Dancing Jax

The people still on the beach who could not see that nothing was happening around the front of the fort were getting restless and resentful. They started pushing and trying to get on to the path. Others played their own music from their phones. Tempers began to flare. The expectation and excitement had completely gone, replaced by a sense of being cheated, and people were now feeling angry.

Conor turned around and thrust himself back through the crush. This was a washout, a hoax – someone’s lame idea of a joke. He wasn’t going to waste another minute of his precious Friday night squashed here. He barged through, none too gently, standing on heels and kicking ankles. Someone roared in his ear and he felt a thump in his back. The fighting began.

It spread through the vast crowd in a violent wave and panic took over.

Ashleigh was slammed against Keeley as a lad blundered into her, felled by a headbutt. The girl kicked him then swung her elbow into his stunned face and broke his nose.

“I’m leavin’!” Keeley cried above the riot. She took her perfume from her handbag and held it in front of her, like a vampire hunter with a bottle of holy water, and sprayed it in the eyes of anyone who came too close or whoever she didn’t like the look of.

Fists and bottles were flung in every direction.

Walking back along the road, Martin and Paul heard the fierce shouts and screams behind and they turned to see the furious mob that the crowd had become.

“Hell!” Martin said as it spilled back on to the road and a bottle came sailing through the air to explode into white dust on the tarmac. “We’ve got to get out of here, fast.” Taking Paul’s hand, the two ran into the nature reserve and across to the sandhills.

Chaos and aggression raged behind them. He could hear children crying in that seething rabble, but the parents and older siblings who came with them managed to get them out of the brawl and they too came fleeing on to the dark sands.

Conor Westlake dodged the punches aimed at his head, but when he felt a kick to the back of his thigh, he whirled round and retaliated. The gangs were here tonight. He had seen them with their hoods pulled up and saw the bottles of golden liquid in their hands. He battled his way through the thickest heart of that thronging sea, wrenching at coats and smacking hands away from his face.

Ashleigh and Keeley were locked in the very middle of it. Ashleigh had lost a shoe. The perfume bottle had been dashed from Keeley’s grasp and her bag had been ripped from her shoulder. It was impossible to move unless it was by the current of the crowd. Then Ashleigh felt something wet and heavy on her head. At first she thought the storm had broken, but then she heard the braying laughter and another bottle was tipped over her. The two girls suddenly saw they were hemmed in by one of the gangs and litres of vegetable oil were being chucked and squirted at them.

Ashleigh screeched and the stuff splashed into her open mouth. She choked then lashed out and clawed the lad in front of her. Seeing a gap, she ploughed through it, retching and dragging Keeley after her.

A dozen plastic bottles went spinning after them, spilling their contents as they flew through the air. People began to slither on the oily road and when other idiots saw that, they lobbed their bottles as well.

Danny Marlow’s foot was down on the accelerator and the Fiesta left curves of rubber behind as they turned the corner into View Point Road.

“Slow down,” Emma told him. “I want to get there in one piece.”

“I’m built for speed, baby!” Danny bragged, turning the radio on and switching to fourth gear.

“So I’ve heard,” she said witheringly.

Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ came on and Kevin reached through sharply to turn it right up.

“Do the Wayne’s World thing! Do the Wayne’s World thing!” he shouted, wagging his head up and down far too early in the song.

Brian and B.O. joined in. Emma mouthed a string of expletives as she pressed her forehead against the passenger window and took a cigarette from her bag. She lit it and blew a stream of smoke from the side of her mouth.

“I’m stuck in a car with the Muppets,” she muttered. “I like a woman who smokes,” Danny said. “It’s dead sophis.” He’s just a poor boy, from a poor family…

He took his left hand off the wheel and clumsily placed his clammy palm on Emma’s thigh.

“OFF!” she demanded instantly.

“Don’t be like that,” he said.

“If you don’t move your sweaty mitt, right now, I swear…!”

Danny didn’t hear her. He was staring ahead. There were countless people swarming around the Landguard. He had never imagined it would be so engulfed with them. But something wasn’t right. It didn’t look like the fantastic happening the email had promised.

“What’s going…?”

Emma didn’t let him finish the question. With a vindictive smile, she touched the back of his hand with the glowing cigarette.

“OWWW!!!” he yelled, snatching the hand away.

The cigarette was knocked from her fingers. It disappeared between the seats. The car lurched across the road.

“Watch where you’re going!” she shouted.

The boys in the back had stopped headbanging and Kevin was peering forward. “That’s a fight!” he hooted. “There’s thousands of them!”

Suddenly a siren began to blare and blue lights were bouncing in the rear-view mirror.

“It’s the fuzz!” Kevin laughed. “Are they coming for you, Danny, or to stop the barney? Ha ha ha ha!”

Emma wondered if they were coming for her.

And then it happened. The turpentine-soaked rags under the seat burst into flames and the boys in the back yelled in fear. Emma thrashed her legs wildly and scrabbled with her seat belt.

“Let me out!” she screamed.

“Stop the car!” the boys bawled.

…No! We will not let you go!

Danny was flustered, confused and petrified. He didn’t know what to do. The police lights panicked him. The flames terrified him and the voices of his passengers were deafening. The blaring song seemed to be mocking him. Instead of pressing the brake, he reached for the gear stick, but a ribbon of flame scorched his fingers and he threw his weight against the wheel. His foot slammed the accelerator to the floor.

The Fiesta’s headlights came bleaching along the peninsula.

Martin Baxter and Paul were standing on the high path of the sandhills. It commanded an excellent view. The port at night looked like a gritty space dock from one of Martin’s sci-fi movies and he had always thought those cranes resembled Martian war machines from War of the Worlds. On the road below them, they saw the car go streaking by, its occupants screaming, smoke flooding from the open windows, and that too seemed part of a film – with a rock soundtrack by Queen. It was so unreal.

Dripping and sodden with vegetable oil, Keeley and Ashleigh came staggering and slipping from the thuggish riot as the headlights raced toward them. Caught in the glare, the crowd turned and saw the car hurtling straight on. Anger turned to fear and they fell back like a tide down the shingle, but not all were quick enough.

“Stop the car!” Kevin was shouting, shaking Danny’s shoulder.

Danny saw the blanched faces of the horror-stricken people ahead and he finally found the brake. He stamped on it hard.

But the car did not stop. Its tyres had crunched over half empty plastic bottles and they were skating over the spilled oil.

The Fiesta spun in the road. Danny heaved the steering wheel to the right, but it was no good. The vehicle went careering into the people-skittles.

Stark faces flashed by the windows. There were thuds and other, more dreadful noises. Freddie Mercury was raging out the lyrics and the headbanging truly began.

From his vantage point up on the ridge, Martin saw it all. He drew Paul to him and wouldn’t let him watch.

Finally the Fiesta crunched into a parked car and stopped dead. The night was filled with screaming. The maths teacher wondered what he should do. If he went back there, would he be of any use? The two police cars were already on the scene, the officers leaping out to give assistance.