Road Kill Read online

  ROAD KILL

  Hanna Jameson

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About Road Kill

  I should have known that Eli would be a believer in favours. Not just the odd favour here and there, but the life-or-death ones you have to drag around with you for ever.

  Eli and Ronnie are two lawless Brits on the road in America. Their mission is to find Trent, a guy who screwed Eli over and disappeared. But now, after forty hours driving through yellow desert, eating at lonely motels, what seemed real is no longer certain. Where did Trent stay? What did he do? Did he even exist at all?

  Leaving violent killings in their wake, Ronnie and Eli can do nothing except keep travelling forward. Now, trapped in a nightmarish road trip together, these two men must confront their own personal demons before they can come home...

  For C & C, S, and Marianne

  ‘Faith, one was told, could move mountains, and here was faith – faith in the spittle that healed the blind man and the voice that raised the dead. The evening star was out: it hung low down over the edge of the plateau: it looked as if it was within reach: and a small hot wind stirred. The priest found himself watching the child for some movement. When none came, it was as if God had missed an opportunity. The woman sat down, and taking a lump of sugar from her bundle began to eat, and the child lay quietly at the foot of the cross. Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?’

  —GRAHAM GREENE, The Power And The Glory

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  About Road Kill

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  About Hanna Jemeson

  About the Underground Series

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  Daisy

  If I’d felt the ripples of the implosion to come the following morning, I’d have got so much more hammered that night.

  ‘Does that even work?’ I asked, as Noel wrapped his MDMA in a Rizla and washed it down with a gulp of vodka and coke.

  It was his last vodka and coke before AA in the morning. He’d insisted on a last hurrah, a final big one, the ultimate in apocalyptic benders before a new life of attempted sobriety. Noel celebrated anything if it meant an excuse to get trashed, even the end of his own alcoholism.

  Attempted sobriety.

  I put a lot of emphasis on that word. Attempted. According to Ronnie, Noel had tried to do this at least three times before. He was being quietly pessimistic about the endeavour, but had still come out to get wasted.

  It wasn’t a particularly special night. I only remembered this one because it was the last time any of us were actually happy together. It was an illusion of calm, of harmony, before everything started to go so spectacularly to shit.

  It was an illusion of calm, of harmony, after she had left.

  ‘It gets into your bloodstream faster,’ Noel said, sitting on the toilet lid and holding open the sachet.

  I licked my finger, took a load of white powder onto it and sucked it off. I sipped my Southern Comfort and lemonade but the acidic tang remained stuck to my tongue and the roof of my mouth.

  ‘I don’t think so, not through the paper. It’s not gonna be faster than just eating it.’ I sucked at my finger again.

  ‘Well, you can do more this way.’

  ‘How about I’ll do it my way and you do it yours? The wrong way. Yours is the wrong way, by the way.’

  Everything was moving as we sat chatting in the Ladies, as if we were on a train. Music pounded through the walls. Outside there was a queue but neither of us gave a shit.

  I guessed we had about twenty minutes before we starting buzzing off our tits, for the second time that night in my case. I’d taken some before coming out.

  Noel put the sachet back in his wallet.

  ‘Are you nervous about tomorrow?’ I asked, leaning against the side of the cubicle and stretching my bare legs across the space. I was careful not to lean on my left arm. It still hurt sometimes and even when it didn’t I slung it across me like it was deadweight, not part of me, out of habit.

  ‘I’ve done it all before, haven’t I?’ He smiled. ‘I’m a pro.’

  ‘Yeah, but like… if you’ve done all this before, don’t you just tell the same stories over and over again?’

  ‘Every alcoholic has the same stories. We’re all so fucking boring, Daisy, and we all go on as if our alcoholism is special.’ He sniffed, half-heartedly looking for tobacco. ‘Also, everyone in the world is an alcoholic, right, so everyone has the same story. Why are you an alcoholic, eh?’

  I blinked a couple of times, hard. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Yeah, you are. You’re drunk all the fucking time. You’re drunk at work! We don’t give a shit, but admit it.’ He raised his eyebrows at me. ‘And even when you’re not drunk, you’re high.’

  It bothered me. I was unsure why.

  ‘You’re just drunk,’ I retorted.

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I mean, look out there.’ He gestured at the cubicle door, presumably at the flailing contents of the eighties night happening outside our paradise of drug-taking calm. ‘Look at those animals. All anyone does is drink. It’s because life is so fucking empty, you know.’

  ‘Jesus, give it a rest. I can’t wait for your Mandy to kick in.’

  ‘But it’s true! God, just shut up for a moment, will you?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I snapped, but waited for him to speak again.

  ‘We’re all alcoholics, love.’

  Why, Captain Mansplain?’

  I got tired of standing and swiped his hand off his knees to sit across his lap.

