Stay Alive (20 page)

‘Can you see, Tony? Can you see?’

‘Aye, course I can see.’

‘I think we should call the police.’ Jackie fumbled in her pocket for her mobile.

‘Let’s take a look first,’ he said, slowing down as he got nearer the cottage. He could see now that the lights on the ground floor were on as well.

‘But what if it’s burglars and they’re still there? Come on. You need to call the police.’ She tried to hand him the phone but he didn’t take it.

‘And tell them what? That the lights are on in our cottage and they shouldn’t be? We need to see what’s happened first.’

‘I don’t like this,’ Jackie announced warily as he drove into the driveway and stopped, switching off the engine.

‘Ah shit, we’ve been burgled,’ he said, seeing the broken kitchen window. ‘God knows what they were after. There’s nothing there.’

‘I knew we should have got a bloody alarm. What did I tell you? The place is too bloody isolated.’

But Tony was looking up at the bedroom window. ‘Christ Almighty. There’s someone moving up there. They’re still here.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Jackie fearfully as he fumbled for his keys, suddenly wishing he hadn’t turned off the engine. ‘Come on, come on.’ She shook his arm as if this would speed him up, her eyes wide with panic.

Behind her, a shadow moved outside the passenger door and the next second there was a deafening bang, very close.

Tony shut his eyes instinctively, and when he opened them a split second later, his face had been sprayed with a warm liquid, and Jackie was tottering in her seat, with a large chunk of the side of her head missing. One eye was gone, and the other was open and staring sightlessly into the distance. Blood and pieces of brain covered the whole of the car’s interior, and Tony knew that that was what was covering his face too.

Jackie fell sideways and slumped in her seat. Dead. Gone. Finished. Outside, the man who’d fired the fatal shot was standing beside the bonnet aiming his rifle at Tony. Tony couldn’t see his face, and didn’t want to.

Dropping the keys, he yanked open the driver’s door and jumped out, moving surprisingly fast for a man who was a good three stone overweight. But he was never going to make it. He heard the second shot ring out, felt a huge pressure on his back, as if someone had dropped a rock on it, and fell forward onto the driveway, hitting it face first.

Moaning more in shock than anything else, still unable to process the fact that his wife had just been murdered, he rolled over onto his back as the man with the rifle came round the front of the car and stood over him.

‘What did you have to turn up here for?’ said the man, in a tone that was more annoyed than anything else. He had a hard, expressionless face, with two thin scars running across it like train tracks, and straight away Tony knew this was a man who was never going to show him any mercy. As if to prove the point, the gunman pushed the end of the barrel against his cheek.

Flinching from the heat of the metal, Tony raised a hand and tried to cry out, knowing it was useless, and thinking in his last moments that he was going to miss Jackie, and that perhaps she hadn’t been so bad after all.

Then the shot rang out.

Keogh turned away from the driver’s corpse, unable to believe how badly wrong things were going. Two more civilians caught in the crossfire. Five dead in all, now, and one of his men missing. And still no sign of Amanda Rowan. The dogs were in the house but, though they’d found a pack of sausages wrapped in wet clothes, which must have been left to attract them to the scent, there was no sign of either her or the two kids. Either they were hidden extremely well in the house or, far more likely, they were gone.

He looked back across the woods, scanning them for any sign of movement, but they were utterly still.

‘You’re round here somewhere, Amanda,’ he whispered into the darkness. ‘And when I find you, I’m going to make you pay for this.’

JESS COVERED CASEY’S
ears and pulled her close as the third shot rang out, its retort reverberating through the trees like a thunderclap, making them all flinch.

They’d stopped in a small clearing twenty yards from the single-track road and about a hundred yards up the hill from the house where, barely five minutes earlier, they’d been sheltering. Jess’s mouth was bone dry and she felt sick. ‘What do you think just happened?’ she asked urgently.

‘I think the car that just drove down belonged to the owner of the house,’ whispered Amanda. ‘I think he must have disturbed the men who are looking for us.’

‘And they just killed him?’ The full force of the danger they were in hit Jess like a sledgehammer.

‘I’m going back for the owner’s car.’

‘What do you mean? You’re going to steal it?’

