by T. J. Lebbon
Chris reached for the pistol.
Rose tensed. Then let him take it. ‘You’ll have to be very quick,’ she whispered.
Chris nodded as he tucked the pistol into the waistband of his running trousers. Everything was moving very slowly. He wished he was still running and could run on forever, but sometimes things had to stop. Every race came to an end.
‘I’m coming out!’ the woman shouted.
Chris and Rose threw the rifles onto the grass and backed away, but not too far.
Megs appeared at the window.
Gemma had thought they were fireworks. But only for a minute. Vey’s reaction made her hear and see the truth. Their captor dashed from the room, more shooting sounded, and the heavy front door opened and slammed again. She returned a few seconds later carrying a big gun. She moved quickly and calmly, but her eyes were wide and Gemma heard her fast breathing. There was blood on her hands.
Gemma, her mum and sister pressed in close. Megs whined behind her gag. Gemma looked at her mum, wishing she could communicate something about what she was doing, what she had in her hand. But through the sudden sting of tears, all she could do was smile with her eyes.
Vey scooped up a potted plant and threw it at the window. The glass was single glazed, and it smashed, the pot cracking and spilling soil and roots across the carpet and windowsill. Gemma had a flashing, crazy vision of her own body doing the same. Breaking, falling, spilling—
Vey came at them with a knife. Megs squealed, their mother writhed against her restraints, Gemma tensed. But Vey said nothing as she knelt and slashed the ties binding their ankles.
And now she’ll go for our wrists and she’ll see what I’ve been doing and I’ll have to try to get her, because everything’s happening now and I might not get another chance.
Panic hovered at the periphery of her senses, sharpening them. But that curious distance also remained, and while events moved quickly, Gemma was able to observe and absorb, slowing things down and settling her thoughts as much as possible. If she looked at her mum and sister again she might lose it, so she breathed deeply, feeling the warm nail in her right hand and the bloody, burning pain where she’d been working her wrists against the rope.
Vey disappeared behind the sofa, but she didn’t cut their ropes. Instead, she knelt and rested the rifle across the sofa’s back. Its barrel touched Gemma’s neck briefly, shockingly cold.
Vey started shouting.
Gemma closed her eyes. She heard the hated woman’s voice but it was only volume, a song of hatred, and she ignored the meaning of the words. It aided her concentration. Her right hand slid from the loop of rope, and it felt like someone was pouring acid on her hand, stripping skin and scouring exposed nerves. She shivered with pain.
But that’s okay, she thought. She’ll think I’m scared. And that’s good.
And then she heard her dad’s voice and everything changed. All the coolness, the concentration, were swept away by a terrible sense of dread and hopelessness, and though she wanted to remain quiet Gemma squealed loud and long against her gag.
A gunshot smashed into her ears, her head, thumping at the centre of her. Dust rained down around them, and all sound receded. It faded back in slowly; Megs crying, coming in from a distance to Gemma’s ringing ears.
Her dad appeared at the window. There was something wrong with his face. He was bleeding. But he saw them, and Gemma saw him.
He fell back just as Vey fired the rifle.
The noise slammed Gemma’s hearing to nothing, and she realised that the previous warning shot must have been from the smaller gun. It was like the whole world had exploded. The impact was a physical thing, seeming to bruise her ears and head. It sent a wave of pain through her whole body, and Gemma grabbed hold of this.
The pain, the nail. She clasped them both, because she knew they might both help her.
The pain, the nail. The rage.
Rose felt curiously distant. No longer armed, she was not part of this any more. She was an observer, and whether Chris killed Grin, or Grin killed both of them, was now out of her hands.
She had spent so long trying to maintain control that it felt terrifying to be helpless.
But Chris had been right. Grin would be watching her, not him, because she was the greater threat. And the only slim chance they had of stopping her killing them all – because she would try, Rose had very little doubt about that – was now all on Chris’s shoulders.
