The Hunt (25 page)

Chris readied himself to move, then heard a soft, low voice.

‘Here we go. This is it. This is it!’

He closed his eyes, breathed softly, and started to turn around.

‘Wait
…
wait, keep still
…
’ the voice whispered, panicked, excited. ‘Gun down. Now!’

Chris continued turning around, gun held pointed down, and made eye contact as quickly as he could. ‘My name’s Chris Sheen,’ he said. ‘My daughters are called Megs and Gemma. I’m their dad. My wife is Terri, and she’s beautiful. I have a family like yours.’

The hunter’s eyes were wide, glinting with shreds of madness. His camouflage gear was heavy with rainwater and mud. He was breathing hard. He gave no sign of hearing, or processing what he heard, and Chris knew then that appealing to the man’s humanity would be useless. This had gone way beyond that.

‘Here we go
…
’ the man said, and his whole body tensed as his rifle ceased wavering.

‘Safety catch,’ Chris said.

The man frowned, glanced down at his weapon, and tilted it slightly to the right.

Chris fired from the hip. The blast was deafening, the recoil jarring, and as the man flipped back onto the ground Chris brought the gun up to his shoulder and aimed at his torso. His finger remained tight on the trigger, ready to fire again.

The man had dropped his gun and clasped both hands to the left side of his stomach. Blood bloomed. He groaned, then started to whine as he rocked gently from side to side. He might have been crying, but his tears were lost in the rain. Chris felt a surge of fury. How
dare
this bastard cry?

Gunfire came from along the road. Chris glanced that way but could see nothing, and he had to assume Rose could deal with them herself. Two quick shots echoed across the landscape, then after a few seconds, two more.

‘You fucking shot me!’ the man on the ground said through gritted teeth.

‘You’ll live,’ Chris said. The disgust he felt, the rage, the smothering sense of unfairness, all pressed down to suffocate and crush him. But he could not allow that. He was better than them. ‘Can you walk?’ he asked.

The man sat up slowly, both hands pressed to his side. The bullet must have barely touched him, passing straight through the overly fleshy part of his hip. He took his hands away, examined the wound, and said, ‘Yeah, think so.’

Chris took one step closer and shot him in the right shin.

This time he screamed. His leg smacked against the ground and settled out of shape, the unnatural angle making Chris gag. He kicked the hunter onto his back and picked up his rifle, slinging the weapon he’d just used over his shoulder.

‘Chris!’ Rose was calling from a long way off. There was a side to her voice that he didn’t like, so he crouched down and listened again.

The man he’d shot was still shouting. Chris prodded him in the chest with the rifle and held a finger to his lips. The man, eyes wide and face now pale as snow, bit down on his lip until it bled.

‘Chris!’ she called again.

He heard footsteps running along the road, growing rapidly closer.
Heavy
footsteps. He was shielded from the road, but once the man drew level he’d be able to see them both. He decided not to wait that long.

Taking a deep breath, Chris braced the gun against his shoulder and stood.

The man was barely ten metres away, running with his rifle held across his bare chest. He wore a camouflage headscarf and had mud smeared across his body. Sweat and rain had washed it into streaked patterns. It was the Rambo character, lost in his own fantasy. The image should have been comical but wasn’t. He was a fat, stinking pig of a man, and Chris came so close to shooting.

‘Stop!’ he shouted instead. The man skidded to a halt and looked around, still not seeing him. ‘Gun down
…
slowly.’

‘He means it!’ the shot man shouted.

For a split second, Chris thought the fat man was going to try to bring his own rifle up to shoot.
I won’t hesitate
, he thought, finger tightening on the trigger. ‘You want to die?’ he asked.

Rose appeared along the road, running a few steps before shouldering her own rifle.

‘You’ve got one second,’ Chris said.

The man threw the gun aside and fell onto his front, arms and legs held out in a star shape.

Rose lowered her rifle and ran. Chris expected to see a fresh wound, pale face, glimmering blood, but she reached him quickly and nodded once.

‘The other one?’ he asked.

‘Dead.’ Whether she’d done it on purpose or not didn’t matter to Chris right then. All that mattered was that they were wasting time.

‘You, fat fuck. Down there.’ He nodded across the ditch and behind the rocky pile to where the other man still writhed in pain. The fat man crawled from the road, leaning across the ditch and scrambling up the other side.

‘Can’t just leave him,’ Rose said. ‘He’ll run, get help.’

