From the corner of the house he looked across a hundred-yard clearing to the stables, lantern light spilling through the opendouble doors. He didn’t remember lighting one. The place shone like a parade. But the clearing was murky in the pelting rain,a no-man’s-land between the house and the barn, and it felt like a muzzle-loader he was firing, given the gaps between rounds.Quick with it, though. An expert shot. Still, most likely that meant only one round, two at most, if he fired the very secondTommy ran. Shit, shit, shit. He had no choice. He needed a horse, needed to warn Arthur—if the shooter was mounted Tommy wouldnever outrun him on foot. Then there was Emily, waiting in her apartment, sitting on her bed, her hands clasped in her lap.If he didn’t get down there first there’d be a knock at the door and she would answer, her face crumpling in terror when shesaw it was not him.
Tommy snatched a final breath, and ran.
A flash of movement breaking cover. “And here the boss reckons you’re the clever one.” Percy tracked the runner left to right in his scope, but the rain blurred his vision and it was dark between the buildings. Aim for the torso, in that case. A bigger target to hit. He adjusted the rifle a fraction, and fired.
Mad eyes bulging, teeth bared, boots slapping the waterlogged earth, Tommy fled for his life across the yard. Ahead the barndoors yawned in the dusk, seemingly coming no closer, if anything inching farther away. Leaden arms flailing, no strengthleft in his legs, but close enough now to see inside the stables, the shapes of the hanging saddles, the benches, the stalls,and lying in the aisle there were bundles of . . . lying in the aisle there were . . . lying in the aisle . . .
Missed him. Fucker slowed right at the last. Percy saw the shot kick harmlessly in the mud, cursed and quickly reloaded, raised the rifle again.
At the sound of the booming rifle report Tommy flung himself forward and rolled into the barn, landing hard on the straw-strewnground. He lifted his head and looked at those bundles that had stalled him as he ran, and in the shadows from a distancehad resembled heaped blankets or covered hay bales that he knew should not have been there, and that now, up close, were clearlynothing of the sort.
“Good luck getting them saddles on,” Percy crowed, snatching up his rifle, carrying it by its forestock, skipping nimbly toward the house down the hill.
The horses had had their throats slit, Tess’s belly sawed open like a bean can. Tommy gripped his head and wrenched the skintaut, his eyes distended and red, death breaking over him in a wave. It was hopeless, he was doomed here, meaning so wereArthur and Rosie and Emily—no, not them. He staggered to the table, collected the shotgun, the box of shells. There was noway out but through him. No running away from this. Stepping over the animals and the pools of their mess, he made his wayalong the aisle to the barn’s back door, sliding in two shells as he went. He forced the door open, stiff from under-use,then crept along the side of the building to the front corner facing the gully and fired a shot blindly into the rain.
Percy’s feet went from under him at the sound of the shotgun blast. He slid in the wet scrub and scrambled behind a tree, squatting with his rifle clutched vertically between his legs. Waiting. He stuck his head around the tree then ducked back in at the sound of another blast, louder, coming closer. Silly boy.
Tommy fired the second cartridge as he sprinted across the track, buying time to find cover in the trees. He freewheeled downinto the gully, slipping through the ferns and long grass and only just keeping his feet. He knew every path in this gully,every bush, every warren, every tree. Moving smoothly between them, reloading as he ran, all the way down to the creek, wherehe paused in a crouch, watching the foliage on the opposite bank. There was a crossing he had built a little way along, mightmake a good ambush point. He crept low, following the creek, until he reached it. A horse, soaked to the bone, its saddlebagsladen, was tethered miserably to the nearside bridge post. It hadn’t heard him coming. The rain was too loud. Tommy paused,like there might be an alternative, when he already knew there was not. Hidden behind a trunk, he raised the gun and shotthe horse clean through its neck.
Another blast, but this time Percy was ready—he got a read on the position and set off after it, sidestepping down the hillside toward the creek. From a high vantage he followed its course until he caught a glimpse of the bridge. He halted. Shouldered the Hawken, used the scope. His horse lay on its side, its neck blown out, no sign of who had done it, no movement on the bank. Percy lowered the rifle. Fucker was really starting to piss him off now.
Tommy retreated from the crossing, backtracking into the trees, then with the shotgun raised waded into the creek to his waist.The water took his breath away. Shivering, he dragged himself into the root hollow of a fallen gray gum, reloaded with tremblingfingers, steeled himself, and went on.
There. There he was, the cunt. Skulking up the hillside, shotgun in his hands, looked fucking petrified bless him, startled as a baby deer. Percy took up a shooting position. Adjusting his feet, shifting his weight. Rain bounced off the long barrel of the Hawken as he closed one eye and dipped the
