by Tim Weaver
Enough to stop him dead.
He was on the other side of the door now, only a
We stayed like that for a long time. And then he started opening the door again, inch by inch, more daylight leaking in, covering the shelves, the shoeboxes, the floor. I looked down. The sun was behind him, low in the sky, and his shadow was long across the floor of the storage room. It got smaller as he stepped further in.
Then he was inside.
Immediately he saw me, spinning round to face us. I levelled the gun at his head. He started and stepped back, hitting one of the shelves. A shoebox tumbled over his shoulder and scattered across the floor. Photographs. A necklace. A letter. Someone’s forgotten life spilling across the room.
Myzwik looked at me. At the gun.
At Alex.
‘You shouldn’t have come back.’
We were two feet apart. I jabbed the barrel of the gun forward, smashing Myzwik square in the nose. Blood burst out, down over his lips and chin. As he bent forward, clutching at his face, I turned the gun around and swung it into the side of his face. He fell backwards to the floor with a thump.
The pain numbed me for a moment. When I finally shook it off, I looked up. Alex’s eyes were lingering on Myzwik – uncertain, as if a flood of memories were passing through him. And then he turned and peered
He opened his mouth to speak to me when the alarm stopped.
As silence descended across the farm, it became eerily quiet. Only the sound of shovels against the ground could be heard; the ching of metal meeting earth.
Alex knelt down and started going through Myzwik’s pockets.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying to find a key,’ he said.
‘Key?’
He didn’t reply, just kept searching. Eventually, though, he stood and looked at me – his face etched with unease – and then up to the group again.
‘We have to join them,’ Alex said.
‘What?’
‘There’s no instructor up there with them.’
‘So what? I’m fifteen years older than anyone else up there. They’re going to know I’m not part of the programme. What’s to stop one of them finding someone in charge and raising the alarm?’
‘They won’t,’ he replied, his eyes still fixed on the group. ‘They’re too deep into the programme to remember if we’re part of the farm or not. They won’t care about the age thing either.’ Finally, he looked at me. ‘When you’ve got no memory, you can’t be sure about anything.’
‘Andrew will be securing the compound, room by room, making sure everything’s as it should be. He’ll get to Calvary last, which means we’ve got –’ he looked at his watch ‘– about a minute before he and his attack dog discover you’re not nailed to that cross any more. Which gives us about two minutes before they get to the surface again.’
‘I cut a hole in the fence – we can go back out that way.’
‘The electricity’s on.’
‘Electricity?’
‘In the fencing.’
I looked at the fencing that ran in a gentle curve from the top entrance, all the way down the hill, dissecting a field of heather before hitting the beach. When the wind dropped away, and the sea quietened, I could hear the gentle buzz of a current.
‘When the alarm goes off, the electricity comes on, and stays on for thirty minutes,’ Alex said. ‘You can only switch it off from inside the compound, but we’re not going back in there. So the little hole you crawled through to get in here? That’s no longer an option. The only other way to get out is to find one of the master keys and use it to unlock the main gate. That isn’t electrified. But I haven’t got one of those. Only the instructors have them. So, we join the group and wait for one of the instructors to come back. Once they do, we spring him and take the key.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘Are you following me?’
‘Good,’ he said.
I pocketed everything from the box, slid the gun in at the front of my trousers and then followed him out. But after only a short distance, I started to fall behind. Alex jammed a fist around my arm, yanking me forward. Something twinged in my chest, forcing me to suck in air. I felt pain snake around to my side, where Legion had sliced it open.
‘This could take a while,’ I said.
‘We need to be quick,’ he replied, glancing back at the mouth of the compound. He was staring at something. I looked back and could see the CCTV camera attached to the roof of Lazarus panning in our direction.
The ground beneath our feet was uneven. Snow and stones everywhere. I could feel every bump and piece of gravel through the soles of the slippers, the pain rippling across my skin. Alex tried to quicken the pace by dragging me up the hill. Every time I looked up and expected to see the group getting closer, it was like they were being pushed further away.
‘Is this all they do all day?’
‘No. Some work locally too.’
‘The locals are in on this?’
‘No. Only the ones that used to work here. When someone like you breaches security, or gets too close, Andrew swaps everyone around. There’ll be new people working out of Angel’s now, and someone else
I looked up towards the group digging in front of us.
‘What do they do in the villages?’
‘The same as they do here. Digging, planting, fetching, carrying, maybe standing behind a counter and serving. Menial tasks. Nothing tasks. Andrew argues it’s a purer, untarnished existence. But the truth is, by the time they’ve finished with you here, you’re not good for much else.’
A few of the faces were visible beneath the hoods, staring down the hill towards us. They looked normal, even healthy, until you watched their eyes, darting between us, desperately trying to fit memories together like broken pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
We finally reached them and a couple more looked up: a teenaged girl, a man in his mid-twenties, a girl of about the same age. In front of them, cracks and fissures in the frozen earth were gradually opening up. Their hands, wrapped around the shovels, were red with cold.
