Adam Nevill - Banquet for the Damned

Dante pulls his arm free. 'Come on. It could mean they're all together. They have to make their connection somewhere. It could be perfect for us.' Without turning to Hart, he catches the white of the American's face studying him. 'Told you I'd lost it,' he adds, with a smile. They jog, side by side, back to the Land Rover. Dante releases the brake, dips the clutch, and they drive away from Knoxville. 'Not far now,' he says. When the road rises up a gentle incline, Dante kills the headlights.

'What you doing?' Hart says. 'You gonna derail this crazy train.'

'I know where I am. These headlights will go right through that hedgerow. They'll see us coming from a mile away. Don't worry, I've only crashed this thing twice. Both times I never felt a thing. This is the War Wagon.'

Hart stares at him as if he is mad. Dante smiles, feeling a welcome heat rise through his body. Taking deep breaths to steady himself, he slides his side window open and motions for Hart to do the same. 'Let the fumes out, Hart. We need to get our heads straight. Round the next bend is the field where we park.' Hart goes still and quiet. Dante can feel his stomach churning.

After slowing down to second gear, they reach the small concealed inlet by the field where Dante parked the night before. He pulls up, right against the metal fence, and then noses the bonnet through the hedge. 'Can you drive a stick shift?' he asks Hart, who nods. 'I'm leaving the keys in the ignition and the gear in reverse. If you have to take off without me, depress the clutch, just turn the key clockwise, hit the ignition button, here, and you're off. OK?'

He can see the immobile silhouette of Hart's head staring at him through the unlit cabin. 'Don't start with that shit.'

'If you make it back, get in touch with this girl and tell her about things the best way you can. I've put a note in too. She'll be cool.' Dante hands Hart an envelope addressed to Imogen. Hart takes it from Dante's fingers, stares at it, and slowly tucks it away, inside his khaki jacket. Dante gives Hart his broadest smile and slips his hand on the cold metal door-lock.

Hart clears his throat with a big swallow. 'Wait.' He leans over the gearstick and handbrake and gently cups the back of Dante's head with one small hand. He pulls him forward so their foreheads touch. 'Listen, kid.' Dante can smell the whisky on his breath. 'We both gonna be old men, with the longest and craziest beards since ZZ Top, telling our pups about the night we saved St Andrews. You hear me?' Dante smiles. 'Two go in, buddy,' Hart adds. 'And two come out. No other way to do it. Now let's get some.' They clasp hands and stare at each other for a while, before disembarking from the War Wagon in unison.

Outside the Land Rover, the air is cool and windless, the night sky clear. A bright moon turns the fields to frosted glass and the trees into jagged shapes, the spaces between them quenched by the dark. Stars seem closer to the earth, twinkling in a purple-black immensity above the hills and glens, patched with snow at their summits and older than the frailest ruin by the sea. The night's icy beauty, and the sense that a ghastly confrontation awaits, overwhelms Dante with the most powerful feeling of insignificance he can remember. For a while, he just stands at the entrance to the field, and holds the top of the gate for support. Watched by Hart, he is allowed to take a moment. Probably the last moment of reflection he will allow himself tonight.

Eventually, he eases himself up one side of the gate and down the next, using the horizontal metal slats as rungs. Hart passes the cardboard box of Molotov cocktails over the fence. Dante places them on the ground by his feet. 'And the canisters. All of them.' He speaks with urgency now. 'We'll break through the trees at the side of the cottage and try the back door. Might still be busted.'

'We'll never carry them all,' Hart groans, hoisting another loaded box with RIBENA printed on the side.

Looking around nervously, Dante zips his jacket up to his throat. 'Stay here for a bit while I check the place over. Count to thirty or something and then follow me. And be real quiet.'

Hart nods.

'Now pass me the axe. You take the crowbar.' Price tags are still tied with tiny loops of white string around the smooth handles. The arsenal rattled around on the aluminium floor behind the front seats as they drove out to the cottage. He strove to ignore the sound of them as they trembled and juddered against the cold metal of the Land Rover, seemingly aware of their impending role in a violent conspiracy. Crowbar for the door, and the axe for… He doesn't want to think about it. That was the plan that afternoon, as he groaned and wheezed his way between lawnmowers, garden chairs and pots of enamel paint in the hardware store.

The heavy fire axe, with the shining red paint on the blade, is handed over the gate. Dante turns to leave, and Hart begins muttering. 'Don't go tear-arsing in there without me. Stay cool.'

'Don't worry. Wouldn't dream of taking the glory without you.' Dante winks at the pale face in the bushy beard, and then turns to look at the distant spectre of the cottage, a black clump on the other side of an open field. For reassurance, he peers over his shoulder at the American and says, 'We're fine on the outside of the property. They can't see us. The trees are too thick and there's a fence at the back.'

Hart appears unconvinced. Dante walks across the hard clay of the field. It is furrowed in long curving rows, but the topsoil is dried hard and crumbly. His boots crunch up toward the distant row of poplars, chestnuts and baby ferns, planted like a natural corral down the side of the cottage. Above the top of the highest branches he can see the solid black outline of the roof.

Stooped over but running, with the axe clutched across his chest, he covers the last twenty feet. His throat dries out and a single greasy strand of his fringe whips across his eyes, threatening to dislodge a contact lens. Engulfed by the cool and piny smell of the trees, Dante pauses and rearranges his hair. After pulling the collar of his biker's leather up to his chin, and pulling his red scarf over his mouth, he pushes himself through the trees.

Branches and sharp twigs crackle and stick into his hair and jacket, preventing him from moving more than a foot. Crouching down at the base of the barrier, he quickly rethinks his entry. By crawling sideways, he finds a small opening at the bottom of the trunks of two trees. Peering between them, he can see the cottage wall and the weedy path leading to the rear garden on the other side of the trees. Carefully, he assumes a press-up position and smuggles his head and shoulders through the hole. The smell of dark soil and peaty leaf mould fills his sinuses, and the cold presses through his jeans. It seems to take an age to struggle through the gap, his back so delicate, and he is forced to roll onto his side to complete the manoeuvre. Reaching out with both hands he drags his body, up to the waist, into the grounds. He looks left and right, tingling from the sense that he is most vulnerable on the ground. To the front of the cottage he can just see where the lawn begins, but the rear is a wall of darkness, made from the shadows cast down by the trees and fence. He pulls his legs through.

Slowly, Dante stands up. The cottage is silent. As before, it appears deserted. He begins to wonder if it is and hopes that the occupants are out, lighting fires back in the town, or wreaking havoc elsewhere. Behind him, on the field side, he hears Hart's boots scrabble across the clay. Dante drops to his knees and peers through the hole he's just widened.

'Hey now,' Hart whispers from the other side. 'I carried both boxes together. But I fell twice.'