LIFERS Chapter Forty Seven

When Jill reached the town hall at the T-junction with Culver Drive, she stopped the van facing six stone steps that led up to the entrance doors. On either side of the doors were five large windows and in each of them stood eight to ten people, and all of them staring out.

She turned right and pulled up under the second window past the doors where her peripheral vision afforded her the unfortunate luxury of seeing the third window along. She could see the shape of people as they stood there but couldn’t bring herself to look straight at them. She’d climbed in the van only three or four minutes ago and already her heart rate was off the scale. What she needed was to calm down, to compose herself and get her nerves under control, and the only way to do that was to look at them and get it over with.

She closed her eyes, turned her head, and promised herself she’d open them again after a count of three, but it wasn’t until nine that she kept that promise. And that’s when she saw how their grey-white faces stared right back at her, she half-expected them to point and shout and bang on the glass, but they were just like Gregg said, mannequins, dummies in a shop window.

She turned off the engine and stopped the wipers mid-sweep; the sudden stillness marred only by the patter of rain as it struck the shell of the van. She tried to swallow but found it near impossible as all her body fluids had gone to the palms of her hands. She removed them from the wheel and rubbed them dry over her thighs hard enough to feel the warmth of static.

Now she had to get out of the van and hope her movement didn’t disturb the watchers. She opened the door and twisted in the seat to allow her feet to find purchase before she got out, and again Gregg was right about them. From her position at ground level she could see the blank stares were looking beyond her.

She moved along the side of the van as slow as time and the diminishing rain would allow, all the while mindful that any sudden movement might just be enough to wake them. She pulled open the rear doors to get the container of oil out and that’s when the air of stillness fragmented into a million pieces.

The high-pitched creak of the damaged doors disturbed some nearby birds and sent them yakking in a huge circle overhead. The pale faces must have heard that and would be banging on the windows for sure now. She looked and saw movement. A hand twitched, an arm twitched, a head leaned an ear toward the noise it heard but soon resumed its posture, its brain remaining rapt in whatever its senses were feeding it.

Satisfied she hadn’t disturbed them; Jill returned to her task and climbed in and knelt to untie the container. The straps used to hold it in place were Velcro and tore apart with a loud rasp that filled the cavern of the van almost as much as it filled Jill’s imagination. Imagination that had her hearing things outside, footsteps, quiet ones, almost not there. She wanted to turn and look but had a feeling she’d see one of them risking the rain and standing right behind her.

Frozen to the spot, she felt the van sink as though someone had stepped inside it. She heard sniffing, just like she heard when Ella came to the stationroom to see them. Then a low grunt sounded, almost pleasurable in tone.

Her gun was in the cab on the passenger seat so her eyes moved to the van’s floor in search of a weapon, and the only thing at hand was the roll of fuse Nick had set up. She grabbed at it and wheeled round in a wild, feral arc and just missed the insomniatic badger that climbed in the van for nothing more than a nosey round.

‘Fuck,’ was all she could think of as she landed ass-first on the van’s rubber bed to see the badger take off along the road, keckering its disapproval at her unexpected attack.

Jill picked herself up and dragged the container to the edge of the van where she jumped down and lifted it out, but she wasn’t expecting the sudden surprise gravity had in store and only just managed its weight. She gripped the steel handle with both hands and shuffled herself backward as she dragged the heavy container to the side of the stone steps. Once there, she rested to the left of the first window and tucked herself deep into the corner to keep out of sight.

The wall she leaned against was wooden and faded light-grey by the sun. She moved underneath the first window and unscrewed the lid of the container, its weight gave her the only option of tilting it to allow the oil to glug out, and when the patch reached a little over dinner-plate-size, she tilted it back and moved on to the next window.

After the first five deposits the container was light enough for her to carry and tlit and then move on to the next, and the next. When all the windows were done she poured the remaining dregs outside the front doors.

She dumped the empty container under the first window and went back to the van for the roll of Rapidy-litey stuff. Then, following Nick’s instructions, she tied the point where the two fuses were joined to the hand rail that followed the steps up to the entrance.

She looped a loop at every deposit and dropped the remaining fifty or so metres at the top of the steps in order to ignite the doors. She stretched out the twenty-feet of slow burning blue fuse in a straight line away from the steps when a stark realisation hit her smack in the face.

She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid, how could she forget the most important thing she needed to finish the small task she’d been given? The one small job she actually volunteered to do.