Free Blood Crazy by Simon Clark Page A

the fan – and all you want to do is pick a fight.’
    â€˜Fight? I don’t need to fight you. You’re a streak of piss.’
    I clenched my jaw so tight it ached.
    â€˜Aten. I want to drive.’
    â€˜No way, Slatter. NO WAY.’
    â€˜Take me back to Doncaster.’
    â€˜This is my car. We go where I say.’
    â€˜Where’s that, then? You don’t know, do you? You haven’t got that tart of a mother to tell you what to do.’
    â€˜I know where I’m going … I’m going south.’
    â€˜Suit yourself.’
    We were hitting sixty when he opened the door and started to get out.
    Anne’s and Vicki’s screams fused with the sound of the tyres as I crunched the brake. Slatter was out of the car before we even stopped. Lighting another cigarette he walked back the way we’d come, head swinging from side to side.
    My hatred for the bastard ran deeper than I’d felt anything before. Under my breath I hissed, ‘Don’t mention it, Slatter. I don’t need thanks for saving your frigging skin. Any time … pal.’
    As I drove away I wound down the window to shift the cigarette smoke, and the smell of Slatter.
    â€˜He’s not a real person, is he?’ asked Anne. ‘I think he’s got to be a monster.’
    â€˜You’re right.’ I laughed with the sheer relief of getting shut of him. ‘He’s a monster all right.’
    Vicki said, ‘He frightened me.’
    â€˜Me too.’ Sarah looked at me. Her eyes softened – it was the nearest thing to an apology. ‘Who is Tug Slatter, Nick?’
    â€˜A nobody. Forget him. Now where’s those chocolates? I’m starving.’
    Slatter was going back into the jaws of death in Doncaster. He’d be cold by suppertime.
    But I knew right then as I drove down the slip road onto the deserted motorway that if I’d dropped Slatter off at the gates of hell he’d walk right through it.
    And walk out the other side, smoking a cigarette, and looking as if he’d made the place his own.

Chapter Fifteen
A Kind of Normality
    We’d been living in the cottage three days. My turn to cook. Sarah in a skirt and striped T-shirt sat on the sofa flicking through a holiday brochure.
    â€˜Supper’s ready. The wine’s on the shelf.’
    â€˜Fancy a beer?’ asked Sarah.
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜Spaghetti bolognaise. A man of many talents. Where did you find the meat?’
    â€˜It’s tinned. I stuck in a jar of bolognaise sauce and my own special ingredient.’
    â€˜Which is?’
    â€˜Half a mugful of red wine. The tip from the Nick Aten guide to smart cuisine is whatever you cook, add booze. It transforms it.’
    â€˜I had you down for a good-for-nothing slob.’ Sarah smiled as I handed her the plate. ‘You’ve got hidden depths.’
    â€˜Well hidden. Now eat up before it gets cold.’
    â€˜You sound like my mother …’
    That killed the conversation for a while.
    Over the last three days we’d been able to begin to relax. Now we were getting to know one another as people. Not merely shell-shocked survivors who happened to share a car.
    She downed her wine in one then refilled her glass. ‘Nick. How long do you think we should stay here?’
    â€˜Give it a few more days. We’ve got food, shelter, we’re miles from anywhere. No point in rushing it after what happened on Monday.’
    â€˜It’s not your fault, you know. You did what you could.’
    After leaving Slatter to his fate we’d hit the motorway and barrelled south. For twenty miles there were no hold-ups, just the occasional abandoned car. In the distance we saw towns and cities. Some were burning.
    After hours of driving my arms and shoulders hurt like hell; the tension clamped my jaws together so tightly my teeth ached. As the motorway approached another burning city we saw the road ahead was