‘Delilah!’ he cried.
And suddenly he was jerked off his feet, pulled upright as the crane rose and the rope tightened. His yells cut off.
She was only metres away now, but hands were grabbing her from all sides, pulling her down to her knees. She scratched at a face. She kicked. She bit without seeing what and felt skin and muscle. She bit harder, there was a yell, the taste of blood and then stars as someone hit her. She staggered, dazed. She could see Charlie and she screamed for him. With everything she had, she struggled against the ropes they were now binding her with, against the hands of the monsters holding her in place, monsters all the worse because they looked so human – the boy with the acne scars, the older man in the hat, the one who never blinked as he chewed his cigarette. It didn’t matter.
‘We found him running for the servo.’ That was a woman’s voice, ringing out among the cars. ‘He left you all alone, Maggie. Only took a few hits for him to tell us all about you. How he helped you. Then a few more hits for him to beg us to take you away. To let him and his little sweetheart leave. They won’t get to leave though, Maggie. And that’s on you.’
A foul-tasting cloth was shoved in Delilah’s mouth, cutting off her attempt to cry out. A mechanical whirring came from the truck. The crane went higher. Charlie was gasping and writhing. His mouth was open, face red, eyes bulging.
‘Watch, Maggie,’ the woman called. ‘Watch him hang. The boy who patched you up.’
Charlie’s whole body jerked with futile desperation.
‘This is your chance,’ the woman said. ‘Come out and we’ll let him down. He saved you. Return the favour.’
Delilah looked to the front of the house. There was no movement.
A terrible wheezing was coming from Charlie now. His eyes had rolled back in his head.
‘Please!’ Delilah tried to say. It came out as a muffled groan. She didn’t know who she was asking and she didn’t care. Someone could stop this. Someone could save her Charlie. They could take her. They could do what they wanted to her. But Charlie—
‘Last chance!’ the woman called.
The house remained silent.
Charlie spasmed and was still. His body swayed slightly in the breeze.
All strength went out of Delilah. She was limp, held up by the men surrounding her. She couldn’t look away from Charlie.
A man beside her came in close. ‘God save the queen, eh? Cos nothing could have saved that sorry cunt.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The moment Delilah had run, Frank had started back for the quad bike. He’d glimpsed, for just a second, the figures coming. Even from that distance, they had seen him. He had to get clear. Had to find a way to save Allie.
He vaulted onto the quad bike and gunned the engine. It sputtered. He swore. Of all times. The men were closer now. He could see their guns. Behind them, Delilah was being dragged towards the cars. But that hadn’t stopped the three coming for him. Every second brought them closer and the quad still wasn’t starting.
He climbed over it and ran.
The crack of gunfire. A bullet whistled past his ear.
He flew forwards, landed on his forearms and rolled. He saw the stars, fringed with the swaying of the long grass. The footsteps slowed from a run to a walk. He knew what they would see. Grass in every direction, tall and moving with the low wind. He could be anywhere among it.
Frank lifted the gun in front of his face. Six shots left. Each one might as well be a signal, drawing them all to him. And each second he waited . . .
He rolled onto his front. There was a ditch, just ahead. One arm after another, he crawled for it, dropping quickly into the dry, cracked depression in the dirt, tufts of prickly grass forcing their way out of the rock-hard soil. He turned, to face where he had come from. Moved forwards onto his knees. Found that place again. Let everything else recede.
They attacked my home. Threatened my granddaughter. Tried to burn me alive.
Footsteps neared him.
Frank sprang, keeping low. He collided with the man’s midsection, slamming him down into the grass. A cry, cut off as Frank’s left hand closed around his throat. They hit the ground together, Frank lifted his pistol by the barrel and hit him hard in the face again and again until something gave way, he heard the crack of bone and the man stopped struggling.
Frank rolled off him. Waited for the rustling of fast-approaching attackers. His hands were slick with blood. Some had splattered his face as well. He tried not to look at the face of the person he had just killed.
Instead, his eyes moved down to the man’s leg. To the hunting knife strapped there.
