Dead? Couldn't tell from here. Had no idea where the arrow came from or who shot it. From that angle, it could have been meant for me.
Keeping low, I circled warily around to Landry's crumpled form, coming up behind him. Ready to bolt at the slightest move. But he wasn't moving. Wasn't breathing, either. I reached carefully around for the service revolver still in his fist.
"Leave it,” Sinclair said, humming his wheelchair into the clearing. His crossbow was back in its mount, loaded, and centered on my chest. Beyond him I could see the crumpled form of his sister, cowering against a tree, clutching her arm.
"What happened?” I asked, rising slowly.
"Dana tried to pick up the shotgun. I ran her down with the chair. I think her arm is broken. And you've got some explaining to do. Why did you come out here? With that gun?"
I thought about lying to him. Something in his eyes told me not to.
"I came to have it out with you. To kill you, if it came down to it."
"Over your dog?” he said, disbelieving. “I told you I didn't shoot it."
"It was more than that. Landry and your sister were planning to get rid of you and lay the blame on me. To make it work, they vandalized my home, and one of them, probably Landry, fired a crossbow bolt through my den window. It could have killed somebody. And it was dusted with blue chalk."
"Dana, most likely. I taught her to shoot a few years ago. Thought hunting might make her more self-sufficient. It didn't, though. Some people don't have what it takes to cut it in this world."
I couldn't tell if the irony was intended or not. “What happens now?"
"A hunting accident,” Chan said coolly. “Poor Jerry stumbled into my line of fire, got himself killed. His family will collect a nice settlement, the department will avoid a scandal, and my sister will stay out of jail."
"She meant to kill you."
"She's still my sister. My responsibility."
"What about me?"
"Nothing about you, Dylan. You were never here. Any problem with that?"
"No. I've got troubles of my own."
"So I understand. I made a few calls about you after your visit the other day. I'm sorry about your wife."
"So am I. I have to get back. Do you ... need anything from me?"
"Take your gun with you, it'll save me some explaining. Do you have a cell phone with you?"
"No."
"Neither do I. I hate the damned things, especially in the forest. Ruins the atmosphere. When you get home, would you call nine-one-one for me? Just tell them where I am. I'll take it from there."
"You can't really believe you'll get away with this."
"Sure I will. I can handle Stan Wolinski, and as for the rest, well, I'm used to coping. Been doing it all my life. No choice. When I tell people I'm not really handicapped, I'm dead serious."
"Yes,” I said. “I can see that now."
Retrieving my gun, I headed out, half expecting a crossbow bolt in the back with every step. But it didn't happen.
When I glanced back, Sinclair was where I left him. A half-man with withered legs and barely functional arms, sitting in his chair ten yards from the corpse of a man he'd killed. Talking quietly to his sister, enjoying the afternoon sun.
He was right. Despite the chair, he really wasn't handicapped. He could cope.
And if he could do it, maybe I could too.
I was losing my wife. But not forever. I believe in a hereafter. I will see her again.
Meanwhile, I have our sons to raise. And maybe some growing up to do myself.
As I left the woods, I noticed an eagle circling high in the autumn sky. Free and magnificent. A pure predator. Like Chan Sinclair. Or like most of us when you rough away the veneer of civility.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. As I scanned the trail ahead, my vision seemed sharper, my senses more alert. For danger. Or prey.
Perhaps it will fade after a few weeks back in the classroom. If I let it. But I don't think I will.
Someday soon, I'm going to bring my sons out here, to show them the countryside their mother loved so much.
And I'll teach them to hunt. With a camera or a weapon, their choice. I'll teach them to move silently, and listen. And track. And show them whitetail bucks battling over turf. And foxes stalking rabbits, and soaring hawks scanning the fields for mice.
I'll show them how the world really works.
So that later on, if they happen to meet Hitler? They'll know exactly what to do.
