Blood Kin Page 16

  She was torn between continuing towards the bridge and waiting for Pinky to catch up. He’d initially go to where he’d left her last, and finding her gone, he’d come after her. Tess kept moving towards the bridge, picking up pace with each step. The dogs bayed and howled, getting more excitable every second. More gunshots rang out. Shouts and orders rang from several quarters of the woods. It didn’t bode well for Po.

  The GMC roared up alongside Tess, and without missing a step, she hauled open the passenger door and jumped inside. Pinky hit the gas and the door slammed shut.

  ‘It sounds as if Po’s got half the community chasing him,’ she said.

  ‘So let’s go help even the odds, us!’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Under normal circumstances the fence erected decades ago would not cause much of an impediment to Po. With its outward facing security measures, he could easily climb the fence and then negotiate the barbed wire for a safe drop to the ground outside. However, being pursued by dogs and armed men he was pushed for time; a lack of time necessitated hurry; and hurry caused inattention. Trying to scale the fence under those terms would see him ripped to shreds and easy game afterwards. He couldn’t allow it. Instead of climbing the fence he followed its march through the trees, seeking someplace where the wire had been cut or beaten down by previous trespassers onto the land, through which he could escape without damaging his body. The problem being, the more he followed the fence, the deeper into the tangled woods he went, and the further he’d be from his extraction point he’d agreed with Tess. He had no time to check, but assumed that by now his two hours’ window had firmly closed on him. He hoped that Tess and Pinky didn’t do something rash like try to come to his rescue.

  Pursuit had followed swiftly on his heels. The youths he’d shut in the bunker must have raised enough of a ruckus to bring help running, and the instant they had warned of an interloper then the dogs had been put on his scent. He wondered if the dogs were kept for the sole purpose of hunting unwelcome visitors to the community’s land, and how many people before him had been ran down by them. In his mind’s eye he’d pictured the scene, a man torn to pieces by a slavering pack of hounds, and it had sent a qualm through him when the man in his imagination was him. The nightmarish vision had made him fleeter than normal as he’d ran through the Moorcocks’ land to where the fence reared up to halt him. On this side the forest had been tamed, beyond the fence it was a tangle of ancient woodland, thickets and crags. The old wood gave him more potential places to go to ground, to put his back against something impenetrable so he could face the pack one at a time as they came at him, where, armed with his knife, he would make the dogs pay for every strip of flesh they tore from his hide. For now the old wood was out of reach, but at least he had the benefit of maneuverability while moving between the spaced-apart trees.

  There was no break in the fence. He’d spotted places where the wire had been patched and was now as sturdy as before; it enforced the message how badly the Moorcocks demanded that trespassers stayed out. He saw signs fixed to the exterior, spaced regularly at about a hundred paces. He had hoped to find that further inland from the entrance gate the fence would be less maintained, but his hopes had been dashed.

  A rifle fired.

  The bullet came nowhere near to Po, but the gun’s retort caused him to flinch in anticipation all the same. Whoever had fired, they did so at the crashing of his progress through the woods; they did not have their eyes on him yet. The dogs were a different story entirely: they were on his scent and coming fast. Somewhere ahead and to his left he heard voices raised in question: how the hell had his pursuers anticipated his movements and gotten ahead of him already?

  He ran, swerving around the boles of trees that reared out of the gloom, with the fence no further than a couple of body lengths’ distance to his right. The baying of the dogs grew louder. He slowed, only enough to cup his hand over the flashlight and inspect a new portion of the fence he’d come across. It appeared to have been clipped apart, a long zipper of severed links that would open wide enough to permit entry to a human. Sadly on close inspection the clipped fence had since been mended, with newer, stronger wires entwined through the cut links: Po wasn’t escaping by that route. His pause had cost him seconds, and the dogs were gaining. He shoved the flashlight in his pocket and dipped down to his boot and drew his blade. Hurting an innocent animal severely went against his grain, but not at the expense of allowing a pack of mutts to eat him alive. He gripped the knife’s hilt in his right hand, the flat of the blade angled against his forearm. With his knife gripped in this position it was less likely to be knocked from his grasp if it collided with a tree as he ran. He set off again.

