Carved in Stone: Monochrome Destiny (31 page)

The engine
roared as pistons pounded and the transmission spun.  The car flew up the
lane.

In
the mirror, Andrew’s house became smaller and smaller and with a bend it
disappeared from view entirely.

Andrew
was dressed, she noticed.  He must have thrown the shirt and jeans on when
he went to get the keys.  He now sat in the driving seat concentrating on
the road.

They
hurtled up the road as Andrew pushed the Audi to its limit.  They weren’t
free.  They weren’t safe.  Not yet.  Fear was painted all over
Andrew’s body.  He would not relax until they were out of
Porthmollek
.

Climbing
the lane to the main road, they surged through a tunnel of trees.  Robyn
knew these woods.  She knew the species that lived together to make the
ever changing forest that surrounded the town.  She also knew that they
didn’t live as harmoniously as they appeared to.  No, each species fought
for the same resources that the others needed, wanted.  The trees grew
tall to claim the light, and they grew wide and deep roots to claim the
water.  The animals fought over food and resources to build their nests.

The
people of
Porthmollek
were the same.  They
fought for resources, killed for them, but they didn’t understand the
difference.  Nature was a rough and wild thing because it couldn’t see
reason, it couldn’t compromise or share.  People were supposed to be on a
higher level, they were supposed to feel and empathise and understand. 
What James and his cronies had put into place, and what the town had allowed
them to do, brought
Porthmollek’s
population back
down to the level of animals.  They had wiped thousands of years of
evolution from their own species.

Andrew
swore
,
bringing Robyn’s drifting mind back to
reality.  She saw one last glimpse of the array of trees before everything
went dark and the car braked, hard.

Robyn
held out her hands, ready to brace, not understanding the reason for their
sudden deceleration.

“A
car,” Andrew’s voice was a whisper, as if the noise would alert the other
vehicle to their presence, “there’s another car coming this way.”

Andrew
shifted gears and the reverse lights lit up.

“I
hope they didn’t see us.”  Andrew slung his arm over the back of Robyn’s
chair, turned his head to face down the road, back the way they had come, and
pushed the accelerator to the floor.

Robyn
grabbed the armrest and sat upright, rigid.  It wasn’t a car crash that
she feared: it was what lay ahead of them, what headed towards them on this
small narrow lane that had seconds ago been their means of escape.

Staring
at the road ahead she saw an errant beam of light.  It caught a tree in
its path and swept down again.  She sat forwards, straining to see.  She
noticed it again, further to the right.  It illuminated the trees for
longer, sweeping to the right and getting stronger before disappearing again.

“They’re
speeding up.”  She whispered to Andrew as the headlights rounded another
turn.  She cursed herself for not picking up Sanger’s shotgun.

“Damn!”
Andrew swerved around a bend.

“They’re
going to see us any second.” Her words were shaky, panicked and she couldn’t
calm them.

“Hang
on.”  Andrew simultaneously turned to face front again and slammed on the brakes. 
The tyres slipped and skidded on loose gravel, the rear of the car lit up in a
red glow and the car slid in a straight line. “Out, now!” He ordered.

Pulling
on the handle before the car had come to a complete
stop,
Robyn pushed open the door and unclipped her belt.  The car had slowed but
was still moving backwards and she hesitated.

“Now!”
Andrew shouted
as headlights swept across them.

She
felt the hand on her back, she felt the shove as Andrew pushed her out of the
moving vehicle and then she felt only air.

Robyn’s
feet hit down hard, the momentum of Andrew’s shove throwing her body clear of
the door as the car continued to roll backwards.  Overbalanced and
leaning, she had no choice but to run as soon as her feet touched the ground.

The
Audi rolled slowly down the incline unoccupied, two doors wide open and Robyn
turned to see Andrew on the bank heading for the church.  She ran.

Feet
moving over gravel and then grass, Robyn caught Andrew’s outstretched
hand.  He grabbed onto her and pulled her up the bank.

Behind
them, they could hear the familiar sound of tyre rubber sliding on gravel as
the vehicle that had moments ago foiled their departure, came to a sudden
stop.  Within seconds, three car doors slammed.

Not
yet at the top of the incline, Robyn didn’t waste any time looking back. 
She’d already guessed that it was James, George and David hot in pursuit.

