Hunters: A Trilogy (63 page)

Jane kept off the drink as her stomach and back weren’t really feeling that great, instead she spent her time engaged in small-talk with everyone, studiously sticking to the story. ‘Ever since Ken’s injury we’ve been planning on ‘doing one’… we want to travel without ties and, well, we’re going at last!’ She smiled when her friends remarked how lucky they were. ‘Yeah, I guess so – really lucky, but Ken has worked hard, you know, so we thought we may as well go and make all that effort worth it.’

They also asked Mike what he was doing. He simply said that he would be tagging along with Ken and Jane for a while, ‘Then I’ll be off on some travels of my own, I guess…’ If they had known him better then perhaps they would have seen the strange glimmer in his eye.

The night was a great success and sometime after midnight the last guests had either left for home or crawled onto one of the camp beds, which Ken had erected about the empty lodge. It had been a wonderful evening, but it was still with some relief that they all crawled into their own sleeping bags for some much-needed sleep.

The following morning, after a slightly hung over breakfast, they said their final goodbyes to the stragglers and then painfully completed the final packing. Their efforts left them with a small cardboard box and a few plastic carrier bags containing the last remnants of their time in the lodge, and of their life so far.

Looking at their paltry belongings, Jane said, ‘Well, that’s not much to show for nearly forty years of life, is it?’ The reality of their decision had unexpectedly washed over her and the sight of the bare walls, lonely picture hooks and barren cupboards was a saddening one.

Ken, seeing Jane’s glum expression, walked over to join her. Standing by the kitchen sink, he said, ‘Hey, come on there now, baby… everything will be fine! New horizons, big adventures and plenty more craziness to come – what more can you want?’ He leaned over and pulled her tightly towards him with his left arm. Standing there, arm-in-arm, they gazed out of the kitchen window and looked up at the beautiful green countryside sloping upwards behind the lodge.

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Jane said. ‘We’ve had some good times here and I shall miss them, but new things await us! So, let’s just keep the memories safe, shall we?’ She turned towards him and they kissed gently.

When they parted, Ken held her at arm’s length, saying: ‘I don’t care about anything, Jane. We can sleep in a ditch for all I care, just as long as we’re together then the rest will be easy, life’s just a game anyway, nothing lasts forever.’ He smiled at her and she smiled back. They were together and that was all that mattered.

Later, they sat with Mike and did one final check of all their paperwork and finances – all those things they would never have the chance to do again, not in this place they wouldn’t. Ken had been very assiduous and the final check was a quick affair. Jane called out the item and Ken checked it off on his list. ‘Done, sold, done…’ he said, confirming the list with a quick tick of his pen. It wasn’t long before he was satisfied. ‘Right, folks, that’s it,’ he said, with a slight grin. ‘We are ready to rock, what now, Mike?’

Mike reached for the Communicator and flipped the lid open. ‘I’ll contact George and find out, shall I?’ he whispered. ‘We’re a day early, but what the hell…’ They watched in silence as he attended to the keypad.

The reply from George was almost instantaneous. ‘Be ready in fifteen minutes – ensure you are wearing the suits and that you have all taken the appropriate tablet. At exactly midday you should be in the vehicle. Good luck!’

The screen died and they looked at each other in silence, the rush of reality heading straight towards them – it was to a long time before they would hear from George again, a very long time.

‘Oh God, I’m so nervous…I just can’t tell you!’ Jane said as she stood and made her way upstairs to get changed.

Ken followed her – he knew what she meant, the butterflies in his guts were starting to grow fingernails, sharp fingernails.

Mike was as cool as ice. He had already changed into his suit and popped one of the blueys. He calmly sat on the window ledge and listened to his friends laughing upstairs. It was time to go and he was ready.

He was going to have to be, and he knew it.

Twelve minutes later, after having made their way over to the barn, hugged each other tightly, and zapped one of the Spears into its required size, with the spare tucked away in the boot as normal, they were seated inside the vehicle with their seatbelts tightly fastened. Mike switched on the Navigator and watched as a timer appeared in the top right corner.

The digital counter was clicking down. The words above the decreasing timer said it all. ‘Jumping Time: 02:27…’ The numbers counted down towards the inevitable zeros. With eyes wide and mouths as dry as cream crackers, they sat and waited. Waited for zeros all round.

