The Hunt

by T. J. Lebbon

  Even edging up the first ropes, set at an angle and in high tension, he’d not liked looking down. By the time they were almost thirty feet above the ground, his heart had been hammering, sweat slicked his hands, and the only thing that kept him moving was the sight of Gemma progressing confidently ahead of him.

  Since then he’d happily look from an aircraft window at the ground far below, but he avoided ladders at all costs.

  Head torch on, slipping over the cliff edge and feeling around for footholds, that same consuming fear settled over him. He remained in place for a couple of minutes, toes pressed tight on a narrow ledge, arms spread on the sloping ground before him, fingers clawed into the rugged soil. He’d secured the rifle and backpack, and now they both felt like weights seeking to pull him out and down. Maybe he should leave the rifle behind.

  Chris closed his eyes and thought of his family. ‘Get your fucking act together!’ he said aloud. Then he started easing himself down the cliff face.

  He focused. The slope was not quite vertical, but it was steep enough to necessitate care and consideration as to where he next placed his toes and fingers. He sought out each toe and hand hold, moving one limb at a time, testing his weight, shifting slowly. Sometimes the little ledges or cracks in the face were soft with soil and moss, other times they were cool wet rock. He hoped that every movement would be the last one, and that his foot would touch down onto a gentle slope, the beginning of the valley and the foot of the mountain. But the cliff continued.

  He was breathing hard, heart hammering, yet he soon became immersed in his task. If he did think of the unknown drop below him his stomach turned, his bowels felt suddenly loose. What was he doing? How stupid could he have been? He was stuck out here on the face of a cliff, and if he froze now he might never get moving again. But it would only take a few seconds of searching, locating a ridge or crack, moving, before his mind was set to its task once more.

  His left knee was stiff and felt swollen inside his running trousers. The ankle on the same leg was hot and painful. His fingers continued to bleed, wounds not given the chance to clot. The pain was rich and sickly, but he tried to shut it out. Pain was merely a warning that he chose to ignore.

  The wind picked up. Gusts prised at him, attempting to tug him away from the cliff. Rain slanted in, running down the cliff face before him. The sudden change in conditions was shocking, yet painfully familiar. He pressed in tight and closed his eyes, trying to become part of the cliff, hoping that if he was still enough the storm would pass him by.

  When he opened his eyes he realised that dawn had come, the wind had started to disperse the mist, and he could look down and see how far he had yet to descend.

  Chris whined and hugged himself against the cliff as tightly as he could. He realised that he was going to die.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  drowning puppies

  For the first few hours they kept them restrained, seated on a leather sofa in a comfortable living room, wrists tied in front of them with itchy rope and ankles bound with zip ties. But then they let them visit the small downstairs bathroom. They also let them undress, and Gemma’s mum swilled their piss-stinking clothes and hung them on a rack above the bath, and while they waited for them to dry they wore big, fluffy towels. Gemma had been worried about the nail – she didn’t want anyone to know about it, including her sister or mum – but she managed to slip it into the space between sofa cushions before undressing.

  Vey and Tom took it in turns watching them. Tom would sit in the window seat, leg swinging, gun in his belt, looking from the window. Vey would take the larger armchair and scan her phone. Neither of them said much, but they didn’t seem to mind their captives chatting quietly.

  From the minute they had arrived, Gemma had been storing away information about where they were being kept. Their mum chatted with them, told jokes, doing her best to keep her girls calm while she herself seemed ready to collapse at any moment. Gemma hated seeing her mother like that – shaking, pale, constantly swallowing as if verging on being sick – but she’d already decided that she was the one looking after them.

  She didn’t know how, or why. She’d never thought of herself as brave. But she was not about to question how she felt.

  They’d had only a glimpse of their surroundings as they walked between the van and cottage. She’d seen a barren, wide landscape, mountains in the distance, steep, sweeping slopes closer by dotted with sheep and lined with old stone walls. Staggered fencing prickled one slope, turning it into a patchwork of fields. There were a few other buildings visible through hedges and past clumps of trees, and perhaps some were in shouting distance. Perhaps. She stored that knowledge in the box.

