Dead Man Walking

by Paul Finch

  Heck sped on, thirty yards later running into the back of Gemma, who had halted for some reason, bowling her over.

  ‘What the hell …?’ he stuttered.

  ‘We’ve got trouble!’ she said, jumping back to her feet.

  Hazel snapped her torch on. Its beam played over the rough surface of a plank barricade, which blocked all further progress along the path.

  ‘Oh God,’ Hazel said weakly. ‘I forgot all about this.’

  The barricade had been painted with crude crimson letters:

  DANGER! DO NOT USE VIA FERRATA UNSAFE!

  ‘What does this mean?’ Heck demanded.

  ‘It’s a Via Ferrata … don’t you know?’ Hazel was ash-pale in the torchlight; her hair hung in sweat-sodden strands. ‘Via Ferrata … it’s Italian, it means “iron road”.’

  ‘Oh … bloody hell,’ he said.

  Gemma still looked perplexed.

  ‘They have these in mountains everywhere,’ Hazel added. ‘It’s like a fun thing. You know, for climbers and hikers. Plus it helps them get from one ridge to the next.’

  ‘You’d know it as a cable-walk or monkey run,’ Heck explained.

  ‘You mean like a rope bridge?’

  ‘Bit more solid than that.’

  ‘Except that this one’s closed,’ Hazel said. ‘It’s been closed for about five months. The pins will have rusted or the cables frayed, or something.’

  ‘So … is that it?’ Gemma asked, incredulous. ‘This is as far as we go?’

  Heck turned his torch on and shone it up the canyon walls on either side, but they were sheer, offering no visible escape.

  A shot was fired.

  It was difficult to say how far back along the passage it was fired from. And thankfully it wasn’t a clear shot, caroming from the left-hand wall and ricocheting from the right, before smashing a hole through the planking on the left of them. Both Gemma and Hazel dropped to crouches, the latter just managing to suppress a scream. Heck spun to face the barricade.

  ‘Either he can’t see us, or he’s a crap shot, or both!’ he said, tearing with his fingers at the splintery-edged bullet hole, then stepping back and kicking with his right foot. ‘Either way, we’ve no choice now!’

  ‘You’re going across the bridge?’ Hazel said, eyes bugging.

  ‘Not just me,’ he responded.

  Gemma joined him, ripping and rending, pulling the planks apart until there was space for a body.

  ‘Go!’ Heck ushered her through, then leaned down and grabbed Hazel by the arm.

  ‘I’m not going through there,’ she said hoarsely.

  ‘Hazel … if this guy’s who I think he is, he used to open women up like tins of dog-meat.’

  ‘But it’s not safe …’

  ‘We’ve got to try.’ He yanked her to her feet and hauled her through the shattered barricade after him.

  On the other side, they crossed an open flat area like a small plateau, before hitting a rusty iron safety-barrier, which was the only thing stopping them pitching over an edge into a terrible gulf.

  ‘Here!’ Gemma said, emerging from the fog on their left.

  They felt their way along the barrier, the plateau narrowing until soon they were on another ledge. This narrowed too until it was replaced by a timber catwalk. The safety-barrier now gave way to a row of upright steel pegs, each about three feet tall, equidistant from each other and connected by chains, though both the pegs and the chains were corroded, and in some cases missing. The footing comprised loose, uneven planking, which creaked and shifted. Just thinking about the bottomless mist underneath it stiffened Heck’s hair. Again, they could only progress in single file and now did so by hugging the left-hand rock-face, which though it sloped as it ascended away from them, was rubbed smooth by the numberless hands and bodies that had sidled along it, offering no purchase if the structure suddenly collapsed – which it threatened to constantly, shaking, shuddering, pins swivelling in their holes.

