The Final Winter

Chapter Thirty-One

“Damien…

“Damien, wake up.”

Damien opened his eyes, expecting light to stream in and burn his retinas; but there was only darkness. Gradually, he remembered the evening’s events. The unending snow, the power cut, and everybody freezing. He could remember no more than that at first, but when he found himself tied to a chair he began to panic. It all came flooding back to him.

“Steph!”

“I’m here, Damien. I’m going to untie you, but you’ve got to stay calm. We need your help.”

“That son of a bitch knocked me out. Harry, I’m going to kill you.”

“Damien, I can only untie you if you calm down. The only reason Harry hit you was because he thought-“

“I was going rape you.”

“Yes,” said Steph. “We got it all wrong. It wasn’t you, it was-“

“Nigel!” Damien could remember; remembered finding the sick pervert about to stick it in an unconscious woman. Not just any women either; it was Steph. Damien was a lot of things, but a rapist he was not. Sex offenders and nonces were a whole other level of scumbag; subhuman slugs. He pulled at his wrist restraints, furious when they would not come off. “Where the hell is that fucker?”

“I’m here princess, and guess what? This time you get to watch.”

Damien strained in the darkness to see what was happening. He heard Nigel speak and the girls cry out in fear, but his eyes were still too unadjusted to the lack of light. He could only make out vague, shifting shapes in front of the fireplace. He struggled at the ropes around his wrists. Come on, come on. Need to put a stop to this before it gets nasty. Motherfucker needs to pay.

The ropes were tight, too tight in fact, and the skin around Damien’s wrists was abraded and sore. Nevertheless, he began sawing his arms back and forth, trying to create some slack that could set him free. In front of the fire the struggle continued, punctuated by a wet slapping sound.

Damien flinched as a body fell down in front of him. Steph lay crumpled on the floor, dazed and semi-conscious, blood seeping from a wound on the bridge of her nose. She murmured something to Damien but it went by him. It sounded like the word ‘poker’. Damien continued rubbing his wrists back and forth and felt the ropes loosen a couple of millimetres.

Yes, come on.

At his feet, Damien could feel Steph squirming on the floor, slowly moving past his legs. At first he thought she was making a run for it, but a tugging sensation at his wrists made him realise what she was doing: untying him.

He felt the ropes loosen.

Damien’s eyes adjusted to the scene in front of him. Nigel had Jess up against the wall beside the fire, struggling back and forth as the girl held onto his wrists, keeping his hands away from her. Jess obviously put up more of a fight than Nigel expected. Damien almost smiled as he watched her spit and bite at his face, doing anything she could to defend herself.

Girl’s a fighter!

Damien felt the ropes come free from his wrists and, with a jolt that emanated from his knees and spread through his entire body, he shot up and leapt towards Nigel, landing hard against the man’s broad back. It felt like hitting a barn wall, but the blow was enough to send Nigel face first into the wall. Unfortunately, Jess was in the way and got squashed in between. The air exploded from her lungs in a great ‘whooof!’ as she fell to the floor like a puppet without strings. Taking advantage of the confusion, Damien swung his fist.

And missed.

Nigel turned and ducked the blow, countering with a punch of his own. The man’s large, meaty fist connected with Damien’s ribcage with an echoing thud! The air flowed out of him like a whistle on a steam train; a drawn-out, strangled wheeze that seemed to go on forever. Damien fell to his knees and tried hard not to lose focus completely as the pain urged him to lie down and give up.

Nigel stomped towards him like a greasy-haired rhino, grunting and snorting. There was still too little air in Damien’s winded lungs to launch an effective attack, and he was just about to resign himself to the oncoming onslaught when he spotted something.

Damien snatched at the poker that lay strewn at his feet. It seemed to glow in the soft light of the fire like a gift from the Gods. It was his salvation; his chance to knock the greasy haired rapist to hell and back. Damien rose up, sweeping the poker up and over his head.

The clanging sound that filled the room as the thick iron poker struck Nigel’s skull was the most beautiful thing Damien had ever heard. It was music. Head banging music.

Nigel staggered backwards, half-conscious, legs wobbling like a beaten boxer’s. Damien watched the whites of Nigel’s eyes roll back into his head. Watched as his hulking body crumpled. And watched as Nigel fell backwards into the fire.

With an agonising scream, Nigel’s eyes rolled back into their normal position as his mind was forced back to lucidity. His head lay in the fire like it was a pillow; a pillow that quickly roasted and blistered his skin. Like a greyhound out of the starting gates, Nigel shot forward, leaping away from the fire like it was trying to consume him whole. The flames had died down to embers; most likely the only reason Nigel wasn’t a human fireball right now. The whole thing happened so quickly that Damien couldn’t think fast enough to react to Nigel’s enflamed body hurtling towards him.

When the knife entered, it felt like a bee sting, followed by a huge amount of pressure. Damien thought it was ironic. About time I found out what this feels like. I always thought it would have been sooner

The pain was unbearable.

“What in the blue hell is happening tonight. I mean FUCK!” Harry felt like he was going to go insane, smash the place up like a coked-up rock star. He’d just watched a teenage boy get ripped to shreds like minced beef on a taco. This on a night where the world was being consumed by a never-ending torrent of snow and hooded demons stalked run-down English council estates for kicks. On top of everything, it all seemed to have something to do with him. They had called Harry ‘the sinner’.

“Seriously, can anybody tell me what is going on? I just watched Jerry get ripped apart by God-knows what, and now we’re trapped in a pitch-black supermarket surrounded by a bunch of homicidal monks.”

“I don’t think they’re monks,” said Kath.

“No shit,” said Harry.

Lucas walked over to the front fire door and looked out into the snow. There seemed to be movement outside. He turned around and faced Harry. “I think it would be shrewd if we thought a wee bit less about what they be and a lot more about how to get passed them and back to the pub. The others need us.”

Harry let air flow slowly from his lips, trying to calm his beating heart. It didn’t work and left Harry feeling even more anxious. “We’re fucked, you know that?”

Lucas nodded. “Aye, but better to take a shagging standing up than to bend over and take it.”

Harry couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve obviously spent some time in prison, right?”

Lucas grinned. “You could say that, Harry Boy, and you wouldn’t be too far from the truth.”

“Okay,” said Kath. “Can we just do what we’re here to do? It’s even colder here than it was outside.”

Harry nodded and started moving. “Okay. Let’s get the coal, painkillers, food. Anything we need to take back, let’s get it all piled up over here.”

Kath and Lucas nodded and got to work. Before Lucas ran off into the darkness he saluted Harry and said, “Right away, Major Jobson.”

It was then that Harry realised something important; something he’d overlooked earlier. He’d never told Lucas what his surname was and he was sure no one else had either.

Which begged one question for Harry: How does Lucas know me?