‘You heard what just happened. The guy didn’t even get a chance to get out of his car. The keys are probably still in there.’

‘You can’t go back there.’ Jess thought of the three shots, and wondered if the little boy who owned the Buzz Lightyear dressing gown was one of the dead.

Amanda’s expression was determined. ‘It’s our only chance. You two don’t have to come. You can wait here. When you hear me drive up, come out onto the side of the road and I’ll pick you up.’

It struck Jess then that she didn’t trust Amanda enough to rely on her to stop once she’d got the car on the track, especially if there were armed men and dogs chasing her. ‘I’ll come with you.’ She looked down at her sister. ‘Casey, you stay here and wait for us, okay? We’ll just be a couple of minutes.’

‘I don’t want to,’ said Casey, looking terrified. She was still clutching her jeans in her hands like some kind of comfort blanket. ‘What if something happens to you?’

‘Nothing will. I promise.’ Jess wasn’t at all sure she believed what she was saying. In many ways going back to the house was madness, but she wasn’t prepared to let Amanda go back on her own and, at least if anything did happen to them, the chances were that the men wouldn’t go after Casey.

She stroked her sister’s head. ‘We’ll be two minutes. Put your jeans on, and when you hear the car, get over to the road, and check it’s us before you show yourself. Okay?’

Casey nodded and Jess pulled away from her, blew her a kiss, and followed Amanda as they raced back through the trees, not daring to look behind them, and all the time she was praying she was doing the right thing.

They slowed up when they reached the laurel hedge and followed it until they reached the entrance to the driveway, moving as silently as possible. Amanda looked round the corner of the hedge, then turned and motioned for Jess to follow her. From somewhere in the house, Jess could hear shouting. It sounded as if the men were trying to get the dogs to stop doing something, but she couldn’t quite make out the words. They were close by, though, and Jess felt her legs shaking as she and Amanda crept onto the driveway and made their way towards the back of the car. The body of a man in a dark tracksuit lay on its back near the driver’s door, a pool of blood forming on the ground round his head. Jess turned away quickly.

‘Go round the other side and get in,’ whispered Amanda as she turned towards the driver’s side.

Jess continued round towards the passenger door, keeping as close to the car as possible, thankful that it was a concrete rather than a gravel driveway, so that her approach wasn’t quite as audible. Suddenly she saw a tough-looking guy appear in the kitchen. The light was on in there and she could see him clearly, only a few yards away. He had scars on his face and he was carrying a rifle and looking down at something at his feet. Then he turned and looked out in Jess’s direction.

Jess froze where she was, praying he wouldn’t notice her, because if he did, she was dead.

For what felt like a long time but was probably only a couple of seconds, the man stayed where he was, looking out, then he turned away. ‘Come on, they’re not here,’ she heard him call out to whoever was in there with him, his voice carrying through the broken kitchen window. ‘They must have made a dash for it.’

Creeping forward quickly, Jess opened the passenger door, flinching when she saw a woman lying with her back to her in the passenger seat, a great chunk missing from the top of her head. The windscreen and dashboard were covered in gore and thick splats of blood, some of which were still dripping, and a horrible smell of shit hung heavily in the air.

Amanda was leaning in the other side of the car, searching frantically for the keys. ‘I can’t see them,’ she hissed. ‘Are they over your side?’

Jess looked on the floor, trying hard to ignore the corpse in the seat. She couldn’t see them anywhere, and when she looked back up, the scar-faced man was no longer in the kitchen. A shadow appeared through the frosted glass panel in the front door, and she heard the sound of the dogs’ paws scrabbling against the woodwork.

Fear surged through her. ‘We’ve got to go,’ she whispered desperately. ‘They’re going to see us any second . . .’

‘Hold on,’ hissed Amanda. ‘Give me one moment.’ Turning away, she crept quickly over to the driver’s corpse while Jess stared at the door, waiting for it to open, racked by indecision.

‘I’ve got them.’ Amanda lifted up the keys and jumped back in the car. ‘Get rid of her and get in quick,’ she added, motioning towards the woman’s body as she shoved the key into the ignition with shaking hands.

