by T. J. Lebbon
‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said, and he slumped back against the wall.
Wes and Scott seemed to become suddenly more active. Scott ripped open three foil packets and Wes boiled more water. It was soon steaming, and when Wes poured the boiling fluid into the packets, the hut was suddenly filled with the gorgeous smells of hot food. Chris had eaten dehydrated meals before and knew they weren’t the best, but his stomach rumbled and his mouth watered. A few minutes more spent here would pay off in the long run.
He glanced at the door. He’d been there maybe fifteen minutes. Same again, and then he should be gone.
‘So where’d you run up from?’ Scott asked.
‘Oh, way down in the next valley. Left my car in a lay-by, figured I’d get up to the summit here by eight pm, then back down in the dark. Hadn’t counted on the storm.’
‘They do roll in without you knowing, sometimes,’ Wes said. ‘Lots of people get caught out by the weather.’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ Chris said. A stab of pride spiked him, and he couldn’t keep it from his voice. He looked down at the mug of tea, swilled it around. ‘Really. I’ve done loads of this stuff. Just … lost my jacket.’
‘Almost lost your rucksack, too,’ Scott said. Chris glanced up. Scott was holding his rucksack by one strap, looking at the tear in the material.
‘Yeah, got caught on a rock.’ Chris half-stood and leaned across the narrow space between them, handing the phone back and plucking the rucksack from Scott’s hands. ‘This is one run I’ll never forget.’ He tried to sound light-hearted. Scott and Wes both smiled and nodded, but then they swapped that glance again.
‘Hey, Chris, listen,’ Scott began, and then something banged against the metal door.
Chris stood, backing away.
The other two men looked startled, but then calm again. Why shouldn’t they? They weren’t expecting anyone with a gun.
Chris started rooting in his rucksack, his hands closed around the knife that had been deformed by the bullet, and then the door smashed open. It almost struck him across the face, and if he hadn’t stumbled back half a step he might have been knocked out. Things would have turned out very differently.
The storm entered. Blondie followed. Seeing him close-up, Chris’s first thought was, I shouldn’t have underestimated any of them. He was a tall man, powerfully built, and even though he must have really pushed up the mountain through the storm to get here this quickly, he still looked fresh and strong.
Maybe that was the endorphin rush of knowing he almost had his kill. His rifle was half-raised, and it took only a split second for him to bring it up and aim at Chris’s chest. Blondie’s own face was curiously expressionless. To him, Chris wasn’t human. He was prey.
Time seemed to freeze. Chris saw every detail of the scene – an acne scar on Blondie’s chin, a drip of rainwater forming on his nose, the ash-speckles of grey in his short goatee, the glimmer of a diamond in his left ear, rain hanging in the air around him like a spiked halo, the heavy darkness outside, swirled with mist, violence stilled by worse yet to come.
‘What the fuck?’ Wes said.
Blondie’s eyes came alive. From dead, soulless things, a spark lit them as they went wide. His whole face seemed to elongate as his lips parted, and Chris was shocked at the whiteness of his teeth. Expensive teeth. Lots of dental work. Vanity and money on display.
The gun dipped slightly, and Blondie glanced to his right.
I’ve got seconds, Chris thought. I’ve got the time it takes him to decide what to do. Shoot us all, make up some lie, or turn to run. I can’t let him do any of those.
Blondie looked confused, disorientated, as if stirred from an immersive video game he’d been playing for hours. He was waking to the world, and Chris took that moment of surprise to act.
He threw the heavy metal mug. It struck Blondie’s nose and hot tea splashed across his face. His head tilted back and to the side. The gun fired.
It was shatteringly loud, but Chris’s senses, though enhanced, were protecting him against danger. Everything became clear and sharp, slow and considered, and as he stepped forward and grabbed the rifle’s barrel his right hand swung around and struck Blondie in the chest.
He shoved the barrel up so that it was pointing at the hut’s corrugated metal ceiling. As Blondie fell back he must have squeezed the trigger again, and Chris felt heat pulse from the barrel and into his hand. It was so hot that it felt cold.
