For a second, maybe two, Jon Quinn's reflexes froze, a snippet of time that meant the difference between life and death for Eric Atkinson. Seeing but not wholly believing, the terrible fear of what he might find back in the cottage.
Anger climbing into fury, remembering his gun and what it could do. He threw it to his shoulder, pulled twice, cursed because there was no more than a faint futile click from each trigger. The safety-catch was on! Valuable seconds consumed as he half-lowered the weapon, forced the serrated sliding catch forward; back to his shoulder, searching for his target.
The other was already in the hedge, scrambling through like a dog-fox to whom its escape route was second nature; screened from view. Right or left? He hedged his bets, fired 6ne barrel a yard to the right of the gap, the other a yard to the left. No answering cry of pain. He could have killed the bastard stone dead. Or he could have missed.
Running, still carrying the smoking shotgun, in through the door. Oh my God!
At first he thought Sylvia was dead, the way her naked body was stretched out across the quarries, those weals on her flesh, the rape blood smeared on the insides of her thighs. My fault, oh Jesus, my fault, I shouldn't have left her. I killed her!
Then her head moved and her eyes opened, insistently asking questions as he knelt to examine her. 'You didn't kill him, did you? DidyouT Starting to scream hysterically.
'No.' He knew he spoke the truth, knew only too well that the fleeing throwback had flung himself flat once he was through the hedge; was now on his way back up to those thorn bushes where he could sit and watch them in safety, probably wanking himself and remembering what he'd done in that cottage. The filthy fucking bastard! Next time . . .
'You're sure?' Sylvia was crying, clutching at him. 'You're sure you didn't kill him?'
'I missed.' Jon was shaking. God, I'm glad I never told her what happened to Gwyther. 'What happened?1 It was obvious but he had to ask just the same.
'I left the door open,' she said, calmer now, 'and before I knew it he was in here. He didn't hurt me, he . . .'
'It doesn't bloody look like it.' He winced at the sight of those nail gouges, the bruise on her forehead, pictured the intruder whipping himself up into a fury of lust, stabbing at her until he found the way in. 'In a civilised society they'd put a guy away for ten years for a rape like that.' Only we don't have a civilised society anymore.
'I. . . don't want you to kill anybody,' she sobbed, knew he couldn't see her expression at that moment because she was pulling her blouse back over her head. 'Whatever you do, Jon, you mustn't kill anybody. Now that you've shot at him and frightened him I don't expect he'll come back.'
'He won't go far,' Jon grimaced. 'He's been up there watching us for weeks, mooching about the place after dark. He's a threat to both of us and now you're asking me not to hurt him. Are you crazy?'
'I can't stand killing.' She turned her head away from him. 'I'm OK, there's no harm done, and in future I'll keep the door locked. I'm asking you is not to kill anybody.'
'So if they rush us one night we just open the doors and let them come in? Would you like me to arrange disarmament talks with them, unilateral, of course,' he sneered, regretted his sarcasm a moment later.
She leaped to her feet, ran for the stairs. He heard her sobs, the banging of the bedroom door. Jesus Harry Christ, this took some beating! He sighed, moved across to the doorway. It was raining again, splattering on the yard, melting the sun-baked summer clay into thick sticky mud. It was cold, too.
He found himself looking back up towards the hillside opposite, his eyes searching through the scattered thorn bushes. A hare was bounding up the slope, its powerful backlegs thrusting it upwards with an air of urgency; because something had disturbed it.
Jon Quinn narrowed his eyes, squinted, but he could not find what he was looking for, a hairy human shape squatting on its haunches, immobile as it gazed down on the cottage.
Jon could not see him but he knew he was there all right. Waiting again. He reloaded the gun, propped it up in the porch. I'm going to kill you, you bastard. She won't stop me because it's not because of her I'm going to blow your fucking head off like I did Gwyther's. It's because there s only room for one of us in these hills.
Autumn. The rutting season had begun when males fought to the death for their place at the stand. And Jon Quinn had made up his mind that he wasn't going to be the vanquished.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PHIL WINDER was aware that large numbers of these wild tribes were moving into the hills. He had spied them in the distance from the Knoll, the highest point on the farm, whole packs of them trekking purposefully, urgently. They must be crazy moving up on to high ground for the winter, he thought.
He was worried about Jackie, too. It was like taking a dog that had lived in an outside kennel all its life and expecting it to adapt immediately to a life indoors. She was constantly going outside; once he awoke in the middle of the night and found her gone. Panicking, fearing lest she had gone back to the wild he had run downstairs, seen the back door wide open.
A starlit autumn night with no moon, a distinct chill creeping into the atmosphere, some of the leaves beginning to turn now. He shivered, called softly, 'Jac.'
He heard a movement, saw something materialising out of the clump of cupressus firs which served as a windbreak across the front of the farmhouse. It was Jackie, shaking her head and smiling weakly in her own kind of apology. She couldn't sleep, she needed fresh air. Day by day she was becoming more restless. He wondered if the call of the wild was proving too much for her and one morning he would wake up and she would be gone for good.
'We'd better go back inside and keep the door locked.' He used sign language still, let her pick up her own scraps of vocabulary; if he didn't talk to somebody he would go mad. These hills are full of your . . . people. We can't take risks.1
She nodded, followed him back into the house. How the hell did you ask a woman who had virtually stepped straight out of the Stone Age if something was troubling her? It was a miracle that the throwbacks had not attacked the house. Perhaps they were afraid, although he doubted it. More likely all their time was taken up preparing new dwelling-places for themselves and when that task was completed . . .
Jackie was certainly disturbed. Uppermost in her mind was the fear that one day Kuz and his followers from the village might appear on the scene. She ought to persuade Phil to move on; they had not run far enough. Perhaps Kuz had another woman, had already forgotten her. Somehow her primitive pride refused to allow her to believe this. He would not let up until he found her.
And then there was this strange calling, something which she did not understand. The man called Phil was not truly her mate. They lived together, copulated frequently but . . . something was not quite right. She could not think of him in the same way as ... no, not Kuz . . . she struggled to come to terms with her problem. A ha If-re mem be red face that slipped from her memory just when she thought she had grasped it, left her with a frustrating blank. Who?
Who?
Searching her mind, going out into the garden at night and just standing there listening. She heard the others in j the hills, noises from encampments borne to her on the ! wind. The urge was becoming stronger, soon she would have to go out into the hills and , . . and what? She didn't know.
Phil Winder wished that he had a weapon of some kind, one that would give him superiority in the event of an attack on the farm. A shotgun, for instance. But his father was not a believer in guns, abhorred killing; he even refused to let the local hunt draw his land. He did have an old .410 though, one that had been his father's and had been used for shooting rats around the hayricks in the old days. Phil remembered it, determined to search for it and in due course found it hidden away on a shelf in the cowhouse. He grimaced when he saw it; the barrel was rusted, had a dent in it, the stock was split, and both hammer and trigger springs were broken. So he settled for the big wood axe, took it upstairs with them at night. Maybe, if the need arose, he could defend the landing in much the same way that Horatio had defended the bridge.