The Dead Yard

12: THE DEAD YARD

They return my armor from the sea. They improvise a weapon. They give it to me. Go and pay them back in kind, they say. The water burns, the air curdles, Kit comes to me in the moonlit hut.

Geologists say that Ireland was once joined to the coast of North America.

“Is that so, Kit?”

Greenland was tucked into Labrador, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were squished together, and Ireland was soldered in there too. Galway hinged to the coast of Maine. There are rock formations that begin in the west of Ireland and end three thousand miles away in Maine and Massachusetts. So really I’m dying in a part of my homeland, separated by plate tectonics and several million years.

Is that comforting?

Is it fuck.

Kit. I smell sweet pea and look.

But she’s not there.

She’s not coming.

Shit.

I could never really have been asleep. More a hallucination. A waking dream.

And the dreams are done.

It’s business now.

Self-rescue, as the instructors used to say in the army survival course.

Imagine, if you can, the situation.

An epic journey of about one yard.

First step.

You’re holding the neck of a Coke bottle between your big toe and your next toe on your right foot. Your arms are spread-eagled, tied to crossbeams. The bottle has a ragged neck and if you can get it to your hands, you’ll be able to use the broken glass to saw through the rope. But how do you get it from foot to hand?

You’re going to have to swing your right leg up to shoulder height, hook it on top of your left arm, and then grab the bottle with your left hand. You’re probably going to get only one shot at this. Because the bottle could slip or fall out of your grip with the violent motion you’ll have to use to swing it. If it falls and rolls away, you’ll never get it back or another chance at this, and basically you’re done for.

Kit’s not coming.

But Touched is.

This is not the time for mister fuckup.

You rehearse it in your mind a couple of times.

It’s going to be tough.

And remember, also, they’ve taken away the prosthesis on your left foot, so for that second or two that your right leg is hooked over your left arm-if you can get it up there in the first place-you’ll be dangling off the floor, the ropes digging into you, pulling apart your wrists and popping your shoulder blades.

It’s going to take some time to saw through the ropes and they’re probably going to kill you first thing in the morning. You can’t be sure about the time right now but it’s certainly after midnight.

At the most you’ve got about five hours.

One shot to get the bottle up to your left hand and then about five hours to cut the ropes.

And, to state the bloody obvious, the scales aren’t even.

On the minus side, there’s your ricochet wounds, you’ve a one-inch square carved out of your chest, you’ve a couple of broken ribs, you’ve had the shit kicked out of you, and you haven’t had any fluids or food in twenty-four hours.

On the plus side, if you don’t do it, you’re going to die.

Simple as that.

You’ll die and you’ll rob the Fates.

Oh yes, Michael. If you die now you’ll never see what Bridget Callaghan’s got in store for you-what she’s been hiding away all these years.

Other things.

You’ll never see the consequences of asking for that pardon from the Mexican government.

You’ll never go to Los Angeles or Peru and you won’t go back to Belfast on a wet June day seven years from now.

You won’t do any of that fun stuff, Michael, if you can’t get the bottle up there.

One chance.

You’ll need to be a goddamn gymnast. One of those guys with the giant arms and the talc on their hands and their coach praying in Romanian as they swing their legs up above that bloody horse.

One chance.

Give you a minute to compose yourself.

Cut to the establishing shot. Midnight in the primeval forest. In Maine. A sepia film in a remote country of the dead. The uneasiness is everywhere. You can feel it. The hunters, the hunted.

But if you can get that bottle up there.

Well, I wouldn’t like to be in that big cabin when I get free.

A deep meditation.

A silent countdown.

Here goes.

A final look out the tiny window to check for a light on at the cabin. I listen for anyone coming down the path. Nah. Just me and the woods and the boy, and the snow falling, steaming in the log fire. It’s after midnight and they’re done for the night. Those brave inheritors of Cuchulainn. With their tattoos of a maniacal fighting man tied to a stone. You should be concerned about another man, tied to the beams of a smokehouse wall.

Enough procrastination.

Slowly and deliberately, I jam the broken bottle into my big toe to give me a better grip. I hold it as tight as I can.

The night holds its breath.

If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it.

Ten, nine, eight.

“Here goes.”

I swing my leg up, feel the bottle slip, but grasp it tight as a motherfucking vise, jamming the glass deeper into my skin.

I arch my side and my broken ribs, and in some kind of miracle hook my right leg over my left arm.

With the fingers of my left hand I take the bottle from between the toes.

I make sure I’ve got it.

Have I got it?

A desperate tenth of a second.

This is my poleaxe, my claymore, my fucking deliverer.

Have I got it?

Aye.

I hold it tight in my palm and fingers, I unhook my leg, drop it back to the ground, take a huge gasp of air, spit, and begin rubbing the ragged bottle neck over the ropes.

The morning-dour and constant in a speckled half-light. A snowy mist and an eerie quiet, as if the plague had come or we were waiting for old eponymous in the moorland of the Baskervilles.

The boy raised his head as the door opened.

A key jangled in her hand.

She was holding a tray with a plate of toast and a cup of coffee. I could smell the melting butter and the stench of Sanka.

She looked at me.

“You’re free,” she said, surprised.

I know.

“How? When?”

Only just now.

Her mouth opened.

This was the moment.

Slow-down time.

I swung the Coke bottle and smashed it against the side of Sonia’s face. It caught her on the cheek and made a clubbing noise on contact with the heavy bones in her skull. I’d swung powerfully from the shoulder, and the crushing force of the blow hammered through the bronze dust of hair on her jaw and twisted her jawbone with a dry snap that shoved it almost forty-five degrees from the horizontal.

