Matt Hilton - Blood and Ashes

Ignoring him, I picked up the handset. Listened to empty sound. Slammed down the receiver.

‘You must have your cell?’ I said, but recalled Don throwing it on the dashboard of the Audi on the way here, and the phone clattering in the footwell. In his anger, the old man hadn’t picked it up again. ‘Millie? What about you?’

Millie shook her head slowly. ‘I rang my dad from the house. I didn’t remember to bring mine. I was in too much of a panic and I just grabbed the cat and the car keys and got out of there.’

‘Shit,’ I growled. And I could just bet that if Adrian had a cell phone it would be in his bloody trouser pocket and as inaccessible to us now as all the rest. Of course I couldn’t complain about any of the others’ short-sightedness, not when my own phone was mounted in the hands-free holder in the Audi.

The cops wouldn’t be coming. It was solely down to me to save these people from a brutal death. It wasn’t a job I’d envy any man.

And judging by the crashing at the front door, I’d be called to task very soon.

Samuel Gant strode back and forward just inside the treeline that bordered Adrian Reynolds’ home, directing the attack over a radio he brandished like a flaming torch. None of the others disputed his position.

He wasn’t the largest of men, but there was more to him than the assault rifle he carried that won him the respect of his followers. He was a proven killer, but again so were the others, so that wasn’t why he commanded them without question. He looked quite sinister, with his pale, almost yellow eyes and skin like wrinkled parchment, an intricate pattern of tattoos beginning above his right eyebrow and extending down below the collar of his coat. Hidden amongst the Celtic symbolism was a repeated pattern of numbers: eight-eight inked in scarlet over a stylised swastika. Normally, strangers didn’t get close enough to spot the hidden numbers. But he made no secret of them; anyone who met him knew that he was a white supremacist, and anyone who didn’t get the message early on found out soon enough. Usually at their own expense and paid for in agony.

Gant was supremely vicious. He would kill for the most minor reason, and sometimes his fury was even inflicted on those who considered him an ally. But he was also shrewd and a born leader. That was why Carswell Hicks had elevated him to his right hand, and why Gant had commanded his army while Hicks had been otherwise detained.

He had ten men at his disposal. A further three, plus that punk rocker bitch joining them soon. Fifteen of them against Don Griffiths and his family. Ordinarily that would be ample, but that was before the stranger had arrived with Griffiths. Gant had no idea who the man was, but he knew he was going to be trouble. It was almost as if the man had sensed the rifle Gant aimed at him. For some unknown reason Gant had pulled his aim away, swung it on Adrian Reynolds instead. Maybe he just wanted to find out what kind of man Don Griffiths had at his back.

When the stranger had responded, Gant had been forced down on his belly. One of the retaliatory bullets had come so close to his head that he’d felt the disturbance in the air beside him. By the time he’d made it back to a firing position, the man had dragged Reynolds to cover between the parked cars and he’d missed the opportunity to finish him.

Now he wondered if he’d made the wrong decision in killing Reynolds first. This man knew about guns. He also had the finely tuned senses of a warrior and though he’d initially moved as though in pain, he definitely looked like someone capable of holding his own in battle.

Gant cursed to himself. The hit on the Griffiths family should have been a sure thing, but now he wasn’t so confident. It was going to be more difficult than anticipated. He glanced around at the crew he’d assembled. To hell with them, he thought, they’re expendable. As long as I’m still standing, who gives a flying fuck?

Gant watched as one of his men, a tall skinhead called Howard, expended bullets through the closed front door of the house, then had to dive clear when the stranger fired back. Give the idiot his due, Howard went back at the door like he’d been ordered and started butting it with his shoulder.

Gant called to the others over his radio. He sent some round the back. Others were dispatched to deal with the Lexus and Audi, setting the cars aflame so that the family had no quick way out. Then he ordered a full-frontal assault on the house.

As he charged across the lawn towards the back of the house, he said: ‘Let’s see just how dangerous this asshole really is.’

I didn’t know it at the time, but the Reynolds house was erected over one hundred years ago, built by an English gentleman who desired a reminder of his homeland deep in the Pennsylvanian mountains. He’d brought in master architects and craftsmen, and had used the best of materials to create a house that would stand firm against the elements. Over the intervening decades it had defied the storms and blizzards that occasionally shrieked through the northern Alleghenies, resisting with the stiff-upper-lip character of its creator. But extreme weather was one thing. The house didn’t stand a chance against assault rifles and explosives.

Rounds blasted the hinges of the front door, and then someone threw their weight against it. The heavy door crashed back against the inner wall, the sound echoing through the house like the tolling announcement of Doomsday, which would prove apt if I didn’t get my arse in gear.

‘Don! Millie! Get round this side of the island.’ I gestured to the granite-topped counter, indicating the side least exposed to the back door. ‘Keep your heads down and only use those knives if you have to.’

‘We’ll be trapped here,’ Millie croaked as she ushered the children to their hiding place.

I nodded sharply. She was right, but at least the granite would stop some of the bullets. Then I swung to the door jamb, pushing against it with a hip as I aimed my SIG at the men hurtling along the vestibule at us. I picked my target, calm and measured. Crack! Crack! Crack!

A tall skinhead led the charge, and it was he who took all three rounds. He crumpled, fell and the H amp;K assault rifle he dropped rattled along the hall towards me. Not quite far enough, but its position was noted for later. I fired another two rounds, and the two men following let out yelps of pain, both throwing themselves out of the line of fire. One of them was lucky to find an open doorway, but the other caromed off the vestibule wall, taking a family portrait down with him. He scrambled, tried to place himself behind a chest of drawers, but I shot him again, taking the heel off his left foot, and the man screamed in agony.

Another figure appeared at the front door, a quickly moving amorphous shape in my peripheral vision. I fired once, causing the attacker to fall back and I rushed out, scooping up the dead skinhead’s H amp;K. Encumbered by the SIG in one hand and KA-BAR in the other I merely tucked the rifle under my armpit and kept walking.

The shrieking man cradling his blasted foot deserved barely a second’s notice. I just swung sideways with the razor-sharp KA-BAR and the screaming stopped. In the next action I’d jammed the military knife into my belt and transferred the SIG to my left hand. The skinhead had thoughtfully primed the rifle. I moved into the room where I’d so recently spoken to Adrian Reynolds. The man I’d forced there brought up his gun but I ripped him to tatters with a controlled burst of the assault rifle. I went and plucked his rifle out of his grasp, swinging it over my shoulder by the carrying strap.

It sounds perfunctory, the way I slaughtered those men, but I was on autopilot, doing what was required. Emotion wasn’t necessary. All the interlopers who’d made it thus far were now dead. But this was just the beginning and it could very well be me who was a steaming corpse in the next few seconds. Like emotion, I couldn’t allow that; not if I hoped to save the children.