Blood Sport (3 page)

I kept jogging and soon the car neared me, its lights on high beam, blinding me as it grew closer, illuminating the gentle rainfall. I couldn’t see who was inside the car or what make it was, but it didn’t swerve towards me or try to run me off the road. We passed each other peacefully and I patted my knife once more. I took my hunting knife with me everywhere when I wasn’t in uniform with access to my gun – even to bed. It had saved my life on more than one occasion.

The car drove away from me, the engine noise receding and I relaxed again, laughing at myself for my irrational fear. I was like a kid around a camp fire, telling creepy stories to frighten my friends, but scaring myself more than anybody. I breathed out and thought about something much more pleasant – my upcoming weekend with my boyfriend, Jake. It was his birthday next Saturday and as a surprise, I had booked a room for us at one of Big Town’s flashest hotels, as well as a table at one of its leading restaurants. We were going to celebrate him turning twenty-nine in style. I couldn’t wait.

But even with that happy thought in my mind, I couldn’t shake the quiver of uneasiness that snaked down my spine. I berated myself. What the hell was the matter with me this morning? I was jumpier than a bigamist at a family gathering.

A stunning moment of clarity swept over me. I was ignoring my instincts. Something was hinky, but I wasn’t listening to myself. That’s how people got themselves killed. I stopped running immediately and turned around. I was going home.

As I did, I noticed a glint from something ahead of me in the darkness. I realised that it was a car with its lights off at exactly the same moment that its high beams flicked on. Its engine gunned and it drove straight at me.

I froze. It was my worst nightmare, but my brain simply would not communicate with my legs. No doubt about it, I’d grown soft since my over-protective sergeant had come to Little Town. I screamed to myself to
move
and finally neurons connected with neurons again and I began to run. Not away from the car, but towards it, reaching up to turn off my headlight.

The car drove towards me and I ran towards its harsh light. I was quite good at judging distances, being a reasonable shot. When I thought it was the best time, at the last second I veered to the right into the darkness of the wild scrubby coastal vegetation that flanked the road. I kept running. The car tried to swerve after me, but its momentum carried it one hundred metres further down the road before it shuddered to a screeching halt, reversing with squealing tyres and recklessly ploughing into the vegetation after me.

I was a sitting duck in that high beam, the gentle rain misting in the dazzling light surrounding me. On the positive side though, it did provide me with much needed illumination as I stumbled over the prickly, low-lying, salt-tolerant plants that grew profusely in the sandy soil. The plants scratched my legs through my tracksuit pants as I thrashed through the vegetation, my breathing stertorous, my heart hammering. Without any warning, I made a ninety-degree turn right, away from the lights, running sideways for ten metres before turning again and doubling back towards the road, hoping the driver hadn’t noticed my u-turn.

He had. The car also spun in a u-turn, chasing after me relentlessly, high beam pinning me in its glare again. I sped up, self-preservation lending wings to my feet. I desperately ran as fast as I could, arms and legs pumping, tripping over plants, lungs bursting, until I hit the road. I threw my head left and then right, trying to decide which direction to head. In the end I went where a car couldn’t travel and that was straight ahead. I sprinted towards the giant old mango tree on the other side of the road that grew next to the high fence surrounding the nudist community. Local boys had been climbing up its branches for decades, peeping over the fence and learning a lot about female anatomy in the process.

The car sped straight ahead, following me, wildly flying across the road and screeching to a stop, mere centimetres from the trunk of the mango tree. The driver’s door flung open and a tall, well-built man stepped out into the rain.

“Tessie Fuller!” he shouted loudly in the silence. “Come and play with me, lovely.”

It was Red Bycraft.

My heart doubled up on its already thumping beat. I struggled to calm down and control my emotions, needing to think and plan clearly. I was standing a bare two metres away from him on the other side of the huge trunk, pressed up against its reassuring girth, holding my breath. I thought my lungs would explode.

“Tessie!” he shouted out again. “I’m waiting for you.”

