It would have been easy to end Mullen before he even woke but Mann could not entertain bald murder, warranted though it might be. Will would have to face him in a fight, only then could Mann justify to himself the helping of this Mullen brother into God’s hands to answer for his sins. Mann heard the loud bangs and shouts from the room above where Gunnar was helping one of the other brothers to repent, and it was these sudden sounds that woke Will and brought him staggering to his feet. Mann saw the weals on his face and remembered again the woman who had broken her nails on him.
‘Preacher?’ The surprise and confusion left Will Mullen’s face and a sly smile appeared in their place. ‘Rosie,’ he continued as he calculated the odds of the situation he’d awoken to, ‘Oh Rosie, you bad girl.’ Mullen began a circling manoeuvre hoping to outflank Mann who held his position between Mullen and the door.
‘You may look dog dumb,’ Mann said, ‘and behave like one, but you aren’t as stupid as I'd thought.’ Mann noticed a flicker of uncertainty in Will’s eye. As always, a preacher full of threat was a new experience for most. Mann enjoyed the moment. ‘I am here at your sister’s behest, and that of the woman who marked you.’
Will lifted his hand to the scabs on his face and sneered, ‘Are you here for my confession?’
‘We’re beyond that Will Mullen,’ Mann spat once into the palm of each of his hands, ‘Way beyond.’
Mullen must have wondered where the danger was coming from, Mann supposed. Mullen was half a head taller, broad like a barrel and his longer reach delivered three quick jabs that rattled the teeth in Mann’s head and opened a cut under his eye. Rosie must have wondered too, Mann realized, as she slipped into the room like a wraith to spirit away her child while Mann at best, perhaps, distracted her older brother. But it was she herself distracted Will long enough for Mann to deliver the kill. When Will saw his sister his eyes left Mann and he opened his mouth to hurl curses at her. Mann seized his chance and ducked behind his opponent cupping his spit slick hand over Will’s nose and mouth, while gripping his neck tight in the crook of his other arm. Will roared with muffled anger and bucked and spun about the room like a new saddled horse, while trying with both hands to lever Mann’s arm from around his neck.
‘Cover your face,’ Mann yelled at Rosie, ‘Cover the boy and muffle yourself.’ Rosie looked both confused and defiant. ‘Do it now.’ Mann shouted and with some reluctance she slowly pulled her muffler into place and threw a blanket over her boy just as Will slammed himself backwards into a wall, painfully crushing Mann and winding him in the process. No matter, he thought, it’s done. He ticks down now.
Will turned quickly to vent his rage and indignation on Mann but he checked himself mid-shout. His hands slowly rose to his throat and his eyes began to leak tears. His tread became unsteady and he staggered sideways. Mann got to his own feet shakily and ducked past Will as he headed across the room to Rosie. ‘Keep your face covered.’ He said grimly.
‘What have you done?’ She whispered, her eyes showing fearful above her muffler. As if in answer Will choked once and then a second time and dropped to his knees.
Rosie was as appalled as she was fascinated now as she watched her brother’s last moments. His watering eyes bulging with fear and the effort to breathe, his blue tinged lips unable to hold back the river of drool that ran from his mouth. The helpless clawing at his throat as if he could clear the clamp that held it shut.
She turned fearful eyes on Mann. ‘How have you done this? How is it you infect him but you still live?’ She asked in a frightened voice.
‘God’s will.’ Mann said.
'May that same God forgive you.' She replied and turned to look again at her brother.
Mann placed a hand on Rosie’s arm. ‘Don’t watch.’ He said.
She twisted violently away from him. ‘Don’t touch me.’ She hissed.
‘You wished this.’
She backed further away, shaking her head, ‘Never this.’ She said. ‘Oh Lord, what have I done? I let the devil in through my door.’
Gunnar entered the room and took in the convulsing body of Will Mullen. He pulled his muffler up over his face and turned to see Rosie backed into a corner and John Mann standing stock still his eyes closed as if in prayer.
‘The baby?’ Gunnar asked.
