Matt Hilton - Blood and Ashes

I kicked the corpse over on to its back, and reached this time for his gun.

Things had moved on.

The SUV had forced through the flimsy barricade and hurtled into the camp. I tracked it with the assault rifle, loosing a short burst. Rounds pockmarked the rear door in an oblique pattern but failed to stop the vehicle. I pulled the trigger again, but the magazine was empty. A quick glance at the dead body showed no sign of extra ammunition, so I simply dropped the useless weapon and raced after the SUV. As I ran the KA-BAR was exchanged for my SIG.

I vaulted through the hole in the gate, kept on running. Two hundred yards ahead the SUV came to a screeching halt and the front doors flew open. Men sprinted in opposite directions, seeking cover in the cabins on both sides of the encampment.

Preserve your bullets, I told myself. No way that I could hit them from here.

Swerving to the right, I jogged along a wooden walkway in front of a semi-collapsed storage shed, mentally figuring my chances and happy to note that I was still confident of taking out both these amateurs.

Overconfidence could kill me as quickly as the past feelings of insecurity, I reminded myself when someone lurched up in the back seat of the SUV. The first bullet shattered the rear window, but the follow-ups were aimed at me.

Bullets whizzed past, blasting holes in the storage shed and tugging at my clothing. Something so hot that it felt like the scorch of a brand laid a line across my left triceps. I knew what it was like to get shot. It was never hot like that; on the contrary it was like the poke of an icy finger. Some primal point in my brain acknowledged how close the round had come to cutting my arm in half, but just shelved it for processing later. My conscious brain screamed at me to move.

I tumbled ungracefully against the wall of the shed as more bullets churned the planks next to my feet. Splinters flew like a shower of needles. I skipped sideways, then threw myself backwards through a void only vaguely recognisable as a window. Glass tinkled around me as I fell on my back inside the shed. Above me rounds stitched a pattern of holes in the wall, causing laser-like strobes of dim light to cut through the shed.

The wooden wall, sick with mould and damp, was no barrier to the high-impact rounds of an assault rifle and it would be seconds before my attacker adjusted trajectory and fired where I’d gone through the window. I rolled away just as new shafts of light jabbed the space I’d vacated.

Coming to my feet, I raced back the way I’d come, doing the opposite to what my attacker expected. The wall behind me was split into flying chunks, and I was relieved that I’d read the man right.

Hunkering in the far corner, listening, I didn’t attempt to fire back. I was rewarded a moment later by the clunk of the SUV’s door being thrown open. I held my breath, so that my exhalations didn’t compete with the stealthy sounds of approach.

Playing possum wasn’t my usual way of dealing with armed men, but in the circumstances it served me well. Let the man think his bullets had cut me to pieces, then when he came and peered inside the window to check on his handiwork I would put a well-placed bullet in his skull.

There was the steady approach of boots in mud and I creased my finger on the trigger of the SIG.

Shadows shifted beyond the broken window.

Any second now.

I slowly exhaled even as I lifted the gun and aimed it at head height.

Then a strangled yell spoiled everything.

Don roaring in rage.

Apparently he wasn’t fully out of bullets after all, because suddenly more strobes flashed through the shed. Boots pounded along the walkway outside as the man I was a second away from killing made for cover further away.

Son of a bitch, I cursed under my breath, the tattooed man had escaped death a second time.

Vince ran.

Not away from Samuel Gant as would be expected from anyone with the least bit of sense or a will to protect his own ass, but directly towards him.

There was no option left to him if he hoped to achieve what he’d been working so hard for.

Everything depended on him being there.

If he missed it, then, well, he’d be righteously fucked.

He wished he’d sneaked back to the black van, surprised Dillman by dragging that piece of shit out and stomping him stupid under his heels. At least then he’d have a van to climb the mountain in, instead of having to run the entire way in a pair of boots designed for shit-kicking rather than a goddamn marathon.

He stopped to catch his breath.

Damned if I ain’t gonna have to get back to the gym.

Of late his lifestyle hadn’t allowed him the opportunity and he was feeling the effects of too many beers, too many smokes, and too much time between the sheets with Sonya. No regrets, he warned, it had to be done. Damned if he hadn’t enjoyed himself, too. But now, leaning with his hands on his knees while he sucked in great gusts of damp air, he knew he was going to have to do something to get his form back.

He heard the rattle of machine-gun fire.

‘Jesus H. Christ, it’s started!’

He began running again, his burning lungs begging him to stop, but his brain screaming like a drill-instructor to keep on going.

The mud made the going even more difficult, huge clods of it sticking to and building up under his heels and insteps. His jacket stank of overheated leather and perspiration. His hair, usually elegantly coiffed, whipped his face. Adding to his discomfort was the throbbing lump on the back of his skull, and the cat scratches on his face that stung like a sumbitch.

Forget it all, he told himself.

Keep going, Vince, just keep going. You want to come outa this on the right side, you just gotta keep going.

He exhorted himself all the way up and over the crest of the hill, all the while wincing at the sounds of a raging gun battle.

Ahead of him was a logging camp that hadn’t known the presence of lumberjacks for the best part of a decade. It reminded him of a ghost town from a horror movie. The drifting rain added to the image, phantom mists crawling out of the forest and floating across the deserted streets. Or maybe it was clouds of cordite.

A little way ahead was an abandoned sedan car, peppered with bullet holes. As he approached it he scanned left and right, hoping he wasn’t in the crosshairs of any of the skinheads who’d disembarked in a hurry.

Gunfire sounded again.

This time it was from inside the camp and he saw a man rush across the street and throw himself backwards through a window. He saw the flash of a rifle from the back of a dark-coloured SUV. Vince ducked down by the door of the sedan, watched as a figure clambered from the SUV and walked towards where the other had disappeared. The figure held his assault rifle low down near his hip, firing through the walls of the shed. When there was no return fire, the figure continued creeping forward. He was almost at the window when a cry rang out.

Vince swung to the new sound and saw Don Griffiths come out from between the buildings on the opposite side, firing wildly at the figure. As the figure turned to run, Vince recognised the tattoo like a dark stain down his face.

Gant, the motherfucker, ran off.

Further along, more rifles cracked and Don Griffiths was forced to retreat back towards the cabins. By the way he dragged his leg he’d taken a hit from one of the rounds.

Vince had to get inside the camp, but unarmed as he was, he’d be wandering into a shooting gallery where he’d be dropped as easily as a tin duck.

Maybe he could cut round back and take Don Griffiths’ rifle away from him?

No way, he decided. The old guy looked like he knew his way round a machine-gun and would probably plug him before he got near. The way to win this was to go directly for Millie and the children; if only he had the faintest idea where they were hiding.