It wasn’t long before those inevitable numbers arrived.

His old man had been missing for more than two weeks now, but it wasn’t reciprocated – Dwayne Tolder never missed the fiend at all, not one bit. He had long since stopped doing the chores, as there weren’t any, all he had to do was clean up behind himself and he wasn’t messy by any means, so that took hardly any time at all. Instead, the boy’s days were filled with early morning walks, fishing, reading the magazine and, above all, sketching.

Now he was free from the chains of his father’s shackles, the young man’s talent no longer lay hidden. It flourished like a lily in springtime. From the small bulb of ideas grew a beautiful stem, a stalk, topped by endless pages of pencil drawings; he sketched everything he saw, smelled, touched and heard. The ‘flowers’ he produced were wonderfully articulated upon the creased canvas of old bills and crumpled envelopes.

Yes, it was a good time for him and was only tempered by one thing, and that wasn’t even really a ‘thing’ as such. It was the dream, a horrible little play that appeared in his head every night. At some time after midnight he would have the same dream, over-and-over again. The vision he had of himself running across the oceans with a burning green stone clutched in his hand, disturbed him. He couldn’t seem to wake from the pantomime, felt himself held prisoner, clamped into place by some unseen force. He shook himself violently, trying to break free, but escape was not to be an option.

The ending was always the same, too. Red felt himself lifted and then fired, like one of those crazy ‘Human Cannonball’ folks he had watched at the fairground one time, fired into a long, black tunnel. Spiralling upwards, whirling through bright green light and rocketing towards the darkness that waited in hunger for him. His black destination took the shape of an enormous, spinning whirlpool and he was always propelled helplessly into it. Again and again, Red was launched into the darkness.

The boy’s echoing shriek became his nightly alarm call. Jerking upright in the bed, covered in sweat, he would sit with the sound of his own voice still ringing in his ears. Untangling the knotted sheets, the young man would go back to sleep. Or try to, tossing and turning until he eventually fell into a restless doze. The dream, it seemed, was the only thing that distracted him from his peaceful new life. Well, almost the only thing…

There was also a strange stirring in his loins, a hunger, one that seemed to have been brought about by the rather-revealing picture of a young lady on the second to last page of the magazine. Those long, smooth legs reached up into her tiny skirt. The white tennis shoes on the girl’s feet were brilliantly contradicted by the glossy red of her lips, and a shock of black hair, tumbling onto her slender shoulders – he almost smelled the fragrant lustre of that hair. Red didn’t remember noticing her previously, and that surprised him.

‘How come I ain’t seen her before? I must o’ read this here book a thousand times or more…’ The thoughts confused him. Still, he had found her now, and she took his breath away. It was a picture that did not leave a lot to the imagination, an imagination the young man was just starting to develop. He stared at it and felt the heat within himself. She almost seemed to smile at him and the boy swore he was able to hear her voice.

‘Any day now, my sweet, one day I will see you. One day soon…’

It was a distraction that helped to save Red from the inner pages of the magazine – he now began to spend more time looking at the girl than he did reading those familiar words about the Army, and the men in grey suits.

The time dragged by and he savoured it.

Occasionally, depending upon the wind, he would catch the sound of a vehicle slowing down on the main road as it approached the farm’s distant turning. The noise would make him pause and stand with his head tilted towards the gate, trying to catch the sound of his father’s cog-crunching gear change. There was no mistaking that noise and his pulse quickened in fearful anticipation of it every time he heard the sound of an engine. For a long time it never came, the noise of the engine accelerating away, humming softly into the distance as whoever it was, kept on driving towards town. After a while he learned to discard that awful sense of trepidation that filled him every time he heard the sound.

Red had taken to living off the land, and to his great shame the boy had used his father’s shotgun on several occasions. After each successful hunting trip, he would carry his prey back to the kitchen, whereupon the brace of wild birds, which he had shot, would be treated with a respectful reverence as he plucked and gutted their ruby-feathered bodies. They, like the fish, provided a feast fit for a king. After cleaning his plate, he would carefully inspect the remains of his meal, proceeding to pick it spotlessly clean with his teeth, enjoying the birds even more than the fish, sitting and noisily sucking the marrow from within their fragile carcasses. By the time Red had finished there were never more than a handful of splintered bones remaining in witness to the meal.