Mann opened his eyes and gave Gunnar a pained look and pushed past him out of the room.
Chapter Ten
Mann gunned the truck down the rutted track. The rain had long cleared and the moon now stood high in a bright sky, lighting the way between the trees. Beside him Gunnar bounced violently again and placed one hand up against the roof of the cab to brace against being bucked from the bench seat.
‘John,’ he said, angered, ‘The child.’ Mann glanced in the cab’s mirror to see Rosie Mullen and the boy, Padroic, jerking around in the truck’s open flat bed. The sight of the child quelled his anger at the boy’s mother and he eased his foot off the accelerator.
‘She’s young.’ Gunnar said. ‘She hadn’t thought to see her brother die.’
‘Her brother die like that.’
‘What?’ Gunnar asked puzzled.
‘She hadn’t thought to see me end him with the choke you mean.’ Gunnar remained mute so Mann continued. ‘She asked for her brothers dead. I didn’t think to look for a pretty means, like a knife.’
‘She’ll come around, if you make an effort with her.’
‘Why would I need to? She has her child, why is she travelling with us now?’
‘We couldn’t leave her in that house.’
‘You couldn’t.’
Gunnar turned to Mann, ‘ What got into you John, this isn’t how you are?’
Mann thumped the steering wheel angrily, ‘Don’t think to know me.’ He shouted, filling the cab with a booming voice.
Gunnar reached into his pocket and slapped David’s locket down on the seat between them. ‘I removed it prettily from Donal’s neck.’ Gunnar said quietly before snapping his muffler into place and setting his eyes firmly back on the road ahead.
In the flat bed behind the truck, Rosie Mullen heard the raised voices in the cab and smiled. She slapped Pad's hand away from a hank of her hair.
Chapter Eleven
The atmosphere is as thick as this broth thought Mann as he spooned more of the warm green liquid out of the cracked bowl and into his mouth.
When they’d arrived back at the hut with Rosie and Pad, Ma May had been far from happy to see a Mullen on her land but when Mann made it clear to her that Rosie’s brothers would no longer be a threat she had thawed slightly, if only for the child’s sake, and allowed them both into her hut.
Rosie for her part proved a sullen guest. She seated herself as far from Mann as she could get and shot him hostile looks from time to time, which he chose to ignore. She didn’t show any better manners to her host and one glance at all the decaying yellow and blue striped vaccine boxes tacked around the walls, in echo of the bird corpses outside, seemed enough to decide Rosie that Ma May was crazed.
If Rosie showed any sweetness at all it was towards Gunnar and he responded to it, though he had nothing but scowls for Mann and they had not exchanged a word since their return.
The broth tasted good and warmed Mann through. He still felt shaken by the earlier violence in spite of the fact it was a fight of his choosing this time. He had accompanied Ma May to collect the food for the meal. She had led him beyond the field where she lived and through woodland so thick with trees Mann didn't think he'd be able to retrace his steps to her shack again if she chose to abandon him. But once beyond the woods she led him to an enclosure, behind a line of hollowed out houses, that had once been allotted to people who grew their own crops. The area was surrounded by a high, wire fence that Ma May had breached long ago and the enclosure itself was dotted about with small wooden sheds and broken glass houses, and plastic butts to collect rainwater. At first glance it seemed to Mann an abandoned place, rank with dead weeds and stands of
nettles. But Ma May had moved about here and there, stopping at one food cache after another. She led him to a clamp of potatoes, another of carrots, she dug some horseradish and, from beneath a great spreading tree on the margin, collected fallen acorns. She handed each prize to Mann to carry in a scooped wooden trug.
He watched her as she worked, her ease of movement belied her age and she scarcely needed the cane she carried using it only to part grasses or move hanks of vegetation aside. The white cane Mann had retrieved for her from the Mullen’s parlour was all she had requested in trade for information on their whereabouts. It had seemed a small price to him but she had been immensely grateful for its return and it had seemed to seal a larger bargain between them.
