Michael Marshall - The Straw Men

Carefully we manoeuvred around it, revealing a long, low room. More stained glass, and clerestory windows high up. A fireplace over to the left. Bookshelves, and a seating nook. The shelves were empty. The furniture was in place, but there was no rug on the floor.

We walked very quietly across the room. The house was utterly silent. I held up a hand, pointed; Zandt looked — saw the entrance to another room, partly concealed behind a wooden screen. Nodded, and dropped back beside me. We approached it together, Zandt still glancing behind.

The doorway gave into a kitchen. It was darker, without the highlevel windows. Split-level, with a breakfast area down the end. On the table was a single cup, sitting plumb in the centre. The interior was

dry and the handle was broken. I opened a cupboard, and then a drawer. Both empty.

'This house has been cleaned out.'

Zandt nodded. 'Maybe. But we're still going to check it.'

We searched the rest of the house.

'There's somebody out there,' Nina said, meanwhile.

Bobby was squatted beside where she lay, braced in one of the big leather chairs. The lobby was in darkness. He'd been of two minds about this, reasoning that the lights had been left on, and that to turn them off would broadcast their presence to anyone else lurking in the compound. It was hard to believe that any such person could have avoided hearing the minute of heavy gunfire, however, and so in the end he'd dug around behind reception and turned them off one by one. It felt safer, though not perfect. The end wall was only partly windowed, and he thought they were safe from view, but he still felt like a sitting

duck. The lobby was large, dark, and had three dead people in it.

'I heard something a minute ago,' he admitted. 'Hoped it was them coming back.'

Nina shook her head. 'John will check all the houses. They'll be a little while, even if there's nothing to

find. Especially if. And the sound was coming from the front, not back there.'

He nodded. 'Ward will kill me if he finds out I've left you here alone, but I'm going to have to go look.'

'I won't tell if you won't. But don't be long.'

Bobby made sure her gun was loaded, and then dropped back from her to the wall. He scooted along it as low as he could. When he got to the main door he put his head out cautiously. Theirs was still the only car in the lot. There was no sign of anybody else, and he considered just staying put.

But then he heard something again. It wasn't loud, but it was definitely not caused by the elements. It wasn't a rain sound. It was mechanical, a short, isolated pop. It sounded like it was coming from over on the other side of the lot, where the second building stood. 'What is it?' Now that he wasn't looking at her, Nina was allowing more of the pain to be in her mind. As a result her head felt very fuzzy, and her voice sounded cracked.

'I don't know,' he said. He turned to check, and saw that Nina was well-hidden in the deepness of the huge chair. Best he could do. 'Keep the pressure on the wound.'

Still keeping low, he pushed the door open. A very cold rush of air pushed past him, ushering in the sound of rain.

The rest of the house was empty. Four bedrooms, den, library, a music room. Empty and cleaned out. Stripped of any identification at all, though it was clear that people had lived there until very recently. No dust. Zandt and I came back down the central staircase, less quietly now, and made our way to the back of the ground floor. There was a second large reception room here, a little less fancy than the one in front. A horizontal band of windows showed half an acre of landscaped yard. I flicked the safety on my gun back on.

'Next house?' It was clear that this one didn't hold anything of interest. I was done with it. I was prepared to help Zandt look for the girl's body, if that's what he wanted, but my own needs were focused on finding a live Straw Man or two. And sitting them down, and getting them to explain a few things. Nothing else could hold my attention. It was already feeling too late.

'I'll take a look out back,' Zandt said. 'Then I guess, yes. Though this isn't looking good.'

He opened the door set in the middle of the window panelling, and disappeared into the rain. I stepped out after him, but stayed at the wall. By now I was increasingly sure that Nina had been right: perhaps this guy Wang had speeded things up, but the evacuation had started right from the moment I had beaten up Chip. I'd fucked up, in other words. Given them warning, and time to get away. I hadn't expected this would be their response. They were bunkered in. They were rich and powerful; this was their land. Why run? But I'd still screwed it up. We hadn't discussed the matter, but I suspected Zandt felt I had, too. There was an increasingly wild look to the man's eyes.

As I listened to the sound of him poking about out there in the darkness, I noticed a long line of wire that lay along the bottom of the wall. It appeared from round the corner, and seemed to be buried in the beds by the wall. Cable, or something. Maybe the much-vaunted ADSL Net access. I was about to take

a closer look at it when Zandt made a sudden coughing sound.

I hurried out into the yard. He was standing right in the middle, bolt upright. 'What?'

He didn't say anything. Just pointed. .

At first I couldn't make out what he meant, but then I saw that a patch of ground just to the right

seemed a little rounded.

I walked over and looked down at it. Licked my lips. 'Tell me that's a pet or something under there.'

Zandt just shook his head, and I realized that he hadn't let his arm drop yet. Instead he was pointing

at another spot. At another mound. 'Oh Christ,' I said, my voice catching in my throat. 'Look at this.' Now I was looking for them, I could see that there were other mounds. Three short lines of them. Twelve in total.

Zandt dropped to one knee, pulled at the earth over the nearest mound. The grass slipped out of his fingers, but he got a clump out. Underneath was heavy, wet soil.

I dropped to help him, and we yanked and pulled at the ground. The going was hard and it took a couple of minutes to get down to where suddenly we had something other than soil in our hands and the

smell became awful. I started back, but Zandt pulled out two more handfuls before abruptly giving up.

'We need a shovel,' I said.

Zandt shook his head. 'Anything in these holes is dead. Sarah may still be alive somewhere.'

'Come on, man — she's going to be in one of these graves.'

Zandt was already striding back to the house. I followed him, trying to avoid the mounds but realizing

I must have stepped on at least one on the way out. Back inside Zandt strode straight through into the first reception room. 'We're going to have to look

again,' he said. 'We missed something.'

'I don't know where,' I said.

'So let's start here.'

We split to opposite sides of the room, overturning bookshelves, pulling furniture out of place. I was

quickly convinced that there was nothing there to be found, but Zandt wouldn't be budged from searching every inch.

'This is going to take hours,' I said. 'I don't

I stopped. Zandt glanced up. 'What?'

I wasn't looking at anything in the room, but staring straight out through the main bank of windows to the front of the house. Zandt stepped over to where I was standing.

'You see that?'

I pointed down to the split in the path, about twenty yards away. There, lying where it forked into the routes to all the different houses, something lay on the ground. It wasn't very large, and at this distance it was impossible to tell what it might be. A small pile of sticks, perhaps.