‘Guys,’ he pleads. ‘I know I’ve been a bit . . . of a pain? But I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep running.’
His eyes dart from Oscar to Nathan to Tajik to me. I’m not sure if he’s trying to work out who’s in charge—or who to blame for his predicament. I can see he’s at the end of his rope, desperate for any way out that’s away from us.
‘Tie me up? Seriously, I don’t mind. I am cool with it.’
As much as Alex has been a pain, I’m not so scarred over that I don’t feel bad for him. It’s not his fault he can’t cope any more than it was cowardice that caused millions of men to refuse to go to war. Marv got his chance to go his own way. Maybe we should give Alex the same right. Forcing him on like this seems cruel and pointless and counterproductive. And it makes us what Jack says we are—hostage-takers. If we hide him here he’ll probably be found before he dies. We might have enough time to get away, get lost.
‘I think he’s right,’ I say. Oscar looks at me sharply. I think I see disappointment in his eyes.
‘Yes, thank you.’ says Alex. ‘I won’t—’
‘Not gonna happen,’ Oscar says sharply. ‘We can’t risk it.’
Alex’s eyes plead.
‘End of the line, end of subject,’ Oscar says, hand on the .38 in his waistband. ‘No one will hear the shot over the rain, son. Are we clear? You’re coming with us, okay?’
Alex doesn’t nod. Everything has drained from his expression, like he’s vacated himself. There’s no time to argue this now. Once we’re on the other side of the river, I’ll talk to Oscar and convince him we’re better off parting ways with Alex.
‘Are we clear?’ Oscar demands.
Alex stares at him. Doesn’t answer.
‘I’ll take that as a yes, son,’ Oscar says. ‘Tajik, what do we need?’
Tajik looks uncomfortably from him to Alex and then the rest of us.
‘Five saddles,’ he says, pointing to the wall of leather. ‘I’ll get the pads and bridles.’
‘Helmets?’ Nathan asks. ‘Safety first, right?’
Oscar shakes his head and points at the rack. Every piece of head protection is blinding white. ‘Too easy to see.’
While the others get the saddles, I spot what I need to give Evan the best chance on the river: a stack of Styrofoam containers. Unconscious or not, my little brother can’t swim. I spill half-shrivelled apples from the boxes and start snapping them into white rectangles.
Across from me in the stalls, Tajik slips a halter onto a big brown horse and hands it to Nathan. ‘Hold her steady,’ he says. ‘Watch carefully, guys.’
Tajik slides a pad down the horse’s back, takes the saddle from over a crossbeam and slings it softly on top of the pad.
‘Make sure you keep touching the horse when you go around,’ he says, running his hand over the horse’s haunches as he steps behind the animal. ‘So she knows where you are and does not kick your head.’
‘You let the cinch down,’ Tajik says as he bends to tighten the straps. ‘And then come back around and do the bit and bridle.’
Tajik bends to grab the cinch, tightens it slowly.
He takes the halter off, strokes the horse’s nose, puts the reins around her neck and then inches the bit into her mouth. When she’s accepted it, Tajik fastens the bridle’s throat strap and takes the reins and ties them to a fencepost.
‘Good girl,’ he says. ‘She’s ready. Nathan, you help me with the next one. Oscar and Alex, can you do one together?’
My Styrofoam boards squeak and shed baubles as I carry them to where Evan sits on the hay bales. I stuff the Styrofoam sheets in front of and behind him in the backpack, break off pieces to fill up gaps, use bungee ropes to tighten him into a buoyant bundle. There’s no way he’ll sink but Tajik will have to keep him upright. I’m trusting him with Evan’s life. I guess we’re all in each other’s hands now.
I glance at the teamwork below.
Tajik and Nathan have almost got another horse ready to ride.
In the next stall, Oscar bends to bring the cinch up but Alex lets go of the halter and ducks to grab something from the dirt before scrabbling to the fence.
‘Shit!’ Oscar yells and their spooked horse sidesteps away.
He steps towards the assault rifle hung by its strap on a fencepost.
‘Don’t!’ Alex screams.
He has the .38.
The revolver must’ve fallen from Oscar’s waistband when he bent over. Now Alex is aiming it at him.
Nathan and Tajik watch with mortified expressions.