Frank reached out and took hold of the hilt. He started to draw it and as he did he heard movement right above his head. He shifted just as the shot was fired; the man had been crawling commando-style through the grass, keeping low just like Frank. The gun had been metres from his head. Ringing filled his ears. On base instinct, Frank jumped to his feet and ran head-on towards the sound. He heard another gunshot, from nearby, but there was no impact.
The man lying hidden in the grass lifted his rifle but Frank’s boot hit the barrel and sent it off target. The man moved with it, exposing his front. Frank’s foot came down hard on his diaphragm. He gasped, winded. He was young. His eyes were scared. Frank buried the knife in his chest.
The boy did not die fast. Frank had been hoping to hit the heart but the rasping screams and gurgle of blood told him he had punctured a lung. Frank held the knife. Held it and made himself meet those eyes and remembered everything this person would have done to him. That this person deserved what was happening. He wrenched the knife free, then stabbed again, aiming for the heart. His hands were completely red now. His clothes soaked and sticky. He went to stand before remembering why he shouldn’t. There was another one, somewhere.
He paused, listening to the night. He could hear shouts from the house.
He had to get back.
Ahead, the grass moved.
The man lunged. Frank brought the knife up, but the man was fast. Too fast. He had Frank’s wrist, forcing it back into the ground, pulling Frank with him. A blow took Frank in the temple. His vision swam. The fist came again and again. Frank wasn’t sure where he was anymore. The knife was pulled from his grasp. The hand was around his neck. Somewhere, distantly, he knew he’d had a gun. But he didn’t anymore.
Allie was in the house.
His hands came up. Found the sides of the man’s head. His thumbs found eyes and pressed. The man screamed. Frank’s thumbs dug deeper until more blood doused his hands. Then he was on top of his blinded enemy and he couldn’t see, but he could feel, and what he felt was his fist striking the man’s face, again and again.
Greg tried not to look at the gently swaying body as the ute backed out of the light. But he didn’t know where else he could look. He had to stop himself from turning towards the roadhouse. They were distracted. There probably wouldn’t be a better time to run than now.
Delilah had been shoved out of the way and was propped up against a nearby ute, her hands and feet bound. Greg didn’t want to look at her either. She hadn’t taken her haunted, bloodshot eyes off Charlie for a second. A dirty rag gagged her. Greg had a strong inclination to pull it off, but he didn’t dare.
He flinched as Trent passed him, headed for Delilah. The tall man put his hands on his hips, considering her. Her gaze remained locked on Charlie’s hanging body.
‘What the fuck happened back at the roadhouse?’ Trent said.
Delilah didn’t react. Trent knelt and pulled the gag roughly from her mouth. She coughed, spluttered, but her eyes didn’t leave Charlie. Trent remained kneeling. He looked her up and down. He sniffed. ‘Burnt petrol.’ He looked in the direction of the roadhouse. ‘So. You and the old fella lit the joint up, did you? Boom.’ He clapped in Delilah’s face. She didn’t flinch. Trent grabbed a handful of her hair and twisted. She gasped. She met his glare. Trent leaned in close. ‘Is that what happened?’
<
br /> Delilah looked at him for a long time. Her eyes moved across his face. It was impossible to read what was in them. It could have been nothing. Greg just hoped it didn’t mean Delilah was about to do something really stupid.
‘Cut him down,’ she said finally. Her voice was hollow.
‘Nah,’ Trent said. ‘You don’t give orders. You don’t get requests. The only thing stopping me from ripping your throat out with my bare hands is what you have to tell me. So get telling.’
‘Cut him down,’ Delilah said.
Greg looked over his shoulder. The car had turned around again. Charlie’s body was little more than a shape in the dark. Greg wished he didn’t feel such ugly relief at that.
‘Look,’ Trent said. ‘It’s as simple as this, because I’m well past bullshitting. You’re gonna die tonight. This whole mess has gone too fucking far, and all of you involved are dead. That’s the way it’s gotta be now. But what you do have control over – and listen carefully here cos right now it’s the only mercy you’re gonna get – is how you go. I can put a bullet in your head right now and you’re off to join your fella in a second. Flash of light and everything goes black. That’s the way this can go if you do what I say.’ He paused.
