Gary Gibson - Final Days

Jeff’s teeth chattered, not entirely from the cold. He watched them confer for a moment, before they stepped up to the door of his cabin. The shorter one held in one hand what might be a weapon of some kind.

Jeff continued watching as they stepped inside, light flooding on to the gravel a moment later. With a sudden terrible lurch, he remembered that the contacts containing the stolen database were still hidden in the tool shed behind the cabin.

He gripped the wooden hand railing running alongside the steps, and swore quietly. How could he have been so stupid?

He saw the cabin door swing open once more. After a moment, the bright beam of a torch flicked first across the driveway, then up towards the path on which he stood watching.

Suddenly galvanized, Jeff hurried further up the steps, taking them two or three at a time. After ascending a short way, he came to another trail encircling the summit of the hill. He jogged along this second path until he found another clear view down through the trees, to where he could see a tiny wharf jutting out into the waters of the lake, where some of the local residents kept their boats moored.

He pulled himself up and over the low wooden railing, whose purpose was to keep summer hikers from tumbling down the hillside, and started to make his way down the steep slope, navigating between dense clumps of pine and fir. He could make out the dark masses of granite outcrops to either side, while far below him lay a relatively smooth grassy slope extending most of the way down to the shoreline. Assuming he didn’t take a tumble, he could make it to the wharf in about ten minutes, or fifteen at the outside.

Voices called out to each other from above and behind. Jeff started to move more quickly, grabbing hold of tufts of grass or branches to keep from skidding too fast down the steep gradient. The air smelled of barbecue smoke drifting across the lake from cabins on the far side, as he slid down occasional stretches of snow on his butt.

The clouds passed away from the face of the moon, illuminating the slope beneath him and making the going easier. The ground began to level out, and Jeff started to run. Suddenly a point of red light was visible on a patch of snow a few metres ahead of him. A second later, a thin plume of snow erupted from the same spot, followed by the sound of a gunshot echoing across the valley.

Jeff threw himself towards the relative cover of some bull pine, in his terror almost colliding with a granite boulder. Manoeuvring his way past the boulder, he caught sight of the lakeside road, maybe only forty or fifty metres away. His shoulder blades tingled as he imagined that red dot alighting between them next.

He stumbled over a root, just as the trees began to thin out, and hit the ground hard. He staggered upright, despite the pain, and forced himself to keep moving, pushing through a tangle of brush until he reached the edge of a steep incline overlooking the road. He came to a stop briefly, then darted along the upper edge of the slope until he came across another flight of stone steps leading steeply downwards.

Shit . Jeff stared across the roadway towards the wharf, and suddenly realized there was nothing moored there – nothing he could use to try and get away to safety across the lake. A derelict hut, once home to a diving outfit, stood right next to the wharf, the side of it facing the road adorned with a crude illustration of several divers swimming amidst cartoon bubbles.

As clouds passed across the moon, Jeff grabbed the opportunity and ran across the road, desperate to avoid becoming target to another sniper shot. Glancing to one side, he nearly cried out in relief when he spotted a dinghy pulled up on the shore, quite close to the wharf but just far away enough for him not to have noticed it from the top of the incline. He hurried towards it, the gravelly sand crunching underfoot, and also saw that the dinghy was equipped with a small outboard motor.

He pushed the craft out into the freezing water, getting his ankles thoroughly soaked before he pulled himself inside and settled on the single narrow wooden bench. Jeff touched the engine’s interface, and a menu rendered in softly glowing panels superimposed itself against the night sky. The dinghy was fully juiced up, enough power stored in its battery reserves to keep it going for several days.

At the sound of someone splashing through the water towards him, he reached out in a panic to activate the motor. Just as he began to pull away from the shore, a dark shape threw itself halfway inside the dinghy, making it rock wildly.

Jeff didn’t even have time to feel scared, but he grabbed hold of the bench on either side of him, and used it for leverage as he kicked out with both feet. He heard an oof , and kicked again, as the dinghy began to turn in tight circles. His assailant staggered upright, and Jeff fell backwards against the outboard motor as a fist connected with the side of his head.

His assailant, the tall thin one, had a gun trained on him. Without thinking, Jeff grabbed hold of the tiller and twisted it frantically. The dinghy slewed wildly to one side, and the thin man staggered. Light and sound exploded from the gun, and Jeff felt something hot sear past his cheek. There was a yell, then a splash, as the other man lost his balance and fell back into the freezing water.

Jeff heard another shot, then another, from the direction of the shore. Crouching low, he twisted the tiller back again. Clouds were passing back in front of the moon and, in the pitch darkness, he was unsure where the far side of the lake now lay.

The dinghy jerked, and spun half around, as it smacked violently into something. For one heart-freezing moment, Jeff wondered if he’d somehow run himself aground somewhere alongside the wharf.

Instead, the dinghy continued on its way, its prow cutting cleanly through the water. He saw a dark shape slip past, arms spread out and motionless, and guessed it was the same man who had attacked him.

As the clouds cleared from the face of the moon, he caught sight of another wharf on the far shore, now only a few kilometres away. Shots rang out again, splashing water up on either side of the dinghy. Hoping to make himself a more difficult target, Jeff twisted the tiller frantically from side to side.

He glanced down to see water trickling through a hole just below the waterline, which he was sure hadn’t been there only seconds before. There were further shots behind him, but then no more. Assessing the trickle of water pooling around his boots, he decided it wasn’t likely to become a serious issue before he reached the opposite shore.

Jeff shivered as the wind cut through his soaking-wet clothes. It froze him to the marrow, and he wondered how long he had before hypothermia set in.

He was going to have to find some kind of transport soon. If he tried to hide in the woods or make it to Lakeside on foot, he’d only wind up dead of exposure.

As he sailed on, the dinghy’s motor emitting a barely audible hum, lights became increasingly visible through the trees above the far shore, and music drifted across the still waters. Several minutes later, he finally ran the dinghy up on to the shore, alongside a luxurious-looking motorboat moored to the wharf. He looked back across the lake and saw some headlights suddenly come on close by his cabin. Jeff watched for a few seconds as the same lights headed back down the long switchback road, and he realized he was far from being home and free.

Crossing the road, he soon found himself at the foot of another steep switchback track leading to a cluster of cabins he vaguely recalled were owned by some rental agency in Missoula. He jogged a short way up the road until he came to a cul-de-sac, where he found several private vehicles parked together, some of them busy chewing on bales of leafy biomass. The rear hatch of one car had been left open, revealing the shrink-wrapped cartons of beer stacked inside. Judging by the music, a party was currently in full swing.