Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

Leather Jacket danced from foot to foot, to an unseen, insane rhythm, jaw wrenched open by the voltage racing through him, a tuneless song spilling from his mouth. His jacket started to char and smoulder, as the lining caught alight. Then his hair was a torch, small flames dancing like a crown around his head. His hips jerked backwards and forwards, in a manic imitation of fucking, the grill still gripped tight in his hands.

A final grunt drove the air from his body, which performed one last convulsive spasm and lay still.

I knew better than to go through his pockets for the handcuff keys; the grill was still plugged into the generator, with the cable’s bare wires emitting blue-white sparks and flashes. Instead, I focused on pulling the chain around my leg away from the clasp set into the wall.

With the chain wrapped around my free hand, I used what leverage I could get with my feet against the wall. I tried to ignore the pain from the chain cutting into my burnt flesh, but there was no give at all. I kicked at the steel of the wall hook, but it was sunk deep into the brickwork.

I was still kicking, hoping to dislodge some of the plaster, when I heard it.

A scream from the bleakest, blackest depths. Coming from upstairs.

For a couple of seconds, I froze, and I was in the hospital, beside Chinara as she screamed for the morphine to dull the bite of the tumours devouring her.

I was yelling down the corridor, ready to kill whichever uncaring attendant had slipped out for a few drags of a papirosh . I was lying beside her, holding her while her nails, made brittle and thin by the drugs, splintered and cracked as they dug into my arm.

She’d howled over and over again, unaware of anything but the fire consuming her, the noise from her throat sounding as if a wolf had made its way down from the mountains and was roaming the hospital in search of food…

Syrgak burst through the door, his mouth open, streaming with blood, white stumps of shattered teeth glinting through a crimson mask.

‘Boss, the bitch, she just –’

He stopped at the sight of the vor , flames flickering from his jacket, blue flashes from the grill sparking against his body.

I tugged on the chain with the last of my strength, felt the plaster finally give way, lost my balance, tumbled back against the table. I swung the chain over my head, building up momentum, took aim, then released my grip. The metal reeled out across the room, the sharp spikes that had held it in place embedding themselves in Syrgak’s face.

He gave a high-pitched gasp of surprise, then a howl of anguish as he tried to dislodge the spikes wedged deep in his right eye and cheek. He whimpered over and over, a keening wail that made me sick to my stomach, calling to his mother to help him.

I threw up, uncontrollably, emptying my guts. And I remembered how Chinara would vomit after each treatment, her body shaking with the retching that overwhelmed her, how I would hold the bowl up to her mouth, and wipe the rank sweat away from her face.

Syrgak had both hands covering his eyes and cheek, working out just how ruined his face was.

I still had one hand cuffed to the table, but I used my free hand to pull the leg chain towards me, making sure it didn’t touch the water on the floor. I grasped it about a metre from the business end, and got ready to swing it once more if Syrgak came over to finish me off. The adrenaline was hurtling through me; one of these two shitheads must have butchered Shairkul, Yekaterina, Gulbara – and who knew who else?

But if I killed Syrgak, the trail died. And this wasn’t just about avenging the dead women.

I gripped the chain tighter, picturing how the heavy steel links would coil around Syrgak’s face, and I realised I wanted to flog the sooksin and flay every inch of skin off his worthless hide.

Once he’d told me what I needed to know.

Syrgak let out a bellow of pain and rage as his fingers told him he’d never be a male model, and he glared at me with his one remaining eye. Unless he was armed, it was a stand-off – at least, until one of us was overwhelmed by pain.

I thought of Saltanat lying dead and butchered upstairs at the hands of these two, and began to wonder if revenge wasn’t enough of an ending. Fuck catching the big guys.

That was when the door swung open again.

‘I thought you were dead,’ I said, as Saltanat staggered through the door.

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ she rasped, her voice sounding torn and ripped. She looked like shit, a long streak of blood smearing her cheek and around her mouth. Her shirt was ripped and her bra hung in two halves, dangling where it had been torn apart. There was a purple bruise on her forehead and the knuckles of her left hand were swollen and dislocated. She was also naked from the waist down.

There was no time to swap anecdotes, because Syrgak lumbered towards her, face streaming blood down his cheek. He swung at Saltanat, who ducked, pivoted and lashed out with her foot. She connected with Syrgak’s groin and, as he doubled over in pain, grabbed his shoulder, slammed him head first into the wall, once, twice, and then brought her elbow down on to the nape of his neck.

Syrgak’s vertebrae splintered and cracked like twigs snapping in a midnight frost. As he collapsed to the floor, his face dragged down the wall and left a vivid red smear, like a child’s first attempt at painting. And then the only sound to be heard in the room was the breathing of the two people left alive, and the sizzle of flesh cooking on the grill.

‘Handcuff keys are in his jacket pocket. But careful, he’s hooked up to the mains.’

Saltanat grabbed a chair and threw it against the generator, dislodging the bare wires and breaking the circuit. She checked one pocket, rolled Leather Jacket’s corpse over with no sign of disgust, and found the keys. Half naked, dazed, bleeding, she still seemed more focused and professional than half the uniforms I’ve worked with.

Once she’d freed me from the cuffs and ankle chain, I made a tentative move to hug her. Not out of desire but to offer some comfort, for myself as much as for her. But she held up a warning hand, palm towards me, and I let my arms drop by my side.

Saltanat seemed to realise for the first time that she was almost naked, and looked around for something to cover herself. Streaks of blood on her face dripped down, and I saw that she was crying.

‘Is Azad…?’

‘He won’t bother us.’

‘You killed him?’

Saltanat wiped some blood from the corners of her mouth, then nodded.

‘Did they…?’

‘Yes.’

Her voice flat, expressionless.

‘Let’s find you a blanket, or something.’

‘I’m not going back upstairs.’

I nodded, understanding. If you’d just been beaten, raped and God knows what else by two psychotic thugs, the last thing you’d want to do is revisit the scene.

‘I’ll go.’

I edged past the bodies on the floor, held out my hand, but Saltanat stared down, totally absorbed. It doesn’t matter how many times you kill a man, whether in the line of duty or not, the dead stay with you, visit you in the long hours before dawn and in the brightest of sunlight. Their eyes stare at you from the reflections of shop windows, car windscreens, ripples on water. They live with you like elderly relatives with nowhere else to go, sneaking up on you unawares with a tap on the shoulder or a half-heard question. All you can do is remind yourself it was them or you, and keep on keeping on.

My hand throbbed as I climbed the stairs up to the ground floor, and then the bedrooms. It was already swollen up to twice its normal size, and the burn marks looked etched in. The muscles and tendons had tensed up, turning my fingers into a set of hooked claws, and I knew that if I didn’t get medical attention soon, the hand would be next to useless. I tried to remember if it said anything in my employment contract about disability pensions. But since I was weaponless, that wouldn’t matter if there was someone else up there waiting for me.