My fingers stretch for my rifle, propped against a hay bale.
‘Don’t anybody move!’ Alex says, wild eyes freezing me short of my weapon.
‘You’re scaring the horses,’ Oscar says calmly. ‘Put the gun down.’
Alex shakes his head. Even with his two-handed grip the .38 is jittering. He’s more nervous than I was doing target practice. Oscar takes a step forward, hands raised at shoulder level.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ Alex says, half threatening, half pleading. ‘All I want to do is go. That’s fair, right? You can’t kidnap me. I’ll take my chances. You take yours.’
Oscar takes another stride. ‘It can’t happen that way, son.’
‘I’m not your bloody son!’
Alex stiffens and his gun jolts loudly.
TWENTY-FIVE
Oscar drops to the dirt. The horse snorts and spins and bucks. Alex turns to run. Kicking back legs spear him into a fence. Nathan and Tajik flee their stall as their reined animal circles and shudders in sympathetic panic.
‘Up, Nathan,’ Tajik orders. ‘Try to stay calm.’
On the hay bales, rifle aimed below, I’m far from chilled. Oscar’s body buckles under the crazed horse’s trampling hooves. Alex lies in a heap by the fence. Nathan sits next to me.
‘We’ve got to help!’ I make to go down the bales.
‘Stay there,’ commands Tajik from where he stands like a statue in the middle of the stable. ‘Be calm. We must be calm for them to be. Then we can help.’
The horse is clear of Oscar now.
We all stay very still. Every second that passes settles the horses. Every second takes Oscar closer to death. Every second brings Minions closer to us.
Tajik scoops up scattered apples, carries them to the stall and passes a few through the rails into a post-mounted trough.
‘It’s okay,’ he says softly. ‘It’s okay.’
The horse does nervous figure eights in the stall. Tajik ignores it, takes apples to the troughs of the other horses and talks to them in the same quiet voice.
Oscar’s not moving. Neither is Alex.
‘Do you think they’re dead?’ I whisper.
Nathan shakes his head that he doesn’t know. ‘What was that idiot doing?’
I glance at him. Shake my head. I don’t know what Alex was doing. What any of us are doing. I turn back to watch Tajik but lean into Nathan so we’re grimy cheek to grimy cheek. We breathe together. It’s better than trying to talk.
‘Okay,’ calls Tajik. He’s tied the horse so it’s clear of Oscar and Alex. ‘Slowly now.’
Nathan and I ease down the hay bales, get the backpack with medical supplies and climb through the fence at the far side of the stall.
Nathan feels for Oscar’s pulse. It’s a formality. The bullet bored through his neck. His eyes stare emptily and his blood’s puddled around him like black mud. I hope the gunshot killed him instantly and he didn’t feel the hooves that crushed his body. I’m sad—and angry.
Oscar should have listened to me. Alex could’ve been tied up and we’d be on our way and he’d be alive. Except in that scenario Alex might’ve been found and pointed the Minions after us.
There’s no way to know what we should’ve done. Only that this is done now.
No way to know how to feel.
‘Sorry,’ I say to Oscar, wiping my hand on my cardigan and closing his eyes for him. ‘Sorry.’
I glance at Nathan. He waves me over to Alex. Oscar’s killer is on his side in the dirt. One arm is bent at a sickening angle. His head is horribly swollen. Air rasps through bloody jaws smashed out of alignment. He’s broken but alive.
Nathan holds up the medical kit.
‘No,’ I say. He nods. Even if we had time there’s nothing we can really do for him. Alex wanted to stay here. Now he gets his wish. If he lives to be found, he won’t be telling Jack anything—at least for a while. Leaving him like this isn’t payback for Oscar. That’s what I tell myself.
Nathan takes Oscar’s assault rifle from the fencepost, I grab the .38 from the dirt beside Alex. It’s a similar model to the one Jack gave me to take to Mum’s. I tuck it into my jeans.
‘How are they?’ Tajik calls from where he’s been readying the horses.
‘Dead,’ I say. ‘Both dead.’ It’s not really a lie. Alex will either die here or be finished off by Jack. Tajik drops his head. I’m not sure if he’s praying or just trying to summon the strength to go on.
