That rage, burning as bright as the pain. She clenched her teeth and waited for the wave of dizzying agony to pass. Looking out into the darkness, seeing nothing, she knew.
They’re here.
Pain had to join fear. She tried to stand and fell back into the seat. Hands fumbling and shaking, she raised part of her muddied shirt to her mouth and using her teeth she tore at it until she held several strips of fabric.
She wrapped her leg as tightly as she could, trying not to think of the mud getting in her wound. Once she was sure she’d stemmed most of the bleeding she prepared herself, then, relying on her good leg, stood. She swayed and her head spun. She fell forwards and landed on her hands, beside the teeth of the trap. Crawling, panting and crying, she pulled herself over to the dead dog. She grabbed it by the back of the neck and tried to shift closer. The fucker was heavy.
The sound of grinding dirt beneath the dog was loud, too loud. She pulled again and again, bit by bit dragging the carcass around until they were both in front of the car. She paused, catching her breath as she leaned against the bumper bar. She forced her focus back to the bush around her. Still no sound of an approach. Back around the car, to where the trap lay open. It was no wonder she hadn’t seen it. You’d have to know it was there to notice the zigzag of dark, rusted metal against the ground. With both hands she pulled it towards her. It was lighter than she imagined but her strength was starting to flag. Seconds felt like hours but finally the trap lay in front of Blue’s corpse. Almost invisible in the shadow of the car’s front.
She stood. Feeling was slipping away from her leg now. She thought of the road and freedom. Then she opened her mouth and screamed. It echoed through the night and the bush, as if coming from every direction, the panic closing in and threatening to shatter whatever control she had left.
The last of the scream bounced from the close-circling trees. The pain didn’t matter. She got to her feet and, breaths ragged and painful in her throat, limped around behind the car. She moved as fast as she could, but it was still slow, too slow. Her leg weighed her down. She had just reached the boot of the car when she heard dry leaves shaking and twigs breaking underfoot. She froze. She saw the shape burst out of the trees and hurry to the front of the car.
‘Blue?’
Then the metal snap, and his scream filled the night.
Using her whole body, Maggie pushed the back of the car as hard as she could. She pushed and pushed and finally it started to roll. She stepped back, heard desperate scuffling then a crunch, sharp and grinding and awful. She was moving again, making herself stand through the protests of her muscles and her leg about to collapse under her. Half-falling, she reached the front of the car, saw Matty – stuck partway under it, eyes finding hers, mouth opening to scream again.
She plunged the knife through his eye socket and pushed until he was still. Then she wrenched the knife free and stood. Dizzy and swaying, she lurched away from the car, reached out for a tree, missed it and fell hard in the dirt. The knife was gone. Wind in the trees and no other noise. The world around her empty of life.
Her body felt light and her thoughts swam. She could drift off to sleep here. At least asleep her leg wouldn’t hurt so damn much. But something was calling her back to reality, some distant sound, some—
‘Hurry the fuck up, Matty went this way.’ She recognised Steve’s voice.
She tried to stand and move. She fell again then, slower this time, stood. The voices got louder and clearer as she clambered away from the car, stumbling every few seconds as she moved back towards the river. She could hear the voices rise behind her – they had found Matty. She had to run, but she couldn’t run and the bandage around her calf felt sodden. Pain surged. She fell face first into the mud, inhaling the damp earth, the gentle gurgle of the water drowning out all other sounds.
She rolled onto her back. There was a gap in the trees over the river and she could see stars. Funny, that stars could exist in the same world as the people she was running from. She reached out a hand and felt a rock just as someone ran past – only metres from where she lay – and then slid down the slope in the direction of the water.
She couldn’t move. The pain was an anchor holding her to the ground. He would turn and he would find her and it would be just like that night when she had gone into Hamish’s room and launched herself at him, the night he had held her down and hit her again and again until Ben and Debbie had pulled him off. Just like the time her father had backhanded her when she’d forgotten her shoes in the hall, and left her bleeding in the doorway. Just like all the others.
