A Killing Air

by Nigel Price

  “The villagers,” Harry said. Sure enough, they were carrying the same selection of improvised weapons that they had used the previous day – picks and hoes and scythes. “We should have left earlier,” Harry said, angry with himself. “This is my fault.”

  Lisa was staring hard at the men. “Look.”

  “What?”

  “They’re frightened.”

  As Harry watched he saw one of the men being held back by his comrades. He had started forward towards the office block. Another man was holding him by the arm, restraining him. There was a dispute. Others seemed to be looking for a way around the hard standings.

  “It’s as if this place is cursed or something,” Harry said. “Perhaps it’s bewitched.”

  Lisa’s face was ashen. “Or contaminated.”

  “Ah.” The smile was wiped from Harry’s face.

  “And we’ve just spent the night here,” Lisa added for good measure. “With no clothes on.”

  “It might be nothing like that,” Harry hurried to reassure her.

  “Well look at them. They seem pretty sure they need to keep away from here. If anyone should know, they should.”

  Harry led her back to the door at the far end of the hut, facing in the opposite direction. “If they won’t cross the clearing then they’ll work their way round the side of it. The forest is pretty thick. That’ll give us a head start. Not much, but a bit.”

  There was a key on a peg to one side of the door. Harry tried it in the lock. It worked. He opened the door a crack and peered out. The coast was clear, the tree-line standing about ten yards off. With the body of the hut shielding them from the villagers, he led the way outside, closing the door behind him. He locked it then lobbed the key as far as he could into the undergrowth. “No point making it easy for them.”

  The rain had stopped, leaving the ground sodden underfoot. Once inside the forest though, the soft press of leaves had acted as a sponge so it wasn’t long before they were moving across a relatively dry surface. There had been forestry work here and the rotting stumps of trees long felled stood forlornly in between their towering newer descendents. At some point the undergrowth sprouting around them had been cleared which made for easier going. Harry had little idea of their direction, save for the feeling that they were heading away from the village. With all their belongings destroyed in Herbert’s car, they had only the few possessions that had been in their pockets. For a second his mind flitted to his gutted wallet. Lisa’s quick thinking had saved their lives. Literally bought them time.

  With the rain gone, the forest came alive with birdsong. All the trees dripped and the air was washed clean. In the few spaces overhead that revealed the sky, Harry could see fast-moving clouds scudded along by the wind. Still no blue. It was as if China had exhausted its supply of the colour.

  “I think we have lost the villagers,” Lisa said after an hour or two of travel. She was out of breath and panted the words like a hound lapping water. They were heading up a steep incline, using tree trunks to haul themselves up. Although neither of them had a clue where they were, for some reason both of them felt happy. It was ridiculous and they both knew it. Harry turned, met her eyes and grinned.

  “I think you’re right.” He stopped and reached back to help her up. She came up alongside him and the two of them stood for a moment catching their breath. The exertion had helped complete the drying of their clothes.

  For an instant they were side by side looking into each other’s faces. Simultaneously a smile broke between them, equally shared. Then they started to chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” Lisa asked. The back of her hand slapped Harry’s chest. “Charlie Brown.” The memory of her hilarious joke broadened her grin until she was laughing.

  The thought of the sheer dumbness of it had Harry laughing too. Then he said, “Lisa. Would you mind if I kissed you?”

  He felt the colour blossom throughout his whole stupid, goofy, stubbly face. He might have been sixteen again. In front of him, a foot away, Lisa shrugged.

  Couldn’t care less. If you have to.

  So he did.

  Which was the moment they heard dogs. Not farm dogs. Tracker dogs. Baying.

  Thirty Two

  The taste of her lips. Like a diva presented with flowers, it bowed to the audience and withdrew.

  Dogs. Harry knew that there were two types of tracker dog. Ones trained to follow ground scent. Ones trained to follow air-borne scent. And then there was the third of the two types. The vicious mutts trucked in by whoever had been whistled up by the villagers to help them hunt down and kill the fugitives. He had a sneaking suspicion that he just might have met these furry chaps before.