Before she could react, I hit her again from the other side. This second blow an uppercut. It knocked out teeth and splintered pieces of bone and cartilage through the roof of her mouth. Fragments slicing through the front of her gums and spurting thick blood down onto her chin. She swayed and staggered to the side. The tray dropped in a clatter on the floor.

“Ssssss,” she groaned.

The two hits were enough to send her into a mild standing concussion, but I needed her to stay down. I held on tight to the wall and kicked her in the stomach with the heel of my right foot. I knocked the wind out of her and she fell backwards, bumping her head into the edge of a pine log and slumping to the floor.

For a second I thought she was unconscious and I hunted for a gag but then she began struggling up on one arm. Conscious, but still too stunned to react. She put her hand to her mouth and looked at the red blood on her fingertips.

Kneeling there before her executioner like Mary Queen of fucking Scots.

Our eyes met.

I lifted the bottle above my head.

She breathed in air to scream.

I knew I had to kill her in the next second.

I jumped up and, in midair, two-handed, thumped her hard on the top of her skull-so hard that the violence of the contact shook her brain and the impact pressure wave retarded back, surfing off the blow itself, and crashed into the bonded silicon of the bottle, shattering it into a hundred micro pieces, like a goddamn fragmentation grenade going off. Fucking Christ. Glass everywhere. Tiny razors cast into life in the dead black air, spraying in all directions. Some caught me and even Peter at the far side of the hut. Like darts into a clayboard. Sonia’s scalp a minefield of little particles of glass. Glass in her lips and eyes and bottle fragments stuck in her forehead.

“Huuuhhhh,” she said and clattered to the smokehouse floor. The holes immediately giving way to the steady progression of blood, oozing inevitably out from the myriad of wounds. In a second, Sonia’s head looked as if it had been dipped in red paint.

I listened to the outside.

Nothing.

I turned her over.

It looked bad, but I knew it was still all superficial, not life threatening, not immediately, anyway. She began shaking, flitting in and out of awareness, as if she was having an epileptic seizure. Most of the glass still embedded in her face, some falling out. She hadn’t yelled, but that wouldn’t last forever.

I was unsure of what to do. Tie her up? Gag her somehow? Maybe use the rope they’d tied me with. A piece of glass could cut off a long strip; I could bind her arms behind her back and- I’d hesitated too long.

She partially regained consciousness, began whimpering loudly, and with trembling hands tried to pick the bottle fragments out of her face.

This was a goddamn nightmare and I had to finish it. I grabbed the sheared-off bottle neck and slammed it across the line of least resistance in her throat, nodding grimly as it ripped through the epidermis and into the carotid artery. But it just wasn’t sharp enough. I pushed and pulled and the blood vessel remained intact.

“Jesus.”

I tossed the bottle neck and quickly found another frag- ment that looked sharper. I grabbed her hair, held her, and slashed the edge across her throat, lightning fast, before she seized that final chance to cry out. This time I cut the artery and the blood poured out in a long oxygenated red spout. I stood back, away from the curve and flow.

I looked outside the hut, checked on her, and in thirty seconds she was dead.

Thank God.

Ok. I had to move fast now if we were going to live.

I stepped over Sonia, limped to the other side of the smokehouse, and took the blindfold from Peter’s eyes.

“Who, what?” he said.

I rummaged among the set of keys Sonia had brought, found one that looked like a padlock key, lifted the chain that tied him to the wall, put the key in the lock. It turned. I unlocked him.

No hugs, or thanks, or elation, because he was staring at the offal that had once been Sonia’s neck and now resembled the stringy remains from an abattoir. A carpet of blood around her, seeping into all the corners of the smokehouse and out the door.

“You did that? What did you do? What did you? Oh my God, you-” he began to say, his voice rising with shock and a screechy panic.

I cut him off, putting my finger on his lips and forcing his mouth closed.

“You better chill the fuck out, sonny boy. If it looks like you’re going to get us both killed, I’ll top you before you do.

So keep your voice down. Get me?” I said severely.

He nodded.

“Good.”

He didn’t seem capable of helping, so I took the padlock and chain and unwrapped it from the wooden support beam and released him. He rubbed his wrists, groaned, looked at me and again at Sonia.

“Did you have to kill her?” he asked.

“I had to stop her giving the alarm, it was the only way,” I told him.

“Could we have tied her up or-”

“Enough,” I said and gave him a shut-the-fuck-up stare.

I scanned the hut and spotted my boxer shorts and trousers, which had been thrown in a corner. I grabbed them, pulled them on, and searched for my artificial foot, but it wasn’t there. In a burst of petty malice they’d probably tossed it or burned it on the log fire.

I thought for a sec. It was going to complicate things. The best I could manage was either an undignified hop or a shambling limp.

Test both ways of locomotion. I limped from one side of the smokehouse to the other. Hopped back. I moved slightly faster with the limp.

“What do we do-” Peter began, but I stopped. Someone outside.

“Sonia, did you drop something?” a voice yelled from the house. Jackie. I ran to the door, opened it a crack. He was standing at the cabin in pajama bottoms, slippers, and a leather jacket. He was holding a gun.

I looked at Peter.

“When it goes down, it’s going to go down fast. You wait here and keep a lookout; when you think you have a chance, run for the woods. Don’t come back. Just keep going. We’re about ten miles from a town called Belfast. It’s on the coast, so I think it’s east of here. Do you know where east is?”

“Where the sun comes up.”

“That’s right.”

“Keep going and call the police. You remember my name?”

“Michael Forsythe.”

“Right, get them to call the FBI and tell them to get here as fast as fucking possible. This is Gerry McCaghan’s cabin.Say that back.”

“Gerry McCaghan. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to have to stay here and fight them off. They’ve taken my prosthetic foot, so I’m not running anywhere. I’ve got to keep them at bay somehow,” I said.

