The blow came from above, hard and clean, and Bergan fell back against the tree trunk. The figure jumped down nimbly from the branches above him and swung a fist into Bergan’s stomach, winding him and toppling him to his knees. He grabbed wildly at the figure but it was too quick, too lithe and too ready. He tried to speak, to shout a warning to the others but no sooner had he tried than the figure brought a pistol across his face and put him on his back. It approached Maddox from behind, a small figure, comically bound up in oversized army fatigues, trousers and sleeves cut off at the wrists and ankles, tatty trainers on tiny feet picking their way across the ground in light and practised footsteps, the delicate frame seemingly walking on air as it silently drew up behind him and raised its pistol to his large, rock shaped head.
‘Drop the weapon and get on your knees.’ The voice was calm and assured, the first female voice Maddox had heard in months. ‘Slowly lower that rifle and then get on your knees. I won’t ask you again.’
Maddox didn’t move but the tight tension in his shoulders, the taut muscles that had sprung forth against the butt of the rifle as he approached the tent, relaxed, and as soon as they did a crooked smile broke on his face. ‘Sounds like you are a long way from home, darling,’
‘You have no idea, now drop that rifle before I put a bullet through your fat neck,’ her voice was light but deadly, every word seemed to follow a full stop, every breath was held in each syllable. Had she been speaking to anyone else but Maddox they would probably be on their knees pleading for mercy. As it was Maddox merely turned, held his rifle out to one side and then clamped his mouth over the barrel of her pistol.
‘I won’t ask you again! Get on your knees!’ her voice wavered, betraying her sudden surprise at being caught off guard in such a brazen way, but she held firm, working the toughest expression she had. ‘Put that rifle down and get on your knees!’
‘Yeah, you said all that,’ Maddox mumbled over the pistol barrel, his tongue shooting out briefly and tickling the metal. ‘I don’t do small talk.’
Turtle was climbing out of the ditch; beyond him Bergan was swaying on his feet like a Friday night drunk on a Saturday morning, walking a few paces then stopping and holding his head, his legs threatening to buckle under him each time he tried to stagger on again. He was spitting out words now, barely formed words that meant nothing without the raw blast of his anger behind them. Turtle ran to him and ducked under one long arm, his head moving up under Bergan’s armpit, straightening him up to the scene unfolding just in front of them.
‘You’re outnumbered here darling, you know that? Why not play nice?’ Maddox was sucking the pistol barrel, his blue eyes twinkling at her, smiling at her and patronising her in their cocky assuredness.
Bergan and Turtle were approaching, Bergan’s mumbled and indistinct words barking out towards her. “Ear…ear…” he seemed to be shouting. There was enough there for her to recognise, even if she hadn’t yet placed the face to the voice, and in that sudden flash of knowing, in the quick dart of her eyes to her side, the drop of her guard, Maddox moved. He grabbed her at the wrist and squeezed; instantly her hand splayed outward against the pain and released the pistol. Maddox batted her arm away and she swayed to her side with the force. He was looking back at her curiously, taking her all in, her pistol still sticking out of his mouth, like the most bizarre type of dummy.
‘Mia! Mia!’ Bergan was fighting against Turtle’s support, pushing him away, desperate to step into the situation, to be heard, and be back in control.
She was turning back to Maddox, her face flaring in rage, and then she was charging at him, hands clenched to attack, and Maddox was standing there ready, arms open wide to receive her. She launched at him, grabbing him around the throat and jumping on to his back. Her fingers dug into his neck, and then they worked up to his face, into his nose and eyes. At first Maddox seemed to enjoy the tussle, writhing and jerking around on the spot like a child being tickled, but as her fingers clamped around the pistol, as they held firm to the butt and managed to resist his attempts to ply them off, his amusement became irritation and his cockiness became anger. He gripped at her hands and fingers, squeezing hard, bringing his full strength to bear on her delicate bones, but she wouldn’t shift. He started to spin around on the spot, trying to shake her off but she held firm and wouldn’t be moved. He edged a finger behind the trigger, one beefy fingertip just squeezing through to keep it in place, but the pistol was moving in his mouth, withdrawing in wild jerky movements as she yanked, and tugged and wrenched it free, his fingertip twisting and popping out as the finger bone creaked and the knuckle cracked.