She heard his gasp as the gagged little girl appeared at the ground-floor window. A rifle barrel smashed away more glass, then a bloodstained hand dropped a small rug over the sill. The kid sat up on the windowsill and was shoved through. Her arms were tied. She fell to the ground and hit hard, but it was a flower bed, and she rolled and sat up. Her eyes were wide with terror as she struggled to her feet. She stared at her father.
Rose couldn’t help thinking of Molly, sitting up dead with blood in her ear, and she resolved to do anything to avoid seeing this girl become the same.
Another shape appeared, the older girl. She followed Megs through, swinging her legs out first and managing to land on her feet.
‘If you run I’ll shoot your mummy!’ Grin shouted.
Bitch. She was going to shoot them anyway. She wanted a clear shot at Chris and Rose, then the others – the innocents, those who were not a threat – would fall last. Rose glanced sidelong at Chris and hoped he knew that. He’d been shot in the face, the wound pouting, fleshy. He was shaking slightly, difficult to read. Yet staring at his daughters, his eyes seemed clear, his expression neutral. Trying to stay calm, Rose thought, but she didn’t really know this man at all.
A woman came through next, Chris’s wife, hands also tied behind her. And then Grin. She kept the woman close to the window as she climbed out, rifle barrel pressed into her back. Then she stood behind the woman and two children.
The older girl backed up against her mother. There was something about the girl’s expression. She was scared, but also tensed. Eyes wide.
‘Hello, Rose,’ Grin said.
Rose did not answer. She watched Grin appraising the situation – the rifles on the lawn, Rose’s injured arm, Chris’s face, their empty hands. She seemed almost satisfied.
Rose took a small step to the right, just enough to attract Grin’s attention, make her alert. The bitch watched her intently.
As she stepped out from behind her hostages and lifted her rifle towards Rose, Grin tried to put them at ease. ‘Okay then, now we can all—’
‘Safety catch,’ Chris said.
Grin paused, smiled. She didn’t look down at her weapon, because she was too much of a professional for that, and knew that the catch was not on.
But she did lift her head just slightly as she laughed.
Chris’s eldest daughter pivoted on her left foot, swung her right arm around, and slammed her bloodied fist into the side of Grin’s head. It wasn’t a hard impact. But Grin’s eyes went wide, and even from twenty feet away Rose saw the woman’s eye flood red.
The girl pushed her mother and sister to the ground.
Rose fell to the side as Chris reached into his waistband, pulled out the pistol, and fired.
Grin’s rifle fired as well. Rose gasped, ready for the impact, ready for the shock of white-hot pain to rush in. Perhaps there would simply be darkness.
Another shot from the pistol, someone hit the ground, then another impact from closer by. She rolled, cried out as her arm was trapped beneath her, then knelt up.
Chris was on his side, arm stretched out, hand still clasping the pistol. He was bleeding from somewhere else, but Rose couldn’t see where.
Grin was down. Squirming, trying to sit up and lift the rifle again.
Chris’s family ran to him. They dropped to their knees, the wife leaning over and pressing her face to his chest, hands still tied behind her back. The older girl pulled their gags off and the sisters fell upon their parents, seeking succour and an escape from this hell. She glance
d across at Rose. Rose tried to smile, but the girl looked away, burying her face against the side of her father’s neck. Perhaps she was telling him how much she loved him.
Rose struggled to her feet. She’d been shot through the hip, but her leg still supported her weight. The pain was remote, belonging to someone she’d left behind.
Because this Rose now had Grin.
The Trail woman had been shot once in the right shoulder. She also had a nail protruding from her face an inch behind her left eye, and the orbit leaked blood and viscous fluid. Chris’s daughter had done that. Good girl.
Grin’s arm was useless, flapping around like a dead fish as she tried to lift the rifle, protect herself. But Rose got there first.
She stood on Grin’s shoulder and pressed down. Grin screamed. Rose smiled.
Then her smile slipped. She looked back at the family crying and bleeding into the soil. They had already seen enough. Done enough. More than anyone, she knew how events like this could change people.