The fire rose, then and now.
She stood slowly. The pain from her leg had become a blaze, filling her whole body. She turned in time to see Kayden do the same, his eyes going wide at the dark muddy creature rising in front of him before the rock took him in the face and they fell together, Maggie smashing his face again and again, bone breaking and flesh tearing, wet and weak through curbed cries until her hand was hot with blood and she couldn’t make out his face because there was nothing left to make out.
There was no more sound. The night was happening somewhere else to someone else. All she knew was the mud and the water, the blood and the rock.
Something gleaming at the water’s edge, something Kayden had dropped. A shotgun. She took it then, falling on her first two attempts, stood again and limped away from the river, back towards the car. She had held guns before, in the bush, with Ben. Back then they had felt uncomfortable, too heavy. Now, this one felt right. Kayden’s blood on her, Steve ahead in the dark, the weapon in her hands. It was so right it hurt.
‘Oi, Kayden? You get the slut?’
She didn’t slow or quieten. She could see the shape of the car ahead and Steve in front of it.
‘You gonna fuckin’ answer me, cunt?’
Maggie raised the shotgun and fired.
The night burst apart. Steve was thrown back into the car. His cricket bat went flying. He staggered, clutching his stomach. His hand came away bloody.
‘Fuck,’ he managed.
Maggie moved slowly through the dark, shotgun still raised, finger tight on the trigger.
Steve against the car, barely standing, looked up at her. He coughed blood.
‘Is Simon dead?’ Maggie asked.
Steve’s voice was weak and wet. ‘Why do you care? The bastard left you.’
Maggie moved over to the dropped bat. Keeping the gun on Steve, she knelt, ignoring the tear of resistance from her leg.
‘You’re gonna bleed out like a bitch,’ Steve said, every word a rasp. ‘You try to—’ He coughed again. ‘Try to run and they’ll follow.’
Maggie picked up the bat, lowering the shotgun. She stood.
‘Is Simon dead?’
Steve tried to laugh. It came out choked and feeble. ‘You know what he told us? He said—’
One handed, Maggie swung the bat hard across his face. With a crack Steve hit the ground, spluttering, wheezing. He tried to stand. He couldn’t.
‘Is Simon dead?’
‘They’ll kill you,’ Steve wheezed. ‘They’ll come for you and they won’t stop. Whatever you do to me, Trent’ll do worse to you. He’ll make you—’
Maggie dropped the bat, lifted the shotgun and fired.
Steve’s right knee exploded. His scream filled the bush and kept going, a wail of hopeless agony. He tried to crawl. He left his leg behind him. Even in the moonlight, the ground was red.
‘Is Simon dead?’ Maggie’s voice cut through his fading scream.
‘Yes,’ his voice was a croak. ‘Please. Please, take me back. Don’t . . . You’re not . . .’ He was writhing through the blood and the dirt. His face was bone white. His eyelids fluttered. ‘You’re not like the others. You’re like . . . You’re like us.’ Blood dripped from his gaping mouth.
Maggie was unsteady, her head felt thick and heavy, but none of that mattered; what mattered was the thing on the ground in front of her, his words stoking her fu
ry into something impossible to hold onto. ‘Where are the car keys?’
‘P-pocket.’ Steve’s voice was faint.
He wasn’t lying. Maggie felt a rush of something close to ecstasy. Ecstasy quickly overtaken by the rising boil of rage.
You’re like us.
Steve’s eyes closed. ‘Please. I want to go home. Please.’
Maggie lay the shotgun down. She picked up the bat. ‘No.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Now
Greg could hear the low hum of voices on the other side of the door that led out the back of the roadhouse. Light crept through the crack under it. He had expected somebody to come barging in at any second, but no-one had.
