Hunters: A Trilogy (91 page)

With that in mind, they attended the festivities with wholeheartedness and partied long and hard into the night, in fact it way past the ‘night’, as such, when most of them took their leave, it was well into the next day, if complete accuracy is to be a requirement at this stage.

Ken and Red had provided meat of such fine quality, the half-a-cow, mentioned previously, was exactly that and it sat side-by-side with another of Ken’s renowned suckling pigs, the sizzling carcasses filling the air with the appetising smell of fat and juices as the wonderful aroma spread across the farm, trapped within the smoke that lifted lazily from the pit filled with glowing charcoal.

Before their guests had arrived, Michael and Junior were tasked with keeping the meat rotating, a job that involved constant monitoring, and one they relished.

‘You’ll have eaten the whole bloody lot before anyone gets here!’ Ken joshed with them as he caught sight of Red Junior, the boy slicing yet another strip of meat from the carcass. Junior, whilst laughing at Ken, wolfed the meat down.

Ken grinned and shook his head, saying: ‘Give us a hand with this cider, will you, Mikey? This barrel’s too heavy for me.’ Michael jogged over to where Ken was rolling a wooden keg from within the barn. ‘I believe it’s the done-thing, you know… to test a homemade brew before the guests arrive?’ Ken said. ‘After all, we wouldn’t want to poison anybody now, would we, lads?’ Between them they hefted the barrel onto a log trestle, which Ken had made for just this moment. He broke the seal and waited whilst Jane ran across with several glasses in hand.

‘Stand back,’ she said. ‘There’s a cider expert in the house!’

This was true, for without her advice none of them would have had a clue as to what they were doing all those weeks ago, when the idea was first announced. But, with Jane’s knowledge and some trial and error, they had put the abundance of green apples from Mike’s Tree to good use.

Ken twisted the tap, with a creak and a slight hiss, Jane’s out-held glass filled with the cloudy nectar. ‘Oh, now just look at that!’ she exclaimed, lifting the drink to her lips. She took a sip, rolled her eyes, did a fine imitation of a rather pompous wine taster, and then in total contrast, swigged down the remaining cider in one gulp. Placing the back of her hand across her mouth, Jane belched softly and laughed. ‘Oops, I’m so sorry, boys! Oh yeah, that is really, really, good! Who’d like a…’ In a rush she was jostled to one side whilst the men all tried to get the next glass.

The concoction tasted quite excellent and was filled with the flavour of all those wonderful apples. It also had a sting in the tail, almost reminiscent of the potion contained within the silver flask. They each had another glassful and then stood there smacking their lips for a while, before reluctantly getting back to the task of preparing for their guests.

When those guests began arriving, they had, as was usual in these parts, fetched all sorts of wonderful food and drink along; the wooden tables lining the veranda were soon bulging with treats galore. It was a fine scene, piles of food, twinkling glasses and gleaming cutlery sat beneath tall candle sticks holding enormous, homemade beeswax candles. Their yellow glow caused long shadows to flicker across towards the main fire, whereupon they were cast away, like Demons, by the much brighter light of its roaring blaze.

They ate and drank long into the night, the sound of laughter, tinkling glasses and happy voices filled the air. Those sounds, along with a soft ambience caused by friendship, cider, mellow wines and ice-cold beers, flowed across the courtyard and floated out into the eternity of a darkened night. No Demons would have dared to call on them during that particular evening, not if they knew what was good for them they wouldn’t.

Not one of the guests mentioned the impending departure of their hosts, only stories of town life, comments on Jane’s flowers, the quality of the cider and other such trivia were discussed that night. The much-spoken-about cider flowed easily, and along with the roasted meat, soon disappeared with remarkable speed. It was a grand evening and many of their friends stayed at the farm until the beautiful, cerise glow, which began climbing into the sky behind the dark woods to the east, signalled the arrival of a new dawn. It was then and only then that they really made an effort to say goodbye – by five-am Ken and the others were alone again.

Like vampires, all their friends had disappeared before the coming of daybreak. Come six-thirty, the house was deserted, save for Ken and the weary group of helpers who had only just managed to put the last of the tables away and dry the final plate. They were tired beyond belief.