  The cottage was large and well-maintained, with a simple garden of lawn and flower beds and a gravelled driveway. They entered through a side door into a big kitchen, passing through to a square hallway with a staircase and three other doors. One of them was the bathroom they’d been using, and another led into the living room. They had been there ever since.

  It was a holiday home. She’d seen plenty of signs of that – small, tasteful notices; a folder of brochures of things to do in the area; a visitors’ book in the living room – and she stored that away, too. She didn’t think it was good news, because these people might have hired the place for a week or two.

  They were somewhere in the wilds of Wales. Beyond that she knew nothing.

  None of them knew anything.

  She hugged Megs and tried to comfort her, and their mother held them both. They ate some bread and cheese, drank glasses of milk, and Gemma hated being so hungry. Eating what the bastards brought them implied some sort of gratitude, but she made them know for sure she wasn’t grateful. When Vey told her to take the plates through to the kitchen, Gemma dropped them in the hallway and watched them shatter across the flagstone floor.

  ‘You’ll eat your next meal off your laps,’ Vey said.

  Gemma didn’t reply. But she thought, Stupid girl. Don’t antagonise her. Don’t make her think there’s an inch of resistance in you. Put them at ease.

  Her mother asked what they wanted. So did Megs. Gemma asked too, with no need to feign the sudden tears that burned in her eyes. Vey said nothing, merely glanced up at their questions and then returned to surfing her phone. Once or twice Tom gave them obscure answers, which raised more questions than anything else. ‘Ask your husband,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow will tell,’ he said.

  Gemma hated him. She hated both of them, and the hate helped her maintain the distance that kept at least some of the fear and panic at bay.

  As dusk fell and Vey went around the living room closing curtains, Gemma probed down between the sofa cushions and tucked the nail back down the back of her washed and dried trousers. No one noticed. It was cold against her skin, and sharp. Her subterfuge made her feel that she was doing something positive.

  ‘Should have had stitches in that,’ her mother said later. Megs was asleep on the big leather sofa, head propped against the arm. Gemma sat at the other end, and their mother was between them, a hand on each of her daughter’s legs. Gemma knew then that her mum was doing as much as she could. She was keeping control, fighting panic, and not doing a single thing that would risk her daughters’ wellbeing.

  Gemma was the one ready to take risks.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t really hurt any more.’ She pulled her shirt collar aside and checked the cut on her shoulder. It was crispy and sore, and a bruise was forming around it. She would have a scar.

  Vey watched them from the armchair. Several times now, Gemma had seen the woman’s eyelids drooping, and she’d felt a flutter of excitement in her chest at the idea of grabbing the gun. It was stupid. Stuff like that only really happened in films. These people seemed slick and organised, they knew what they were doing – whatever the hell that was – and she had the impression this was far from the first time.

  But the idea persisted. Vey relaxed in her chair. Her breathing came
slower and deeper. Gemma didn’t want to do anything to startle her into alertness.

  ‘Good that she’s asleep,’ she whispered, nodding at her little sister.

  ‘Yeah,’ her mum said. ‘You okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, Mum. It’ll all be okay. If they were going to hurt us they’d have done it by now.’ She knew that wasn’t true, as did her mother.

  ‘We should get some sleep,’ her mum said. ‘We’ll be fine, Gemma. We’ll know more tomorrow.’

  ‘What do you think Dad’s doing now?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ Her mother turned away as if to dismiss the subject. Something about her changed. She became somehow softer, reduced.

  ‘Mum?’

  She was sobbing. Gemma leaned in and pressed her face to her mother’s shoulder, reaching across her stomach to hug her, and she could hear the sobs coming from deep inside, feel them translated through her body. But she was trying to keep quiet. Probably so that she didn’t wake Megs, Gemma knew, but she kept glancing at Vey, slowly nodding off in the armchair across the room by the large, curtained window. That’s it, keep it quiet, Mum, she thought, let’s all keep it quiet.

