Hunters: A Trilogy (92 page)

Maggie looked up and said, ‘Less of the ‘old’, if you please, young man, less of the old!’ She curtsied to the others and then went and lay on the ground behind them in an act of complete exhaustion.

Maggie’s actions bought laughter to all of their lips. Red was clapping like a madman and Tori started a giggling fit that was obviously contagious. Ken shook his head, tried not to join in with the giggling, and told them to wrap it up for the night, the sun was almost gone and there were still weapons to clean and targets to patch up.

The training was an endless routine and it wore them out, but their weariness was a rewarding one, it built up their confidence and moulded them into a close-knit team. They were going to need that confidence and there would soon be a call for those new-found skills, they were going to need them and a whole lot more besides.

Gradually, over the weeks, Ken built up their knowledge, improved their skills and helped them work on their fitness; the long runs he took them on were the one thing Jane and Maggie did pass on, preferring instead to use the exercise bike that Ken had installed in the barn, which he had been converted into a makeshift gymnasium-cum-armoury.

The others didn’t mind in the slightest as the efforts of the two older women were already legendary, especially Maggie’s. She astounded them with her aggression, intelligence, and hand-eye coordination. It was truly a sight to see – the ‘frail’ old woman in full battle-mode, rolling through the dust with her guns and eyes blazing away. She was as mad as a March hare and she was able to shoot too, oh yes, Maggie was a good shot all right!

Ken was merciless during the fitness training. ‘Come on, come on! Keep bloody going…keep on pushing!’ he would shout. ‘Breathe, for Pete’s sake; you can’t operate without some oxygen in your lungs! That’s it, Mikey, sprint, lad, sprint!’ He never stopped and they were amazed at his own level of stamina, Ken just seemed able to keep going all day, and they pretty much figured he would keep going all night, too, if he had to.

The training was as much a benefit to him as it was to the others; he brushed up on his skills and honed the edge on the sharp blade of his experience.

It had been a while but one never forgets how to ride a bike.

Little-by-little they started to understand the ethos behind his training, his words became their words, his thoughts became their thoughts, and his actions translated into their actions. Ken became their instructor.

He would say: ‘We’re a team and we stick together – always remember that we’re only as fast as our slowest member, only as strong as our weakest!’

He pushed them relentlessly; his efforts highlighted their weaknesses and their strengths, both as individuals and as the now much-treasured team. They started to bond and their results began to reflect this bonding. The group started almost to think as one. Ken saw this and pushed them harder, especially during his favourite lesson – Assault Training.

He spent a long while showing them how not to shoot each other, how to be aware of where their partner was, how close they were able to get to weapons being fired just inches away from their heads. Ken started them as individuals and then progressed to pairs, before finally involving all of them in an attack. Two teams were formed. Assault team: Red and Junior. Fire-Support Team: Michael, Jane and Tori. Maggie would be in reserve whilst he, Ken, would be jumping across to wherever he was needed the most.

His screams fired their very souls. ‘Come on, we need more aggression, more effort! Go, go – go! Harder, faster, get up that hill and kill them, kill them!’

The team raced up the hill in pairs, skirmishing and covering, covering and skirmishing, guns blazing with the magazines of ammunition he had provided. Racing on to the final objective, Red and his son attacked the ‘Demon’ as though there were no tomorrow, the dummy, which Ken had placed there in lieu of their nemesis, was torn limb from limb by the Tolders’ ferocious final assault.

Ken wasn’t impressed. ‘Get back down the hill, all of you!’ he snapped. ‘Michael, it’s no use having a jammed weapon when the assault team is right on top of the enemy position. You need to sort that out, okay!’

Michael nodded and wiped the sweat from his face.

Ken winked at him and then hurried them along for a repeat performance. ‘Right, come on then, people, let’s do it again,’ he said. ‘Come on – back to the start! Come on, chop-chop!’ They gathered themselves and their weapons and jogged back down the slope.

