The Dead Yard

by Adrian McKinty

  He kept pushing down on my throat but he saw that I wasn’t dead yet.

  “Kill ya,” he muttered to himself, his breath a few inches from me.

  He lifted my head up, slipped the cord behind my neck, and gave me one chance to suck air into my lungs.

  I breathed deep and, in a desperate effort, I heaved myself forward and bit into his cheek, tearing out a chunk of flesh as large as a big bite out of an apple.

  He screamed and I kicked him off me with my bloody stump.

  He landed on his back and I scrambled to my feet.

  “Gerry, Gerry, wake up, Kit, Gerry, wake up,” he yelled at the top of his voice and crawled towards me, blood pouring out of his face.

  I dived for the gun, got it, cocked it, and shot him square in the belly.

  He slumped forward onto his knees.

  “Gerry,” he said again, desperately.

  I could hear movement upstairs.

  I’d have to bloody sprint if I wanted that big gun now.

  Touched was reeling from the slug in his gut and it was a good hit but with a .22 you can never be sure, so I limped across the room, smacked him in the face with the pistol, kicked his legs, muscled him to the ground, shoved his cheek to the kitchen floor, turned his head.

  “I’m still going to get you,” he said weakly.

  “You better move fast,” I said and shot him above the ear— bits of skull, blood, and brains spraying over my weapon hand.

  “What’s going on down there?” Gerry yelled.

  I turned Touched to face me and gave him one in the forehead, too, the bullet drilling a neat hole above his right eye. I felt his neck pulse. Nada. I stood. I needed that shotgun.

  I put the .22 in my trouser pocket and went up the stairs on all fours.

  “Daddy?” Kit screamed from one of the rooms.

  I got to the top and shoved open the first door on the left. It was Touched’s room all right, there was his leather jacket, his sunglasses, a copy of Hustler. But he’d been lying aboutthe shotgun.

  Fuck.

  “Get behind me, Kit,” Gerry said. He was outside in the corridor. I took a look. And, shit, there he was, naked under a long black kimono, holding that big powerful 12-gauge. Kit behind him with a revolver. He saw me. I ducked inside as one of the barrels erupted, destroying the doorjamb.

  “Give me a shell,” Gerry called to Kit.

  I closed the door.

  Hot in here from the central heating. I wiped the sweat from my brow, opened the window, wondered if I could get out.

  A second later, Gerry blasted the door apart.

  Jesus.

  I pointed my .22 at the wrecked doorway.

  Talk to him.

  “Gerry, listen to me, Touched is dead, Sonia’s dead, Jackie’s dead. I freed the kid, I dialed 911, and the police are on the way. The game is up. You have to surrender,” I yelled.

  “Fuck you, Forsythe. We’ll fucking kill you. Come out of there and face me like a fucking man,” Gerry yelled.

  There was no way I was going out onto the landing, not with two of them armed to the teeth.

  “Gerry, think of Kit. You don’t have a chance in hell of getting out of this. I left a message on the boat, telling them it was you that kidnapped Peter. If you kill me it doesn’t matter, you’ll never go back to your life now. And Peter is running into Belfast and the cops are on the way. It’s bloody over, Gerry. They might do you for being an accessory to murder, but Kit only has to go to jail for kidnap. Think about it, Gerry. If you give up now, come quietly, I’ll make sure she’s out in less than five. Better than a life term or the federal death penalty. It’s a promise.”

  “What’s your promise worth, Forsythe?” he snarled.

  “I swear it, Gerry,” I insisted.

  Gerry muttered something under his breath but Kit was adamant.

  “No, Dad, we can get away. We’ll take the car and we’ll drive to Canada and they’ll never get us,” she said.

  Good old Kit. Never say die.

  It strengthened her da’s resolve.

  “Aye, you fucker, Forsythe. Sonia never hurt anyone in her goddamn life. She wanted us to let you go. Why’d you have to top her, you son of a bitch?” he said.

  Before I could answer he lurched into the bedroom doorway with the shotgun.