(c)2007 by Doug Allyn
[Back to Table of Contents]
A BRIDGE TOO FAR by Zoë Sharp
Zoë Sharp's writing career took off in 2001 with the publication, in the U.K., of the first book in her Charlie Fox series, Killer Instinct. The series was later picked up by St. Martin's Press in the U.S., with the sixth book, Second Shot, due in September ‘07. Ms. Sharp describes Fox, who appears in this story, as “tough, self-sufficient ... with a slightly shady military background..."
I watched with a kind of horrified fascination as the boy climbed onto the narrow parapet. Below his feet the elongated brick arches of the old viaduct stretched, so I'd been told, exactly one hundred and twenty-three feet to the ground. He balanced on the crumbling brickwork at the edge, casual and unconcerned.
My God, I thought, he's going to do it. He's actually going to jump.
"Don't prat around, Adam,” one of the others said. I was still sorting out their names. Paul, that was it. He was a medical student, tall and bony with a long, almost Roman nose. “If you're going to do it, do it, or let someone else have their turn."
"Now, now,” Adam said, wagging a finger, “don't be bitchy."
Paul glared at him, took a step forward, but the cool blond-haired girl, Diana, put a hand on his arm.
"Leave him alone, Paul,” Diana said, and there was a faint snap to her voice. She'd been introduced as Adam's girlfriend, so I suppose she had the right to be protective. “He'll jump when he's ready. You'll have your chance to impress the newbies."
She flicked unfriendly eyes in my direction as she spoke, but I didn't rise to it. Heights didn't draw or repel me the way I knew they did with most people, but that didn't mean I was inclined to throw myself off a bridge to prove my courage. I'd already done that at enough other times, in enough other places.
Beside me, my friend Sam muttered under his breath, “Okay, I'm impressed. No way are you getting me up there."
I grinned at him. It was Sam who'd told me about the local Dangerous Sports Club, who trekked out to this disused viaduct in the middle of nowhere. There they tied one end of a rope to the far parapet and brought the other end up underneath between the supports before tying it round their ankles.
And then they jumped.
The idea, as Sam explained it, was to propel yourself outwards as though diving off a cliff and trying to avoid the rocks below. I suspected this wasn't an analogy with resonance for either of us, but the technique ensured that when you reached the end of your tether, so to speak, the slack was taken up progressively and you swung backwards and forwards under the bridge in a graceful arc.
Jump straight down, however, and you would be jerked to a stop hard enough to break your spine. They used modern climbing rope with a fair amount of give in it, but it was far from the elastic gear required by the bungee jumper. That was for wimps.
Sam knew the group's leader, Adam Lane, from the nearby university, where Sam was something incomprehensible to do with computers and Adam was the star of the track-and-field team. He was one of those magnetic golden boys who breezed effortlessly through life, always looking for a greater challenge, something to set their heartbeats racing. And for Adam, the unlikely pastime of bridge swinging, it seemed, was it.
I hadn't believed Sam's description of the activity and had made the mistake of expressing my scepticism out loud. So here I was on a bright but surprisingly nippy Sunday morning in May, waiting for the first of these lunatics to launch himself into the abyss.
Now, though, Adam put his hands on his hips and breathed in deep, looking around with a certain intensity at the landscape. His stance, up there on the edge of the precipice, was almost a pose.
We were halfway across the valley floor, in splendid isolation. The tracks to this Brunel masterpiece had been long since ripped up and carted away. The only clue to their existence was the footpath that led across the fields from the lay-by on the road where Sam and I had left our motorbikes. The other cars there, I guessed, belonged to Adam and his friends.
The view from the viaduct was stunning, the sides of the valley curving away at either side as though seen through a fish-eye lens. It was still early, so that the last of the dawn mist clung to the dips and hollows, and it was quiet enough to hear the world turning.
"Hello there! Not starting without us, are you?” called a girl's cheery voice, putting a scatter of crows to flight, breaking the spell. A flash of annoyance passed across Adam's handsome features.
