Ли Чайлд - Past Tense

The GPS still worked, in the flashlights. That came direct to the house. Currently it showed Patty and Shorty heading for the mouth of the track. In a straight line. With the burning motel directly behind them, no doubt. Smart. It had never been thought of. Not in any of their brainstorming sessions. Not in any of their simulations. It should have been thought of. Night vision or no night vision, they would be very hard to see, against a bright moving glare directly behind them. Not until they were very close.

His final problem was customer number three’s heart rate monitor. It was sounding an alarm. Not a necessary piece of equipment, but part of the terms and conditions. A private experiment, run by Robert, who wanted to test the notion that the thrill of the hunt was in the chase. He thought not, based on experience in Thailand. He thought the thrill came in the delicious hour after the prey was cornered. He wanted numbers to prove it. Hence customers were to wear monitors. Data was to be recorded. So far number three had displayed increasing excitement, with a recent huge peak, and then he had flatlined. According to his monitor, he was dead.

PATTY AND SHORTY held hands, and somehow the palm to palm contact was better than talking, when it came to saying what they had to say. They were both feeling weird, somewhere between paralysed and frantic, sometimes breathless, caught up in a strange double flip-flop inversion. It was pitch dark, so they were safe, except for night vision, so they weren’t, except night vision couldn’t be used, so they were. One step they felt secure. Like little kids, hiding. They could see no one, therefore no one could see them. The next step they felt they were walking the length of a gigantic airport runway, two tiny figures all alone in the vastness, lit up by a thousand probing searchlights.

They didn’t know which feeling was real.

Maybe neither.

They walked on.

They waited for arrows.

None came.

They anticipated sentries wide on the flanks. Impatient types, hoping for the best. Hoping for early contact. They planned to avoid them by coming in pretty much centrally. Pretty much halfway between any two distant outposts. With the fire behind them every step. But then at the last moment they planned to veer off course, just as far as the edge of the blaze would cover them. Then they would work around in the woods and pick up the track’s direction a little farther down. Better than walking right in, they thought. Surely the mouth of the track would be watched very carefully.

Also they planned to split up. Just temporarily. Just by ten yards or so.

‘Close enough to help,’ Patty said.

Then she thought, far enough to get away when the other one is killed.

But out loud she said, ‘Far enough not to make one big target.’

In the distance behind them the motel’s roof fell in. A huge cloud of sparks rose up, and hungry new flames started in on the timbers. The fire was brighter than ever.

‘Now,’ Patty said.

They went south. To their right. They skipped along sideways, glancing ahead, glancing back at the fire, trying to stay covered by its white-out glow, by the very last edge of its halo, but also pushing the envelope, going as wide as they dared, and then wider, and wider still, and then Shorty ran for the woods first, as agreed. He made it. Patty waited. No sound. No shouted warning. She went after him, squeezing between the same two trees, aiming to head around the same quarter circle, back towards the track. She could hear him up ahead. She was close enough to help. She glanced behind her. She was far enough to get away. Would she? She thought, a mile in my shoes, baby. Who knew what anyone would do?

She walked on.

Then two things happened so fast and sudden her mind went blank. They came out of nowhere. Too fast to see. Two things happened. That was all she knew. And then nothing. Except Shorty was suddenly standing in front of her, and a guy was lying on the ground. Then came a painful slow motion replay, like a mental reaction. Maybe a therapeutic purpose. Post traumatic. In her mind she saw a guy looming up. Literally a nightmare vision. All in black, tight nylon, a bow, an arrow, a hideous mechanical one-eyed face. The bow jerking right, tilting down, at her legs, aiming low. They’ll shoot to wound . Then the string drawing back, the arrowhead winking in the moonlight, then out of nowhere Shorty was behind the guy, swinging his long metal flashlight like the riot police, hitting the guy full on behind the ear, every ounce of his potato farmer bulk and muscle behind it, plus every ounce of his anger and fury and fear and humiliation. The guy went straight down. Dead, she was sure. The sound alone told her. The flashlight against his skull. She was a country girl. She had heard enough cows killed to know what it took.

Close enough to help.

It had worked.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘I busted my flashlight,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t turn on any more.’

‘You can have mine,’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Keep mine for a weapon,’ he said.

They traded flashlights. An absurd little ceremony.

‘Thank you,’ she said again.

‘You’re welcome.’

She looked away.

‘But,’ she said.

‘But what?’

‘They know there are two of us. They must have known we would play it like that.’

‘I guess.’

‘Which is a risk for them.’

‘I guess.’

‘They must have known that upfront.’

‘OK.’

‘I think their obvious solution would be to hunt in pairs.’

A voice said, ‘Damn right about that, little girl.’

They turned around.

Another nightmare vision. Glistening black nylon tight to the skin, a complicated bow lurid with composite layers, a steel arrowhead as big as a serving spoon, a Cyclops stare through an expressionless glass circle.

The nightmare vision shot Shorty in the leg.

The bowstring thumped, the arrow hissed, and Shorty screamed and went down like he had fallen through a trapdoor. The arrow was stuck in his thigh. He was hauling on it, and jerking his head side to side, and clamping his jaw up and down, which bit his scream into separate rapid-fire gasps of agony, much faster than breathing, ah ah ah , like a racing heartbeat.

Patty was calm. Like Shorty had been before. When her mind was blank. Now his was. Suddenly she thought, this is how life is supposed to feel. She heard herself in her head, as if she was her own teammate, at her own shoulder, saying sure, Shorty’s bad, but he won’t get any worse in the next three seconds. Not medically possible. So feel free to take care of the other thing first.

Which was the guy with the bow. Who was old, she saw. Suddenly a second teammate was at her other shoulder, saying sure, you’re going to notice more now, much more detail, because now you’re operating at a higher level, or maybe a more primitive level, where senses are more acute, so that although the guy is dressed head to toe in shiny black, and has a machine on his face, you can tell from his posture and his movements he’s about our grandfathers’ age, and he’s stooped, and he’s sparrow-chested, and if we think back to all the older guys we’ve known, uncles and great-uncles and so on, and the lousy shape they were in, and we adjust for height and weight, then maybe we don’t have too much to worry about with this guy.

He was slow with his reload. His right elbow was slow to bend. Kind of awkward. Arthritis, maybe. He tried to compensate by scrabbling for the arrow early. He fumbled it. Patty breathed in. She felt she was at the head of a tight V-shaped formation, somehow now in motion, loud music playing, her loyal teammates marching at her shoulder, willing her on, bearing her forward, buoying her up, making her weightless.