  Holy Christ. I shot at him, missed, Gerry flinched, slipped, and fired both barrels, tearing up the floor, missing me by half a room, but I couldn’t help but catch a couple of pellets in the leg. I lost my balance, fell heavily backwards into the open window, smashed through the screen, and tumbled ten feet to the wet snow outside.

  I landed with a soft clump, just missing the woodpile by half a yard.

  Gerry appeared in the window.

  “Reload me,” Gerry screamed.

  Kit handed him two more shells; he broke open the gun and slotted them into the smoking chamber.

  I tried to get to my one good foot, but I was dazed from the fall. The house swimming before me, Gerry’s kimono-clad form reloading his gun, Kit beside him wearing Hello Kitty pajamas.

  If I didn’t move I was a name in the newspaper. I pocketed the revolver, turned over, and crawled on all fours again, loping like a goddamn hyena for the bloody trees. The shotgun went off behind me. Gerry missing by a mile. He needed to calm down, shoot less, aim more.

  And then I heard Kit’s gun.

  Blam, blam, blam.

  A 9mm.

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she was firing at me too. Holes appearing in the snow, wide to the left and then after a big overcorrection wide to the right.

  I made it to the edge of the forest, scrambled behind a tree, leaned against the trunk.

  I tried to get my breath back. I felt in my pocket. The .22 was gone. Goddamnit. I looked behind me in the snow but I couldn’t see it. It might be anywhere.

  “Fuck.”

  Up at the house Gerry and Kit had gone from the window now. They were coming downstairs to get me and Gerry might not be the most mobile of psychotic killers but now he had all the cards: guns, a willing accomplice, and a good night’s sleep.

  Have to head.

  I scrambled deeper into the trees.

  Shades of déjà vu. But this was not like yesterday when I could run. There was no possibility of hiding from them because the snow had made tracking my blood trail a piece of cake.

  “This way, Kit, you stay behind me now,” Gerry yelled.

  I looked back. He was huffing and puffing out of the house and into the first line of trees. That big elephant gun leading the way. Kit a step behind him with her niner. Gerry slipped on the snow, fired the gun by accident. Kit panicked and shot her gun too.

  Jesus, neither of them was getting onto the Olympic biathlon team anytime soon.

  “Do you see any sign of him?” Gerry asked, reloading.

  I didn’t catch her reply but if they had any sense at all they’d soon pick up the markers I’d left.

  I hurried on, pushing my way through hanging trees and moss, limping over pine needles, pinecones, branches, rocks.

  Foot and stump ignoring the pain, working together in a Quasimodo gait.

  I crossed over the forest trail that led to the pond, and then up a slippery tree-lined embankment.

  Another breather. Another look back.

  Aye, they weren’t pissing about. They were looking at the ground, seeing the big blundering path I’d taken and coming straight for me. Kit standing right next to her father, not heeding his instruction to stay a pace or two behind. It gave me an idea. One of the oldest mantraps in the book.

  Not original, but who needs original when you don’t have a bloody gun? I looked for a low-hanging tree branch.

  A young bendy one, but a tree trunk thick enough for me to hide behind.

  I selected a good, thick, pliable branch on a balsam fir tree and then limped about ten feet past it so that the trail looked like I had gone farther into the forest. Then I doubled back on myself, got behind the trunk, pulle
d back the long springy branch until it was at the snapping point.

  They were coming and I waited, straining with all my might to hold the goddamn branch. This tree I did know the name of. The balm of Gilead. Balm of fucking Forsythe if this worked.

  “Farther down there,” Gerry said. “There he goes, come on, Kit, gently does it.”

  They came closer, but I couldn’t look. Have to judge by sound alone. Have to judge it just right.

  I waited until I could hear his labored breath and when I felt they were practically on top of me, I let go of the goddamn tree.

  Feewooo, whack.

  It smacked into them with a satisfying crash.

  “Fuck,” Gerry screamed as I ducked round the tree.