A young couple was approaching. Like the other three DSC members, they were wearing high-tech outdoor clothing—lightweight trousers you can wash and dry in thirty seconds, and lairy-coloured fleeces.
The boy was short and muscular, a look emphasised by the fact he'd turned his coat collar up against the chill, giving him no neck to speak of. He tramped onto the bridge and almost threw his rucksack down with the others.
"What's the matter, Michael?” Adam said, his voice a lazy taunt. “Get out of bed on the wrong side?"
The newcomer gave him a single vicious look and said nothing.
The girl was shorter and plumper than Diana. Her gaze flicked nervously from one to the other, latching onto the rope already secured round Adam's legs as if glad of the distraction. “Oh, Adam, you're never jumping today, are you?” she cried. “I didn't think you were supposed to—"
"I'm perfectly okay, Izzy darling,” Adam drawled. His eyes shifted meaningfully towards Sam and me, then back again.
Izzy opened her mouth to speak, closing it again with a snap as she caught on. Her pale complexion bloomed into sudden pink across her cheekbones and she bent to fuss with her own rucksack. She drew out a stainless-steel flask and held it up like an offering. “I brought coffee."
"How very thoughtful of you, Izzy dear,” Diana said, speaking down her well-bred nose at the other girl. “You always were so very accommodating."
Izzy's colour deepened. “I'm not sure there's enough for everybody,” she went on, dogged. She nodded apologetically to us. “No one told me there'd be new people coming. I'm Izzy, by the way."
"Sam Pickering,” Sam put in, “and this is Charlie Fox."
Izzy smiled a little shyly, then a sudden thought struck her. “You're not thinking of joining, are you?” she said in an anxious tone. “Only, it's not certain we're going to carry on with the club for much longer."
"'Course we are,” Michael said brusquely, raising his dark, stubbled chin out of his collar for the first time. “Just because Adam has to give up, no reason for the rest of us to pack it in. We'll manage without him."
The others seemed to hold their breath while they checked Adam's response to this dismissive declaration, but he seemed to have lost interest in the squabbles of lesser mortals. He continued to stand on the parapet, untroubled by the yawning drop below him, staring into the middle distance like an ocean sailor.
"That's not the only reason we might have to stop,” the tall bony boy, Paul, said. “In fact, here comes another right now."
He nodded across the far side of the field. We all turned, and I noticed for the first time that a man on a red Honda quad bike was making a beeline for us across the dewy grass.
"Oh shit,” Michael muttered. “Wacko Jacko. That's all we need."
"Who is he?” Sam asked, watching the purposeful way the quad was bearing down on us.
"He's the local farmer,” Paul explained. “He owns all the land round here and he's dead against us using the viaduct, but it's a public right of way and legally he can't stop us. That doesn't stop the old bugger coming and giving us a hard time every Sunday."
"Mr. Jackson's a strict Methodist, you see,” Izzy said quietly as the quad drew nearer. “It's not trespassing that's the problem—it's the fact that when the boys jump, well, they do tend to swear a bit. I think he objects to the blasphemy."
I eyed the farmer warily as he finally braked to a halt at the edge of the bridge and cut the quad's engine. The main reason for my caution was the elderly double-barrelled Baikal shotgun he lifted out of the rack on one side and brought with him.
Jackson came stumping along the bridge towards us with the kind of rolling, twitching gait that denotes a pair of totally worn-out knees. He wore a flat cap with tar on the peak and a tatty raincoat tied together with orange bailer twine. As he closed on us he snapped the Baikal shut, and I instinctively edged myself slightly in front of Sam.
"Morning, Mr. Jackson,” Izzy called, the tension sending her voice into a high waver.
The farmer ignored the greeting, his eyes fixed on Adam. It was only when Michael and Paul physically blocked his path that he seemed to notice the rest of us.
"I've told you lot before. You've no right to do this on my land,” he said gruffly, clutching the shotgun almost nervously, as though suddenly aware he was outnumbered. “You been warned."