He took charge. ‘Right, come on then folks – that’s it done, all tidied up and squared away,’ Ken said. ‘Let’s hit the sack, eh? First one up makes the brews, and don’t dare disturb us until noon, at the very earliest…’ He laughed loudly, and with Jane in hand, headed toward the extension.

Without one word of dissent the rest of them headed for their beds.

Ken’s prediction of a midday cup of tea was to prove somewhat optimistic, in fact, most of them didn’t surface until well past the middle of the day, whereupon they proceeded to do nothing more than lounge around the farm.

The following day was to be the first of their training.

***

Ken gathered them all in the kitchen after breakfast. ‘Grab a cuppa and then come and sit on the porch,’ he said, with a grin. Doing as he ordered, they filtered outside to see what it was he had to say. They found him leaning against the balustrade of the patio in his usual manner; he was wearing a black tee-shirt and green, combat-style trousers, which hung neatly over the sun bleached beige of his old desert boots. As he looked down whilst waiting for them all to take a seat, sinewy arms folded across his broad chest, Ken appeared to be the quintessential military instructor.

He had placed one of the wooden tables from the party on the patio, only this time there were no sausage rolls or chicken drumsticks piled high in readiness. This time the table was playing host to a different kind of thing altogether, items for a party like one they had never attended before.

The table was covered in a neat array of weapons, guns of all shapes and sizes lay neatly lined up on top of the green cloth which covered the table. Seeing the weapons laying there, the dull glow of their brutish metal flanks glinting in the morning sunshine, his students – for it was now Ken’s opportunity to teach – became strangely quiet. This was real, no more joking, no more grand toasts, just a tall man with big arms and some even bigger guns – lots of guns.

Ken began. ‘Right, as we now know, we’re going back to the place where we saw Mikey’s dad…’ he said, looking at Michael. ‘To the place where we saw Jack having his last stand.’ They nodded. Ken continued. ‘Fair enough, then,’ he said. ‘But if it was up to me, and this bit is up to me, then we’d go back with as many guns and as much training as we could possibly squeeze in!’ Again, they nodded in silent agreement to his words.

He stared at the table on his left and then back to his watching recruits. ‘With that in mind,’ he growled, ‘I want you all to pay attention and to try to remember a saying that my old Sergeant Major once said to me: “Sweat saves blood, but brains save both!” He was right, and from now on I intend to show you why.’

And so it began – their transformation into Hunters at the hands of one Kenneth Robinson, a long-time professional soldier and well-practiced Hunter in his own right. Oh, and it must be said, a killer of some considerable experience and repute.

Over the next week, Ken showed them all he knew about guns, for his was a considerable knowledge and he painstakingly imparted as much of it as he could. How guns worked, what to do when they stopped working, how to clean guns and how to make sure they, his students, didn’t shoot themselves with those very same guns – by the time he had finished, all of them, including Maggie, had become very efficient in the art of weapon-handling.

Bleeding hands, lumps of skin sliced from knuckles and fingers, painfully trapped by fast-moving working parts; just a few of the ways in which weapons were able to damage a frail, human hand. Ken’s Hunters discovered many more ways along the path of their training – by the end of the week they’d all seen just about enough of Ken and his guns.

‘When are we gonna get to fire ‘em, Kenny, huh? My hands are raw, man!’ Red said. He held the heavy weapon aloft as if it weighed no more than a drinking straw, his enormous hands seeming as though they would just as easily have been able to twist the rifle into a knot.

The answer he received was a simple one.

‘Tomorrow, my friend, tomorrow we shall indulge in one of my most favourite activities!’ Then, whilst grinning like a fox, Ken said that he liked to call that particular activity: ‘Shooting the shit out of everything in sight!’

Red whooped with excitement, his sudden burst of enthusiasm was infectious and in no time at all the whole gang were talking about the fun they would have the next day. They were in the most part wrong because ‘shooting the shit out of everything in sight’ turned out to be extremely hard work.

It, the shooting, started easily enough, ten rounds each, firstly from their pistols, highly-accurate Glocks with magazines full of hollow-point bullets, which had a nasty habit of making rather large holes in anything they hit. Then the same drill using their ‘Longs’, as Ken called them. Brand-new Kalashnikov assault rifles, curved thirty-round magazines filled with high-velocity 7.62mm ammunition.