  Another rifle barked, and again the round was spent somewhere in the woods, but a second shot followed and this time Po heard it strike a tree that was too close for comfort. He ducked – too late – and kept running as bits of exploded bark rained to the forest floor behind him.

  More voices echoed through the woods. Some were behind, but again some originated from his front left. Those in front sounded as if they were controlling the hunting party dogging Po’s heels, as if they were purposefully corralling him to a point where a trap could be sprung. It was time to change tack. Instead of weaknesses in the fence, Po began to look to his surroundings and within another ten paces spotted something he could use to his advantage. There was a tree standing perhaps ten feet away from the fence. It was tall and as thick as a telegraph pole, but it was also devoid of foliage. The tree was old and at some point its tip had been broken off about fifteen feet up. Scraggly boughs stuck out the trunk: a perfect ladder.

  Immediately on seeing it, and recognizing it as a worthy way to waste more precious seconds, he lunged towards it and threw his shoulder into the tree. It swayed dramatically, and another three or four feet of rotting wood broke off at the top and plummeted to the earth, barely missing him. The perils of widow-makers were well known to woodsmen, and Po was no exception in knowing how dangerous an old tree like this could be. In his haste he’d almost brought about his ruination. However, now that the uppermost portion of the trunk had collapsed, he threw his entire weight at the tree trunk, pushing with both legs as he drove it towards the fence. Under his heels he felt the sward ripping and a network of old roots began tearing out of the shallow earth. The tree suddenly gave up any resistance to him and began to topple. Po stood clear, praying that there was not another weakened section of the trunk six or seven feet along the trunk where it might snap in half. The falling tree collapsed onto the uppermost wires of the fence, almost matching the same angle at which the stanchions supporting the razor wire protruded outward.

  Po had not relinquished his knife while toppling the tree. He considered doing so, because he’d need both hands to help him scale the trunk. He decided no, but it was because the decision was snatched from him. Two dogs flew from the gloom at him, and unlike the dogs tracking him, these had a different purpose so came almost without warning: attack dogs rarely voiced their intention to rip their target apart. They were large German shepherds, swift, silent and potentially lethal. The leading dog came at him like a missile, its jaws extended to clamp on his arm, to negate his weapon, and to use the leverage to yank and spin him to the floor.

  Po danced to one side, bobbing and weaving like a pugilist. The dog’s teeth snapped on air, and it twisted mid-flight, its claws raking at him for purchase instead. Then it was beyond him and its momentum had taken it to the forest floor. The dog scrambled to regain its feet, to renew its attack.

  Po was already engaged with the second dog. It had been stalled a moment by the first shepherd’s attack, so hadn’t sprang at Po. It ran in instead to grab at his leg. He kicked out but it was as fluid as oil, and faster than him. It swerved and span and clamped down on his heel. The dog powered backwards, digging its feet into the earth for leverage. Po cursed, hopping backwards after it. If he fell, his fight would be over. He was tempted to stab the dog, but only as a
last resort. He twisted, grabbed the bole of the toppled tree and kicked savagely with his trapped leg. The crushing force of the dog’s jaws was terrible, but Po’s saving grace was that the dog had crunched down on his boot and it resisted the sharp teeth. The dog shook its head, yanking him side to side.