  Some fifty yards later, they reached a chunk of timber decking jutting from the cliff-face. This at least felt secure, though it was small, no more than four feet by four. From here, the only progress possible lay out across the chasm courtesy of the Via Ferrata. In appearance, it was a V-shaped bridge constructed entirely from steel cables so old and rotted they were crabbed with rust. Two cables in particular served as hand-rails, one on either side at roughly waist-height, connected by occasional lengths of wire to the single cable serving as the footway. This was thicker than the other two, but any person walking along it would have to tread with care, each foot planted crosswise as though he were traversing a tightrope. By the foggy light of their torches, the structure protruded no more than ten yards before this too was hidden in fog.

  They stood there, paralysed.

  ‘If this thing’s unsafe,’ Hazel said in an eerie monotone voice, ‘we surely can’t risk it all at the same time. I mean, the combined weight …’

  Immediately, the wires and cabling along the ledge behind began to vibrate. Heck stared at Hazel, then at Gemma – even she wore an expression glazed by fear. The metallic vibrations resolved themselves into repeated heavy clanking: the sound of footfalls approaching. Still none of them moved.

  ‘How far to the other side?’ Heck asked dry-mouthed.

  Hazel swallowed, as though about to vomit. ‘Two hundred yards … maybe.’

  He gazed down into the mist. ‘And how far to the bottom?’

  ‘Rough guess … a thousand feet.’

  Chapter 15

  ‘Mark, you cannot be serious!’ Despite the clattering approach of those heavy feet, Hazel hung back. ‘We haven’t got harnesses or safety-lines.’

  ‘Hazel, we’ve no choice,’ Heck said. ‘Look, let Gemma go first. I’ll bring up the rear.’ He caught Gemma’s disbelieving eye. ‘Gemma … you know this guy’s going to kill us all. He wanted to do that before – that’s why he lured us up to Fellstead. We’re the protectors of this place, so he needed to eliminate us first. But now he really has to do that. Listen to me, he can’t afford to let us live!’

  Gemma clearly couldn’t believe what he was asking of her. But by the same token, she knew he was right. Abruptly, she took a breath and, turning back to face the bridge, tucked her torch into a side-pocket and zipped it tight, so that it shone ahead. Planting a firm grip on its two hand-rails, she slowly, extremely tentatively, set her first foot on the cable-walk. A second step followed, and a third, and now she was out over the abyss. The bridge shuddered and sang and appeared to sag. There were deep groans from the network of lesser cables connecting it to the cliff-side. But conversely, the approaching footfalls fell silent.

  Gemma glanced back. Heck did the same, expecting a gun-toting figure to emerge from the wall of blankness behind them.

  It made no sense that one didn’t.

  What was the bastard waiting for? Did he want them to try and cross the bridge? That didn’t bode well. Was he thinking he could make this whole thing look like an accident? Either way, they couldn’t hang around.

  ‘Go, Gemma,’ Heck said. ‘Just go!’

  She went, foot over foot, hand over hand, moving further and further from the platform. The flimsy metal structure shuddered and thrummed.

  ‘Now you, Hazel.’ Heck placed his hand in the small of her back. Hazel was rigid, like a post. She resisted the pressure, so he increased it, pushing her gently but firmly forward. ‘Come on, now … there’s no other way.’

  Seeming to get hold of herself, she ventured onto the bridge. As it didn’t immediately fall apart in a welter of lashing, snapping cables, she was able to steel herself further, going forward in pursuit of Gemma, who had now almost vanished into the vapour. They were both of them stiff as pegs, hands clamped around the safety-rails like talons. Swallowing a lump of bile-flavoured saliva, Heck stuck his own torch into his belt, and started after them, trying to ignore the perilous drop beneath his feet, but already fighting to keep his balance. It went against all the rules
of logic of course. Every bone in his body told him this was a bad idea.

  Danger! Unsafe!

  A wooden barricade had been erected to prevent people doing exactly this.

  But the alternative could be worse, particularly for the two women.

  He glanced back, sweat beading his face. With his torchlight angled upward, the platform behind was already shrouded in darkness. A figure could have appeared there by now, it could be gazing silently after them, and they wouldn’t know. That said, if whoever it was had a thermal imager, he could still pick them off with ease, which thought goaded Heck to greater efforts, sending him blundering on along the slender cable, gloves sopping with sweat as he slid them over rusted, twisted steel. The bridge juddered in response, dipping and bouncing the further over the gulf he proceeded.

