Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

Moving apart a little they passed between the trees at a crouch. From far ahead beyond where the fields sloped upwards they heard the voices of the men moving in and out of the barn, the words still unintelligible. The wind had come up and overhead the clouds were being dragged free of the moon until it loomed, three-quarters full, bathing the fields in pale yellow light.

They’d be plainly visible if they tried to cross directly over the fields. On the other hand, the wall was painted light grey on its inner aspect, almost white, and they would stand out if they traced the perimeter. Purkiss held up a hand. They would wait in the copse until the cloud cover was back in place before making their way across the fields, using the low stone walls between the fields to duck beside when the moon emerged again.

‘We’re waiting for a bit of darkness, then heading up to the barn,’ he said to Abby. He shook his head when there was no reply.

At his elbow Kendrick muttered, ‘That’s weird. My phone says I’ve got a signal.’

Purkiss glanced at the display on Kendrick’s phone, then at his own. It showed the same, a strong signal, three bars.

He said, ‘Abby?’

Venedikt was alone at the kitchen table, finishing a hasty meal and a mug of tea, all he was permitting himself that night, when his phone rang. The rustic-looking clock on the wall said it was ten past ten. His work was done and he needed to get some rest. The men were applying the final touches in the barn, most of which involved cleaning and polishing, and there was nothing left that he could contribute. Still, he knew he would sleep very little that night. He had considered going home but decided to use one of the bedrooms in the farmhouse instead, wanting to be near his acquisition as if it were a loved one, his own limb.

He looked at the caller ID, said: ‘Yes?’

‘We have a problem. Purkiss is somewhere on the grounds of the farm.’

Venedikt took a moment to react, disorientated. ‘Here?’

‘If you’re on the farm now, yes. He’s said he’s just waiting for darkness and is then going to head for the barn.’

‘How do you know — ’

‘I heard him say it a minute ago. You need to get on top of this, Kuznetsov.’

Venedikt rose slowly, eyes straining to see through the window into the darkness. ‘No problem.’

‘And forget non-lethal force. It’s beyond that. You have to — ’

‘I don’t need you to tell me that.’ He was reaching for his shoulder holster and pistol even as the phone was dropping into his pocket.

There was no shouting, very little noise at all to begin with, just the almost surreal sight of dark humanoid figures emerging and massing quietly in the yard between the farmhouse and the barn. Ten men, a dozen perhaps. As Purkiss and Kendrick ducked lower between the trees, the silence on either side of them began to be punctured by static stabs from walkie talkies. Black apparitions peeled away from distant points along the wall and broke into trots, each one carrying something slung low before it.

Then the relative quiet was torn to shreds. Purkiss felt coldness fill his chest and spill through his limbs as there rose towards the naked moon like smoke from a sacrificial fire the manic baying of dogs.

There were four, Purkiss noticed, in the instant after blind panic had immobilised him. Four small shapes, coloured green by the goggles, hurtling across the fields like ground-hugging guided missiles, yelping and screaming in harmonies that broke and formed and broke again. The rectangle of the farm was at its longest from north to south, from the gate end to the rear wall, which meant five hundred metres or so between Purkiss and Kendrick on one hand and the dogs on the other. A distance that was closing rapidly.

In the copse they were protected from the men on either side of them, who were unlikely to attempt a shot given the density of the trees. But the dogs would be upon them soon, and if they ran back to the wall and tried to climb over they might as well daub bullseyes on their backs.

Beside him Kendrick gripped a low branch, braced both feet on the trunk of the fir, and heaved until the branch peeled away enough that he could wrench the rest off. He broke the other end and stripped it to form a point. Purkiss lifted a fallen branch, heavier than Kendrick’s, and hefted it.

The baying was becoming more frenzied and the blood lust seemed to have affected the pack of men behind the dogs, who were shouting unintelligibly. By now Purkiss recognised the skinny bodies and streamlined snouts of Dobermann Pinschers.

He tore off the night-vision goggles — they were unnecessary now — and signalled Kendrick with a jerk of his head. They moved sideways towards the rim of the copse. Through the trees they saw a man waiting, rifle raised to chest height. If they separated and rushed him far enough apart he might be able to hit only one of them, but one down would worsen the odds exponentially.

They pressed themselves agains the widest tree they could find. With his mouth close to Kendrick’s ear, Purkiss told him what he wanted him to do.

The dogs were on the final approach now, two of them well in the lead, hurling themselves across the final hundred-metre stretch of field towards the copse, almost sobbing, moonlight flashing in the ropes of froth slavering from their maws. Purkiss counted down with his fingers and shouted ‘Go,’ and Kendrick emerged from the side of the tree. He lobbed his phone high and arcing and the man raised the gun to take aim at Kendrick, looked up, and for a second lifted the gun higher as if participating in an absurd clay-pigeon shoot. He took several trotting steps back, half-taken in, and before he could register fully that it wasn’t a grenade Purkiss hurled the club of wood so that it spun through the six or seven metres separating them and caught the man in the mouth. He staggered and Purkiss and Kendrick had already broken cover and Purkiss dived the last distance, low to the ground, and caught the man around the legs as he was trying to bring the rifle down again. The butt of the rifle glanced off Purkiss’s head, bringing tears to his nose, but he hung on. Above him Kendrick brought the man down with a blow to his face.

The noise of screaming was suddenly overwhelming because the dogs were upon them.

The first one slammed into Kendrick’s back like slingshot fired at close quarters, forty kilograms of bone and sinew, knocking him off his feet and keeping its place on his back, its agility terrifying, its jaws snapping and probing for his neck. From his position on the ground at the man’s legs Purkiss groped upwards for the rifle but it was out of reach. It was too late anyway because he felt movement behind him and he kicked out blindly, felt his foot connect with softness underlaid with bone and heard an outraged yelp. He didn’t wait to look back but lunged on his knees for the sharpened branch Kendrick had dropped. He pivoted and jabbed and got the dog in mid-leap, an awkward blow to the chest which struck the ribcage, and although it broke the dog’s momentum it only inflamed it further. The beast darted its head in around the stick and got its paws on Purkiss’s chest. He lost his balance and it was on him and over him, drool spattering his face like hot rancid hail, the whites of its eyes flaring in derangement.

On the ground a few feet away Kendrick was roaring. The other two dogs had caught up and they lunged for Purkiss’s feet. He thrashed and jerked, not just to try and hit the snapping snouts but also to keep his legs moving as targets. He got the stick in both hands and used it as a bar against the throat of the dog above him, forcing its head up and away from his face. Dimly he heard a series of wet thuds and a prolonged and diminishing screech from out of his line of sight. It gave him a new impetus. Instead of trying to push the dog backwards and away from him, he rolled back on to his shoulders, carrying the animal over him and pushing hard with the stick when the dog had passed the point of no return, so that it toppled off him. Before he could rise, one of the others sprang to take its place. This time he was ready with the stick. He rammed it straight into the dog’s snarl, the animal’s momentum driving it on to the pointed end so that the back of its throat was impaled. It thrashed away, wrenching the stick from Purkiss’s grasp, and stumbled, choking, pawing at the fragment jutting from its maw.