Chapter 3 - Blood Bound

I saved your life, you owe me your soul
- Murdoc from Radio 1 webchat

Interviewer: What is your greatest fear?
Murdoc: That I'll get frightened of something, what is it they say about fear itself? No hold on, shit I know, that some dirty bastard will show me the contents of Rotten dot com again, I mean I am not a squeamish man and I don't believe in censorship but that should be banned! I strongly advise you all not to get curious and look at this because I'm not joking!
- From the Exclaim.ca interview

How long Murdoc Niccals sat stunned in the driver's seat of his Vauxhall Astra, he had no idea, but it was probably only a few seconds. The sense of unreality persisted. Stu-Pot's desperate, white eyes were burned into his retinas and his ears were still ringing from Stu-Pot's scream. His nose and tongue hurt and he could taste blood.

Abruptly, Murdoc came back to himself. There was a confused noise of swearing and car doors being wrenched open coming from all around him. Broken glass crunched under heavy boots as his nasty bad boy crew climbed out.

"We've hit someone. They're under the car. Murdoc. You said nothing like this would happen. You said everything would be fine!" came Billy-Boy's panicking voice.

Murdoc struggled out of the driver's seat and stepped out onto the carpet of broken, crunching glass. His only thought was to see what had happened to Stu-Pot. He sprinted to the other side of the car and lay down, among the shards of glass.

Blood was seeping out from under the car. He could see Stu-Pot's still, huddled body. The wheel was resting on his head. Murdoc took a deep breath.

"Guys, I want you to grab a corner of the car each and lift it when I tell you," Murdoc could hear his own voice, commanding and strangely calm, coming from what seemed a mile away. He put one hand onto Stu-Pot's neck to steady him, and felt the wet warmth of blood seeping up his arm.

The nasty bad boy crew muttered. Their faces looked sickly.

"Your nose is bleeding, Murdoc," said Tiny.

"Who cares?" said Murdoc. He could feel blood dripping from his chin, but it didn't matter. "Grab the car. Do it! Or you'll be looking at murder, not assault and robbery." He steadied Stu-Pot's head as they took their positions around the car. "Ready? When I tell you, lift the car and take one step to the left. Don't drop it or slip or you'll kill him. Are you ready? One, two, three, lift!"

The nasty bad boy crew grunted and strained and lifted the car off Stu-Pot's head.

"OK, take a step. Another. Now put it down." The car hit the ground with a crunching sound. Some part of Murdoc noticed that the keyboards he planned to steal were now under the car and crushed, along with his dreams of owning a band. But Murdoc did not care.

With the car moved, Stu-Pot was revealed, a crumpled, choking figure, lying in a nest of broken glass. He was unconscious. Dark blood was leaking from one of his eyes, but far worse, blood mixed with a clear fluid dribbled from his ears and nose. The memories of the training he kept secret came back to Murdoc. Fractured skull for sure.

Crusher made a choking sound of horror. "There's a dint in his head! Oh, my fucking God! I can see his brains! This is worse than Rotten dot com!" He scrambled away and Murdoc could hear him retching.

Rocky, Tiny, and Billy-Boy simply stood over Stu-Pot. Rocky gawked uselessly, he had taken off his sunglasses and he looked weak and vulnerable without them. Billy-Boy was whimpering, nearly in tears. Tiny just looked on, bewildered.

Murdoc crawled through the glass, and crouched by Stu-Pot's side. The broken glass stuck into him but he didn't notice. Training that Murdoc had tried to forget took over. He moved the boy carefully, mindful of his fractured skull, opening his air passages and allowing the blood to run out of his mouth so that he was no longer choking. The boy's eyes were slightly open and Murdoc could see black blood creeping across the whiteness of one of them. Eight ball fracture on top of everything else. He could smell a sweet, sugary smell, like butterscotch. It mixed strangely with the coppery smell of blood.

Stu-Pot's blood, mixed with his own, dripped from his hands. This was bad, very bad. Every law of hygiene and satanic ritual broken. He didn't have any rubber gloves. He hadn't washed his hands, he hadn't said the correct rites. But there was nothing he could do but keep Stu-Pot alive until help arrived.