As quietly as possibly, I climbed the tree, grabbing low lying branches and using the knobbly trunk for footholds, memories flooding back as I did. I was very familiar with this tree myself, and I’m embarrassed to admit that my girlfriends and I had climbed it a number of times as teenagers, despite our condescending comments to the boys in town for doing the same. We’d been just as curious about men’s bodies as they were about women’s, although the middle-aged paunches and wrinkly appendages we’d spied in the nudist community had almost turned us all into committed lifelong virgins.

Climbing with cautious silence, I made only slow progress up the trunk catching glimpses of Red through the branches. I was thankful that his continued taunting helped cover any noise I made as I moved.

He grew angry, cursed with an impatient nature and a short fuse. “Where the
fuck
are you? I know you’re close by and I want to play. You’re making me wait. When I find you, I am going to make you pay for that,” he threatened, waving his arm in the air, grasping something in his hand. “And guess what, Tessie? I have a gun of my own now.”

That wasn’t welcome news and although I strained my eyes in the gloom, I couldn’t see what type it was or even if it really was a handgun he was brandishing so dangerously. But I sure wasn’t waiting around to find out either.

Still climbing, I reached a branch that dangled over the fence to the nudist community. I slid myself along it slowly trying to be quiet, getting soaked in the process. I neared the fence, intending on dropping down into the grounds of the community and escaping from him that way. He noticed the movement of me scraping along the branch though, and turned his head up towards me. I peered down at his face with its mane of wavy golden hair, now longer than the last time I’d seen him and glistening with rain. He grinned in delight when he spotted me, his white teeth bright in the gloom of the rainy dawn.

“Hello, Tessie lovely,” he laughed, pointing his gun in my direction. “Long time, no see. Have you missed me? Come on down, now. I want to play with you.”

“Go to hell,” I replied instead. I swung myself over the fence into the nudist community, landing hard and slipping on the wet paving bricks that surrounded its ‘Come Together’ pool and spa, situated at the back of the complex. Everything in the community was named after a Beatles’ song. Its founder, ironically named George Harrison himself, was a huge fan who boasted that he’d gone to primary school with John Lennon back in Liverpool in the late forties. Or so he claimed.

George Harrison’s manhood had been severed in an horrific hedge-trimming accident early last year, which only goes to show how inadvisable it is to garden in the nude. With the nearest hospital a ninety minute drive away, it had fallen to me to calm down the hysterical pack of nudists, provide him with first aid to stem the blood flow, locate the lopped tip, pack it in ice and speed him to meet the ambulance racing towards us from Big Town. After a delicate and lengthy operation at the hospital, it was successfully reattached. I’d given my hands a good wash after that incident, but I couldn’t scrub the memory from my brain.

Mr Harrison had been understandably grateful to me for ensuring that he hadn’t suffered a permanent penectomy and gifted me a lifetime membership of the nudist community. I was yet to take up the offer, being rather fussy about exactly who I allowed to see me naked. Currently Jake was the only one on the list.

I laid on my back, stunned for a moment from my hard landing, gazing up at the heavens as the rain fell on my face. An angel appeared in my vision and I smiled up at it because it was watching over me. It smiled back. Suddenly coming to my senses, I realised with a horrified start that it was in fact Red, his beautiful face surrounded by his golden hair, leaning over the fence looking down at me, grinning. I scrambled hurriedly to my feet, flinging myself behind the pool filter shed, narrowly avoiding a bullet that thudded into the thatched straw. He wouldn’t shoot to kill, but he would shoot to disable so he could take his time with me afterwards. I wasn’t going to let that happen because he was a bloody terrible shot and he’d probably kill me. I took refuge behind the shed, hunched over, my breathing ragged. Water dripped off me everywhere.

With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and pressed speed dial for the police house.

The Sarge took a while to answer, groaning sleepily when he realised it was me. “I didn’t feel like running this morning, Tessie,” he grumbled straight away, not bothering to greet me. “It’s raining in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Red Bycraft’s after me,” I said, speaking quickly and keeping my voice low, my eyes constantly on Red. “I’m in the pool area at the nudist community on Beach Road, but I’m going to have to move on to somewhere else. I’m not safe here. He’s about to climb the fence. He’s armed with some kind of handgun and I only have my knife. Hurry!”