The
valley spread out before them when they reached the top of the bank.  The
church stood embedded in the grey swathe of grass, black and unforgiving on
this moonless night, it was a stark monolith.  Across the valley the trees
beckoned, offering shelter.  Andrew pulled Robyn down the bank and skirted
the church, staying in the shadows as they headed for the bottom of the valley. 

With
the church looming to their left, they following the graveyard wall, ran past
the headstones and headed out into open grass.  They needed to cross the
valley in order to climb the opposite bank and find sanctuary in the
trees.  But they were exposed.  No shadows could hide them as they
ran, black against grey, through the grass.

A
crack echoed out into the night.  The sound bounced up the valley. 
Something smacked sharply into stone as the shot hit the church.  A second
crack, hit closer and Robyn didn’t know if it was the stone walls or the
gravestones that had taken the brunt of the impact, but she could hear stone
chippings being torn from their sculpted form and shattering out into the
night.

Her
body slammed into the ground and she lay flat, sprawled across the grass. 
At the first shot, it had taken her brain a microsecond to make her legs
buckle, a microsecond to compute the origin of the noise and a further
microsecond to throw herself to the ground.  The second shot had rung out
so quickly after the first, that she had not hit the grass before it was
made.  Andrew, who lay sprawled beside her, was the first up.

“Come
on” he panicked, as he tugged on her hand and dragged her across the
hillside.  “He’s reloading”.

Andrew
dragged her across the dip in the valley and up the incline of the other
side.  It was steeper than she remembered and she struggled to keep up
Andrew’s pace as he pulled her along with great urgency.  She could see
the trees and the welcoming darkness that they made, but they seemed so far away.

The
pain from her stomach was howling.

A
soft click echoed out, not the deafening noise of a shot, something else and
Andrew immediately said “Down.”

Robyn
dropped.

The
click, she now realised, was the gun barrel being reclosed after the new shells
had been slotted inside.  The shooter didn’t hesitate.  Shot thudded
into the ground a few feet to her left.  Either he could see them but his
shot was off or he couldn’t see them but he knew roughly where we were. 
Whatever the answer, Robyn wasn’t looking forwards to the second
cartridge.  She could feel her whole body shaking as she fought the scream
in her throat.  She wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and sob
until the inevitable shot tore through her body and rendered it useless.

Andrew’s
hand curled over Robyn’s.  He had crawled through the grass that separated
their prone bodies.  His touch was warm, temperature warm, sensuously warm
and calming warm.  She felt not only his warmth drift into her, but his
strength.  She had time to blink before the second shot rang out and hit
close enough that she could feel its impact with the ground.

“Now.”
 Andrew
dragged her to her feet.

Robyn
knew that they had little time before the shotgun was reloaded and she put all
she had into running for the treeline.  She gritted her teeth and pumped
her legs as fast as they could go.

With
Andrew’s help, they got up the bank.

The
trees loomed over them.  Their forms black against the grey of night
sky.  They were giant, timeless soldiers sent to protect them and they
dived into the thicket just as shot took a chunk out of the trunk next to
Robyn’s head.

The gate was
closed.

They’d
plunging through the darkness at an incredible pace.  Robyn had only just been
able to make out the branches, roots, and other objects determined to hinder
them.  Still it had taken hours to get there.

Andrew
had led her on a path parallel to the cliff and headed back to town instead of
making the obvious move and heading back to her cottage.  The path had
been overgrown and barely noticeable, right up to the point where it had
abruptly ended near
Porthmollek
.  The walkway
had been washed away by some old disaster, leaving an
untraversable
gap between two sheer rock faces.  That must have been why the church had
been abandoned.

Andrew
had pulled Robyn along an alternative route, his knowledge of the area assured
despite the lack of light.  He walked deftly and helped her over muddy
ground, down an embankment and over the river where it was shallow enough to
step across.

They
had entered
Porthmollek
as the sky had begun to
lighten and made their way through the quiet streets, deserted roads and alleys
to the harbour.

James
knew everything about his grandson, or so he thought, but Andrew hoped that he
didn’t know about the boat.  It appeared that Andrew had taken the
surprising step of purchasing the vessel after their date.  The purchase
had been private, nothing that he had discussed with James and he now hoped
that they could sail away and escape.

When
they caught sight of the boat, Robyn had been elated, until Andrew’s hand had
tensed in hers.  Andrew pushed her back against a wall, putting stone
between her and the expanse of trapped water in front of them.

“The
gate’s shut,” he whispered, putting his hands on her shoulders and holding her
in place.