  The branch had cracked Gerry in the skull, splaying him backwards. Kit had rolled with the blow and was getting up again but Gerry was down; he’d dropped the shotgun and his little leather pouch of shotgun shells. I jumped him, punching him hard on the nose and the throat and in his cheek and his right eye.

  Then I rolled off him fast, grabbed Kit by the hair, and smacked her with a two-handed uppercut that sent her sprawling into a tree five feet away.

  Gerry was fumbling for something in his pocket.

  I bent down and grabbed the shotgun.

  Gerry had taken out a revolver, he was trying to point at me, but he was probably seeing double from the punches I’d just given him. He pulled the trigger and the shot was so clumsy it nearly hit Kit.

  “Drop the gun, Gerry,” I demanded, pointing the shotgun at him.

  He pulled the trigger again, this time missing by only a few feet.

  I unloaded both barrels into him at close range. They took his head off, blowing his skull to pieces and scattering blood, brains, skin, and eyes over the lower limbs of the tree. The headless torso bucked wildly for a moment and fell forward.

  Kit screamed and shot at me with the 9mm.

  I hit the ground, grabbed the bag of shotgun shells, broke open the shotgun, removed the spent casings, reloaded, and jumped behind the nearest tree. 9mm rounds slammed into the space where I’d just been. She was a better shot than her old man. She must have lied to Touched about going to the range. Either that or she was a quick study. The latter. Kit was good at everything.

  I heard her click out an old clip and slam home a new one.

  She began shooting again.

  I was in a bad position here, protected by the thin trunk of a pine tree and a couple of spindly branches.

  At this range a lucky shot could sail right through the trunk and take me out.

  Just up ahead, though, there was a little rise and a huge fallen tree that looked like excellent cover. A big tree that had toppled horizontally into the wood in the last year or so. An old log, easily about five feet in diameter. No 9mm was sailing through that motherfucker.

  Fuck it, I said to myself and rolled forward, got up, limped for it through the snow, hobbled, limped, and I was goddamn there before Kit saw that I’d made a move and managed to get a shot off.

  I dived behind the thick trunk.

  Heard a couple of shots thud into the wood.

  I got to my feet. Looked.

  And yeah, there she was. I could see her easily, reloading. I rested my elbows on the trunk, pointed the shotgun, and took aim at her. An excellent position for me, a terrible one for her. I was protected right up to the shoulders by the fallen tree . She was exposed and to kill me she’d have to aim uphill into the light snow and then get me with a head shot.

  She finished reloading and saw that I was standing up.

  I waved to her.

  She stepped out from cover and carefully held the 9mm, aimed, shot. A bullet clunked into the trunk in front of me.

  “Kit, put the gun down. I don’t want to have to kill you, but I will. If you shoot, I’ll have to shoot, and this thing is going to blow you apart,” I said.

  “You killed my dad,” she said, her voice quivering.

  “Kit, I’m sorry. I had to. It was him or me. He understood that, Kit. He was a soldier, like me. He knew that. Him or me.

  But you don’t have to die. Put the gun down on the ground.”

  She hesitated. Closed her eyes. Wiped the tears, snowflakes from her face.

  “You killed him,” she screamed and she began walking towards me, to narrow the distance and get a better shot.

  “Kit, stop walking and put the gun down. Do it now,” I commanded.

  “You killed my dad,” she said and stared at me with those cobalt eyes, that tubercular face, those serious lips.

  “Kit, I’m not kidding, this isn’t a finesse weapon, this thing will fucking kill you. Put your gun down now, and put your hands up.”

  “You killed my father, he was all I had in the world,” she said, sobbing hysterically.

  “Kit, listen to me. He wouldn’t have wanted this. You’ve done your best, you’ve fought the good fight, now put down the bloody gun,” I yelled.

  But she wasn’t listening.

  She kept the 9mm pointed at my head and walked steadily up the rise.

  Sober.

  Determined.

  She stepped over Gerry’s outstretched arm and squinted into the snow.

  Her feet were bare.

  Her Hello Kitty pajamas soaked through.

  The sky was clearing but there were still snowflakes on her arms and a light breeze blowing the loose strands of hair out of her face.

