Feeding Frenzy #5
The mutilated body of the still-nameless young man had been found only the day before, yet it appeared that fresher crimes were already demanding the attentions of the police.
As Adam slipped out into the insipid October sunshine, the sole indication that anything out of the ordinary had occurred were the strips of yellow and black tape criss-crossing the entrance to the alleyway.
The Big Bagel Company, less than five minutes walk from Hanson’s, was small, loud and always busy.
A third of the floor space, which was tiled in gleaming black and white, was taken up by a stainless steel serving counter and kitchenette area where bagels were warmed, sliced and stuffed with various fillings – spicy sausage, humus n’ crunchy vegetable, ham n’ coleslaw, cajun chicken – by hot-faced staff in white aprons and hats.
When Adam arrived the place was so full of office workers scowling at their fellows for daring to have the same idea that he decided to hover in the doorway rather than joining the queue.
He raised himself on tiptoe and for several minutes scanned the crowd, but saw no sign of Jacinta.
He was on the verge of deciding to grab a sandwich from somewhere less congested and wait for her back at Hanson’s when someone screamed.
It was an ear-splitting, nerve-shredding sound, and it came tearing its way out of the shop with almost physical force.
The crowd seemed to flinch then freeze as one, Adam included.
There followed a second, or perhaps less, of almost eerie motionlessness, during which the scream seemed to be overlapped by its own echo. Then all hell broke loose.
It started as a ripple, and quickly became a surge.
The people in front of Adam at the back of the queue were barged by whoever was in front of them and forced to take a stumbling step, or more, backwards.
Then further screams punched the air and the crowd heaved as a wave of panic rushed through it.
Adam jumped back as a chubby woman in a coral-coloured dress was knocked sprawling on to the pavement, followed by a skinny man in a grey suit who fell on top of her.
Within seconds other people were spilling into the street, many tumbling over, others staggering before regaining their balance.
Some looked sick, others wide-eyed with horror.
One girl, who had spots of blood (hers or somebody else’s?) on her white blouse, was dragged out almost in hysterics.
Close behind her a well-built man of around twenty wearing a Nickelback T-shirt staggered out ashen-faced spattered with considerably more blood.
Adam thought he had been stabbed, then saw a few stragglers behind him, fighting to get through the door, who were equally stained.
One of them, a girl, dashed into the street and was sick.
Once they were out, most people didn’t seem to know what to do. Some hurried away (a few running as though wild dogs were after them); several produced mobile phones and jabbed at buttons with trembling fingers; most simply stood around like sleepwalkers who had woken up in a strange place.
Adam approached the man with the Nickelback T-shirt, who was pressing a hand to his face (and unconsciously leaving bloody fingerprints on his cheeks), looking dazed.
“Are you all right?”
The man looked at Adam a moment as though it was the most astonishing question he had ever heard, then his glazed eyes seemed to focus.
“Uh…I am, yeah.”
“So who isn’t? I mean…what happened?”
Because of the out-flood of customers from the shop, Adam was now standing some way from the entrance and couldn’t see inside. The Nickelback man shook his head slowly from side to side. “It was…unbelievable, man.”
“What was?”
“There was this…” A flicker went across the man’s face, as though he didn’t know how to express what he had seen.
Then he said, “…guy, and he got into an argument with one of the guys serving bagels. And suddenly this guy reached across the counter and he shoved his fingers into the bagel guy’s mouth, and next thing he’d just… ripped the guy’s face off.”
He looked stunned by the memory, his eyes glazed over again, and his voice went very quiet. “Just ripped it off,” he repeated, “like it was a…a rubber mask or something.”
For a few moments the thin sunlight seemed suddenly too bright; Adam thought he was going to faint. Unconsciously aping the actions of the Nickelback man, he began to shake his head. “No, that’s…that’s impossible.”
The Nickelback man looked almost sympathetic. “Yeah, but it happened, man.” Then he seemed to register the blood on his clothes for the first time and spread his red-stained hands. “Aw, man, look at me…aw, man…aw, man…” Suddenly he began to cry.
Awkwardly Adam patted his shoulder, mumbled something reassuring and wheeled back around to face the shop.