“I’ll help you, I’ll stay here and help you, two of us against the rest of them is going to be better odds. I was in the army cadets. I’m not completely usele-”

I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m from the fucking midnight school and I’ll do better if I don’t have to worry about you. And I need you to get the peelers out here to save my bloody skin. Literally,” I said, looking at the hole Touched had gouged last night.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You’re going to have to take off. Fast. If they kill me, remember they’ll be like mad dogs to track you down.”

“Maybe we could talk to them, maybe we-”

I stood firmly on one foot to get balanced and then slapped his face.

“Listen to me, Gandhi, we’re going to kill them or they’re going to kill us. That’s the way it’s going to be. Your job is to live. To get out of here and live. Ok?”

He nodded.

I walked to the door crack.

Jackie had started coming down the path, muttering to himself, trying to keep the wet snow off his slippers. Not as cautious as he should be. Not by a long way.

“Ok, Jackie’s coming. Don’t say or do anything.”

I found my shredded T-shirt, pulled it on, grabbed a piece of toast from the floor, wiped the blood off it, ate it, and sipped what was left of the coffee in the spilled cup.

“Sonia, are you ok?” Jackie asked when he was a few feet from the smokehouse. When there was no answer he hesitated, lifted up his gun.

“Sonia?”

Come on, Jackie, come on in.

He looked back at the house and at his gun to make sure it was loaded.

“Sonia, are you ok?” he asked.

Come on, Jack.

“Sonia?” he asked for a final time, his face nervous, his eyebrows scrunched up.

When again there was no reply, he stopped and backed away. I knew he wasn’t going to enter now. He was going to go and get Touched. He was suspicious, afraid. Maybe the famous Michael Forsythe had pulled something. Maybe Sonia had had a heart attack. Maybe the police had shown up. Whatever it was, it was out of his league and was a job for Touched.

He turned his back and began walking to the cabin.

My best chance.

I picked up a large piece of glass. I opened the door and ran on bloody stump and bloody foot, through the wet snow, and leapt on his back.

My left hand struck out in the silence and curled around Jackie’s mouth. My right stabbed the glass into his gun-holding arm.

I pulled hard with my left hand, turning his head sharply to one side, trying to break his neck. A schism of emotions as his face met mine. A terrified look. He was unable to speak. Snow blur and he hit the ground with a thud.

I couldn’t break his neck now but at least he’d dropped the pistol.

We rolled in the snow, his eyes wide, his limbs fluid, and the piece of glass now moving towards his throat with such speed that he probably wondered if there wasn’t some sorcery in it. And Jackie in such a state of petrification he didn’t even have the wit to bite the hand covering his mouth. The piece of glass jerking fast and with it a swishing noise. It moved almost by itself like a cobra as it cut and recut his throat.

“Jesu-” he tried to say but the smoking pain and the satanic look on the man killing him froze the word. A deep puncture below his Adam’s apple. A slash at his jugular vein.

And finally, attempting at last to save his life, he punched me with a left jab.

I was so beyond the pain that it didn’t even register that he was hitting me until he did it again.

I remembered the gun, saw that it was only a few feet from us, and cracked my elbow into his bleeding throat, knocking the wind out of him. He made a grab at me but I head-butted his face so violently that it must have driven the cartilage in his nose a half inch into his brain.

In a last desperate play he thrashed out, knocking away the piece of glass and almost shoving me off him.

But it only upset me for a moment.

I reached for the gun, got it, held the revolver by the stock, and with the butt hit him on the side of the head, three quick times.

“Bluhhh,” he said and slipped into unconsciousness. I couldn’t shoot him, but I had to kill him right this second.

I couldn’t be exposed like this for much longer in plain view of the house.

I turned him over, slid beside him, rolled him, and wrapped my arm around his throat.With his neck in the crook of my elbow and my left hand pulling hard on my right wrist, I squeezed the remaining fight out of him. He woke for a moment before the end, thrashing, gasping. I drove my knee into his back and finally something suddenly snapped. His body went limp. But to be sure he hadn’t just passed out I picked up the glass again and cut deep into his throat, the rough blade breaking the skin apart and scooping out flesh like a bad piece of fruit.

When I was finished, it was much worse than Sonia.

The personal must have slipped in because Jackie’s neck had been severed in a huge gash that left him partially decapitated, his head hanging to his body only by the tissue around the spine.

Not so good.

A waste of effort.

I wasn’t going on a rampage like a PCP freak. I had to do the minimum effort to stay alive.

I lifted Jackie’s gun, spun the chamber, and checked the mechanism. A.22 Smith & Wesson revolver, a lovely little gun, just like the piece I’d had once in New York City.

Sweet.

I stood and limped back to the smokehouse. Peter was standing there, aghast.

“Now’s your chance, fucking run for it and raise the alarm,”I said.

“Are you hurt?”

“Are you still here? Get moving. Follow the old railway line. It’s bound to go somewhere.”

“I don’t-”

I slapped him on the side of the head.

“Go, you fucker,” I ordered.

He ran out of the smokehouse in the direction of the woods, kicking up snow, shambling, limping, but moving. I watched him disappear between the trees. I sat down and took a breather, found the other bit of toast, ate it. I reached outside, grabbed a handful of snow, and swallowed it. It was cold in my mouth. Welcome.

Now what?

There was only one course of action. They had shotguns and were professionals. Touched, at least, was strong and fit and probably a competent tracker. I couldn’t delay. A frontal assault on the house while I still had surprise.

Kill Touched, get his gun, and maneuver Gerry and Kit into a position where they had to surrender.

Simple.

I grabbed another handful of snow, bit into it.

I crawled to Jackie’s body and looked at his watch. Seven a.m. They were all early risers in this family, but yesterday- Christ, was it really only yesterday?-Gerry had slept late. And Touched was bound to be knackered after two days of torture. And they’d been wasted in the wee hours.