He also kept a careful eye on the small supply of vegetables that remained in the plot behind the kitchen. There were still a few turnips in there, along with a handful of carrots and some onions, too. At one stage, the boy had eaten nothing but apples for three days on end, the tree down by the lake was starting to bear fruit and he made the most of its tasty gifts. He was careful with all the plants and animals on the farm, and they rewarded him with their bounty. It was a meagre existence, but he revelled in the freedom. Plus, he had the woman in the magazine to keep him distracted when times became too lonely.

One day the noise of the slowing vehicle didn’t fade away.

As he stood and listened, Red heard the dreaded sound of wheels rumbling across the cattle grid. In horror he listened to the engine accelerate as the vehicle began its journey down the dirt track leading towards the farm.

‘Poppa’s back, shit!’ He raced into the house and hurriedly put the twelve-gauge back into the cupboard. Eyes racing around the house, looking for any mess, the boy stood and trembled. ‘No! I don’t want him back. No, please, I’m happy here, please no!’ He very nearly sobbed the thoughts out loud. Taking a deep breath, he stepped onto the porch and prepared for his father. Red felt himself shaking as he tried to force the fear away.

As it headed his way, the noise of the approaching vehicle began to growl. The boy knew that if the noise did belong to his father, then the older man must have bought himself a new truck. The engine noise echoing towards him sounded nothing like the worn-out old smoke-blower, which his father mistreated so badly. Red sometimes felt more sympathy for the old Chevy than he did for himself. No, this engine sounded like the most sweetly tuned V8 he’d ever heard.

‘Yeah, listen to that baby growl!’ he thought, watching the trail of dust head towards the farm. Then, in a cloud of the same red dust, and amidst the loud honking of an air-horn, the young man’s life changed, and changed radically.

Red’s face broke into a toothy grin as he ran down from the wooden steps and onto the weed-riddled patch of earth in front of the house. A brown pickup truck skidded to a halt in front of the young man’s bare feet.

It was the truck he had hitched a lift in before, weeks before.

‘I thought they’d forgotten…’ he thought. Mind awhirl, he ran towards the truck. Racing onto the driveway, he heard their words of greeting.

‘Hey there, big guy, how are things going?’ the driver shouted through the open window. With a wide grin, the man stepped out of the truck. Leaving the door open behind him, he stood and waited for the other two people to join him. The tall man with the jet-black hair, and the white-toothed smile, came around the front of the truck where he was soon joined by an equally dark-haired woman.

Red smiled, huge teeth shining whitely in the bright sunshine. ‘Howdy folks, howdo ma’am…’ he said, happily. ‘Gee, it’s so good to see you all – I ain’t seen folk fer days, week’s maybes!’ Red grinned again and ran over to shake hands with them. ‘How are you doing ma’am? You weren’t looking’ so fine before, the last time I seen ya, you look better now tho’, a whole heap better! If’n you don’ mind me saying so, sir?’ he said to the woman, whilst looking at the driver hesitantly. The big man still had an icy air about him, and although he was smiling, the expression stopped at his eyes.

‘Still, he shore is friendly enough,’ Red thought. The kid guessed it was just his own imagination and turned to listen whilst the woman told him that her fever was all better now.

The tall, dark-haired man with wide shoulders said his name was Mike. Then the woman reached out with her hand, and upon shaking Red’s large paw, told him that her name was Jane. Putting her arm around the slightly shorter of the two men, she introduced the other man. ‘This is my husband, and he goes by the name of Ken, or Kenny,’ she said, with a smile.

Ken reached out and Red felt the steel once again. ‘How are you, sir?’ he asked, looking at the man.

‘Yeah, I’m good, Red – how about you, pal?’ Ken said, staring at the boy.

Red said he was fine and looked at the truck sitting behind them, engine ticking as it cooled. He looked back to Ken, saying: ‘That shore sounds like a finely-tuned motor, yes sir, it must be finely fettled!’ Ken said he would let him see under the hood some time, he actually said ‘bonnet’, but Red guessed he meant hood as Ken had slapped the brown metal cover when he said it.