“Shouldn’t
it be?” She knew nothing about sailing but had assumed that the gate was
normally shut at night to protect the boats, to stop them from being stolen.

“It’s
never shut.”  His face was so close to hers that their noses almost
touched.  His voice was the quietest of whispers.

“Never?”
She could feel
the anxiety pouring over her as if Andrew was radiating it.

“It’s
a storm gate.  They only shut it when there’s a storm.  It’s only job
is to protect the harbour from flooding.”  Andrew tentatively looked
around the corner at what she assumed was the gate.

“They
don’t normally shut it at night?”

“No,
the fishing fleet needs access to the harbour at all hours.  Their hours
are dictated by the tide.”

Stupidly,
she hadn’t thought of that. “Are they expecting a storm?”

Andrew
slowly shook his head. 

So
the gate was shut and there wasn’t a storm coming.  What did that mean?

“Can
we open it?”

“Yes,
but that’s not the problem.”  Andrew’s eyes turned to hers, luminous pale
blue swirling in a rich pool of cerulean.  They would have been startling
even if she could see colour elsewhere.  “It shouldn’t be shut.”

“Shouldn’t? 
You think they shut it.”  They were out of options, no car, no boat and the
sun would be up soon making it more difficult to hide.  How many people
would be out searching for them? How far could they get if they started
now?  God, she was so tired.  How long had they been running?

“It’s
not just that,” Andrew whispered, “The tide is heading out, has been for a
while.  If we don’t get that boat out of the harbour quickly, it’ll be
trapped there.  There won’t be enough water to clear the harbour
entrance.”

Robyn’s
eyes locked to Andrew’s, both of them looking to the other for answers, looking
to the other for strength.  Robyn had no epiphany.  There was no
alternative plan.  They were trapped and they were running out of
energy.  Defeat felt inevitable.

Andrew
must have seen her resignation for he pushed away from her and stood tall. 
A resolve had come into his eyes.  “I’m opening it,” he stated and started
towards the harbour.

As
the sky lightened further, Andrew ran towards the great behemoth of harbour
wall that obscured the view of the sea.  Running in the shadows as the dim
light offered him little protection from prying eyes, he skirted around the
edge of the trapped pool of water.  Robyn followed and joined him at the
far end of the harbour wall, by the gate.

The
gate was metal, dark and it now closed the gap between the two harbour
walls.  To Robyn’s surprise it had a walkway, with railings, across the
top of it.  When the gate was closed it allowed passage to the other side
of the harbour without the need to walk all the way around.

Directly
across from the gate and hunkered up against the other harbour wall, was what
Robyn could only describe as a small shack.  Constructed of stone with one
small window, it was the size of a small garden shed.  Roofed in slate and
erected in the same stone as the harbour wall itself, some attempt had been
made to make the little building blend in, but the new mortar stood out as a
stark white.  It was the only building on an otherwise empty expanse of
concrete.

“That’s
where we’re going,” Andrew whispered, nodding his head in the direction of the
shack, “It houses the gate mechanism.  We can lower it from there.” 
He looked around at the lifeless harbour, knowing that they would be easily
seen as they stepped over the walkway but they had no choice but to persevere.

“Are
you ready for this?”

Andrew’s
stare was intense and Robyn knew what he meant to say.  She understood the
risks that they needed to take.  There didn’t appear to be anyone around,
but appearances could be deceiving and their pursuers were armed.  The
chances of them getting out of this had become infinitesimally small.

“Yes.” 
She gave the smallest of nods.

Andrew
took her hand.

They
crossed the gate quickly but with great care as the metal transferred any
sounds from their footsteps out to the surroundings like a giant speaker. 
Robyn was glad that they both wore trainers because with the sea calm, the
breeze light and the town asleep, there was little to cover any sounds that
they made.

The
water was good ten feet below them, gently lapping up against the metal gate,
as they crossed, and she knew that each undulation of the waves pulled the tide
away from them.  With every second it was less and less likely that they
could get the boat out.

The
shack was fitted with a wooden side door that was fastened with a large
combination padlock.  Andrew reached for the lock and entered a
code.  “I took notice the one time I watched the harbourmaster unlock it.”

Andrew
pulled the door outwards, revealing a pitch black interior.  There was no
time to try to look into the darkness because, as soon as the door opened,
Robyn heard Andrew gasp.  The sound came too late to avoid the oncoming
freight train that knocked her, sprawling, to the ground.