Conrad Williams - One

'What's that?' Becky asked. They had all stopped.

'I don't know,' Jane said.

'Code?' As if she had read his mind.

'Maybe. I don't like it. Let's get under cover somewhere for a while.'

They scampered down the embankment to a ploughed field. They had to leave the wheelbarrow. Jane dumped it in a ditch and they hurried across the field, dust pluming up from every footstep and lifting from their clothes, their hair, as if they were made from the stuff. At the far end of the field they climbed over a charred fence. There was a lake beyond it, dark and flat as a lithograph.

They lay down by the fence and watched the road. Their dust ghosts rose too slowly, but were then whipped away by the currents of wind. They had barely dissipated when the first of the figures appeared.

It was like looking at a mirror image of themselves. A man led the way for a woman pushing a young child in an old-fashioned pram. The child was too big for it, legs hanging over the side, jouncing at every bump and crater. He seemed to be wrapped from head to toe in shiny material, similar, perhaps, to the reflective insulating blankets that marathon runners wrapped around themselves at the end of a race. Was that what he had seen glinting earlier? Jane thought the child must be injured, or sick. He wanted to go to them, to ask them if they had come from London and why they were heading north, but there was something he didn't like about the senseless motion of the child's limbs.

'Is that a little boy?' Aidan asked. 'Like me?'

'I think so,' Jane said.

'Can we play? He can have my boat. I've played with that enough now.'

'Let's just watch them. I'm not sure if they're friendly.'

Jane could sense Aidan's scrutiny of him. He hated having to seed his mind with doubt. Boys of five shouldn't have to be saddled with issues of trust when it came to other children. He didn't want him growing into a suspicious, lonely man. But he didn't know what else he could do.

The pram – not the best mode of transport for such an unpredictable road – hit one pockmark too many and the woman struggled to right it. The child slid out on to the surface; they heard the dull crack of its head, or Jane imagined he did. The man turned and started haranguing the woman. Two more figures appeared, as though rising out of the road itself. Men. They picked up the child – one of them grasping it by the hair – and dumped him back in the pram. There was no cry of objection, from the child or the woman.

'Becky, I think maybe you should take Aidan down to the lake for a while,' Jane said. 'We don't need to see any more.'

Becky tugged at Aidan's sleeve. The boy resisted. 'But I want to play.'

'Aidan, it doesn't look good. I think—'

'NO!' Aidan said, his chin thrust out in determination.

Jane glanced back at the travellers and saw how they had turned towards them. He saw the first man's stance alter. He saw his knees bend slightly. He saw his shoulder recoil.

'What—' began Becky. And then the fence to her left disintegrated, the bolt the man had fired from his crossbow burying itself in the dead bark of a tree with a dull phut!

'Let's go,' said Jane.

Aidan was pulling toys from his pocket. 'He can have this if he wants. He can—'

'Now,' said Jane, and grabbed Aidan's hand.

His back to the road, he felt the air move. Something punched past his ear, missing by a matter of inches. There had been some practising going on. He slipped the rifle off his shoulder and headed for the lake. Jane rued the lack of shots he had taken himself. He hadn't even tried the gun out yet, thinking it better that he conserve his supplies of ammunition. He thumbed the safety off as they ran. Before the shape of the land took them lower than the level of the road, he glanced back. The three men were coming across the field. He felt his throat turn cold and swollen; he couldn't swallow and for a moment he thought he'd been shot through it.

The lake stretched out, grey and uninviting, gnawing against pebbles so cold they might crack if you held them for a while. No boats to launch from the jetty, which was half collapsed, bending into the water. The trees thinned out as they approached the edge. Their breathing was fast and shallow; the breath of fear. The men would soon breach that fence, the last line of trees, and they would be targets easily picked off.

To the left, maybe two hundred yards away, Jane glimpsed the exposed spine of a drystone wall. They had to get beyond that, and quick, but there was no way they could make it before the men reached clear ground. He urged Becky and Aidan on ahead of him. Someone shouted out. They were splitting up: two men were following the route they had taken; the third – the man with the crossbow – had broken left and was taking a long, curving route to cut them off.

'Stop looking around you,' Jane urged. 'Get to the wall.'

They were at it, folding over it, exhausted, when another bolt hit one of the stones; chips of granite peppered Jane's face. He felt blood wetting his cheek, the taste of it. He was blinded in one eye, but there was no pain. Just blood , he thought, blinking it clear. I'm all right.

He could hear the man now, his thundering stride, the rasp of his breath. He could hear the collision of wood and metal as he notched another bolt into his crossbow. Jane twisted hard to his right, falling back as he raised the gun, and shot from the hip. He no longer knew where Becky and Aidan were. Mouths full of burnt grass if they had any sense. The pellet struck the man in his left shoulder and that and his own velocity spun him violently; Jane heard the crunch of cartilage in the man's right knee as his position suddenly changed. Pain was boiling in the man's throat, a tethered, growling sound, but it couldn't get beyond his clenched teeth. His eyes were too large for his face: he pushed himself upright and lifted the crossbow. Jane shot again out of panic, his aim wild. The pellet caught the man in the throat and the growl was replaced by an awful choking as he began to drown in his own blood. Jane kicked away the crossbow and turned to see the two other men descending on him. One of them carried an iron bar, the other a ceremonial sword. Jane shot the man with the bar in the middle of the chest; he collapsed as if all his tendons had been cut at once, with no apparent regard to physics. The other man was upon Jane before he had a chance to swing the barrel of the rifle his way. The sword came down in a desperate, choppy arc, but it was too shallow, the action of a man who visualises what he wants crucial seconds before the physicality behind it can be achieved. Jane felt the tip describe a curve across his chest. There was a sting, massive heat, but the damage was only superficial. If anything it enlivened him. He was utterly, joyously conscious when he shot a round into the man's open mouth.

Jane lay on the ground hearing only the slam of his heart and the torture of his lungs. This is the clamour of life , he thought. This is the noise of the spirit . Every time he breathed he felt the split in his chest part. Blood welled in his left eye. It was running into his mouth, making him cough and splutter. The taste of it. He'd not tasted anything so fine in such a time.

He rolled over and was sick. He was shaking like a nervous dog. He felt hands on his back, tentative, nervous, as if there was some reserve there, the fear that Jane was running amok, that he might blindly strike out at anyone within reach.

Gradually his breathing calmed. Blood had turned black the pale green shirt he'd put on that morning. The shakes would not abate, however. He could feel his mouth turning dry.

'Get me warm,' he told the shapes he could not quite see but that he hoped were Becky and Aidan. He heard Becky say 'Shock.' She knew what she was doing. She worked in a hospital. Even X-ray people knew how to deal with emergencies. He blacked out.