Ken stayed with the ‘enemy’ for a while and spent a bit of time tidying up the black-coated figure. They had all made a big effort in constructing a realistic effigy of their mortal enemy, and from a distance the dummy did appear to be very real. Ken had filled it with some blood and guts he’d obtained from one of their neighbours’ cattle farms. All-in-all it was a pretty fine ‘Demon’ and he was pleased with their efforts. It some aspects it was almost too good – they were all able to imagine the blackness slinking from its lips. As he stood there watching the final moments of their latest assault, Ken found himself waiting for the terrible, liquid ‘bird-thing’ to rise above the figure, half of him saw it try to escape as the inevitability of the Hunters’ latest ‘victory’ became apparent.

He looked back down to earth and watched them.

Junior fired half a clip into the black-cloaked mannequin and then screamed to his father: ‘Go, Dad! Go, go – Go!’ His weapon barked in anger as he covered Red’s final movement. It was the signal for Red to unleash himself – with a lightning-quick bound, the huge man leapt upon the dummy, emptied his own magazine into the leering, yellow-eyed face, butt-stroked the thing until the entrails-stuffed head flew off, and then attacked it with his bare hands.

Ken ran forward. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘Okay, Red, stop there… RED! He’s dead, man! We win, we fucking win, you’ve knocked his bleeding head off!’ Ken roared with laughter, but his words seemed to have fallen upon deaf ears.

Red had gone berserk – he was now rolling around on the ground and tearing lumps off the dummy, with his teeth. They all stood and watched in amused, if somewhat horrified, fascination as Red literally ripped and bit their makeshift enemy to pieces. Finally, he stood up and they saw that he was covered with blood and entrails. Michael’s father was very much ‘red’ – blood-red. The huge man looked down at the remains of the bloodied dummy, and then for the first time since they had known him, in this dimension, Red swore.

‘You muthafuka!’ he snarled. Spitting the blood from his lips, he kicked the remains of the dummy’s head down the slope, looked up at them and then laughed like a lunatic, saying: ‘Fukin’, yeah…get some o’ that, Mistuhhh, muthafukin’ Black Demon! Hah, you just lemme at that sonofabitch, Ken – just lemme at him!’ He stood there panting, streaked in blood and sweat.

Junior and Michael joined in the profanity, as one, perfectly-timed and in complete unison, they stared at Red and said, ‘Holy-fucking-shit!’ then looked warily at the others, half-expecting to be roasted for their impulsive profanity.

The group of bloodied and battle-weary Hunters looked at the boys, then at each other, then back to the gore-covered Red, before spontaneously indulging in some of their well-practised head-shaking. Within seconds the group were howling with laughter. Seemingly oblivious as to the terrible nature of their mirth, the whole gang stood and laughed, the rich but somewhat eerie sound rolled across the mound and echoed against the woods in the distance.

Ken considered whipping them back into some semblance of order, but it most likely would have been of no use as he himself probably couldn’t have kept a straight face for too much longer anyway. Instead, he told them to make sure their safety catches were on and to take five minutes’ rest. He sat down and then lay back onto the warm grass. Their laughter filled his ears and he smiled as he lay there and looked up at the sky. The sight of Red’s blood-covered face had been one to behold, and was completely out of the norm. Red was such a gentle giant, someone so giving and caring, that his terrible show of unrestrained violence had been almost comical.

Almost, except for the terrible expression upon his face, that particular look transported Ken straight back to a time when he’d been in the Afghan desert, a time when he had looked Red in the eyes and then stared down the barrel of the man’s pistol, just before the flame had spewed from its…

Ken blinked the scene out of his mind and let his thoughts drift back to Jane’s words. ‘Somebody had better bloody well watch out!’ she’d said. Ken figured that his wife had been almost spot-on with that particular remark – at least he hoped she had.

They were nearly ready, maybe a few more days of work, perhaps a bit of extra practice on the skills taught so far – some unarmed combat, just the basics, and Ken’s job would be done. He wondered what the old man had in mind for him next. Smiling, he turned on his side and watched as his family larked about underneath Mike’s Tree.

As he lay there, Ken thought about how all this had started…

***

George had told him the real reason why he, Ken, had been brought out of retirement. The old man had given them the news as he’d sat opposite them, perched on the far cushion of the red dream-couch.

