“Must just be a bug. You better get back,” Ronnie grimaced, silently gesturing to their diabolical environment.
Scribbles coughed, “or, you might be up the duff,” he casually offered, just before taking another puff of his joint.
Chapter Twenty-two
2019
Despite the vast space and crisp, country air stretching out all around them on the marsh, the pungent stench leaked rapidly from the back of the van and hit Ronnie square in the face, almost causing him to reel backwards in repulsion.
“Fuck,” he murmured, instinctively putting his hand over his nose.
Lloyd and Flo giggled from behind him, giddy with excitement as they shuffled to get a better look.
“Who shat themselves?” Ronnie demanded. He shone the flashlight into the cramped van. The sky was still a brilliant white, but the van was compact and dark, so it was annoyingly difficult to see their prisoners in the gloom.
Sienna’s tear-stained face was illuminated by the glow of the torch. The horrific wound on her head was a glistening red circle at her temple; spidery slashes leading off of it in wispy lines. It had been a wonder that she hadn’t died, given the impact to her head when she had been launched from the driver’s seat into the windshield.
“HELP!” she screamed, jerking her bound and tied body so that it looked like she was convulsing. Her voice slashed through the air in an unpleasant croak, her hopeless sobs echoing around the wide, damp plains.
Ronnie took a step back to stand beside his youngest daughter, his boot squelching nastily against the mud. He rested a hand on her shoulder and stared down at her. “It’s your call, kiddo,” he said gently.
Flo gazed back up at him, her wide blue eyes shining with astonishment. “What… you mean… I’m allowed to choose?”
“It’s a rite of passage, darling,” her father replied with a small, fond smile. There was something about his little girl’s amazed expression that ignited a spark inside his chest, perhaps a tiny shred of childhood joy left behind somewhere deep inside his soul. “It’s your revenge to serve up.”
Flo stared back into the back of the van and slowly moved forwards. Her little, excitable brain whirred at a thousand miles a minute, the possibilities running riot in her head.
“Well, I say we do something that looks like a terrible accident…” she said, chewing her lip thoughtfully. “We don’t want to make it obvious that they’ve been slaughtered…”
Sienna let out a low, hopeless whine. She turned to her left, where Jared was lying face down, his body still as stiff and rigid as an ironing board. Although she couldn’t see his eyes, she could feel that he was conscious. Living and breathing the same horrific dread that she was.
“I say, we put them in the front seats,” Flo continued, “jam something in the bonnet, so it catches fire…” she paused briefly, deep in thought. “Maybe spill some vodka inside the car, make sure the whole thing goes up?”
Ronnie and Minnie exchanged glances in a fleeting moment that was pregnant with emotion. Wordlessly, they conveyed their pride to one another. Their girl had taken one of her parent’s old schemes and made it better. Of course- if it was the engine that caught fire, it would look far less suspicious than a lighter igniting in the front seats.
“Right,” Ronnie said briskly, clapping his hands together and turning to his sons. “You heard the lady. Get them both in the front seats.”
Lloyd and Zach both sprang into action, and once again, Sienna began screaming, her voice rasping as it resounded across the wide space. Lloyd grabbed her shoulders and effortlessly dragged her out of the van so that her feet splashed into the mud on the ground, and the murky water splattered up and down her pyjama bottoms.
In her restraints, the woman frantically kicked and struggled, bleating wildly with wide, blood-shot eyes.
“Ugh, fuck me,” groaned Lloyd, briefly turning his head to spit on the ground. “It’s this one who’s shat herself.” In disgust, he threw her body to the ground and hurriedly wiped at his damp trousers. Sienna’s limbs jerked in shivery movements in the muck, and exhaustion finally began to quieten her screams.
Stella laughed, throwing her head back so that her blonde hair fell gracefully over her shoulders. “Not very lady-like, is it?” She squelched forwards in the mud and squatted down beside Sienna’s body, brandishing the blade of her knife, which had been tucked into the pocket of her jeans. “You want me to stop her squealing, Flo?” she asked hopefully, probing the base of the woman’s spine with the point of the knife.
Flo considered this, “but then won’t she be numb? If you paralyse her, I mean?”
“Why don’t we test it on this one?” Zach suggested, dragging Jared’s rigid carcass to the edge of the vest. He flipped him over in one swift movement. Half of Jared’s face was coated in a foul concoction of blood mixed with vomit; the vile paste lit up in the light of the day. Expertly, Zach withdrew his own knife from the waistband of his trousers and held it out to his little sister. “Hurt him. See if he feels it.”
With a mixture of uncertainty and anticipation, the child took the knife from Zach and contemplated it for a moment. Her eyes flitted back towards Jared, whose eyes were closed but whose nostrils were flaring with frightened pants. Lips pursed with concentration, Flo raised the knife and plunged it as hard as she could into the man’s shoulder.
It didn’t go in very far, but the puncture was severe enough to make Jared screech out like a badly wounded animal.
Flo chuckled and nodded approvingly, “interesting…” she turned back to Stella, who was still squatting down by Sienna. “Do it, sister,” she