The fat man was not helping his hunting companion. He sat apart from him, staring at Chris and fearing his own fate. He was barely human. Chris wondered if he had kids and a wife, but he didn’t want to know. All this was making him feel sick to the core, despairing of the humanity that he’d had such faith in. These men were the minority, he knew that. But knowing that even a small minority like this existed tainted everything.

‘Have fun explaining this,’ he said.

The fat man’s eyes went wide. Chris aimed. The man shuffled backwards, back pressed against a rock, grew still. Chris fired and missed.

‘No, no!’ the man shouted, and he turned to scramble away.

‘Chris—’ Rose began, but he shouted over her.

‘Keep still or I’ll just shoot into your gut!’

The man settled again, resting on his side, shivering.

Chris aimed and fired again.

The man’s right knee exploded. He was so shocked, the pain clearly so intense, that it took him almost a minute to start screaming. In that time Chris and Rose stripped both men’s trousers and underwear down their wounded legs, smashed their satphones, took their remaining food and ammunition. Neither had any water left.

Chris took a pair of walking boots. Rose kicked his running shoes into the ferns and slipped her own boots back on, and he felt a curious pang as they went. He’d run hundreds of happy miles in them before all this, and discarding them was like casting aside part of his history.

They left without a backward glance. Chris saw Rose giving him an admiring appraisal, and he almost shot her as well. She had made herself into a killer, and he did not crave her admiration for what he had done. He was not like her. He still had a life, if only he could save it.

They dodged two more police cars before they reached the point where the road passed over the high ridge. The cars were travelling quickly, and Rose hoped that they would pass by the dead man and two survivors without spotting them. With luck, the wounded and humiliated hunters would have hidden away, waiting for the Trail to come and extract them.

They didn’t know that most of this Trail cell was already dead.

Chris had watched as she’d dragged the man she’d shot further from the road, not offering to help. Fair enough. He’d already seen more violent death than any normal person ever should.

Looking down into the next valley they saw civilisation at last. Walls and hedges criss-crossed the landscape, road surfaces glimmered silver with rain, and a couple of miles away the small village of Llwybr huddled low, dwarfed by the expansive landscape. Weak daylight reflected from windows and car windscreens.

‘Close,’ Chris said. She heard the hope in his voice and it cut deep, surprising her, reminding her that her own life was now without hope. They might yet save his family, but whatever rage-filled revenge she continued to exact on the Trail, her own was still dust. Nothing could bring them back. Tears mixed with the rain to cloud her vision. Death and murder had tainted her, and yet in the purity of Chris and his family, perhaps she could find some peace.

‘There’ll be at least two of them,’ she said. ‘One or two keeping watch, another close to your family.’

‘With a gun at their heads.’

‘Yeah.’ She pulled a smartphone from her pocket and accessed the screen, relieved to see reception. She opened an app, entered the name she’d been given, and Goytre Barn appeared on a map. Touching the screen brought up a small compass in the corner, and she turned until the map shown lined up with the wide vista before them.

‘Plan?’ Chris asked.

‘We’ve got just under an hour until the call’s due,’ she said. ‘They’ll know I’m here, and some of what I’ve done. But hopefully, they still think the hunt is on.’

‘So?’ He was panting, sweating, determined.

‘So we don’t have long. And we need to hit the barn quickly and without warning. We waste time looking for the one who’s on watch, that might warn whoever’s at the barn.’

‘You know them, don’t you?’

She didn’t answer. Her arm was numb now, but she could feel the damage that had been done. She was past exhausted; her eyes burned with tiredness, her muscles were weak and watery. But Margaret Vey smiled in her mind’s eye, drawing a knife across her husband’s throat while her children watched.

‘I call her Grin,’ Rose said. ‘She’s the woman who killed my family, and the one guarding yours.’

‘She’s done it before.’ Chris’s voice sounded flat.

‘She won’t do it again.’

He nodded, looking down into the valley. They could not quite see Goytre Barn from here – it was too far away, hidden in the wrinkles of the land – but he was close to his family, close to winning. She didn’t dare tell him how unlikely it was that he’d ever see them again.

‘We’ll go in from two directions,’ she said. ‘If one of us runs into the guards, the other one will get through.’

He looked at her, doubtful. He didn’t trust her, and she could hardly blame him. Selfishness had been her driving force, and perhaps it still was. But now she could see that his own triumph might be hers as well.

‘Really, Chris. I’ll do everything I can.’

‘And your guy won’t help us again?’