‘Get her off me! Get this bitch off me!’ Maddox was trying to turn the rifle around in his hand, to get the barrel against her body, but she knocked it away and kept on him like a limpet, moving away from it, hiding against his huge body and making any shot impossible. Maddox tried to swing his head back and connect with her face but she seemed to pre-empt each move, ducking away, shifting her head left and right. Maddox dumped the rifle on the floor in front of Turtle and then both his hands went behind his head, trying to grab her hair, her face, anything at all. ‘Shoot her!’
Turtle bent down to the rifle on the ground but a giant hand stopped him, grabbed him at the collar and lifted him up again. Bergan was shaking his head.
‘Leave it, Turtle. Mia?’
Her pistol barrel jammed hard against the dark stubble under Maddox’s jaw line at the sound of her name. ‘Mia? It’s Frankie. I need you to calm down now. Can you do that for me? Calm down, Mia.’
‘You on first name terms with this bitch?’ Maddox’s face was a strange mix of affront and embarrassment. He glared across at Bergan as she dug her pistol deeper under his jaw, her eyes peeking around his huge head, scrutinising Bergan like he were an antique to be valued.
‘Shut up, Theo. Mia? You okay there? You want to tell me what’s going on?’
‘You came to get me,’ her voice trembled, coming through gritted teeth. ‘You get me away from this place. You take me home, Mr Bergan.’
‘Just calm down. What happened here, Mia?’
‘He’s dead. He’s…’
‘I know, Mia. We saw. What happened to Wallace?’
She dug the pistol deeper. ‘We should go now.’
‘What happened to Wallace? You took his clothes, didn’t you? Did you see what happened to him, what happened here?’
She was ghostly white; the dark circles under her eyes were like bruises against the pallid complexion. Her cheeks seemed hollow, her bones as if they would snap on a single breath, yet she had summoned a strength that contradicted what you could see in her. She was scared, terrified, in fear for her life. It was the aggression of one who has faced the end and refused to allow it.
‘It sees, you know?’ She said the words quietly, her eyes flicking between Bergan and Turtle. ‘It sees everything, you, me, this…’ she flashed her eyes to the side of Maddox’s head, the hand holding the pistol working the cold metal further into the skin like it were a corkscrew.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘We need to go now.’
‘We aren’t going anywhere, Mia. Now I need you to calm down and take the gun away from his neck, okay? Will you do that for me?’
‘We can’t stay here, Mr Bergan, please. It’s not safe here. You have to take me out of here.’
‘We are here to keep you safe, Mia. Remember? Do you remember why your father came here? Do you remember, Mia?’
‘You can’t keep me safe. You can’t keep anyone safe. Not here. You want to keep me safe then you take me out of this place. It’s tainted. It’s wrong here. It’s all wrong.’
‘Take the gun away, Mia. Trust me. It’s okay.’ Bergan was walking to her, his hands up in front of his body, cupped for the gun. ‘Mia, please.’
‘No! We can’t be here!’ She was screaming, her face haunted and lost.
‘Mia put the gun down!’
‘NO!’ She pu
lled the gun from Maddox and swung it towards Bergan. It shook in her grasp but her eyes remained still. Bergan stopped and dropped his hands, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘Please…’
Maddox seized his chance. His hands thrust up against her slender wrist and jerked it upwards, the pistol firing off a single shot into the sky. Dragging her wrist down sharply and quickly she flew forward, over Maddox’s bulky frame, tilting over in the air and landing on the forest floor on her back. Maddox was straight down on his rifle, plucking it up and swinging it back into his grip. Still she wouldn’t relent. Pulling herself up she turned to where he now stood, the arrogance back in his face, those blue eyes flashing at her once more, and then she began to charge, her hands up, once more ready to grab, and punch, and kill. Turning the rifle around in his hands Maddox let her come on, and then as she did, as she readied herself to lunge again, he jabbed the butt of the rifle into her face, breaking her nose and sending her flat on to her front in a crumpled heap.
