Looking back at his broken son, he said, “Now grab your sister and follow me.” He pulled his hand away from Michael’s mouth and wiped it on his trouser leg.
Michael still stared, unmoving, so Chris shouted, the inhalation flooding his throat with plastic smoke and making it painful to force his words out. “Now, you fucking idiot!” It killed him to do it, but he needed his son to be compliant.
When he opened the driver’s side door, he was hit in the face with the rotten stench of excrement. It made his old world sensibilities momentarily flash up, and he wondered how he’d get the stains out of the upholstery. Shaking the thought away, he dragged Diane from the driver’s seat by grabbing under her arms, not appreciating before now just how heavy a cold and dead body was. At least she was stick thin.
Once he’d moved her to the door leading into the house, her heels scraping along the floor, he saw that Michael still hadn’t shifted. Instead, he watched the limp form of his mother being unceremoniously moved from the car. His eyebrows were lifted in horror.
Spit flew from Chris’ mouth as he said, “Fucking hell, Michael! Get your fucking sister!” He then started to cough, his head spinning from the lack of oxygen.
Finally doing what was asked of him, Michael grunted as he heaved Matilda from the car, sobbing as his skinny arms strained under her weight.
As they left the garage, Chris noticed that his boy’s eyes had turned grey. His son, the once brave and open child, was now buried deep inside. At eight, he’d developed a coping strategy for trauma. He was too young for this.
Once Chris was in the kitchen, he heard a crash from the driveway. Battling against a bad knee, bruised shoulder blades, and the inability to draw a lungful of air, he decided not to concern himself with the reasons for it and slid his limp wife across the room.
Chris heard one of the men say, “Why is it that all these posh cunts have Land Rovers?” Another light then smashed as the men fulfilled what Chris assumed was their burning desires for wanton destruction. Speeding up, he dragged Diane’s dead body into the hall, ignoring the searing pain in his kneecap as best as he could. The strength he found to hoist her over his shoulder, stand on the chair, wobbling for a second and fearful that he’d fall off, and draw the noose in, shocked him. He then looped it over her neck and gently lowered her, the banister letting out a groan of protest as it bore her weight. He prayed it wouldn’t snap.
By the time Michael came in from the garage, his mother was hanging, her tongue protruding from her mouth and her eyes bulging. The skin on her neck had dragged up to make her look like she had several chins. Leaping at him, Chris managed to cover his mouth in time again to silence his next scream. He stood on one leg to rest his knee as he muted his son. Michael looked scared, and had Chris had the use of a mirror, he’d have understood why. His skin was streaked with dirt and he was sweating profusely. His jaw was locked tight because of the pain he felt, making it look like he was trying to push his teeth back into his gums, and his eyes were so bloodshot from smoke and tears that his retinas were almost exclusively red.
In spite of his crazed appearance, he was kinder to his son now that Matilda was with them. He spoke in a whisper as he threw glances at the front door. “Michael, there’s nothing we can do for these two now, but hopefully we can save ourselves.” He wasn’t sure if Michael took in anything he was saying.
When he heard the voices outside, he lifted his head, but he couldn’t see the door, and the looters couldn’t see them from their current position. Making sure to get eye contact with his son, he said, “Go and pull the hosepipe from my car’s exhaust and throw it in the back of the car, I’ll sort things out in here.”
Moving on quickly, he picked his daughter up, fighting the pain and wheezing because a never-ending rush of thick smoke was funneling in through the open garage door and seemed to be heading straight for his lungs.
Stars swam in front of his vision as Chris repeated the process, his lips bending and buckling as tears streamed down his cheeks. He felt sick as he stared into the innocent and eternally peaceful face of his beautiful daughter. He then slipped her small head through the noose. She felt heavier than his wife, which Chris attributed to the burden he felt because of his actions. As he lowered her gently, he looked away, listening to the banister creak again and hopeful it would continue to hold.
After dismounting the chair, he looked at the grotesque gargoyle’s masks his wife and daughter wore from having their entire bodyweight pressing down on their throats. He then stilled both the swinging bodies and tipped the chair over quietly to make it look like it had been kicked.
Michael was back by his side, still in shocked silence, still limp-jawed. Chris grabbed his hand and refused to look back, leading them upstairs at a gentle jog, his knee making their progress slower than he’d have liked.
The cupboard they squeezed into was tiny, but because all of the linen and blankets were in the bedroom, there was enough room for them. It used to be the airing cupboard, and there was a very slight leak in there, as a result, it smelt of wet cement. Once inside, Chris closed the door. It threw them into complete darkness, and he shivered from a mixture of fear and cold.
Reaching out, Chris grabbed his son, who flinched at his touch. “Michael,” he whispered, “I’m sorry you had to see that.” He coughed, stifling it as best as he could. As a result, he gained zero satisfaction from the action and the desire to repeat it burned stronger than before. “But it had to be done; I’m hoping it will deter the looters.”
Michael didn’t reply, and were it not for the sound of his breathing, Chris would have felt alone in the inky darkness. He put his arm around his boy.
An almighty ripping sound and the clatter of the heavy chair he’d placed by the door told Chris that their front door had been kicked in. Michael flinched again as the cockney voices of several men filled the house.
“Fucking hell, John,” one of them said. “Have you seen this? Fuck me!”
John replied. “What a waste. I wouldn’t have minded fucking that one.”
“Which one?” the first man countered with a cruel laugh that made Chris sick to his stomach. He squeezed his tense boy. He then heard the banister creaking and knew that they were swinging the bodies as the same man said, “To you.”
John replied, “To me,” and they both laughed.
The next thing Chris heard was a series of soft, wet thuds that he assumed were punches to the dead bodies. Michael started to have another panic attack, so Chris stroked his hair to try and calm him down.
A third, deeper voice cut in. “You two are fucking sickos. Just get the food and get the fuck out.”
Chris only understood why the two men were instantly compliant when John said, “Sorry, George.” George had an authority not even Dean could compete with.
Although he felt like a Jew in Nazi Germany listening to the SS ransacking the house, he felt blessed that George was with them. Taking deep and slow breaths to calm his furious pulse, he coughed quietly, swallowed against the taste in his throat that was like he’d eaten coal, and then told himself that everything would be okay. But then he heard something that stopped his heart.
The tinkle of an identification tag swinging on a collar called out through the house, and the sound of two dogs running up the stairs quickly followed. Within seconds, two sniffing noses were at the bottom of the cupboard door, sucking the scent in from the two dirty bodies. Squeezing Michael had the desired effect of quietening him, and Chris had to swallow against the tickle in his throat inviting him to cough again.