Alex Scarrow - October skies

He grinned in the dark.

This is fun.

‘Checking this end first,’ whispered Carl, sweeping his nightscope across the stove and around the nearest bunks. He crouched down low and looked quickly beneath the bottom bunks. ‘Signal’s here… can’t see anyone, though.’

Shepherd decided to flush them out. ‘Julian! Rose! We know you’re in here! Your phone was tagged. I’m sorry, but there’s no getting away. You best come out.’

There was no response. A gust of wind played with the skylight shutter in another bunkhouse further along.

‘Why don’t you come out? I don’t really want to add to the body count if I can help it.’

Nothing.

‘Grace was a mistake. Carl reacted too quickly. He didn’t need to shoot her. I’m truly sorry about that.’

Shepherd held his breath and listened more closely to the faint sounds coming from inside the hut: the rustling, skittering sound of a rat, the soft moan of a gentle wind eddying inside amongst the rafters

… and yes, he could hear it now, the stuttering breath of someone trying to be ever, ever, so quiet.

‘Come on out. We’ve got some matters to discuss. We’ll come to some arrangement.’

Carl took another few steps forward, panning his scope left and right between the bunks that he passed by. ‘The signal’s ten yards from my position, right ahead.’

Shepherd swallowed back a nervous giggle. This was getting to be too much fun.

‘Oh, you know what? Screw this… I’m lying. You’re both going to die. I might kill you quickly, or I might decide to have some fun first. It really depends how much you piss me off right now.’

Shepherd listened intently again as the last vibration of his voice faded. He could hear that staccato breathing, faster now, fluttering with fear.

Carl took another few steps forward, whip-panning left-right. ‘I’m nearly on the signal. Can’t see ’em yet, though.’

‘One of them, at least, is in here. Can’t you hear the breathing? It’s the young woman.’

Carl listened. ‘No, not yet.’ He looked at the display in his hand. ‘The signal’s just ahead, to the left, between two bunks.’

Carl took another few steps forward, crouching low to sweep beneath the bunks on both sides, then finally he drew up to where the signal was coming from. His display read just over two yards. Through the nightscope, he saw something lying on the floor.

‘Shit!’ he snapped out angrily.

It was the BlackBerry. He knelt down to pick it up. ‘The fuckers ditched it and ran.’

‘No!’ Shepherd called out from the doorway. ‘I can hear… I can hear her breathing. The girl’s right in here with us.’

Carl held his breath and listened. He could hear nothing. He picked up the phone and then heard something else — the soft puff of exhaled air and the rustle of sudden movement from right beside him. He swung the nightscope to his left, just in time to catch a blurred streak of movement from the top bunk of the frame beside him.

With a sickening penetrative crunch, his eyes saw stars and his ears whistled and rang with a deafening white noise — the sound of his mind going into traumatic shock. His finger convulsed on the trigger and fired off half a dozen rapid rounds.

Julian’s right thigh was punched hard. He heard the crack of his femur.

‘Rose! Get out of here! RUN!’ he screamed, letting go of the wooden handle, and watching Barns slump to the floor with the large, rusty canting hook through the back of his skull, little rapid breaths puffing out of his mouth like a steam train.

He heard the clump and scrape of feet on the wooden floor, someone scrambling. Then he heard Rose whimper and cry out in the dark on the other side of the hut — the sound of a struggle, and her desperate, muffled cries.

Then a heavy thud.

Oh Christ, no.

Julian struggled with the pain in his leg, trying to pull himself out of the bunk.

‘Rose?’ he called out.

It was quiet.

‘Rose!’

Grimacing, he managed to swing his leg over the wooden bunk frame and lower himself to the floor. By the faint, ghostly blue glow of light from a device in Barns’s twitching hand, Julian could see the metallic glint of something smooth on the floor; the man’s gun.

As he reached down for it, everything went black.

Sunday

Sierra Nevada Mountains, California

The young woman was crying, her eyes fixed on the gun. Cooke, lying beside her in a small pool of blood from a cut on his scalp, was unconscious. He was breathing noisily, blowing bubbles in his own blood.

He looked at Carl. He was quite clearly dead. Pity. The man had been an extremely loyal and useful acolyte.

William Shepherd sat on the bunk in silent contemplation, Carl’s pistol held in one hand resting in his lap, the more cumbersome rifle on the bunk beside him.

‘Wh-what are y-you going… t-to do?’ whimpered the woman.

Shepherd put a finger to his lips. ‘Shh.’

He needed quiet to think. There were considerations to make, risk assessments. He had to think this through logically before he did something that couldn’t be undone.

Why are you waiting?

The voice was very loud now in his head, almost uncomfortably so.

‘I have to think,’ Shepherd replied aloud.

Kill them.

‘Is it necessary?’ he uttered, and then realised he was speaking.

Is it necessary? I’m certain their silence can be bought.

What if it can’t?

It’s a risk, I know. He nodded. But I’m not prepared to have blood on my hands.

You already do.

No, I don’t. Carl exceeded his authority. He killed unnecessarily.

The voice laughed unkindly.

It’s true. I never asked him to kill. I asked him to…

Tidy things up?

Shepherd winced. Yes, he’d used those words and left Carl to interpret them, knowing full well what that would mean. The man had been fiercely loyal; loyal enough that he would happily have taken a bullet for him. Deep down, Shepherd had been aware that there would be a body or two before this was all satisfactorily resolved.

Your hands are already bloodied.

I have never killed anyone. I’m a man of faith.

You are a man with ambition. That’s why I’m here.

I only wish to do God’s will.

They need to die, then.

Shepherd’s gaze drifted onto them. The voice was right, of course. Money most certainly wouldn’t silence them. A threat might… but he couldn’t take that chance.

No. If you want the things your heart desires, you must kill.

His hand tightened around the pistol, but he resisted the urge to raise it, aim it and pull the trigger.

I wonder… are you a good man?

I am.

I wonder.

I’ve just… I’ve never had to shoot someone before.

Certainly not like this, in cold blood, so close that he could hear her heart pounding. It took an iron will to kill so deliberately, so intimately. It would be easier if she were running, or struggling, but like this?

That is why you need me.

Shepherd’s hand tightened on the gun.

I am what you need.

What do you mean?

Strength, William Lambert. Strength.

Lambert. That wasn’t a name he’d used in a long time, not since he’d started preaching as a young man. He always preferred his mother’s maiden name — Shepherd was so much more appropriate for his calling. What’s more, the family name was one his father and grandfather preferred maintain a low profile; well away from the tittle-tattle of newspaper columns and latterly, glossy kiosk magazines.

I have all the strength I need.

Yes? Then finish the job.

‘This isn’t… this isn’t what the Lord wants of me,’ he uttered. ‘Not if He wants me to make His word known. I can’t do that with blood on me.’