CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

JON QUINN had wounded a hare on the steep hillside that led up to Gwyther's boundary. An almost pathetic creature lolloping in the snow, its size confusing his judgement of distance when he fired; forty-five yards had seemed no more than thirty. It had squealed once, momentarily lost its footing then regained its balance, powered itself on upwards in spile of the pellets embedded in its back legs, bright red bloodspots marking the course it took once it had gained the brow.

'Damn!' Quinn ejected the spent cartridge, slipped another into the breech. Guilt because he had wounded the creature and in all probability it would die a lingering death up in the big forest after dark when the temperature dropped below freezing. He tried to console his conscience that he was desperate for meat. Rubbish, nobody needs meat, there are ample vegetables stored in the big barn. All the same, he had to follow it and make every possible attempt to alleviate its suffering.

He was sweating hard, his shirt beneath his windcheater sticking to his skin. There was the danger that it might result in a chill. He could not afford to be ill; survival was now a full-time occupation.

He reached the horizon, saw that the footmarks and bloodstains headed across in the direction of the forest. He would have to follow them. He ...

Suddenly he heard the helicopter, its engine powering it into take-off somewhere close by. The noise hit him like a physical blow, froze him into immobility. Hide! There's nowhere to hide. Run before they see you. Open country, he would not make it to the forest in time.

The helicopter was visible now, flying low, coming towards him. Oh Christ, they've seen me, they'll take me back with then to enforced civilisation. The hills and woods are throwback territory, everybody else has to get out. Emergency regulations, martial law. His eyes were fixed on the approaching machine, watching it grow bigger every second, nearer and nearer . . .

And then, without warning, it stopped as though it had run into an invisible barrier. For a second or two it appeared to hover, unbelievably still as though it defied Newton's Law. Then dropped vertically.

Jon Quinn braced himself, felt the vibration of the crash, screamed his horror as he saw the chopper bounce, the vanes snap like bamboo canes, overturning, rolling. Breaking up.

It bounced again off a rock beneath the snow, seemed to split apart, strewing its wreckage as it careered down the steep slope. Something was thrown from it, a mangled bloodied body, blood jetting from a ragged neck stump where it had been decapitated, spraying crimson like a garden sprinkler in summer, a deep snowdrift finally swallowing it up.

Finally there was nothing left to roll any further. A blinding explosion as the fuel tank ignited, a brief funeral pyre that quickly extinguished itself in the frozen wilderness. Less than half a minute and it was all over.

Jon Quinn did not want to go and look. His logic screamed at him that there could be no survivors but his conscience yelled even louder that it was his duty to check. He was still holding the shotgun; euthanasia was his only remedy if anybody still lived, for he could offer neither medical attention nor hope. Just mercy.

Approaching hesitantly, the urge to flee this place very strong. Mangled metal stretched for over a hundred yards down the hillside, a bloody hole in the snow where the headless victim had disappeared. A crumpled door . . . the cab. Oh Jesus Christ, I don't want to look inside there. You have to.

The pilot had hit the control panel, was crushed flat across it, blood dripping steadily off the instruments.

Unrecognisable as a human being, as if a road-roller had gone over him.

That hare, you hurt it bad, you ought to be going and trying to find it. Follow the bloodstains in the snow. There was blood everywhere.

The rest of the cab was empty as far as he could ascertain, like something you found in the corner of a breaker's yard, not even worth stripping for spares.

Go and search for that hare, put it out of its misery. There was nothing to linger on here for.

As he turned away Jon Quinn spied a third body in the snow. It lay fifteen or twenty yards away, face down. He caught his breath, wanted to back off, saw at a cursory glance that it was a throwback. He licked his dry lips. Maybe it had been here all along, was nothing to do with the crash. The hills were full of corpses; when the thaw came (if it ever did) they would begin to decompose, fill the air with the stench of rotting flesh, a reminder of this winter of death.

That hare could be lying up there in the forest in agony. All you have to do is to follow the blood.

He had to check the third body; he would never be able to live with himself if he didn't. It had been a person once.

It was a woman, he could tell that when he was still two or three yards away. Her hide clothing was torn down the one side giving him a glimpse of a shapely body beneath. His eyes searched for signs of blood, found none.

He knelt down, rested a hand on her, detected a shallow rise and fall. Merciful God, she still breathed. She was alive1.

He could not leave her now. That hare crossed his mind again; it was suffering too, but human life was more important than animal life.

A feel at her back and limbs, there were certainly no bones broken. She had been thrown clear on impact when the doors flew open, had landed in deep soft snow. Unconscious, though. Shock and concussion.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Jon Quinn's flesh prickled, gooscpimpled a path right the way up his spine and into the nape of his neck, on from there, spreading across his scalp. His brain seemed to stop, start again. Instincts gone crazy, knowing, recognising something but not being able to place it.

The woman, it had something to do with this woman . . .

He forced his arms underneath her, used the slope to help him roll her over. He would have to examine her carefully, make sure that it was only concussion. Pulling, pushing gently, turning her over.

Then he saw her face. It was akin to an electric shock coursing through his body, those goosepimples spreading everywhere like a moorland fire fanned by a gale. His vision tunnelled, circled a face he knew only too well, features as familiar as his own in the mirror each morning; even the change could not destroy such beauty, only alter it slightly. Marginally.

His brain flipped again. For a second everything before him went black, came back again like a rapid change of channel on television. He swayed, thought he was going to faint, his lips forming a name, mute utterances until at last he got it out.

'Jackie . . . Jackie . . . JACKIE!'

For Jon Quinn the whole world came to a stop in those few seconds. Time ceased to exist. Just the two of them, himself and Jackie, together again. Remembering so clearly the last time he had seen her, that bright sunny morning walking across the yard to where the Dyane was parked, calling out to him, 'I might be late back'; that meant she was going to stop off at Tiffany's tonight.

Late. Six months, maybe seven, he had lost track of time. But she had kept her word, come back. Alive!

Desperately he forced himself back to reality. She might be seriously hurt, even now she might not live. Fear, his quivering fingers examining her body. A few scratches and bruises, nothing worse as far as he could ascertain. Just concussion. Sometimes people died from concussion, victims of road accidents. The golden rule for bystanders who tried to help at the scene of a crash—never try to move an injured person!

He had to, though, because no medical help would be arriving, no ambulance with wailing siren and flashing blue light. No doctors. No hospital emergency unit. Just himself and a catch-phrase which now took on a different meaning—self-sufficiency! Self-survival.