Tim Stevens - Jokerman

One man. There must be only one man, or else surely by now the others would have joined in.

‘Hannah,’ he called, his voice a rasp.

She answered, though he couldn’t make out what she said, as though the tear gas had fogged up his ears as well.

‘Arkwright’s hit. Keep him alive.’

Without waiting for a response, Purkiss got to his feet.

He’d never gone into a gunfight blind before. The odds weren’t appalling. They were utterly insane.

He loped towards the corner of the cottage, the shotgun barrel leading.

As he reached the corner something — a distantly heard sound, a subtle change in the air pressure, pure instinct — made him stoop.

A man stepped out, a handgun aimed at the level Purkiss’s chest would have been.

The range was too close for Purkiss to fire the shotgun. Instead he jabbed the barrel up at the exposed torso.

He could still barely see, and the man was fast, but he was close enough that he made contact. The man’s breath grunted out of him and he reeled back. Purkiss pressed home his advantage and rose, jabbing with the shotgun again, noticing the man’s face was obscured by a gas mask resembling an alien snout. The man swung his arm across to deflect the blow, and Purkiss felt the jarring clang of metal on metal as the shotgun’s barrel struck the gun in the man’s hand.

Purkiss was vaguely aware of an object — the handgun — spinning away, the man leaping after it. Purkiss raised the shotgun to fire. The dim shape of the man changed direction, sprinting away down the side of the cottage.

Purkiss fired, saw the fleeing figure drop, scramble to its feet again, and he knew he’d missed. He blinked, rubbing furiously at his burning eyes. The figure disappeared round the far corner.

As he followed, Purkiss tried to remember the layout at the back that he’d seen when he and Hannah had done a circuit of the cottage earlier. There’d been a small vegetable garden and one or two sheds, beyond which fields had stretched to distant trees.

Purkiss slowed when he reached the corner, risked a quick look round it before pulling back again. The man’s shape was heading for the fence at the far end of the vegetable garden.

He had no hope of hitting the man with a blast from the shotgun at this distance, but if Purkiss went back for the handgun the man had dropped, and managed to locate it in his half-blinded state, he’d lose so much time he might as well not bother. So Purkiss headed after the man at a stumbling run, mindful of the thousand possible traps in his path: uneven ground, wire netting protecting rows of vegetables, exposed roots.

On the other side of the fence a blurred meadow sloped downwards to some kind of riverlet before tilting upwards towards the distant trees. Away from the cloud of teargas, Purkiss found his breathing easier, the intense prickling in nose and eyes fading; but his eyelids remained swollen almost closed, and tears fragmented his vision every time he kept his eyes open for more than a few seconds. The retreating man multiplied before liquefying, over and over again.

Purkiss crawled clumsily over the fence, hooking and tearing his clothes on protruding wire. On the other side the meadow was marshy, the drainage poor. His feet sank into mud and mulch which threatened to drag him down as he hauled his way down the slope. Ahead of him the man appeared nimbler, unencumbered by either a weapon or impaired vision. He weaved and dodged, presenting an unsteady target.

Purkiss gauged the distance between them. Between fifty and a hundred yards, he estimated. He wasn’t certain what type of shotgun he was carrying, or what its exact specifications were, but he knew that at more than forty yards the spray pattern of the buckshot was going to be very broad indeed. His chances of doing any damage were limited.

He decided to risk a shot. Stopping, making sure his stance was steady, he raised the shotgun, aimed, pulled the trigger.

The man dived sideways, and for an instant Purkiss thought he’d got lucky, had caused a significant injury. But no, the man had risen again, was sprinting now, and Purkiss understood: the man had used the shot to gain useful information about how far Purkiss was behind him.

A spike of adrenaline loosened Purkiss’s limbs, drove him forwards so that he rode out the stitch in his side, the leadenness of the muddy ground sucking at his shoes. At the bottom of the slope the man had reached the creek — really a river bed with a desultory, unflowing overlay of water — and was wading through. The water slowed him enough to allow Purkiss to gain some ground, and as he closed the distance he reloaded and took aim and fired once more, still on the move.

He heard the shot speckle the surface of the water, heard a grunt from the man, but saw him crawl out the other side and resume his run. Purkiss saw a narrower stretch of the creek to his left, which would allow him to cross more quickly but meant he’d have to divert from the straight line he was following. He did a quick mental calculation, decided it was worth it, and peeled off to the left.

By fording the creek at this point, Purkiss put himself at an angle from the man, and on the other side he began to close the distance once more. The man had enormous stamina, was showing no signs of flagging, and also seemed to know where he was going. Purkiss thought that if he made it to the trees, he’d get away. The opportunities for camouflage were too great there.

Purkiss drew a breath in through his nose, exhaled through his mouth, centring himself, noticing as he did so the rawness of the lining of his throat and nasal passages. He pictured himself as a spring, compressed and quivering on the point of release. Then he exploded forwards, putting all his concentration, all his energy, into a burst of speed he couldn’t sustain for any great length of time but which might allow him finally to catch up.

The man loomed nearer above him on the slope, but was almost at the trees. Purkiss put his head down, not concentrating on the man but rather on the action of his legs, one in front of the other. At the last minute he looked up through his slowly clearing vision, saw the man at the wooden fence marking the boundary of the meadow, twenty yards away, fifteen. The man had one leg over the fence, and turned the insectoid snout of his gas mask towards Purkiss.

Purkiss snarled like a berserker, raised the shotgun.

The man seized one of the horizontal planks of the fence, tore it free with the ripping sounds of wood splintering around nails, and swung it at Purkiss.

A ragged end slashed across Purkiss’s face, knocking him sideways. Pain exploded in his head and he fought to keep his balance, the shotgun barrel veering away.

The man had dropped off the fence and swung the length of wood in a backhand movement, catching Purkiss across the head again. The world tilted and Purkiss felt the gorge rise in his throat. He stepped towards the man, raising the shotgun once more, but he teetered crazily to one side and dropped to his knee. Through roiling waves of pain and disorientation he saw the man clear the fence, disappear into the woods.

Purkiss slumped forwards, his face making contact with the soggy, bristly ground. For long moments he inhaled the cloying, sweet smell of the wet earth, relishing its raw coolness.

No good. You’ve lost him. It’s no good.

He tried rising, failed once and dropped back, tried again. When he was confident his legs would support him, he leaned on the shotgun and studied the line of trees beyond the fence.

The man was either long gone, or rearming himself from a hidden stash. In neither case did it make any sense for Purkiss to stay there.

Feeling sick, both from the blow and with a sense of failure, of a missed opportunity, he began to make his unsteady way back across the meadow to the cottage.