Hater 1: Hater by David Moody Read Free Book Online Page B

acknowledgement to the rider as he parked his machine and rested it on the kickstand. The leather-clad figure flicked back his visor and took off his helmet.
        'All right, mate, how you getting on?' he asked. 'Mum said it was looking good.'
        'Almost done now,' Spencer replied, loading the last few bricks into the barrow and standing up straight. He stretched his back and looked across at the other man. 'Couple of hours and I should be finished. Just got to get the rest of these bricks down and finish off the edges. I think it's…'
        He stopped speaking and stared into Jackie's son's face.
        'What's the matter?'
        Spencer couldn't answer. He couldn't speak. He was filled with a sudden, indescribable sense of panic and fear. His heart thumping in his chest, he took a couple of nervous backwards steps towards the house and tripped up the lip of the bricks he'd already laid, landing on his backside. The other man walked towards him and held out his hand to help him up.
        'You feeling okay, mate? Want me to get you a drink of water or something?'
        Spencer recoiled. He scrambled back to his feet, grabbing a heavy lump hammer as he got up. He launched himself at Jackie's son and wrapped his left hand round his throat. Knocked off-balance the two men fell awkwardly to the ground, Jackie's son on his back with Spencer on top, pinning him down.
        Spencer lifted the lump hammer and brought over a kilogram of metal smashing down into the middle of the other man's face, caving in his forehead and the bridge of his nose and killing him almost instantly. He lifted the gore-covered hammer and bludgeoned what was left of his face another five times, leaving his head virtually concave, hollowed out like a deflated football.
        Spencer got up and stood breathless over the corpse before being thrown off balance again. Jackie, wailing like a banshee, ran from the front of the house and shoved him away from the body of her son. She screamed and dropped to the ground when she saw the hole in his head and the mass of splintered bone and pulped flesh where his face used to be. She looked up at Spencer but all she saw was the bloodied edge of the lump hammer as he swung it towards her.
        
        
    6
        
        'We're going to be late,' Lizzie grumbles. I know we are, but there's not a lot I can do about it. If she'd given me more notice that we were supposed to be taking Edward to a friend's birthday party then we would have been fine. Half an hour to get the kids ready and out isn't enough. Part of me wishes she'd forgotten about it for another hour. I want Ed to have a good time and enjoy himself of course I do, but I'm not looking forward to spending the next couple of hours sitting in a kid-friendly and adult-unfriendly 'fun-barn' attached to the side of a pub. It's not how I'd planned to spend my Saturday afternoon.
        'We'll get there when we get there,' I tell her. 'Getting wound up about it isn't going to help.'
        'I'm not wound up,' she snaps, proving that she is. 'I just don't like being late, that's all.'
        'We won't be late. We've got a few minutes yet. The pub's only round the corner.'
        'I know but look at the traffic.'
        'There's probably been an accident or something,' I tell her, sitting up in my seat and craning my neck to try and see further down the road. 'I think there's something going on at the top of the hill. Once we get past that the traffic will clear.'
        I hear a muffled thump and a yelp from behind me. I glance over my shoulder and glare at the kids who are crammed shoulder to shoulder on the back seat. They hate being in the car nearly as much as I do. It's too small for us all to fit in but what can I do? I can't afford to change it so they'll just have to put up with it for now. We all will. Lizzie looks at them and then leans closer to me.
        'We're going to have to feed them,' she whispers,