There were four shovels propped against the wall behind the group. Alex and I both grabbed one and pretended to dig, using our hoods to disguise our faces, but with a clear sight of the compound. A couple of the group still watched us, especially Alex, but then, as
‘I’m not going to be able to fight them for much longer,’ I said. My body was on fire: every muscle, every bone. ‘I will slow you up.’
‘We both leave.’
I looked at him. ‘You make a break for it.’
‘And go where?’
‘Run.’
‘There’s nowhere for me to go, David.’
Then, from the mouth of the compound, they came.
There were two of them. One I recognized immediately as Andrew; the other was smaller, maybe female, and had the hood up on her top. As soon as they emerged from the darkness of the compound, they were looking right to left, their eyes adjusting to the dusk. They knew we were on the farm somewhere – it was just a question of where.
They both looked up towards us and studied the group. The slow, rhythmic digging; the sound of the shovels; the wind blowing in from the mountains and the sea. What if they did a head count before we joined the group? I looked at Alex briefly. He shot a glance back, as if he knew what I was thinking.
Andrew headed towards the front of Lazarus. The woman turned and started making her way towards us. Alex and I turned away slightly, and started digging properly.
It took her about sixty seconds to get from the mouth of the compound. She was wearing heavy-duty boots, the steel toecaps scuffing against the gravel and the snow on the ground. Apart from Andrew, the instructors dressed like the people they were supposed to be saving – hooded tops, tracksuit trousers – only in blue instead of green. With my back half-turned I couldn’t
I dug the shovel into the earth, and flicked another look at her as she moved level with the group. She was looking off somewhere else
. When I jammed the shovel down again, into the ground, I felt the wounds throb in my chest, and my back, and my hand. I stopped momentarily, breathed in, then continued digging.
A minute passed.
When I glanced again at her, she’d moved around, closer to Bethany. She was bent over, watching one of the women brushing away some of the earth at her feet. Then the instructor moved again, finally disappearing from my line of sight.
I flicked a glance at Alex.
He was at the opposite angle to me, almost facing the other way. I could see his eyes following the woman as she moved behind me.
We continued digging.
Thirty seconds later I saw Alex glance up at the woman again, then sideways at me.
A brief nod.
It was time.
I gripped the handle of the shovel, my knuckles whitening, and waited for a second nod from Alex. We hadn’t agreed anything, hadn’t made any sort of plan. But I knew the first nod was the primer, the indication that I needed to get ready.
The second would be the trigger.
Evelyn.
Through the corner of her eye she must have seen me staring at her. She turned and faced me, her eyes narrowing. Then she realized who it was beneath the hood. For a second she must have thought she could reason with me. Play on our history, on the fact we’d once got on; laughed together; even been drawn to each other in some way. But then she remembered how she’d held a gun to my head and let them take me out to the woods to be buried.
‘I’m sorry, Evelyn,’ I said.
She started to call out for help.
I swung the shovel at her, dirt spitting off as it arced, and caught her in the side of the head. The impact reverberated along the handle, into my hands. She stumbled sideways. Fell to her knees, and then her stomach, one side of her face puncturing the earth as she hit the ground.
And then she was quiet.
The rest of the group looked up.
Alex glanced between me and the others, and back down towards the farm. No sign of anybody else. He dropped his shovel to the floor and moved across to Evelyn, who was drifting in and out of consciousness. He went through her pockets. Eventually he found a keyring in her trousers and removed it. On the ring were
Then his eyes fixed on something behind me.
His whole face collapsed, the colour draining out of it. Suddenly, he looked terrified.
I turned and followed his gaze.
In the middle of the group, surrounded by men and women, Legion stood staring at us. He was wearing the same clothes as we were, his hood up, the mask still on. In his hand was a submachine gun. It looked like a Heckler & Koch MP7. Black and compact. Short barrel. I glanced at the gun, and back up at him. His eyes were fixed on Alex now. He had been among us the whole time.
He flipped back his hood.
‘Alex,’ he said, almost a whisper.
Despite the wind, the sea, the sounds drifting through the late afternoon light, it was difficult to hear anything but his voice. Sharp, almost scratchy, like a needle cutting across an old record.
Alex held up both his hands.
‘We have something to finish, David,’ Legion said, not looking at me – just staring along the ridge of the gun he was now pointing at Alex.
‘No,’ I said, anger in my voice. I reached into my trousers and brought out the Beretta. A twinge in my chest and back. ‘We’re finished.’
This time he looked at me. Body perfectly still. Head swivelling. Eyes dark and focused. For a second, it was like looking at a ventriloquist’s dummy – as if
Legion glanced at my gun.
‘We will finish what we started, cockroach,’ he said, every word, every syllable, cutting across the ground between us. ‘Put the gun down or I slice Alex in two.’
‘Don’t put the gun down, David,’ Alex said.
I glanced at Alex, then back at Legion. He was still looking at me, standing completely still, even as a gust of wind blew across the group.
‘Put the gun down,’ he said again.
‘They can’t kill me, David.’
I glanced at Alex.
‘Put the gun down,’ Legion said for a third time.
