe thirteen, and the oldest about sixteen. If you added up their IQs the total wouldn’t even equal my shoe size, and yet they think they’re so clever.
I love messing with boys like them. They see me sat in the corner of the carriage, a little Gothette. A tiny emo. They look at my army satchel and they think, ‘poetry book’. They don’t think, Columbine.
Actually, I’m giving them too much credit. They don’t think at all. They function on crowd-brain. Follow the leader. Seek out the weak.
The weak. That’s me. Five foot fuck-all and all dressed in black, like I’ve got nothing better to do with my time than watch The Matrix, and make pretty pictures on my arm with a blade. A pretty girl, pretty fucked-up.
Ripe for the plucking.
Come on then, boys.
Pluck me.
2 (#ulink_1661cb6e-a360-5a91-8b54-129a6e315d65)
‘Who is she?’ DI Loss is looking at the CCTV from the tube train. Even though it’s a recording, not a live link, the tension in the room is a physical presence. The air seems razor-thin, and there is a whine at the back of the DI’s thoughts like a broken light-filament. The image on the screen is in black and white and the pixilation is terrible. There’s grey-out everywhere, and all the faces are smudgy, as if they’ve been partially rubbed out.
It doesn’t, however, disguise the blood.
‘Dunno, sir. We’re checking the cameras from the entrance now.’
His DS is not looking at what her boss is looking at. She’s already seen it and is still, several minutes later, having to swallow the copious amounts of saliva her body is producing. It’s either that or throw up on her lap-top.
On-screen there’s blood everywhere. All over the bodies of the young men lying motionless on the floor of the tube carriage. Splashed on the seats and the windows and in long splatter streaks on the tube walls. Even though the image is black and white and the pixilation is terrible the inspector can tell it’s blood. And he knows it’s not the girl’s blood because he just watched her walk out of the tube without a scratch on her. The DI sighs deeply and reaches for his e-cigarette.
‘Roll it again,’ he says.
The screen goes blank for a moment, and then the carriage is back to a time before the carnage. No blood. No bodies. Just a small teenage girl in the corner and six junked-up predators piling in through the sliding door. They mess about for a bit, hitting each other and mouthing off in silent comedy violence, and then they spot the girl. Even with the white-out. Even with the pixels more spaced out than a SkunkMonk, DI Loss can see that the boys think it’s Christmas. Two of them low-five each other, and the pack begin to move down the carriage towards the girl, unstoppable in their gang-power. Completely in control of their environment. Top of the food chain.
Loss stares at the screen. Stares at the animal hunger visible on their smudged-out faces.
‘I wouldn’t count on it, boys’ he whispers.
3 (#ulink_9ee317f0-29f6-5317-b5db-3c56f6b309b6)
Well whoopy-doo, here they come.
The one in the hoodie spots me first. What am I talking about – they’re all in hoodies. Of course they are. They all want to look the same, as if they’re American gangstas. Don’t they realize it’s all shit? That those people they idolize have the life expectancy of a sparrow? Honestly, if you think it through, what I’m about to do is a mercy. These brothers aren’t really living, they’re simply decomposing in slow motion.
Time to speed up the film.
What I meant to say was, the one at the front in the slightly more hoodie-ish hoodie than the other Marys, spots me first. I’m thinking he’s what passes for the brains of this crew. He can almost walk upright, for a start. He low-fives his drone-clone and starts edging towards me, all the others following as if they’re connected by puppet wire.
Did I tell you I love these guys? All tough stances and thousand-yard stares when they’re in a group. I reckon if I met one of these boys by themselves outside a church on Sunday and gave him a leaflet he’d say thank you very much.
I don’t want you to think I’m part of the God-squad, by the way. Fuck that. I’d rather have my teeth pulled out than get down on my knees in front of a priesty-prick.
No, what I’m saying is without his crew, his structure, he’s nothing but some brain-dead mother’s son with the processing power of a leaking punch-bag.
Doesn’t excuse him, of course.
I observe their approach through the reflection in the carriage window. When they’re a couple of feet away they come to a smug stop, almost in time with each other. Well done, boys.
Here we go. Mega-hoodie grins at me and speaks, his voice dagger-friendly.
‘Hey, Weirdo, how about you come with us, yeah. Do some stuff?’
It’s brilliant. Mega-hoodie is like the Shakespeare of the gang. He’s the Romeo. He’s managed to reduce thousands of years of linguistic evolution to the verbal equivalent of showing me his cock and saying ‘How about it?’.