  ‘Because that’s how we all kill ourselves. I mean, think about it. Nature has created us, right, this super species that’s so fucking hell-bent on progress we’re gonna fuc
k up the planet. We’re like a virus. This is how nature makes sure we all get wiped out, after a while.’

  ‘Oi!’ Someone knocked and said, ‘Some of us are waiting for a piss out here!’

  ‘Oh, piss me a river!’ I shouted back, banging my fist against the door.

  ‘So,’ Noel continued, unfazed, ‘that’s what this all is. Nothing can kill us any more. So nature’s insurance is to hardwire us to kill ourselves. We all drink, we take drugs, people who aren’t taking drugs are eating shit food, we’re pumping chemicals into everything, we fuck up our hearts, our stomachs, our livers, we kill each other, we hold poor people down by the necks and arse-fuck them into dying en masse because they haven’t got money to fucking eat, we gas each other, we blow each other up, we fire tonnes, fucking tonnes, of radioactive shit into the atmosphere, into the sea, we throw all our rubbish into landfills, we’re drilling into the actual planet looking for oil to power things we can’t sustain, we’re fracking and all that shit, we’re bringing tsunamis and earthquakes, hurricanes and drought and… stuff… all on ourselves. We all want to die so fucking badly it’s almost funny, right?’

  I’d put my drink on the floor and started rolling myself a cigarette midway through his rant, but I stopped. ‘Hilarious.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He shook his head, took another gulp of vodka and coke and looked at it. ‘Actually, I think I’ll have one more of these. I know it’s technically past midnight, but it’s not tomorrow until you go to sleep really.’

  There was a commotion outside, sounds of women complaining, and then Ronnie’s booming voice. ‘Hey! Noel, you cunt, where are you?’

  ‘We’re in here!’ I yelled, resuming rolling my cigarette.

  ‘You aren’t shagging, are you?’

  ‘No! God, we’re just doing Mandy, chill out.’

  ‘Well, come out, you wankers! They’re playing fucking Toto!’

  ‘Man, you’re all so old,’ I muttered, sniggering.

  Ronnie was told to fuck off out of the toilets by at least three women and I assumed he did as he was told because we didn’t hear any more from him. I wobbled on Noel’s lap and knocked tobacco onto the floor. There was a black smudge on my thigh, probably from where I’d leant against the wall in the smoking area. I licked my finger again, which still tasted of the Mandy, and rubbed it.

  ‘Fuck.’ It seemed too soon, but I was sure I could feel my jaw starting to lock. It was probably because of the hit I’d taken before going out, drug upon drug hitting my system. ‘I need another drink, I’m gonna come up in a minute and I want to be dancing to something.’

  ‘I am so ready.’ He downed the rest of his drink and put the glass down to clap his hands.

  ‘Did you text Mark?’

  ‘Yeah, he said he’s gonna come later. Ron’s so out of it he won’t care.’

  ‘So… wait a second.’ It was hard to coordinate my thoughts. ‘If everyone’s killing each other and you feel so bad about it, why are you selling everyone drugs? Why aren’t you off in… Ethiopia building a school with a load of gap year students?’

  Noel shrugged. ‘Got to make a living?’

  I got off his lap and unlocked the door.

  ‘Also, you’re wrong,’ Noel said from behind me. ‘I don’t actually feel that bad about it.’

  *

  When I woke up the next morning the gunshot wound, the horrible disfiguring scar fucking up my shoulder, was stiff and inflamed.

  I moved out of my boyfriend’s flat within a week. Ex-boyfriend, as he had come to be known within days.

  Ronnie flew to Philadelphia with a hangover, to meet his little brother out of prison.

  I had this funny feeling that he wouldn’t come back.

  In a way, he didn’t.

  Noel did make it to AA in the morning, I noted. But it was the last time he made it for a while.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ronnie

  ‘James Madison? Who the fuck would wanna go on a bender with Madison?’ I finished my second whisky of the night, chuckling. ‘He was a weird little nerd.’

  ‘He was the only president who fought a war without curtailing the civil liberties of the American people,’ Carey said, bleary-eyed but coherent.

  Fucking lawyers. They were built to argue, even when they were so wasted they could barely lean their elbow upon the bar-top without it slipping off.

  Some old nineties rock was playing. I didn’t know if there was a jukebox here or whether Eli, behind the bar, was picking the tunes. The Phillies were being thrashed on a muted TV screen to our upper-right but I couldn’t tell who they were being thrashed by because I didn’t give a shit about baseball.

  ‘Bollocks, he introduced conscription,’ I said.

  ‘No, only at the end, but Congress denounced it. It failed.’

  ‘Well, he tried.’

  ‘His entire presidency – hell, his entire ideology – was focused on the avoidance of war.’