I reconsidered my options. If only Jackie and Sonia had been awake and the rest were sleeping, that might have changed things. Maybe I could make a run for it into the woods, after all. Or, better yet, maybe I could even steal one of the cars.

Yeah.

It wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to check it out.

I grabbed a pile of snow and threw it on Jackie’s body, shoveling it on top of him as best I could. If someone did have a quick peek out one of the bedroom windows, I wanted them to think all was normal. I stepped back. It wouldn’t do for a close inspection but it might fool them from a distance.

I limped to the snow-covered Mercedes-Benz, tried the door handle. Unlocked. I opened it and got inside. I looked for keys. I checked the glove compartment and the sunshade and the drinks holder.

Nothing.

But wait a minute. Holy shit. It was Sonia’s car, maybe the key was on that big bloody key chain she’d been carrying back at the smokehouse. It probably bloody was.

I got out of the car and closed the door.

“Where is everybody?” Touched suddenly shouted from inside the cabin. “I need me coffee.”

His voice somewhere on the ground floor.

Goddamn it.

By the time I ran to the smokehouse, got the keys, and limped back to the Mercedes, he’d be standing at the cabin door with his pistol ready to shoot me down. It would be a fair fight, but only until Gerry heard a couple of shots and appeared at one of those upper windows with his shotgun. And with me pinned in the broad, from up there he couldn’t miss.

No, forget the car.

It was either make a break for the woods right now, or the full-frontal attack while at least two of them were still sleeping.

“What’s it going to be, Michael?” I whispered to myself.But I already knew the answer and I didn’t need any more convincing to go after Touched.

Once before, long ago, I’d assaulted a big house filled with enemies and killed the occupants. Snowing then, too, come to think of it. Me, murder, and snow-fucking made for one another.

I held the gun tight and limped to the front door of the cabin.

A cigarette smell was coming from inside, limp and sweet from fresh-rolled tobacco. I listened for the sounds of conversation. But Touched was giving no one instructions. His coffee remark had been rhetorical.

Still, he was bound to be bloody suspicious.

I turned the handle and inched open the door. Touched was sitting at the kitchen table with his feet up on another chair. He was in his usual brown slacks and a mustard working jumper. His graying hair was crushed under a woolen hat and he had a tattered dressing gown draped over his shoulders.

I opened the door a little farther and pointed the gun through the gap.

He didn’t stir when I came in and he felt the outdoor breeze.

I sighted the.22.

He turned the page of a magazine called Wooden Boat and took a long draw on his cigarette.

“Pair of ya will catch your death out there,” he said without looking up.

I checked to look for the.38 but it wasn’t next to him. On the kitchen table: a newspaper, magazines, a coffeepot, but no gun. It might be in his pocket, but it might not. If I had to guess I’d say he was being careless, had left it in his room, and was in fact unarmed. Just the way I liked them.

I stepped completely into the cabin and closed the door behind me.

He turned another page of Wooden Boat. I looked for Kit or Gerry or anyone else waiting on the stairs with artillery, but there was no one, this was no trap.

I limped closer, trailing blood and snow.

“I really need some coffee…” he began and then he looked up.

In a single breath his face changed from amazement to fright to a gruesome composedness in the face of death.

He put down his magazine.

Took another puff of the cigarette.

“How the fuck did you get out?” he asked.

“Magic.”

“What?”

“Magic. Now, Touched, me old china plate. Put your hands on your head and bloody keep them there,” I said.

Touched left his fag in the ashtray and did as he was bid, resting his hands on his wool beanie hat.

I surveyed the kitchen and the stairs.

“Where’s Gerry and Kit?” I asked.

“Sleeping,” he said with a little disgusted shake of the head. Here they were letting him down again. Everybody always letting him down. Typical. And of course it was always someone else’s fault. Never his.

His eyes narrowed.

He exhaled the cigarette smoke, a bubble of nervous spittle forming on his dry lips.

“So, Michael Forsythe, killer of Darkey White, informant, spy for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, what are you gonna do now? Arrest me?”

“I don’t think so.”

He looked puzzled and then smiled with recognition. That big friendly grin, that mix of hatred and bravado.

“Ah, I understand,” he said. “It’s personal. The woman in Newburyport. Right?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Well, you certainly had me fooled. I’ll admit that I was suspicious about you and her, but when you helped us put her in the ground and you didn’t make a big song and dance about it, fuck, I didn’t think she meant anything to you,” he muttered a little louder.

“Keep your voice down, Touched,” I said. “And keep those hands on your head.”

Touched smiled again, a labored wrinkling of the face that made him lose his youthful arrogance.

And as he meekly put his hands back up I saw him afresh. The mystique had gone. The aperture of time worked its way with his features and suddenly he was just a middle-aged white guy, getter older, getting stupider, getting fatter, perplexed by the vagaries of life and the representative of the younger generation who had bested him and was, unexpectedly, about to murder him.

“And another thing. Neither of you bloody talked. I don’t know what they teach you nowadays, but that was impressive.

Or it could be that I’m getting soft,” he said.

He reached to get his cigarette.

“Keep your hands where they are, Touched.”

“Sorry, Michael, I forgot,” he said and put his hands back on his hat, drumming them, pretending to be relaxed.

I limped closer until I was close enough.

It wasn’t my style to gloat over him; to exult, to lecture him with famous last words. There wasn’t time for that anyway. I just needed information and then I’d bloody get rid of him.

“Do you have a gun on ya?” I asked.

“No. No, I don’t. If you believe me,” he said.

“Stand up, shake out your pockets on the dressing gown.”

He turned out the pockets.

“It’s in the bog,” he offered.

“Sit down again.”

He sat and put his hands on his head unbidden.

