Page 65 of The Bodies

SIXTY

Holding Drew’s phone before him, Gabriel Roth watches his brother die.

And Joseph, standing above him, tells himself that it’s now, it has to be now, beneath these freshly minted stars piercing a red sky.

Because here, at the end of things, this task falls to him alone.

From the phone he hears the bone-splintering impact of Tilly’s first swing with the log. Moments later, Drew’s cry: ‘ Tilz, stop, what the fuck! ’

As smoothly as he can, Joseph reaches up. He loosens the noose around his neck and lifts it over his head.

Another impact sound. Drew’s scream.

Gabriel contorts as if skewered.

Then comes the blow that ends Angus Roth’s life – the act that destroys first one family, then two, then three.

Joseph allows himself to fall. As gravity takes hold, he pushes off from the chair and launches himself at Gabriel Roth, who looks up in time to see him but not in time to react.

Their coming together is as violent as it is destructive.

Joseph is almost horizontal as his shoulder slams into Gabriel’s sternum.

The chair bursts apart and Gabriel is driven through the wreckage, his back thumping into hard turf.

Joseph’s momentum carries his legs over his head.

The ground swings up and punches him, as unyielding as a granite slab.

He lies prone, his neck and spine vibrating, the shock dissipating through his bones.

His diaphragm spasms, unable to pull in air.

Above him, all around him, he sees red fire and distant suns.

He has to move but he can’t. Has to find the crossbow, can’t see it. He’s a broken thing, a beached carcass. A ship impaled on rocks.

Above him, Max rattles out a breath, the last of his energy spent. The noose tightens around his neck.

Somehow, Joseph manages to roll on to his front and lift himself on all fours.

Gabriel Roth has already found his feet. From his belt he draws the knife Erin confiscated earlier. It’s a savage-looking piece, ruthlessly capable, the blade coated with black ceramic.

Joseph stares at it, his horror rooting him to the grass.

Then he crawls forward and seizes the largest piece of wreckage from the chair they both destroyed – the slatted backrest still connected to the rear legs.

It’s a defensive tool at best, and then it’s not even that, because Gabriel snatches it from his hands and pitches it across the lawn.

In doing so he reveals, behind him, a sight initially too complex for Joseph’s brain to process.

A silhouette has detached itself from the falling dark. Shadows gather to it, or flow from it; he can’t be sure. It approaches with marionette-jerkiness – like a reanimated corpse shuffling on grave-rotten limbs.

For a moment Joseph thinks the dead man must have clawed his way out of the Black Down soil and journeyed here to join his brother. But the truth is perhaps even worse – because this isn’t Angus Roth, returned from death. It’s Joseph’s stepdaughter.

How Tilly is managing to stand he doesn’t know. Nor how she’s managing to see. Her face has taken such a beating it looks like it’s been inflated by a high-pressure pump, the skin so taut it’s in danger of splitting or bursting.

Tilly’s mouth is a shattered cavity from which blood has sheeted in torrents. Her nose is a pulped ruin, her cheekbones smashed and sunken. Her eyes are like the slivers of wet flesh glimpsed inside a wound.

In Tilly’s hands Joseph sees the crossbow. She’s pointing it not at Gabriel Roth, but at him. In her eyes is a fury murderous in its intensity.

And then he can look at her no longer because Gabriel Roth blocks his view, closing on him with the knife.

Joseph worms backwards on his elbows. He opens his mouth, tries to speak, realizes his voice has abandoned him. Gabriel walks him down.

Under the tree, Max starts to strangle.

Joseph moans, elbows faster. When his shoulder knocks against Erin’s chair, he gets a foot under him, two.

Gabriel continues to stalk him.

Joseph pushes out of his crouch, feels something godawful happen inside his knee, as if bone and cartilage and flesh have twisted together to form something diabolical before immediately tearing apart.

Even with adrenalin flooding his system, the pain is crippling, nauseating, but he hardly cares about that, because as he rises he draws Erin’s knife from the sheath still attached to her belt – and now he has the means to cut down his boy from that tree, even though it’s likely the last thing he’ll do.

He circles Erin’s chair, using it to put a little distance between him and Gabriel, hears his son continue to choke.

As Gabriel steps around the chair towards him, Tilly slides back into view. And then Joseph hears it: the snap-thud! of the crossbow as it releases.

Except the thud! isn’t the sound of the string as it transfers its energy to the arrow, but the arrow transferring its energy into living meat.

Joseph doesn’t feel the impact straight away. He stagger-hops across the grass, Gabriel following close behind

He sees his son, so close. Sees Tilly crank the crossbow’s stock. Hears another arrow drop into position.

The air collapses from his lungs.

Snap-thud!

Joseph cringes, clenches his teeth, stumbles. His legs nearly buckle beneath him. The pain is overwhelming, everywhere all at one, his knee its white-hot source.

‘Oh my God, no,’ Erin sobs, and Joseph cannot work out if her words are for him, for Max, or the human wreckage that’s her daughter.

Tilly reloads, looses off another arrow.

Joseph grunts, takes another faltering step towards his son, but he knows he’ll never manage to climb up on that chair. Changing direction, he inches towards the tree trunk, where the other end of Max’s rope is tied.

Gabriel Roth changes direction, too, twisting towards Tilly as she pumps the stock and reloads. As he does, Joseph sees the black fletchings of two arrows protruding from Gabriel’s back – and a bloodied hole in his shirt where a third arrow has passed clean through him.

Joseph swings with his knife. He severs the rope binding Max to the tree, hears his son crash to the grass from his chair, sees him scrabble at the noose around his neck and take a gasping lungful of air.

Their eyes meet, just briefly. A thousand things pass between them in that moment.

Gabriel looks down at himself, at the blood coursing from his abdomen, at the broadhead tips of two arrows glistening with lumps of shredded meat.

He frowns, switches his gaze to Tilly. His eyes flare in recognition of what she’s done. ‘You’ll never—’ he begins.

Her fourth arrow takes him in the neck. He drops his knife, goes down on his knees.

Tilly cranks the stock. Her fifth arrow disappears inside Gabriel’s chest. He remains on his knees a while longer. Then he keels over on to the grass.

Joseph drops his knife. He sees his stepdaughter reload and swing the barrel of the crossbow towards him. Tears streak her face, mixing with the blood. ‘I thought you were dead,’ he whispers.

Tilly shakes her head.

‘You did the right thing.’

She stares at him.

Joseph glances at the crossbow. He can’t remember, now, how many arrows were in the magazine. ‘I need to check on Max.’

Tilly blinks. Her trigger finger twitches. Then she lowers the crossbow and turns towards her mother.