David Raker 01 - Chasing the Dead (28 page)

We continued digging.

Thirty seconds later I saw Alex glance up at the woman again, then sideways at me.

A brief nod.

It was time.

I gripped the handle of the shovel, my knuckles whitening, and waited for a second nod from Alex. We hadn’t agreed anything, hadn’t made any sort of plan. But I knew the first nod was the primer, the indication that I needed to get ready.

The second would be the trigger.

Evelyn.

Through the corner of her eye she must have seen me staring at her. She turned and faced me, her eyes narrowing. Then she realized who it was beneath the hood. For a second she must have thought she could reason with me. Play on our history, on the fact we’d once got on; laughed together; even been drawn to each other in some way. But then she remembered how she’d held a gun to my head and let them take me out to the woods to be buried.

‘I’m sorry, Evelyn,’ I said.

She started to call out for help.

I swung the shovel at her, dirt spitting off as it arced, and caught her in the side of the head. The impact reverberated along the handle, into my hands. She stumbled sideways. Fell to her knees, and then her stomach, one side of her face puncturing the earth as she hit the ground.

And then she was quiet.

The rest of the group looked up.

Alex glanced between me and the others, and back down towards the farm. No sign of anybody else. He dropped his shovel to the floor and moved across to Evelyn, who was drifting in and out of consciousness. He went through her pockets. Eventually he found a keyring in her trousers and removed it. On the ring were

Then his eyes fixed on something behind me.

His whole face collapsed, the colour draining out of it. Suddenly, he looked terrified.

I turned and followed his gaze.

In the middle of the group, surrounded by men and women, Legion stood staring at us. He was wearing the same clothes as we were, his hood up, the mask still on. In his hand was a submachine gun. It looked like a Heckler & Koch MP7. Black and compact. Short barrel. I glanced at the gun, and back up at him. His eyes were fixed on Alex now. He had been among us the whole time.

He flipped back his hood.

‘Alex,’ he said, almost a whisper.

Despite the wind, the sea, the sounds drifting through the late afternoon light, it was difficult to hear anything but his voice. Sharp, almost scratchy, like a needle cutting across an old record.

Alex held up both his hands.

‘We have something to finish, David,’ Legion said, not looking at me – just staring along the ridge of the gun he was now pointing at Alex.

‘No,’ I said, anger in my voice. I reached into my trousers and brought out the Beretta. A twinge in my chest and back. ‘We’re finished.’

This time he looked at me. Body perfectly still. Head swivelling. Eyes dark and focused. For a second, it was like looking at a ventriloquist’s dummy – as if

Legion glanced at my gun.

‘We will finish what we started,
cockroach
,’ he said, every word, every syllable, cutting across the ground between us. ‘Put the gun down or I slice Alex in two.’

‘Don’t put the gun down, David,’ Alex said.

I glanced at Alex, then back at Legion. He was still looking at me, standing completely still, even as a gust of wind blew across the group.

‘Put the gun down,’ he said again.

‘They can’t kill me, David.’

I glanced at Alex.

‘Put the gun down,’ Legion said for a third time.

‘Don’t, David – they can’t kill m–’

In a flash of movement, Legion jabbed the barrel of the gun forward, right into the centre of Alex’s forehead. Alex’s head lurched backwards. He was instantly unconscious, even as he stood. He toppled over and hit the ground like a sack of cement. No grace, no arms out, no reactions at all.

Legion turned to me, and dropped the gun to his side. He didn’t see me as a threat. He took a step towards me, pushing a couple of the group aside. One of the girls fell to the floor. A couple of the others turned and looked towards the sea, to the ground; too petrified to even turn in the direction of the killer standing among them.

‘Stop,’ I said.

He took another step forward.

‘No, you won’t.’

‘You better believe I will.’

‘No.’

The good things are worth fighting for
.

Her voice, suddenly, unexpectedly.

Legion noticed something in my face – a flicker of a memory – and finally did stop. I could feel sweat on the tips of my fingers, feel the adrenalin, hear my heart pumping in my ears. I glanced down at the gun again, and back up at the man in front of me.