“Ok. Where’s the big shotguns?” I asked. “Where do you keep that big shotgun Gerry had yesterday?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Tell me or I’ll fucking kill you, Touched.”

“It’s in my room upstairs. I cleaned it,” he said.

“Loaded?”

“Aye, think so.”

“You know so. Is it loaded or not?”

“It’s not loaded,” he said.

“Where’s the shells?”

“They’re on the dresser in my room.”

“Which one’s your room?”

“First left at the top of the stairs. Two down from yours.

What the fuck you want the shotgun for?”

I was going to kill Touched but I wanted the other two alive. The.22 wasn’t going to impress Gerry. And I wanted them unarmed and intimidated by overwhelming force. If I killed Touched down here, the noise would bring out Gerry, he’d get that shotgun from Touched’s room, and he’d blow my brains out. But if I took a little more effort, marched Touched upstairs, got the shotgun, killed him, and waited outside Gerry’s room with those big double barrels pointed at him, he’d have no choice whatsoever. He’d have to surrender. It would be suicide to come at me then. Pointless suicide. He gives up. March him and Kit downstairs, find the phone…

Nice and neat.

“Take that cord off your robe.”

He unthreaded the dressing-gown tie and held it out to me.

“Turn around, put your hands behind your back,” I ordered.

“I thought you were going to kill me,” he said smugly.

“Plenty of time for that later, now spin around.”

He smiled, spat.

“Hurry up.”

He turned and put his hands behind him.

“Ok, Touched, one fidget, one move, and I blow your bloody brains out,” I said.

I made a slipknot with one end of the bathrobe cord and placed it over his wrist and pulled it tight. Waited for him to try something since this was the best chance he was going to get. But he stood there and didn’t move. I made another slipknot and put his other wrist into it. I tightened both loops and turned him to face me.

“This is how it’s going to be. We’re going to go upstairs and get the shotgun; if you behave yourself you just might live through this,” I lied.

“Changed your mind, huh? That’s what you get from hanging about with feds, it fucking weakens ya,” he said with contempt.

“Whatever. If you try to shout a warning, I’ll kill you.Understand?”

“Aye,” he said and then a look went across his face that I couldn’t interpret but it seemed to be concern.

“Tell me one thing, Michael, is the lad tied up out there too?” he asked. Of course, it wouldn’t be fear for himself, he was worried about his protégé.

“What lad?”

“Jackie. Did you tie him up too?” Touched asked.

“I killed him.”

He swallowed. Paled.

“And Sonia?” Touched asked, a trace of the composure disappearing from his dark eyes.

“Aye. Had to do it. Hated to do it. No choice.”

“Ye wee fucker, peeler agent bastard,” Touched said, anger making him slur his words.

“Keep your voice down. I won’t tell you again.”

Touched shook his head. His face tightened, his temple throbbed and then relaxed. He was no poker player. He was putting together a little plan.

It might have concerned me once. But I was transformed. I could see through him. He was obvious now. Old and obvious and tied. Let him plan.

I had the gun, I was ready.

“Ok, we’ll go up the stairs and we’ll get your gun and maybe you’ll live to do jail time,” I said.

I motioned for him to lead me up the stairs.

Yeah. Coming together. Up to his room, get that shotgun, kill that son of a bitch, arrest those other two, take them to the smokehouse, chain them up, then back to the cabin, untie Touched’s wrists so I could claim it was self-defense and not an execution.

Touched began walking up the stairs. His dressing gown wafting backwards, his legs unsteady. He turned his head to look at me.

“I’m not sure I want to go to prison, Michael,” he said.

“Don’t see that you have much say in the matter.”

He took another step.

“You know a comedy always ends in a marriage, a tragedy in a death,” he said, sly and sleekit.

“Which one’s this?” I asked cautiously.

“Oh, you know,” he said, suddenly throwing himself backwards off the stair and crashing into me with his full body weight. We tumbled down the stairs, Touched landing on top of me, knocking the wind out of me and sending the gun awkwardly under a chair.

He head-butted me on the top of my skull.

“Fucking show ya,” he muttered.

He struggled desperately to get out of the restraints, but I’d bound that bastard tight and good. I pushed him off me and he rolled to the side. He hooked the robe cord over his ass and down his legs, getting it over first his left leg and then the right. Fast for an old geezer. He tried to undo the knot but it was too tight. His hands still tied, but tied in front of him, which was more dangerous. He lunged at me, but I’d had a second to anticipate the attack and finally managed to get the gun round to face him.

Touched hadn’t survived a couple of assassination attempts for nothing.

Before I could pull the trigger he kicked my hand and sent the gun clattering across the wooden floor.

He tried to kick me again but I caught the foot and violently twisted his leg and ankle.

He squirmed out of his slipper, turned, and spitting like a demon, jumped on top of me.

I punched him, breaking his nose with a right hook that sprayed blood into his eyes. Partially blinded, he swung wildly with his fist, missed my head completely but, luckily for him, managed to bring the side of his hand down onto my cracked ribs.

A tidal wave of pain rocked through me, paralyzing me. “Fuuuuu…”

Touched took the opportunity to kneel on my arms, pinning me.

He pushed the robe cord down onto my throat and began to squeeze with all the controlled rage and seething elation of a professional killer. His eyes were wide apart, gray, emotionless.

This was what Samantha saw when he killed her.

“Have you now, Forsythe,” he whispered, intimately, like a lover. He pushed down with all his weight, the blackout beginning with a ringing in my head and my eyes rolling back in their sockets.

If he’d had garroting wire or rope instead of a robe tie, Touched would be telling this story, not me. But as it was, the cord was too thick and too padded to strangle me. He needed more leverage, he needed to wrap the cord completely round my neck and pull with two hands.

