LIFERS Chapter Fifty

Gregg looked through the 4x4’s windshield to see several light-blue slits in the cloud, he reckoned five more minutes of this fine rain and that was it. Game over. He drew his attention across to Nick as he knelt at the hatch to listen for mass movement under the garage.

He then wondered if his plan was working at all. Were they in the tunnels? Were they making their way to the cinema? Or was it possible he’d in some way miscalculated their reaction to the fire and were now doing something he hadn’t anticipated?

He cracked his window an inch. ‘Anything yet, Nick?’

Still listening to the sounds below the garage, Nick raised a hand in a “Hang-on” motion, a few seconds later he got to his feet and went over.

‘It’s working,’ he said. ‘They’re in the tunnel and heading for the cinema.’

‘Great, now as soon as you detonate, get Jill to give the signal and then make sure she and Alicia get out of here.’

‘They’ll be leaving don’t worry about that.’

Gregg nodded and rolled up his window, he took one last look at the girls, put his foot down, and then headed for the town hall. Within thirty seconds he could see plumes of black smoke and bright orange flames lick at the morning sky, and, just fifty yards short of Culver drive, he slammed on the breaks to bring the 4x4 to a standstill. He looked back along the street for the van but couldn’t see through the veil of fine rain, he only hoped he’d be able to see the signal when it came.

..

After Gregg left, Nick went over to Jill. ‘As soon as I’m sure they’re in the cinema, I’ll blow the tunnel and wave for you to flash Gregg, then you have to turn the van around and get out of here.’

‘And as soon as Gregg gets back you’re going to join us, right?’

‘Yes,’ Nick assured her, ‘as soon as he gets back.’

After Jill nodded her acceptance and rolled up the window, Nick returned to the hatch and crouched to listen for the noise of people passing. He likened their hushed murmurations to a congregation leaving church once the mass had ended, and after hearing nothing for half a minute, he picked up his little electronic detonator, opened the flap, and pressed the button.

Two seconds later an explosion sank the middle of the red concrete floor to a two-foot crater and rattled the tin walls around him. Nick was about to wave for Jill to give Gregg his signal when he saw the side of the van’s headlight already flashing; he then went out to make sure she and Alicia left.

..

Gregg stared through the rear window of the 4x4 and felt sure he’d been there too long not to have been given the signal. There was a problem, had to be. What if the third bomb failed to go off? Or what if it went off but he just couldn’t see the signal. He unknowingly drummed the fingers of his left hand on the steering wheel in time with each beat of the wipers for the next thirty seconds, and then saw something, it was faint, but it was there, and then again, and three times after that.

The signal had come.

Gregg flattened the pedal and the 4x4 screached forward, across Culver Drive and rode the six steps before it exploded the burning doors open. Inside the large hallway the car skidded sideways, the tiled floor offering it no cohesion until it came to a stop under the landing where the old man said the girls were being held.

He left the engine running and climbed out the passenger side, and as he met the black, acrid smoke, he pulled his T-shirt over his mouth and tried to blink away the sting in his eyes. Gregg was then welcomed by falling glass and burning bits of wood as it dropped from every wall and window frame around him and, somewhere amid all this chaos and bedlam, a fire alarm blurted out its warning.

Without hesitation or thought for his own safety, Gregg bounded the stairs to the room the girls had been kept in only to find it empty. The old man couldn’t have lied to them because Alicia had confirmed his story. He shouted for Jenny Walsh but the raging fire crackling over the wooden walls around him and the exploding panes of glass combined with the intermittent chonk of the fire alarm, drowned out any hope of him hearing a reply.

After he checked the adjoining rooms and found those to be empty, he headed for the rooms downstairs. Either side of the hallway was a door, but getting to them without being struck by falling debris would be near impossible, but he had to check the rooms out. For all he knew the girls could have been moved since he found Alicia, so no way was he going to leave anywhere unchecked.

He ripped the felt-covered shelf from inside the back of the 4x4 and held it over his head with his one free hand as he ran to the first of the doors, all the time, the thud of falling missiles hitting his makeshift shield accompanied him.

He opened the door to find a large empty room with flames and smoke billowing through the smashed windows and then crossed the hallway to find the same situation there. The only place left to check was the kitchen; he remembered Alicia said she’d been sent down a tunnel in there.

Under the relative safety of the landing, Gregg climbed in the passenger side of the 4x4 and out driver’s the side to gain access to the kitchen. He saw an open hatch and descended into it. At the bottom was another open hatch, and the closed steel hatch Alicia said was there. But what he saw lying on the floor between the two hatches was something he hadn’t expected to see.

The realisation of the fate of the remaining girls felt like a freight-train had just thundered through the walls and hit him square in the chest. He bent down and picked up the bright multi-coloured bangle Alicia said she’d given to Jenny Walsh for being her friend.

They’d taken the two girls with them to the cinema, and that was something Gregg hadn’t foreseen, so now they were in just as much danger as before, if not more.

Gregg was out of the shaft in no time and scrambled his way to the 4x4. He climbed in, manoeuvred it to face the doors, hit the gas, and crashed back through to the street. With his foot pressed hard on the pedal, the car cleared the stone steps by a good ten feet as he raced to get back in time to stop Nick detonating the truck-bomb.

Why the hell did he tell him not wait for him to get back? “We’ll only get one opportunity of ending this.” He told him. “Push the truck through the doors and don’t hesitate to raze that place to the ground.” And now those young girls could die just because of his impatience; he can’t allow that to happen. He has to get there, he has to stop Nick detonating and then hope to negotiate with Ella for the girls’ release.

At around half way he saw the two trucks cross the street and head toward the cinema, and the rain, athough Gregg was far too preoccupied to notice, had now stopped, even though the wipers on the 4x4 were still at full speed. What he did notice was the tow-truck as it reversed back across the street and disappeared into the alley at the side of the schoolhouse.

The bomb was in the cinema now, and in the next few seconds there wouldn’t be a cinema, just a hole where it used to stand. But if he could put himself and the 4x4 in Nick’s line of sight he’d see him and not detonate.

He pushed harder on the pedal but it would go no lower, the 4x4 was giving him all it had.

Just a few more seconds and he’d be there.