  ‘And what’s so great about that?’ I indicated for Eli, languidly polishing glasses, to bring us another round of drinks, and pushed Carey’s further towards him. ‘War is necessary sometimes. He was also a slave owner; I’d like to see you try and justify that old chestnut.’

  ‘They were all slave owners, Ronnie.’

  I saw him cast his eyes about the joint – looking for any people of colour, no doubt – but we were the only ones left, and had been for a while. The dregs of a quiet Wednesday night, far removed enough from Philadelphia’s city centre to find some peace.

  ‘Who would you want to go for a drink with anyway?’ Carey asked, eyes sliding down towards his drink and lowering his face to the rim of the glass, having lost the coordination or the willpower to lift it.

  ‘Andrew Jackson.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  I spread my hands. ‘I like Jackson, he was a nutcase.’

  ‘I mean, Madison was a slave owner but it was Jackson who passed the Indian Removal Act.’

  ‘Should’ve known you’d be anti-expansionist, you fat bastard.’ I reached out and poked him in the kidney, trying to pinch an inch or so of flab. But Carey wasn’t fat.

  He was sensitive though, and swiped me away with an expression of genuine hurt.

  Our next round of drinks arrived. I gave Eli a nod and he moved away. He was a tall and antagonistic-looking man with big eyes, high cheekbones and slicked-back hair that hovered between black and grey. Waistcoats had never been my bag but he carried his off with apathy.

  ‘He used more vetoes in his first term of office than all the previous presidents combined,’ I said, realizing I was struggling with my words and returning my new glass of whisky to the bar. ‘I like a guy who knows he’s boss.’

  ‘He was a douche.’

  ‘He was more of a socialist than your fucking Madison. Peoples’ President and all that.’

  ‘I’m not a socialist, I’m a capitalist who gives a shit.’

  ‘Carey,’ at that point I grasped his shoulder, ‘no. Just no.’

  It was almost sad, to be this oblivious. He’d had been my brother’s defence lawyer, had known our family for years, and all that time I had despised him. It had taken root as an irrational baseless hate that originates in the head. I hated the way his face was begging to be classic frat-boy attractive but wasn’t. The features hung together wrong; lips too thin, eyes too far apart. I also hated that he was blond. I’d never trusted a blond man; not a grown adult.

  But the more I’d got to know about Carey recently, the more the hate had sunk right into the soul, hammered into my being with confirmation after confirmation. It was like sinking into a luxurious bath of vindication.

  Carey liked me, of course, but his approval wasn’t worth a damn. He was a lawyer; he liked everyone who paid him and had the potential to pay him more.

  ‘I suppose you believe in trickle-down economics and all that,’ I said.

  Over my shoulder, I watched Eli shut the venue doors, lock and bolt them. It was just after two in the morning and I
didn’t want Carey to realize how late it was and make a dash home. It was a school night for him after all.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied, with inexplicable smugness. ‘It’s not a matter of believing in it. It’s a fact that it works.’

  ‘You live in one of the most unequal societies in the world and you think it needs more millionaires. Really?’

  ‘The problem here isn’t inequality, it’s’ – another cursory glance around the bar to check that no one could overhear us, and failing to notice there was no one else – ‘it’s drugs. It’s the ghettos.’

  ‘And that’s not a product of your fucked-up economics?’

  ‘No, it’s a product of social decay. Moral decay, Ron.’

  Christ, he made me sound liberal. I forgot sometimes that being a Conservative in the UK put you on the far left of the spectrum over here. All the cosmopolitan and affluent American cities, like the one we were in, were full to spewing with arseholes like Carey, whose idea of politics was little more than a masquerade for racism.

  ‘You’re talking about blacks?’ I said, helpfully.

  ‘African-American, geez.’ But he shrugged. ‘I’m talking about ghettoes. No one’s employed, all in social housing or in… slums. That’s where the problems are.’

  I had to lean back. ‘Ghettoes were created by your war on drugs in the first place. It was fucking made up by Reagan, when drug use was at an all-time low, to criminalize African-Americans because you lot couldn’t hack desegregation.’

  Carey’s expression melted into distaste. ‘I never had you down as a conspiracy theorist.’

  ‘Just saying. Convenient, isn’t it? You criminalize a generation of African-Americans through biased stop-and-searches, give them records for smoking half a joint before they’re old enough to drink, and then they can’t work, can they? The whole damn system is against you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Apart from sell substandard smack to people who can’t afford fucking curtains.’

  There was a tense silence. One of Carey’s eyes was twitching.

  He laughed, when it became too uncomfortable to do anything else, and clapped me on the shoulder a little too hard. Eyeing up the second whisky, he glanced at his watch, and as he did so I glanced at Eli.