Chapter 18 #2
“No, it’s … it’s…” She looked around frantically. The rock she’d hidden behind. It was in the shape of a bear.
It was the rock she’d passed earlier, now on the other side of the lane. But not on the other side, of course.
With her free hand, she clutched her head. “How…? Oh, shit. That’s why you came from the ‘wrong’ direction. I was going the wrong way. I freaked out and got dizzy and turned around.”
“On the bright side, it meant I was able to quickly catch up. But Amelia, we need to get off the road. If it spots us out here, we’re toast.”
A dog bayed, the mournful sound looping through the air. It could be ten feet away or half a mile. “Omigod, The Hound of the Baskervilles, now? We’ve gone the full Sherlock Holmes.”
“We should stop talking. Sound can carry on the moor, especially when it’s foggy. Follow as close to me as you can. We’ll head for that rise.” He pointed, though she could barely make out his hand, let alone anything behind it.
Still, she didn’t need to be told twice. Some hero she was.
They walked along the spongy earth in a silence that amplified the sounds around them: water, owls, rustling, shuffling.
Mercifully, though, the buzzing became fainter.
The fog was glowing again. A dog bayed and it wasn’t hard to picture Arthur Conan Doyle’s “spectral hound” prowling outside their cocoon.
Sometimes it wasn’t so helpful to be an obsessive reader, like Catherine in Northanger Abbey, freaking herself out after binge-reading Gothic novels.
They crested a small hill and descended into a stony hollow. The whine of the drone dulled. Her shoe slipped on shingle and she started sliding. Tom caught her, pulling her upright. She took a second to balance, and realized he’d stopped dead, staring at a rock ten feet away.
“Tom?”
“Can you smell that?”
She inhaled, and gagged before she’d got half a breath. It wasn’t a rock. It was something large and very dead. She could hear the low buzz of dozens of blowflies.
She planted a hand on the front of Tom’s coat. “Let me check it out. Do you think it’s safe to use the flashlight, for a second?”
“We’re in the shelter of the ridge. But only a second—less than a second. Just long enough that if someone’s watching they think they’re seeing things.”
She crept over to the shape. A fly landed on her cheek and she shooed it. She clicked the light on and off, just long enough to sear the image into her head: scratched-out eye sockets, grinning teeth. She gagged again.
“It’s a sheep,” she said shakily. “Just a sheep. And it does smell a little too … dead.”
Even the dim flash of light had robbed her of her night vision. She picked her way back to Tom, found his arm, and squeezed it. He briefly covered her hand with his.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We’re almost to the glade.” As her eyes readjusted, she could pick out the ragged outline of trees. “We’ll keep under the densest canopy. It won’t hide our heat signatures, but it’ll make it harder for them to shoot straight.”
“Not sure my heat signature is all that hot right now, but okay.”
If her sense of direction was screwed earlier, by the time they reached the first trees that marked the glade, it was tied in knots.
Under the canopy, it was darker and slower going, but her body lost some of its tension.
Not that that made sense, given that thermal imaging didn’t care if it was dark or not.
They came to a grassy clearing, shining in silvery rays of moonlight.
Any other day, she would have thought it beautiful.
A sanctuary. This would all be a very different place when viewed through a filter that wasn’t fear.
“I can’t hear the—” she started. Right on cue, the drone buzzed. She looked up. “Where is it? I can’t tell.”
“It’s close.”
“Is there somewhere else we can shelter, for now? Somewhere closer? There are other buildings, right?”
“Very few still have roofs, and some of those are thatched. I’d rather be in the abbey, where we can hide properly. And find drinking water.”
“I’m so thirsty my mouth isn’t even watering at the thought of water anymore. The drone sounds really close.”
He looked straight up, and she followed his gaze, nervously. Above the trees, a red light blinked. As her eyes put together the picture, a spidery dark form took shape.
“It’s hovering,” she said. “It’s seen us.”
“It came from the moor,” Tom said, looking behind. “Come on. Not far now.”
They wove through the trees, no longer bothering to be quiet. The ground was firmer and drier, but she still stumbled and skidded. Tom halted, and she nearly ran straight into the back of him. They’d almost reached the abbey’s western wing, beside the Land Rover garage.
“I can’t hear the drone,” she whispered.
“They might have landed it.”
“What does that mean? It’s out of battery, or…?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Or … they don’t need it anymore because they’ve found us and they’re switching to rifles.”
Tom was quiet.
“I hate this,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Shall we run for it?” It was a half-hearted suggestion at best. There was a decent stretch of open ground between them and the house.
He took a deep breath. “You’re going to run for the abbey, shortly. First, I’m going to create a diversion. They have to be close, and I don’t like our chances of making it, otherwise.”
Something snapped into a big oak beside them, followed a split second later by a rifle crack. Tom cursed, pulling Amelia behind the tree. “Think you can find the butler’s room, from the outside?”
“Sure. Next to the front doors.”
“Follow the tree line around until you’re directly in front of it, and then sprint. I’ll cover you, keep their eyes off you.”
“You’re going to cover me? You have one double-barreled shotgun against two rifles! I thought covering fire was supposed to be quick?”
“You haven’t seen how fast I can reload.
And I expect they’ll see the muzzle flash and home in on that, giving you time.
Plus, I have an idea for a distraction that should put both of us in the clear.
As soon as I fire, you go, okay? When you see my signal, cut across to the butler’s room window, fast as you can.
It’ll take a shove, but you should be able to open it and climb inside. Hide under the desk and wait for me.”
“What’s the signal?”
A tree beside them cracked and swayed, under multiple gunshots. A branch scudded to the ground.
“You’ll know it when you see it. Unless they shoot me,” he added, matter-of-factly. “In which case, that’s your signal. If that happens, get in the house and find a really good hiding place. Ready? I don’t have many shells, so this won’t take long…”
He crawled to a mound a few feet from the tree. At his first shot, she ran, like a sprinter at a starting block. The sound of his second shot was absorbed by a burst from their weapons.
She skidded behind the remains of an old building, almost swallowed by trees, and peered around it, wishing she’d forced him to be more explicit about his plan. More gunfire—the booming potshots of the shotgun mixed in with multiple sharp rifle cracks.
She made out his silhouette backtracking from the tree.
He looped around to the stables, carrying a feathery, leafy branch—the branch that had been shot down from the tree—and disappeared behind his car.
The garage flickered with light. It glimmered in the pool of fuel, and then the space erupted into a huge orange flame.
“Tom!” she cried.
The ground under her boomed. Flames leapt over the car. A large boxy object shot into the air. It landed on the hood of the car with a crunch and bounced off. Amelia yelped, partially shielding her eyes. The stables billowed into an inferno—with Tom inside.