by Lee, Frazer
Murmurs of approval rippled through the shivering crowd. Then, with the roar of an engine, the stragglers arrived. Peering through the eyeholes in his costume, Tom saw Joe Greyson, sitting proudly atop a huge tractor, both his sons in the cab by his side. As the massive vehicle trundled towards them, Tom saw it was towing an open-topped trailer as big as a bus. The trailer was stacked with hay bales from his barn, and crammed into every available inch of space were dozens of people. The crowd looked on as Joe parked up a short distance from the post office. His lads hopped out of the vehicle and dashed round to the rear of the trailer, unclipping the rear gate. One by one, the passengers disembarked, helping each other down onto the street.
Tom recognized the faces of the newcomers. Each and every one was a protestor from the violent clash at the airport. The last to clamber down from the trailer, like royalty, were Bill and the woman in the flowing skirts.
“What’s all this, Joe? Who are all these people?” Holly sounded worried, and rightly so. Tom had witnessed first-hand the mayhem these protestors could create with their mere presence.
“They’re here for the procession,” Joe said. “Only it’s less of a procession now and more of a protest.”
“Against what?” Holly asked.
Joe looked straight at Tom. Even with his face hidden inside his costume, Tom felt vulnerable. He could feel Greyson’s sharp hatred penetrating the canopy of green encasing him.
“Company men just arrived. They’re setting up near the power plant. They’ve got a generator truck, dozens of vehicles—more traffic than Douglass has seen in many a long year.”
“What are they doing up there?”
“Ask him,” Joe said, pointing at Tom. “And while you’re at it, ask him why they brought chainsaws.”
Tom felt the crowd shift its collective focus on him. It was like being caught in the all-seeing glare of a lighthouse. He took a shuffling step back, heel catching the webbing at the bottom of his costume.
“I’m sorry,” Tom said. “But it appears plans are moving quicker than anybody expected.”
Collective dismay rang out from the villagers, a great worried crowd facing Tom, where moments ago there had been happy revelers ready for a day’s walking.
“What about your offer, McCrae? I suppose that was all smoke and mirrors too?”
“Far from it, Joe…”
The farmer snorted.
“You’ve got to believe me, I made that offer in good faith. My…my superiors rode roughshod over that, and I’m sorry. I’m just…”
“Just doing your job, is that it, Tom?”
It was Holly. She had tears in her eyes.
“How can you let them cut the trees? They’re older than any of us.”
Her voice was heavy with sadness.
“New life will grow in their stead, new opportunities for Douglass; for your community.”
Tom tried to sound convincing, but could see the crowd was already against him. Rory, looking furious, broke ranks and strode up to Tom, towering over him.
“Take that off,” he yelled. “You have no right to wear it!”
The lad tore at Tom’s costume, ripping the eyeholes open to form a hole the size of a bowling ball. Tom’s head was exposed to the freezing air and he felt suddenly naked and afraid for his life. Rory clenched his massive fist, still clutching the costume in his other. Tom staggered backwards, avoiding the blow in part but still feeling the impact of the boy’s knuckles on his chin. He fell to the ground, mouth filling with the salt-metal tang of blood, and scrambled backwards on his hands and feet. The ground felt cold and hard beneath him. Getting to his feet, Tom made for a break in the throng and ran.
He dashed through the surprised ranks of locals, tourists and protestors and emerged on the other side near to Joe’s tractor. For a crazed instant, he considered jumping up into the cab and driving away—but even if the keys were still in the ignition, he couldn’t drive. Skirting the front of the behemoth of a vehicle, he ran alongside its trailer and out onto the road. Someone cried out behind him, maybe Holly, and he saw a car hurtling towards him. He froze, his forward momentum reversing through his body until he tilted backwards on his heels and toppled onto his ass. The car skidded to a halt, narrowly avoiding hitting him.
Tom looked up and saw Officer Travis looking out the passenger window, directly at him.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Officer, you’ve got to help me, these people want my blood.”