He kept pushing down on my throat but he saw that I wasn’t dead yet.

“Kill ya,” he muttered to himself, his breath a few inches from me.

He lifted my head up, slipped the cord behind my neck, and gave me one chance to suck air into my lungs.

I breathed deep and, in a desperate effort, I heaved myself forward and bit into his cheek, tearing out a chunk of flesh as large as a big bite out of an apple.

He screamed and I kicked him off me with my bloody stump.

He landed on his back and I scrambled to my feet.

“Gerry, Gerry, wake up, Kit, Gerry, wake up,” he yelled at the top of his voice and crawled towards me, blood pouring out of his face.

I dived for the gun, got it, cocked it, and shot him square in the belly.

He slumped forward onto his knees.

“Gerry,” he said again, desperately.

I could hear movement upstairs.

I’d have to bloody sprint if I wanted that big gun now.

Touched was reeling from the slug in his gut and it was a good hit but with a.22 you can never be sure, so I limped across the room, smacked him in the face with the pistol, kicked his legs, muscled him to the ground, shoved his cheek to the kitchen floor, turned his head.

“I’m still going to get you,” he said weakly.

“You better move fast,” I said and shot him above the ear- bits of skull, blood, and brains spraying over my weapon hand.

“What’s going on down there?” Gerry yelled.

I turned Touched to face me and gave him one in the forehead, too, the bullet drilling a neat hole above his right eye. I felt his neck pulse. Nada. I stood. I needed that shotgun.

I put the.22 in my trouser pocket and went up the stairs on all fours.

“Daddy?” Kit screamed from one of the rooms.

I got to the top and shoved open the first door on the left. It was Touched’s room all right, there was his leather jacket, his sunglasses, a copy of Hustler. But he’d been lying aboutthe shotgun.

Fuck.

“Get behind me, Kit,” Gerry said. He was outside in the corridor. I took a look. And, shit, there he was, naked under a long black kimono, holding that big powerful 12-gauge. Kit behind him with a revolver. He saw me. I ducked inside as one of the barrels erupted, destroying the doorjamb.

“Give me a shell,” Gerry called to Kit.

I closed the door.

Hot in here from the central heating. I wiped the sweat from my brow, opened the window, wondered if I could get out.

A second later, Gerry blasted the door apart.

Jesus.

I pointed my.22 at the wrecked doorway.

Talk to him.

“Gerry, listen to me, Touched is dead, Sonia’s dead, Jackie’s dead. I freed the kid, I dialed 911, and the police are on the way. The game is up. You have to surrender,” I yelled.

“Fuck you, Forsythe. We’ll fucking kill you. Come out of there and face me like a fucking man,” Gerry yelled.

There was no way I was going out onto the landing, not with two of them armed to the teeth.

“Gerry, think of Kit. You don’t have a chance in hell of getting out of this. I left a message on the boat, telling them it was you that kidnapped Peter. If you kill me it doesn’t matter, you’ll never go back to your life now. And Peter is running into Belfast and the cops are on the way. It’s bloody over, Gerry. They might do you for being an accessory to murder, but Kit only has to go to jail for kidnap. Think about it, Gerry. If you give up now, come quietly, I’ll make sure she’s out in less than five. Better than a life term or the federal death penalty. It’s a promise.”

“What’s your promise worth, Forsythe?” he snarled.

“I swear it, Gerry,” I insisted.

Gerry muttered something under his breath but Kit was adamant.

“No, Dad, we can get away. We’ll take the car and we’ll drive to Canada and they’ll never get us,” she said.

Good old Kit. Never say die.

It strengthened her da’s resolve.

“Aye, you fucker, Forsythe. Sonia never hurt anyone in her goddamn life. She wanted us to let you go. Why’d you have to top her, you son of a bitch?” he said.

Before I could answer he lurched into the bedroom doorway with the shotgun.

Holy Christ. I shot at him, missed, Gerry flinched, slipped, and fired both barrels, tearing up the floor, missing me by half a room, but I couldn’t help but catch a couple of pellets in the leg. I lost my balance, fell heavily backwards into the open window, smashed through the screen, and tumbled ten feet to the wet snow outside.

I landed with a soft clump, just missing the woodpile by half a yard.

Gerry appeared in the window.

“Reload me,” Gerry screamed.

Kit handed him two more shells; he broke open the gun and slotted them into the smoking chamber.

I tried to get to my one good foot, but I was dazed from the fall. The house swimming before me, Gerry’s kimono-clad form reloading his gun, Kit beside him wearing Hello Kitty pajamas.

If I didn’t move I was a name in the newspaper. I pocketed the revolver, turned over, and crawled on all fours again, loping like a goddamn hyena for the bloody trees. The shotgun went off behind me. Gerry missing by a mile. He needed to calm down, shoot less, aim more.

And then I heard Kit’s gun.

Blam, blam, blam.

A 9mm.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she was firing at me too. Holes appearing in the snow, wide to the left and then after a big overcorrection wide to the right.

I made it to the edge of the forest, scrambled behind a tree, leaned against the trunk.

I tried to get my breath back. I felt in my pocket. The.22 was gone. Goddamnit. I looked behind me in the snow but I couldn’t see it. It might be anywhere.

“Fuck.”

Up at the house Gerry and Kit had gone from the window now. They were coming downstairs to get me and Gerry might not be the most mobile of psychotic killers but now he had all the cards: guns, a willing accomplice, and a good night’s sleep.

Have to head.

I scrambled deeper into the trees.

Shades of déjà vu. But this was not like yesterday when I could run. There was no possibility of hiding from them because the snow had made tracking my blood trail a piece of cake.

“This way, Kit, you stay behind me now,” Gerry yelled.