  Lisa’s expression had gone from teen curiosity-cum-indulgence, to cold fear. Harry tried to be positive. “The rain’s saturated the woodland. It’ll make it difficult for the dogs to track us.” He hoped he was right. The waterlogged ground would especially help if the dogs were untrained. There again, how many times more efficient than a human nose was a dog’s? Something like a thousand?

  From the sound of the baying, the dogs were a long way off. Harry reckoned their handlers would keep them on a leash for better control. Which meant that they could only move as fast as people. Harry and Lisa were people. They could move at people speed too. So it wasn’t a total disaster. Yet.

  They hit the top of a ridge, still wooded. Before heading down the far side, Harry found a spot where the trees thinned. By standing on tiptoe he could glimpse the land below. He hunted around for a better vantage point and found one of the old stumps fat enough to act as a stool. Balancing on top he finally got a clear view.

  “Well?” Lisa stood below him, her hands steadying his hips.

  “I can see a road!” He announced it triumphantly as if there was a brigade of Royal Marines marching down it, yomped all the way from Portsmouth just to rescue the two of them. In truth it was a meagre affair, spindly and bare. And no Marines.

  One glance at Lisa’s face was enough to make him keep all of that to himself. “Let’s move.”

  They set off down the slope, swinging from tree to tree like gibbons. “We can probably catch a bus,” she called to him as he led the way. The voice brimmed with enthusiasm.

  “I expect so,” Harry answered over his shoulder, hoping she was right. This time if the villagers caught them there would be no Plan B. Whoever had brought the dogs would make sure of that. Harry wondered if Clive Miller was with the hunting party. If so, they could expect a very different reception to the last one he had given them. No ride in a BMW, nor en-suite bedrooms with supper and breakfast included.

  They reached the lower slopes of the hill just as they heard the dogs some way behind them. First there was a single bark, followed by a moment of utter silence. It killed the birdsong like flicking the off switch. The whole forest went quiet as if it was holding its breath. The next second, another dog answered. And then came a howling that chilled Harry to the bone. He hardly dared look at Lisa until he felt her hand gripping his arm. Her face was pale and drawn. He looked into her eyes and saw the fear that his own had buried. In Lisa it was stripped naked and staked to the ground.

  “Come on,” Harry said firmly, voice low and calm.

  From far behind them there was more baying, and then a torrent of yaps and barks and howls. Great canine whoops of exhilaration.

  “What does that mean?” Lisa asked as they broke into a run, her voice quaking from more than their shambling gait.

  “Nothing,” Harry said. It means they’ve let them off the leash. It means unless we get transport at the road we’re fucked.

  As they hurtled headlong down the slope, Harry ran through options in his head. How to take on multiple dog attacks. How to destroy the bloody things. How to disappear, take wing, fly away. He thought of all those nightmares he’d had in the past. The sort of semi-lucid ones when he realised it was just a dream while still in the middle of it. Often it was on the point of capture, the most hid
eous tortures waiting. Then he’d been able to wake himself up. He’d been able to do this for years and often got little sleep because of it.

  This was no dream. Of course he could debate the finer points about existence. Whether or not Life itself was some kind of dream. There were all sorts of belief systems that maintained that. Even quantum physics seemed to give some credence …

  Shut the fuck up, Harry.

  With a suddenness that caught both of them by surprise, they burst headlong from the undergrowth and found themselves in open ground. A stretch of rough grassland stretched before them for some two hundred yards.

  “Go!” Harry commanded. Putting Lisa in front of him, he glanced over his shoulder before goading her forward. “Run!”

  She didn’t need telling. The ground sloped gently upwards. At the top of the rise an earthen bund announced the road. From his position in dead ground, Harry couldn’t see what was up there. The road as seen from his earlier vantage point remained fixed in his mind though. Long and empty. Might there be vehicles coming by now? It was certainly possible. But then anything was possible. An A10 Thunderbolt with nose-mounted cannon was possible. Fighter ground attack was possible.