“Calm down, Mr. McCrae, just come with us, you’ll be all right now.”
Tom’s eyes darted in the direction of the driver’s door. Iver was climbing out of the vehicle, slow and stealthy like a long, pale snake. Even in the foggy gloom, Tom spied the glint of a pair of handcuffs in Iver’s hands.
“What do you want with me?”
Tom glanced over his shoulder. The Greysons and their protestors were closing in behind him; a small army of malcontents.
“Just a few questions, Mr. McCrae. Your employer contacted us with a matter of grave importance.”
“You found Dieter? Where is he? Is he okay?”
“I’m afraid the investigation regarding your colleague is ongoing, Mr. McCrae. Our questions are regarding another of your colleagues…a Mr. Monroe.”
“Monroe? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Someone reported seeing you up on the mezzanine floor of your office with Mr. Monroe, just seconds before he took a tumble off the balcony.”
“No, I…I was up there alone, after a meeting. I never even spoke to him until…”
Tom’s aching brain reeled. Mathers had wanted him to stay put in the village so the cops could pick him up, take him in. The bastard had never intended for Tom to meet with the logging detail. Was this going to be it; the frame-up job to protect the good name of the company? He knew his corporate masters were ruthless; such tactics were their stock-in-trade. But trying to pin Monroe’s suicide on him somehow? That marked a new low. All because of the scandalous snapshot of him and Holly in the woods. All because he had been so weak; easy game.
“I have to ask you to come quietly, and anything you say to us may be taken down as evidence against you…”
Iver had almost sidled his way around the front of the car. Tom could feel the sheer weight of numbers bearing down on him, like a giant breath at the back of his neck. Travis was creeping nearer to him, his open hands held out in supplication.
Tom looked around, frantic. He was trapped like a lab rat in a maze. He crouched low, aimed his shoulder at Travis and barreled toward him, knocking the policeman off his feet and into Iver. The two were a tangle of limbs next to their aged police car. Tom sprang onto the hood of the vehicle, then its roof. Feeling the metal bodywork buckle beneath his feet, Tom leaped off the other side of the vehicle and sprinted for the forest.
As he crashed into the cover of the trees, he heard a chorus of outraged voices behind him. Without pausing for breath, he ran on, his cloak of moss green camouflaging him from his pursuers.
But for how long, he could not be sure.
The freezing fog that, even now, was turning the sweat that covered Tom’s body to ice gave him the advantage he needed. Every sound was swallowed up by the fog’s dense blanket and visibility had been reduced to barely a few feet. Tom’s pursuers were still out there, hunting him, but the fog had disorientated them into smaller groups. As he pushed on through the forest, Tom could hear their muffled cries as protestors and villagers alike tried to navigate their passage through the trees behind him. He was grateful, too, for MacGregor’s ridiculous costume. If it came to it and his trackers got too close, he would simply lie down in the leaf litter and pray for them to pass without noticing him. He had to keep moving to avoid testing that theory—such a dangerous ruse would have to be his very last resort.
Running for what felt like an age had caused his leg muscles to start burning. His entire body surged with the adrenaline heat of his fear and the chill bite of the weath
er that seeped into his every pore. Tom’s pulse pounded out of synch with his desire to flee and he felt his rib cage might burst under the stress being visited upon it by his struggling heart and lungs. He did not dare stop, but instead slowed his pace more out of necessity than design. Panting, he felt the freezing-cold damp air scratching his raw throat with each breath. Careering through the trees, now unable to keep much more than a limping pace, he heard a new sound like the buzzing of giant insects. The chill mist distorted the sound into a muffled drone. As the wind changed direction, it sounded for a moment like the noise was emanating from the confines of a great hive. The wind dropped, making the fog vapor swirl—and the sound clarified.
Chainsaws.
The logging team was somewhere up ahead. Tom clenched his fists until his fingernails almost drew blood from his palms and ran on, toward the sound.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The unholy cacophony of chainsaws rang out across the ancient woodland. Tom saw shafts of yellow light up ahead, slicing through the patches of darkness between the trees. Work lights, erected by the logging teamsters so they could better perform their function in the gloom of the freezing fog.