I looked back. He was huffing and puffing out of the house and into the first line of trees. That big elephant gun leading the way. Kit a step behind him with her niner. Gerry slipped on the snow, fired the gun by accident. Kit panicked and shot her gun too.

Jesus, neither of them was getting onto the Olympic biathlon team anytime soon.

“Do you see any sign of him?” Gerry asked, reloading.

I didn’t catch her reply but if they had any sense at all they’d soon pick up the markers I’d left.

I hurried on, pushing my way through hanging trees and moss, limping over pine needles, pinecones, branches, rocks.

Foot and stump ignoring the pain, working together in a Quasimodo gait.

I crossed over the forest trail that led to the pond, and then up a slippery tree-lined embankment.

Another breather. Another look back.

Aye, they weren’t pissing about. They were looking at the ground, seeing the big blundering path I’d taken and coming straight for me. Kit standing right next to her father, not heeding his instruction to stay a pace or two behind. It gave me an idea. One of the oldest mantraps in the book.

Not original, but who needs original when you don’t have a bloody gun? I looked for a low-hanging tree branch.

A young bendy one, but a tree trunk thick enough for me to hide behind.

I selected a good, thick, pliable branch on a balsam fir tree and then limped about ten feet past it so that the trail looked like I had gone farther into the forest. Then I doubled back on myself, got behind the trunk, pulled back the long springy branch until it was at the snapping point.

They were coming and I waited, straining with all my might to hold the goddamn branch. This tree I did know the name of. The balm of Gilead. Balm of fucking Forsythe if this worked.

“Farther down there,” Gerry said. “There he goes, come on, Kit, gently does it.”

They came closer, but I couldn’t look. Have to judge by sound alone. Have to judge it just right.

I waited until I could hear his labored breath and when I felt they were practically on top of me, I let go of the goddamn tree.

Feewooo, whack.

It smacked into them with a satisfying crash.

“Fuck,” Gerry screamed as I ducked round the tree.

The branch had cracked Gerry in the skull, splaying him backwards. Kit had rolled with the blow and was getting up again but Gerry was down; he’d dropped the shotgun and his little leather pouch of shotgun shells. I jumped him, punching him hard on the nose and the throat and in his cheek and his right eye.

Then I rolled off him fast, grabbed Kit by the hair, and smacked her with a two-handed uppercut that sent her sprawling into a tree five feet away.

Gerry was fumbling for something in his pocket.

I bent down and grabbed the shotgun.

Gerry had taken out a revolver, he was trying to point at me, but he was probably seeing double from the punches I’d just given him. He pulled the trigger and the shot was so clumsy it nearly hit Kit.

“Drop the gun, Gerry,” I demanded, pointing the shotgun at him.

He pulled the trigger again, this time missing by only a few feet.

I unloaded both barrels into him at close range. They took his head off, blowing his skull to pieces and scattering blood, brains, skin, and eyes over the lower limbs of the tree. The headless torso bucked wildly for a moment and fell forward.

Kit screamed and shot at me with the 9mm.

I hit the ground, grabbed the bag of shotgun shells, broke open the shotgun, removed the spent casings, reloaded, and jumped behind the nearest tree. 9mm rounds slammed into the space where I’d just been. She was a better shot than her old man. She must have lied to Touched about going to the range. Either that or she was a quick study. The latter. Kit was good at everything.

I heard her click out an old clip and slam home a new one.

She began shooting again.

I was in a bad position here, protected by the thin trunk of a pine tree and a couple of spindly branches.

At this range a lucky shot could sail right through the trunk and take me out.

Just up ahead, though, there was a little rise and a huge fallen tree that looked like excellent cover. A big tree that had toppled horizontally into the wood in the last year or so. An old log, easily about five feet in diameter. No 9mm was sailing through that motherfucker.

Fuck it, I said to myself and rolled forward, got up, limped for it through the snow, hobbled, limped, and I was goddamn there before Kit saw that I’d made a move and managed to get a shot off.

I dived behind the thick trunk.

Heard a couple of shots thud into the wood.

I got to my feet. Looked.

And yeah, there she was. I could see her easily, reloading. I rested my elbows on the trunk, pointed the shotgun, and took aim at her. An excellent position for me, a terrible one for her. I was protected right up to the shoulders by the fallen tree. She was exposed and to kill me she’d have to aim uphill into the light snow and then get me with a head shot.

She finished reloading and saw that I was standing up.

I waved to her.

She stepped out from cover and carefully held the 9mm, aimed, shot. A bullet clunked into the trunk in front of me.

“Kit, put the gun down. I don’t want to have to kill you, but I will. If you shoot, I’ll have to shoot, and this thing is going to blow you apart,” I said.

“You killed my dad,” she said, her voice quivering.

“Kit, I’m sorry. I had to. It was him or me. He understood that, Kit. He was a soldier, like me. He knew that. Him or me.

But you don’t have to die. Put the gun down on the ground.”

She hesitated. Closed her eyes. Wiped the tears, snowflakes from her face.

“You killed him,” she screamed and she began walking towards me, to narrow the distance and get a better shot.

“Kit, stop walking and put the gun down. Do it now,” I commanded.

“You killed my dad,” she said and stared at me with those cobalt eyes, that tubercular face, those serious lips.

“Kit, I’m not kidding, this isn’t a finesse weapon, this thing will fucking kill you. Put your gun down now, and put your hands up.”

“You killed my father, he was all I had in the world,” she said, sobbing hysterically.

“Kit, listen to me. He wouldn’t have wanted this. You’ve done your best, you’ve fought the good fight, now put down the bloody gun,” I yelled.

But she wasn’t listening.

She kept the 9mm pointed at my head and walked steadily up the rise.

Sober.

Determined.

She stepped over Gerry’s outstretched arm and squinted into the snow.

Her feet were bare.