What did he know? Not much. It was hard to imagine the kind of explanation that would cause this situation to make sense. But, somehow, he had to force his reeling mind to turn away from the growing fear that he was most certainly about to die and work out if he had another option, slim though the possibility might be.
There was a girl. Whoever she was, she was at the core of this. She was the one they were after. And furthermore, Greg knew where she was, more or less. A house, somewhere behind them. If he gave these people what they wanted, they would have to let him go. Whatever they did to the others here, it needn’t include the person who had helped them.
This, after all, was what he had done for years. Negotiated deals, identified what people wanted and used an innate sense of how much they wanted it to establish the terms of a deal that would benefit him.
He thought of Delilah, who had left again. Her scared smile. He hadn’t heard the door to the main store open. He pictured her alone in the hall, shaking, trying to regain composure. As scared as Greg. He thought of the old prick with the gun. And the faceless girl he would hand over to these people. Whatever this was, it had nothing to do with him. He got to his feet.
Allie tried not to breathe. She held the gun as tightly as she dared, eyes fixed on the crack at the bottom of the bedroom door. Listening.
The creak came again. Closer.
Very slowly, taking care not to make a sound, Allie slid back further until she was as far under the bed as she could be, back pressed against the wall.
Another creak.
She pointed the gun at the bottom of the door.
Another creak, from right on the other side of the closed door.
Her finger crept around the trigger.
The bedroom door opened. Her insides seemed to evaporate. Even in the dark she knew she was looking at a pair of boots.
One step, then another, they walked into the room. Allie’s hands were trembling. Her heart assaulted the inside of her chest. She tried to aim the gun at the ankle, but she couldn’t hold it steady and if she missed she didn’t know how to reload it. Or if it was even loaded to begin with. The trembling spread. She was shaking all over now. She closed her eyes. Her hands were too sweaty to hold the gun properly.
She heard the steps, closer and closer until the boots had to be right at the edge of her bed. She couldn’t open her eyes. Couldn’t see what she knew was there. Maybe he would go away.
Then—
A rush of air as the mattress was pulled from the bed. She tried to raise the gun, but it hit a wooden slat. Her eyes opened.
Reg’s face loomed over her, close, a leering taunt in the dark. ‘G’day, sweetheart.’
His hand flew through a gap between the slats and closed around her neck. Hard. She gasped. No air was going in. She let go of the gun. She tried to struggle. Her vision blurred but even so she saw Reg’s spare hand rip away one slat then another, throwing them aside before pulling Allie up by the neck. Her head felt like it was submerged in liquid. She barely felt him slam her against the wall over the bed.
His grip loosened, slightly. She forced in what air she could and his awful smell filled her nose: stale cigarettes, old beer and something else, something sour and wrong that made her want to throw up, something touched with copper and rot.
‘You need to learn to lock the back door,’ he said. ‘Anybody could be ’round these parts, y’know?’
Allie tried to yell out, but his grip was still too tight around her throat. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the gun on the floor. It was too far away but she reached for it anyway, until Reg’s boot found it and kicked it hard backwards, out of sight.
‘That ain’t happening, love,’ he said. ‘Now. Reading between the lines, I reckon you might just be hiding something in this cosy little house. I’ve had a quick look around and I don’t see our little mate, but that don’t mean she ain’t here. You’d be making everyone’s lives a shitload easier if you came clean.’
Allie couldn’t have said anything if she’d wanted to.
Reg’s face filled her vision.
‘I don’t want things to get rough, love,’ he said. ‘Sweet young thing like you, I’d hate to do too much damage. I’d like that face to stay in one piece. But you know how it is. Gotta have your mates’ backs. Especially when someone kills four of them. Tell me where Maggie is.’
Allie breathed in the rancid air. She made herself meet Reg’s dead eyes. She opened her mouth.
But a voice from behind Reg beat her to it.
‘She’s right here.’