Before he had time to think about it, he began to lurch towards the entrance, pushing through the ever-expanding crowd, who seemed compliant as sheep.
Most people were standing well back on the pavement, though two men were hovering close to the shop doorway as though trying to pluck up the courage to enter.
As Adam approached, one of the men raised a hand, splaying his fingers as though warding off evil.
“Careful, mate, there’s a bloke with a knife in there.”
“I don’t think there is,” said Adam.
The man waggled his narrow balding head on his long neck and said petulantly, “Well, no one’s seen him come out.”
“No, I mean I don’t think he’s got a knife.”
The other man pursed his lips as though brandishing his moustache. “Were you here when it happened?”
“I was standing just outside.”
“Well, word is, this nutter stabbed someone in the face.”
“I was told he used his bare hands by someone who was standing just behind him,” Adam said.
“His hands,” said the first man incredulously.
“Either way,” said the man with the moustache, “I think we should wait till the police get here. Me and Stan are hanging around in case he makes a break for it, like.”
“But the staff are still in there,” Adam said. “Someone might be bleeding to death. I think we should help.”
Stan and the moustached man glanced at each other, as though gauging how courageous the other was prepared to be. Adam took a step forward. “Well, I’m going in,” he said. “You can’t stop me.”
Stan’s Adam’s apple bobbed as if he was swallowing a gobstopper. “I’m with you, mate,” he said, though sounded as if he wished he wasn’t.
“Me too,” said the man with the moustache.
Adam took the lead, the two men tucking themselves in behind him.
Stan muttered something about watching his back, but Adam knew their real intention was to make sure he was first in the firing line.
Even now he wasn’t entirely sure why he was doing this, apart from the fact that he felt involved in what was going on, even – awful though the prospect was - partly responsible for it.
It surely couldn’t be coincidence that firstly the murder and now this appalling attack had been almost identical to fictional passages he had read, but on the other hand what else could it be?
Was he somehow breathing life into words on a page?
The notion was ludicrous. All Adam knew was that he had to find answers.
Indeed, his need for them at that moment was great enough to supersede his instinct for self-preservation.
He stepped over the threshold into the shop.
The first thing he saw was a pool of shockingly red blood drooling from the stainless steel serving counter to the black and white checked floor below.
The blood on the floor had been stepped and slid in.
Gory overlapping footprints led out of the shop, on to the pavement outside.
“Jesus wept,” murmured one of the men behind Adam. The other said something too, but Adam didn’t hear it, because as soon as he saw the blood his head started buzzing.
At first he thought the sound came from some unattended piece of equipment, or was perhaps some kind of low-level alarm.
Then he wondered whether it was simply inside his own head; certainly it filled his skull like the reverberations of a dentist’s drill, made the bone beneath his skin tingle.
He began to feel woozy, detached from his surroundings.
Darkness gathered at the edge of his vision like encroaching dusk.
Something seemed to move in the dimming corner of the room.
He had to make an effort to focus upon it.
Emerging from the thickening shadows he saw a figure whose face was in darkness apart from its grinning display of jagged teeth.
It seemed to glide forward, and as it did so it reached out long bloody talons towards him.
“You all right, mate?”
Adam had no sense of time passing, but suddenly he was opening his eyes and immediately having to close them again against the harshness of the light.
Little by little he realised he was lying on the pavement, something soft and bulky, a bundled-up blanket perhaps, behind his head.
The man who had spoken was kneeling beside him, his head charred by the light pouring from his corroded skull.
He shifted position, blotting out all but a shimmering corona of sunlight, and suddenly his features formed from the receding murk of his face.
Before Adam could work out that he was expected to answer the man’s question, an acrid smell propelled spikes of itself into his head. He jerked away from the smelling salts, tears springing to his eyes.
“What happened?” he asked, his words mashed by a tongue that felt twice the size it should be.
“You passed out, mate, that’s all. The sight of blood takes a lot of people that way.”
“No.” Adam struggled to sit up. The man – a paramedic, Adam realised, from his jacket – told him to take it easy, but supported him with strong hands nevertheless. “There was a man in there. The one who did it. I saw him.”