It was fun to take part, feeling the recoil and watching the little holes appearing in the wooden targets that Ken had arranged in random patterns along the bottom of the old riverbed. He would shout ‘Left!’ and then ‘Right!’ Each time they would raise the weapons into the aim and fire two shots at the nominated targets. The loud noise sent shockwaves reverberating into their ears and birds flapping into the sky.

After an hour, Ken went about individually coaching them in some different methods of holding their guns, a little bit tighter here, or perhaps a small change to the way the firer was using the trigger, ‘trigger-operation’ he called it. Whatever the name was didn’t make a difference, it was his knowledge which did that. There didn’t seem to be a lot that Ken didn’t know about this stuff, and with his help they began to get the idea, began to have some real fun, yes, lots of fun was had by all and they enjoyed it.

For a first effort they had done well, and Ken told them so.

‘Good job, guys, well done! But, remember that we’re only thirty yards away and standing here like spare pricks at a whore’s wedding. Let’s see how we do when the going gets tougher, eh? When we leap around a bit, let’s see then, shall we?’ he said, seriously.

For almost the whole of the week he made them stay on the shooting range, relentless in his desire to make them reach the required standard. That was when the pain had started and the fun stopped. Anyone in doubt of that required standard had only to watch Ken in action as he demonstrated what it was he wanted from them. The flowing, almost natural way in which he moved from cover to cover, snapping-off two quick shots and then moving again, his hands a blur as he changed magazines or carried out the stoppage-drills if one of the guns jammed, was almost akin to some deadly ballet.

He was a complete natural, or so they thought.

At the end of one such demonstration, Ken said, ‘Listen, I need you to understand something – I didn’t get this way by chance. No, I trained my arse off for years and years; it’s not something you can just do, no matter what you’ve seen at the movies. It takes a lot of training, and then some more training and then, well…basically you have to work at it and work bloody hard, too, okay?’

It was okay and Ken was an outstanding role-model. He was also an excellent instructor, very strict and one who never accepted second-best, but he was humorous and caring as well. His love of the subject and his knowledge of it, were plain for all to see.

They all, to coin his phrase: ‘trained their arses off.’

He told them: ‘I don’t need you to be poncey target-shooters. Yes, having a neat little group of shots all in the middle of the target looks good! But we’re combat-shooting here and…’ he held up his rifle and shook it, ‘…this baby fires 7.62mm high-velocity bullets, and they kick arse! Hit someone in the centre of their body-mass and they’ll be going down!’

In demonstration he raised the rifle, and without aiming through the sights, merely looking over the top like a shot-gunner would, Ken fired two rounds, allowing his relaxed strength to control the recoil of the lead-spewing weapon. Two shots, fired as fast as they were able to blink. When they went forward and looked at the target, Ken pointed to the two holes.

‘That’s what I mean,’ he said. ‘One in the chest and one in the bollocks, this guy wouldn’t be going anywhere except down, and down for good – understand?’

They understood and redoubled their efforts.

Those efforts began to pay dividends, the shooting became more accurate and their movements became much more economical, infinitely smoother and with far less effort. They began to learn the art, an art that can only be learned by paying in sweat and blood. There were no tears – this group of Hunters were currently all done with the crying thing. At least for now they were.

Ken had said that Maggie and Jane should sit out some of the more physical activities; the women looked at him scornfully. Everyone laughed when Maggie replied in an exaggerated voice. ‘Kenneth, my dear, I may be old but I was slaying parts of this Demon when you and your world were nothing more than a hot lump of water-covered lava…’ She laughed, rolled to one side and emptied half a clip into the head of a wooden target to their front. Then, moving quickly, she clambered back to her feet, expertly unloaded the pistol, and showed him the empty breech. ‘Showing my pistol clear, Sir,’ she said, sweetly.

Ken couldn’t restrain himself, the hard veneer of the instructor fell away and he laughed loudly. ‘Now, that’s the spirit! You’re some old bird, Maggie, some old bird!’ he chuckled.