Page 44

For a moment Steph just stared back at the smaller man. Despite his smile, he was clearly serious. She clicked her tongue as she turned towards the cave. She tried to remember how she had been taught to do it. It was an old Indigenous American man who had taken her on the night walk when she’d learnt how to do it. She doubted he’d ever have imagined her having to use it in such a strange scenario.

Gathering her breath deep within her lungs she began to howl. Thankfully the man didn’t laugh. Instead he raised his head a little to look eagerly at the mouth of the cave. Nothing. Steph howled again. Still nothing. They waited a further few seconds.

Steph could see that the man was about to ask questions, so Steph howled again. In the pause that followed, there was only silence, not even the sound of bird song. Perhaps they’d been scared off by the howling.

“It doesn’t seem our quarry is here,”

the man said, an edge to his voice.

“Which could be an issue,”

Steph whispered.

“Obviously.”

“Because if he is not here, where is he?”

“I dunno; could be anywhere. Could be miles away, couldn’t he?”

“Possibly, possibly not…”

Steph hoped that the seed she planted might at least make the man slightly more concerned with his immediate surroundings rather than what to do with her and her failure to deliver the bear. It must have been on his mind. He kept flicking looks from the cave to her to where his friend was hidden. More importantly, where were Davey and the others to make her need to distract him with fear as irrelevant?

Growling slightly, the smaller man stood upright, stretched and called.

“You might as well come out now! He isn’t here!”

Following the man’s lead Steph stood up. She looked in the direction of where the other man was meant to be hidden.

“I said you should come out!”

Still he remained hidden.

“For fuck’s sake!”

muttered the smaller man before hoisting the rifle onto his back and beginning to walk across the small plateau to where his friend was hidden. Steph followed.

“Why are you still crouching down there, you dozy turnip?”

The man then stopped, colour draining from his face as he looked at a spot behind a tree. Steph could not see what he was looking at. The branches of the great yew hung low. Cautiously, she took one quick glance at the cave mouth to her left before sidling up to the smaller man.

“Shit!”

Steph couldn’t help the outburst. She knew there would be some sort of ambush, but she had no idea how it was going to play out. It had been silent. A quiet, efficient sweep.

The large balding man lay face down in the dirt with blood pouring from the wound at the back of his head. His tranquillizer rifle lay next to his open hand. There was no sign of what had hit him.

As the smaller man appeared frozen by shock and indecision, Steph took the opportunity to kneel down and place two fingers under the man’s neck. She moved them around trying to find what she doubted was there. She was right, it wasn’t there. She turned to the man looming over her and shook her head.

The man just stared down, his mouth slightly ajar. He was not looking at her as such. It was more that he was looking through her, lost in his own thoughts. Steph stood up. As she did so there was an audible snap somewhere further up the slope within the trees. Steph jerked her head upwards. So did the man, the noise seeming to shatter his trance and crystallise his thoughts.

In one swift move, Steph felt the man grab the scruff of her neck before cold metal settled itself just under her chin. It all happened in the space of a couple of seconds. Seconds, Steph thought, would be her last on the planet.

“Right, enough of this act,”

the man snarled.

“What act?”

Steph replied, her voice rising and her heart beginning to prep itself for action.

“I said enough! You know who I am, and I know who you are, so let’s stop the pretence! Now where are the others?”

“I don’t know!”

Steph squeaked. Did he really know who she was? Did he really think she knew who he was? Or did he just mean that she knew what he was doing? Either way, she supposed she’d given the game away by saying ‘I don’t know’.

“I suggest that you don’t lie to me!”

Steph felt the bite of a blade nibble at her neck, something warm trickling down it.

“I really don’t know!”

Steph panted, trying to subdue the sobs.

“I promise, I don’t know. They didn’t tell me!”

“But you were happy to lead us here, weren’t you? Happy to bring us here for your friends to smash our heads in!”

“I didn’t know the plan, I swear! I thought they were just going to knock you out or… or tranquillize you or… I swear on my life!”

“Well, your life isn’t worth much right now, is it?”

the man snarled.

“Put her down, Ashley!”

Both Steph and who she assumed was Ashley snapped their head in the direction of the voice. From the right of the cave, carefully edging down a sharp slope, came Kelvin followed by Martina. Ashley eased the pressure of the blade a touch but didn’t remove it from Steph’s neck.