  “Don’t do it, Kit. If you shoot at me, I’ll have to kill you. I won’t have any choice. Please. Put the gun down on the ground and put your hands up,” I begged her.

  She shook her head. She was only ten feet away now. The pistol wobbled in her right fist.

  “Drop the gun, Kit. Please.”

  Carefully, she placed her left hand underneath the right to steady herself. She closed one eye. Took aim.

  “I’m sorry,” she said and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet missed by mere centimeters. I was desperate now.

  “Kit, please, I’m begging you. You’ve got everything to live for, your real mother and father live in New York, Lilly and Hector Orlandez are their names, they—”

  I gasped as the second bullet scorched up my left arm. It staggered me for a millisecond. It was only a superficial hit but it made me instantly react and squeeze the trigger on the shotgun.

  The right barrel erupted in a spout of fire.

  She fired one more time as the full force of the shotgun slammed into her, throwing her off her feet, eviscerating her, gouging a dozen holes the size of quarters in her chest and abdomen and throat.

  She tumbled backwards down the slope.

  “Kit,” I screamed and dropped the gun. I scrambled on top of the horizontal tree, fell over it, crashed to the forest floor, and crawled to her.

  Kit was lying in the snow. Her chest was open, exposing a destroyed mass of gore that had once been her internal organs.

  Blood pouring everywhere.

  There was no question.

  The wound was fatal. The damage to her heart alone would be enough to erase her name forever from the big black book.

  “Oh God, Kit.”

  I cradled her face.

  She was so beautiful.

  Kit, it didn’t have to be this way.

  My mouth opened to speak, to say anything, to comfort her, but there were no words. Her eyes blinked. A tear fell.

  She whispered something.

  I leaned in. I couldn’t hear. I shook my head.

  I didn’t understand.

  “What?”

  With a superhuman effort she finally spoke:

  “I love you, too, Sean,” she said, and happy that she had communicated this thought, closed her eyes and breathed her last.

  * * *

  The sun rises to banish specters. They’ll watch me no more, these dead men. I’m glad. I was getting nervous under their reproach. And I’m becoming cold. The icy air penetrating through my soaked clothes. Gathering me away and in
to it. An ache to add to all the other aches, another rebuke for all I’ve wrought.

  The sun rises over the wooded hills and clears those heralds tutting over the killing ground. Two women as well as the three men. One of them unarmed. But there was no other way that I could see. And that stupid kid, didn’t he at least get out of here?

  Anyway, they’re all dead. The last of the Sons of Cuchu-lainn. Samantha was wrong. She overestimated them. They weren’t the boys who make no noise. They weren’t that smart.

  Do they even know the story of their name? The child Setanta was renamed Cuchulainn because he killed a dog. Blood transformed him.

  Transformed all of us.

  And I have lost a lot of it.

  Red under my back and legs.

  Red, all of today and yesterday.

  I’m exhausted.

  Lying prone on the ground, like a child making a snow angel. My hand cradling her white neck, massaging the capillaries to keep the rigor at bay for a few minutes yet. A vermilion hand. A flower of grief.

  I’m too weak to get up. I can’t move. So here I’ll stay. Half-naked between the trees. The story of the precipitation running through the vultured rag of human paint that is smeared in great swirls across my body. In my hair and in my eyes that are almond now and black.

  Stay here.

  Under the ordered sky.

  The growing day extinguishing the lamps of heaven and the yellow of unprayed-for souls. A big tiredness in every constriction of my rib cage. A lightness in my head that can only be oxygen deprivation. Death wants me, too.

  About us, insects scenting putrefying flesh and descending onto the snow-draped soil where two bodies lie.

  Five this morning. Five in the space of an hour.

  One the day before yesterday.

  I blink away the snowflakes.

  I try to get up.

  But it’s too hard. And anyway it’s better here on the ground, the earth licking my wounds in the protection of the trees.

  Better than up there in the afterlife of the accursed, caught between a massacre and the stretched attitudes of the hills.