‘Holt? No.’ She shook her head, although she wasn’t sure. He’d have escaped from the farm, she was quite convinced of that. And he’d come this far to protect her because
…
he’d fallen in love with her? She hated even considering that because it felt like such a betrayal of Adam and her dead children. But the truth was there before her – in his abandonment of the Trail, the ease with which he’d let her go in Italy, and the fact that he was here now. Confronting it, she wasn’t quite sure how she felt. And that confusion troubled her even more. ‘No, we’re on our own.’

‘Okay,’ Chris said. ‘The guard will be close to the barn, he’ll want to stay in touch. And as soon as he hears any trouble
…
’ He shook his head. ‘Got to be a better way. Come on. We don’t have long, let’s think while we’ve moving.’ He started running again, the hunter’s walking boots slapping hard at the road surface.

Rose pushed off on the bike and rolled downhill after him.

We’re so close
, Chris thought.
Nothing can go wrong now. I can’t let it. I
won’t.

Running in the stranger’s boots felt unnatural. His feet were heavy, legs fluid, muscles hot and aching. Blisters burned on his feet, and his groin felt chafed, nipples sore and bleeding from where they’d rubbed back and forth across his breathable top. His left knee was stiff and hot. He’d suffer for weeks, but he’d suffer for so much longer if he didn’t push himself onward with every shred of determination he could muster.

The barn was across the valley on the eastern slopes of another, smaller mountain. The looming bulk was harsh and steep, great swathes of rock having broken away and tumbled down over the aeons. People didn’t think about that when they built their villages and dwellings. They didn’t consider the vastness of time, and the chance of another huge chunk of mountain breaking away and burying them all. Time would wear away the whole mountain, but it was an order of time that did not affect a human lifespan. Chris often thought about this, how a human’s life was nothing. And yet the lives of those he loved were everything, and he’d tear away at the mountain with his bare hands for every remaining second of his life if he thought it would save them.

The road veered south, away from the location of the barn, so he climbed over the stone wall and started across the fields. Rose called for him to slow down, let her catch up, but he didn’t listen. If he stopped now he might not start again. After all he’d been through, the idea of getting there a minute too late was too terrible to contemplate.

He yearned to see his family again. Hold them to him, hug them tight, tell them that everything was going to be all right. What came after
…
he could not think about that right now. That assumed survival, and beyond that was a whole different world. He would open the door to that new existence only when the time came, and not an instant before. Chris was not a superstitious man, but he would not tempt fate.

The field became marshy and he had to pick his feet higher, lifting his knees to wade as much as run. Behind him, Rose was struggling with the bike. He could hear her grunting and cursing, and then there came a single shout and she cast the bike aside. She was running after him now, and he admired her determination. She’d kept going all through the afternoon and night before, and she was pushing on now. Even with a wound in her arm. There was something special about her, or perhaps her quest for revenge was really a form of madness. Would he go mad if he reached the barn only to find his family
…
?

He tried to shove the images away, but the more he pushed the more insistent they became. Terri, the girls, and blood. His eyes watered.
No!
He ran faster. The rifle strap had rubbed his shoulder raw and the stock bashed against his lower back with every step. Everywhere was pain. The few parts of him that didn’t hurt felt numb and strange, as if they had no part here.

He climbed into another field, paused to locate himself in the landscape, glanced back to Rose. She was close, struggling across the field but no longer urging him to slow down. Her face was grim, pale but resolute. She caught his eye and nodded for him to go on.

How long? She’d said an hour, but maybe it was less. Maybe it was half an hour, or twenty minutes. Perhaps Rose was starting to believe they were minutes too late, and they’d close in on the barn in time to see the two Trail members leaving in a Land Rover, the building behind them still echoing to his family’s dying screams.

Chris ran. He had always run, but it had never been towards anything so important.

The end of this run meant his whole world.

He crossed a wider spread of marshy land, aiming for the areas where sharp marsh reeds grew, hoping that meant drier land. The ongoing deluge drowned out the splashing and his groans of effort. Sometimes he went up to his knees in mud, but he was still strong. He pulled through.

Rose was almost keeping up with him. He wondered at the boundaries she was crossing. Pain, exhaustion.

They reached another road, and looking slightly uphill towards the mountain he saw the barn at last. It sat on a flat area of land on the gently sloping hillside, several outbuildings surrounding it. Smoke rose from the chimney. That almost stopped him in his path, because it was such a homely sight. Someone wanted heat, and comfort, and warm water. He wondered whether the two Trail gave a shit about his family’s comfort, and knew that they did not.

