'From the source of pestilence comes our salvation.'
'Make us safe.'
'Life for life. Blood for blood.'
'Make us safe.'
He turned, tenderly cradled the woman's head and kissed her lips.
'I thank you for your gift,' he said.
Then she was hauled as high as the rope would go. David stood directly beneath her. One of his acolytes stepped forward and smoothly, emotionlessly, drew his machete across the trussed woman's neck.
And David showered in her fresh blood as the crowd screamed and his acolytes chanted together:
'Safe now. Safe now. Safe now.'
Suddenly Mac didn't seem like such a bad guy after all.
I turned away in disgust to find Petts, white-faced in shock, Williams, throwing up, and a very big man with a machete standing behind me.
Without hesitation I threw a punch, but he rocked backwards and I swung into thin air. He snapped upright and brought his machete scything down at my shoulder. I followed my fist and spun left as the metal blade sliced within a millimetre of my ear. I stumbled, my weak leg momentarily betraying me. I hit the ground and tried to roll with it.
I'm not a martial arts specialist. That's Norton's thing. I can do guns, no problem. I can even do toilets, in a pinch. But straightforward fighting, especially when I'm unarmed and the guy I'm fighting has a piece of metal specifically designed to split me in two, is not something I'm very good at.
My cack-handed attempt at a forward roll probably saved my life. The man brought the machete around with lightning speed and chopped at the space where I would have been had my hand not slipped in some mud, pitching me face first. I scrambled forward on my hands and knees as he raised the knife again.
Petts barrelled into the guy's side, classic rugby tackle. The man staggered sideways but didn't fall, and he brought the machete handle down on the back of Petts' neck, hard. He went down like a sack of spuds.
I had regained my feet by now, and the man and I circled each other warily. I caught a glimpse of Williams, running for the safety of the trees in the distance. Cowardly bastard. Maybe I would crucify him, if I ever saw him again.
I considered letting myself be captured, escaping later. But after what I'd just witnessed I didn't want to spend any more time in the company of these lunatics than I had to. No point taking a chance of being bled. But I was hopelessly outmatched here. This guy was faster, older, stronger and armed. I was limping, breathless and my neck hurt like hell.
He lunged forward, sweeping the machete sideways, trying to gut me. I sucked in my stomach and bent myself like a bow. The knife missed its mark. He then stepped towards me, and in one fluid movement the knife swept up and across, slicing down at my neck. I took a single step forward, ducked under the swing, and raised both hands to grab his forearm. I spun and shoved my back into his belly, tried to use his weight against him, throw him off balance. But, dammit, he was too solid on his legs and I hadn't practised this move before; I was just aping what I'd seen on TV, and he obviously knew what he was doing. He pulled in his arms, kept me cradled to him and squeezed, lifting me off my feet and tossing me aside.
I got to my feet and ran. Of course I say 'ran', I was still limping so there was no point my making for the tree-line; I'd just never make it. Instead I ran back to the house, making it inside just seconds before my pursuer. I flung myself through the kitchen door and scanned left and right for some kind of weapon with which to defend myself.
When the man came pelting through the door in pursuit, his face met the business end of a frying pan and his feet went out from under him. He crashed down onto the hard tiled floor with a rush of expelled breath. But still he kept a tight grip on his machete. I aimed a kick at his nuts but he rolled away. Nonetheless I connected with his thigh and he grunted. Finally a stroke of luck – I'd given him a dead leg.
He pulled himself up on a table as I swung at his head with the frying pan again. He swatted it away with the machete and it went flying from my grip, clattering to the floor. His nose was bleeding freely and one side of his face was vivid red where the pan had caught him on the cheekbone.
He snarled at me, wiped his hand in the blood from his nose, licked it, smacked his lips, and then smeared the fresh blood all over his face, mixing the new blood with the old.
'Safer now,' he chuckled as he advanced, limping, towards me.
Jesus, was this guy for real?
I backed away, looking all the time for another means of defence. There was a rack of knives to my left, and I snatched a short one which I brandished menacingly. A voice in my head mocked: 'Call that a knife? That's not a knife. That thing he's got, that's a knife!'
I continued backing away, trod on my discarded flying pan, and went flying like a character in a bad slapstick comedy. To add insult to injury I somehow contrived to land on my own knife, stabbing myself in the side. I yelled in pain as I pulled the blade out and felt hot blood seep down my hip. I looked up and there he was, looming over me, grinning.
'Good cattle. Bleed yourself. Save me the trouble.'
'Oh, fuck off,' I said wearily. And then I sat up, leaned forward and buried the knife hilt-deep into his thigh. Now it was his turn to yell. I flung myself backwards to avoid the answering swipe of his machete. I scrambled to my feet again and staggered away from him.
He resumed his advance without even pausing to remove the knife. I started grabbing things off the work surfaces and hurling them at him without taking time to see what they were. A colander, a kettle, a bottle of oil, a box of teabags; nothing slowed him down. This was futile.
I turned and scurried to the door.
It was locked. I looked left and right frantically. This wasn't the door Williams, Petts and I had entered from, that was on the other side of the room. This was – oh fuck, it was the door to a walk-in freezer.
I was trapped.
Long metal work surfaces stretched forward on either side of me, hemming me in. Behind me was a locked door, and in front of me stood some kind of Home Counties Jason Voorhees, dripping with blood, and grinning.
'Time to bleed, boy.'
There was nowhere to run, nothing to hand offered any chance of defence or offence. It was just me, him and a very big knife.
Fuck it.
I put my head down, and charged the bastard. I slammed into his midriff and this time, with both legs damaged, he lost his balance and fell backwards. We tumbled to the floor and slid across the tiles and – hallelujah! – I saw his machete go sliding away underneath the tables. We wrestled, each trying to gain some purchase, but both of us were slick with blood and our hands kept slipping off each other. I tried to reach up and grab his throat but he was way too strong for me. He forced my arms down and somehow spun me, taking a firm grip on my clothes and pinioning me, face down on the floor. He folded his arm around my neck, nestling the soft inside of his elbow on my already bruised and battered windpipe, and squeezed.
For the second time in an hour I was being choked to death and I couldn't see any way of escape. I writhed and kicked, tried a reverse head butt, scratched and gasped and thrashed, but he was solid as stone, bearing down on me. I couldn't move him an inch.
Again my vision began to cloud, my ears began to roar.
And then my thrashing hands brushed against something hard. The knife – it was still in his thigh! I grasped it, twisted and pulled. He grunted and tightened his grip. I couldn't move my arm up to hit anything vital so I resorted to stabbing him in the thigh again.
And then again.
And again.
And again.
I kept the knife pumping in and out of his thigh with all the force I could muster, but as my body failed, my thrusts got weaker and weaker.
Eventually the blade fell out of my blood-slicked hands and I felt myself blacking out.
I regained consciousness what must have been a minute or two later. The dead weight of my assailant was
