Blood Crazy Read Online Free PDF Page B

I saw a Reebok on the end of a leg.
    I quit the door as if it had suddenly erupted in boils. For a moment I stood there, wanting a piss but not knowing what to do.
    At last I put my head round the corner of the ladies’ door. It was pinkly empty. Feeling stupidly self-conscious I went as quickly as I could and left, still zipping my jeans.
    The two girls watched me come downstairs, their eyes huge with fear. I’ve never seen a drowning man clinging to a life belt, but I’m sure if I did he wouldn’t hang on more tightly than one of those girl’s was hanging onto that McDonald coke dispenser.
    I got through the door feeling their eyes on my back. What could I do? What could I say? I was in shock. My brain was black lead inside my skull. I should have tried to help them – they were just frightened kids.
    I didn’t.
    I hit the street not knowing where I was going but walking quickly. If I walked purposefully then maybe a purpose would come. Some idea of where to go.
    The police?
    No. When was the last time you saw a teenage cop?
    I saw the car, the roof dimpled where I’d jumped onto it. There was a purpose after all in the direction I was walking. I had to check on Steve. He might be alive.
    I edged slowly round the car. First I saw the mess in the gutter that looked like black-red treacle. Lying flat on the paving slabs was my friend. I didn’t know if he lay face up or face down. They’d been thorough.
    As I stepped forward a black shape rushed at my face, whipping my cheek with something soft, then it was gone. I looked up to see a rook flapping up to the roof tops, a piece of food hanging from its beak.
    I walked away.
    Before me the traffic lights ran through their sequence. Red, amber, green. Neon signs flashed in the stores. Six TVs in an electrical store played an old U2 video. Then the sense of dislocation squeezed back again. Perhaps it would have been easier to walk through a post-nuclear holocaust town with burned-out buildings and rusting car wrecks. But here was madness and murder in a town with clean pavements and traffic lights signalling to empty highways. My friend lay broken on the street while a TV in the Post Office window chuntered in green letters:
    GOOD MORNING DONCASTER.
    THE WEATHER TODAY – SUNSHINE: 21C.
    EVENTS SUNDAY, APRIL 16.
    REGENT’S SQUARE SPRING FETE. 1PM.
    FOR CARE OF THE ELDERLY WITH DIGNITY, THE—
    As I stood there the screen died.
    And at that moment I knew the town itself had begun to die. The traffic lights went out; screens in the electrical stores blanked; VDU timetables at the bus stop faded to black.
    Electricity is like blood flowing through your veins. You don’t notice it till it stops.
    Now there was something cold and inert about the town. The buildings, even in sunshine, seemed suddenly dark. It was quieter. All the air conditioning units and Xpelair fans that provide the subliminal hum had died too.
    For the first time I realised that loneliness wasn’t just people not being there. Loneliness has form, it’s got a presence so huge you feel it pressing against you. You have to do something or it begins to smother you.
    I couldn’t just keep circling the town like a calf circling around its dead mother. She was dead. I had to break away.
    In the end, I didn’t have to make the decision.
    A hundred yards ahead of me, gathering in a swarm, were men and women. They were moving in from side streets. Some were the ones that had attacked Steve. They had his lifeblood drying to cracks on their hands and faces.
    I cut down a side street that lead in the direction of the station. It took me by McDonald’s. Smoke now filled the restaurant. I never did find out what had happened to the girls who’d served me twenty minutes ago.
    People seemed to seep from the brickwork. They headed in the direction of Clock Corner, the traditional centre of town, as if there was going to be some announcement and the call had