I wonder whether we should cover Oscar and Alex with hay. Decide body-sized mounds in a stall will look obvious. We just need to get out of here.
Nathan and I climb the hay bales and haul Evan down. Tajik leads three saddled horses from the stalls and looks in sadly at Oscar and Alex before mounting his golden animal in a smooth move. We hand Evan up and he settles my little brother in the saddle in front of him. He takes the rifle we offer and slings it over his shoulder.
As I consolidate our remaining supplies into one backpack, Nathan comes out of the office with a roll of garbage bags.
‘For the guns,’ he says to me and Tajik. ‘Keep them pointed down in the rain. We’ll wrap them when we cross the river.’
I turn and he tucks the roll into the backpack.
Tajik hands me a set of horse reins to hold while Nathan mounts.
‘Foot in here,’ I say to him, pointing at the stirrup. ‘Then swing yourself up and over.’
He bounces up, comes back down, pops up again and gets his leg over. I hand him his reins and he shifts around in the saddle trying to get comfortable. His sleek caramel horse has a P on its butt.
I grab my reins from Tajik and run my hands along my silver mare. Hindquarters are branded M. I climb into my saddle. Tajik ambles between stalls and opens gates so that the other horses can run free after we leave. His animal bears a little B-L marking on its bum.
‘Okay,’ he says, steering his horse past us. ‘Nathan, just relax, I will tell you what to do. Danby, you go at the back.’
A glance at the stall nameplates confirms my memory. Tajik is on B-Lo, Nathan has his thighs tight around Prince and I’m astride Madonna. My smile fades when I look back at Oscar’s body. A friend is dead in the dirt, body still warm, the breath barely expelled from his lungs. And I’m amused by stupid horse names?
What’s worse is that I don’t feel worse. I wonder if we get somewhere physically safe whether I’ll be mentally torn to shreds by everything I’ve repressed. Or maybe I won’t be able to ever relax because I’ll be like one of those soldiers who only feels alive and sane when constantly facing violent death in crazy circumstances.
‘We must go,’ Tajik says.
We nod and he leads us through the barn door.
Visibility is just a few lengths, the weeping willow reduced to lace tracery in the misty drizzle. Minions could be all around. Steadying their weapons at the blurry shapes leaving the barn. We might be better off not knowing.
Prince and Madonna fall in naturally behind B-Lo and match her trot.
‘Sit up a bit taller,’ I say behind Nathan as he bounces. ‘Try to count one-two. Rise up with him on one, go back in the saddle on two.’
He nods, straightens, counts off and rides a bit easier.
Stephanie took me for riding lessons all those years ago. I took them for granted like a little brat. Rejected her attempt to bond with me. Now what she did for me might save my life. I wish I could tell her I’m sorry. That I’m finally grateful.
We cut across the paddock, parallel to the racecourse. Tree stumps, wrapped hay bales and rusted car bodies take shape in the brooding gloom. Tajik slows, follows a fence, dismounts to unlatch a gate. Our horses meander down a path that twists between brambles.
‘Lean back when you go down a hill,’ Tajik says.
Ahead of me Nathan obeys as his horse follows the track that eases into the creek.
Tajik and B-Lo splash into the shallows. Prince follows.
‘Nathan, are you cool?’ I say.
He turns, tugs the brim of an imaginary cowboy hat. ‘Call me “Duke”.’
That he can make me laugh now is a miracle.
I urge Madonna into the creek.
The rain drapes over us like a cloak. Thick reeds and scrubby bluffs rise higher as the horses trudge through knee-deep water. Trees crowd the banks to enclose us. Even in clear conditions, anyone gazing across the paddocks would find it tough to spot us. As it is, I think we’re invisible.
Tajik halts and we bring our horses up behind his. Water swirls around Madonna’s forearms and flows through my jeans and boots. Whatever part of me’s not in the river is saturated with rain. In front of me water sluices off and around Nathan. Beyond him, Tajik points through the murk at a drainage tunnel under the road.
‘We need to go slowly by foot in there,’ he says, taking the assault rifle from his back and pointing at the red cellophane on the taped flashlight. ‘And we need to use these without the filters.’
I shake my head. We don’t know how far the torchbeams might carry in this gloom.