‘You see, Kenneth, my dear chap – we need you now, for there is nobody else we can rely upon, no-one who has the skills that you possess.’ He’d nodded and it had been a strange expression, almost a Masonic wink, as though he was sharing a secret with the big man who sat in complete bemusement before him.

Ken had asked: ‘Skills, what skills?’ He had no idea what the old man was going on about and didn’t figure that his rudimentary carpentry-skills would have had much call on an intergalactic scale. He looked at the old man who had begun to speak again.

George said, ‘Of the many Hunters I have worked with, you are the finest of them all when it comes to the delicate art of…umm, how shall we say? Yes, in dispensing with problems. Yes, dispensing with problem people, that is about right. After all, ‘killing’ is such a distasteful word, do you not think?’

Ken had stared at him – this was not what he’d expected. ‘Killing people?’ he thought. The feeling of uneasiness had begun its cold intrusion into his guts again. At the time he hadn’t known quite what to say about George’s remark.

Within a few moments, George had laid the bare bones of his requirements before them. The task for Ken was to be a simple one. He was to train the others: Red, Tori, their son Michael, Maggie, and even Jane. George wanted Ken to impart as much as possible of his fighting skill, and knowledge of that particular art, into his friends and family.

George had made it sound simple and Ken guessed that it probably would be. ‘Yeah,’ he’d thought, at the time. ‘Yeah, I can do that.’

Then, in typical fashion, the old man went and complicated things.

Without a blink he had said, ‘There will also be one other addition to your lives, someone who will become vital if we are to succeed.’

Ken had felt Jane sit more upright next to him. ‘Is Tori pregnant again?’ she asked, excitedly. When George shook his head, the negative response had fetched a faint shadow of disappointment to Jane’s face.

George then proceeded to complicate the matter further. ‘No, I am afraid not, a second child is not something foreseen to be within my granddaughter’s future,’ he said. It was the added phrase that had deepened the mystery. ‘No, not right at this moment,’ he’d said, smiling, probably from the knowledge that dangling a possible addition to their family, another child in the future, would’ve been rather a pleasant thought for Ken’s wife.

Looking somewhat confused, Jane had said, ‘Well, what is it that you mean by ‘addition’, is it someone we know?’ She looked at Ken, but he had no more idea where this was leading than she did.

As they’d sat and listened to George’s answer, it had been exactly then they had become aware of a certain young man, a boy going by the name of Michael Wildeman. The news of his existence had caused a veritable torrent of questions to pour from Jane’s lips. After she had finished blabbering, firing almost non-stop random questions at George, it had been plain to see that what she really wanted to know had only been one thing: Mikey, their Mikey, was he back? That was the answer she craved, but couldn’t quite find the words to ask the precise question.

In the end, George had stopped her. Smiling down at her, he’d said, ‘This Michael is not the complete reincarnation of your dear friend, Mister Wyppen, although I do know that event is what you desire most of all, but I am sorry to say that things do not quite work in that way.’ He went on to assure them of the fact that much of their friend would actually have been imparted into the boy, a child, who at that precise moment, was not even born into the dimension where his forthcoming life was to be interrupted by that very meeting. The old man’s tale continued with the details of how they were to go and ‘collect’ young Michael.

At that time, George hadn’t gone into too many details regarding the boy’s parents. Instead, and as though he were beckoning a maître d', he’d merely waved his arm in the air. Ken and Jane had watched as his order arrived. It came in the form of a large holographic screen, and even though they’d seen that particular servant before, it was still a phenomenal sight to behold.

So it came to pass, the telling of the tale, George’s latest instalment of the truth, his version of what it was that really went on around here, there, and most probably everywhere. The information was conveyed to them in the usual mixture of George’s blue-eyed sincerity, together with some help from his silver partner, the shimmering screen that rolled the pictures whenever he commanded. The final instructions they had received contained some problems to which, even up to the present moment, Ken had not yet managed to find a solution.

George had told them that the identification of the latest person involved with the Demon, its new partner, remained unknown. The Dark One had cast a veil over their ability to see past much more than simple things, things like where he was or maybe just the fact that he was still alive…at least they knew that…but the rest was like a fog, misty and dark, and even trying to see what he was up to, never mind anything more detailed, gave the impression of looking at a television picture wracked with interference.