Scott was by his side then, helping him shove Blondie away from the doorway and out into the storm. The gunman tripped over his own heels and fell back, and as he went Chris tugged the rifle from his grasp.
‘Holy shit!’ Scott said, stepping back, surprised at what he’d done. Chris moved to one side so that he wasn’t silhouetted by the weak light coming from the hut.
Wes appeared in the doorway, breathing hard, rubbing at his ears. ‘Motherfucker!’ He stepped forward and kicked Blondie between the legs.
The downed man groaned and curled into a ball, hugging his wounded parts and rolling back and forth as the dull pain turned into a blazing agony.
Chris looked down at the rifle in his hands. He had never held a gun before, and he was surprised at how heavy it was. It had a small scope, looked expensive.
When he looked up again he saw Scott and Wes staring at him. Wes’s eyes flickered from Chris’s face, down to the gun, up again, as if sizing him up. Scott looked like a rabbit caught in headlights.
‘They’re hunting me,’ Chris said. ‘Five of them. No idea who they are, but they’re rich. They paid a lot of money to hunt and kill a person, and that’s what’s happening. The people who organised it, the Trail, they’re holding my family somewhere. If I escape they’ll kill my wife and daughters.’
Wes and Scott heard but didn’t seem to register the outlandish story. The wind blew hard, rain slanting across the plateau and stinging exposed skin.
‘I’m Special Forces,’ Blondie said, voice sharp with pain. ‘He’s wanted for three murders, and I’m one of a few—’
‘No, you’re not,’ Scott said. ‘You’re Mike Pinborough. The footballer. I saw you on A Question of Sport last month and … ’ He drifted off, bemused.
Blondie actually smiled, as if pleased at being recognised.
‘You fucking idiot!’ Chris shouted. He stepped forward and pointed the gun down at the pathetic man, making sure he wasn’t too close, and ensuring he could see Wes and Scott as well. They seemed like good, normal guys, lovers of the outdoors, and they’d surely try to help. But Chris didn’t know who or what they thought was right. ‘You think you’re Special Forces? What fucking video game are you playing in your head? Who am I, when you get me in your sights and pull the trigger? My name’s Chris Sheen. I have a wife and two beautiful daughters, I’m an architect, and you’ve paid someone so you can fucking hunt and kill me? What happens in your head when you do that? What do you … ?’ He trailed off, because he saw how Blondie was staring at him.
He looked like a terrified kid. Confronted with the human reality of what he was doing, he’d started to shake, dribbling from his mouth.
A day ago, Chris might have felt sorry for him.
He turned the rifle around and smashed the stock down against the outside of Blondie’s knee. The man cried out, Scott and Wes said things that Chris didn’t let himself hear and understand, and he struck the downed man again in the ribs. Hard. He put every shred of frustration, fear and anger behind the strike, and he felt the breaking of bones transmitted up through the rifle.
‘Son of a bitch!’ Chris shouted. ‘You know they have my family? You know they’ve got my two little girls tied up somewhere with a gun to their heads, you piece of shit?’
‘N … no,’ Blondie said, shaking his head, holding his hands up to ward off further blows. Chris hit him again, the rifle’s stock striking his left hand and snapping fingers.
‘Hey, friend, you need to calm down and—’ Wes said.
‘Shu
t up!’ Chris shouted. He didn’t aim the gun, not really. But he turned it around again so that he was holding it properly.
He pointed the barrel at Blondie. The man squirmed on the wet ground, snot bubbling from his nose. He was groaning in pain, twisting as he tried to snake away from Chris and the dark, wide barrel of the gun.
‘Who did you think I was?’ Chris asked, voice quieter now, barely audible above the rain. ‘When you came out here to kill me. Just who?’
‘I … ’ Blondie said. ‘I just thought … ’
‘No,’ Chris said. ‘You didn’t think at all.’ For a second his finger closed around the trigger. But he was not a killer.
‘They told us you were nobody,’ Blondie said. ‘An easy target. Someone who wouldn’t be missed. A criminal. A loner, a drifter, and that—’
‘And that made it okay to kill me,’ Chris said.