  The other dog was upon him. It grabbed at his left arm, where it was wrapped about the tree trunk. His leather jacket wasn’t strong enough to fully thwart its teeth. He felt the bones in his forearm grinding together. Uncharacteristically, Po roared in torment. But he didn’t give up. He wrenched around, dragging the dog on his arm with him, and he pounded it in the ribs with the hilt of his knife several times. The dog was driven by a killer instinct, though, and didn’t let go. Po slammed it around the head and muzzle, and this time it released him and cowered away, its tail tucked under it as it regarded him with rolling brown eyes. Po swore savagely at it, and then turned his rage on the second dog. It had not given up trying to upend him the entire time it had held his heel. Po booted it away, then sent another kick at its rump. The dog span about, snapping and snarling at him. Po took another kick at it and the dog leaped sideways to avoid him and it rebounded off the fence: it was the reaction Po was hoping for. Before it could gather itself to attack again, Po ran up the toppled tree. Its angle was too sharp to carry him to the top, but he got his boots four or five feet off the ground before he had to grab at the ends of broken branches to help haul him up. The dogs renewed their attack, the cowed one more tentatively, both leaping and snapping at his heels. The braver dog attempted to scramble up the trunk after him, but it didn’t have the benefit of thumbs. It fell off the tree, and then Po was clear of its teeth.

  The uppermost portion of the tree trunk had squished down the rolls of razor wire, but the barbs were still a potential threat unless Po took his time to negotiate them. He didn’t, he scaled to the pinnacle of the trunk, then leaped for all his worth.

  The drop took him by surprise. Not only had he to jump from the height of the fence, he’d added to it by leaping up and outwards from the top. He sailed out and into the lower boughs of the forest on the other side, crashing through them as he plummeted to earth. Something raked his side from his hip to his armpit, and another knotty branch dug a painful furrow up his left thigh. As he landed, both heels close together, they sank deep into the loam, and his forward momentum carried him over both ankles so that he almost somersaulted. It was a graceless landing, and the force of it stunned him, so he’d no conception of windmilling between tree trunks and checking up against a fallen trunk.

  The temptation to stay exactly where he’d landed was strong. He was numb for the moment, and his brain full of cotton wool. A curse wheezed between his teeth.

  The baying of hounds and shouting of men was growing closer.

  There was no staying put if he intended evading pursuit.

  For the moment he’d foiled the attack dogs, but in no time his human pursuers would arrive and any of them with a gun could halt his escape. He pushed up from where he’d fallen, feeling every muscle, ligament and bone shifting and rearranging it seemed, until he had his legs under him. His left thigh was on fire, his knee twisted and his heel also felt unstable. He lurched as he attempted his first step, and he bit down on a curse. His right foot felt sore too, but it held him. He checked towards the fence and the two shepherds slavered and growled at him between the chain links. Po grimaced at them, but couldn’t raise any genuine ire; the mutts were only doing their jobs. He felt for his flashlight, it was gone. Miraculously though, he had held onto his knife. He dipped down, sheathing the blade in its boot sheath for safety, then turned towards the twisted old wood, and limped into the darkness.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘Drive past the bridge, Pinky,’ Tess instructed urgently.

  ‘Say what? I thought we were gonna—’

  ‘Yeah, but it looks as if the truck’s going to come out and save us some trouble.’

  While they were still on the approach to the bridge, Tess had watched the guards. One of them had left his pal in the truck, so that he could raise the barrier at the far end of the bridge. The pickup was already rolling forward.

  ‘What are they up to, them?’

  ‘My guess is they’ve been told to watch out for Po, and the guy in the truck’s coming out to patrol this side of the river. Keep driving, Pinky, and don’t look at them. Once we’re out of sight we’ll turn and come back. Then we’ll only have the one guy at the bridge to deal with, and I don’t think he has access to a radio to call for help.’

  It was an assumption, but a fair one.

  Pinky had his own version of a plan. ‘I could ram that mother off the road, and then go and smack the one at the bridge around. But you’re right, it’s probably best your way.’

  He kept driving, and they both kept their faces forward as they passed the bridge. The pickup was most of the way across, slowing down, so that the man on foot could run ahead and move the sawhorses. He glanced at the GMC but gave it no further attention as he began dragging the barriers aside. Pinky didn’t slow, he sent the GMC around two curves before finding a passing place at the shoulder, where he quickly performed a turn, and aimed the car at the bridge once more. He began crawling the GMC forward, and as an afterthought knocked off the headlights so their approach was not announced. At the final curve he stopped and they peered out towards the span of the bridge. There was no sign of the man on foot.

