There were four shovels propped against the wall behind the group. Alex and I both grabbed one and pretended to dig, using our hoods to disguise our faces, but with a clear sight of the compound. A couple of the group still watched us, especially Alex, but then, as we started to dig, they gradually turned their attention back to their work.
‘I’m not going to be able to fight them for much longer,’ I said. My body was on fire: every muscle, every bone. ‘I will slow you up.’
‘We both leave.’
I looked at him. ‘You make a break for it.’
‘And go where?’
‘Run.’
‘There’s nowhere for me to go, David.’
Then, from the mouth of the compound, they came.
42
There were two of them. One I recognized immediately as Andrew; the other was smaller, maybe female, and had the hood up on her top. As soon as they emerged from the darkness of the compound, they were looking right to left, their eyes adjusting to the dusk. They knew we were on the farm somewhere — it was just a question of where.
They both looked up towards us and studied the group. The slow, rhythmic digging; the sound of the shovels; the wind blowing in from the mountains and the sea. What if they did a head count before we joined the group? I looked at Alex briefly. He shot a glance back, as if he knew what I was thinking.
Andrew headed towards the front of Lazarus. The woman turned and started making her way towards us. Alex and I turned away slightly, and started digging properly.
It took her about sixty seconds to get from the mouth of the compound. She was wearing heavy-duty boots, the steel toecaps scuffing against the gravel and the snow on the ground. Apart from Andrew, the instructors dressed like the people they were supposed to be saving — hooded tops, tracksuit trousers — only in blue instead of green. With my back half-turned I couldn’t make out her face clearly, and as she got closer to the group I turned away from her a little more so she was side-on to me.
I dug the shovel into the earth, and flicked another look at her as she moved level with the group. She was looking off somewhere else. When I jammed the shovel down again, into the ground, I felt the wounds throb in my chest, and my back, and my hand. I stopped momentarily, breathed in, then continued digging.
A minute passed.
When I glanced again at her, she’d moved around, closer to Bethany. She was bent over, watching one of the women brushing away some of the earth at her feet. Then the instructor moved again, finally disappearing from my line of sight.
I flicked a glance at Alex.
He was at the opposite angle to me, almost facing the other way. I could see his eyes following the woman as she moved behind me.
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.
From my left, the woman reappeared, her eyes fixed on a girl digging next to me. She stopped about six feet from me. A sudden gust of wind swept up the hill, lifting the hood from her face. Then it fell away.
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 two keys: a brass Yale key, and a silver one with a blue head. Alex selected the blue one and held it up to me.
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 his head shared none of the muscle, bone and sinew of the rest of him.
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.
‘I’ll shoot you.’
‘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.