The old woman wore a grey smocked shirt, with a small, round mirror pinned at her breast, and boyish black trousers that barely reached her ankles but it was her headscarf Mann pondered most. It was silk, red with pink patterning and it was pulled low to her eyebrows in front and knotted securely behind her head. It was functional but had been chosen for its beauty with a magpie’s eye.
The more he saw the more he realized there was much smoke and shadow play about her. Her cabin, hung about with bird corpses, warned the world to stay away. As a preacher he had entered many a home of the mad and the desperate. Their surroundings always reflected the battered rooms in their heads, chaotic, dark and stifling but that wasn’t the case inside her home, or her mind he decided. She played at being demented in order to survive, nothing more.
‘This plot holds a wealth of hidden treasure.’ He said and Ma May eyed him with sudden suspicion. He retreated a pace and showed her his empty hands, ‘We are no threat to you.’ He added.
She pursed her lips. 'Your friend is dangerous because he is angry and careless. He is, even now, being seduced by that girl.'
'You always jump to read people so quickly?' Mann said.
'It's a talent I think we share.' Ma May replied and after a moment's hesitation John Mann gave a slight nod of his head in recognition of the fact. 'We trust our instincts,' Ma May continued, 'it's how we've lived as long as we have.'
'Gunnar doesn't hide his light.'
'Unlike the man who is his equal in danger but hides it behind a preacher's cloth.' She gazed at him frankly for a moment, 'You like sharp apples?’ she said.
Back in her hut Ma May had prepared the broth and baked the green apples, while Mann had watched Gunnar and Rosie whispering to each other and sometimes laughing quietly and it unsettled him after Ma May's words of warning. But he also recognised that his feelings were shot through with ribbons of jealousy. Gunnar had a relaxed way with the girl, an ease that Mann had never known, could never know, with a woman. He thought of Keen. He missed her more than he could fathom or voice in meaningful words and there was an ache in his chest that gnawed at him whenever he thought of her. He had spent more time than this apart from her but could always return to her side when he chose. Now he had no idea when he would see her again.
When the meal was finished Ma May surprised Mann by producing a wind-up radio for the eight o'clock broadcast and he told her as much.
‘I’m a good citizen,’ she said with mock affront, ‘Besides, if you want to avoid the scorpions be sure you know which stone they are nesting under.’
Chapter Twelve
Russell switched off the broadcast before it was half done. Her shock was profound and her mind raced to make sense of what she had just heard. It was bad enough that John's name had just topped a list of wanted fugitives, but her own name had also been mentioned in a medical update. 'The Government is keeping a close eye on Dr Ellen Russell's work in recent developments in pursuit of a vaccine.' She felt sickened when she replayed the words in her head. What the hell did they mean? This could only be a warning she realised, a thinly disguised warning shot. But who was behind it? Colonel Smith, the nominal head of the Facility, had neither the heft nor the finesse for such a play.
She peered out of the farmhouse window into the dark yard where Vincent was working by torchlight beneath the raised bonnet of the car. She thanked the stars that he hadn’t heard the broadcast, seen her reaction to it, else he might have asked questions. She knew her deceptions wouldn’t fly for long but she had hoped for another day’s grace at least.
She reasoned that perhaps Private Evans had returned to the Facility after all. Technically a deserter, running from the viaduct where his colleagues lay dead, he should be shot but if he had kept his wits about him, and she had championed his quick wits, then he could have spun a different version of events perhaps painting himself in a better light and her in a darker one. She could think of no other explanation for this sudden dip in her fortunes, and the fact that it would be harder for her now to avoid scrutiny. There was nothing she could immediately do to rescue the situation but she felt a sudden and powerful need to hide herself, rid herself of the lab scrubs she always favoured and deflect attention by finding a civilian disguise.
Earlier they had found a wardrobe of men’s clothes for Vincent to raid as he couldn’t travel in army fatigues if they hoped to pass unnoticed, but it was obvious to her, as she had run her hand over them, that they were cut to fit a broader man than John. She rued the fact that not all the pieces she held fit neatly into a finished puzzle yet but some held vivid enough glimpses of the whole picture to satisfy her for the moment.