She snatched the rifle from Grin and smashed her around the head. The temptation to strike the nail, and complete its journey, was great. But she struck her across the right temple. The woman moaned woozily, head lolling to one side, and Rose hit her again.
And then she walked away.
She took a moment to hobble into the house and find Tom. He was slouched in the hallway, still conscious but bleeding out. Maybe he’d survive, maybe not, but he was no immediate threat. She aimed the gun at his face and he blinked slowly. Rose felt sick, tired, and something stayed her trigger finger. She searched through his pockets until she found the keys to the postal van and a flick-knife, then staggered from the converted barn.
Grin was still down and out cold.
Rose took a moment, breathing deeply, left hand seeking her new wound. It throbbed with each beat of her heart, and blood was making her jeans heavy. But she didn’t think there was any serious damage.
Time would tell.
She limped towards Chris, hoping against hope that she would not find something worse.
Chris was crying. His family’s tears merged with his own, diluted by rain, and somewhere there was blood. But he could not tell the difference, and one pain seemed to merge with another so that it was also impossible to tell where else he’d been shot. His sweet girls clung to him, Terri buried her face against his chest and sobbed. There were tooth fragments in his mouth and his face felt out of shape, burning and pulsing with every heartbeat. But he could still tell his family that he loved them.
‘Hey,’ a voice said. He spun round, still sensing danger. Rose. She leaned down, groaning, and slit the ropes still tying Terri’s and Megs’ wrists.
Chris tried to sit up. Terri helped, her touch firm but caring. Then she gasped when she saw the blood.
Rose crouched close to him, wincing, and appraised the wound. The bullet had glanced from his knee, scoring a bloody path through muscle and skin.
‘Be a nice scar,’ she said.
‘As long as I can run again,’ he said. He looked at her hip.
Rose shrugged, then nodded at the house. ‘The other guy’s in there, not quite dead. He stays alive, maybe it’ll make things easier for you with the police. He knows the Trail, and hopefully they’ll get him to talk.’
Chris was still not ready to think that far ahead. A few seconds, a few minutes with his family were all he wanted right now. This hunt was over, and whatever came next was the future.
The investigation would be an endurance test all of its own.
‘You?’ he asked, but he already knew. He looked past Rose at the woman lying on the ground with a nail in her head. ‘You should turn her in.’
‘After everything I’ve done?’ Rose sounded suddenly colder and emptier than she ever had before. Chris’s family winced away from the voice as if it could touch and hurt them.
He had no answer for her. She’d known the course she wanted to take, and he supposed she’d achieved more than she had ever believed possible.
With a little help from him. And from Holt.
‘Okay,’ he said.
‘Good luck,’ she said. Then she stood and limped away. With her one good arm, and with all her weight on her uninjured leg, she dragged the unconscious woman towards the postal van and sat her against the open passenger doorway. From the driver’s side she hauled her inside. Then she stripped off her own belt, leaned the woman forward and bound her arms tightly behind her. Sweating, pale, groaning with every movement, the effort was staggering.
She only looked back when she was almost ready to go.
After a long pause she said, ‘Have a good life.’ She was looking at all of them, not just Chris, and sounded like she meant it.
He watched as Rose reversed the van around and drove back down the rough road. The gunfire would have been heard by surrounding properties and down in the town itself, and the police would be coming.
He hoped she made it away before they arrived.
Alone at last with his family, Chris allowed himself to believe that he had won.
Chapter Thirty-Three
coup de grâce
Each jolt of the post office van sent spears of pain through her hip and into her pelvis. Blood flowed and soaked the seat beneath her backside. But she did not care. She had already won, and yet she felt strangely resistant to delivering the coup de grâce. She tried to convince herself it was because Grin was still unconscious and she wanted the bitch awake when she killed her. But in truth, Rose realised that she was terrified of this being over.
The thought of revenge had given her something to live for.