‘Friend of yours, Frank?’ Maddox asked, staring down at his handiwork, his eyes roaming her frame, her legs and her breasts. He picked up her pistol and handed it to Bergan. ‘Spirited little minx. I like that.’
Bergan wasn’t listening. He stood apart from Maddox and Turtle, gazing ahead into the forest, alighted on something, watching and waiting.
5
‘Let’s go.’
‘What happened? I heard a shot.’
‘Mia? Oh my, that’s…’
‘Let’s go. Now.’
‘Is she dead? What happened?’
‘Go? Go where? This place is a maze, how do you know where to go?’
‘We’re on a hill, right?’
‘Yeah, so what?’
‘So we go down. Dick.’
Sullivan heard the words but couldn’t place the voices. They were detached from him and meant nothing. He sat on the tree stump looking down at Wallace’s body and he could feel everyone’s eyes on him. He had felt, on first meeting them at Bend Lane, like the new boy at school, but now his isolation had gone way beyond that. They were alien to him, all of them, even Turtle. They spoke in their own language that he wasn’t allowed to understand, they shared looks and nods and sly little expressions, they were on a different page and he didn’t even know the story. Footsteps came across to him. It was Turtle.
‘Hey, come on, we’re moving out.’
‘We’re just leaving him?’ Sullivan nodded down to Wallace. ‘Is that fair?’
Turtle ran a hand over Sullivan’s shoulder. ‘Let’s go.’
They set off in silence. Bergan and Maddox led the way, Mia slung over Maddox’s shoulder. Behind them Davenport and Kendrick walked side by side, picking their way daintily across the forest floor, Turtle and Sullivan following some distance back.
‘Who’s the girl?’ Sullivan asked, caring more about the silence that had fallen than the actual answer.
‘Mia Hennessey.’
‘Hennessey?’
‘Yeah, Lucas’s daughter. She came out with the point team. Never made it back, I guess.’
‘Neither did Wallace.’
‘No. No he didn’t.’
‘And the others?’
Turtle walked on without answering, Sullivan asked it again and again got no reply. Sullivan stopped still.
‘Hey! What we walking into, Turtle?’
For the first time since Sullivan had met him, Turtle carried no expression.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Keep up!’ Kendrick’s voice came at them like a whip. Turtle turned back and carried on. Sullivan took in a deep breath and followed.
As they got further into the forest they started to see balloons in the trees. Just a few at first; red, white and blue shapes caught in the upper branches like fat exotic birds, but as they walked on, the balloons started to grow in number. One tree was all but covered in them. Sullivan gazed up at them in wonderment. No one else seemed to spare them a consideration and Sullivan wanted to ask why, wanted to know what they meant and why no one else seemed to care.
They walked on for another quarter of an hour, each man following the man in front, and then the man in front began moving off to the side, leading the men into a small clearing. The clearing fed off into a track, and then the track opened up into a road, the brilliant white carpet slicing through the gloom of the forest, snaking its way along to a large break in the trees about a hundred yards ahead. In the gap was nothing but sky.
‘At last,’ Kendrick said into the air, walking to the front of the group and taking the lead. ‘Come on.’
They followed him one at a time, starting off in single file but slowly breaking position as the gap in the trees drew nearer. Beyond it looked like a sheer drop, like they were cresting a cliff face, or walking along a water chute that threatened to spit them out into the great unseen, and then slowly a line of dark trees rose up into their eyeline as the other side of the forest grew across the bottom of the horizon. Kendrick and Davenport quickened their pace, encouraging the others to do the same. They grouped together and then moved apart, subconsciously forming a line across the road like they were keeping to lanes in a race.
