Chapter Thirteen

The Ordeal of Juliet DeLore

Juliet flung a shopping trolley out of her way as she ran once again across the supermarket carpark. For an instant, she considered running back into the supermarket, finding somewhere to hide. But it would be like running back to the prison from which she had escaped. And perhaps there were bodies in there…

Glancing back over her shoulder, she could see that Trevor was not in pursuit. She couldn’t see him at the glass frontage of the radio station, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t see her. Ducking behind a car, Juliet paused to get her breath. She had to find somewhere to hide. It couldn’t be long before help got here. If only she could find somewhere to keep out of Trevor’s sight. She sneaked a look around the corner, keeping on her haunches. Still no sign of Trevor. But she was far from safe here. She dipped down again, moving hand over hand behind the car, looking around the carpark and beyond to see if there was anywhere she might have missed.

And almost fell over the body that had been lying beside the car.

Juliet retched, turning quickly away. There was no time to tell whether the bloodied mass had been a man or a woman. But he or she had been hit by a flying fragment of concrete.

“Don’t!” Juliet hissed, a hand over her mouth as she looked away. “Come on, Juliet! Keep cool. Don’t make a noise.”

She looked back at the radio station again, and then over to her right. There was a glass-recycling container there. Keeping low, and averting her sight from the body, she ran between cars until she’d reached the container. Once behind it, she braced her back against the cool metal and tried to control her breathing. She scanned the sky. No vapour trails, no clouds. No circling helicopters, looking for survivors. Just that same blank greyness that she had seen from the storeroom window. If not for the fact that she was hurting so much, she might be tempted to believe that this was a nightmare and none of it was happening.

But where the hell was she going to go? She’d already been around most of the cliff-edge, and she knew that the supermarket and radio station were balanced on the brink of the chasm.

There’s nowhere else, Juliet. Nowhere else to run.

She fought off despair.

And then heard the car engine turning over.

Someone else was alive, after all. Just when she had been giving up hope. She glanced back at the radio station again. Still no sign of Trevor, and it seemed as if the noise was coming from the row of parked cars just ahead. Once they had been parked neatly side to side. Now the tremor had shifted and jolted them against each other so that they were standing haphazardly, their paintwork scratched, side windows splintered. Supermarket trolleys lay scattered all over the cracked asphalt.

Again, the engine turned over, this time coughing into life.

Juliet pushed away from the container and ran towards the sound.

A Land Rover edged out of the haphazard rank.

“Wait!” Juliet waved her arms as she ran, trying to flag it down.

The Land Rover jerked to a halt, engine stalling.

“Please, wait!”

The engine roared again, and the vehicle swung towards her, juddering to a standstill, engine idling.

“Thank God…”

Trevor leaned forward over the steering wheel, smiling that ghastly rictus of a smile. Fresh blood was leaking from his ragged socket down his cheek and dripping from his chin. He scratched at the itch it caused, as if the terrible pain in the socket itself meant nothing. Suddenly, it was as if the Trevor Blake she’d known no longer existed. What sat behind that wheel was some kind of ravaged shell; something that now barely looked human. Something that existed only to torment her to death.

Juliet staggered to a halt, hair flying. It wasn’t possible!

Trevor barked out a laugh, then jammed his foot hard down on the accelerator. The Land Rover shot forward.

Juliet couldn’t move. The terrified part of her wondered whether she shouldn’t just let the vehicle ram into her. Would the pain be so bad, and wouldn’t it put an end to this nightmare one way or the other? But another primal and instinctive urge made her flip aside just before impact, twirling almost gracefully like some kind of matador. Trevor anticipated her move, twisting the wheel hard. The vehicle swung after her. This time, not so gracefully, Juliet scrambled up over the hood of another parked car. She fell badly, grazing the palms of her hands. As the Land Rover slammed into the skewed car, shattering its already crazed windscreen in a shower of glass, Juliet launched herself through two tubular rails of the trolley-parking bay into the cluster of trolleys beyond. An instant later the Land Rover jammed the vehicle right up against the rails, where she had just been crouching.

It reversed noisily, gears screeching, then rammed the car again. The tubular rails buckled. Did Trevor think that she was still down there, crushed up against the rails? Shoving a path through the trolleys, Juliet repeated the manouevre on the other side of the bay. Now she was out in the open carpark again, and could hear the Land Rover reversing and turning to follow her. Directly ahead of her were two parked cars. She ran for them, lungs bursting, breath sobbing in her throat. She saw the reflection of the Land Rover in the rear window of one of the parked cars as it roared around towards her, swaying on its suspension in the tight turn. There was no time to veer to either side, nowhere to run if she did. Between the cars was a two-foot space, leading to a low wall and a hedgerow, with no way of knowing what was on the other side.

There was no choice.

With the roaring of the Land Rover engine filling the air, Juliet ran between the cars and hurtled on ahead. Using the small wall as a step, she lunged forward through the hedgerow as the Land Rover smashed into the rear of both cars, shunting them forward with her. The brambles tore at her clothes as she fell, the car on her right bursting completely through the hedge and nose-diving the three feet down the other side with a noise like another earth tremor. Juliet hit the ground, staggered, but did not fall. Now she could see where she was; she’d curved around towards the radio station again. There was the forecourt and glass frontage from which she’d just run, further down on her left. The Land Rover engine was making a grinding sound, as if something under the chassis had been damaged. Juliet saw smoke rising from over the roofs of other parked cars as Trevor headed for the carpark exit, hunting for her again. She wouldn’t have time to reach the main entrance of the radio station before he found her, and it would mean running in the same direction as he was headed.

