Rolling on the floor as the men in the doorway laughed among themselves did nothing to help his mood as he foolishly looked up to make eye contact with one. The look of pure violent malevolence he gave was sufficient to earn him a hard kick to the ribs.
Dan scribbled another mental note, this time to wait until you’re untied before you pick a fight
The other men disappeared as he gasped for air, bathing him in sunlight, only for one to return with a single chair and sit on it directly in front of where he lay. The man sat lazily, leaning down to eye him closely with a cruel but amused grin. Sitting back and toying with a packet of cigarettes, he continued to smirk at him. His languid style made Dan burn with anger and he allowed himself to drift off and imagine what it would feel like to punch him in the throat and watch him choke. The thought made him smile, and that smile seemed to amuse the man watching him.
“My name is Leo,” he said in near-perfect English, “but my men call me le chasseur.”
He smiled and relaxed further, sinking into his seat as he produced one of the two remaining cigarettes from the pack and lit it, taking his time as he pocketed the lighter and inhaled slowly.
“Chasseur: do you know what this means, Englishman?” he asked threateningly.
Dan had an idea, but realising that the bastard was sitting there smoking fifty per cent of all the cigarettes he had left in the world made him tight-lipped and insolent.
Smiling, Leo told him anyway. “It means ‘hunter’. You understand me OK, Englishman? Is my accent too strong for you to hear my words?” he said mockingly, inhaling again and blowing a lazy smoke ring over Dan’s head. “I am a hunter of men,” he said with a hint of steel in his voice, “but you were the first of many to give me, how you might say, a challenge.” He relished the last word with a wolfish smile.
In that instant, Dan recognised him for what he was: another bloody madman intent on forcing his will on others.
Deciding that he had nothing important to say yet, Dan held his tongue and just watched the Frenchman smoke his cigarette. Leo regarded him with humour, an arrogant and superior humour as though Dan were an amusement or a mere insignificance in his life.
“So now you will tell me where your camp is, where your people are and what you have for us,” he growled at him as he leant in close. Taking another drag on the cigarette and holding the glowing tip close to Dan’s eyes, he blew a slow stream of smoke directly into his captive’s eyes as a smile crept over his face. Leaning to the side as though he were avoiding the stinging smoke, Dan glanced through the open door to find that Leo seemed to feel comfortable enough to have this small tête-à-tête alone.
Fool, thought Dan.
Striking like a snake, he wrapped his bound hands over the hunter’s head and brought it down with a sickening crunch onto his upright kneecap. The single blow was sufficient to render the man instantly useless, and Dan was actually grateful for the warmth that the sudden gush of blood from the broken nose gave him. Leo was down and out, and he hadn’t uttered a sound. Leaning around to look out of the door, Dan breathed out in relief that the crunching noise hadn’t alerted a single one of the others to his sudden escape attempt. Going back to the unconscious man on the floor, he found a knife on his belt and used it to cut his bonds quickly.
Searching the rest of his pockets, Dan tucked his last cigarette and lighter into the waistband of his underwear; there was no way he was going to give up on that small pleasure.
Hovering in the shadows of the doorway, Dan watched for any sign of anyone responding to the small noises his actions had caused, but found none. Glancing once at the sleeping Leo, he decided that it was unwise to leave anyone – even one who merely claimed to be capable – alive to follow him. It just seemed like a bad business model.
As he bent down to carefully insert the sharp knife into the hunter’s femoral artery, a bellowed challenge erupted from behind him. Spinning around to find another man wide-eyed with shock silhouetted in the doorway, he drove the blade forward unthinkingly, into his chest. The blade initially grated on bone, then found easier passage between the ribs as the sharp tip sought the path of least resistance and slid neatly into the chest cavity of his newest enemy.
The shock in the man’s eyes turned to utter horror as he realised that he was effectively dying, even though the pain hadn’t yet hit him fully.
Retracting the knife before the muscles went into spasm and threatened to hold the blade tight, Dan gave a slight twist and withdrew it before another target came into play. The shout must have alerted others, and from Dan’s hazy recollection, there had to be at least three more to deal with.
Staggering from the room as the head injury still impaired him greatly, he went in search of his personal effects; God only knew how much he needed his evil, stubby shotgun right then.
As he bounced between office furniture through the open-plan room he found himself in, his thoughts drifted off to Ash. If he had him there now, he would feel almost invincible. As his knees gave out on him for the first time, he felt the incredible pressure build in his damaged head as a wave of dizziness threatened to overcome him.
Moving with murderous and reckless abandon from room to room, he burst open through each door in turn, wearing only underwear and a bloodstain to accompany the knife in his hand and the grimace on his face. Behind the third door, he found a suddenly shocked and equally embarrassed man trying on his ballistic vest complete with his own Walther still in the holster.
The two men froze as they both stared at each other for a second. It suddenly became a race of who could bring a weapon to bear first, and as the terrified Frenchman scrabbled backwards as he attempted in vain to pull the sidearm free from the vest, Dan pounced on him, pinning him to the floor with his knees on the man’s chest. Leaning close to his face with his left forearm pressed painfully on his windpipe, Dan grinned at him malevolently.
