Lionel entered the garden in time to see Sara disappearing over the far fence. He raised his gun and squeezed off two more shots, thumping them square into the panels just below the spot where she had disappeared.
He stopped to listen, waiting for the sound of a falling body. But there was just silence. He couldn’t hear any movement, which meant that she was either dead, injured or was hiding just the other side of the fence.
He tucked the gun into his waistband and limped across the balding grass. A sense of sadness was blooming in him. It was not the fact of killing a child. He knew she was no ordinary child, even though it seemed that the mother’s deprogramming had neutralized some of her power. It was the loss he felt at what could have been. If the daughter had trusted him, it could all have been so different. He breathed deeply to fight the anguish in his heart. He was at fault too. He had let feelings develop in him that clouded his judgement. Her condition had drawn something out of him, and the methodical hunt of Sara was as much a hunt to kill that which had escaped as it was to contain her threat. With the firing of the last shots, both were now terminated.
His mind was so far away that he was halfway across the garden when he heard them.
The sound was like several chainsaws firing up at the same time.
He looked over and saw three creatures sit up, bodies stiff, shoulder blades raised, eyes trained on him.
He couldn’t recognize what sort of animals they were at first. Their frames were huge and misshapen, with thick welts of crude stitching knitting together missing chunks of flesh.
Their faces were the stuff of nightmares: the upper lip was missing from one, giving it a ghoulish, skeletal look; another was missing an eye.
Dogs: fighting dogs.
Their antecedents had been bred and interbred so many times it was impossible to tell what breed they were but, when standing, their heads were level with Lionel’s chest.
Fear lurched in him with such force it knocked the breath from his lungs.
He froze, not moving a muscle. The dogs eyed him warily. Their muscles shimmering beneath their pockmarked skin, ready to propel them forwards.
With infinite care, he began reaching behind him for his gun, his eyes locked on to the dogs, his hand moving slowly.
The dogs did not move, but their snarling increased in pitch and volume, and their bodies flexed and strained as if against invisible leashes.
He stopped moving his hand, leaving it suspended in the air.
Something in his peripheral vision caught his eye. It looked like a child’s doll at first, red and white debris pulled apart and lying in patches on the grass. And then he saw the head and realized it was a house cat, torn to shreds for sport.
If he went for his gun now, he might be able to get one of them, but the others would be on him before he could re-aim. His only chance was to make it to the fence and leap over.
Keeping his eyes on the dogs, he began to walk purposefully forwards.
On cue, they separated; two of them moving in opposing arcs towards him while the other one stalked towards Lionel slowly.
‘Sara,’ he hissed, his mouth not moving.
The dogs were closer now, less than ten feet.
‘Sara.’
Lionel looked over his shoulder at the lead dog, who was now stationed directly behind him. The other two dogs were on either side of him, snapping their teeth and lunging.
He made a decision – he could make it. It would take one leap, he would favour his good leg, lift it high enough on to the top of the fence, the momentum would carry his centre of gravity over, and he could topple on to the other side.
He took a final look at the dog behind him and broke for the fence.
Immediately the dog behind him jerked forwards, its mouth open and teeth bared.
Lionel pushed himself off his left foot as he ran towards the fence, then raised his right knee and stretched out his arms to grab the top.
Only his knee didn’t lift far enough. It couldn’t. It was still frozen, the scar tissue from Sara’s attack robbing it of the precise amount of strength it needed to lift high enough to clear the fence.
He collapsed in pain on to the grass. Above him, Sara’s head appeared above the fence, looking down at him with an unfathomable expression.
Lionel looked up at Sara, his mind scrambling back to the night in the safe house and the flesh wound she had given him, a wound that seemed to miss the mark one month ago and yet now robbed him of exactly the amount of strength he needed to escape. Before his mind could think through the implications, he screamed.
‘No!’
They were the last words he said before the dogs set on him.