Blondie seemed confused, frowning and shaking his head as he tried to process what Chris had said. ‘Your family? I don’t know anything about them, I had no idea—’
‘Shut up.’ Chris took a step closer and pushed the barrel down against the man’s stomach. Blondie cried out but froze, hands clawed and held out as if to snatch life from the air. He was grimacing. He was probably a handsome man. Chris had seen his face in the media, Terri might have mentioned him, perhaps they’d even watched him on TV together once or twice, kicking a ball about and making sure his hairdo was the most talked-about of the match.
But today he was ugly.
‘You bastard,’ Chris whispered.
‘No, please, no, I didn’t mean to—’
Chris moved the rifle barrel down the man’s legs, pressed it against the outside of his bent knee, pulled the trigger.
The loud gunshot, the man’s scream, the other men’s shouts of surprise and shock, all sounded around the plateau, echoing from rocks and from the stone hut built to protect brave adventurers. A coward might hide in it now.
It was Scott who came for him. Chris had been expecting Wes. It only took a slight shift of the rifle barrel to halt the man’s forward dash.
‘You have no idea!’ Chris shouted. Scott held his hands out placatingly, stepping back again. ‘You really … no idea.’
Blondie continued to writhe, hands held either side of his ruined knee. He was too afraid to touch, in too much agony to remain still.
‘In there,’ Chris said, nodding at the hut. ‘They’ll find you.’
Blondie didn’t look as though he heard, but Chris didn’t care. He searched the man’s pockets, found a satphone, slipped it into his own pocket.
‘Don’t follow me,’ Chris said to Wes and Scott. ‘Thanks for your help. Really. Nothing you see or hear about me is true, everything I’m saying is the reality. Just … believe me.’ He shook his head. It didn’t really matter what they believed. ‘Patch him up if you like, but I wouldn’t advise staying with him. I doubt the Trail likes loose ends.’
‘What’s the Trail?’ Wes asked.
Blondie had stilled at the sound of the name, looking up at Chris as if for an answer. But there was nothing more to say.
He darted back inside the hut for the jacket Wes had lent him. He also picked up his rucksack and shoved a few packets of dehydrated food inside, and a full plastic water bladder. There was more he could take, he was sure. But the others might not be far behind Blondie, and though he now carried a rifle, he had no real wish to use it again.
Back outside, the two men were still standing where he’d left them. Scott looked just as shocked as before. They watched Blondie crawling towards the hut.
Chris paused for a moment, wondering what more he could gain from this. He tilted his head, smiled apologetically. ‘Phone?’
‘Sure,’ Wes said. He pulled the phone from his pocket, lobbed it, and Chris caught it.
‘Thanks. Sorry.’ He shrugged, then set off away from the hut.
They were soon lost to sight behind him. He switched on his head torch, and before he’d moved far enough away for the storm to take him fully into its belly, he heard Blondie cry out. They were dragging him towards the stone hut.
More than anything, he hoped it hurt.
Chapter Twenty-Four
throats
There were families. Wives and children, brothers and mothers, sisters and fathers. And beyond there would be friends. Some would know of the Trail, but probably most did not.
Every action she took in these mountains had far-reaching consequences.
The fat bastard she’d killed had paid good money to hunt and murder someone, and yet she could not feel good about shooting him. In no way did it chip at her mountainous grief, because he’d had nothing to do with her family’s murder. In a way he was as innocent as her, corrupted by the Trail simply because it had enabled his sick fantasies to come true. She didn’t care about or mourn him, but the thought of his loved ones troubled her.
They’d hear about him shot dead on a remote mountain in Wales, and perhaps they’d never know why. He’d risen the day before, maybe preparing for a business trip to the City that might take a couple of days. Kissed his wife goodbye, if they had that sort of relationship. Ruffled his kids’ hair. Then he’d left, always expecting to return, leaving unsaid things that could heal a wound or calm a troubled relationship. There were always things unsaid.