Kelvin made sure to stop a short distance from the pair. Steph appreciated a ten-yard gap would allow him some sort of comfort. Even so, he had what looked like Davey’s revolver held loosely in his right hand, just to be sure.

“I should have known you two might resurface at some point,”

Kelvin said in a bored sort of voice.

Steph could sense Ashley’s body tense.

“You killed Baz!”

snarled Ashley, rather pathetically.

“You killed Michael,”

Kelvin shrugged.

“He was going behind your back.”

“Still my man though. If anyone had a right to kill him, it was me!”

There was a small pause as Ashley assessed the situation.

“In fairness, you had this coming after what you did,”

Ashley said, flicking his eyes left and right.

“Fairness?”

Kelvin scoffed.

“You and Baz were paid the amount agreed upon in the contract you signed. It is the definition of fair!”

“We didn’t know the market value of what we were dealing with!”

“Not my fault,”

Kelvin shrugged again.

“Not that you seem to have been able to make use of it,”

Ashley replied with an undertone of satisfaction.

Kelvin’s eyes flashed. He opened his mouth, but the words snagged in his throat as a new thought crossed his mind. His expression changed and his body eased.

“Yet,”

he replied. Both he and Martina began to move in their direction whilst keeping their distance as if they meant to go around. This put Ashley on edge even more, spinning his head in the direction they were heading before turning the other way to look over his shoulder. Steph felt the knife ease in the distraction. She considered whether she should pull her own knife out of the sheath on her ankle. No. She wouldn’t have it halfway out before she felt Ashley’s blade warming her with her own blood.

Perhaps sensing Steph’s thoughts, Ashley raised his knife once more and began pulling Steph in the direction of the slope.

“I guess we have no more to say to each other then, for now,”

he said to Kelvin, clearly disturbed by his heading towards the slope.

“Oh, I’m not completely sure about that,”

Kelvin said. Ashley stopped guiding Steph towards the lip of the plateau but said nothing.

“For one thing, I am very interested in where you are going.”

“What do you mean?”

“With Steph, I mean. Well, in general really.”

“What do you mean ‘in general’? I’m not an idiot. I know you’ll have someone waiting for me somewhere. The moment I let her go, I’m gone. I know you never did Baz in; you don’t have the stomach for it. Besides, you don’t like to get your dainty hands dirty!”

Kelvin laughed, the revolver still loose in his hand. Martina, Steph noticed, was less at ease. Much like Ashley, she continued to flick her eyes in numerous directions.

“Even so, could you tell me exactly where you’re taking her?”

Kelvin asked.

“Let’s not play more games here than we need to. You know where I’m taking her.”

Kelvin stopped grinning now. His face became steely.

“Indeed, I do know where,”

he said, reaching into his pocket for something. Steph felt herself being pulled tighter to Ashley’s body.

“I just don’t get why when you can’t go anywhere!”

Ashley growled a revolting profanity before Steph felt his body slacken again. Ahead of him, Kelvin dangled the keys to the truck.

Steph could hear Ashley muttering to himself under his breath, but it was so quiet that she couldn’t make out a single syllable despite her close proximity. Eventually, he sighed.

“Fine,”

he said, pushing Steph a little further ahead of him but still gripping her collar.

“The girl for the keys.”

It made sense. Steph could see that he genuinely feared the risk of running down the slope without any collateral, but what choice did he really have? Kelvin basically had him in checkmate. More importantly, what plan did Kelvin have to stop him from running down the slope and reaching the truck? Was Davey down there now?

“No.”

Steph blinked.

“What?”

she said before even Ashley could digest what had just happened. Martina, for the first time, stopped flicking her eyes left and right and allowed herself a small smile. Kelvin ignored Steph. His eyes looked just past her.

Ashley seemed as surprised as Steph. His bargaining chip was worth nothing. Even so, Steph noticed that he had looked at her as soon as the no had come out. Despite having her at knifepoint, he understood the insult that had been delivered.

“Why ‘no’?”

Steph said.

Still, Kelvin ignored her. His eyes were firmly set on Ashley.

A quite sudden and explosive rage started to build within Steph. It was a rage that enveloped everything. The world around her and all its context seemed to melt to nothing in the face of the heat she felt.

Eventually Ashley asked, taking his eyes off Steph, lowering the knife a little further.

“Yes, why won’t you trade?”

Kelvin shifted his feet slightly.