Delilah didn’t move. She just looked at him.
‘Or,’ Trent said, ‘we can do things the fun way. We can take you back to our town. Put a hook through your shoulder, dangle you in the shed, let you bleed. We know right where to stick it to keep you alive but fuck up your tendons. You won’t be able to get loose. But you’ll last. You’ll last and while you do, we’ll have our fun. You’ll belong to us. We can all do whatever we want to you. Personally, I’ll be breaking your fingers. One by one.’ He raised his own and wriggled them as if to underline the point. ‘Every joint. ’Course, I’ll wait between each one. Wait for the pain to go away. Pain doesn’t do its job when you’re doubling up. Then, when all your fingers are twisted and broken, I’ll start cutting parts off. That threat holds a little more weight with the fellas, true, but that’s the great thing about taking your time. You can always think of new things. And I will. I can be a very imaginative bastard when I want to be.’
Silence. Greg felt like his insides had melted away, leaving an empty, echoing void.
‘Cut him down,’ Delilah said.
Trent stood. ‘Persistent little bitch, aren’t you? Alright. I can respect that.’ He turned. ‘Boys. Cut the Pom down.’
There was movement around the lifeless shape that had once been Charlie. His body was being lowered into a huddle of people. Greg stared and as he did, realisation rose like bile and he shook his head, wanting to do something, do anything to make this nightmare stop, but he could only stand stock still as a hoot of delight filled the air and one of the younger guys hurried away from the group, something in his arms, something that he threw into Delilah’s lap as laughter that sounded like rusty knives filled the night.
Greg covered his ears as she screamed. As she tried to stand, as she pulled against her ropes, eyes wide and the screams never ending as Charlie’s blank-eyed head stared up at her.
Frank rolled off the dead man. His breathing was fast and shallow. If faraway sounds came from the house, he couldn’t hear them. His body couldn’t move. He had never felt so tired.
Allie. Think of Allie.
Instead, his thoughts slipped away from his grasp, back to a darkened clearing, illuminated by a pathetic beam of torchlight. Something twitched and whimpered in the middle of it, something lying in a pool of spreading blood. Frank had approached, gun still raised. A deer. A big one. He lowered the rifle. He’d hit it in the flank. He reached for his knife as the animal’s head twisted up to look at him.
He had been rooted to the spot. By what, he didn’t know. But the animal’s wide, scared eye had found him as its bloody mouth struggled for air. Then that sound again, that low, desperate, uncomprehending moan of a beast that didn’t know why this had happened to it, that didn’t even know it was going to die, but knew through pain and terror and the sudden inability to move that something bad was happening. Something he had done.
Frank had dropped the gun. He got closer. His heart picked up. He fell to his knees. The animal’s head drooped, but the eye was still fixed on him. He almost wished it had looked accusing. But it didn’t. It didn’t understand accusation.
He reached out and touched its head. Just moments ago he had pulled the trigger and yelled out in thrilled victory as he heard the thump of the animal going down. He’d moved through the dark, ready to tell Wayne and the boys what he’d scored. Ready to drink and pass out in the tent and get home whenever the fuck he wanted tomorrow, Amber’s complaints be damned.
He lifted the deer’s head. It was heavy. A dead weight, although the animal still feebly moved. He pulled it into his lap. There were tears in his eyes. When was the last time he had cried? He’d felt like it often enough. A father at seventeen, all his old friends gone, stuck in a shithole small town with a girl he’d had a summer fling with and a son he’d never wanted. And then the fury. The fury that made him hurt others because maybe then he wouldn’t feel this way himself. He held the deer as it died and he let himself cry.
And far away, years away, he heard screams.
A big man approached from the dark behind the cars. He held a rifle with a scope on it. He even loomed over Trent. His head was bald and his eyes were sunken in a lined face. He looked, Greg thought, too old to be here. But the outline of his muscled torso under his shirt belied that.