She climbed the darkened stairway now and could feel John’s presence in the house. The very paper on the walls held traces of him, she knew it for a certainty. She entered the largest bedroom and threw wide the door to the woman Keen’s wardrobe.
Chapter Thirteen
Exhaustion tore at his lungs as Mann pushed onwards, his legs leaden and shaking with effort. Head high teasels reached out and tore at his face and hands as he blundered through them. The cacophony of the hound pack on his trail grew louder as it drew nearer, hot on the scent of an imminent kill.
He awoke with a shout and threw off the sacking blankets that covered him. It took a few moments in the weak dawn light to recognize that he was still on the floor in Ma May’s hut. His shout had awoken Gunnar, who sat up alert to danger, and the child Pad who whimpered in alarm. Mann wiped at the sweat on his face and tried to calm his ragged breathing.
‘Still safe.’ Came the cracked voice of Ma May. She held Pad on her lap, rocking him now to quiet him. Mann whispered a low apology in reply.
Gunnar rose and crossed to a small window, raking the black curtain aside. ‘I wouldn’t sleep easy with a price on my head either. Where’s Rosie?’ He continued, turning to survey the inside of the hut again.
‘Flown.’ Said Ma May.
‘When?’ Snapped Gunnar.
‘Before the moon sank, left her child and betrayed her whispered promises to you too.’
‘What promises?’ Mann asked coming fully alert.
‘You watched her leave and raised no alarm?’ Said Gunnar.
‘Anyone who leaves like a thief in the night is probably a thief and are better let go.’ Replied Ma May. Gunnar checked his belt for his blades, ‘If she’d been a threat to anyone I wouldn’t have let her leave.’ The old woman continued.
‘What promises were made?’ Mann repeated.
‘She knows where you are headed.’ Ma May said, ‘She also knows of course that such information will fetch her a reward.’
Mann felt again the shiver of unease he’d experienced hours earlier when he’d been publicly named an outlaw, and he wondered what it meant for his chances now. Strange too to hear Russell's name on air, he hadn’t thought of her in days and wondered briefly where she was. Gunnar’s hard words came quietly but still broke through Mann's thoughts.
‘I can own to my mistakes crone.’ Gunnar growled at Ma May.
‘You told her about Chenko?’ Mann asked.
‘She wanted to journey with us and I told her how dangerous our road would be.’ Gunnar said bitterly. ‘I guess she chose another path.’
‘And chose to leave
her child.’ Ma May added.
‘Perhaps she felt he’d be safer here.’ Gunnar said.
‘Perhaps she only used him to gain your trust and never intended to mind him once free of her brothers.'
Gunnar struggled with the suggestion that he’d been duped so easily but knew any objection would sound hollow in the face of the evidence. ‘Then I’ll take the boy.’ He said.
‘And what?’ Said Ma May.
‘Fend.’ Shouted Gunnar.
Ma May laughed, ‘I’d reckon his chances higher with the foxes outside.’
‘Must you heap scorn on all I say?’ Gunnar spat, ‘I was gulled like a teen, I admit to it, and your goading cannot make me feel worse than I do now, but I will fix this.’
‘Some things can’t be fixed.’ Said Ma May as she unwrapped swaddling from around Pad until his small bare feet were exposed. ‘Perhaps the Mullen girl feared that being caught with this child would pin her as a witch.’
‘What clap-trap now?’ Asked Gunnar. Ma May held the child forward and Mann and Gunnar both moved closer in the dim light to see what she was talking about. Padroic had very small, dirt streaked feet, so pale they seemed luminous in the half-light of the hut but even in the gloom both men could clearly see that the boy had webbed toes. Gunnar hissed and spat on the floor. Mann reached a tentative hand out to take one small foot, squeezing it gently to splay the toes to see the webbing more clearly. Pad gurgled with pleasure. ‘Careful.’ Gunnar said.