He hung up and I knew he was mobilising, stopping only long enough to gather his gear. But even though we lived in a small town, it would still be ten minutes at least before he turned up. I could count on him to take me seriously any time I rang him for help, night or day. When he’d first arrived in town, he’d thought I was crazy for carrying a knife with me everywhere, but it hadn’t taken him too long to realise that I wasn’t hysterical or paranoid – the Bycrafts really were out to get me.

Red had shoved his gun into the waistband of his jeans to free up both hands as he climbed over the fence. I watched him carefully, thinking that I should take the opportunity to flee. But I badly wanted to see him banged up again and not roaming around free, mocking me. So instead, I made a snap decision and rushed out to ram him at the very moment he landed with a thump, unsteady on his feet on the wet pavers. The force of my impact made him slip to the ground heavily. As he fell, he grabbed out at me, clutching my arms and pulling me down on top of him.

I immediately reached towards his jeans to secure his gun, but he moved swiftly, capturing me by the wrists, clasping me cruelly.

“No, you don’t, lovely,” he warned. “You don’t want me telling Jakey that you were trying to get your hands down my pants, do you?”

He shouldn’t have mentioned Jake, because I didn’t need reminding at that moment that the despicable Red was my much-loved boyfriend’s older brother. How such a horrible family of demons as the Bycrafts had brought forth a gem of a man like my Jake was one of the world’s enduring mysteries.

I struggled furiously to free my arms, but he only held on tighter. While it meant that I wasn’t able to reach for his gun or my knife, neither was he, so we were at an impasse. Red’s hoodie and t-shirt had ridden up when he’d slipped over and I couldn’t escape the sight of the obscene tattoo he had inked on his taut honey-brown stomach of him raping, stabbing and strangling a woman who strongly resembled me. She was smiling in ecstasy as he did the sick deed. He told me once he’d had the tattoo done so that he could relive his favourite fantasy about me every day when he was in jail.

“The Sarge is on his way,” I warned him coldly.

He smiled up at me lazily, the ten-centimetre scar I’d given him on his neck when I was fifteen only enhancing his rakish attractiveness. “I don’t care. We’re together again at last, Tessie. You’re a hard woman to get near. Especially with that lovesick copper hanging around you all the time.”

I ignored the jibe – everybody knew the Sarge was engaged.

“I’m going to sit on you until the Sarge gets here.”

“Good, because I can’t tell you much I’m loving it. Let me get you in a better position though,” he said and wriggled his hips around, pushing me back a bit until I was astride his pelvis. “Oh yeah, that’s real good for me.”

He groaned with pleasure and moved against me suggestively.

“Stop it!” I insisted in disgust, attempting to get off him. He held me down, his hands fast around my wrists.

“Not a chance,” he laughed nastily, continuing to thrust himself against me. His growing excitement was evident through his jeans. “You’re giving me a hard-on already.”

“You’re repulsive,” I spat out. “Let me go!”

“No way! Why should Jakey have all the fun with you? He’s not good at sharing his playthings.”

He yanked on my wrists and pulled me down towards him, trying to kiss me. I twisted my head and his lips landed on my cheek instead of my mouth. He flicked out his tongue and licked my face with relish from my chin up to my eye. I jerked back in revulsion, but he pulled me towards him again, clamping his mouth onto mine and forcing his tongue inside.

Nauseous at the unwelcome intimacy, I bit down on his tongue, hard enough to taste blood. He gave a muffled scream, releasing one of my hands to crack me one across the chin, flinging my head sideways.
Damn, that hurt!

I righted myself, moving my jaw around experimentally to check that it was okay, as I reached my free hand down to grab my knife from its sheath. Problem was that he simultaneously reached for his gun with his free hand. Not liking those odds, I fisted my fingers instead and punched him solidly in the stomach, the impact forcing him to free my other hand as well as dropping his gun to the ground.