Trent turned away from Delilah, crumpled over Charlie’s head. ‘Mick. I need you to sort something for me.’
The big man, Mick, said nothing. Just waited.
Trent nodded over his shoulder. ‘The old fella has fucked off into the long grass. Some of the boys went after him, but they haven’t come back. Which probably means the old bastard got them.’ His lip curled in angry disgust. ‘I can’t be worrying about this shit on two fronts. I want you to find him and bring me his head. We need to get the bitch clear of the house, kill the little girl and be home before morning. Right about now, you’re the only one who I know isn’t going to royally fuck things up.’
Mick went to move. Trent grabbed him by the arm.
‘Go low,’ he said. ‘Move through the grass. Keep your scope forwards. You see movement, fire. And if you can, make it hurt.’
‘Don’t tell me my business, Trent,’ Mick grunted.
And he was gone, moving through the grass.
Trent clicked at one of the nearby young men, then pointed at Delilah. ‘Get her out of my sight. Might find a use for her. If not, she’s all yours.’
Frank sat up, slowly. The screams had subsided. Not Allie. He could work out that much. Nor had they come from inside, but that wasn’t nearly a relief.
He found the gun and the knife. He tried to concentrate on standing. He felt like he’d been through a meat grinder. Adrenaline was ebbing and his whole body told him to lie back down, to close his eyes and drift away to somewhere where none of this was happening. But it was happening and all that was left was for him to deal with the fact, however he could. He had to get back to the house, somehow. He had to protect his granddaughter until the very last. That was his job.
He made his limbs comply. He pulled himself forwards into a crouch. He peered through the swaying grass. The house looked very far off, its presence given away only by the lights. He had the element of surprise and that was not nothing. He stood.
He felt the impact and heard the gunshot only after he’d already fallen. He was face down. The bullet had sent him to the ground. Then the pain, spreading from his left shoulder – a wildfire that made rational thought impossible. He tried to move but it was too much. Fuck that. He rolled over. He was gasping, struggling for air; the pain had taken it all out of him. Hot alternated with cold. He looked at his shoulder. He couldn’t see the entry wound. There was too much blood. He had lost grip of the gun and the knife. Something flickered across his vision. He tr
ied to sit up as a shape filled the sky above him. A man, holding a hunting rifle. Wayne.
‘You didn’t make it hard for me.’
Not Wayne. The voice was deep, slow, measured. Old. The man crouched. His dark eyes moved over Frank, evaluating.
‘You’ve done alright.’ There was no inflection in his tones. Just statement of fact. ‘You’ve killed a few of us now. More than that girl, probably. But Trent’s Trent. When his sight is set on something, it’s set.’ He shifted closer. There was something almost clinical about his expression. ‘Does it hurt?’
It did. Frank wasn’t about to say so.
The man reached over and pushed his finger into the bullet wound.
Frank screamed. His vision went white, momentarily.
‘Thought so.’ The man withdrew it. ‘Straight through. The shock’s the killer.’ He lifted something else in front of Frank. A long, curved knife. ‘Usually I’d take my time. But we don’t have much of that left. So I’m going to cut your head off and bring it back to Trent.’ He touched the edge of the blade against Frank’s throat. ‘Almost a shame. The way you handled yourself. You’d fit right in. You knew exactly what to do. And how to do it. You wasted your life out here when you could have had a home.’
He grabbed Frank by the neck and pulled him sharply upwards. Frank didn’t even feel it. His right hand, tugged forwards, landed on something hard.
The man looked him in the eyes. Pressed the knife deeper. Frank felt his skin break.
‘Should have handed Maggie over when you had the chance,’ the man said.
Frank’s hand tightened around the hilt of the knife.
‘Now your little girl will burn with her.’
Frank swung the knife up. It plunged straight into the man’s temple, burying deep. His eyes went wide. His mouth fell open. A strange, strangled noise came out.
Frank pushed the knife harder. Blood spurted over his hand.
‘No.’ Frank’s voice was hard.
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