"And you've been told that you have no right to stop us, you daft old bugger,” Adam said, the derision clear in his voice.
Jackson's ruddy face congested. He tried to push closer to Adam, but Paul caught the lapel of his raincoat and shoved him backwards. With a fraction less aggression, the whole thing could have passed off with a few harsh words, but after this there was only one way it was going to go.
The scuffle was brief. Jackson was hard and fit from years of manual labour, but the boys both had thirty years on him. It was the shotgun that worried me the most. Michael had grabbed hold of the barrel and was trying to wrench it from the farmer's grasp, while he was determined to keep hold of it. The business end of the Baikal swung wildly across the rest of us.
Izzy was shrieking, ducked down with her hands over her ears. I piled Sam backwards, starting to head for the end of the bridge.
The blast of the shotgun discharging stopped my breath. I flinched at the pellets twanging off the brickwork as the shot spread. The echo rolled away up and down the valley like a call to battle.
The silence that followed was quickly broken by Izzy's whimpering cries. She was still on the ground, staring in horrified disbelief at the blood seeping through a couple of small holes in the leg of her trousers.
Paul crouched near to her, hands fluttering over the wounds without actually wanting to touch them. Sam had turned vaguely green at the first sign of blood, but he unwound the cotton scarf from under the neck of his leathers and handed it over to me without a word. I moved Paul aside quietly and padded the makeshift dressing onto Izzy's leg.
"It's only a couple of pellets,” I told her. “It's not serious. Hold this against it as hard as you can. You'll be fine."
Michael had managed to wrestle the Baikal away from Jackson. He turned and took in Izzy's state, then pointed the shotgun meaningfully back at the shaken farmer, settling his finger onto the second trigger. “You bastard,” he ground out.
"Michael, stop it,” Diana said.
Michael ignored her, his dark eyes fixed menacingly on Jackson. “You've just shot my girlfriend."
"Michael!" Diana tried again, shouting this time. She had quite a voice for one so slender. “Stop it! Don't you understand? Where's Adam?"
We all turned then, looked back to the section of parapet where he'd been standing. The lichen-covered wall was peppered with tiny fresh chips, but the parapet itself was empty.
Adam was gone.
I ran to the edge and leaned out over it as far as I dared. A hundred and twenty-three feet below me, a crumpled form lay utterly still on the grassy slope. The blood was a bright halo around his head.
I stepped back, caught Sam's enquiring glance, and shook my head.
Paul was already hurrying towards the end of the bridge to pick his way down beneath the arches. I went after him, snagged his arm as he started his descent.
"I'll go,” I said. When he looked at me dubiously, I added, “I know first-aid if there's anything to be done, and if not, well—” I shrugged—"I've seen dead bodies before."
His face was grave for a moment, then he nodded. “What can we do?"
"Get an ambulance—Izzy probably needs one even if Adam doesn't—and call the police.” He nodded again and had already started back up the slope when I added, “Oh, and try not to let Michael shoot that bloody farmer."
"Why not?” Paul demanded bitterly. “He deserves it.” And then he was gone.
It was a relatively easy path down to where Adam's body lay. Close to, it wasn't particularly pretty. I hardly needed to search for a pulse at his outflung wrist to know the boy was dead. Still, the relatively soft surface had kept him largely intact, enough for me to tell that it wasn't any shotgun blast that had killed him. Gravity had done that all by itself.
I took off my jacket and gently laid it over the top half of the body, covering his head. It was the only thing I could do for him, and even that was more to protect the sensibilities of the living.
When I looked up, I could see half of the rope dangling from the opposite side of the bridge high above my head, its loose end swaying gently. The other end was still tied around Adam's ankles. It had snapped during his fall, but why?
Had Jackson's shot severed the rope at the moment when Adam had either lost his balance and fallen, or as he'd chosen to jump?
I got to my feet and followed the rope along the ground to where the severed end lay coiled in the grass. I used a twig to carefully lift it up enough to examine it.
EQMM, July 2007 Page 4