Simon Kernick - Wrong Time, Wrong Place

He turned round completely. He was wearing night vision goggles and he was staring straight at her.

For a split second, he didn’t move.

But Ash did.

With a speed born of pure heart-pounding adrenalin, she leaped out of the bush, rose to her full height and let out a howl of anger as she threw the stone straight at his head.

It was her one chance of survival, and it worked. The stone hit him full in the face, knocking him backwards.

He kept his balance, and he still had the knife, but he was hurt. He clutched at his face with his free hand and grunted with pain.

Now that she’d drawn blood, the rage seemed to re-energise Ash. She flew forward, picked up the stone and, before her attacker had time to defend himself, smashed it into the side of his head with such force that he went down to his knees.

He swung his knife at her in a wild arc but he was way too slow and unsteady. Ash dodged out of the way and danced round the back of him, sensing victory as she struck him in the base of the skull with another big howl.

This time the knife dropped from his hand and he let out a painful groan as he fell forward.

Ash was on him like a shot, jumping on his back and forcing him into the dirt. She brought the stone down again and again on his head, using both hands for effect, ignoring the terrible sound of bone crunching and the blood and brain matter oozing out of his skull. She was lost in the absolute thrill of revenge.

Then, without warning, it was like a switch had been turned off. Ash stopped hitting him, let the stone fall from her hands, and began to sob. He’d stopped moving, and the top of his head was a white-flecked pulp of meat and shattered bone. The man who’d killed her husband was dead, and Ash was the one who’d killed him.

Filled with a black curiosity, needing to know what a murderer like him looked like, she reached down with a shaking hand and pulled off the goggles.

He was younger than her, probably no more than late twenties with pale, unlined features and plump cheeks with a heavy spray of freckles. His eyes were closed, and it looked like he was asleep. And that was the thing. He looked so bloody normal. There was no menace about him, no sign of the darkness that must have been in his heart. As she stared, a thick line of blood ran down his forehead and pooled in his eye.

‘Oh God,’ whispered Ash. ‘What have I done?’

Which was the moment when she heard an angry bark. She looked up and saw a second black-clad figure on the other side of the stream, running down towards her and pulling a rifle from his shoulder. The dogs, sleek-looking Dobermanns, were on either side of him.

‘Get her, boys!’ he roared.

The baying dogs charged into the stream while the man went down on one knee, taking a firing stance.

Calling up her last reserves of energy, Ash turned and bolted, hurtling through bushes, keeping low, trying to zigzag so she wouldn’t present him with a decent target. She knew she’d never outrun the dogs, but she had no choice but to try.

A shot rang out with a loud crack, and a bullet whistled through the branches so close to Ash that she could almost feel its heat.

Her legs ached. Her whole body felt like it was seizing up. Fit or not, there was no way she could last much longer.

Keep going. Your life depends on it. If you stop, you die .

A branch hit her in the face, cutting the skin just beneath her eye. She almost fell but somehow righted herself, hearing the dogs getting closer once again.

Then suddenly the ground disappeared in front of her and Ash was forced to make an emergency stop. She only just avoided falling over the edge of a high cliff that dropped down to a river flowing hard a long, long way below. Thirty metres to her left, the waterfall cascaded down to meet it. The water sparkled in the moonlight that flickered through the trees.

Ash turned as the dogs came bolting out of the trees straight at her, teeth bared, tongues lolling. She’d always been petrified of heights. She refused to travel in cable cars, and didn’t even like going up a stepladder at home. But people can overcome even their worst fears when confronted by two attack dogs, and the prospect of certain death.

As the first dog leaped for her she turned and jumped out into the unknown, eyes squeezed shut and legs flapping wildly. She was half-expecting the sensation of teeth sinking into her flesh, but nothing came. Instead she simply fell through space for what seemed like hours, her whole life flashing before her — visions of childhood parties, desert islands, romantic nights with Nick.

She hit the water with a huge crash, and felt herself being taken further and further downstream. Ash fought all the time to keep her head above water and avoid the warm embrace of unconsciousness.

The last thing she remembered was the current driving her into the shallows where she could feel the ground beneath her feet.

Then, finally, everything went black.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Ash’s eyes opened.

For a few seconds she had no idea where she was, just this vague feeling that she’d had a dark and brutal dream in which her beloved Nick had been murdered. Then, as she raised her head from where it had been face down in foul-smelling mud, and felt her whole body aching, she remembered what had happened, and her heart sank.

Rubbing mud from her eyes, she carefully glanced round. Sunlight dappled through the trees, and she was forced to squint against it. By the sun’s low angle she guessed it was fairly early in the morning.

She rolled round on to her back with a groan and saw that water was lapping at her hiking shoes. She was lying next to a fast-flowing river, with a cliff stretching up on the other side. The river must have carried her along for God knows how far before depositing her here in a flat clearing.

As she slowly sat up, Ash felt a rush of sickness that immediately set off a bout of shivering. She was in a bad way. But at least she was alive. Somehow, against all the odds, she’d made it. And somehow they hadn’t found her, even though she must have been unconscious for hours.

Ash got to her feet, cold and sick but determined not to break down and cry over what had happened to Nick. Which was when she remembered that she’d killed one of them herself. Killed him . It was hard to accept that she, Ash, a primary school teacher by trade who hadn’t had a fight since she was thirteen years old (with Chloe Baxter about a boy in the dinner queue), had beaten a man so badly that his brains had come out. Jesus. It made her want to throw up.

Pulling a thick knot of matted hair out of her eyes, she staggered through the trees. How on earth was she ever going to explain what had happened the previous night to anyone? She still wasn’t sure why she, Nick and the others had been targeted. But at least now that it was daytime, she felt less scared. There was something about the sunshine that lifted her spirits.

The woods were empty and filled with the sound of birdsong. It was a real contrast to the previous night. No baying of hounds, or screams of dying friends. She thought about Tracy then. Poor, frightened Tracy caught in a metal trap and left to die alone.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Ash told herself. ‘You did what you had to do.’

Even so, it didn’t make her feel any better.

The forest began to thin out, and the sunshine became brighter ahead. Ash sped up, telling herself that soon she’d be able to rest, that it wouldn’t be much longer before she found someone. Just one more big effort and this would all be over.

Suddenly the trees parted in front of her and she was standing on a narrow pot-holed road. On the other side was an overgrown field that stretched up towards another pine-covered hill.