‘Horses cannot see red,’ Tajik says. ‘They have excellent night vision but they do not like total darkness and—’
Mechanical rumbling drowns out his voice. Headlights strobe through branches. There’s not even time to flatten ourselves against the horses before a motorbike wails along the road above us. It’s followed by two more. Just an unlucky sideward glance and they’ll see us sodden souls on horseback staring up from the creek. A Humvee lumbers by and then another two buzzing bikes. It’s a few moments before my mind accepts that I don’t hear the squealing of rubber on wet road, that they’re not stopping, that we haven’t been seen. The roar falls away as their tail-lights fade into haze. Once again it’s just us in the rainy twilight.
We don’t remark on our luck. To do so might invoke its opposite. Good fortune ran out for Louis and Oscar and Alex. I wish I knew where Marv is, whether he is, but all my mind finds are Tregan and Gary now at the air force base and making themselves at home in a commander’s comfortable quarters not far from where we’re being hunted. They’re being fools. Letting themselves be fooled. Just like I was.
I try to tamp down my fury. It won’t help me see straight.
Tajik urges B-Lo forward, dismounts onto a concrete apron and takes Evan down from the saddle. I join him, swing off Madonna, help Nathan off Prince. Tajik hands me Evan and I cradle my little brother in my arms, a strange little Styrofoam-backpack bundle.
‘I will lead the horses through one at a time,’ Tajik says. ‘Everyone must be very relaxed. If the horses get frightened then they might hurt themselves. And maybe also us.’
Nathan and I nod.
The horses look like they’ll fit into the tunnel with a few feet of clearance. But if they buck, or rear or try to bolt they’ll smash themselves on the unforgiving ceiling and walls.
Tajik produces a little apple for each horse. They crunch while he chats to them in a calming murmur and ties Prince’s and Madonna’s reins to a tree branch. I size up the concrete cave. It’s pitch black in there. The exit’s watery, a grey rectangle that’s the equivalent of six road lanes away. We should be okay. So long as there aren’t any sinkholes—and the horses don’t panic.
Tajik switches on his flashlight. Above the tunnel entrance someone’s spray-painted ‘No Party, No Disco’ and the walls inside glow with kaleidoscopic colours. It’s a claustrophobic art gallery, a haunt
for the local graffiti community. I’m glad our horses can’t see colour. This place might really freak them out.
‘You go first,’ Tajik says. ‘Then you will not be trampled if they get scared by vehicles overhead.’
He sounds like he’s trying not to be nervous about this.
‘What about you?’ I ask.
Tajik looks at me. ‘There’s another saying: “Who wants to live forever?”’
‘Afghani?’
‘Justin Bieber,’ he says, grinning.
Our laughter echoes down the tunnel’s dark throat like a gurgling drain.
Nathan sloshes into the tunnel entrance and tugs the cellophane off his gunbarrel flashlight. I follow him in, my feet inching out in the rushing water for any submerged obstacles, determined not to trip and spill my little brother. The air in here is dank and old. Above, the concrete glistens mossy green, sprouts fungal growths in cracks and corners. Zombie Mickey Mouse, Heath Ledger Joker and Angry Robot Jesus watch from the wet walls as we slosh past. Behind us: the starburst of Tajik’s torch and the hulking shadow of a horse so far soothed by his stream of patter.
As the tunnel exit nears, the musty odours of moss and mould are overtaken by a soggy stench. Nathan turns to me and uses his free hand to slather menthol liniment under my nose. I nod my thanks, brace for what’s outside. Nathan turns off his flashlight and steps out onto a concrete island that juts into the stream.
‘Oh God,’ he says, hand over mouth.
I join him, set Evan down, try not to puke.
There’s enough light coming down with the rain to see that while the creek’s deepest channel flows freely, the shallows bob with puffy corpses snagged on logs and rocks.
Tajik makes gagging noises as he leads B-Lo into the light. At least the horse isn’t put off by the miasma and obediently steps down into the creek. Nathan holds the reins as Tajik returns into the darkness.
A minute later, he has Prince through and goes back for Madonna.
Echoes whisper through the tunnel. I glance back and see Tajik’s silhouette as his flashlight bobs. Then the glow gets larger. But he splashes from the tunnel alone, shaking his head.
The Last Shot Page 25
