Heaven From Hell (Part 2)

The boy’s hand - for he was no more than a boy - began forcing its way between them, searching. Sara could feel the ugly lump of what could only be some kind of gun, hidden beneath his clothes. She resisted his attempts, clung even tighter. Anything to deny him his twisted and fatal ambition, the revenge he craved.

In another sense of calm, Sara knew she'd been lucky yet again; the café had all but emptied. She whispered again into his ear, pleading ‘No!'

But his strength was too much. He broke free, throwing her heavily against a wall. Stunned into a daze, slumped on the floor, Sara could only watch as time slowed to a crawl. The grey shape of a deadly assault rifle emerged from the blackness of his coat, fingers already closing on the trigger. Fire spat from the muzzle as bullets raked around the cafe in all directions. 

But cafe was empty. Sara had bought just enough time. But time, her time, had run out.

Kamal, hearing the gunfire, ran to the teashop too late. On the floor lay two bodies. Sara had paid the ultimate price. The gunman, frustrated in his mission, lay alongside her, killed by his own hand. 

The table where they, mere moments ago, had sat and drank sweet tea, Kamal found the postcard to her daughter Beth. 

In a local hospital, in a cold, damp town far from the heat and chaos of the Middle East, inside an overheated ward, Beth watched her new born son cry against his exhausted mother's breast. 

'He's beautiful,' Beth whispered.

Kamal, his arm around his wife, agreed.

'He has your eyes, of course he's beautiful. And he will have your mother's courage, I'm certain'

Beth squeezed her partners arm, hearing again the regret in his voice. 

'Kamal, it wasn't your fault. You didn't know what would happen. You have to let it go.'

'I can never. I took her to my safe haven, my 'mamounia'. She saved many people that day. Myself included.'

'And if she hadn't, we would never have met. Your son would not be here.'

'That is true. Perhaps he too will have her courage.'

'You know, it's strange. My mom always said her mom was always with her somehow. Maybe she will be here for Mike, too.'

'Maybe.' Kamal hugged his wife. 'Inshallah.'

In seemingly less than a heartbeat, as all children seem to do, Mike was no longer an infant but a grown man, yet still a child.

And right now, this man-child was struggling.

‘When will you be back home?’

‘Later’

‘WHEN later? Tonight, tomorrow … ’ 

Mike’s mother drew her hand through her hair in exasperation, ‘Your dad and I need to know, Mike. Mike!’

Mike snarled at his mother over his shoulder in frustration, refusing to meet her eyes, ‘I dunno when! Look, I’ll call ya. Gota go now, okay? See ya later.’

“Mike!”

Slamming the front door behind him, he stalked off. The bike was waiting and he wasn’t listening.

‘Mike!’

Twisting the throttle viciously, Mike let the engine drown out his mother's plea in a scream of defiance. Dropping the clutch and pulling the bars, the front wheel lifted high. Mike leaned into the sudden acceleration, the front wheel high in the air, and powered away.

Beth watched as Mike rode away. Almost twenty, yet still the teenager and desperate to escape from home. She shook her head, moved back inside the house and closed the door. 

Mike powered down the road, taking each familiar bend at speed, his knee almost touching the tarmac as the bike leant hard over. Sparks flew from the foot pegs as he pushed at the limits. He loved this sense of power and speed. The independence of it all. Yet, something was niggling at his mind, cautioning. So he eased back, slowed, reaching the first intersection a fraction later than he might have otherwise.

The car had appeared from nowhere, as cars always do. Mike's reflexes saved him: a touch of front brake, a push on the left bar and the bike answered, swerved just enough for him to fly past without contact.

'Damn,' Mike swore, under his breath.

For the next few miles of road to his girlfriend’s house his heart thumped and he rode that little bit more carefully. 

Mike slowed as he came into town. There, he could see Janie, waiting. Soon those intense dark-brown eyes of hers were fixed upon him as he pulled up alongside her. He’d barely removed his helmet before her lips found his own. The engine pinged and popped between them, cooling despite the heat of their embrace. 

Mike’s heart was racing. From the near miss, or from meeting Janie, he wasn’t sure.

He let her brush a single matted hair from his forehead. ‘Mike, you’re sweating like a pig!’

‘Yeah, I was pushing it a bit. Nearly lost the beast on the road back there …’

Janie’s dark eyes narrowed.