  A thousand feet down.

  Heck did his damnedest not to think about that – and in some ways it was easier than expected, because this was close to the most unreal experience of his life. On all sides, above and below as well, hung only swirling mist – it was like a studio set, partly negating that gnawing sense of vertigo. Ahead, he could no longer see the two women, could merely hear the clunking of metalwork, the vibrations passing backward with a force he felt through the rubber soles of his trainers. He tightened his own grip as he swayed from side to side. A small whimper floated back to him.

  ‘Stick with it, Hazel!’ he shouted. ‘Couple of minutes and this’ll be over.’

  He didn’t know if that was true. What rate of progress were they actually making? Could they really cover two hundred yards in two minutes?

  He tried to increase his speed, but a couple of times his feet slipped, shooting downward either left or right, leaving him dangling, lopsided. Though he never let go of the hand-rails, these were moments of the purest terror – yet thanks to the unseen presence behind, he always levered himself to his feet and pushed on with reckless speed.

  Were they out in the middle of it yet? It seemed unlikely, but it was impossible to judge. When a yelp of horror came echoing back, Heck initially froze, but then stumbled forward as fast as he dared, the bridge swaying and tilting horribly. Two seconds later, he came up behind Hazel. Gemma was just in front of her, but she too had lost her footing, and was in the process of slowly, carefully raising herself up.

  ‘We can’t fart around,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to keep moving.’

  Gemma threw him a baleful glance. It looked as if she was about to voice some very choice words, but then came a shuddering impact from their rear, a mighty THUNG resounding through the entire structure.

  ‘What was that?’ Hazel said, in a tone so querulous Heck barely recognised it.

  ‘Don’t bloody know,’ he muttered.

  Another impact followed, and another. A horrendous realisation dawned on the two cops at the same time.

  ‘He’s trying to de-anchor us,’ Heck said. ‘Trying to tip us into the valley. Quickly, forward … forward!’

  The women needed no second telling. Gemma lurched her way along at the front, the bridge swinging wildly.

  ‘He can’t cut through those cables, surely?’ Hazel said, breathless.

  ‘Let’s not wait to find out,’ Heck replied.

  She turned to push herself on, only to shriek deafeningly as both feet slid off the cable-walk together. She dropped hard on her crotch and tilted to the right, legs pumping against nothing. For several seconds Heck thought she was going to pitch clean through and plummet into the chasm. He jerked his right arm down and grabbed her hood, though this meant he only had one hand in place himself. For several spine-freezing seconds they were locked together in the middle of nothing, wrestling to maintain their mutual balance, Heck’s left arm straining hideously under the combined weight. Slowly, barely breathing, he managed to haul her upright again.

  All the time, shocks were passing through the bridge, repeatedly, getting increasingly heavy.

  ‘He can’t … can’t cut those cables,’ Hazel stuttered again, teeth chattering.

  ‘I don’t know whether he can or can’t,’ Heck replied. ‘But a lot of those pins were loose. How many does he have to knock out before gravity does the rest?’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘Don’t think about it, just keep going!’

  A deeper impact sounded behind them, followed by a squeeeaaal of splintering metal and then a reverberating whip-lash as the bridge lurched downward several feet. Hazel shrieked again. Twenty yards ahead, Gemma dropped to a crouch, arms rigid as she clutched the rails. She glanced back, white-faced.

  ‘Keep moving!’ Heck shouted. ‘It can’t be too far.’

  ‘We’re miles away,’ Hazel moaned, lunging desperately on.

  Further thudding impacts shuddered past them.

  Heck held his position, a crazy thought spinning. Slowly, he shuffled around and began to retrace his steps backward. It was several seconds before Hazel noticed.

  ‘Mark!’ she screeched. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘If he’s busy trying to de-anchor this thing, he might not be watching,’ Heck called back. ‘I might be able to get on top of him!’

