The Killing Hour (16 page)

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ he says to Landry. ‘Funny hah, hah, funny you brought him out here into the summer, funny because you forgot me, forgot all about me.’

‘Cyris,’ Landry says, and it’s all he can manage.

Jo looks over at me and I can see a whole bunch of things in her eyes. Confusion, yeah, there’s plenty of that, and regret too. Regret for not believing me. Regret for hitting Landry so hard because around now he could have been helping us. I feel like she’s just forgiven me but it will last only until she dies alongside me. I hope she can forgive me for that too. She aims the torch at Landry’s eyes. They’re red. He doesn’t look well at all.

Cyris laughs again, then raises his gun, tracks the barrel up and down Landry’s body and hovers it over his leg. He narrows the distance, resting the barrel on Landry’s right ankle.

‘Pick a limb, pick one, a limb, a limb.’

Landry tries to pull his leg away but Cyris stands on his foot, then repositions the gun so it touches the policeman’s head. Landry stops moving. The rain is pouring heavily down in our little neck of the woods and small droplets of mud splash onto Landry’s face. They look like chocolate tears. Cyris moves the gun a few centimetres away from Landry’s head and fires it into the ground.

An eruption of sound, it’s like thunder without the lightning, and the mouth of the cave seems to swallow it. A few seconds later all we can hear is Landry as he screams. He starts rolling around, the handcuffs making it difficult for him to push his hands against his ears. He can manage to cover only one ear. The other he pushes into the ground.

Cyris pumps the shotgun and pushes the barrel into Landry’s leg right behind the kneecap. There’s a second explosion of sound, followed by an explosion of screaming. Both echo around us, the screams quickly outlasting the gunshot. Landry tries to sit up, tries bringing his knee into his belly so he can curl his arms around his leg, but the leg won’t bend because the knee joint is a pile of raw nerves and slivers of bone. I feel sick and when I glance at Jo it’s obvious she feels the same way.

Landry’s concussion has become the least of his worries.

His fate is the least of ours.

Cyris says something but I can’t hear. The rain steals away his words and my ears are ringing from the gunshot. Landry is still screaming, still pushing his hands against his wounded leg. I feel bad for him. Bad that he’s seen so much in his life and has now become victim to it. He’s become victim to his own anger but it’s his anger that brought us all out here. His screams grate at my eardrums. If anybody wants to be heard over this noise they’re going to need to yell at the top of their lungs.

Cyris seems to realise this and he walks over.

‘Who’s next? Which one of you isn’t really real? Huh? I want to know.’

God, he’s crazier than I thought. ‘Leave her out of it,’ I shout.

‘Why? She’s the meat and potatoes,’ Cyris says.

He moves towards Landry, walking backwards so he can keep his eyes on us.

I look at Jo and she looks back. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. It doesn’t seem enough to offer her but it’s all I have.

‘I figured you would be. I’m sorry too but it doesn’t help, does it?’

Cyris returns his attention to the detective. I take the torch from Jo and point it into the cave. We could attempt an escape through there but soon the batteries would be flat and we would become lost, navigating our way through the darkness either deeper into the earth or simply in circles around it. Behind us is only a bank of rocks and then the river stretching away. Ahead of us one lunatic looking down at another lunatic. Further to the right is the same path we followed but there’s no way we could run through there keeping ahead of the shotgun.

Landry’s movements have slowed down. He’s lying on his side, attempting to hold his wounded knee with blood-covered hands. He holds his palms against it, trying to push everything back together, trying to help it heal. He looks over at us and in his agony I can see him pleading for help. I can’t help him. He has dug his own grave and I hate him for putting us in there with him. His face and clothes are saturated in blood. There’s so much the rain can’t even start to move it. His mouth is open but he’s no longer screaming and I wonder if his previous screams have torn his vocal cords apart.

Cyris points the shotgun at him and at the same time starts grinding his heel into the wounded knee. Landry’s eyes roll back in his head but he keeps thrashing around, unable to pass out. I’m too afraid to move, too scared to take my eyes from this grisly display, too much of a coward to try and help. Jo clutches my hand tightly.

I step back, taking Jo with me.