‘What do you mean?’

Mike twisted his head away, ‘Jesus, don’t start …’

‘Why the shit shouldn’t I start! You know how you scare me riding like that.’

‘For Christ’s sake Janie, you’re beginning to sound like my Mum …’

Janie bristled with anger. ‘Mike, if you don’t start taking it easy on that thing...' She hit him with two clenched fists on his chest. 'You could get killed!’ 

He knew he couldn't defeat her, instead pulled her close. She rested her forehead against his shoulder.

‘No, no I won’t,’ he reassured her, ‘I always know when to ease up – it’s my “sixth sense.” 'Maybe my grandmother is looking out for me.’

'Sixth sense my arse. You’re trembling.’ she told, looking up into his face.

Mike checked his hand. He couldn't deny it was shaking slightly. He laughed. ‘Oh yeah... So I am. Damn!’

Janie stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

‘Listen dumb ass, I want you fully functioning, not injured or worse. In fact, well, I want you right now.”

‘I thought you wanted to go out for a ride?” Mike laughed.

‘Oh, I do,’ Janie giggled. ‘But the bike ride can wait – this one can’t. You do know my parents aren't in, don’t you?’ she said, her smile radiating more warmth than a summer’s evening.

‘Oh, well, in that case. That’s much more interesting,’ he said. ‘I guess the bike can wait …'

Later, in the evening dusk, they walked to a nearby pub. The traffic was light, few cars around, and Mike felt more content at that moment than he’d ever been in his young life. But, as he thought that one particularly awkward question wouldn’t be asked by Janie, it was.

‘So, any news about the job then?’

Mike rolled his eyes as his heart sank.

‘Janie, look, you know this job is my ticket out of here, out of this dump of a town …’

‘Yeah, and away from me.’

A sullen silence began to build. As they walked along the road, the traffic rumbled past unheard and unnoticed.

‘That’s not true,’ sighed Mike. ‘It’s only a couple of hundred miles away, we can still see each other.’

‘You’ll find someone else, I know you will …’

‘Look, we’ll see each other at weekends or you could move down with me, why not?’

‘You know why not – I’m not yet eighteen, my folks would never let me go and I’ve got Uni and … oh, why can’t you just stay?’

‘Because, well, because …’ Unable to find words she would understand, he finished lamely with the tired excuse, ‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime …’

‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime …’ she mimicked, folding her arms. 

Janie stared into the sky as the silence between them deepened. Finally she spoke with a sudden decision. ‘Look. Fine, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care, you just go, don’t think about me, just do what you want.’

‘Janie, look, you’re being silly …’ Mike bit his tongue as he spoke that last word.

‘Silly?’ Janie growled. ‘Oh, I’m being ‘silly,’ am I? Well screw you, Mike!’

Mike, hands balled into fists, watched as she marched away across the road. Furious with her and with himself, he turned away, determined to leave her to her tantrum. Yet something called to him, within his mind. Stopped him dead. Then he heard it.

The sound of a truck air-horn renting the air. A huge semi-trailer, on the wrong side of the road, bearing down on Janie, standing stock still half way across the road. 

Both had seen and heard the truck at the same instant, but Janie froze. Mike reacted instantly.

'JANIE!' 

She turned, meeting his eyes for an instant as he launched himself towards her. He connected with the speed of a full throated rugby tackle knocking her sprawling and out of the trucks path. 

Mike hit the road hard, hearing, not feeling, the bones in his shoulder snap like twigs. Pain shot through him, hard and vicious. He lay helpless in agony, watching the front end of twenty tons of steel and rubber bare down upon him. Breath knocked from his lungs stifled any scream escaping his lips. Air horns bellowing, tyres screeching, the truck skidded inexorably, fatally, towards him. He closed his eyes. 

Only Janie could scream, and she screamed his name in a long despairing wail. The sound of her voice was the last thing on Earth that Mike heard, but it meant everything to him, because it meant she was safe. 

Several months later, in another hot and stifling maternity ward, Janie's new born child lay against her breast.

Like his grandmother, Mike was watching. He whispered, 'She's beautiful'.

'Yes, she is, so beautiful'. Janie answered to the empty room, without knowing why.

For Mike, just as for Sara before him, there could be no other.