“What’s that?” Tim asked.
“That plane’s dusting crops where there ain’t no crops.”
The plane turned sharply and began to fly towards us. I could hear the propeller chopping at the air. The engine sounded angry. For a long time I just stood there watching it. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe I was tired. I didn’t realize I was watching my own death.
But then the plane swooped down and before my brain had time to tell me what was going on my legs were hurling me out of the way as the whole thing sliced through the air millimetres above where my head had just been. Tim shrieked and threw himself in the other direction. For a moment everything went dark as the plane blotted out the sun. The propeller whipped up the surface of the road, stinging my eyes. And then it was gone, climbing upwards and at the same time turning for the next attack.
Tim got to his knees, coughing and blinking. I don’t think he’d quite understood what was happening. “Low flying…” he muttered.
I nodded. “Any lower and it wouldn’t need wings.”
“Do you think…?”
But even Tim had worked out what I was thinking. It was Charon. Somehow he had found out about our meeting with Charlotte.
I remembered now how scared she’d been on the telephone. Maybe she’d been followed. Maybe she was already dead.
Charon was up there. And we had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Because that was exactly where we were. Nowhere.
I was still wondering which way to run when the plane swept down again. And this time there was an even more unpleasant surprise. Two of its wings were fitted with machine-guns. I saw the sparks of red and heard the chatter of the bullets. A section of the road leaped up at me, the tarmac shattering. Tim dived to one side and I tried to follow him but then something punched me hard on the shoulder and I was thrown on my back. The plane rushed past, the wind battering and blinding me. I knew I had been hit but I didn’t know how badly. I was hurting all over.
But then the plane had gone and somehow I had got to my feet. I looked round for Tim. His face was white but it could have been dust. The plane was banking steeply, preparing for the next attack. Third time lucky…?
We only had one chance. “Come on!” I shouted. “The wheat!”
“I can’t!” Tim was frozen. The plane had almost completed its turn.
“Why not?”
“My hay fever…!”
“Tim!” It was incredible. Charon had us right in his sights and Tim was worrying about his hay fever. Any minute now he’d have more holes in him than a Swiss cheese and the next time he sneezed, he’d do it in fourteen directions at once. But this was no time to argue. Ignoring the pain in my shoulder, I grabbed hold of him and pushed him off the road.
The plane dived again, invisible this time, and a great patch of wheat tore itself apart spectacularly around me. Tim sneezed. At least he hadn’t been hit. But this was hopeless. We could stumble through the field until the whole thing looked like a plate of cornflakes but we’d end up as the free gifts in the middle. Eventually Charon would pick us off. We had to do something. Now.
And then I saw them. They’d been left in the middle of the wheat and they had both fallen over into a sad and useless heap. They were made of wire and old broomstick handles with punctured footballs for heads. Scarecrows. Even the most cowardly of crows wouldn’t have been scared by them but they’d given me an idea.
I searched for the plane. It was at its furthest point, turning again. Then I yelled at Tim. “Take off your jacket!”
“Why?”
“Just do it!”
I pulled off my own jacket. It hurt me and as my sleeve came free I saw that it was soaked in blood. But it would just have to wait. I grabbed hold of one of the scarecrows and threw it towards Tim. Miraculously he’d got the idea without my having to explain it. We had no time. The plane had almost completed its turn, a shimmering dot in the face of the sun. I hoped that Charon would be blinded by the glare, that he wouldn’t see what we were doing. I’d managed to get my jacket onto the smaller scarecrow. It hung off the wooden framework clumsily and the football face — black and white and half deflated — looked nothing like mine. At least, I hope it didn’t. I glanced back. The plane had completed its turn. It was coming at us, out of the sun.
“Tim…?”
He’d hung his own jacket onto the other scarecrow. Carefully, we leaned them against each other, shoulder to shoulder. They swayed but stood upright like two drunken friends. The noise of the plane reached me and I almost felt the wheat shiver behind me.
“Duck!” I shouted.
We threw ourselves into the wheat at the same moment as the bullets erupted again. I looked up and saw the two scarecrows only a metre or two away cut in half by the scythe of gunfire. The plane roared overhead. And then it was all over. The plane continued the way it had come, disappearing in the distance. The scarecrows lay in tatters on a bed of shredded wheat. The wind stroked the rest of the crop as if trying to soothe it after what had happened.
We stood up. We wouldn’t be wearing our jackets again. The bullets had turned them into so many handkerchiefs. Tim gazed up at the sky, “You think it was Charon?” he said.
“Who else could it have been?” I replied.
“A farmer…”
“What? Using machine-gun bullets to spray the crops?”
Tim considered. “Maybe it was an organic farmer.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
There was a long silence. I found I was unconsciously gripping my arm. I could feel the blood seeping through my fingers.
Tim was deep in thought. At last he spoke. “If it was Charon,” he muttered, “he’ll think we’re dead now. And if he thinks we’re dead, he won’t try and kill us.”
“Right,” I agreed.
Tim brightened. “Well, I suppose that’s a shot in the arm.” Then he saw the blood.
“Nick!”
“What?”
“You’ve been shot in the arm.”
“I know.”
Tim took a step forward. His face had gone a cheesy-white and I knew what was about to happen. And a moment later it did. With a little moan, he crumpled and joined the two scarecrows, stretched out in the heat. He never had been able to stand the sight of blood.
I just stood where I was, clutching my arm. It was hurting more now, but that was good. It reminded me that I was still alive.
CHARON
“Now, this won’t hurt…”
Why do doctors always say that before they hurt you?
Dr Monika Bloem wasn’t even a doctor. She was a vet. We’d found her farmhouse just outside the Flavoland as we’d walked back towards the city. I wasn’t too happy about being treated by someone who was more comfortable with dogs and rabbits, but I didn’t have much choice. I’d left about half a litre of my blood in a dotted line along the road and although it may have looked pretty, I didn’t have enough to continue it all the way to Amsterdam.
