Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

I breathed deep and, in a desperate effort, I heaved myself forward and bit into his cheek, tearing out a chunk of flesh as large as a big bite out of an apple.

He screamed and I kicked him off me with my bloody stump.

He landed on his back and I scrambled to my feet.

“Gerry, Gerry, wake up, Kit, Gerry, wake up,” he yelled at the top of his voice and crawled towards me, blood pouring out of his face.

I dived for the gun, got it, cocked it, and shot him square in the belly.

He slumped forward onto his knees.

“Gerry,” he said again, desperately.

I could hear movement upstairs.

I’d have to bloody sprint if I wanted that big gun now.

Touched was reeling from the slug in his gut and it was a good hit but with a.22 you can never be sure, so I limped across the room, smacked him in the face with the pistol, kicked his legs, muscled him to the ground, shoved his cheek to the kitchen floor, turned his head.

“I’m still going to get you,” he said weakly.

“You better move fast,” I said and shot him above the ear- bits of skull, blood, and brains spraying over my weapon hand.

“What’s going on down there?” Gerry yelled.

I turned Touched to face me and gave him one in the forehead, too, the bullet drilling a neat hole above his right eye. I felt his neck pulse. Nada. I stood. I needed that shotgun.

I put the.22 in my trouser pocket and went up the stairs on all fours.

“Daddy?” Kit screamed from one of the rooms.

I got to the top and shoved open the first door on the left. It was Touched’s room all right, there was his leather jacket, his sunglasses, a copy of Hustler. But he’d been lying aboutthe shotgun.

Fuck.

“Get behind me, Kit,” Gerry said. He was outside in the corridor. I took a look. And, shit, there he was, naked under a long black kimono, holding that big powerful 12-gauge. Kit behind him with a revolver. He saw me. I ducked inside as one of the barrels erupted, destroying the doorjamb.

“Give me a shell,” Gerry called to Kit.

I closed the door.

Hot in here from the central heating. I wiped the sweat from my brow, opened the window, wondered if I could get out.

A second later, Gerry blasted the door apart.

Jesus.

I pointed my.22 at the wrecked doorway.

Talk to him.

“Gerry, listen to me, Touched is dead, Sonia’s dead, Jackie’s dead. I freed the kid, I dialed 911, and the police are on the way. The game is up. You have to surrender,” I yelled.

“Fuck you, Forsythe. We’ll fucking kill you. Come out of there and face me like a fucking man,” Gerry yelled.

There was no way I was going out onto the landing, not with two of them armed to the teeth.

“Gerry, think of Kit. You don’t have a chance in hell of getting out of this. I left a message on the boat, telling them it was you that kidnapped Peter. If you kill me it doesn’t matter, you’ll never go back to your life now. And Peter is running into Belfast and the cops are on the way. It’s bloody over, Gerry. They might do you for being an accessory to murder, but Kit only has to go to jail for kidnap. Think about it, Gerry. If you give up now, come quietly, I’ll make sure she’s out in less than five. Better than a life term or the federal death penalty. It’s a promise.”

“What’s your promise worth, Forsythe?” he snarled.

“I swear it, Gerry,” I insisted.

Gerry muttered something under his breath but Kit was adamant.

“No, Dad, we can get away. We’ll take the car and we’ll drive to Canada and they’ll never get us,” she said.

Good old Kit. Never say die.

It strengthened her da’s resolve.

“Aye, you fucker, Forsythe. Sonia never hurt anyone in her goddamn life. She wanted us to let you go. Why’d you have to top her, you son of a bitch?” he said.

Before I could answer he lurched into the bedroom doorway with the shotgun.

Holy Christ. I shot at him, missed, Gerry flinched, slipped, and fired both barrels, tearing up the floor, missing me by half a room, but I couldn’t help but catch a couple of pellets in the leg. I lost my balance, fell heavily backwards into the open window, smashed through the screen, and tumbled ten feet to the wet snow outside.

I landed with a soft clump, just missing the woodpile by half a yard.

Gerry appeared in the window.

“Reload me,” Gerry screamed.

Kit handed him two more shells; he broke open the gun and slotted them into the smoking chamber.

I tried to get to my one good foot, but I was dazed from the fall. The house swimming before me, Gerry’s kimono-clad form reloading his gun, Kit beside him wearing Hello Kitty pajamas.

If I didn’t move I was a name in the newspaper. I pocketed the revolver, turned over, and crawled on all fours again, loping like a goddamn hyena for the bloody trees. The shotgun went off behind me. Gerry missing by a mile. He needed to calm down, shoot less, aim more.

And then I heard Kit’s gun.

Blam, blam, blam.

A 9mm.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she was firing at me too. Holes appearing in the snow, wide to the left and then after a big overcorrection wide to the right.

I made it to the edge of the forest, scrambled behind a tree, leaned against the trunk.

I tried to get my breath back. I felt in my pocket. The.22 was gone. Goddamnit. I looked behind me in the snow but I couldn’t see it. It might be anywhere.

“Fuck.”

Up at the house Gerry and Kit had gone from the window now. They were coming downstairs to get me and Gerry might not be the most mobile of psychotic killers but now he had all the cards: guns, a willing accomplice, and a good night’s sleep.

Have to head.

I scrambled deeper into the trees.

Shades of déjà vu. But this was not like yesterday when I could run. There was no possibility of hiding from them because the snow had made tracking my blood trail a piece of cake.

“This way, Kit, you stay behind me now,” Gerry yelled.

I looked back. He was huffing and puffing out of the house and into the first line of trees. That big elephant gun leading the way. Kit a step behind him with her niner. Gerry slipped on the snow, fired the gun by accident. Kit panicked and shot her gun too.

Jesus, neither of them was getting onto the Olympic biathlon team anytime soon.

“Do you see any sign of him?” Gerry asked, reloading.

I didn’t catch her reply but if they had any sense at all they’d soon pick up the markers I’d left.

I hurried on, pushing my way through hanging trees and moss, limping over pine needles, pinecones, branches, rocks.

Foot and stump ignoring the pain, working together in a Quasimodo gait.

I crossed over the forest trail that led to the pond, and then up a slippery tree-lined embankment.

Another breather. Another look back.

Aye, they weren’t pissing about. They were looking at the ground, seeing the big blundering path I’d taken and coming straight for me. Kit standing right next to her father, not heeding his instruction to stay a pace or two behind. It gave me an idea. One of the oldest mantraps in the book.

Not original, but who needs original when you don’t have a bloody gun? I looked for a low-hanging tree branch.

A young bendy one, but a tree trunk thick enough for me to hide behind.

I selected a good, thick, pliable branch on a balsam fir tree and then limped about ten feet past it so that the trail looked like I had gone farther into the forest. Then I doubled back on myself, got behind the trunk, pulled back the long springy branch until it was at the snapping point.

They were coming and I waited, straining with all my might to hold the goddamn branch. This tree I did know the name of. The balm of Gilead. Balm of fucking Forsythe if this worked.