by T. J. Lebbon
The farmer struggled, trying to step back so that he could free up the shotgun. But she followed him, pressed close to keep the business-end of the weapon facing away from her. She trapped the shotgun between her and the door frame and slipped the pistol from her pocket. She showed it to him. He dropped the gun. It was that simple.
‘Please,’ the old man breathed, and Rose kicked the door shut behind her and held up her hand. She pulled her wounded arm from her coat. It hung heavy.
‘Listen to me. I’m not going to hurt you. You hear? We’re the good guys.’
The man suddenly looked old and terrified, all his years of experience and living off the land clouded by something else. ‘Did you hurt Jean?’
‘Jean?’
‘I sent her for the police. We don’t have a phone, and those mobile things don’t work up here.’
‘How long ago?’ Rose asked.
‘Two hours.’
‘No, I haven’t seen her. So where is he?’
‘In here.’ She heard Chris’s voice, muffled by a door. It was across the room, beside the big dining table that took up most of the space. A low door, almost comically small, she guessed it led to a small store cupboard or basement.
Rose felt a flood of relief, unexpected but welcome. She hated putting her trust in anyone else – she’d only done so with Holt since her family had been killed, and his betrayal had planted a cold seed of fury in her heart – but she and Chris had business to finish. Wounded, she would need his help.
‘Open it,’ she said to the farmer.
He glanced at her gun again. She lowered it, but not all the way.
‘I told you, I won’t hurt you,’ she said. ‘But I will ask you for some help. Now hurry. We don’t have much time.’
The farmer took a key from his pocket and approached the door. As he unlocked it and it swung inwards, he mumbled something to himself that she couldn’t make out.
‘What?’ Rose demanded.
‘Wasn’t talking to you, girl,’ he said.
Chris emerged, wincing against subdued daylight leaking through the rain-lashed windows. He took in Rose’s condition quickly, saw the guns, nodded his thanks at the farmer.
‘I’m not what they say,’ he said.
‘Don’t care,’ the old man replied.
‘Chris, come on. And you, we need some food and your vehicle.’
‘Jean took our car.’ The farmer shrugged. ‘Welcome to the tractor if you can get her started. Damned if I can, more than one time in three.’
‘Fuck it!’ Rose said.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You have to use such language?’
She laughed, almost manic.
‘So where are they?’ Chris asked. ‘And how long do we have?’
‘I’ll have to tell you while we’re moving.’
‘You can move?’ he asked, glancing at her arm.
‘I have to.’ She saw the bread and pot of jam on the table. ‘You bag that for us?’ she asked the farmer. He grumbled something under his breath, opened a drawer in the dresser, pulled out a plastic bag.
While he was doing that, Rose nudged the shotgun with her foot and told Chris to pick it up. Her heart was racing, pulse hammering in her head. She needed water, food, a rest, and medical attention. But there was something she needed more, and she’d not stop for anything.
She swayed on the spot, taking the bag when the farmer held it out, then nodded her thanks to him. She supposed she could have apologised, too. But every word was an effort, and all her effort had to be focused.
‘I can’t stop moving,’ she said. Chris followed her to the door, shotgun held in both hands. He shrugged on his soaked coat.
Rose opened the door onto the storm. The rain was so heavy now that it splashed mud up from the ground, stirring the farmyard into new shapes.
As they moved from the shadow of the house and the door clicked shut behind them, the gunfire began.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
trust
Rose dropped so quickly that Chris thought she’d been shot. He rushed to the barn and crouched down, then turned around and scanned the farmyard and countryside beyond. The barn protected him only from certain angles of fire. If the hunters had reached them, spread out, taken ambush positions …
Rose grabbed his foot. She was down low, crawling in the mud. ‘Into the barn!’
‘Where’s it coming from?’
‘In!’
Chris did as he was told, slipping through the gap between leaning door and barn wall. Inside it was musty, puddled with dripping water, scattered with rusting machinery and piles of mouldering bags, split with shards of daylight penetrating the holed roof and cracks in the walls. The perfect place to defend.