Murdoc sensed Rocky, Tiny and Billy-Boy bending over him. "Call an ambulance!" he said, without looking up.

"No way," said Rocky. "I'm not taking responsibility for this. This was your idea. If I call, they'll think it's my fault. They'll have my voice on the tape."

"Call the fcking ambulance, Rocky. Billy-Boy? Tiny? Anyone? I'm trying to give first aid here so we're not facing a murder charge," Murdoc said through gritted teeth.

"You seem to know what you're doing there. You a doctor?" said Crusher, walking back and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Murdoc could hear his stubble rasping.

"Shut up," Murdoc snapped. Now was not the time to elaborate. He had never told anyone what he did before he became a bass player. Stu-Pot was going a little blue around the lips and starting to shiver. Murdoc felt for his pulse, and it was weak and rapid. "Get me some of the blankets from over there. Stu-Pot's losing blood and he's got to be kept warm or he'll go into shock."

Tiny lifted a hand to take one of the green blankets that were covering the keyboards to keep the dust out and stopped. "No, I'm not putting my fingerprints on these."

Murdoc swore at Tiny, leaped to his feet and grabbed two blankets. One he rolled up and placed under Stu-Pot's feet so that they were elevated. The other he lay over his body and tucked him in to keep him warm.

The nasty bad boy crew continued to gawk uselessly as Murdoc grabbed his mobile and called emergency services himself.

He told emergency services the truth. Calmly. Matter of factly. Without his usual growling and hyperbole. He told them his name. He told them Stu-Pot's medical state and what had happened to him. He did not tell them about the nasty bad boy crew who were standing around almost in tears.

The operator queried him and the nasty bad boy crew watched as Murdoc replied, "How do I know this? I was a nurse. I quit a few years ago and became a bass player."

When Murdoc hung up, the ambulance was on its way, and he realised the nasty bad boy crew were staring at him with a smirking fascination. He looked back down at Stu-Pot, waiting for the questions he knew were coming.

"You were a nurse? I never knew," said Billy-Boy.

"I quit because the pay was shit," said Murdoc, not looking up. There were other reasons, but he didn't feel like explaining. He heard Crusher start to snigger above his head and realised explanations would be unnecessary.

"You're gay, aren't you Murdoc?" said Crusher.

Murdoc's teeth bared in a snarl. Not this shit again? The way people jumped to conclusions when he said he was a nurse. He thought he had left this behind years ago. "No, I'm not gay," he said, between gritted teeth.

"Come off it, ALL male nurses are gay. It's like hairdressing. Now I know why you never told us," Crusher sniggered. Crusher was about to go on when he caught sight of Stu-Pot, who was going blue around the lips. "He's dying. You killed him," said Crusher, forgetting his own part in the ram raid. His bulky form pushed through the shattered window and into the street, where he turned and gave a passing shot, "See you later, poof!" before running down the street.

"I'm NOT gay!" Murdoc shouted after him.

Murdoc turned back to the other members of the nasty bad boy crew.

"We're murderers," said Billy-Boy. "That means time in jail. I can't go to jail. I'm too pretty!"

"I thought you been there, you liar," said Tiny.

"I have been there. I just visited one day with me Mum and a charity group choir. I don't want to get banged up for real. Shit!" Billy-Boy turned around and ran away, out of the broken glass of the shop window, into the kerb and off down the street as if the devil was on his heels.

"Come back!" shouted Murdoc uselessly at the disappearing figure. If he'd had any say in the matter, the devil would have been on Billy-Boy's heels for real. He looked around. Tiny had vanished without a word. He must have slipped away while Crusher or Billy-Boy were drawing attention to themselves. That only left Rocky.

"They forgot something," said Rocky, gazing after the others.

"You mean they forgot we were all supposed to be best mates?" said Murdoc bitterly, as he crouched by Stu-Pot's body.

