It was all she could hear now. The slow brother’s foot. And all she could see. The smart brother’s back, arched and tense. Each slide of the foot another torture. Every slip forward another movement towards the explosion.
“I see them,” the slow brother said suddenly.
“Don’t …”
But it was too late. The slow brother fired his gun, once, twice, three times.
* * *
The smart brother was across to the front window.
Pulling the slow brother back by the shoulders.
They tumbled to the floor, the slow brother struggling to get to his feet.
After a brief tussle, they stood there, like two wrestlers facing each other, both panting. Evenly matched, thought Carrie, in a fight to the death.
“Don’t shoot at them,” the smart brother said. “They will shoot back. If you’re by the window, they will kill you. They’ve been trained. It’s all they do all day. Shooting. They have lasers and things.”
“You shot …” the slow brother went to say, out of the back window.
“I shot high. To scare them back. Warning shots. You shot down to kill. If you kill one of them, they will come for us straightaway. They will not wait. There will be too many of them for us.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Wait,” said the smart brother.
He crawled on his knees to the front window.
Carrie held her breath as he slowly moved to the right side of the window frame, the opposite side to the broken pane of glass that he had shot through. He wiped with his fingers at the dirty pane of glass to the right, raised his head, peered through.
“What do you see?” the slow brother asked. “Are they dead?”
“Ssshhh.”
The three of them were quiet as the smart brother looked out.
Eventually, the smart brother looked back, gesturing to the slow brother to check the back window.
“Slowly … head down, like I did.”
The slow brother crept across, adopting the same opposite-side, head-low position as the smart brother.
“There’s no one here,” the smart brother said finally. “Out the front. You shot at ghosts.”
“I saw policemen and I shot at them,” the slow brother responded, slower to anger than his brother, but it was definitely there, thought Carrie. Down deep inside. Ready to rumble up. “I am a hotshot shooter.”
The slow brother stood up and, without thinking, stomped across to the front window.
He bent and looked through the broken pane.
Carrie shut her eyes, waiting for a shot to ring out, to see the slow brother stagger back and collapse dead on the floor.
She pulled and tore at the material between her wrists with the shard, one more attempt to free her hands before the smart brother, screaming in anguish, turned on her to kill her.
But nothing happened.
The slow brother just peered out. Carrie could see him checking slowly all around.
“They have gone,” he said finally. “The police cars have left.”
“What did you shoot at?” the smart brother asked.
“Over there,” he answered. “By the big barn. There was someone behind it. A policeman. And someone behind him.”
“You imagined it,” the smart brother replied. “Moonlight on metal … a padlock … or a fox running across … the corner of your eye … there’s no one there.”
The slow brother shook his head emphatically, a sense of anger that his brother would not believe him. “I shot the policeman. And now they have gone. The cars. We have won. It is over.”
The slow brother sounded delighted. He dropped his gun to the floor on the other side of the barn from her, Carrie noted.
The smart brother looked disbelieving as he turned to Carrie.
She shook her head slowly as if to say to him, ‘it’s not over, it’s only just beginning. This is the quiet before the storm.’
* * *
The slow brother sat down on the floor by his gun and reached into his tin of roll-up cigarettes. Carrie could see him visibly relaxing.
He held the tin up to his smart brother as if to say, ‘do you want one?’
The smart brother ignored him, moving back and forth between the front and back windows looking out. Agitated. On edge. Expectant.
“Could they have gone, the police, for a while?” the smart brother stopped and looked at Carrie.
She shrugged, not sure what to say. “They might have retreated a bit, but not far … once you shot at the police … when they were taking your mother off … they won’t have gone away.”
“Why have they taken Mother?” the slow brother asked in a steady, concerned voice, as if it had only just occurred to him.
“Because it’s dangerous here and they need to get everyone out of the way. Your mother will be at the police station. She’ll be safe there.”
“What will they do next, the police?” the smart brother asked more urgently, now looking out the back. She thought he’d shoot at anything that moved in that moment. He was that twitchy.
“The first lot of police who arrived were probably local officers. They’ll be waiting for reinforcements … someone to take charge … firearms … specialist, trained police. It takes a while to get everything into place … and they will want to talk to your mother too … see what she has to say.”
“She won’t say anything,” the smart brother snapped back. “Mother would not betray us.”
“Mother wants to come home,” the slow brother said patiently, lighting a cigarette successfully for the first time. “To be with her boys. And we want Mother home.”
Carrie nodded.
“They know you have guns … so they will evacuate and cordon off the area first.”
The smart brother nodded back, yes, I realise that.
“They will then scout around to see where we are. That may take some time. Once they have done that, they will try to engage with you, to talk you into giving yourself up and letting me go.”
“We will let you go; we will exchange you for Mother. If they do not bring Mother back, we will not release you,” the smart brother said.
“You’ve fired shots.” She looked across. “So they will want to know