A day ago the idea of handling a freshly murdered corpse would have been impossible to imagine for Jess. But now her survival instinct kicked in and she grabbed the dead woman by the collar of her lurid pink tracksuit top and yanked her out, dumping her on the driveway before jumping in the passenger seat just as the front door to the house flew open, and the scar-faced guy appeared in the gap, the rifle held out in front of him, the dogs already pushing past him as they made a dash for the car.

At the same time, Amanda switched on the engine and threw the car into reverse.

‘Duck!’ screamed Jess as the man raised the rifle and pointed it at straight at them. Without waiting to see whether Amanda followed her prompt, Jess threw herself down in the seat as the car accelerated backwards. A shot rang out and in the same instant the windscreen exploded, raining glass down on her as she squeezed her eyes shut and covered her head.

A second shot rang out, then a third and a fourth, and the car mounted a bank as it came hurtling out of the drive. As Jess opened her eyes again she saw Amanda crouched uncomfortably in her seat, eyes level with the dashboard as she yanked the wheel round, and the car fell back onto the road.

They were now temporarily out of sight of the gunman and they both sat up in their seats, Amanda craning her head round as she reversed the car wildly up the hill.

‘Don’t forget Casey!’ yelled Jess. ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t forget my sister!’

‘I won’t, I won’t. Just hold still and keep your head down.’ Amanda had her foot flat on the accelerator. The car was wobbling all over the place and she was going as fast as she could in reverse, but it wasn’t fast enough and there was no room to turn round, although for the moment they were just about outrunning the dogs. And now they were coming up towards the bend in the road close to where Jess reckoned Casey would be. If they could get round that and out of sight, then they might just have a chance of escape.

And then, as she looked back down the hill, Jess saw the scar-faced gunman come into view again. In one movement, he crouched down, took aim with the rifle and opened fire, letting off shot after shot.

As Jess ducked back down, she felt the car spin out of control. Amanda was yanking the wheel this way and that but it didn’t seem to be doing any good, and suddenly they were leaving the road. The car swerved wildly and hit a tree before coming to a halt, facing back down the hill.

‘Out! Out! Out!’ yelled Amanda. ‘Out your side!’ She gave Jess an angry shove as another shot rang out, its impact making the car shake. Smoke was rising from the bonnet now and it was clear the car was going nowhere.

‘What about Casey?’ yelled Jess.

‘Just go!’ No longer willing to wait, Amanda scrambled over her and yanked the door open.

The two of them rolled out together and scrambled into the undergrowth as another shot whistled past somewhere not that far over their heads. Using the bushes as cover, Jess leapt to her feet, still clutching the knife she’d taken from the kitchen, and looked round desperately for any sign of her sister. But she couldn’t see her anywhere and didn’t dare call her name, in case it alerted their pursuers to her whereabouts. She could hear the dogs racing up the hill towards them, coming close now.

Amanda yelled at her to run and took off herself into the trees without looking back but, for a long second, Jess stood where she was, cursing herself for not staying with Casey, knowing that she couldn’t let the dogs catch her sister’s scent. She had to distract them. ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ she called out as the dogs – two lean, powerful-looking Dobermans – raced into view.

Knowing she had their full attention, Jess turned and sprinted into the darkness of the woods, running faster than she’d ever run in her life, knowing that it was never going to be fast enough, but praying that Casey at least would make it out of here in one piece.

She could hear them right behind her now. Closing in for the kill. Could hear their hot panting breath only feet away.

Swinging round, she held out the knife as the closest dog leapt through the air towards her, jaws open wide. The knife connected with the dog’s chest and it let loose a strange gasping howl as it impaled itself right up to the hilt on the blade, the momentum of its leap sending both the dog and Jess crashing to the ground. Warm blood poured onto her chest from where she’d stabbed the dog, and she just had time to see its eyes roll back in its head before the second Doberman was on her, sinking its teeth into her knife arm.

Jess yelped in pain, trying and failing to retrieve the knife, kicking out wildly at the dog as its teeth tore her flesh. With a huge, desperate effort, she tried to fight her way to her feet, but the dog’s grip was too strong, and already she could see the shadows of the men who were hunting her on the road.