Nailed by the Heart (47 page)

But
he understood what had to be done. He knew a secret grown-ups didn't.

"I
want to stand up, Mum."

She
let him go.

The
towel slipped onto the sand. He knew what to do. And he had to do it
now.

It
was time.

His
dad was not looking his way. He was staring at the red men. David
waited until his mum looked the other way.

Then
he ran.

"Chris!"
Ruth's voice pierced his ears. "Get him!"

Chris
looked round.

David
had run down the beach in the direction of the causeway. He ran
between two Saf Dar who made no effort to catch him.

Plenty
of time for that. ...

Plenty
of time to play with the little boy in our own special way. ...

Chris
bounded down the beach, the hammer gripped tightly in his hand.

By
the time he reached the causeway, David was a third of the way
across.

"David!
Come back... You can't go back there."

David
didn't, or pretended not to, hear him. He ran on; a small
blond-haired figure in a red sweatshirt and jeans, bare feet
splashing through the surf.

Chris
struggled through the waves. Now they were above knee-deep, making
running nearly impossible.

By
some fluke, David must have been running between waves. He ran easily
and fast.

He
prayed that a wave would not knock David into the sea. Flanking the
causeway were Saf Dar. Waiting.

He
moved as quickly as he could, not knowing what he would do when he
caught up with David. The seafort was alight. Maybe not all the gas
bottles had exploded. The smoke would be choking. How could they
return to the shore?

If
they did, they would only meet the Saf Dar. Time ... life was running
out.

Something
twisted around his ankle. He pitched forward, sliding along the
cobbles on the palms of his hands and knees. Picking up the hammer,
he kicked free the long strand of seaweed that had bound itself
around his ankle.

Then
on his knees he suddenly stopped.

He
knew he would chase after David no longer.

He
watched his little boy leave the causeway and run through the open
gates of the seafort. Smoke rolled through them and up into the
flame-colored sky.

He
should save his son. His inner voice begged him to go on, to bring
his son out of the burning building.

But
another voice, the voice of the other dancer, said No.

The
voice, clear and overpowering his, rang through his mind: It's time
to leave David now.

As
Chris Stainforth knelt there, the water curling around his legs, the
final blast came.

This
time the explosion was titanic.

The
sound tore open the sky with a tremendous crack. A fountain of flame
shot up from the courtyard, turning the sea the color of liquid gold.
He screwed his eyes to slits.

But
he had to keep watching. He knew he had to.

The
top half of the building-the windows, the balcony-split from the
rest. In a single piece it rose into the sky, flames spurting from
the bottom, cracking like thunder.

Like
some stone rocket it rose higher and higher toward the rose-colored
sky.

Then,
with horrible slowness, it tore itself in two. Bleeding fire and
smoke, it dropped piece by piece into the sea.

Chris's
eyes opened wide. Fragments of burning wood were raining down from
the sky all around him, to fall into the sea with a sharp sizzling
sound. A burning tire from the car dropped like a meteor onto the
causeway ten feet in front of him and rolled into the sea.

The
seafort was a mound of blazing rubble.

David.

Chris,
the father, had knelt there and let his son run into the building.
Now David lay crushed beneath that inferno.

As
if a handful of skin had been torn from his face, he howled.

His
only son.

An
avalanche of memories swept everything from his mind.

It
was more than grief; it knocked the breath from his body.

David.
He remembered how three days after he was born they had brought him
home from hospital wrapped in a white shawl. The time he had fallen
from his bike and cut his chin. He was three years old; Chris had
been nearly mindless with worry. Driving him to hospital, David in
Ruth's arms in the back. And two years ago, when David had woken in
the middle of the night crying and holding his head, saying it hurt
him. Chris had convinced himself it was meningitis.

When
David had first started school a bigger boy began bullying him. How
can someone punch a four-yearold child? David, his eyes large, had
calmly catalogued how the boy had hurt him: punches, kicks, bending
fingers back, jabbing a thumb into his spine. All the times Chris had
taken his son to school then walked away. David had watched him with
those big frightened eyes, giving him a little wave and a forced
smile, knowing that the bully would be waiting for him around the
corner.

God
... You try to protect your children. There are so many cruel things
waiting to hurt them: a car traveling too fast; a dormant cancer
waking in their bones to kill them by inches; or choking to death on
a piece of apple.

You're
afraid some pervert's going to snatch your son or daughter off the
pavement. Even from the garden. You see it over and over in your
mind. Some faceless man, gripping your child by the hand, pulling
them along crying and frightened. Then doing what to them?

You've
read enough newspaper reports to know. The remembered fragments of
text, odd sentences, stream up in a poisonous flow through your mind:
little girls, little boys, abducted, tortured, killed.