Take this chance, David
.

I fired once. It hit Legion in the shoulder. He staggered back against one of the others in the group. Somewhere behind me, one of the women screamed. A shovel clanged against the earth. Legion lurched away from the group, clutching his wound.

I pulled myself out of the moment and headed for Bethany, leaving Alex on the ground, face down. Maybe dying. Maybe dead. I moved quickly around the edge of the house and towards the back door.

Snow crunched behind me.

The devil was coming.

I kicked open the back door, immediately realizing I’d led myself into a trap. Half-inside the kitchen, I turned back and saw his silhouette pass across the windows.

It was too late to go back.

Swivelling, I headed through to the living room – dark now, as daylight began to fade – and towards the

I ran for the stairs, landing awkwardly when I reached them. Pain tore across my chest as I scrambled up on all fours, the first shots piercing the wall behind me. I could hear the old brickwork spitting out dust and debris, could hear the
ping
of a ricochet. I heard him move across the living room, broken tiles beneath his feet. I launched myself on to the landing and a shower of bullets followed me up, popping in the walls, bouncing off the stonework, lodging in the wooden floor.

I fired back three times, then made for Room A. As I moved, he followed. I could hear him pad up the stairs. The occasional creak but nothing more. He was quick. Lean. Streamlined.

He fired as he got to the top. Beyond the noise, I thought I could hear him whisper something, then the words were swallowed up as more bullets followed me into the room. The smell of rotting damp hit me.

I looked around.

The chimney flue, running from the fireplace downstairs, was angled enough to provide cover from the door. I dropped behind it. Flowers of light erupted from the landing. Bullets hit the door frame and walls. Wood splintered. Plaster spilled. Legion kept firing into the bedroom: the flue disintegrated beside me, floorboards cracked and broke, bullets ricocheted. One bullet missed my leg by an inch as I rolled to my side.

He was out of bullets.

The silence was like a shockwave.

I leaned out, as quickly as I could, and loosed off six shots. One didn’t even get beyond the room, hitting the door itself. One headed straight across the landing to the wall at the top of the stairs. The others lodged in the walls on the landing – every one a wasted bullet. Legion had already taken cover to the left of the doorway.

I stayed like that, leaning out towards the doorway, waiting for him to appear again. But he had second-guessed me. All I could hear was my breathing.

‘
C-c-c-c-c-cockroach
,’ he whispered.

The sound of something snapping into place.

Reloading.

There was a long pause, the silence hanging in the air.

And then I coughed.

Legion came in at me, firing quickly. I ducked back for cover, shielding my face from the dust and the glass. Bullets fizzed past me. One tore through the floorboards about two inches from my hand. Another made contact with my slipper, taking part of the toe off.

I knew I had to fire back, knew I had to attempt to repel him. If I didn’t, he would get closer and closer

The first three shots missed, going so wide of the mark he didn’t even stop shooting. The fourth got closer, briefly interrupting the noise from his gun.

Then the fifth hit something.

I heard footsteps – barely audible – retreating from the room.

I looked down at the gun, unsure whether he was really hit or whether this was all part of the game. The pain was becoming unbearable. Huge chunks of air escaped from my chest. Glass was embedded in my skin. I didn’t want to move.

I held the Beretta up in front of me and removed the magazine with a shaky right hand. I’d fired all fifteen bullets.

I waited for a moment. Breathed.

My teeth throbbed. My eyes were watering. I listened for Legion, for any sign of movement. All I could hear was the wind.

‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ I said.

Nothing. No reply. No sound of movement.

I looked down into my lap. The gun felt heavy now. My whole body felt heavy. As if it had been turned inside out. It felt like Legion held all the cards, even if I’d somehow managed to hit him. He would wait. He was a soldier. He was trained to use silence and time to his advantage.

I swallowed and felt the saliva slide down my throat,

‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ I said again.

Silence.

I reached into my pocket and quietly removed everything I’d taken from the shoebox: my wallet, my car keys, my photographs of Derryn, my wedding ring. And the bullet. A fine mist settled on the metal casing as the chill of the evening slithered its way in through the broken windows.