"No, they forgot this was supposed to be a ram raid," said Rocky. He darted forward, grabbed a keyboard at random and headed out through the window. He glanced behind at Murdoc on the way out, "You seem to have forgotten too. Leave him. The police will be here soon."

"I can't leave Stu-Pot," said Murdoc. "He'll die."

Rocky looked at Stu-Pot, and then at Murdoc. "Goodbye then," he said. Then he was gone, running up the street with the keyboard tucked under his arm.

Murdoc had never felt so alone. The nasty bad boy crew he had thought were his closest friends had just turned tail and run, leaving him alone with a geeky, unconscious stranger that he wouldn't have touched, wouldn't have spent more than five seconds with under normal circumstances.

But these weren't normal circumstances. Murdoc had been in endless trouble with the law, since he was old enough to be arrested. Getting arrested was a joke, court was a theatre, with all the players strutting in wigs and gowns. But it was all over minor things. Shoplifting, mostly. Nobody got hurt except for the insurance companies. Murdoc had never badly injured someone before. There was something so real about the still, broken, blood stained body in front of him that it made every other part of his life seem like an unimportant dream. He couldn't run. He felt handcuffed to Stu-Pot's side.

He stayed by Stu-Put, holding his wrist, feeling the pulse get faster and weaker, feeling his hand become clammy. Begging him to keep breathing.

He stayed by Stu-Pot when flashing lights lit up the smashed remains of Uncle Norm's Organ Emporium.

He stayed by Stu-Pot when he heard the police and paramedics crunching through the broken glass towards him.

He did not flinch when real handcuffs came down over his wrists. It was as if he were already wearing them anyway. He listened in silence as the police read him his rights.

He watched the ambulance containing Stu-Pot take off, lights blazing and sirens screaming, and felt it was taking a part of himself away.

Somehow he was already bound to Stu-Pot, by bonds far stronger than those metal cuffs around his wrists. He thought about it as he sat in the back of the police car, looking at his hands, which were reddish brown with slowly drying blood. Maybe that was it? The blood? Murdoc thought about all the satanic rituals he knew. Most of them involved blood. Mixing blood. Washing in blood. Consuming blood. He had done all those things that night.

Have I inadvertently blood bound myself to Stu-Pot? I must have, he thought. Stu-Pot is in me and I am in him. Forever.

He sleep walked through the finger printing, the checking in. The photographs. Everybody knew him by name, he was a fixture at the police station, usually there once a week or so, for public drunkenness or shoplifting. But he wasn't his normal cheeky, chatty self. Finally alone, in the police cell, he lay down on the thin mattress and went to sleep.

He dreamed he was in the intensive care ward in hospital, lying on a bed, surrounded by beeping machines and tubes full of pumping fluid. The machines towered over him accusing, threatening. Shivering, he tried to get up and run, but he found that he was handcuffed, to a motionless, blood stained body wrapped in a green blanket that had once been used for keeping dust off a keyboard. The handcuffs were made of blood, drying brown and cracked around his wrist, and blood stained the blanket. He lifted the body, blanket and all, into his arms and ran with it. Through the harshly lit hospital corridors, out onto a lonely, bleak, grey moor wreathed in fog. Lost and alone in the fog, he lifted the blanket.

The body had no head.

He woke up screaming and thrashing in the narrow cell bed, still trying to break the handcuffs that bound him to the limp, blood stained corpse.

Stu-Pot's blood was still on his hands, turning brown and crusty. He scrubbed his hands under cold water in the small sink in his cell for half an hour, but the blood was obstinate and he had no soap. He tried to sleep again and found himself back on the moors, carrying the corpse with trembling hands, trying not to look too closely at the wound at the end of the neck stump as he ran through the fog. All through the night he alternatively slept, screamed himself awake and scrubbed at his hands.

In the morning, he overheard two policemen talking outside his cell.

"Did you see Murdoc Niccals this morning? He's one sorry bastard. Constable who fingerprinted him last night said he looked like a ghost."

"What, Murdoc Niccals? The Murdoc Niccals? Showing remorse? Well, there's always a first time."