Ahead of them a black shape lay to the side of the road, at first they thought it a rock, another tumbled down tree perhaps, but slowly, as the light ahead began to work away at the surroundings with a greater purpose, they saw it for what it was and immediately came to a stop, gathering around it like it were a discovery from another world. It was the point teams small, ride-on snowplough. It was upended against a tree, a dent like a blow from a giants fist in its side. A wing mirror hung limply off, tapping away at the side of the plough, keeping time with the sharp, winter wind. A bloody handprint was smeared across the seat. There was more blood on the blade at the front.
‘When every sign is telling you to go back and you have nowhere else to go, what then?’ Davenport spoke the words to no one in particular, and no one responded.
‘Turtle?’ Bergan nodded to the snowplough.
The stocky chef tilted the plough back on to the road and straddled the seat, firing it up. It coughed and whined and then failed. Twice more he sparked it and on the third it caught. Bergan turned and brushed a hand in the direction of the gap in the trees and Turtle edged the plough out slowly, chugging along to where the trees stopped and the sky seemed to begin, the others scuttling along in his wake.
They drew up in a line next to the snowplough, standing there at the edge of the forest and gazing down at the estate through a delicate rain of snowflakes, dancing gracefully like sprites on the swirling breeze, cold and sharp and probing. They had arrived.
For several seconds no one said anything. Davenport moved to speak but could do no better than a whine that developed and died in his throat. Bergan was motionless; Turtle the same way next to him, sitting on the snowplough like a sculpture. Maddox sucked on the end of his cigar, staring down the hill along with the others through a cloud of smoke, the fingers on his right hand strumming lightly on Mia’s left thigh. Sullivan was the first to move, inching forward and then looking to Turtle, his eyes burrowing into the chef’s face, asking questions he couldn’t vocalise, but Turtle wasn’t meeting his gaze, instead he slowly lowered his head to the handles of the snowplough and his body shivered, still fighting off the cold and now, it seemed, tears too. To the other side of Sullivan, unnoticed by the others, Kendrick had fallen to his knees and was rocking back and forth slowly, his arms wrapped around his chest in a vain grab of comfort.
‘Well,’ Maddox said, finally breaking the silence and spitting out the end of his cigar into the snow. ‘That’s not ideal is it?’
The magnificent estate, once sat in opulent splendour in the large bowl of land in the middle of Bleeker Hill, was a charred and blackened mess. Like a burnt meal ripped apart by ravenous animals, the house’s carcass was hollow, its heart was ash, and its bones an ugly jet black against the wide expanse of brilliant white all around it. The roof was gone completely, three of the
four walls had fallen in on themselves, the fourth, standing bare and lonely, holding up a jagged reminder of the upper floors, looking out over the rest through one blown out window eye. In front of the house were the last reminders of two large trucks, machines sucked into the destruction and spat back out empty shells. Beyond it all a wooden pen sat empty, and next to it a concrete building, one door in its side, poked up out of the snow, untouched and ignored, overseeing all like a judge.
‘Turtle?’ Bergan called his name and then fell silent again as if he had forgotten what he was going to say. Turtle didn’t look up or respond, he didn’t even move.
‘This isn’t…no…no I don’t think so, I think…’ Davenport was mumbling to himself, looking at the house like it were a mirage, trying to look through it, and then shaking the image in his head, closing his eyes and then turning back and staring into the forest before swinging around again to the house almost as if expecting to see something different.
‘Frank?’ Maddox was shifting Mia on his shoulder, pushing her up and then clasping a hand back on to her thigh. ‘Frankie? Hey!’
One by one they looked across at Bergan, the stoical giant that had led them here. They looked for those dispassionate eyes, the cold assurance in every movement and the confidence in every word, they looked for someone to tell them what to do, and for that moment, for the first time since he had stepped into the role they now needed him to wear so well, the giant was coming up short. His eyes scanned the landscape in front of them, swept across the wide expanse of snow, the pen and the concrete building and then the house again, roaming through the blackness, and then he looked up to his men, to the stupid, dumb looking faces gawping at him hopefully.
‘Turtle?’
Turtle nodded.
Bleeker Hill Page 11