floor corridor below me was now lit up like a football stadium.
Above me the American screamed, 'Sarah! One of them has Sarah!
They have Sarah!'
From below me a voice shouted above the babble of the TV, 'Where?
Where are they? Help me here.'
I froze no more than six feet from the bottom of the stairs. It wouldn't be long before these two got their act together and I'd be dead. I just wanted five seconds in which to calm down and think.
A shadow approached from the left on the corridor below. It turned into Bossman, now in jeans and carrying an HK53. Fuck, how did he get free so quickly? I kept looking down on him, weapon in the aim, gripping Sarah even tighter to stop her disrupting my sight picture.
He turned and looked up. I blatted three quiet rounds until he went down, not dead, just screaming and writhing on the ground. The 53 clattered down the stairs to the floor below.
Above me the American half groaned, half yelled, 'What's happening?
Talk to me. Someone talk to me here.'
I went down more stairs, stopped short of the corridor and, still holding Sarah with my left arm, put my pistol around to the left and loosed off the rest of the rounds blindly. Being suppressed, it wouldn't have quite the same effect as rounds going off with a loud report, but people would hear them splintering the woodwork and get the general idea. I willed Bossman to carry on screaming and scare the shit out of anyone listening. Maybe it worked, because there was still no firing back at me. Either that, or there were no more people.
I ran out of rounds and started to change mags. Pressing the mag release catch I jerked my hand downward to help the mag fall out. It hit the stair and bounced down, onto Bossman's back. I looked at him, facedown on the floor, his blood spilling across the polished wood. Then, turning to look up the stairs, waiting for the American, I placed a new mag into the weapon right next to Sarah's face. As I turned back to check the chamber, we had eye contact for the first time. The shock of recognition was plain to see; her eyes were wide with amazement and disbelief. I looked away, more concerned about the job in hand.
I moved straight across the gap without looking, just making sure I didn't trip over Bossman, whose screams were fading. I rammed down the last flight of stairs, feeling and hearing Sarah bumping down behind me, sometimes lifting up her feet to take the strain, sometimes stumbling.
I carried on straight across the room toward the garage stairs, passing Too Thin To Win and his friends. Shouts and screams came from the TV as we passed the kitchen door.
Just as I neared the bottom of the flight and was about to enter the garage, I heard shouting upstairs, and then four or five rounds went off.
I wondered what the American was firing at, then I realized: he'd probably run downstairs, seen figures by the TV in semidarkness and fired off at them straightaway without looking. The flickering light from the screen, and the scariness of the situation, had probably got him jumping.
It certainly had me.
I closed the door behind me to add a bit more to the confusion. He wouldn't dare barge straight through; he couldn't guarantee what was on the other side. We moved alongside the Explorer, and I could hear the American's voice above me. I couldn't make sense of what he was saying, but he didn't sound too happy about the way his day was shaping up.
The rain stung as it lashed my face. It was then that I remembered the bergen, but it was too late now. Fuck it. I turned left, toward the other house, and had taken no more than three steps when the proximity lights came on. With my head down I started pumping, but was restricted by the weight I was dragging.
I'd covered maybe ten or fifteen meters when the first burst from a 53 was fired from one of the upper floors. Its short barrel and the power of the round makes the muzzle emit a fearsome flash; it's the only weapon I'd ever seen that looks like the ones you see in films. It was great for closeup work as it scared the shit out of people. I kept on running; I'd be out of the light in a few more strides.
As soon as we hit darkness I glanced back. All the lights in the house were blazing. Smoke was drifting from the windows on the second floor.
It looked almost like that house in The Amityville Horror, shrouded in rain and mist, except that it wasn't mist, it was cordite from the rounds.
A couple of lights were on upstairs in the place next door. My new plan was to get in there, point a big fat gun at them, take their pickup and fuck off. The next thing I knew, however, the external light on the family's 4x4, mounted on the driver's side wing, burst into life, and a million-candlepower beam sliced through the darkness toward us. A man's voice shouted a warning: 'Don't come near stay away! I'm armed I've called the police!'
For good measure he whanged down a couple of rounds at us from a rifle. He probably had 'My land, my country, my gun' on his bumpers, and a few other stickers that he'd bought at Jim's, but he was protecting his family, and that was a fair one.
I felt a thump as one of the rounds rammed into the ground far too close to me. Either he was good, and he meant to aim a warning shot, or he was trying to hit us and this time we'd been lucky. I didn't want to find out which. I jinked left and ran between the two houses, uphill, toward the dirt track. Change of plan again: we were going to make it on foot back to my car, as I'd been aiming to do all along, but without all this drama.
Another rifle shot rang out, but this time I didn't hear the answering thud. There was the burst of a 53; fuck knows where that went.
I got to the track, crossed it and stopped to try and assess the situation.
We were in darkness and on higher ground. I heard shots and saw a couple of foot-long muzzle flashes coming from the direction of the target house, and more from the area around the pickup. Shotgun Ned must be zapping and shouting at anything that moved. His spotlight swept left and right, looking for targets.
It wasn't the only light I could see. Red and blue flashing lights were glistening in the rain on the other side of the lake and I suddenly realized that I stood more chance of being struck by lightning than I did of getting back to my car. Acting as the situation demanded, I changed plan again.
We were going to get out of here on foot. I stood still, knees bent, waiting to regain my breath. It was colder than before, and the wind and rain were loud against the leaves.
I started moving through the forest again. Sarah's bare flesh was getting zapped left and right by branches, and I could hear her suffering. I put my head down and pumped uphill, leaving everybody down there to get on with it. It seemed that my lucky number for house clearing was the same as for shopping trolleys: zero.
gripped Sarah and plunged on, slipping and skidding on the wet mush, stumbling over rocks and fallen branches, nailing to regain my footing.
She was screaming as best she could beneath the gag, partly because of the tree branches that whipped at her bare body and the ground cutting her legs, partly just trying to keep her airway clear. At least I knew she was breathing.
I tripped again and went down. The pain as my knees hit rock made them feel as if they were on fire. She moaned loudly under the gag as she took the brunt of my fall, and she had to arch her back to relieve the strain on her neck. I stayed on my knees, screwing my face up as I took the pain, waiting for it to die down. There was nothing I could do but accept it. I just hoped I hadn't smashed a kneecap. My chest was heaving up and down as I tried to catch my breath. Sarah gave up the struggle to keep her body off the ground. She collapsed in the mud beside and slightly below me, her head, still in the neck hold, resting in my lap and moving up and down in unison with my breathing.
There was plenty of commotion going on behind, the odd rifle round and automatic burst, followed by shouts. Looking down and behind me through the trees and rain, I could make out the lights of both houses some 150 meters away. I wasn't in dead ground yet, and it was going to be light soon. I needed to get distance.
Shotgun Ned was having a ballistic fit, screaming and hollering, like something out of one of the movies for guys who like guy movies. I couldn't tell whether he was enjoying it or hating it, but he was vocal, that
was for sure. I got myself to my feet, pulling Sarah upright with me, and started moving again.
I could hear rotor blades in the sky behind. Moments later a blindingly bright Night Sun searchlight penetrated the darkness and began to sweep the area toward the houses as the helicopter hovered over the lake. It wasn't venturing too near the scene just yet, probably for fear of someone taking a potshot.
More gunshots echoed in the background. Almost immediately I heard returned bursts of fire and saw the brilliant, almost white, muzzle flash of a 53.1 turned back and started to move off.