  But a bus? Was that really too much to ask?

  Like most soldiers, Harry was a selective prayer. Depending on the circumstances he could be sceptical agnostic or fervent believer. And he could switch between the two at the flick of a, well, switch.

  At this precise moment his praying facility kicked in. Into overdrive. A bus. Come on God. I must have done something at some time worth rewarding. No?

  Well if I haven’t, surely this girl has. Come on. Pretty please?

  He knew it was unlikely to wash. God wasn’t an idiot. That was the trouble with omniscience. You couldn’t pull the wool over the old fellow’s eyes. Or should that be Old Fellow? Capitals, yes.

  “Listen!”

  Lisa stopped dead in her tracks. Harry ran straight into her. Grabbed her by both arms to steady himself.

  “Shush!” She held up a single forefinger, imbuing it with such savage intensity that Harry felt it might have been a magic wand.

  And so it was. For out of the bucolic sounds of the countryside – apart from the dogs’ baying and yapping and barking that was now uncomfortably close – he heard the cough and grind of engine and gears.

  He looked at Lisa. “Bus?” they said in tandem.

  The next instant they were hurling themselves up the wet grassy slope. Harry had never been a great sprinter. Actually he had never been a particularly proficient long-distance runner either. His strength, if it could be called such, was a sort of dogged stamina-driven bloody-mindedness that kept him going forever. Whether burdened with pack and rifle, or simply webbing with thumbs hooked in his shoulder straps, he was indefatigable.

  Now though, his ankles sprouted wings and he sailed up the slope outstripping Lisa who was managing a ferocious pace of her own. They flung themselves over the top of the bund to find the road waiting there. Rough and potholed, it was nonetheless a road. It might have been fashioned from yellow bricks or rainbows for all Harry cared – after the village mud, the forest floor and the grassland’s peaty sponge, it felt wonderful underfoot. Roads denote civilisation. And civilisation delivers salvation.

  And here it came. As anticipated by their starving ears, out of the distance rolled and rumbled the most battered and dilapidated bus that certainly Harry, and perhaps even Lisa, had seen in quite a while. Behind it trailed a cloud of road-spirit in the form of a spreading dust train.

  Lisa planted herself dead centre of the road’s modest expanse, feet straddling the camber, arms pumping as if marshalling Top Gun fighters on the Nimitz. As the bus neared, Harry could see the driver scrutinising the two pedestrians in his path. He wondered if he was weighing the pros and cons of stopping versus ploughing right through them. To his relief he saw a broad grin spread across the faces of both driver and a man seated next to him as they reached a decision. The bus began to slow, the engine working down through its worn gears.

  There was a howl from the trees far behind them and Harry whipped round to see dogs breaking from the undergrowth. Their noses found him before their weaker eyes, and they set off towards the fugitives.

  “Get that door open!” he shouted at Lisa.

  With the bus still moving, she ran alongside it, hammering on the door at the front. The driver seemed muddled, trying to pull to a complete halt before letting his new passengers on board. Lisa added entreaties and threats to the hammering.

  The dogs were halfway to them. It was impossible to tell if they were the ones from Ryder Chau’s villa or some others. But teeth were teeth. Harry realised it was all pretty academic if he was about to be torn to shreds. The niceties of ownership were irrelevant.

  “Open the bloody …”

  The door opened with a hiss of air. Lisa hauled herself up, now shouting at the driver to close it. The man was thoroughly confused and wailed something back at her. Harry pushed himself up the bent muddy steps as the foremost of the dogs reached the road and tore round the bus to get at the door, seeing its lunch still hanging out of it. There was a vicious snarl as the creature went for Harry’s booted foot which thrashed out at the snapping muzzle.