Steph took a step forward. She meant to march right up to Kelvin. What then? Bury her knee into his bollocks? Shout at him until she got an answer as to why he viewed her life as expendable. Did he? Did he think Ashley would kill her? Surely he at least knew he might. He’d killed Michael.

A sharp tug on her collar brought her back. It seemed that Ashley still felt she was of some value even if Kelvin didn’t. She growled but didn’t take her eyes off Kelvin, willing him to acknowledge her. He stared passively, if uncomfortably, past.

Silence descended. A brief silence. A painful and hate-filled silence – at least on one-half of the plateau’s edge. And then, in one sudden burst, the silence, the hate, the unease was ripped apart.

None of them noticed it in time. They’d been too carelessly preoccupied. Certainly, Steph cursed herself for not being more careful. She cursed Martina too for not keeping up the nervous vigilance she had shown earlier. Each of them had allowed themselves to be sucked into the moment. Now the moment was being blown apart by the cave bear imposing itself upon them all. It had exploded down the slope and onto the plateau as if the ambush had been his to set all along and they were merely playing his game.

Steph turned her head in the direction of heavy, grunting breaths and thudding paws. Everything slowed down. She noticed the whole thing with a clarity that had been missing just two seconds before. Her primitive brain was forcing a rapid assessment of the situation, absorbing detail in the hope that something might save her. What could save her? Perhaps the shape coming from her right. Perhaps that could. It was certainly on a trajectory to meet the bear, but what was it?

Steph’s brain caught up with what her eyes were seeing as the shape crashed into the pumping back legs of the bear, another second later and it would have missed – it was Davey. He had launched himself in what could only be described as a shoulder-barge against the animal’s flank. What he hoped to achieve was hard to say. What was clear was the result. The bear’s back legs stumbled. Not a lot, but enough to slow it. For the briefest of moments, there was a mildly confused expression etched across its face. Its eyes widened and its focus fizzed quickly away from Steph and the others and around to whatever had interrupted its intended trajectory.

The moment was all that Kelvin needed. Steph noticed movement on the left of her periphery. She turned to see Kelvin and Martina whipping down the hill. She knew she should follow. Ashley seemed rooted to the spot, his mouth half open as he took in the bear’s enormity. She should definitely run. But what about Davey?

In what seemed an intelligent move, Davey had allowed his momentum to carry him. He had crashed into the bear’s hind legs in a sort of half spin. This spin, along with running into a weight far greater than his own, sent him tumbling behind the bear. As the bear spun around to look over its left shoulder, Davey was already tumbling over the ground to its right. This allowed him a precious extra second to get to his feet before the bear got its bearings. Even so, it didn’t seem obvious to Steph how he’d escape. The whole move had been suicidal. Why do it?

Whatever little time Davey thought he had bought himself from the move evaporated as quickly as it had come. The bear launched itself at Davey, half-rearing up in sheer, explosive power. Then Davey did the next unexpected thing. In one desperate spring of flailing limbs, he leapt over the lip of the small plateau and down a particularly sharper part of the slope. He vanished from sight. The bear, again momentarily taken by surprise, roared after him. And just like that, the noises that had shattered the tautness of the moment, trailed off downhill.

Steph instinctively intended to follow the bear and Davey, but her legs remained rooted. She felt that she should do what she could to ensure he was OK. She owed him that. Her eyes flicked in the other direction. Ashley was still there. He was still seemingly transfixed, staring at where Davey and the bear had disappeared.

His mouth was the first thing to revive itself.

“What the fucking hell just happened?”

His words seemed to break the leash that had held Steph. She turned to her right. She walked away at first, to her shame, in the opposite direction to Davey and the bear. After a few steps, she stepped it up to a light jog. Then she broke into an all-out run. She skidded down sections of the slope, leaping over tree roots. Her lungs burnt and the muscles in her legs cried for rest, but still, she ran.

She noticed a noise behind her. Something was following her. She allowed a quick glance over her shoulder. It was Ashley. He wasn’t chasing her exactly – it certainly didn’t seem that way – but he was definitely following her.

Steph didn’t stop running until she had burst from the trees that littered the slope and out onto the same open grassland she had witnessed the wolves kill a deer on days earlier. Her hands clasped her knees as she tried to force oxygen into her chest, sweat tickling her temples.

The heavy breathing behind her announced that Ashley had also blown his lungs. She turned her head. He turned his. They looked at each other.