  She thought she could remain strong. But hearing her mother’s distress caused Gemma’s resolve to slip, become more fluid and uncertain. Your mother was supposed to be the strong one, her warmth a place of safety, her smile a sign that all was well. As her sobs continued, fear threatened to overwhelm Gemma. It pressed in like the loaded shadows, heavy with dread, that she had once believed were trying to take her away.

  She’d been eight years old then, and every night for a week she had dragged herself kicking and screaming from sleep, thrashing at sweat-soaked bedding and reaching for her troubled parents as they dashed into her room, arms held out ready to rescue her. The retreating shadows had glared from corners, on top of her wardrobe, and beside her bookcase, but between her parents she had always found a safe place. It was only when she was diagnosed with glandular fever that the cause of such night terrors had been revealed. Their hold over her had soon melted away.

  This fear felt the same. An unstoppable force threatened her and her family, and the dread was heavy and slick. It pressed against her, constraining her breathing, dulling her senses. She blinked and the room grew darker. The overhead light had vanished, and a soft glow filtered through the open doorway from the hall. Her mother no longer sobbed, but her breathing was still uneven. Megs muttered in her sleep.

  Gemma stood slowly from the sofa, and it felt like someone else. Her limbs were not her own, her body was alien, her intentions were unlikely and distant. She touched the nail down the back of her trousers, then let go and took three steps towards the sleeping woman and her gun.

  ‘Sit down,’ a man’s voice said from behind her.

  She froze. Breath caught in her throat. Fear winded her.

  Vey stirred and then quickly stood, grasping the gun from her lap, smiling through sleep-swollen eyes. She pointed it casually at Gemma’s face.

  I’ve killed little girls tougher than you.

  ‘Gemma!’ her mother whispered, stirring behind her. Megs woke as well, mumbling.

  ‘I could kill you and do just as well with the other two,’ Vey said.

  Gemma could not speak. No words came to her, and her throat convulsed, struggling to draw in a breath.

  ‘Sit down,’ Tom said, walking around the sofa and turning on the light. He’d been sitting at the small table in the corner of the room, keeping watch while Vey slept, and Gemma had not even looked for him.

  Vey kept the gun aimed at her face.

  Gemma drew in a long, ragged breath, afraid that it might be her last.

  ‘Please,’ her mother pleaded from behind her.

  Vey grinned. ‘Tom, tie them up again. Tight. And gag them.’

  The light remained on for the rest of the night, and Vey stayed awake, looking at her phone. It buzzed once and she answered, hung up, and called out to Tom, who was making coffee in the kitchen, ‘Still on!’ From then until dawn she scanned the screen, chuckling now and then when something seemed to amuse her.

  Pictures of drowning puppies, Gemma thought. And each time she closed her eyes to sleep, the promise of that dreadful gun’s barrel kept her awake.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  dawn

  Rose popped another palmful of painkillers from the helicopter’s first aid kit. Too many and she’d damage her liver. She almost laughed at the idea.

  She welcomed the dawn. It came as she faced the Trail woman, casting light on their interaction and bringing stark colour to the situation. Mainly red.

  ‘It’s turned out a bit differently to how we’d expected. We knew you were still alive. And we always wanted you to be a challenge, a good hunt for us. But we didn’t know if that would ever happen. And we didn’t expect you to take control quite so comprehensively.’

  ‘What do you mean, a hunt for you? The Trail?’

  ‘Yeah. You’re the one that got away, Rose. Of course we couldn’t let it stay that way, and some of us have always wanted to sample what we sell. Believe me, it’s always the same. Drug dealers become addicts, pimps screw their whores. I was Trail for only a year before I craved a kill, and I knew others who were thinking the same way.’

  ‘What others?’

  The woman coughed, groaning and curling around her stomach wound as if to hug it to sleep.

  ‘What others?’

  ‘Come on. Don’t tell me you don’t know something. You’ve been stalking us for years.’