Whatever the outcome of this hunt, surely his family were doomed from the beginning. Even if the hunters had found and killed Chris, how could his family ever be released? They’d have a story to tell, if only a small part of the whole truth. And the Trail could not afford that.

But this was not his world, he had no idea how these things worked. He was just a fucking architect.

Maybe they’d been dead since yesterday morning.

The thought was sickening, but he could not let it influence him. He shoved it aside.

Rose reached him and grabbed his arm. He pulled away and went to set off again, but she kicked his foot from under him, tripped him, fell across his body and pinned her arm across his throat. She was panting so much that she could barely talk, but she screeched out in pain from her injuries. Chris had to respect her force of will in carrying on. He tried to buck her off, but she increased the pressure. The gun was pressing painfully into his back.

‘Wait,’ she gasped at last.

Chris shook his head beneath her arm.

‘
Wait!
’

Chris relaxed a little.

‘Vehicle.’

Chris listened and heard a distant motor.

‘How long?’

‘We’ve got half an hour. Long enough. But we can’t be seen.’

He struggled again, but Rose was stretching to look over the tall reeds, up towards the barn and its approach road. When she saw the vehicle she let Chris up at last, but kept one hand on his shoulder to make sure he stayed out of sight.

‘Saved by the post office,’ she said. ‘We’ll see where the guard is now.’

The red postal van bounced along the barn’s approach road, moving faster than it should have. Even from several hundred metres away Chris could hear the van’s chassis bouncing from the uneven road surface, suspension groaning, metal screeching.

‘Too fast,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ Rose knelt up and slipped the rifle from her shoulder.

Chris crouched, watched the van, scanned the barn’s surroundings, saw no one. He wanted to start running again, to get there as soon as he could. But getting himself shot in these final moments would serve no purpose at all.

‘Can you shoot from this far?’ he asked.

‘Long shot.’ That was all she offered.

As the van neared the barn its brakes slammed on. It slewed to the side and struck a stone wall, throwing up a fan of mud. The driver’s door opened.

Holt
, Chris thought,
it’s him, and he’s come to help me save my family
.

But the man who emerged was much taller than Holt, and definitely not a postman. He wore casual clothes and carried a machine gun slung over one shoulder.

‘Fiona!’ the man called.

Closer to Rose and Chris – much closer, maybe only two hundred metres away – a woman emerged from behind a rusted cattle feeder. She was short and lithe, wearing a heavy waterproof jacket and carrying a Kalashnikov.

‘What’s up, Tom?’

Tom walked from the van and leaned against the stone wall. ‘It’s definitely all gone to shit,’ he shouted. ‘Fucker had help, that Rose woman from a few years back. And she’s still out there somewhere. We’re compromised, cell’s wasted.’

‘No shit?’ Did this new Trail woman care? Chris wasn’t sure. Perhaps only for herself.

‘Rose!’ he whispered urgently. She touched his mouth with her hand, never taking her eyes from the exchange.

‘Margaret inside?’ Tom asked.

‘Yeah.’

Tom seemed to sigh. He looked up at the mountains around them, and for a moment Chris thought the Trail man was smiling. He muttered something then, shaking his head.

‘What?’ Fiona asked.

‘I said it’s a damn shame,’ Tom called. ‘Come on. Let’s help Margaret clear up.’

‘Clear up?’ Chris muttered. He went to stand. Crouching down here, hiding, waiting, could do nothing. He had to keep moving forward, one step in front of the other.

‘We’ll give them one minute—’ Rose said. But Chris was done giving them time, and done listening to her.

Rifle held at the ready, he shoved with both feet, launching himself away from Rose and out into the open.

He ran.

Tom saw him first, eyes going wide, right hand fumbling for the machine gun hanging from his shoulder.

Then Fiona turned around.

Fucking idiot!
Rose thought, but she couldn’t blame him. If she’d heard that fucker Tom right – and over this rain, that wasn’t guaranteed – it sounded like they’d already killed Chris’s family. Now there was nothing left to fight for but revenge.

It had kept her alive for so long. She let it guide her now.

She brought the rifle up to her shoulder, aimed, and fired in one motion. Chris was between her and the woman, Fiona, but Rose could not let that stay her finger. His only chance was her first shot.

Fiona’s head flipped back as the bullet struck her in her face. She stiffened, then hit the ground like a fallen mannequin.

Chris ran on, shooting at Tom as he went. It was pointless.

Tom crouched behind the wall and let loose a burst of machine-gun fire. The range was long for such a weapon to be accurate, but Chris dropped and sought cover. It was what Tom wanted. He sprinted for the barn.