Blood Water

CHAPTER 23

Sean’s head was pounding. He’d half expected to pass out – that was what people did when they were in a car accident, but apart from being thrown about and bruising his shoulder, he was fine. But his head was pounding from the whiplash. It was like he’d been standing next to a loudspeaker on maximum volume for an hour. He felt like crying, the pain was so bad. He turned to his brother, who was just sitting there, his hands back on the wheel, staring through the windscreen in shock.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, I think so. Must have hit my head on something though. I feel all right… Jesus, this car must have been made before airbags were invented. We were lucky.’

A back door opened and Sean heard Waites scrambling out. He and James got out too and the three of them congregated behind the vehicle. The car was a wreck. Three windows had shattered, one rear wheel had been crushed by the weight of the chassis, a headlight was missing, parts of the frame had buckled and there was a large dent in the roof. The one functioning headlight illuminated the area around them, though the interior of the vehicle was still in darkness. Sean thought he could see Titus, sitting bolt upright again, facing straight ahead. He looked at Waites.

‘Did it… ?’

‘What? Get me? No, of course not.’ Waites wiped water from his face and spat, not taking his eyes off the car.

James glanced at him uncertainly.

‘What? I’m telling you, it didn’t get me. Look, the face guard is still on, you can see.’

‘So what do we do now?’ James asked, still testing his limbs to see if anything had been injured.

‘We need to get him into the centre. How far is it?’

‘It’s just down there,’ James said, pointing along the road.

‘OK then. I’ll have to knock him out. We’ll drag him… Once we get him inside—’

He was interrupted by the sound of a car door opening. Sean wasn’t sure how much of the water in his eyes was rain and how much was tears from the pain, but through it all he could just make out the door swinging lazily open; first one foot emerged, then the other, very gingerly. It reminded him of his grandfather – though this man was barely fifty years old. Titus reached behind his head and deftly undid the straps of the face guard before anyone could stop him. He threw the mask down and smiled. His eyes were the worst thing of all. They were wide and staring.

‘Well, well. What a fix we’ve got ourselves in.’

‘Shit…’ Waites murmured.

‘What now?’ James whispered, though his words were lost in the rain.

‘Why don’t we go into the centre?’ Titus said; he looked like a zombie. ‘We’re all terribly wet. Wouldn’t want to catch something. Hmm?’

Sean and James exchanged incredulous glances. This was already a situation none of them knew how to handle, but now Titus, or rather the thing inside him, was talking quite normally. They didn’t take their eyes off the man as he looked around.

‘This is familiar,’ he said, taking a step forward. The others all took a step back. Noticing this, the headmaster chuckled. ‘Oh come on, there’s no need to fear me. We can all be friends. Besides, there’s three of you and only one of me. I’m not stupid enough to try anything.’

‘You’d better not,’ Waites said, reminding himself that he was talking to the creature, not the headmaster. ‘If we have to kill Titus to get to you, we will.’

‘Kill Titus?’ The creature smiled again and mulled things over. ‘You’re really prepared to kill this innocent man? How cold. Although, to be honest, he is already dead: destroying his body will make little difference to him now. As for killing me, well… I’m only trying to survive. Isn’t that what we’re all doing?’

‘We don’t normally murder innocent people to do it.’

‘Survival doesn’t discriminate. You do what you have to do. I can’t help it, it’s something I have no control over. I don’t deliberately kill. I have no wish to harm anybody.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Waites said.

‘Me neither,’ Sean said. ‘What do you want?’

‘What do I want?’ Titus repeated, as though genuinely considering the question. ‘What do I want… ?’ He was staring at the ground now, but after a few seconds he looked back up at them, smiled, then roared and charged at them, his hands outstretched, grasping for them, murder once more in his eyes.

This time Waites was ready for him. At the last moment he stepped to one side and put out his right foot. The headmaster had no time to avoid it; he flew forward into the mud. Waites rushed across, turned him over and punched him hard in the face. The headmaster was out cold again. Waites undid and pulled off his tie.

‘What are you doing?’ Sean asked.

‘Might be a bit more effective than that face guard.’ The teacher wound the tie round the headmaster’s mouth twice, securing it behind his head in a double knot. ‘There, that should keep the little bastard in there. Come on, guys, help me get him up.’

They lifted the headmaster, this time with Waites taking one arm, both brothers the other, and dragged him along, his feet making two troughs in the mud. They struggled up the hill and onto the pitted road, where they stopped briefly to catch their breath. James looked back at the car: he hadn’t locked it, but no one was going to be able to drive it away.

Sean glanced at the tie covering the headmaster’s mouth and wondered if it was strong enough to prevent the parasite escaping. They dragged their captive towards the study centre, its lights just visible through the darkness. Sean kept looking at the gag – it seemed to bulge outwards every now and then, but perhaps it was just his imagination.

At the car park they stopped for another breather. Although there were three of them, the headmaster was a large man, and his clothes were heavy with water and mud. When they’d got their breath back, they picked him up again, dragging him into the reception, where a film of water covered the linoleum floor. They dumped Titus on one of the benches, closed the front door and stood there, panting.

‘OK,’ Waites said. ‘Let’s go to Sally’s office, James, and try not to drop him… We don’t want him waking up.’