  ‘They must’ve both got in the truck after we passed them,’ Tess surmised.

  ‘They’ve both gone to cut off Nicolas’s escape route,’ Pinky said, ‘which probably means he isn’t coming back this way.’

  ‘Forget about crossing the bridge then,’ Tess said. ‘It’s more important we stay this side of the river and stop them from catching Po. If they have guns and they spot him trying to jump the water …’

  Pinky put his foot down. Driving without lights was risky on the twisting road, but he’d got the measure of the road beyond the bridge having traveled it back and forth a few times now, so he kept the lights turned off. It was the pickup’s taillights that gave up the guards’ position in the road ahead; ironically they had parked in the same ravine between the boulders that Tess and Pinky had used earlier. Unobserved by the guards, Pinky slowed the GMC and pulled in as tight to the shoulder as possible. He and Tess slipped out of the car, their guns ready, and they moved to intercept the would-be interceptors.

  The pickup wasn’t tucked in tight the way they’d tried to hide the GMC earlier; there was no reason for the guards to conceal it. The truck was parked across the entrance to the ravine, on the hardpack where the police cruiser had earlier halted. Tess wondered if the cops had mentioned coming across a romantic couple hiding back there to the guards, and now that the alarm had been raised about a trespasser on their land, they had reason to be more suspicious and decided to investigate. It was fortunate the guards hadn’t arrived a few minutes ago, or it would have seen them trapped on foot in the ravine. As it were, they were back on foot, but this time they held the advantage, if marginally.

  One of the guards was still in the truck, speaking into a CB-style handset. The other man was out on the hardpack, staring across the river. He had a rifle canted across his middle. The roaring of water between the rocks camouflaged any noises that Tess or Pinky made. Also, they were behind the glow of the pickup’s high beams, and invisible to the man on the road.

  ‘You get him,’ Tess whispered, indicating the man on foot, ‘I’ll handle the other one.’

  ‘Should I kill him, me?’

  Tess clucked her tongue. ‘We can only use reasonable force, Pinky.’

  ‘Good job I checked, eh?’ He squeezed her a smile.

  She shook her head in dismay, anticipating Pinky’s next muttered words as he moved for the man: ‘Now I just have to figure out what constitutes reasonable force when dealing with a sumbitch intent on murdering my best friend.’

  As Pinky strode directly past the pickup, his
pistol extended, she mirrored him. The driver was a hawk-faced man sporting a straggly beard and mustache. He was dressed in casual work clothing and boots. There was a gold band on his third finger. Tess should not forget that he was just an ordinary man, probably with a family at home, doing as he’d been commanded to hurt Po whether he liked it or not. But neither should she forget that he shouldn’t be taken lightly; he was armed, though right then, his gun was on the pickup’s dashboard.

  He was listening to his radio as Tess moved alongside him, partially distracted. But he was also on edge, his adrenalin up after being brought in on the hunt to capture Po. He knew without looking directly at her that she was a stranger, and therefore a potential foe. Also, his gaze was fixed on Pinky as he lunged into the beams of light, and spotting Pinky’s gun, the driver dropped the handset and snatched at his revolver. Tess jammed the muzzle of her pistol under his ear with enough force to shove him sideways in the seat, and his fingers fell short of grasping the revolver’s handle. Tess reached with her left hand and swept his gun to her. She picked it up and held it behind her, out of his reach as she allowed him to return to a more upright position. ‘Don’t try anything stupid,’ she hissed through the open door, ‘if you don’t believe I’ll shoot you you’re sorely mistaken.’

  Before she’d even got out the words, Pinky had dealt similarly with the other guard. Tess was only vaguely aware of a brief swirl of action that ended with the guard sitting in the dust, holding his head, while Pinky slung the appropriated rifle over the rocks and into the river beyond. Pinky bent, clutched the man by the back of his collar and yanked him onto his knees. He pressed his pistol to the nape of the man’s neck. Tess couldn’t hear the dire warning her friend gave. She concentrated on her own prisoner. ‘Put both your hands on the steering wheel.’