“You’ve got to twist the barrel to draw it smoothly, see?” he said as he slipped the gun free with a practised turn of his wrist. Placing the end of the short suppressor hard under the chin of the man stranded under his body weight, he grinned maniacally at him as his victim babbled incoherently in high-speed French.
“Je ne comprends pas,” Dan said nastily in his worst French accent as he pulled the trigger and fountained the man’s brains up the white plasterboard in front of him. The spray of atomised blood and brain matter splashed back over his own face, making him spit out the fragments which had gone in his mouth inadvertently. Working fast to strip the man of his own equipment as well as his trousers, he felt a little less ridiculous as he was no longer running around an office building murdering men in his underwear.
Shrugging himself into the vest and trousers, which were slightly too big for him in the waist, he continued to stalk the rooms barefoot for any others. The wanton feeling that he had to recover all of his gear pushed him on, room to room, until he discovered his shotgun on a table with the boxed supplies which had previously been in the back of his Land Rover. As he looked through his rifled equipment on the desk, he heard and felt the simultaneous blast of a shotgun being fired from close range. Falling to the floor, he felt the stinging sensation mixing with the trickle of fresh, warm blood as some of the pellets had infiltrated his body where the vest had not absorbed their impact. Spinning around, he brought the ungainly shotgun to bear and selected a target: from that range, he could not miss, even though his enemy had failed to kill him from the same distance, and he fired to lift the man clean off his feet and throw him backwards in bloody ruin. Deciding that he had suffered enough attention from these people, he limped and staggered to the doorway and outside to freedom.
Only to be met at gunpoint by two more men. Dropping to his knees, he decided that he had fought enough and killed enough of them to justify his surrender and imminent death now.
“Do it, you fucking prick,” he said in a slur, smiling up at the man pointing a barrel in his face. Fuck the lot of them, he thought as he closed his eyes and wa
ited for the end.
~
Two meaty thuds followed by grunts and the sound of men collapsing to the floor made him open his eyes again and question if he was still alive.
Seeing Leah emerge at a crouch from behind a nearby commercial trash bin with her weapon raised made him certain that he had died and was now imagining things.
Staring with unbelieving eyes at Ash streaking forwards toward him made him absolutely sure that he had rapidly transcended to the afterlife and was now joined by his greatest loves. Pitching forwards, he finally let the adrenaline and the concussion take him into unconsciousness as he landed hard on the concrete.
The dog whined and licked desperately at the blood on his face, fearing that it was his and not that of the men he had killed.
IT WOULD TAKE TOO LONG TO EXPLAIN
Leah almost whipped the group to make them move faster. No sooner had her foggy brain understood the meaning of the sound of the engine did she spark into life herself; her own power output would have a relatively higher brake horsepower if the measure were taken, and the others found themselves harried and harangued into action.
Firing the oily and exhausted Neil into action, he turned to Jimmy who immediately offered to drive the big truck. Ripping her hands on the rusty chain as she tore at the mechanism to raise the shutter doors with a feverish excitement, she was the last to hop aboard the vehicle as they made their way with all haste to the rendezvous point.
Mitch, although physically impaired, had figured they should make the meeting place with an hour of daylight to spare, and from there they could regroup and decide where to go. The concept that Dan might not be there was an unspeakable thing, and although some may have suspected it, it was not an opinion anyone wished to offer.
When they were about an hour away from the bridge’s location, the radio crackled into sudden life in the cab.
The burst of static relayed two distinct words: Bridge. Hostiles.
Glancing between themselves, Jimmy, Neil and Leah said nothing, but Jimmy pressed his right foot down a little harder.
Fifty minutes later, they slowed their approach as the start of the bridge came into sight. Leah instructed Jimmy to stop and wait as she skipped ahead with Ash at her heel. Although it was agonising for the others, she kept still for over ten minutes as she scanned every single inch of the ground she could see.
No sign of Dan.
The only thing to catch her eye was a glint of something reflected about one hundred yards onto the bridge.
Turning and indicating with a flat hand for the others in the truck to hold their position, she stalked forward with the dog at her side until she reached the place where the reflection originated.
Bending to one knee, she picked up one of a dozen bullet casings scattered on the rough concrete on the roadway. Picking one up, she sniffed it and recoiled as the fresh stench of cordite stung her nostrils.
There had been a gun battle here; someone had fired rounds recently, rounds which were the same calibre as her own weapon, and now there was no trace of them. Moving her search out a few feet from the empty casings, she found a small patch of dark road. Touching it with her fingers, the tips came back with a faint red. Blood. Nowhere near enough to indicate that anyone had died there, but enough to mean that this wasn’t just a paper cut.
Combined with the recently fired casings, her heart sank as she thought that they were too late.
Turning and jogging back to the others on the truck, she thought about how to share the potentially bad news with the others, especially Marie as she was delicate enough about Dan’s missing status as it was, and she didn’t even know about the radio transmission yet.
Taking matters into her own hands, more to negate the moaning objections of the others if they knew what she planned, she told them to sit tight while she scouted around. Neil began to interject until the girl less than a third of his age silenced him.
