Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

“Who, what?” he said.

I rummaged among the set of keys Sonia had brought, found one that looked like a padlock key, lifted the chain that tied him to the wall, put the key in the lock. It turned. I unlocked him.

No hugs, or thanks, or elation, because he was staring at the offal that had once been Sonia’s neck and now resembled the stringy remains from an abattoir. A carpet of blood around her, seeping into all the corners of the smokehouse and out the door.

“You did that? What did you do? What did you? Oh my God, you-” he began to say, his voice rising with shock and a screechy panic.

I cut him off, putting my finger on his lips and forcing his mouth closed.

“You better chill the fuck out, sonny boy. If it looks like you’re going to get us both killed, I’ll top you before you do.

So keep your voice down. Get me?” I said severely.

He nodded.

“Good.”

He didn’t seem capable of helping, so I took the padlock and chain and unwrapped it from the wooden support beam and released him. He rubbed his wrists, groaned, looked at me and again at Sonia.

“Did you have to kill her?” he asked.

“I had to stop her giving the alarm, it was the only way,” I told him.

“Could we have tied her up or-”

“Enough,” I said and gave him a shut-the-fuck-up stare.

I scanned the hut and spotted my boxer shorts and trousers, which had been thrown in a corner. I grabbed them, pulled them on, and searched for my artificial foot, but it wasn’t there. In a burst of petty malice they’d probably tossed it or burned it on the log fire.

I thought for a sec. It was going to complicate things. The best I could manage was either an undignified hop or a shambling limp.

Test both ways of locomotion. I limped from one side of the smokehouse to the other. Hopped back. I moved slightly faster with the limp.

“What do we do-” Peter began, but I stopped. Someone outside.

“Sonia, did you drop something?” a voice yelled from the house. Jackie. I ran to the door, opened it a crack. He was standing at the cabin in pajama bottoms, slippers, and a leather jacket. He was holding a gun.

I looked at Peter.

“When it goes down, it’s going to go down fast. You wait here and keep a lookout; when you think you have a chance, run for the woods. Don’t come back. Just keep going. We’re about ten miles from a town called Belfast. It’s on the coast, so I think it’s east of here. Do you know where east is?”

“Where the sun comes up.”

“That’s right.”

“Keep going and call the police. You remember my name?”

“Michael Forsythe.”

“Right, get them to call the FBI and tell them to get here as fast as fucking possible. This is Gerry McCaghan’s cabin.Say that back.”

“Gerry McCaghan. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to have to stay here and fight them off. They’ve taken my prosthetic foot, so I’m not running anywhere. I’ve got to keep them at bay somehow,” I said.

“I’ll help you, I’ll stay here and help you, two of us against the rest of them is going to be better odds. I was in the army cadets. I’m not completely usele-”

I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m from the fucking midnight school and I’ll do better if I don’t have to worry about you. And I need you to get the peelers out here to save my bloody skin. Literally,” I said, looking at the hole Touched had gouged last night.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You’re going to have to take off. Fast. If they kill me, remember they’ll be like mad dogs to track you down.”

“Maybe we could talk to them, maybe we-”

I stood firmly on one foot to get balanced and then slapped his face.

“Listen to me, Gandhi, we’re going to kill them or they’re going to kill us. That’s the way it’s going to be. Your job is to live. To get out of here and live. Ok?”

He nodded.

I walked to the door crack.

Jackie had started coming down the path, muttering to himself, trying to keep the wet snow off his slippers. Not as cautious as he should be. Not by a long way.

“Ok, Jackie’s coming. Don’t say or do anything.”

I found my shredded T-shirt, pulled it on, grabbed a piece of toast from the floor, wiped the blood off it, ate it, and sipped what was left of the coffee in the spilled cup.

“Sonia, are you ok?” Jackie asked when he was a few feet from the smokehouse. When there was no answer he hesitated, lifted up his gun.

“Sonia?”

Come on, Jackie, come on in.

He looked back at the house and at his gun to make sure it was loaded.

“Sonia, are you ok?” he asked.

Come on, Jack.

“Sonia?” he asked for a final time, his face nervous, his eyebrows scrunched up.

When again there was no reply, he stopped and backed away. I knew he wasn’t going to enter now. He was going to go and get Touched. He was suspicious, afraid. Maybe the famous Michael Forsythe had pulled something. Maybe Sonia had had a heart attack. Maybe the police had shown up. Whatever it was, it was out of his league and was a job for Touched.

He turned his back and began walking to the cabin.

My best chance.

I picked up a large piece of glass. I opened the door and ran on bloody stump and bloody foot, through the wet snow, and leapt on his back.

My left hand struck out in the silence and curled around Jackie’s mouth. My right stabbed the glass into his gun-holding arm.

I pulled hard with my left hand, turning his head sharply to one side, trying to break his neck. A schism of emotions as his face met mine. A terrified look. He was unable to speak. Snow blur and he hit the ground with a thud.

I couldn’t break his neck now but at least he’d dropped the pistol.

We rolled in the snow, his eyes wide, his limbs fluid, and the piece of glass now moving towards his throat with such speed that he probably wondered if there wasn’t some sorcery in it. And Jackie in such a state of petrification he didn’t even have the wit to bite the hand covering his mouth. The piece of glass jerking fast and with it a swishing noise. It moved almost by itself like a cobra as it cut and recut his throat.

“Jesu-” he tried to say but the smoking pain and the satanic look on the man killing him froze the word. A deep puncture below his Adam’s apple. A slash at his jugular vein.

And finally, attempting at last to save his life, he punched me with a left jab.

I was so beyond the pain that it didn’t even register that he was hitting me until he did it again.

I remembered the gun, saw that it was only a few feet from us, and cracked my elbow into his bleeding throat, knocking the wind out of him. He made a grab at me but I head-butted his face so violently that it must have driven the cartilage in his nose a half inch into his brain.

In a last desperate play he thrashed out, knocking away the piece of glass and almost shoving me off him.

But it only upset me for a moment.

I reached for the gun, got it, held the revolver by the stock, and with the butt hit him on the side of the head, three quick times.

“Bluhhh,” he said and slipped into unconsciousness. I couldn’t shoot him, but I had to kill him right this second.

I couldn’t be exposed like this for much longer in plain view of the house.

I turned him over, slid beside him, rolled him, and wrapped my arm around his throat.With his neck in the crook of my elbow and my left hand pulling hard on my right wrist, I squeezed the remaining fight out of him. He woke for a moment before the end, thrashing, gasping. I drove my knee into his back and finally something suddenly snapped. His body went limp. But to be sure he hadn’t just passed out I picked up the glass again and cut deep into his throat, the rough blade breaking the skin apart and scooping out flesh like a bad piece of fruit.