Майкл Смит - The Lonely Dead

'Still don't move,' Nina said. 'Seriously.'

She slipped around the bush shield and kept low as she made her way along the side of the gully. She wasn't going to let go of her gun, not ever again, but she kept slipping on the wet rocks with only one hand to steady herself. She grabbed at the branch stumps, tried to pull herself along, and it worked but wasn't very fast. Small rivulets of water turned her hands to ice. It took her long minutes to go fifty feet upstream, every step a bad adventure.

She hoped Ward was coming. She really, really hoped so.

Up ahead the walls were only six to eight feet high. She could see something lying sprawled at the bottom.

It was Phil.

He was alive, but holding his thigh very tightly with both hands, his body twisting in a slow roll. He was trying so hard not to make a noise, eyes bulging like white marbles with the pain, but another groan escaped when he saw her.

'Shot me,' he said, like a wheezy cough. 'Henrickson. Took my gun.' With a jerk of his head he indicated back the way she'd come, along the stream bed.

Nina looked behind him instead, scanning the tops of the gully walls. The fact he'd gone the way Phil indicated meant nothing. He could be back up the top there now.

Or she could be, in fact… She quickly considered going upriver past the deputy, trying to clamber up one of the walls, getting back on higher ground, above all this, and hoping the Upright Man came back down below. Make him the fish in the barrel instead of her.

But she knew she wouldn't be able to climb while holding a gun, and also that her back was a very wide target for someone who knew how to kill.

'Keep holding the wound,' she said, and crept back the other way.

She stayed away from the walls this time and went straight down the middle through the stream, the water nearly up to her knees, cold as anything she'd ever felt. Cold and loud: lapping, rushing water and more of that howling wind, the drifting curtain of the endless snow.

She couldn't turn and look around because the bed of the stream was too loose and unpredictable underfoot. So she maintained a straight course down the centre line, squinting ahead, trying to spot the Anders woman so she'd know how close she was to where she'd started. She thought about shouting in case Ward could hear, but the Upright Man could be a lot closer, and she realized with painful clarity what a stupid idea the 'shoot and shout' plan had been and wished someone else had made that decision instead of her.

She still couldn't see the woman yet and that freaked her and she started pushing ahead more quickly.

Then out of the corner of her eye she saw someone standing on the left side of the gully. In a space of time too small to measure, she saw he had a rifle locked in his shoulder and so she knew it wasn't Ward — and with a speed that bypassed her conscious mind altogether she swivelled and lifted her hands and fired three times.

Two of the sounds disappeared in handclaps. The last returned a dry, rustling slap. The shape slipped, came sliding down the low slope of the gully.

She ran up through the water, the cold forgotten, everything tangential and of no interest except the man on the ground in front of her. She kept her gun pointed at him, edging closer until she was ten feet away.

Once was never enough. She should shoot him again.

Her trigger finger was tightening when he pushed himself upwards and showed his face.

'Oh Christ,' she said, aghast. 'John…'

Then there was the sound of someone landing lightly behind her. The gun was knocked out of her hand and an arm wrapped tight around her neck and a cold circle of metal pressed into her temple.

'Hello, Agent Baynam,' said a voice. 'Excellent work.'

31

I nearly ran off the end of the world.

If I hadn't grabbed out at the last minute with my left hand, it would have happened. I would have gotten right up to that high rocky place and taken one long step too many and just gone sailing into forever night. As it was my stomach bowed outwards, hanging out over space, and I got a horrifying split-second glimpse of a huge drop, and felt the branch bend, and heard clearly the roar of water landing somewhere a very, very long way beneath me.

I pulled myself back and turned my back on the drop quickly, desperate and terrified. My lungs were crying, aching as if full of ground glass. My lungs hated me a lot.

I lurched over and saw that, yes, I'd made it to the gully — but it couldn't be anywhere near the right place. It was forty feet across here and had sides so steep and deep they looked like they'd been made with a single violent sweep from a giant's axe.

Yet this must be the right gully.

So I had to go back.

I kept a couple of yards back from the edge and shoved through the bushes. The trees were a little smaller here but that didn't help much: all it meant was the undergrowth had room to expand and really get into its stride. Before long I was drifting further away from the gully again, forced back up the way I'd come.

I kept struggling forward, running when I could, but always fighting against the tide. I was beginning to think I was going to have to go all the way back around when I stopped dead in my tracks.

I had been looking through the ranks of trees between me and the ravine, and I thought I saw something, a glimpse of something at the gully edge. I pushed my way over towards the spot, knowing the gap would still be too wide.

But when I got there I understood what I'd seen.

There was a big tree trunk lying across the gully. It had fallen plumb across, in fact. It looked bizarrely like an actual bridge, and it was hard not to see it as an invitation. The other side was much more open.

I pushed my way through to the end of the log, kicked it. It was solid. The bank on the other side looked like it would give me a clear run back down to where I was supposed to be, or at least a lot nearer than I was now.

Assuming I could get ten feet or so over a nasty drop down to cold and jagged rocks, across a trunk four inches deep in snow.

Screw that. I'd be no use to anyone with a smashed skull. I turned away.

Then I heard three more shots. Something that sounded like Nina's voice, making a noise that was not a cry of triumph.

I jumped up onto the log. Took a deep breath.

I didn't know what else to do but take it at a run.

— «» — «» — «»—

Patrice watched what was happening in front of her. She had seen Henrickson drop down into the river like a piece of film run backwards. She'd never seen someone so unlikely to stumble or fall. In one smooth movement he'd disarmed the woman and put a gun to her head.

He knocked the other man's rifle into the water with his foot, then pulled the woman back a few yards, until they were standing in the middle of the stream bed.

The man on the ground looked in pain but was trying not to show it. Patrice knew it was that way with men. Except sometimes, when they whined like hell. Even Bill had. Cancer will kick the grit out of most anyone.

'How did you get here, John?'

'Dravecky,' the man told him, not without satisfaction. 'Even the psychopaths of the world want rid of you. You're the outcast's outcast. You've got nowhere to go.'

'There's always somewhere,' Henrickson said. 'Finding Dravecky and killing him will be item one. Item two will be his NSA buddy down in LA. You run into him yet, Nina?'

'Yes.'

'Thought you might. Don't worry. They're a lot less important than they think.'

Patrice saw the man on the ground move suddenly, and then he had a gun in his hand. But Henrickson had moved at the same time, back two more yards, and now he had the woman right in front of him; his body behind hers, his head behind hers.

'What are you going to do, John? You going to shoot her to get to me?'