Reg turned. Maggie hit him hard in the face with the butt of the shotgun. He let go of Allie and fell away, clutching his nose, snarling and swearing as Maggie spun the gun around, pointed it at his face and pulled the trigger.
Warm blood splattered Allie as the shot filled her ears. She screamed but no sound came out.
For a moment Reg remained standing. He swayed. Above his jaw was nothing but a red mess of bone and blood.
He fell hard.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Maggie had known she was on a couch, or maybe she hadn’t. The dryness in her mouth, roughness of the fabric against her skin, pain in her leg; it had been coming and going and all the while she had been sinking in fragments, snatches and hisses of memories or dreams, she didn’t know which. They had started to claim her on the road, tendrils wrapping tight as her vision flickered and her mind slowed. What had she even been running from? The knowledge lingered, but vaguer by the second. The bush. The blood. The knife. The pain. She remembered the pain without feeling it. That had been the first warning. But by the time she’d recognised the fact, it had been too late. She had seen the roadhouse ahead and swerved towards it. She’d opened the car door and stepped into darkness.
And then the fragments. Jagged images, crammed together without order or sense. Pulling herself clear of them had been like dragging her body through broken glass. But in the fragments and the dark, the one thing she knew was that somehow she had to get clear. Somehow she had to wake up from whatever this was, whether it was sleep or the first welcoming whisper of death.
I should have killed you.
Her father, his voice slurred and rough with booze, his hand around her throat and the sour smell in her nose. The hate she had felt in that moment, the overpowering sweep of a blazing flood she could never escape from, exacerbated by his familiar grip and the nauseous instinct to flinch and hide and wait for the beating to be over. She had tried to hold it down but his words had been like the striking of a match about to fall into a pool of kerosene.
I should have killed you.
The staircase. The night. The two of them alone and in the loosening of his grip, an opportunity. The struck match falling slow through darkness to the gleaming pool below. Only that time, she didn’t try to put out the fire. That time, she had let it burn.
Something brighter, then, clearer. A voice alive with urgency. We’re going to call help. All she knew was that whoever it was couldn’t do that, because help would mean something final for her, a return to confines and the eyes, waiting for any sign of weakness, waiting.
You wouldn’t believe how long some of these fuckers last.
She was going to last.
The sharp edges of the fragments were gone, or at
least she couldn’t feel them anymore. The faces she saw warped and blurred in the darkness, the voices were snatches of garbled nothing. She had forgotten even what the pain had been like. Everything was warm, everything was soft, nothing mattered. Echoes faded to silence and even her own name escaped her. She was safe. She had never known what safe was until then. Nothing was coming to harm her because there was nothing left, not anymore.
I think we should check out the car.
Clear and ringing as a bell. A throb, dull and distant, but there. A fragment, so sudden and clear it jarred, the snarling of a dog, the tear of teeth. The throb became something worse. The sharp edges were back, but they hid in the dark. She scraped against them without knowing where or what they were.
The people here . . . I don’t like this place.
Simon, terrified even though he tried to hide it, and then Simon was little Ted and something in her chest pulled horribly, something that hurt far worse than the building pressure in her leg . . .
Footsteps on wood outside.
The pain had flared. Sharp, bright. Like an alarm.
Her eyes had opened.
Her limbs felt stretched and distended. Her throat burned raw with every breath. She didn’t want to move. But she heard a doorknob turn and knew she had to.
She sat up despite the tendrils, the dark hands trying to pull her back. She was in a living room, everything off kilter and swimming in front of her eyes. She rolled off the couch, hands jarring on the wooden floor, shuffled away as best she could, ignoring the storm of objection from every battered inch of her. She clocked the first-aid kit and brushed it under the couch as she went. She moved into the shadow cast by the side of the couch, up against the wall, legs pulled to her chest. She tried to listen past the pounding in her ears. Everything still. Silent.
A creak, then another, louder. The sound of breathing. Someone in the doorway, scanning the living room.
The Hunted Page 13
