Murderous by David Hickson (best ereader for comics .txt) 📕

“It’s urgent,” I said.

“Everything is urgent. Load it up and clear it out. No blocking of the path like this.”

“Too heavy for one load,” I said.

“Bullshit. That’s a three thousand pound cabbie you got, those little boxes of yours won’t get near it. Load them up and get out of here.”

The man bit down on his gum and bulged his jaw muscles at me. “What you got in them? Lead piping?”

I shrugged. Fat-Boy had the second box clear and our forklift was making a loud beeping noise as it reversed away from the crate. Two workers appeared from a side aisle, one of them brandishing rolls of thick canvas straps.

“This one, boss?” he asked clipboard man, who held up his clipboard to check the manifest number, then nodded and pointed. Then his forehead crinkled into a frown and he looked from the crate to our boxes and back again. A sluggish thought process was connecting us to the crate he’d been bribed to fast-track.

“What you guys doing?” he asked.

“This is not part of their consignment,” I said. “The truck is moving out early. Those men gave us a little something to get it ready to go.” I indicated the White Africans with a nod of my head and gave a conspiratorial smile. His jaw muscles bulged as he considered my story. The man with the straps threw one over the crate and started fastening the end. The other man caught the strap on the far side and looped it through a metal hook on the edge of the flat-bed. The crate was small for the base and they would have to make sure it didn’t slide about when it drove off.

“Hey buddy,” clipboard man called out to Fat-Boy, but Fat-Boy continued as if he hadn’t heard him and manoeuvred the forklift into position to lower the second box.

“I’ll talk to him,” I said, and tapped the side of my head to suggest Fat-Boy’s limited mental capacity. “We’ll get out of your way. Those guys don’t want you slowing them down.”

“You do that,” said the man with a nod. “And fast. They’re in a mighty big rush.” He gave a gloating smile to reveal just how mighty was their rush.

As if on cue, a black rectangle of night sprang up beyond the crate of lions, and stretched wider as the doors opened.

Fat-Boy was sitting in the forklift like a sulking boy with his back to the adults. He had stacked the two boxes on top of each other and was staring at them, his lazy eye wider than usual from the mounting anxiety. I climbed in beside him.

“Pick them both up,” I said.

“It’s double the max load,” said Fat-Boy.

“It’s either that or we leave half of it behind for the Afrikaner.”

Fat-Boy inserted the prongs beneath the lower box and lifted them a few inches off the ground. The motor whined, made slapping noises and cut out. The boxes of gold sagged a little, but they stayed off the ground. Fat-Boy started the motor again and applied full acceleration. We crept down the aisle with our overloaded truck towards the outer perimeter where signs indicated that the area should be kept clear at all times as an emergency exit. We crawled forwards on the way to our own emergency exit.

I glanced back as we reached the end of the corridor. The White Africans had reached their truck and were swarming about it. I noticed one of them holding up a strip of wood and remonstrating with the clipboard man.

“We didn’t replace the panel,” I said as a tower of crates slowly drew a curtain across the drama as we turned onto the perimeter track.

Fat-Boy mumbled something under his breath. His eyes were staring and wide. Panic was overpowering his reason. I could feel the adrenalin pump through me as well, and it took all my willpower not to jump out of the forklift and run for cover. The two of us sat in that yellow machine like village fools with targets painted on our backs as we rolled slowly along the perimeter towards the exit doors. The warehouse was full of noise which echoed from the hard metal walls, but I thought I could hear voices raised in angry surprise behind us, and pressed my right foot onto the floor of the forklift as if I could speed up our progress.

“We must dump the boxes,” I said.

“Dump the boxes?” said Fat-Boy. His voice was tight. “That’s my life in those boxes. Dump them? Fuck you.”

“What we do in the next few minutes is going to bring the gold in, or not. We need to distract them.”

“You’ll get us killed,” said Fat-Boy. “I saw those guns. Change the plan and one of them will be putting their lead in our guts.”

“Drop the boxes. I don’t want to be sitting in this damn crawling machine when they come after us to see what we’ve got balancing up front. Pull over.”

There was a cluster of damaged machinery in a demarcated area to the side. Two forklifts, one of them with a twisted loader, and a mobile crane that was leaning against them as if it was trying to recover its balance.

“Not a fuck,” said Fat-Boy, and he hunched down over the wheel as if that would make us more aerodynamic.

“We’ll come back,” I said. “Pull over here.”

A sudden wail filled the air, and Fat-Boy almost lifted out of his seat at the shock of it. An alarm. I wrenched the wheel from Fat-Boy’s sweaty hands, and our forklift veered off to the side, and crunched into the lopsided crane, bending a steel support so that the crane collapsed further over the front of our load. The wooden edge of one of our boxes splintered under the impact, revealing a glinting sliver of gold. I was out of the truck and pushing Fat-Boy ahead of me towards the black gaping hole of