“If you think any of us but Adam can keep up with me and Ash then fine, but you can’t. And Adam is the fittest one here who can still use his weapon, so stop telling me what to do, Grandad.”
With that, she turned her back and stalked away appalled at her own blatant rudeness to a man she held a huge amount of love and respect for. She told herself that the rudeness was a necessary ruse to prevent him coming after her, and that in her own way she was protecting him from getting involved in whatever trouble she was intending to find.
Come hell or high water, she was going to find Dan. Even if that meant wading through a dozen bodies which she had personally converted from alive to dead, and even if it meant hauling his dead body with her, she was bloody well bringing him back.
Standing on the roof of a wrecked car, she scanned the area for anywhere she thought he could be. Using her best guess, she headed for a building which she thought looked defensible with Ash in faithful tow.
~
Rounding a corner, she froze at some form of noisy commotion inside the building ahead. Hearing that commotion become two shotgun blasts made her heart race, and as she pressed forwards, that terror deep in her chest became a sudden weeping delight as she saw movement through the dirty glass window ahead. A flash of familiarity, a desperate hope that she had recognised him.
It was all she could do not to cry out Dan’s name and run forwards, but the undeniable sense of self-preservation ingrained in her every waking thought by Dan and Steve made her hesitate in caution.
That hesitation gave her the split-second advantage which saved both of their lives.
Two men emerged from cover just as Dan burst into the outside world. He dropped to his knees and said something to them, just as she rose and slotted a single bullet neatly into the head of each man threatening her adoptive father.
As both slumped lifelessly around him, she moved forwards at the ready, gun up and tracking for anyone else who wanted to take on her family. Ash streaked ahead to his master and began to fuss him. Glancing down briefly from the holographic sights of her gun, she saw that Dan was hurt. He barely seemed awake and he was definitely injured as blood began to pool around his knees.
Deciding that their immediate withdrawal was more important than anything else, she slung the rifle on her back and hauled Dan to his feet with his arm over her shoulder. Dragging him back into cover, she once again scanned the building but found nobody willing or able to come forward and challenge them. Dan muttered incoherently and tried to move but instead floundered like a drunk. Gently taking the Walther from his hand, she returned it to the holster and used the tough carry handle at the collar of his vest to drag him back towards the truck and more relative safety.
Exhausted, she had to leave him barely conscious a few hundred metres from the others and run back for help in recovering him. Hearing a shout from her right made her freeze. Turning, she saw a man with a fearsome beard holding a rifle at his hip as he walked towards her. Holding up her hands and saying nothing, she back-pedalled to entice the man further forward.
“Arrêtez,” he growled at her, only to realise his mistake in emerging too far into the open. Hearing a ripping snarl coming from his left, he was powerless to do anything as Ash advanced on him menacingly. Switching his glance from Leah to Ash, he hesitated as he couldn’t decide who to aim the gun at first. Deciding to shoot the girl, he twitched the gun towards her just as Ash pounced forward and sank his teeth into the exposed flesh of his left arm.
Dropping the gun in agony, he died with a single bullet in his forehead fired by Leah.
“Good boy,” she told Ash, breathless from the adrenaline, before she turned and ran towards the truck for help.
Adam moved without hesitation, and when he reached Dan, he hauled him with ease onto his shoulders and carried him at a trot back to Kate.
The shouts and screams of shock, fear, delight and a mix of other feelings drowned out what Kate was trying to say to her.
Leah simply shook her head and told her to fix him before climbing back into the cab and telling
Jimmy to get his foot down. Her last glimpse of Dan was seeing him with a lopsided smile as he tried in vain with no hand–eye coordination to light a single, crumpled cigarette.
They had to get clear of the bridge before more men came for them.
THE LONG AND BORING ROAD
The four of them in the Land Rover felt stagnant. They had been travelling for what felt like days on the same empty stretch of concrete monotony, despite the excitement of seeing a severed head. Paul and Chris both slept in the back, more out of disinterest than of tiredness, and while Lexi kept the vehicle going in a straight line, even Simon at her side began to flag.
Another fifty minutes down the same dull road, they came to the interesting break of a long-abandoned toll gate. When Lexi had last visited the country, each of the booths held a person who could at least smile and bid a hello even if there was no common language between the driving and stationary parties. In more recent years, all of these booths had become automated for either cash or card, and as with everything in life, the human touch was being lost to a world where technology made a smile to a stranger a useless commodity with no tangible worth.
Lamenting this loss of human interaction and likening it sadly to her own life, Lexi rolled towards the blockage without much sense of awareness as her wandering mind was distracted.
As she slowed to negotiate the only unobstructed lane, she realised too late that she had fallen for a simple funnel trap. As both front tyres blew out simultaneously, the loud noise waking the other three occupants, so did the haunting and terrifying noise start from the woodland either side of the road.
A haunting howl rippled through the trees, issued from unseen mouths and indicating unspeakable things. She faced a choice: go forwards and blow out the back tyres on whatever hidden trap she had sprung or go back and find an alternative route with two flat tyres and no sure escape route. Realising too late that she may have condemned them all, she looked wildly from left to right as shapes began to emerge from the foliage.
Sanctuary: After It Happened Book 5 Page 17