Cyris looks over and yells something. It’s indistinguishable over the loud rain, so heavy now it almost feels like hail. He points the gun at us and I figure he’s not such a dumb guy after all and I give him credit for reading my mind, though it isn’t that big a trick because trying to run is the only option worth looking at. He steps over Landry towards us. We back away, getting closer to the river. We’re going to have to jump for it. We’re going to have to climb into the freezing cold water and do whatever we can to avoid rocks and drowning and pneumonia and gunshots. I don’t know if Jo has come up with the same plan. I know she hates water and I know she can’t swim. I also know she isn’t bulletproof. What she needs to do is choose one plan over the other, and really it can be simplified down to two choices: living or dying. I don’t know how many times I’ve had that option this week. Living is turning out to be a hell of a lot of work and the alternative is starting to look tempting.

Cyris is grinning because that’s what guys like him do. The gun sways slightly as the wind pushes at him. The shotgun means he doesn’t need to be accurate – he can fire in our general direction and still nail us. I can’t see any way that he won’t pull the trigger before we’re in the water. I look down at Landry. He’s starting to move, but barely.

Cyris pumps the shotgun and we get ready to jump.

27

The pain in Landry’s arms and legs is so raw, so intense, that he can barely think. His throat is burning from all the screaming, and the gunfire has left a high-pitched whine in his ears that is eating right through the middle of his brain. He can feel his heart slowing down. He’s losing it. He doesn’t want to die. He’s made the biggest mistake of his life by coming out here tonight, and he’s going to pay for it in the biggest way possible. This is far from the justice he pictured hours ago, but in a way it’s justice nonetheless. He came out here with the thought that he was doing humanity a service. All he was doing was making a mockery of everything he believed in.

What a mistake.

Even though Cyris is here, he still isn’t entirely convinced of Feldman’s innocence. However he isn’t convinced of Feldman’s guilt either. If he were to choose …

He doesn’t have time to choose.

He hates that he’s spent the last week dwelling on his cancer. What a waste of time. The cancer doesn’t matter now, not out here, not in this shithole of a forest where people have died before him. His six-month wait has just jumped forward by six months.

As his eyes fill with blood the shapes moving in front of him turn as red as the landscape he sees them moving across. Everything is wet. The gunshot wound isn’t enough to kill him but the blood loss is. Trained paramedics couldn’t save him now. There’s no hope. Not for him. Maybe for Feldman and the girl.

He digs his fingers into the damp ground and twists himself towards Cyris. His killer is facing Feldman and the woman, the shotgun firmly in his hands. Landry uses his arms and his good leg to crawl forward. He starts to close the distance.

He reaches into his right pocket. Charlie took the keys to the handcuffs but not both sets. For as long as he’s been a cop he’s always carried a spare handcuff key in case his own cuffs were used against him. And now they have been. Hell of a time for it to happen. He curls his fingers around the key and pulls it out, then nearly drops it as he undoes the left bracelet.

He crawls closer to Cyris knowing this is the last thing he will ever do.

28

Cyris is shouting at them and Jo can make out the words ‘turn’ and ‘partner’, but she’s too cold and too confused to understand their meaning. She glances at the river but knows only drowning waits for her there. It looks black and cold enough to stop her heart, assuming it’s still beating when she hits the surface – which at this point is a big assumption. She should have trusted Charlie. Should have trusted herself because she wanted to believe him.

The policeman is crawling towards Cyris. His leg drags unmoving behind him, the knee a mess of blood and tissue and cotton fibres from his shredded pants. He has a determined look on his face. He’s working at the handcuffs. He gets one bracelet unhooked from one wrist. Then he makes one last lurch forward and latches the empty cuff around Cyris’s ankle. Both men yell out at the same time: Cyris in a loud ‘No’, and Landry in an even louder ‘Run’. Cyris stamps hard on the policeman’s hand. She sees the fingers buckle beneath his boots, and when Cyris steps away, the splintered fingers are splayed out like road signs pointing in all the wrong directions, but the handcuffs keep the two men joined. With his other hand the policeman throws the key into the darkness.

Cyris levels the shotgun down to the back of his head.

