More concerned with the fact that his son was running wild, Chris bent down and firmly grabbed his shoulders, shaking him so hard that his head flopped as if his neck were made of string. “Michael, you need to listen to me. I’ve told you to stay in one place. Stop running around!”
Michael looked at the floor.
“Do you want us to get caught?”
Michael didn’t reply.
With anger controlling his actions, he shook his boy again, his skinny neck unable to support his large head. “Well? Is that what you want?”
Michael’s voice was tiny when he uttered the syllable at the floor. “No.”
“Well, start listening to me. If any of them see us, then this is all over. Do you understand? We’ll be dragged outside like Tommy and Frank.”
The little blonde boy started to cry.
Realizing he’d said enough, Chris gulped against the sandy dryness in his oesophagus. It was like swallowing glass.
Looking out of the window again, he addressed Michael’s previous comment with a husky whisper. “You’re right though, mate, I should have given them some food.” Hugging his son with one arm, Chris felt the mistrust in Michael’s tense body as he ever so slightly pulled away from him. Trying to ignore the reaction, Chris repeated, “We should have helped them.”
“I told you to, didn’t I?”
“You did, mate.”
Another cry from Daisy made Chris look outside, and Michael slipped away from him, running to his window downstairs again. Chris wanted to scream. What was wrong with the boy? Was he losing the plot? It was so unlike Michael to completely disregard what was being said to him. Accepting that he couldn’t control him as much as he’d have liked, Chris looked outside again.
Like Marie, Daisy didn’t go easily as she was dragged to the truck. It took three men and a right hook to get her on the back of the pick-up with the other women. Mel and Sarah, having obviously seen what had happened to Frank, Marie, and Tommy, realized how pointless it was to fight. Throwing occasional glances at John, they started crying when they saw him forced to his knees into the same position Frank was in earlier. Although he didn’t say anything, John stared at his little girls and wife as they climbed into the cage and hugged each other while they sobbed. The futility of their situation had removed any fight from him. He looked up at Dean through his matted and greasy black fringe and said, “Please, just make it quick and be kind to my wife and daughters.”
Chris looked at John’s loved ones, and all three wore ugly masks of grief, their faces drawn with despair. Swallowing back the tickle that was daring him to cough again, his throat yearning for water, he regarded his boy. He was trying to see better and making himself more visible in the process. He hissed at him, but Michael was too engrossed in what was happening. He thought again about grabbing him, but he knew his movements would give them away.
When Dean didn’t reply, John dropped his head and looked at the floor.
Lifting the hammer high, looming over the powerless man like a god and throwing him into shadow, Dean grinned like a skeleton, laughed, and brought the hammer crashing down.
The girls screamed at the same time that Michael drew a sharp intake of breath. A wet crack and squelch like someone had broken through ice into a muddy bog beneath rang out across the cul-de-sac. Silence followed, like the whole world was holding its breath.
When Chris realized that he was, he exhaled, and it was visible in the cold and now smoke-filled air, which stank of burning plastic. His next inhalation left an aftertaste as if he’d drunk diesel, and it threw an instant headache across his eyes. He looked back at Michael to see him frozen. He hated to see his son in such a state, but he prayed that his temporary paralysis lasted because with the frame of mind he was in, he’d surely give them away soon if it didn’t.
Dean let the handle of the hammer go, and John, who was fat from years of good living, fell to the floor with a wet thud like sixteen stones of soft clay. The tool protruded from the side of his head like an embedded arrow. Pushing his foot against John’s face for leverage, the forced pout almost comical if it weren’t for the fact that John was dead, Dean then wrenched his weapon free. The crack was like a branch being ripped from a tree.
Chris heaved and then spat bile and grit onto the carpet. He checked to see if Michael was still watching and still inert. He was.
Whilst wiping the blood from the head of his hammer onto his suit, which looked more like a butcher’s apron than a three-piece, Dean stared at the wide and shocked eyes of the corpse on the drive as if he could hear John’s thoughts. Before long, the hole in his head pushed undulating waves of blood out that pooled on the floor.
“You fucking arsehole!”
When Chris looked over and heard that it was Mel shouting at their captors, he had to do a double-take. Mel was one of the most relaxed women he knew, and he’d certainly never heard her swear before.
“You fucking pikey waste of space! Where do you get off on hurting innocent people?” she screamed.
“Innocent?” Dean asked. He then looked at a couple of the men and sneered as he said, “Bring her over here.”
Watching Mel as she initially refused to come made Chris feel sick with anticipation. He ground his jaw as one of the men, a Turkish skin-headed and tattooed man that looked like a cage fighter, grabbed Daisy by the throat and started to choke her. He squeezed so hard that her eyes bulged, and she gasped like a fish, her pale skin turning purple in the process. Chris looked at Michael again, and felt a burning mixture of fear and distress as he thought about what they might do to him.
Holding her hands up, Mel said, “Okay, okay, I’m coming.” Of her own accord, the tall, slim woman left the cage and jumped off the back of the truck. As she stormed towards Dean, she said, “I mean it, you’re a fucking scum bag!”
She didn’t slow her pace as she got close to him, so Dean dropped his hammer and met her with an uppercut to the chin. Chris’ balls pulled tight as he watched the blow lift her clean off her feet. She was thrust backwards before landing on her back, her head hitting the concrete with a crack. Her eyes rolled, and Chris could see she’d been knocked instantly unconscious. No matter how many examples he saw of their brutality, it didn’t get any easier to watch.
Stood over her with gritted teeth, Dean spat as he growled, “Innocent? You call yourself fucking innocent? You weren’t so innocent when you were enjoying a wealth well beyond what you needed to survive on. You weren’t so fucking innocent when people around me were having to buy broken biscuits from the pound shop to feed their kids while you threw half of your dinner in the bin each night.” Bending down so his face was close to hers, he screamed, veins standing out under his red skin, “You weren’t so fucking innocent when you went on seventeen holidays a fucking year while others lived below the fucking poverty line!”
Regaining focus, Mel looked through her ruffled brown hair and said in a groggy voice, “We worked hard for that.”
Clenching his fist like he was going to punch her again, Dean, red-faced and with his eyes bulging, said, “Did you fuck!” Pointing at her overweight husband, he continued, “Putting a suit on that fat cunt over there and kissing someone’s arse isn’t hard work.” Then pointing at the pick-up with the girls on, he said, “Sending those spoilt twats to private school so they can get a much better life than me or mine can afford isn’t hard work. Going for runs in the morning, followed by coffee-shop mother’s meetings isn’t hard work. You got a break! You were shat into existence at the right place and the right time. Sure, you took some opportunities, but don’t be so fucking arrogant to think that it was all down to hard work. The reality for you was that you were fucking the right guy. All you had to do was lie on your back, you filthy slut!” Pulling his leg back, he then buried his boot into her stomach.