  ‘Not stalking. Hunting. A cold hunt.’

  ‘And the war’s just gone hot,’ the woman said in a faux gruff voice. She even managed a laugh. ‘Bit melodramatic, eh, Rose?’

  ‘Melodramatic? You killed my family, you sit there with your guts squeezing out between your fingers, and you’re taking the piss?’

  ‘I didn’t have anything to do with that,’ the woman said, an element of fear creeping into her voice. Good. Rose didn’t like to think that they were indestructible. Cool, calm, superior, almost always in control … but not immortal. I’m sure they can bleed, Holt had said, and she had proven that statement true. But Rose realised that he’d meant more than blood.

  ‘So what were you doing when they were slitting my children’s throats?’ Her voice was flat and hollow. Any injection of emotion and she’d have broken down, taken up a rock and smashed in the dying woman’s skull. And it still contained information she needed.

  ‘Barely involved,’ the woman said. ‘I was logistics. Still learning the ropes. Just kicked out of the army for—’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about your history,’ Rose cut in. ‘You’re just a voice to me. A source of information. So who killed my children?’

  The woman’s eyes flickered away from Rose, squeezed half-shut in pain.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Rose asked. Even pretending to be familiar with this bitch left a stale taste in her mouth, like dried blood.

  ‘Michelle.’

  ‘Keep pressure on the wound, Michelle. Tell me a name and I’ll call mountain rescue, they’ll take you off to a hospital. I’ll let you explain the bullet wound. I’m sure you bastards have failsafes in place for a situation like this. Just one name.’

  She saw a flicker of hope in the wounded woman’s face, a drifting of her harsh facade.

  ‘You know only pseudonyms. This one you know as Margaret Vey.’

  Grin! Rose thought. It was Grin … she killed them … and I saw her, I was near her, I could have waited in her house and killed her there and then.

  She stood, whining in pain and grief reborn, pulling the pistol, aiming it at the woman’s face.

  The bitch who said her name was Michelle held up two bloody hands. In that last moment of her life she became a normal human being – not wanting to die, begging for mercy, mewling in terror and remorse.

  ‘There’s more!’

  ‘I don’t need more.’

  ‘Holt.’

  The name was
like a blow to her gut. Rose blinked, trying to tie flailing ends of information together. She could not even grasp them. Nobody knows him, she thought. Unless …

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  The dying woman talked.

  Chris was frozen. He’d had nightmares about situations exactly like this – caught halfway up a sheer cliff, exposed, his weak flesh and blood and bone body insignificant compared to the measureless weight of rock, the endless expanse of open sky. He connected rock and sky, both of them seeking to do him harm – the sky pulled, promising a quick fall; the rock pushed, its gravity drawing him down.

  Climbing back up seemed impossible. Making his way down, looking between his feet, filled him with dread. Remaining where he was depended on the strength of his leg muscles, the clench of his fingers against sharp rock. Falling held a terrible allure.

  He dared to look down again.

  The cliff fell away below him. There were cracks and fissures, projections and dark areas, but the remaining descent was near-vertical. The base of the cliff was a litter of tumbled rocks and boulders. He tried to perceive distance, but it was difficult.

  It’s all scree, he thought. They’re all tiny pebbles, and I’m one step above the ground. But even though there was little context to assess his height, he knew that was a vain hope. There were a few plants down there, and scatters of pale shapes that might have been a dead sheep’s bones and tattered woollen remains. It was at least far enough to die if he fell, and that was plenty far enough.

  He pressed his face to the rock and stuck out his tongue, feeling the rush of cool rainwater. He swallowed, grateful for the fluid. The rifle felt heavier than ever on his back, tugging him out and down. Perhaps its reason for being was to deal death in any way it could.

  ‘It’s always one step down,’ he said. ‘I’m close to the bottom. One step at a time. One step down.’ But he could not fool himself. He prided himself on his mental strength, but this was nothing to do with strength, or endurance, or the levelling of pain. This was all about falling.