Her Hello Kitty pajamas soaked through.

The sky was clearing but there were still snowflakes on her arms and a light breeze blowing the loose strands of hair out of her face.

“Don’t do it, Kit. If you shoot at me, I’ll have to kill you. I won’t have any choice. Please. Put the gun down on the ground and put your hands up,” I begged her.

She shook her head. She was only ten feet away now. The pistol wobbled in her right fist.

“Drop the gun, Kit. Please.”

Carefully, she placed her left hand underneath the right to steady herself. She closed one eye. Took aim.

“I’m sorry,” she said and pulled the trigger.

The bullet missed by mere centimeters. I was desperate now.

“Kit, please, I’m begging you. You’ve got everything to live for, your real mother and father live in New York, Lilly and Hector Orlandez are their names, they-”

I gasped as the second bullet scorched up my left arm. It staggered me for a millisecond. It was only a superficial hit but it made me instantly react and squeeze the trigger on the shotgun.

The right barrel erupted in a spout of fire.

She fired one more time as the full force of the shotgun slammed into her, throwing her off her feet, eviscerating her, gouging a dozen holes the size of quarters in her chest and abdomen and throat.

She tumbled backwards down the slope.

“Kit,” I screamed and dropped the gun. I scrambled on top of the horizontal tree, fell over it, crashed to the forest floor, and crawled to her.

Kit was lying in the snow. Her chest was open, exposing a destroyed mass of gore that had once been her internal organs.

Blood pouring everywhere.

There was no question.

The wound was fatal. The damage to her heart alone would be enough to erase her name forever from the big black book.

“Oh God, Kit.”

I cradled her face.

She was so beautiful.

Kit, it didn’t have to be this way.

My mouth opened to speak, to say anything, to comfort her, but there were no words. Her eyes blinked. A tear fell.

She whispered something.

I leaned in. I couldn’t hear. I shook my head.

I didn’t understand.

“What?”

With a superhuman effort she finally spoke:

“I love you, too, Sean,” she said, and happy that she had communicated this thought, closed her eyes and breathed her last.

The sun rises to banish specters. They’ll watch me no more, these dead men. I’m glad. I was getting nervous under their reproach. And I’m becoming cold. The icy air penetrating through my soaked clothes. Gathering me away and into it. An ache to add to all the other aches, another rebuke for all I’ve wrought.

The sun rises over the wooded hills and clears those heralds tutting over the killing ground. Two women as well as the three men. One of them unarmed. But there was no other way that I could see. And that stupid kid, didn’t he at least get out of here?

Anyway, they’re all dead. The last of the Sons of Cuchu-lainn. Samantha was wrong. She overestimated them. They weren’t the boys who make no noise. They weren’t that smart.

Do they even know the story of their name? The child Setanta was renamed Cuchulainn because he killed a dog. Blood transformed him.

Transformed all of us.

And I have lost a lot of it.

Red under my back and legs.

Red, all of today and yesterday.

I’m exhausted.

Lying prone on the ground, like a child making a snow angel. My hand cradling her white neck, massaging the capillaries to keep the rigor at bay for a few minutes yet. A vermilion hand. A flower of grief.

I’m too weak to get up. I can’t move. So here I’ll stay. Half-naked between the trees. The story of the precipitation running through the vultured rag of human paint that is smeared in great swirls across my body. In my hair and in my eyes that are almond now and black.

Stay here.

Under the ordered sky.

The growing day extinguishing the lamps of heaven and the yellow of unprayed-for souls. A big tiredness in every constriction of my rib cage. A lightness in my head that can only be oxygen deprivation. Death wants me, too.

About us, insects scenting putrefying flesh and descending onto the snow-draped soil where two bodies lie.

Five this morning. Five in the space of an hour.

One the day before yesterday.

I blink away the snowflakes.

I try to get up.

But it’s too hard. And anyway it’s better here on the ground, the earth licking my wounds in the protection of the trees.

Better than up there in the afterlife of the accursed, caught between a massacre and the stretched attitudes of the hills.

If I get up, I know how it will be.

I know what will happen. A hushed absence and around me the sentient creatures will move aside in recognition. They know there will be more slaughters down the road. For I am the one, the master of the art. I am the favored son of Death. Touched was a mere pretender. They’ll run and the skeleton will smile beneath his hood.

No.

I’ll resist it. I’ll stay here. With her.

An ocean wind. A faltering front. The snow is ending. Back in its box until December. The weather will return to something more autumnal, but the world will not be as it was before. I’ve changed it. Everything remade with a bitter quality. I see it manifest in the ghost of pine trees, in the clouds, the black bark, the dead girl next to me in the snow.

I shake my head.

I’ll resist it…

A jet.

The moon.

Aye.

Do that, Michael.

Don’t get up. Don’t let them see you. They can leave you for a while yet. They can let you be. Those tongues of midnight. Whispering incantations. Casting glyphs. Biding their time. They’ll weather well their wait, blessed as they are with the virtues of patience and fortitude and the knowledge of their propagation with the blood from the never-ending works of man.

You’ll live to see another day. They’ll let you have some years of peace.

You’ll live because she is out there and she wants you. And her power is growing and will grow until she cleanses the deck of all the captains.

And you’ll live because he is out there too. And no one knows. And he is coming. And the rage in you is as nothing to the bursting dam that is him. And you’re the one that set him free.

It’s a dangerous world, Michael. Stay in the woods. Hide.

From the paramedics, the feds, the killers, hide from them all.

Don’t get up.

Don’t get up if you know what’s good for you.

Snow blinks into my eyelids.

I watch the sky.

Not a jet.

A helicopter.

Rotor blades.

Engines.

Sirens.

Cars.

A squeal of brakes.

A slamming door.

Voices.

Footsteps.

I get up.