The long, rough driveway gave way to a narrow country lane, its surface almost as uneven and potholed. Stone walls lined both sides, broken here and there by farm gates and stretches fallen into disrepair. She passed occasional grey stone houses, homes where families lived. There would be pets asleep inside, waiting for adults to return home from work and children from school. Perhaps a stew in the slow cooker. After dinner they’d take a walk in the fields, maybe aiming for the darker spread of forest that lined the foothills in the distance. Then they’d have family time in the evening, watching TV or playing a game, making sandwiches in readiness for their next, normal day. She envied them their normality.
She drove sitting in a pool of her own blood, a pistol warming between her thighs, and an unconscious woman breathing away her final minutes in the passenger seat.
An elderly couple walked along the road, and Rose accelerated past them. Glancing in the side mirror she saw the old woman raise a hand in greeting, and Rose switched on the hazard lights for a couple of flashes in response. Of all the vehicles she could have hoped for, this probably gave her the best cover.
So long as nobody wanted their mail.
‘Postman Rose,’ Grin groaned from the seat beside her, even managing a pained chuckle.
Rose picked up the gun and struck Grin across her wounded shoulder. The woman cried out. Rose grimaced against her own agonies, pleased that she made no noise.
‘Don’t speak,’ Rose said. ‘Don’t say a thing. I don’t want a conversation with you. There’s nothing you can say to me, so sit there and shut up if you want to live a while longer.’
‘They’ll hunt you down and kill you,’ Grin said.
‘Really? What, those three arseholes up on the mountain? The birds have already taken their eyes. The helicopter pilot? The skinny runt with the dogs?’ She glanced across just in time to see a dark look cross Grin’s features. Then the Trail woman put on a pained smile once more.
‘You really think—’ she began.
‘Just shut up,’ Rose cut in. ‘Maybe I’ll let you live. Give you to the police, a nice big public trial. Face splashed all over the papers, pictures of your wounds, that fancy tattoo on your thigh. That nail sticking out of your head. You’ll become notorious, infamous, and everyone everywhere will know your face. Do you have a family? I know you don’t have a husband, or if you do that doesn’t sto
p you spending time picking up young men to fuck. But you must have an extended family out there. Siblings, nephews and nieces, people you care about. Maybe your parents are even still alive, though Christ knows what they did wrong with you. So the Trail, or whatever’s left of it, what will they think of you dishing the dirt on them?’
‘They know I won’t.’
‘But I reckon they’ll do everything they can to make sure, don’t you?’ Rose shifted the rearview mirror so she could see the woman’s face.
Blood pooled and dribbled from her left eye, its lid drooping half-shut. Grin squirmed a little, arms trapped and bound behind her. She continued trying to smile through the pain. A sickly grimace.
‘Beaten by a young girl,’ Rose said. She laughed.
Grin did not respond.
They came to a junction and Rose had to pause, letting a car and a tractor pass from right to left. The farmer in the tractor glanced down at the postal van, and the smile slipped from his face. He shielded his eyes to see better, and Rose moved off the way he’d come, squeezing past the tractor and the stone wall. She lost the wing mirror on her side. Stone screeched against metal.
I’ve dreamed of this for years, she thought, and now I have no idea what I’m going to do. Maybe it was blood loss and pain, tiredness and fear over what was to come next. She’d imagined having Grin at her mercy a thousand times. She’d use a knife on her, slowly, painfully. Garden implements, covered with dirt and dead worms, pressing into the bitch’s soft belly and exposed throat. Electrical wires taped to her sensitive parts and wired to several car batteries. Bricks to crush her limbs, ground glass fed to her in yoghurt, metal filings pressed into her eyes. Rose had sickened herself by imagining the things she wanted to do to Grin, but never in those daydreams did she see Adam and her children smile. They don’t know me now, she thought, that familiar idea. But she had come to realise a long time ago that she was doing this for herself.
For now she was just driving. She had no destination in mind. The idea of delivering Grin to the police had crossed her mind, but only briefly. So much would remain unfinished if she did that, so much left to chance, that it was not an option. It never had been. For now, she was simply looking for a suitable place for an execution.