The bullet.

Sliding out the empty clip, I slotted the bullet into it and pushed the clip back into the Beretta.

Slowly, I edged out from the chimney flue. Held the gun up in front of my face. Slid along the floor on my knees. A shiver passed through me. Ahead of me, on the landing, I could see zigzags of snow, compacted, fallen from the soles of his shoes. I moved along the floorboards, churned up by the gunfire.

As I closed in on the doorway, I tried to angle the gun towards the sliver of wall that joined the two bedrooms. Legion had hidden there while he was reloading – but he wasn’t there now. I looked right to the bathroom, then left to the top of the stairs. Shadows were everywhere, but I couldn’t make him out. That meant there was only one place he could be.

Next door. The room with the rings.

I kept close to the wall as I approached the door. Held the Beretta as straight as I could. My hands turned red as I squeezed the handle. The muscles in my arms tightened, the veins in my wrists prominent through the skin. An image flashed in my head of Legion sitting in the corner of the room, opening fire as I tried to get in the first shot. I hesitated. Stopped short of the door.

Then, suddenly, I could smell him.

There was no aftershave overpowering his stench now. All I could smell was decay, as if death were

I peered around the door a fraction, my eyes darting from one corner to the next. I thought I could see him, half-covered by darkness, directly across from me.

Then it felt like I got hit by a train.

I hadn’t seen Andrew coming. Hadn’t even thought about it. But the impact sent me flying, my knees leaving the floor, the gun dropping from my grasp. I looked up to see him clutching a table leg. I went for the gun – an automatic reaction, even though it was too far away – but he hit me again, low in the ribs.

I screamed out.

Instinct kicked in: I tried to gain some purchase on the floorboards, tried to crawl away so I could gain some distance, but my fingers slipped and he hit me again, in the ankles. I yelled out in pain as a paralysing tremor hummed up my leg. Then a third blow: in the small of my back, and this time I could feel my skin break beneath the cling film.

He stopped. Looked down at me. His black clothes made him seem bigger in the semi-darkness. More powerful. As he stepped into what little light there was left, in his face I could see regret. Maybe even a little mercy.

‘I understand,’ he said, gently, and dropped to his haunches beside me. ‘I understand how you feel. How desperate you must be to get her back.’

Hauling myself on to all fours, I started towards it.

But Andrew was on his feet again. He took one step in my direction and smashed the table leg into the same spot as before: the small of my back, right where one of the wounds had opened up.

I yelled out and collapsed on to my stomach.

There was silence for a moment. He was watching me, seeing if I was going to try to make a move again. When I didn’t, through the corner of my eye, I saw him drop down for a second time, but further away, so I couldn’t make contact.

‘After I got out of prison,’ he said, turning the table leg in his hands, ‘my parole officer found me a job teaching kids how to play football at a youth club. He knew the people who ran it. The first evening I turned up there, the guy in charge pulled me aside and said, “I know you’ve got a record. You’re just a favour for a friend, so if you mess up
once
, even if it’s forgetting to tell me we’re out of orange squash, you’re finished.” I got twenty pounds cash in hand, and was claiming every week as well. When Sunday came round, I had nothing. The temptation to steal, the temptation to claw it back, whoever I hurt, was immense.’

I looked across the landing, to the Beretta.

I glanced at him.

‘Just give me an excuse, David. I can’t wait to see what your face looks like as it leaks through the floorboards.’

I closed my eyes. Tried to memorize the layout of the building. Tried to recall anything I could use as a makeshift weapon.

He started talking again.

‘Prison was tough,’ he continued, and I opened my eyes and watched him. ‘So, I didn’t want to go back. And, anyway, about five months after I started there, everything changed. I got talking to the mum of one of the boys. He’d had leukaemia, but it was in remission. And the way she spoke about him, about the love she had for him, it just absolutely stopped me dead. When I found out she was on her own, I asked her out – even before I knew her name. She was the one who first took me to church. She was how I found my faith.’