Really, I’ve got to leave him till last, if I can. He’s just so much fun! I pull my knees up to my chest and carry on staring out of the window. Into the dark tunnel flashing by at a million miles an hour.
They all start to smile and jitter up. They think they’ve scored a hot one here. They think I’m scared and ready to pop.
‘Hey, Emo! I’m talking to you. Nothing to look at out there, girl. Plenty to look at in here, though.’ He starts to laugh, one elbow banging into his mate while he stuffs his right hand down the front of his pre-ripped Diesel combat trousers.
Two things here:
One. There’s plenty to look at because we’re in a tunnel with the lights of the carriage bright and sparkly. That makes the window a mirror. I can see everything they’re doing.
Two. Mr Ape has just stuffed his right hand down his trousers to have a good old jiggle in front of his mates, and so I’m guessing he’s right-handed, and has just about made it impossible for him to attack me.
I mean, you couldn’t make it up, could you? Intimidate the stranger in front of you by handicapping yourself! It’s like being threatened by the Teletubbies.
I can’t be fucked anymore. I turn back round to face them, pull the knife out of my bag, and stab Trouser-boy in the throat.
4 (#ulink_189e26d1-4132-55c3-9bc6-74a0168d4953)
The DI watches the girl on the tube do her thing. Even in the washed-out colour he can tell she’s smiling. Even with the time-stutter visuals and the horror film lighting that starts halfway through, when she pulls the emergency cord, he can tell she’s happy. There is a beauty and fluidity to her movements as she walks back down the carriage that sings of her satisfaction with her work. It is like witnessing a human tsunami as she flows down the carriage. Loss takes a drag from his e-cigarette and continues to watch, the vape obscuring not one grisly moment.
5 (#ulink_8f06c926-5e76-5448-9783-0fb22119b467)
It’s not hard to stab someone in the throat. You just pull the knife out of your army satchel and shove it in his neck, cutting into his carotid artery, just a few centimetres to the side of his trachea. Of course it’s not hard; he was going to rape you, and then watch as you were cluster-fucked by his clones. Completely self-defence.
No, the hard thing is not freezing up and stopping there, staring at the boy dying in front of you as he spasms around on the floor. That’s where most people go wrong. You have to stab him in the throat, then immediately pull out the knife, turning his body with your scuffed oxblood DM so that none of the blood hits you. Marks you. Then you’ve got to not freeze as the blood pumps out of Dying-boy in great gushes of red, spraying over his mates and the walls as his body spins away from you.
But you’re not looking as the body falls. No you’re not. You’re already slashing the eyes of drone number two as you run along the length of the bench-seating to the other end of the carriage. Between the blood fountain and the screaming you’ve gained yourself three or four seconds of shock before the adrenalin kicks in and they come for you as a pack. Of course, if they do that, you’re fucked. Beyond fucked. But by the time they’ve got it together you’ve already got your back pressed against the wall and big loony smile on your face.
It’s important which wall you’re pressed against. The tube train is travelling at 56 mph and when the emergency cord is pulled, which is what is about to happen, the momentum placed on the standing body of a drugged-up rape-junkie will be enough to make him face-dive the floor. It would also be enough to make a little Gothette sail through the air and crumple herself against a window, so it’s important that she is against the wall that will immediately arrest her momentum, and they are at the end that will give them the furthest to travel, thereby – one can only hope – breaking every bone in their rape-mongering bodies.
Smile. Pull. The scream of the brakes barely registers in my head, cos it’s full of snow and ice, but the boys in front of me are looking a little bit not so fucking clever now.
Oh, and rather helpfully, once the cord is pulled, the overhead lights go out, leaving the carriage lit by the stutter of the emergency fluorescent trace bulbs in the walls and floor.
Have a nice day, boys. I open up the satchel and pull out two curved scythes. I stand up and walk towards them.
Swish swash.
It doesn’t take long. It never takes long. If it takes long you’re in trouble. If it takes long you’re dead. The carriage is silent. I walk back up the train and put the scythes away. I won’t use them again but I don’t want to leave them for the police, either.
I mean, I don’t want it to be too easy, do I? Where’s the fun in that? There is, however, something I do want to leave for the police, and I take it out of my vintage American army shirt pocket and place it on Trouser-boy. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t object.
Then I look up at the camera so the boys and girls in blue get a good shot of me.
Then I leave.
Job done.
6 (#ulink_8752f194-ee56-5120-ac7e-706fefb146d5)
