by Ella West
‘Just that—’
Below us, somewhere, down the mountain there’s yelling. Then a noise, an explosion. Screaming.
‘Another tripwire?’ Jack asks.
‘We would have seen it.’
‘Is there more than one way to get up here?’
‘There are tracks all through this bush.’
He’s looking back down the track, his phone suddenly in his hand. ‘No reception again.’
‘Do you think your dad will have got your message by now?’ My voice is shaking. I’m trying not to think about what must be happening down the track.
‘No idea. But I don’t think that would have been him. Even if he had got my message he wouldn’t have had time to get here.’
‘So who do you think it was? Who do you think is down there?’
‘I don’t know.’
The voices start up again, still loud, still shouting. I can’t make out what they’re saying. Just snatches, swearing. They’re too far away.
‘There’s more than one of them,’ Jack says. ‘And they don’t sound too happy. We’d better get going just in case. Run!’
Run? Run where? I don’t have time to ask – Jack is already ahead of me on the track, following it as it curves in and out of the trees. He keeps glancing back, making sure I’m keeping up, and looking past me to see if anyone is following. I just hope he’s looking out for tripwires too. I can’t hear the shouting anymore. It’s gone quiet. It’s just the two of us, breathing hard. I’m looking back again when I almost crash into Jack. He must have suddenly stopped.
There, just off the track, is a man crouching in the ferns with a shotgun pointed right at us. Jack is slowly raising his arms, staring at him.
‘Pete, what are you doing?’ I call out, still puffing from the run. ‘It’s me, Annie, from across the road.’ I bend over, my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath, pull my raincoat hood off my head so he can see my face.
‘Annie? What are you doing up here?’
‘We’re trying to find you.’
‘I don’t need finding. Who’s this with you?’
‘It’s Jack,’ I tell him.
Jack still has his arms raised, the gun still pointed at him.
‘Jack Pearson from the fishing boats?’
‘No. It’s another Jack, you won’t know him. He’s from away. He’s here to help too. Can you put the gun down?’
‘Have you finally got a boyfriend, Annie?’
‘Yes, he’s my boyfriend.’ I sigh, glancing across at Jack, who is almost grinning at what I’ve just said but also looking terrified. ‘Put your arms down, it’s okay,’ I tell him.
‘He has a gun pointed at me.’
‘Pete, give it a rest, will you?’
Pete lowers the gun and stands up, pushes his long blond hair back from his face. He picks up another gun from by his feet and wades through the ferns to the track. He doesn’t look like a guy who’s been living rough for more than a week. He doesn’t even have any stubble on his face. I wonder just how many of Di’s scones he has eaten.
‘You shouldn’t be up here,’ he says, looking Jack up and down, trying to figure him out. There must be only a couple of years’ difference in ages between the two of them, but even a year makes a difference, especially, I suppose, when you’re hiding from the police.
‘There are people behind us,’ Jack says. ‘I don’t know how many.’
‘I know. You think I’m deaf or something? I heard the blast.’
‘We have to get out of here.’
‘It would be a good idea,’ Pete says. ‘You wouldn’t know how to shoot a gun, would you?’
‘One minute you’re pointing it at me and now you’re giving it to me?’
‘Situations change, and if Annie likes you then you must be okay. So you know how to use one or not?’
‘No.’
‘Keep the pointy end away from anyone unless you want to kill them. The safety is here, see? It’s on. There’s a bullet up the spout, so be careful with it.’ Pete hands Jack the gun. I can see now it’s high calibre, something big. It’s Harry’s three-oh-three. Jack doesn’t look at all comfortable holding it. ‘If you’re going to shoot someone, make sure you go for the chest. Easiest bit to hit. That’ll take them down. If you be all silly about it and shoot them in the leg because you don’t want to kill them, they’ll just shoot you back. Okay? Go for the chest?’
Pete leads the way at a slow jog, sticking to the track. His leather boots are flopping on his feet, the laces missing.
Jack notices them too. ‘No need to ask him who it was who set the tripwire,’ he says.