‘Trapped in here,’ Rose said. ‘We’ll have to break out or we’re sitting ducks.’
‘But we’re under cover!’
‘Until they close in. Three of them, two of us, remember. And you with just a shotgun, two shots. We can’t cover every angle.’ She moved to the far wall and took a look through a dusty window. She was moving awkwardly. She must have smashed her injured arm when she dropped to take cover.
The window shattered inwards and another shot rang out.
‘They’re not close,’ Rose said, frowning. ‘Whoever it is they’re a good shot.’
‘How long do we have?’
‘Few hours. Maybe less.’ Chris blinked, trying not to let desperation get the better of him. He felt faint. He felt sick.
‘Is there time to—?’
‘Plenty of time, but we have to get away from here now! If that old bastard’s wife really has gone for the law, it might all end here.’
‘End?’ Chris asked, but he didn’t need an answer. He knew what that end would entail. He could not think about it, would not allow it. He had to go on. Filled with energy, determination, hope, he was ready to run forever.
‘Got to draw them closer,’ Rose muttered.
‘Get ready,’ Chris said. He moved to a narrow, open doorway that would emerge close to the track leading away from the farm.
‘What are you—?’
‘Watch for them to break cover!’ He didn’t wait for a response. There was no time to argue. He ran through the gap, shotgun held across his chest, sprinting past the opening in the low boundary wall where the track left the farm. Halfway across he stepped in a mud-filled hole and tripped, slipped, holding the shotgun out with one hand as he tried to keep his balance. Something hissed past his head, flicking his hair, and the shot sounded a moment later. He found his footing again and dived behind the far wall. Two more shots came from much closer by. The shotgun banged against his chest. He scanned the yard, the farm buildings, the other stretches of boundary wall, expecting to see camouflaged shapes sliding over them at any moment. If he did, he’d open up with both barrels.
He hadn’t even checked to see if the shotgun was loaded.
‘Chris!’ Rose called.
‘Yeah.’ He was panting, heart hammering in fright. His knee screamed. If he’d fallen, he’d have been a sitting duck.
Rose appeared low at the doorway he’d just run from. ‘It’s not them.’ Her eyes were wide and wild, he couldn’t tell whether it was fear or excitement. Both, perhaps.
‘What?’
‘There’s a vehicle across the fields. It’s the Trail. Hopefully just one of them.’
‘How?’
‘They’ve been tracking you too, remember? I’ve already killed three of them up there.’ She frowned, looked aside. ‘Four, I guess. One of them told me the tracking chip’s in your running shoes. So they’ll be coming for me, too.’
‘My family?’ he asked.
‘The hunt’s still on.’
‘You know that for sure? You’ve killed seven people, and you know for sure they’re not just pulling out, abandoning the whole thing?’
‘Eight. I bagged one of the hunters. And yeah. I know.’
‘How?’
‘Because while those fat bas
tards are trying to kill you, the Trail are supposed to be hunting me.’
Chris frowned, trying to process things.
Rose shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter! Not now. I know where your family are, and we have to get there.’
‘Yes!’ he said. But he could see that Rose had her own reasons. Of course she did. This had always been about her.
‘I’m getting back into the house,’ Rose said. ‘Give me two minutes. Upstairs, I’ll be able to see a lot further, should get a good shot. Watch for me. When I signal … ’ She gestured with her head.
She wanted him to make himself a target once more.
Chris nodded. Rose disappeared back into the barn, and a moment later she exited the main door. He watched her crawl quickly across the muddy yard, rifle over her shoulder, and could barely imagine the pain she was putting herself through.
From somewhere away from the farm, someone whistled, high and sharp.
They were signalling. Which meant there was more than one.
Chris waited for more gunshots but none came. But there was something. A rapid, pattering sound, like heavy rain hitting muddy ground, yet audible even above the deluge. Chris shifted where he crouched, tilting his head to try to make out exactly what he was hearing. He blinked rain and sweat from his eyes.