Head down, Juliet ran for the nearside of the broadcasting building, constantly glancing to her left. When the Land Rover roared out of the carpark, she cried out aloud and tried to run harder. The vehicle screeched to a halt and paused, smoke rising from its hood. Juliet prayed that there would be an unlocked side entrance at the edge of the building, prayed that there was someone still alive there who could see and hear what was happening and could help.

The Land Rover hadn’t moved. It was still pointed in her direction. Was Trevor playing with her again?

When she reached the building, she heard the engine roaring and knew that Trevor had recommenced the chase. She hurtled around the corner and found herself facing the broadcasting mast right next to the building. It was set into a six-foot-high concrete base, and there was an iron door set squarely in the centre before her. Juliet staggered to it.

Please!

It was locked.

Tugging at the handle, Juliet yelled for help. She kicked at the metal door.

Out of sight, the Land Rover closed.

There was a metal ladder at the side of the door, leading up to the roof of the concrete platform. From there, a steel maintenance ladder ascended on the outside of the mast.

The Land Rover engine growled like a living beast.

There was no time for anything else.

Quickly, Juliet climbed to the top of the concrete base.

You’ve no head for heights, Juliet. What are you doing?

“What else can I do?” she shouted aloud, and scrambled to the base of the maintenance ladder. She looked up, and the height of the mast made her dizzy before she had even begun to climb. “Oh, God…”

And then the Land Rover came around the corner of the building, screeching to a halt before it could slam into the concrete base.

No time.

And nothing else for it.

Juliet climbed, not looking up or down, concentrating hard on each metal rung as she gripped it. Her footsteps seemed to clang preternaturally loud, as if she were climbing inside some great metal cylinder. She heard the Land Rover door slam down below as Trevor climbed out. She refused to look down, and kept on.

“Now where do you think you’re going?” came Trevor’s voice.

Juliet gritted her teeth. Already the voice seemed to come from a long way down.

Don’t look down. Step after step. Just do it.

“This isn’t the beanstalk, Juliet. What do you expect to find up there? A way out? A magic castle, maybe. A golden goose? A magic harp?” He began to laugh then; as if he’d just made the best joke in the world.

Come on now. You can do it. Step, step, step.

“You couldn’t have picked a better place!” Trevor’s voice was even more distant now. “Only one way to go now. And that’s down!”

Juliet reached for the next rung.

It wasn’t there.

“Oh no…”

Gripping the ladder tight, she forced herself to look up.

There was a metal rail above her head, slightly higher than where the next rung should be. She would have to reach for it. But suddenly she felt as if she were frozen to the ladder. She hadn’t looked down, but she knew that she was high. And just the thought of it terrified her.

“What’s wrong, Juliet? Stuck?”

Juliet hugged the ladder tight, eyes screwed shut.

“Shall I come up there and help you?”

“No!”

She reached with her left hand. For a moment, it seemed that the rail was higher than she’d thought. A sickening fear gnawed at her stomach. She was going to fall. Her fingers closed around cold steel. The chill of it seemed to suck the energy right out of her body. Did she have the strength to go on, or was she going to fall backwards off the ladder? Hauling herself up, she grabbed with the other hand. There was a steel mesh inspection platform ahead, perhaps five feet square. Frantically, she clambered up on to it and collapsed there, hugging herself tight. From below, she could hear the distant sound of Trevor laughing.

“You couldn’t have picked a better place!” he said.

Juliet forced herself to the rail and looked down. Her senses reeled. She couldn’t believe that she’d managed to climb so far; perhaps a hundred and fifty feet, half the height of the mast. It seemed very still up here; unreal, without a breath of wind. Down below, Trevor was standing with his arms folded, looking up. Steam still rose from the hood of the Land Rover to his rear.

“Behind you!” shouted Trevor. “On the other side of the mast!”

Carefully, fearfully, Juliet shuffled on all fours to the other side of the platform. Above her, the maintenance ladder continued up the side of the mast. And at the edge of the platform it was as if she were back in the supermarket storeroom again, balanced precariously on the window ledge and looking down into a great void. Giddiness threatened to overcome her as she clutched at the metal rails. In her panic to get away, she hadn’t seen the most obvious thing. Her refusal to look down had perhaps been a big mistake.

Because now she realised with overwhelming horror that not only the broadcasting building but also its communications mast, and the concrete base in which it was set, was balanced on the edge of the chasm. Below was nothing but the hideous, mountainous drop into darkness. Hundreds of feet away, on the other side, was the ragged cliff-edge of the nearest “plateau”, rimmed by torn trees and ruined buildings.

“Seen this, Juliet?” asked Trevor. He pointed to the base of the mast. “No? Maybe you didn’t notice it when you started to climb.” He walked casually forward, still pointing. “It’s cracked. See? Right there…and there…and there. Big cracks, too. I reckon that mast could go over any time.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus…”

“Like I said: well done! Couldn’t have picked a better place. Question is…what happens next?”

Juliet looked around angrily for something to hurl down at him. There was nothing.

Trevor walked back to the steaming Land Rover and leaned his back against the front grille, as if he had all the time in the world.

“Oh dear,” he said at last. “I think it’s getting darker.”

“Trevor! Leave me alone! Get the hell away from me!”

“And bad…bad things can happen in the dark.”

“You bastard!”

“Can’t they?”