Robert Swindells - Daz 4 Zoe

It was still raining and there were few people to be seen as I approached the dilapidated block Daz called home. Nevertheless, I didn’t go straight up to the door, but stood for a minute or two in the doorway of an abandoned shop, watching and listening. All seemed quiet. No children were playing in the lobby. I shifted my gaze to the damp-scarred face of the building till it found the right window. No light showed there, but this was not unusual. The electricity supply was sporadic because fuel to run the generator was hard to come by, and unreliable because the generator itself was ancient. An hour’s uninterrupted current was an event, a full evening of TV virtually unknown. Candles burned in some of the windows but candles, too, were in short supply.

I crossed the road and walked into the dark lobby. It was deserted. The dead elevator wore a shroud of shadow. The stench was familiar now. I took the stairs.

The door of the apartment stood open. I took one step into the hallway and stopped.

‘Daz?’ No answer.

‘Mrs Barraclough?’ Silence. The place had an empty feel to it, yet I couldn’t believe neither occupant was in. Daz often went out after dark, I knew that, but his mother didn’t. Ever, she told me. So she had to be here, unless -.

I heard a small sound behind me but before I could react an arm was thrown round my waist, a hand clamped my mouth and a soft voice murmured in my ear. ‘No noise, now. No noise at all, or the world’s total of Subbies will fall by one.’

He wasn’t a big guy. No taller than me, in fact, but his grip was good. I struggled for a while and lashed out backwards with my foot, but it was no use. He turned me, pushed me back to the stairs and we hobbled down, awkwardly, his mouth in my hair saying, ‘Down we go. There’s a good girl, now. All the way down.’

He shoved and wrestled me down to the basement where I saw two men, one with a torch and one with a gun. They were near the old furnace.The little guy pushed me toward them. The one with the torch shone it in my eyes.

‘Who’s this, Cal?’

Cal! So I’m at Cal’s mercy now. The merciless Cal.

‘This?’ Cal chuckled. ‘Why, this is nothing less than the answer to all our recent prayers, Mick my boy.’ He faced the furnace and called, ‘Hey, Mister Barraclough. Here’s a friend wants to see you.’ He removed his hand from over my mouth, grabbed my ear and gave it a twist that damn near tore it off. I screamed.

‘Zoe?’ As Daz called out I saw it all. DRED had come for him and he’d taken refuge where he’d always taken it – in the crawlspace under the furnace. They’d found him somehow, but short of dismantling the base brick by brick, there was no way they could’ve got him out of there. No way, that is, till I came along.

Cal released me and I considered making a run for it. If I got away, maybe Daz could hold out till morning when the police would resume their search for me and Cal would be forced to leave. He must’ve read my mind or something, because he smiled coldly and murmured, ‘Don’t even think about it. Smithy here’s a crack shot. You’d be dead before you hit the floor.’ He turned. ‘Darren, you’re keeping the lady waiting. Where’s your manners, lad?’

If I come out,’ said Daz, ‘Will you let her go?’

‘You have my word, and you know I’m a man of my word.’

‘What’ll you do to him?’ I asked, though I guess I knew the answer.

He looked at me. ‘Do to him? Why I’m going to kill him of course. What else?’

‘Daz,’ I cried, ‘Don’t come out. They’ll kill you if you do.’

‘And we’ll kill her if you don’t,’ countered Cal. ‘And we’ll get you anyway, in the end.’

I’m no heroine. D’you know what a heroine would’ve done right then? A heroine in a book? She’d have made a dash for it, forced ’em to kill her so they had nothing to bargain with. It occurred to me, but I didn’t do it. Couldn’t. Maybe I don’t love Daz enough. I don’t know. Anyway, I hope you’re never faced with a choice like that. You think about it afterwards and it’s heavy. It screws you up.

Daz was coming out. I could hear him scraping the wall, shuffling sideways in the narrow space. Coming out to die. The guy with the torch, Mick, shone it in his face as he emerged. Daz lifted a hand to shield his eyes, looking for Cal.

‘Okay, you got me. Let her go.’

Cal smiled. ‘All in good time, lad. We don’t want her fetching the law before we’re through here, now do we?’

Daz squinted at him. ‘How long does it take to kill a guy? You’ll be through before she’s up the stairs.’

Mick sniggered and Cal said, ‘Oh no, lad. You don’t understand. What we have here is a breakdown of understanding. Killing can be pretty quick, that’s true, but it can also be – how shall I put it – dragged out.’ He gazed into Daz’s eyes. ‘Take Pete now. You remember Pete of course – my good friend Pete, whom you shot in the back? Yes, of course you do. Now Pete’s death was one of the quick ones. In fact you could say he never knew what hit him. You on the other hand, will know exactly what hits you. We’ll begin, I think, with a kneecap. Young Zoe here can watch.’ He turned to me, ‘Tell me, have you ever seen a kneecap blown off? Have you heard the noise the victim makes? No?’ He shook his head, sadly. ‘Terrible, it is. I don’t even like to think about it.’ As he spoke, he drew a revolver from the pocket of his raincoat. He gestured to the two men. ‘Bring him over here and keep a good hold of him.’ He leered at Daz. ‘This is going to hurt you a lot more than it’ll hurt me.’ He stooped, thrusting the gun into the crook of Daz’s knee. I cringed and turned my face away as the shot rang out.

The shot, and the agonised scream which followed it echoed deafeningly through the basement. Sick with horror, yet driven by a compulsion I was powerless to resist I turned. Daz, supported by Mick and Smithy, was still on his feet. Cal was kneeling on the floor with his arms wrapped round his stomach, screaming. His broken glasses lay in a crimson splotch on the floor. As I gaped, the two men let go of Daz and turned toward the stairs. I turned, too. Pohlman was crouching on the bottom step with a smoking gun in his fist. Smithy was raising his own weapon when Pohlman fired again. The gunman spun round and crumpled, his pistol skittering away across the cement. Mick, seeing Pohlman momentarily distracted, doused his torch and made a dash for it, knocking the policeman sideways and leaping on to the stairs. There was a shot, a cry and a metallic clatter. A light which had been shining from somewhere behind Pohlman went out and the basement was plunged into blackness.

A grip clamped my arm, Daz yelled, ‘Come on!’ and I was dragged, totally blind, across the floor. I don’t know how he knew where to go, but almost at once I tripped on the first step and then we were climbing. There was a heck of a racket – shouting, shooting, some sort of motor. Anyway, there we were, going up into blackness and then I saw light – a glimmer and some flashes and we were up in the lobby and somebody had a spotlight on it so I couldn’t see much more than in the dark.

I’m not sure, but I think we were shot at as we burst out on the street. Who shot at us I don’t know – it might’ve been DRED, or the cops, or both. Or they might’ve been shooting at each other and we got in the way. Anyway, DRED was there in strength to engage the cops in a fire-fight, and that’s what saved us. We ran through the flash and rattle of small arms fire and everybody was too busy keeping their heads down to worry about us. DS had a fan on the roof of the block and as we set off along the street it came swooping down, chasing us with its spotlamp, but when it slowed to keep pace with us it became a soft target for DRED, whose concentrated fire forced it to climb away. We ran on, gasping and sobbing, and when we stopped there was darkness all around and the fight was far behind.