The farm dog appeared from around the far corner of the house. It slunk forward a few steps then settled in the mud, growling.
Dogs! Chris thought. The pattering was footsteps, and they were growing rapidly closer. It sounded like more than one.
‘Rose, I can hear—!’
A shape leapt over the stone wall in the farm’s rear garden, slamming into a lush green bean frame, knocking it over, thrashing around and then emerging. Growling. Running.
Rose had seen it. She rolled onto her side and dropped the rifle, rolling back to pick it up and aim it at the running animal.
It was a huge dog. Chris wasn’t sure of its breed, but it looked as mean as murder. Saliva flicked around its head as it ran. It passed the house and skidded on the muddy yard, front legs splaying in opposite angles as it slid towards Rose.
She fired her rifle and tried to roll, crying out when her weight landed on her injured arm.
The dog barked, a surprisingly high yelp from such a big beast. It slid to a standstill and did not get up, but continued squirming, legs kicking as if to move itself away from the pain.
Rose glanced back at him, then stood in a crouch and ran for the farmhouse. She hit the door with her good shoulder and disappeared inside.
Behind him, Chris sensed movement. He turned in a crouch, trying not to raise his head above the stone wall,
The Alsatian stood with front paws on the wall twenty feet past the open gateway, surveying the farmyard with a startling, chilling intelligence.
It saw Chris, growled, lowered itself slightly, then jumped completely onto the wall, dropping down into a clump of nettles and brambles without hesitation.
Chris lifted the shotgun. It was like a dream, a nightmare, the situation so unreal that he felt like someone else performing these movements and thinking these thoughts. He could smell the wet mud, hear the dog’s companion whining and kicking across the yard, feel the white-hot stiffness in his knee and the swelling in his left ankle, but this might as well have been a game on Megs’ Xbox. He saw blood splash his vision and a starry crack across the screen of this nightmare, heard Megs saying, Aww, Dad, you’re crap at this, but this was a game he could not lose.
The dog leapt free from the plants and ran at him.
He had no time to aim. Still seated, he pointed the gun and tried pulling the trigger. Nothing happened.
Barking, the little farm dog skittered across the yard towards the big Alsatian. The Alsatian stopped, turned, growled.
The sheepdog paused a dozen feet from the bigger animal and barked, jumping left and right.
The Alsatian did not hesitate. It ran at the sheepdog, snapping out when the farm dog tried to scamper away. They became a storm of twisting, barking, snapping, and yelping, difficult to discern which was which. Flashes of white from the sheepdog, brown and black from the Alsatian, and then a shocking splash of red, accompanied by a high, pained yelp.
Still keeping below the top of the wall, Chris turned and readied himself to dash to the barn. He glanced at the farmhouse but saw no sign of Rose at the windows. He wasn’t going to wait for her, not when he risked getting his throat ripped out when the Alsatian had finished with the other wretched creature.
The animal Rose had shot had stopped kicking and now lay motionless, its chest rising and falling rapidly as it panted itself towards death.
A shot sounded. He heard no bullet, no impact or ricochet. Another two shots close together, and these sounded like they were from a different weapon.
Screw this, Chris thought, glancing at the farmhouse windows once more. He took in a breath, prepared to ignore the molten pain in his left knee and ankle—
Someone slipped over the stone boundary wall close to the farmhouse. A man, short and lean and carrying a rifle, dressed in jeans and a white tee shirt, soaked to the skin and looking completely out of place. His eyes were wide as if in shock. He saw the dead dog and paused. Then he looked directly at Chris.
Chris raised the shotgun, aimed, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened again. ‘Rose!’ he shouted. He tried to find a safety switch, something else. Tried pulling the trigger again. ‘Rose!’
There was a second of complete, unreal silence.
The shooting had stopped, the dogfight behind him was over, the breeze was stilled to a held breath.
The man brought the rifle to his shoulder and sighted at Chris.
