THE CAR skidded to a stop with a short sizzling scrunch. Robbie could hear the dogs falling over each other inside, thumping against the seats in front. Then the car windows slid shut and muffled the barking. All was quiet, but that wasn’t going to last. He felt completely exposed. He wondered if there was anyone out there, in the fields or on the roads around. He needed another car to come along. Someone to see what was about to happen. Squinting up the sides of the cliffs on either side, he saw they were overhanging hard rock, not soft sandstone good for climbing. Even if he had the energy. And he had none now.
He knew he couldn’t outrun the dogs again.
He shivered. Surprising how cool it was in the shade.
The Land Rover started to back up slowly, until it stopped in front of him. They were just looking down, Stricklands and dogs, peering at him, waiting to see what he was going to do.
The passenger window opened. It was Billy, holding a packet of fags.
‘Want one?’
He nodded.
A cigarette was picked from the packet and held out to him. The dogs’ tongues had covered the back window in spittle.
‘Catch.’ Robbie put out his hand, but the cigarette rolled off and fell on to the tarmac. Billy looked at him and pulled a sad face. ‘Oops. Pick it up,’ Robbie heard him say, as if he was talking to a baby.
There was a hum in the distance.
A car, a black four-wheel-drive, came down the hill, and slowed. But the Land Rover’s door opened and shut and Billy’s hand was on his shoulder and he was kneeling next to him lighting the cigarette and pushing it into Robbie’s hand. The driver’s door opened and slammed too. There was a lot of waving and halloing from the brothers. Trying to make everything look normal.
Tommy was on the other side of the Land Rover. His brother was next to Robbie. The dogs were still inside.
One last chance.
It was all in the back neck muscles. Like heading a football.
Robbie brought the point of his forehead down sharply on to the bridge of Billy’s nose. Robbie had never had that much practice, but he knew the pain would swamp his victim’s head. He watched him stagger backwards. It was time to go.
If he could get up the road and into the fields he could lose them in the woods. He was going back the way he came, so he knew these cliffs ended somewhere. Doors were opening and slamming shut behind him again. They would need to turn, not so easy in that gully.
He was out in the open now. Two empty fields of grass, then one of corn, then the woods. He wasn’t moving as fast as he had been and he didn’t know how long he’d last. He was looking for a way into the next field, he didn’t want to be rushing ditches and barbed wire, but he daren’t slow down either. There was a gate over to the left, and he was aiming for that, when suddenly the dogs were behind him. He could hear them, a couple of hundred metres away, and they were shortening the distance.
He was over the gate like a high-jumper, then over the next field, his vision blurring from sweat and the pain in his chest coming back fast. Up on the hill ahead where the wood ended there was a house, he could sense it better than see it.
Another stile.
He looked back.
Tommy Strickland. Far away. Cradling something in his arms.
The top of the post next to Robbie’s hand blew apart, wood splintering everywhere. Then there came the sound of the shot.
Was he trying to kill him or warn him?
Robbie’s head was swimming now.
He looked up at the house again. It seemed a long way away.
One last go.
One last.
Go.
Every bit of him was screaming, every bone a heavy weight.
Stop thinking, Robbie. Stop thinking. Too much energy, thinking. Just run.
House. Where?
Come on.
Dogs. Where?
Closing. Everything closing. Me on the house. Dogs on me.
Gun. Where?
No more shots.
Warning, then.
Why would he kill me, anyway?
Whole body saying stop. Shutting down.
Almost there. Look up. Look up.
High fences. Barbed wire.
I can’t get in.
Then the dogs were upon him, their teeth pulling at his clothes. As he stumbled his hand felt wood, a branch blown to the ground in the wind, long and bendy and leafy. He picked it up and brought it down on the head of one of the dogs.
The dog backed off. It wasn’t expecting that.
There was strength in his arms even if his legs had gone, but as a weapon the branch was pretty lame.
They were waiting for their chance, the three of them, teeth bared, one stock-still with taut haunches, the other two sloping around him. He wasn’t going to last long, he could feel that. He could see the Stricklands closing in up the hill and heaving the branch around, pushing it at the dogs, was doing him no good. No good at all.
One last burn.
Now.
He turned again and ran.
They’d been waiting for just that moment.
There was snarling in his ears, and in a blur he was down, floundering under the attack.
And suddenly there they were. Billy had blood all over his face. That wasn’t a good idea, that, Robbie thought.
With his good eye, he winked at Robbie.
‘Time for some fun,’ he said.