I nod, thinking about what Harry had said about Pete. How he wouldn’t hurt anyone. That it wasn’t in him. You got that one wrong, Harry.
‘Just keep that gun pointed away from me,’ I tell him. ‘You shouldn’t trust the safety. There shouldn’t be a bullet in the chamber, not when you’re carrying it like this.’
‘If you know so much about it then why didn’t he give the gun to you?’
‘Hurry up,’ Pete calls back at us and we pick up the pace. A few minutes later, we’re leaving the track, heading towards the shores of the lake. Jack is trying his phone again, the gun cradled against his chest.
‘Nothing,’ he tells me.
Somewhere, up above us in the cloud, is the cell phone tower on the top of Rochfort, but the angles must be all wrong again. We’re glimpsing more of the lake through the trees now. The water is still, the grey surface only roughed up by the rain. I’ve never liked the look of it much. It’s probably full of eels. The closer we get the more open the bush becomes, but even so, I don’t see it until we’re almost there. A corrugated iron shed. Pete is pulling the door open.
‘Get in here,’ he says and yanks the door shut behind us, then scoots down, his face up to the wall. There’s a slit there in the iron, where two sheets don’t quite meet. A place to watch from, maybe to shoot from. ‘Now sit down and keep quiet and let’s see if I’m right about who’s following us.’
We do what we’re told, sitting on the dirt floor in the gloom. There are no windows, and with the door shut there’s not a lot of light. At least it’s dry, but there are enough possum and rat droppings everywhere for us to know we’re not the only ones to use it. A tramping pack is against one wall. It’s full and ready to go, straps done up. While I’ve been looking around Jack has found another hole in the iron, about half a metre off the ground, and he’s lying stretched out, the gun ready, peering out of it.
‘Just don’t shoot unless we have to,’ Pete is telling him over the noise of the rain on the roof. ‘If they walk right past us, all the better. Then we’ll have the jump on them.’
I crawl up next to Jack, to see if I can look out of the hole as well. He’s loosening then tightening his hands on the gun, but they’re still shaking. He doesn’t want to go along with Pete’s plan and nor do I but I don’t think either of us have got any choice. I lean over and push the safety off, and Jack glances back at me.
‘I’ve used this gun,’ I explain. ‘It pulls slightly to the left.’
‘You’ve used this gun?’
‘It belongs to Harry.’
‘The farmer with the dogs? Pete’s stolen it?’
‘I think Harry probably gave it to him.’
‘I’m not going to even ask why. So how come you’ve used it?’
‘I shot a deer with it once, not far from here.’
Jack shakes his head at me in disbelief again. ‘You take it.’ He hands me the gun and rolls away.
Pete doesn’t say anything, so I shuffle to where Jack was lying, look out the hole. Nothing to see but ferns, the track further on. Trees. Rain. Not that I want to see anything else. I’m scared, just like Jack. Except it was my idea to come up here. I got him into this.
‘Who are these people?’ Jack calls softly over to Pete.
‘Just people,’ Pete says. ‘So, Annie, who told you I was up here?’
‘No one. I overheard Harry talking to you on the phone last night.’
‘When they were around at your place for tea?’
‘Later I saw lights up here. It wasn’t hard to figure it out.’
‘You shouldn’t have come. You both shouldn’t have come. I don’t need saving.’
‘I wasn’t really given the option,’ Jack mutters.
I look back through the gap in the iron, wondering what to say. Maybe nothing. Jack’s right. I should have told him everything, before we started up the mountain. It was just all this girlfriend stuff. If I had known about Stella, if I had known he was serious when he kissed me, that he wasn’t just fooling around like I thought he was, then maybe I would have been more honest with him. I mumble something about being sorry.
Everyone is silent again, waiting, watching, listening. Just the sound of the rain on the roof. Which is good. That’s all I want to hear. I don’t want to hear footsteps, large or small. A pile of rat droppings is right by my hand and the last thing I want to see right now is a rat, or anything.