Chris ran for the barn as a fusillade of shots rang out, explosions that echoed around the yard and slammed into his ears.
He smashed into the barn door and fell inside, splintered wood falling around him, one shard smacking him on the head and drawing blood. It gushed into his eyes. He waited for the pain to kick in from a bullet’s impact, the darkness to come. But he felt and saw neither.
Outside, someone screamed, ‘Motherfucker!’ It was a horrible sound, high and wretched. Two more gunshots echoed into silence.
What the hell was that? Chris thought, and the dog entered the barn. It was big, surprisingly silent, standing amongst the remains of the door he’d crashed through. When it bared its teeth both they and its muzzle were bloody.
Chris wiped blood from his eyes and felt around the shotgun for a safety catch, sure that he’d missed something simple, and then the Alsatian jumped at him. Holding it in a shooting grasp he brought the gun up, its barrel meeting the underside of the animal’s jaw with a solid thunk. He took a step back and stumbled, the Alsatian landing on its back legs and coming for him again. As he fell, Chris swung out with the shotgun’s stock, catching the dog across the shoulder.
Its teeth snapped shut so close to his face that he could smell its breath, meaty and foul. Its claws scrabbled to drive it closer to his throat, ripping down his stomach, crotch and thighs, and he cried out as he felt and heard his running trousers being shredded.
Chris rolled and threw the dog from him. It landed in a jumble of loose gardening tools and several of them fell across its back.
It was a natural reaction when the dog crouched down away from the falling implements, and equally natural when Chris knelt and brought the shotgun up over his shoulder, both hands around the barrel, stock smashing down on the back of the Alsatian’s head.
The impact was so hard that the stock snapped from the gun and clattered across the barn’s wet floor. The dog whimpered, eyes rolling in its head, tongue lolling. Chris felt a flash of pity.
He paused and listened, trying not to breathe too hard. He was shaking from the confrontation. Blood blurred his vision and ran down his stomach and legs. The dog scratched weakly at the concrete floor.
He had no idea what was happening outside. Maybe he should go out through the broken door, climb the wall,
creep along to where he’d hidden his own rifle a couple of hours before. What if Rose had emerged and been shot? What if he was left alone, without knowing where his family were being kept or exactly how long he had left?
Then he heard Rose’s voice, and he knew that she was still with him. As the enraged shouting began, he went to see who else had arrived.
‘You complete bastard.’ Rose was too angry to shout. She aimed the rifle at him and he let her. Her finger stroked the trigger, keeping an even pressure close to firing, just a gentle squeeze to change her life. This death might not be so clear and easy to handle. Everything was becoming more complicated, and she didn’t like or need that. Revenge was simple, but this was something different.
‘Don’t shoot me,’ Holt said. Of course, he knew that she would not.
‘What am I supposed to do with that?’ The farmer stood framed in his doorway, a big man who’d led a harsh life, but now looking scared. He stared at the Trail man slumped against the wall. Blood glimmered darkly on the man’s white shirt, and his head bobbed with each desperate breath.
‘Go inside,’ Holt said. The old man did as he was told, and the gentle click of the door closing seemed to silence them all.
Holt raised an eyebrow at Rose, then shrugged.
‘What, so you’re sorry?’ Rose asked. He wouldn’t care about her anger, or what he’d done, or how he’d lied to her. And neither should she. What she should care about was why he hadn’t finished what he’d begun.
Maybe he was here to do just that.
‘I can say that if you want to hear it,’ he said.
‘Rose?’ Chris asked, but she ignored him. She wished he’d go inside with the farmer and stay there, let her get on with what she had to do. He’d only inconvenience her. But then the pain in her arm pulsed, seeming to clutch her bones and crush, melt, twist them, and she realised that she could no longer do this on her own.
But she’d rather be dead than do it with Holt now.
‘You’re one of them,’ Rose said.
Holt actually laughed. ‘What, one of the people I’ve been killing? I’ve saved your life once already, and I just saved his, too.’ He nodded at Chris.