  ‘Mark, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Just get moving … get to the other side!’ Heck pressed on back. The reality was they couldn’t have progressed more than a hundred yards. It seemed highly unlikely they’d make it to the other side if someone didn’t do something to distract the bastard.

  ‘Gemma, stop him!’ Hazel cried.

  ‘Heck!’ Gemma called.

  ‘Gemma, get Hazel to safety!’

  ‘Sergeant Heckenburg, get back here this fucking instant!’

  ‘Go!’ he shouted again, almost overbalancing as another thunderous blow struck the bridge. The flimsy structure lurched to the left, and he had to clamp the cable on the right with both hands. A fog-filled chasm yawned directly beneath him.

  What in the name of God was he doing?

  It only struck Heck now that if the bridge collapsed while he was near the broken end of it, he’d have far less chance of surviving. Even clinging on, he’d have a much longer distance to travel.

  ‘Okay … okay!’ he said, forcibly getting hold of himself, suddenly baffled that he could ever have thought this was anything more than the stupidest idea in history.

  He might die going the other way, but he’d certainly die going this way.

  Fingers locked painfully into rusted steel, he pivoted back around, and began struggling forward again. All around him metalwork shuddered, one massive vibration following another as the suspension cables were assailed.

  ‘How you guys doing?’ he shouted, no longer able to see the two women.

  This time there was no reply, but there was so much noise from the bridge that any responses were likely lost. He advanced with rash speed, leaning precariously to the right but not letting that worry him as he took longer and longer strides. It was still impossible to judge how much distance he was covering; there were no points of reference. With a reverberating CLUNG, the bridge sagged again, tilting even further to the right. Muffled shrieks tore through the fog. Yet the women had to be almost at the other side by now. It might have been Heck’s imagination, but the footway appeared to be sloping upward, as though he’d passed the dip at its centre.

  ‘Heck, where are you?’ someone called back. It was Gemma. Relief was palpable in her voice. ‘We’ve made …’

  ‘I’m almost there,’ he shouted, gravity tugging on him as he sidled along, corroded metal burning through his gloves, digging into the muscle and bones of his fingers. The bridge was definitely angling upward now. ‘Couple of min—’

  It fell away beneath him.

  Heck didn’t even hear the fatal blow.

  All he knew was that another sharp vibration rocked the structure and that it flipped all the way to the right, before collapsing in a chaos of whining, whipping wires and cables. Heck’s body plummeted through mid-air, but by sheer instinct his left hand remained wrapped aroun
d the cable – and half a second later he wasn’t dropping like a stone so much as swinging like a pendulum.

  The Via Ferrata had held its mooring on the far side.

  One breathless second later, a granite wall hung with tufts of vegetation came hurtling towards him out of the fog. Heck gazed at it, goggle-eyed, knowing that any such impact would break him to pieces. But all the time he was losing altitude, and now he dropped below the level of the rock-face, heading instead for a steep, bracken-clad embankment. The next thing, he was crashing through layers of dead vegetation with pile-driving force. As well as knocking every ounce of wind out of him, the collision yanked him loose from the mass of twisting, screaming cable, and then he was falling backward downhill, turning head over heels, somersaulting through rotted, semi-frozen foliage, bouncing, spinning, hammering every part of his body on the shifting, ragged-edged rocks underneath, yet still protected by the bracken, which meshed itself thickly around him. Finally, after what seemed like minutes but was probably only seconds, he came to a dizzying, bone-numbing halt.

  After that, there was only darkness.

  And pain.

  Chapter 16

  Heck had no clue how long he lay there for.

  Firstly, because he was only semi-conscious. Secondly, because it was one of those slow disbelief moments, the sort people experience after emerging from terrible car crashes; when it seems somehow unjust that they’ve survived, when they probe gingerly and nervously around their limbs and body, increasingly baffled by the absence of extensive damage. Heck did exactly this, and though he discovered cuts and bruising, nothing appeared to be out of place. His vision was still obscured, but this time by broken stalks and tatters of brown leafage.