I’d always wanted to be close to her when it happened; to be thinking of her at the end. I’d thought about my own mortality a lot since she’d died, and I wasn’t scared of facing it down. But here, a hundred miles from the pictures I had of her, the memories, the reminders of what she once was to me, I realized — as she must have done — that all I would feel at the end was pain.
Suddenly, we veered off the path, into the woodland on the right-hand side. Jason’s hand tightened around my arm as the ground gently started to rise, sloping upwards through snow-covered undergrowth. I looked back over my shoulder at him.
‘Why do you have to do this?’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
Behind him the guy from the house was scanning the woodland. His torch was sweeping from side to side, illuminating a dense clutch of trees to his right.
‘Jason,’ he said from behind me. ‘Wait a sec.’
Jason told me to stop, and then looked back at his partner. Further up the slope, deeper into the forest, moonlight carved down through irregular gaps in the canopy, forming pale tubes of light. Where it couldn’t penetrate the foliage, the woods were black as oil. Between my toes I could feel grass, and hard, uneven ground — the sort of ground you could break an ankle running across.
I looked back.
Jason was closer to the other guy now, whispering. It was incredibly still; so still their voices carried across the night: ‘You know what he told us. Take him to the usual spot. Come on, Zack, you know how it plays out.’
The black guy was Zack.
‘This is a better spot,’ Zack said.
‘It’s right on the fucking road.’
‘Look how dense it is there.’
‘Who gives a shit?’ Jason said, his voice rising. Then he quietened again as Zack stared at him in silence. Zack was the senior partner. Jason nodded his apology and leaned in closer. ‘All I’m saying is, I don’t really wanna piss him off. He told us to take him up to the top and do it there. That’s where we put the others.’
The others. There were more like me. More that had got too close. My heart tightened and a feeling of dread snaked along my back and down my legs: the anticipation of being put in the ground, of lying there in the freezing cold praying the end would come. I turned to face the darkness in front of me.
Run.
My face burnt, even in the cold.
You have to run.
I looked up the slope, then back to them.
They were still talking. Jason was gripping the gun tightly, his finger moving at the trigger. Zack glanced at me, his eyes narrowing, as if he sensed I might be on the cusp of doing something stupid.
Run.
I scanned the woodland in front of me again. They knew the terrain. They knew the path. They’d know where to force me to go, and where to head me off. But then I thought of the alternative: the two of them leading me through a maze of trees to a dumping ground full of skeletons. Making me beg for my life. Putting a bullet in my chest.
Watching me die in the snow.
Do it now.
I looked back once more — right into Zack’s eyes.
And then I made a break for it.
I almost fell before I’d started, my toes grazing a tree stump. But then I was away, pushing through the darkness, heading for a pool of light about twenty yards up the slope.
‘Hey!’ Zack’s voice. It echoed after me, suppressed by the canopy of the trees, bouncing off the bark. Then I heard him say, ‘I’ll take the road.’
Something punctured the underside of my foot — a stone, maybe even a sliver of glass — but I didn’t stop. I tried to make my strides as long as possible, tried to swallow up as much ground as I could. Huge trees lurched out of the night and knocked me off balance. I arced further right, deeper into the forest. Then I finally stole a look behind me: Jason was about forty feet further down — concentrating on where his feet were landing — but he looked up, once. Our eyes met. He lifted the gun and lost his footing, adjusting himself almost instantly. He was quick and fit. Used to running. I knew that from before. He was probably closing on me already.
I passed through one pool of light, and headed for the next. As I did, I tried to up the pace, every bone in my body aching, every nerve prickling, and saw that the foliage thickened about twenty feet ahead. It got dense quickly, most of it hidden from the moonlight. It would make for a difficult chase. I headed for it, ducking down. Thorny branches scratched my skin, and snow flecked against my face. Darkness set in around me. I moved through the foliage as fast as I could. Beyond the noise of the branches cracking and splintering against me, I expected to hear Jason follow me — but there was no other sound. He was no longer chasing me. He’d gone a different route.
I stopped and dropped to the floor.
All I could hear was blood being pumped around my body, a thumping baseline so loud it felt like it was echoing through the forest.
Something cracked to my right, as I faced up the hill. I turned, narrowed my eyes, willing myself to see into the darkness. They’d both had torches — but they’d both switched them off. There was no light close to me now, and I realized, in some ways, that was worse: they knew this area. They knew the hiding places, the holes. They could be right on top of me and I wouldn’t even see them.
I reached down, slowly, and felt around for something to use as a weapon. The ground was covered in a layer of snow, hard and crystallized, and all I could feel were thick tangles of thorn bushes. In the silence, I started to notice the pain in my feet: it felt like there were deep cuts on the balls and arches of my left foot, and I’d bruised the ankle on my right. I felt blood slowly trickle down from my hairline again, but I didn’t wipe it away this time. Because, over to my right, I saw a flash of colour: pale blue, the colour of Jason’s jacket, catching in the moonlight close to where he was standing.
My heart was punching against my skin so hard — so fast — it felt like it was about to explode. Another flash of pale blue. Moving up the slope, but maintaining the same distance from me. No sound came with it — not even the faintest crunch of snow. He was lithe and quick, every foot landing where it was supposed to. More blood broke free of my hairline; this time it ran down the centre of my forehead, over the bridge of my nose and down to the corner of my mouth.
Then I made him out against the night.
He was about ten feet to my right, up the slope from me, coming around the edges of the thorns. The jacket had been a bad idea. If he’d taken it off, he could have been standing next to me and I wouldn’t have even seen him. But, instead, the jacket was reflecting back what little light there was. He turned where he was, then swung back round in my direction, the gun out in front of him, and stared straight at me. I gazed back, looking at him, frozen to the spot. But then his head swivelled to face further up the slope, and he took a step up.
I could wait him out, wait for him to pass and move further up into the forest. Then I could make a break for it, back in the direction of the bottom road. But there was another problem: Zack. I had no idea where he was. He said he was going to take the road, so presumably it wrapped around the forest, and came back again at the top in a rough semi-circle. But I didn’t know how close the road was. It could be a way off. Perhaps if I waited for Jason to disappear up the slope, and then ran, Zack would be even further behind me. Or maybe the road was nearby above me and, when I got up to run, they’d both be standing side by side and put a bullet in my back.