Springy bracken, twigs and soft earth gave way to the crunch of gravel and Tom realized he was now wandering the path leading the way to Electricity Substation D-5. As he neared the dark shapes of the railings, their half-dead captive trees on the other side, Tom halted in his tracks. Someone—or something—had flitted across the path no more than ten feet from where he stood. Rooted to the spot, he heard voices and saw a couple more shapes cross from the trees to the substation’s perimeter fence.
Tom crept back to the side of the path and into the tree cover. He needed to get closer to see what he was up against. He took a few steps farther, behind the trees, parallel with the path. A twig snapped beneath his foot and he froze in his tracks. One of the figures turned and looked around. From his vantage point, he could now recognize Bill’s face. With him were a couple of the heavier-set protesters; muscle he had brought along with him. The rat-faced protester looked straight at Tom. His heart pounded and he felt sure he had been spotted. But then Bill looked away and Tom exhaled a quiet, nervous breath. The Jack costume had camouflaged him well and he had gone undetected, for now. No chance but to stay absolutely still and wait for the protesters to do whatever they were doing before he could move on.
Peering through the mist and gloom, Tom saw one of the protesters clamber up onto the shoulders of the other. Anchoring himself using the railings, the man at the top then reached down with one hand to grab a hold of Bill and help him up.
Bill then walked up the railings, almost horizontal by the time he got to the top. With a lot of grunting, and a little cursing, the two other men helped push Bill forwards until the very top of the fence was level with his waist. Bill slipped out of his jacket and used it to cushion the sharp, lethal points of the railings. Over he clambered, sliding and then jumping to the ground on the other side. His cohorts stood waiting for him, separated from Bill by the railings.
Tom listened intently for a clue as to what was happening on the other side of the fence. He didn’t have to wait long. There was a hammer-like banging sound, followed by a crash. Bill must have broken into the main power complex. Even at this distance Tom could feel the hum of electricity in the ground beneath his feet. Bill was certifiably insane to go in there; he risked being fried alive any moment.
The next sound Tom heard was a whoop of victory, and then he saw flames rising from within the compound. Bill had set a fire. With more whoops of celebration, he saw Bill return to the perimeter fence. His men pushed their arms through the railings, folding them on the other side to form crude human steps. Bill grabbed the railings and started to pull himself up, his feet now resting on the arms of the guy at the bottom.
Then another figure appeared from the swirling gloom. It was a tall man, dressed in a long coat. Tom could not see his face for the figure had his back to him but, even before he spied the axe in the man’s hand, he knew in the yawning pit of his stomach that it was his stalker.
Without warning, the figure swung his axe into the lower spine of the man at the bottom of the human ladder. The man howled in agony and dropped to his knees, toppling the other who was stood on his shoulders. As the second of Bill’s helpers hit the ground, their attacker lifted the axe again and sank its heavy blade into the center of his skull. Tom saw Bill’s jaw drop as he looked on at his fallen comrades in abject horror. The figure regarded him for a moment, as though measuring the level of threat posed by Bill.
But Bill was now trapped behind the high railings, with the fire that he had just started growing into an inferno behind him. The axe-wielding figure lingered for a moment then took off down the path in the direction of the logging team.
Tom watched, wide-eyed and unable to move from fear of being spotted by the axman. But as the fire grew, Tom knew he had to help. He lumbered from the tree cover, his leafy costume snagging on branches as he went. Tom glanced in the direction of the attacker and saw only swirling smoke. He dashed over to the high railings.
Desperate, Bill was trying to clamber up the fence but his feet had no purchase on the slippery metal surface now his helpers had been slain.
“Climb up on this!”
Tom pointed at the yellow Warning: Danger of Death sign affixed to the railings. If Bill could get a foothold on the sign, he might be able to clamber the rest of the way with Tom’s help.
