He’d lost. A-fucking-gain
Movement caught his eye. He flicked the knife in his hand until the blade pointed towards the aggressive sky. A twin to Euan’s bowie, the eleven inches of razor-sharp steel and angry saw-back would see any living man tremble.
Four bodies. Three lay motionless in the mud. Rain hammered their clothes until they stuck to emaciated torsos. They already resembled decomposing corpses, pulled into the earth to be consumed by Mother Nature. More skeletons to add to the hoards that remained unburied after the fall of mankind.
But one still trembled, and Nick recognised him as the man that had forced Kira into the back of the truck. In that moment, he felt a terrible pleasure. A wonderful brilliance that bloomed through his chest. His lips tipped up and a rush of gruesome greed splashed through his muscles.
He was going to do it. He was going to enjoy it. He closed his eyes, breathed in. His fist tightened on his weapon. Joy unlike any he had felt before sung within him.
The steps he took to the twitching body were measured. When he stood over the man, the grin that split across his face was inhuman. Maybe he was no longer man. In that moment, he certainly felt like a predator.
It gave him a vile sense of pleasure.
When the man in the mud registered Nick standing above him like the warden of death, he flinched. Despite the bullet that had clearly lodged in this throat, he registered Nick’s intentions. Wild, dying eyes roamed Nick’s face before he travelled down his body. He saw the knife in Nick’s hand and his already pale skin turned yellow with sickened terror.
Nick had been the one to send Rodgers to his maker that terrible day. In that moment, he hadn’t concerned himself with what had surrounded him in that room, only that the man known as Death needed to die.
Memories of what he had done to him, how he had hurt, tormented and brutalised him had made the effort to pull the trigger easy. There had been no second-guessing. He had simply seen, then shot.
But once that evil had fallen to the blood-soaked floor, he was able to take in the rest of the tiny, smoky room. It was then he realised that the carcass that swung from the roof on a meat hook was the man he loved, the man he adored, the man he worshipped and revered. It had been shocking. The horror so bright he thought the earth beneath his feet had opened and the devil had kissed his hand in a promise of pain and suffering. Euan had been mutilated. He had been tortured for nothing other than to pleasure another man’s sick sense of need. Once he had gotten over the shock and realised the bleeding body still lived, he had been too overwhelmed to understand how a man could do that to another living thing.
In this moment, Nick understood.
He crouched. He stared into wild, wide eyes of the man he would kill. He saw everything, and he did everything in slow motion. A terrible reducing of time and intentions. The man’s face was destroyed. His throat oozed blood with every heartbeat. When he worked his jaw in an attempt to breathe, the gloss of bloody teeth could be seen through his gasping lisps.
‘Does she live?’ Nick asked. His voice sounded strange even to him. Firm, unwavering. Stoic.
Like Euan’s.
The man tried to roll away, and Nick lashed out. The knife embedded in the flesh of the man’s shoulder and pinned him to the ground. The gurgling howl that erupted out of that gaping wound in his face was revolting.
‘I’m not going to ask again.’
The man’s eyes rolled back. Nick took the time to look towards the sky. Clouds of grey and green, of yellow and white twisted and twirled as they continued to eradicate the heaviest of the water they held in their arms. The wind whipped up and Nick’s sodden hair flicked his cheeks, into his eyelashes. His gaze returned to the man in the mud.
He waited.
The wheezing breaths slowed. Each gurgle a little longer after the last. Nick pushed the hilt of his knife further into the shoulder of the man and bent down until he could smell the blood.
He held blue-grey eyes. The man nodded.
A thundering heart. A relief that was physical. Nick’s shoulders slumped and his body hunched. His knees were in the dirt. The knuckles of his free hand held him upright. ‘Did you hurt her?’
At that, the man answered too quickly. The shake of his head was too eager, too nervous.
Nick breathed in deeply. The air was tainted with the scent of blood, of waste, of stinking wet clothes and death. He licked his lips, tasted the remnant of his tears and with a jerk, pulled his knife from the man’s shoulder.
But it was no reprieve.
He held the blade over the man’s left eye. He could envision it, the slow precision as it eased into the mutilated face. He could feel what it would be like to embed a blade into flesh and bone. He lifted the knife, held it aloft.
And did nothing.
Euan would not want him to kill. The big man had worked so hard to ensure his soul remained clean of intentional scars. This was not a burden he needed to bear. He was angry, he was scared. But in this, he would remain whole.
That disgusting gurgle was back. Until it wasn’t. Cut short by time. Not Nick.
Nick stood, a changed man. He stood a man that had one intention. One reason to breathe, one reason to move forward.
Kira lived. He didn’t know what had been done to her to have her scream his and Euan’s name in such desperation. But he did know he would save her from it.
His eyes travelled towards the horizon. The road stretched out before him. Black bisected with a white line. Edged with nature. It was his yellow brick road home.
His backpack lost, his knife his