  At last the driver realised what had to be done and stabbed repeatedly at a button on the dashboard until the door sighed and folded itself shut. A final kick from Harry sent the dog back from the step. It angled this way and that, searching for some new way of getting at its quarry. The other members of the pack arrived and circled and sniffed and yapped and howled, confused and frustrated and excited. Their handlers were still nowhere to be seen. Harry knew they wouldn’t be far behind.

  “Go, go, go,” Lisa urged the driver pleasantly, aiming for ‘calm passenger’ rather than ‘scary fugitive’.

  Muttering to himself, the driver shoved at the gear stick producing a series of horrible noises. Spinning the steering wheel, he brought the slowly moving bus back into the centre of the road and set off. Holding on for support, Harry and Lisa stared hard through the windows. The dogs were falling behind. With the scent gone, they didn’t know what to do, unable to compute that their fugitives were in the foul-smelling tube blowing black smoke in their faces as it pulled out of reach. They scanned every inch of the road with their noses, expecting to stumble upon the two humans.

  “There,” Harry said, lowering his voice. Lisa looked towards the tree-line and saw men starting to emerge. They were running. “Best take a seat.”

  He led the way down the length of the bus past the seats of puzzled, gawping, grinning passengers. The back row was empty. Lisa flung herself into one of the seats, Harry slumping down next to her, both of them panting hard. They stared out of the filthy rear window to see the men step onto the bund fifty yards behind them. They were waving frantically. The driver didn’t appear to have noticed as the dust cloud was already enveloping the villagers. Among them Harry noted two others differently dressed. The dog handlers perhaps. He couldn’t tell, and didn’t particularly want to. He swapped a glance with Lisa. A smile was trying to break on her grubby face. Then it did. Harry caught the bug and smiled back. They were free.

  “Where the hell are we going?” he mused.

  “Who cares?” Lisa answered. “Away from there. That’ll do for now.”

  He agreed. It would do for now. Then he thought of his empty wallet. So did Lisa. She dug into her jacket and produced her own. “Don’t worry. I’ve got cash.”

  “Oh I see. So it’s okay to throw away my money, but not yours?”

  The two of them laughed. Settled back into their seats as the bus accelerated. The next thing Harry felt was Lisa’s hand taking hold of his. He patted the back of it. Clasped it warmly in his lap. All great chums. And free.

  “Harry.”

  He was too busy beaming privately to worry about anything for the moment. What an adventure they’d had.

  “Harry.”

  Lisa’s voice kno
cked lightly on the door of his reverie.

  “Hm?”

  There was something about the squeeze of her hand. He returned it with satisfaction. Her hand tightened further.

  “What is it?” he asked. He glanced at her. Her face was stiff as a board. Expressionless. Harry followed her eyes. They were looking straight down the bus. Nothing unusual there. The passengers were all staring back at them, grinning, puzzled, bemused.

  The passengers were mostly men, though here and there a woman joined in the group scrutiny of the two new arrivals at the rear. They were all dressed in identical rain capes. Where the capes were open, rows of bright buttons ran down the front of their uniform shirts.

  “I’m so glad we got to you before the dogs did.”

  The voice hailed them from the front of the bus. Harry felt his body go rigid. Bracing for action. Except that he was staring down the length of a bus crammed to the gunwales with police.

  The figure who had spoken rose from his seat, pushed back his rain cape and started unsteadily down the aisle, going from hold to hold as the vehicle lurched down the potholed road.

  “You’ve saved me a great deal of trouble. I really didn’t like the thought of scrubbing around in the bush searching for you. But here you are! And darling Lisa with you. Simply wonderful to see you both.”

  The warmth of the smile plastered across Clive Miller’s face might have been genuine, had it extended to the eyes. Which it didn’t. They were as cold as the body in the grave where the dead girl lay.

  Thirty Three

  Smarmy. It was a word Harry detested. Hardly a word at all. He didn’t know its origins. Perhaps it was something from the Hindi or Urdu of the Indian Army’s Raj days. Like ‘bungalow’ or ‘pyjamas’ or ‘chutney’. He didn’t really care. The fact was he disliked it.