But Jack is still thinking. When I glance at him I can see it. He’s frowning, working things through in his head. It makes him look like his dad, a much younger version. Maybe that’s what he’s doing – figuring out the stuff that his dad would be figuring out right now, if he was here, like how we’re all going to get out of this alive. I hope that’s what he’s thinking about.
‘So, Pete,’ Jack is asking.
‘What?’
‘How come these other people know you’re up here?’
‘Because I invited them up,’ Pete says.
I glance over at Pete, wondering. He’s sitting by the wall, calmly staring through the slit, the shotgun on the ground, his hand on it ready.
‘You did what?’ I whisper.
‘They killed my mate. It’s time for payback.’
‘The body in the Orowaiti River, the one that ended up on the beach?’ I say slowly.
‘His name was Ben.’
I glance at Jack. He nods back. The name would have been in the papers, online, but I haven’t been following it. Not in the past few days. Not with the possibility of Dad losing his job. But Jack would have known it. He closes his eyes for a second and I know now exactly what he’s thinking. How did he get to be holed up in a tin shed in the middle of nowhere, where there is no cell phone coverage, with a crazy guy who wants to kill people who no doubt want to kill him first? Less than two hours ago he was picking up his girlfriend from her house hoping to take her out for a coffee in a warm café. Where did he go wrong?
‘Ben used to work up the hill at Stockton,’ Pete is saying. ‘He used to set the explosives, to take the overburden off. Then in the last round of layoffs, he got the chop. Anyway, about a month ago these guys came up to Ben and me in the pub. They were truck drivers who’d worked with Ben at the mine, they knew what he could do. They’d all been laid off, just like him. But they were a lot older than us. Had families. They needed money, so they had this plan to rob banks over in Christchurch.’
‘So what happened?’ Jack asks.
‘We thought it was all rot. Pub talk. But we went along with it for a laugh. See what would happen. We had nothing else to do anyway. Ben showed them how to wire stuff up, use blasting caps, timers, everything. We were just having fun. Like when we were kids and we used to pull firecrackers apart.’
‘Where did they get them from? The explosives?’
‘We didn’t know. They just had a few, nothing much, nothing that would really cause any damage. Maybe take your hand off if you weren’t careful. That’s why we weren’t really worried or anything. Then one night they showed us all this stuff they had stolen from the shed out on the pakihi.’
‘Powergel. And you realised then they weren’t joking.’
‘Ben got scared and tried to tell them that we weren’t interested, so they hit him and he fell and he just didn’t get up again. They made me help them dump him in the Orowaiti River and then everything went to shit.’
‘So why not just go to the police?’
‘I wanted to, but they would have started accusing me of doing drugs or something. I mean, I smoke a bit of weed but so does everyone around here. Then I got drunk and went around to the cop shop anyway but there was no one there, or so I thought. It was all dark. Shut up. No one answered. So I went nuts and shot a few things I probably shouldn’t have.’
‘Like the police station,’ Jack says.
‘I know. Dumb, real dumb. I was just drunk and angry and I wanted to talk to someone. I didn’t even know anyone had heard or seen me until I realised the police had surrounded my house the next morning. So then I had to come up with a plan.’
‘What was the plan?’ Jack asks.
‘I blew up Mum’s house, so everyone would think I was dead. Hey, Annie, thanks for those sandwiches, by the way.’
‘No problem,’ I say, avoiding Jack’s glance.
‘They were really good sandwiches. Anyway, I made it out onto the beach the next day and headed for Harry’s farm. He’s always helped me in the past, and I’ve been holing up there. Found out the police figured I wasn’t in the house when I blew it up, so that plan failed. When I heard they were going to start searching places I couldn’t let Harry and Di get in trouble, so I hoofed it up here. Really, I just want it to be all over. I just want to do normal stuff again. Go to the pub. You know. It’s not like I’ve done anything wrong. Not when you think about it.’
I hope Jack is not going to make a comment on this last bit. He’s still staring at me. Maybe he’s working out why I really was on the beach that day with Blue when we first met, and whether he wants to have a criminal as a girlfriend. Whether he’ll come and visit me in prison. I’m still not sure what he thinks about me shooting a deer. Ever since I took the gun from him he’s been looking at me weirdly.