She and Adam had let many arguments fade away rather than settling them. They were always minor things, but sometimes she thought about them, really analysed, and her heart raced and her thoughts drifted, making them monstrous blots on their marriage.
She was a new person, but she still retained the empathy that set her aside from the Trail. She had to. If she didn’t remain human, she’d be just like them.
So just for a few moments, walking in the darkness, she forced herself to think about the families affected by this. And then she just as easily boxed them and set them aside in her mind. At least they could still draw breath, laugh, and cry. They were still alive.
In the darkness, the memory came again. Arriving at the quiet detached house on the outskirts of Birmingham, knowing it was the right place because she’d located Adam’s phone using a ‘find my phone’ app on the new iPhone she’d bought, waiting outside to assess comings and goings. She didn’t know then that the hunt had been called off almost a whole day before, soon after she’d dropped the tracking device into someone’s pocket on a bus, given the hunters the slip, and literally gone to ground, hiding in the city’s sewers for a day and night. She’d considered calling the police, but took the warning given to her by the woman she’d come to know as Grin seriously: Call the police and your family die. She knew little about who the hunters were, didn’t even know if they were still alive. Right then she didn’t care.
Creeping around the side of the house and forcing the back door open using an old screwdriver rusting on a windowsill. Waiting for a barking dog and screaming occupant, but finding neither. Entering, and sensing something wrong the moment she crossed the silent kitchen. She didn’t know then, and still had no idea, exactly what she had sensed. Maybe an unnatural silence, one honoured by the smallest creatures because this was a house for the dead. Maybe a stillness in the air, or the scent of something familiar. Family.
She found them downstairs in the basement.
On the Welsh mountainside, screwing her eyes against the unrelenting rain and wind starting to scream through the heavy darkness, nothing could make her not remember.
Adam was propped against a rack of shelving, both arms tied back to the framework at the elbows and wrists. They’d slit his throat and left him there to bleed out. His eyes were wide, head pressed back against a shelf containing a stack of Empire movie magazines. Ironic, because they’d loved going to the movies together. She’d spent long hours wondering what he’d seen as he died. Their children lying dead before him?
Or worse, their three beautiful children watching him die?
Molly was huddled against a damp wall, her long blonde hair covering h
er face. She’d liked animals and wanted to be a vet, just like her mum. They’d stabbed her behind the ear. Isaac, their youngest child at only five years old, was splayed in the middle of the floor with a halo of blood dried around his head. He had often made up nonsensical songs and drove them mad singing them again and again. He was lying face-down. It looked like he’d been thrown there, and there was something so blasé, so inhuman about that idea that it stuck with her more than the mess of his head. Alex was still holding his father’s hand. He’d loved athletics and running, and his sports teacher in school had been pushing for him to enter some of the local club runs. Maybe he’d gone to him while he was bleeding, dying. Or perhaps Adam had to hold his son while they killed him.
Her whole past and future was dead in that basement. She stayed with her family for several hours, then when she climbed the staircase and emerged into daylight, the best of her remained down there with them, forever.
Rose breathed hard, drawing cold air into her lungs. She closed her eyes and turned towards the storm, relishing the stinging sensation of rain spearing her face. Whenever she thought of her family, alive or dead, returning to reality always felt like a dilution of life. The world was an emptier place for her now. Even revenge was a fleeting thing.
She glanced at the satphone that she’d taken from the dead pilot, hunched down over the screen to prevent it from being seen. After quickly appraising her position, she switched it off again. Chris had been motionless for almost half an hour. She wasn’t letting that worry her just yet. He was probably resting, having put a good distance between himself and the hunters. Even if he had been injured or killed, the three Trail men were still in the mountains with her. They were still hers.
But she hoped he hadn’t. She liked Chris, and she found herself wanting him to get through this. Find his family, rescue them, make a life together with them again even after everything that had happened.
It was impossible, but she liked the crazy idea of a happy ending.
She swayed as dizziness hit her. Her whole arm and shoulder throbbed, heavy as a sack of coal, burning. She could barely open and close her right hand without searing pain pulsing through her whole limb. When it came to firing the rifle, she’d just have to grit her teeth.