‘Come on,’ Charlie says, tugging her hand. She turns towards him. ‘We have to jump. Now.’

They switch hands and step to the river. There’s no need for any discussion, no time for hesitation. The shotgun explodes behind her but she doesn’t look back to see what has happened. She stares into the water and a second later they’re falling into it.

29

I sink as if a large stone has been shackled to my ankles, but the only extra weight I have is Jo. I cling tightly to her hand as my nose and mouth fill with ice-cold water. It burns my eyes and for my efforts all I can see is nothing. This is complete and utter lack of any light. It feels heavy, almost appealing.

The cold doesn’t wait to jump at the chance to soak across and into my body, trying to hold me, trying to convince me to stay. I kick out to drive us upwards but my feet kick at nothing. The current is moving us but to where I don’t know. Maybe only deeper. Maybe nowhere at all. Maybe right back to Cyris. At the moment it’s peaceful beneath the water. Quiet. And the prospect of drowning isn’t really that scary. In fact it’s almost relaxing, almost …

My feet hit something and I automatically push off from it, my survival instinct kicking in. We head upwards, the current twisting us, moving us through a corridor of no light, no sound. My lungs ache inside my freezing body.

We break the surface and it’s so quick that I barely manage to suck in some air before I’m dragged back under. I pull Jo tighter towards me just as the current smashes me into a large boulder. The contact is spread evenly but painfully across my back, shoulders and head. What air I had pulled in is shoved from my body. Jo’s forehead punches into my jaw. The pain is warm and reminds me all is not lost. I’m still holding the torch, though it isn’t going any more. We’re not going anywhere.

Jo has her arms wrapped around me. I fight with the torch, managing to unscrew the base. The batteries drop into the water and hit me on their way past. I unscrew the top and let it follow. I lift one end of the metal tube above the water and hold the other end to my mouth. The air above is cool and I drink it in and my energy returns quickly. I suck in a deep breath and put the tube in Jo’s mouth. She grabs at it and gets the concept immediately.

With renewed yet frozen energy I push away at the rock, slowly wriggling myself to the side, and suddenly the current catches us and pushes us up the boulder, sliding us above the surface. It holds us here for a few seconds. I look around and try to figure out how far we’ve travelled but it’s impossible to tell.

The shotgun blast rakes stone chips from the boulder into my face. I drop what’s left of the torch as we roll around the edge of the boulder. The current snatches us as another shotgun blast follows us down the river. We’re herded along, gasping for air as we bob up and down, breathing in cold water, cold air, cold rain. I have nothing to hold onto except the wet darkness and Jo. As I fumble against the water, I sense more than see the branches that jut from the bank towards us like spears. They try to stab and skewer as we rush by, try to hold us with wooden fingers for ever beneath the surface. I stay in front of Jo, trying to take the impacts away from her. When a bright orange flare lights up the night sky I genuinely believe help has arrived, but soon realise the glow is inside my head, ignited by the back of my skull cracking into a boulder. When it happens again only a few moments later the flare is grey.

Floating or drowning – I can’t tell the difference now and don’t think it matters. My grip on Jo weakens with each knock I take and I’m so cold I can’t tell if her fingers are still clutching me.

As the water pulls us down for seconds at a time, I drift and so does my perception of time. More boulders, and I slam into them but there’s no pain. I wonder if death will have feeling. The warm pain in my jaw is no longer warm. My eyes close and open but there’s darkness either way. I hardly feel a thing when my cold body comes to rest against a fallen tree. Thick dead branches cradle me above the water as my feet dangle in the current ahead. The tree bridges the width of the river. Jo is trying to claw herself from the water. I lean my face against the tree, scratching it on the bark. I watch as Jo comes towards me. Her arms reach for my arms. I kick at the water while she tries to pull me from it, and when I’m closer I grab handholds of branch and bark and pull myself along as though climbing a sideways ladder. This woman I kidnapped, this woman I’ve nearly killed, is trying to save me. Maybe this is why I love her.

The current swirls around my legs, begging me to join it, but it had its chance and lost. My feet touch the riverbed and I continue forward, and soon the water is only up to my waist, my thighs, my knees. When it’s around my ankles I collapse, my body slapping into the muddy bank.