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 staircase. I glanced back. From the semi-darkness of the kitchen he came: the horns on the mask; the eyes moving inside the holes; the mouth wide and leering.
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.
The window closest to me fractured and blew out. Glass landed on the floor and snow from the roof swept in. I clutched the gun with both hands. One of Legion’s feet hit a floorboard at the door to the room. A creak. I waited for him to move closer, but, instead, heard the clicking of his gun.
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 until he was near enough to put me down. I gripped the gun, lay my arm across my chest and emptied the rest of the clip.
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, moving towards the centre of my chest, where it blew up like an explosion. Pain scattered across my chest and back.
‘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.
43
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 crawling across the floor of the house towards me. I’d been right. It was like an animal scent, trailing him. A warning system. It was telling me not to come any closer. Except I had to if I was ever going to leave the farm alive.
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.