The
little details haunt you. The little girl murdered and left in a
deep-freeze. Police find a single tear, frozen to her cheek. Perverts
forcing whiskey down the throat of the five-year-old boy. They hold
him by the throat too hard. He is asphyxiated. The little boy had
only gone to the canal to watch the swans.

For
years and years he had read these reports. He had wished over and
over that he could have surprised one of these perverts just as they
abducted a child. He would have broken every bastard bone in their
body.

Those
thoughts had sifted through his mind for years.

He
had tried as hard as humanly possible to keep David safe from harm.

He
had failed.

A
change took place inside him.

The
icy calm broke. A fury began to run through him, bitter, and burning
like fire.

"Bastards!"

Chris
stood up, the huge hammer gripped in his two hands.

"Bastards!"

Those
red men had caused this. The Saf Dar. They had destroyed Chris's
life. They had taken away his son. They had robbed him of the reason
to live.

Bastards.

Fucking
bastards.

What
have I done to you?

He
walked back toward the beach, fury pumping his legs, forcing him
through the surf like a man-of-war.

The
hammer seemed to quiver in his hand.

The
Saf Dar's circle was tightening around the people on the beach.

Chris
didn't give a shit now.

He
wasn't walking away from this one.

Those
bastards killed my son.

Revenge.

The
word had a beautiful power. Revenge. It resonated inside his skull.
REVENGE.

The
monsters would pull him apart like roast chicken, but he wouldn't run
away from this. No. This was where he stood and fought.

Fury
thundered through him, bursting inside, lighting UP his arms and legs
in a rush of blazing power.

The
first red man turned to face him, glass-splinter eyes gleaming
hungrily. The lips parted in a vicious grin. It lifted its gorilla
arms, muscles bunching, distorting the skin and veins.

"Bastard!"

Fury
ripped a scream from his throat; he swung the hammer at the flat red
face.

He
had not expected it.

The
impossible happened.

The
massive iron head of the hammer swung down into the face-dead center.
And it kept on going, the fury-driven swing sending it down through
the spade-like forehead, down between the eyes, splitting open the
nose to wreck the jaw, driving out teeth to punch through the skin.

The
red man crashed back onto the sand, flat out, arms and legs
outstretched as if he had fallen from a tower block.

One
to Chris's left lurched forward furiously, its arms reaching out, the
fingers flexing to snap his neck.

The
anger blazing through Chris powered him into something more than
human. Arms straight out, he swung the hammer toward the side of the
monster's head.

The
head exploded like a paint-filled balloon; splinters of bone,
cancered brain, and a gobful of black shit hung through the gaping
hole the hammer had made.

The
thing's knees bent and it folded dead on the sand.

Shouting,
he twisted around to face the next one. He was howling, swearing, the
fury blasting through his whole being like a high-pressure hose; its
intensity hurt, but there was a sweetness too, a sweet pain like
pulling a deeply embedded thorn from your finger.

"Kill
me!" he roared at the red man. "Do it. Do it!"

He
wanted the thing to rip him apart and end his life. He didn't want to
live knowing he had failed his son.

"Come
on! What are you waiting for? Kill me!" he bellowed furiously.
The fire blazed in him, from his balls to his brain; it torched the
core of his being.

"Kill
me! Come on, I want you to kill me!"

He
walked forward, body burning, the hammer above his head.

Then
he saw it.

The
realization stopped him dead.

He
had looked into the monster's face and seen for the first time an
expression of the emotion it felt.

On
that great flat face there was ... fear.

This
lump of man-shaped shit was actually frightened of him.

He
moved forward, hammer swinging over his head.

The
creature groaned.

Fear.
He scared that great bulging block of muscle.

The
knowledge uplifted him. He felt strength flowing through him. He felt
a new power. His fury met with it; fused with it and-

The
hammer tore off the monster's face.

Faceless,
terrified, it turned and tried to run.

The
next hammer blow snapped its spine. It fell to the sand, face down.

He
didn't stop to finish it off. He walked over it, his feet stamping
down, cracking the ribs like wishbones, rupturing its internal
organs.

The
remaining Saf Dar were backing away now, looking from one to the
other.

They
didn't look so big now. Their arms looked thinner. The look of evil
had been replaced by one of fear.

This
shouldn't be happening ... Chris knew what they were thinking. This
wasn't what was supposed to happen. These people from the seafort
were sheep.

Well,
one sheep had turned into their nemesis. The avenging angel.

He
moved among them. He moved fast. The hammer became an extension of
his arms; it had no weight, it sliced through the air like a blade,
pounding a skull to red mush here, separating an arm from a torso
there.