Bill backed up as far as the smoke and flames would allow him and took a running jump at the railings. Holding on for dear life, he clambered up, crying out as the metal railings bit into the palms of his hands. His feet found the top of the sign and he rested for a moment, peering up at the top of the fence. He still had a way to go.
“Help me!”
Tom ran to where Bill was clinging on. The warning sign was at waist height. If he could clamber onto it on the other side, the same way Bill had, maybe he could help him with a leg up the same way his now-dead colleagues had. He had to try; the flames in the main building were growing fiercer by the second.
Clutching the railings, Tom pulled himself up and swung his body sideways until he got a foothold on the sign. There was a sharp cracking sound. The combined weight of two men had ripped the sign from the railings.
Tom fell too. He hit the ground with a painful jolt to his tailbone and the world before him exploded. Brick, metal and glass erupted in a ball of flame as the substation complex went up like a roman candle. Bill fell from the fence and toppled backwards into the fire and chaos that were of his own making. The angry orange light from the fire flickered through the mist. Bill’s agonized screams amidst the inferno were so loud they almost drowned out the sound of the chainsaws that still echoed on throughout the forest. Tom approached the railings again but the heat was so intense he could feel it burning the hairs from his face.
Bill’s screams ended, cut off by a fury of flames.
As the fire grew before Tom’s eyes, he found his legs again and ran down the path the same way the figure had gone. He could not fathom the actions of Bill and his two henchmen; what kind of environmental protester would set a fire at a substation in the midst of dense woodland? Whatever the motivation, their reckless actions had cost them their lives—two at the sharp axe blade of their killer, and one by his own hand.
As he neared the end of the path, Tom could see the beams of the overhead work lights, yellow as sunlight. Somewhere up ahead, there was a crashing sound as a tall fir tree toppled. The teamsters were cutting their way through the trees lining the little access road no doubt, in order to extend it all the way up to the power substation. Tom glanced behind him at the flicker of flames, diffused by the mist and smoke. It could be that the loggers could not yet see the fire through the glare of the work lights—each of which was pumping out twenty kilowatts of artificial daylight. Tom had to warn them. Even on a damp day, the threat of a forest fire loomed like a shadow. Pushing on
through the trees, he focused on the loudest chainsaw sound he could hear and aimed for it. Then, two things happened. The first was that the work lights dipped all of a sudden, then went out completely, plunging the woods into near darkness. The second was that the chainsaws stopped. One by one, their engines ceased, giving way to an increasing and eerie silence after all the hellish noise.
Tom could hear his heart beating in his eardrums. He ran on, slower now due to the gloom, and heard the first of the screams before he had even broken the tree line. With every stopped chainsaw, a new scream rose up on the misty air. Each cry was a raw, aching sound, telegraphing agony through the canopy of trees like a warning. Clutching his hands to his ears, Tom stumbled on, tripping over roots and fallen branches and tumbling into a clearing. The low hum of a chainsaw growled like a tiger. Searching out the source of the noise, Tom could just about make out the shape of a man lying on the forest floor. Creeping closer, Tom could see the man was clutching his leg. His foot was ankle deep in a large metal trap. Rusted, angry jaws had closed around the man’s leg. Arterial blood was spurting from the wound like red wine from a broken barrel. The man, a logger dressed in a fluorescent yellow tabard over muddy work clothes, was trying to reach the chainsaw lying next to him. He looked petrified, and hadn’t even noticed Tom standing nearby, dressed in his suit of green leaves. The man’s twitching fingers gripped the handle of the chainsaw and he pulled it toward him, lifting it now with both hands.
No!
Tom tried to cry out, to try and intervene—to stop the logger from performing the desperate act he knew he was about to perform. But no sound would come from Tom’s throat. The man revved the chainsaw and drove it into his trapped leg, slicing through the already shattered and twisted bone all the way through into the blood-drenched ground beneath. The leaves on Tom’s costume were spattered with the man’s blood which, now that his leg had been severed, was spurting out thick and fast. The logger dropped the chainsaw to the ground and tried to drag himself across the forest floor.