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.
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.
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.
The DS taps at her keyboard and the scene backs up a few frames, and then freezes at the place where the girl is smiling up at the camera. Loss can feel a pressure building in his stomach and quietly belches; his hand in front of his mouth. The room fills with the smell of bacon fat. It makes him feel nauseous. More nauseous.
‘The cameras outside the station?’ he asks, reaching inside his jacket for some antacid tablets. His DS indicates the split-screen on her laptop, showing the CCTV views of the entrance to Embankment tube station, where all the passengers had to disembark after the emergency cord was pulled on the train.
‘Nothing, sir. According to the cameras she never left the station. She walked through those boys as if she was some sort of ghost ninja and then …’, she makes a throwing away gesture with her hands, ‘puff, disappeared.’
The DI continues looking at the girl on the screen. She couldn’t be more than seventeen. ‘And how many of those fine young men did she kill?’
‘Amazingly, only one. The leader.’ The DS taps a few keys. ‘One Jason Dunne from Sparrow Close, Crossquays.’
‘Lovely.’ Sparrow Close was well known to DI Loss. If one took a sink estate, an estate so deprived of government investment, but so rich in monies from drugs and stolen goods, and then dumped a load of stone-cold bastards in it, you’d have Sparrow Close.
‘Although none of the others will walk again,’ continues his DS. ‘She sliced their Achilles tendons and cut through the hamstrings behind the knee.’
The DS stops looking at her laptop and turns to face him. ‘Actually, she did more than that but I don’t want to think about it.’
Loss doesn’t blame her. All the blood in front of him on the screen is starting to make him light-headed. Even though on the monitor it’s not in colour, it’s in colour in his head, and it’s turned up to full-tilt. ‘And what was it she put on his body?’ he asks
She turns back to her laptop and starts tapping, her fingers hammering at the keys, and the screen is filled with a close-up of the body of Jason Dunne. Lying on his jeans, stuck onto them with blood, is a piece of white card, like a business card. Typed in Ariel font is one word: Tuesday. The DI sighs heavily.
‘And is it?’
‘Is it what, sir?’
‘Tuesday.’
Stone smiles tightly, staring at the image on the screen.
‘No, sir. It’s Friday.’
It‘s all over the news, screaming out on every media platform going.
One murdered and five crippled for life!
Jason Dunne, 16, and five other teenagers, all excluded pupils of Sparrow Secondary School, were brutally attacked in a Tube train late last night. Mr Dunne died at the scene. At present the police are asking for witnesses of the crime to come forward, and say they will shortly be giving a statement. They are particularly keen to speak to a young woman whom they believe to be at the centre of the incident.
When Lily sees the report she feels faint; she thinks she’s the young woman the police want to question. After a moment reality slams back in, and she breathes a shaky sigh of relief.
Of