‘Don’t, David – they can’t kill m–’
In a flash of movement, Legion jabbed the barrel of the gun forward, right into the centre of Alex’s forehead. Alex’s head lurched backwards. He was instantly unconscious, even as he stood. He toppled over and hit the ground like a sack of cement. No grace, no arms out, no reactions at all.
Legion turned to me, and dropped the gun to his side. He didn’t see me as a threat. He took a step towards me, pushing a couple of the group aside. One of the girls fell to the floor. A couple of the others turned and looked towards the sea, to the ground; too petrified to even turn in the direction of the killer standing among them.
‘Stop,’ I said.
He took another step forward.
‘No, you won’t.’
‘You better believe I will.’
‘No.’
The good things are worth fighting for.
Her voice, suddenly, unexpectedly.
Legion noticed something in my face – a flicker of a memory – and finally did stop. I could feel sweat on the tips of my fingers, feel the adrenalin, hear my heart pumping in my ears. I glanced down at the gun again, and back up at the man in front of me.
Take this chance, David.
I fired once. It hit Legion in the shoulder. He staggered back against one of the others in the group. Somewhere behind me, one of the women screamed. A shovel clanged against the earth. Legion lurched away from the group, clutching his wound.
I pulled myself out of the moment and headed for Bethany, leaving Alex on the ground, face down. Maybe dying. Maybe dead. I moved quickly around the edge of the house and towards the back door.
Snow crunched behind me.
The devil was coming.
I kicked open the back door, immediately realizing I’d led myself into a trap. Half-inside the kitchen, I turned back and saw his silhouette pass across the windows.
It was too late to go back.
Swivelling, I headed through to the living room – dark now, as daylight began to fade – and towards the
I ran for the stairs, landing awkwardly when I reached them. Pain tore across my chest as I scrambled up on all fours, the first shots piercing the wall behind me. I could hear the old brickwork spitting out dust and debris, could hear the ping of a ricochet. I heard him move across the living room, broken tiles beneath his feet. I launched myself on to the landing and a shower of bullets followed me up, popping in the walls, bouncing off the stonework, lodging in the wooden floor.
I fired back three times, then made for Room A. As I moved, he followed. I could hear him pad up the stairs. The occasional creak but nothing more. He was quick. Lean. Streamlined.
He fired as he got to the top. Beyond the noise, I thought I could hear him whisper something, then the words were swallowed up as more bullets followed me into the room. The smell of rotting damp hit me.
I looked around.
The chimney flue, running from the fireplace downstairs, was angled enough to provide cover from the door. I dropped behind it. Flowers of light erupted from the landing. Bullets hit the door frame and walls. Wood splintered. Plaster spilled. Legion kept firing into the bedroom: the flue disintegrated beside me, floorboards cracked and broke, bullets ricocheted. One bullet missed my leg by an inch as I rolled to my side.
He was out of bullets.
The silence was like a shockwave.
I leaned out, as quickly as I could, and loosed off six shots. One didn’t even get beyond the room, hitting the door itself. One headed straight across the landing to the wall at the top of the stairs. The others lodged in the walls on the landing – every one a wasted bullet. Legion had already taken cover to the left of the doorway.
I stayed like that, leaning out towards the doorway, waiting for him to appear again. But he had second-gue
ssed me. All I could hear was my breathing.
‘C-c-c-c-c-cockroach,’ he whispered.
The sound of something snapping into place.
Reloading.
There was a long pause, the silence hanging in the air.
And then I coughed.
Legion came in at me, firing quickly. I ducked back for cover, shielding my face from the dust and the glass. Bullets fizzed past me. One tore through the floorboards about two inches from my hand. Another made contact with my slipper, taking part of the toe off.
I knew I had to fire back, knew I had to attempt to repel him. If I didn’t, he would get closer and closer
The first three shots missed, going so wide of the mark he didn’t even stop shooting. The fourth got closer, briefly interrupting the noise from his gun.
Then the fifth hit something.
I heard footsteps – barely audible – retreating from the room.
I looked down at the gun, unsure whether he was really hit or whether this was all part of the game. The pain was becoming unbearable. Huge chunks of air escaped from my chest. Glass was embedded in my skin. I didn’t want to move.
I held the Beretta up in front of me and removed the magazine with a shaky right hand. I’d fired all fifteen bullets.
I waited for a moment. Breathed.
My teeth throbbed. My eyes were watering. I listened for Legion, for any sign of movement. All I could hear was the wind.
‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ I said.
Nothing. No reply. No sound of movement.
I looked down into my lap. The gun felt heavy now. My whole body felt heavy. As if it had been turned inside out. It felt like Legion held all the cards, even if I’d somehow managed to hit him. He would wait. He was a soldier. He was trained to use silence and time to his advantage.
I swallowed and felt the saliva slide down my throat,
‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ I said again.
Silence.
I reached into my pocket and quietly removed everything I’d taken from the shoebox: my wallet, my car keys, my photographs of Derryn, my wedding ring. And the bullet. A fine mist settled on the metal casing as the chill of the evening slithered its way in through the broken windows.