‘So do these men know about this place, this hut?’ Jack asks Pete, switching his attention from me.
‘No. Shouldn’t, I don’t think.’
‘But you said you invited them up here. How?’
‘I phoned one of them, used Harry’s phone. Told them I was coming up here.’
‘Because?’ The way Jack asks it I can tell he’s not at all happy.
‘As I said, I want it over with.’
‘So your intention is just to kill them all?’
‘Don’t know. If I have to. I’ve already taken at least one of them out with that tripwire on the track. That was my doorbell. So I knew they were coming.’
‘It could have been anyone walking up the mountain. It was almost us.’ Jack is still whispering, still keeping his voice down. He can just be heard above the sound of the rain, but he’s getting angry. Scared and angry.
‘You guys weren’t meant to be up here. No one comes up here. I didn’t invite you.’
‘So what was your plan? The tripwire tells you they’re coming, then you scurry in here to see what happens next?’
‘I was going shoot them in the bush. They wouldn’t have known what hit them.’
‘So what are we doing in this shed, then?’
‘You guys stuffed it up, didn’t you? Now we’ll just have to take them out from here. More cover for three people than a fern or something. I should see them first, so I’ll get the first shots in and anyone I miss, you get, Annie. You okay with that?’
‘Suppose so,’ I say, trying to keep my voice level. I’m feeling sick inside, wishing like anything I hadn’t come up here looking for Pete. That I hadn’t brought Jack with me. What if I have to shoot someone, like Pete wants me to? Like really shoot someone, before they shoot us? It was hard enough shooting that deer. It was just because Dad was there that I managed to do it, because Harry was talking quietly in my ear, looking down the barrel of the gun with me, telling me exactly what to do, what to expect. When I finally saw the dead animal up close I didn’t know what to think. Here was this beautiful creature, lying in the bush, and I had killed it. There was the hole in its
side, blood, the eyes still open, still clear. Minutes ago it was crashing through the trees and now it was stopped forever. Because of me.
‘Hey, Annie,’ Pete’s saying, ‘you look pretty good lying there with that gun, you know. You look like you could take out a whole army.’
Now I’m really avoiding Jack’s stare and I’m hoping like crazy he doesn’t take Pete’s compliment the wrong way, that Pete’s eyeing up his girlfriend. And I don’t want to take out an army, I don’t want to take out anyone, and lying here on the dirt in my raincoat, my hair still dripping wet, my heart beating so fast in my chest that it hurts, I doubt I look pretty good to anyone.
But I don’t get the chance to say anything back to Pete because noise erupts on the far side of the shed. Something hard is raked across the corrugated iron outside, deafening us, and the door bursts open.
I struggle up, swing the gun around, but I’m not fast enough. It’s kicked out of my hands. Jack is somehow on his feet yelling and so is Pete and he’s swinging the shotgun everywhere and the shed is suddenly crowded. I’m reaching for the gun on the ground but the same guy kicks me this time, in the side, and I slam against the wall, screaming in pain, in fear.
‘Don’t hurt her,’ Jack is yelling and he tries to punch the guy but the guy just hits him with his gun and Jack goes down and then I’m screaming again and the men are yelling and Pete is swearing and threatening to shoot them all.
‘Just shut up, will you, all of you,’ a man shouts above us and then there’s just the sound of the rain, hitting the iron roof. It’s started to bucket down outside. Four men are standing in the shed, guns pointed at us, one of them is Harry’s three-oh-three. Jack is crouched on the ground, shaking, a gun in his face. Pete is pinned next to the door, the shotgun still in his hands.
‘Just put it down, Pete, don’t be stupid,’ the man says.
Pete stares up at him and for a second I think he’s not going to do what the man wants. His finger is on the shotgun’s trigger. If there were more distance, maybe he could take out two of them with the shot, but this close there’s no way.
Maybe he has got a death wish, maybe he doesn’t care if he goes down in a hail of bullets, but I care. I don’t want to see him die, not like this. And if they shoot Pete, what will they do to us?
