Before I Go by Francesca McMahon

Author:Francesca McMahon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781739885335
Publisher: MacInk Publishing

CHAPTER 4

DESPERATE

It had been three days.

Her dad wasn’t back yet and neither were the men who’d gone out with their guns. She only knew that last fact because, every so often, she would see Dr Cora standing outside the lab staring at the mountain. Waiting.

Cora would stand there for a long time until one of her white-coated lackeys would come and get her for something.

As Jamie watched her watch the mountainside, she came to realise that the men out hunting were sent by Cora. Which meant that now, more than ever, Artemis was in danger. And her dad was nowhere in sight.

She had tried to call him on the satellite phone he’d left her, “in case of emergencies” he’d said, but each time she’d called he hadn’t answered. What was the point of telling her to use it in an emergency if he wasn’t there to receive the emergence?

On the fourth day, Jamie had been sent out to the market to grab some fruits and meat for her auntie. She’d been told off for pacing too much in the house and was sent to do some chores to stop her wearing a hole into the floor.

It was while she was there, ignoring the biting words of the nearby kids and their parents, that she heard the hollering.

The growls of an engine being revved echoed into the air echoed all around, swallowed immediately by the cheers of the three men that rode the four-wheeled machines. One held his gun high in the air, stood up on the bike as it rolled to a stop. The other two followed closely behind, yelling just as loudly and excitedly.

Jamie was nervous to go closer. There was a large group of people surrounding the men, cheering along with them. The people here hated her; getting too close could be a problem.

But her anxiety about why they were so happy forced her to walk towards them, keeping enough of a distance to be out of sight. She was glad she’d kept that distance when she caught sight of the blood. The sight of it alone nearly made her gag.

There, strung across the leather of the first man's bike seat, was a dead wolf.

Its eyes were open wide, glassy and dead. It looked as if the poor creature had died of shock, its tongue hanging listlessly from the open mouth, spattered with blood. The once beautiful grey fur was now covered in its own blood and matted with mud and snow from where, Jamie could only assume, it had been drug across the ground.

“That’ll teach them!” one person from the crowd cried, gleeful.

One of the men, the one who had led the group into the town, stepped towards the wolf and leant against the quad bike, smiling as someone took a photo of him with the dead animal.

“Found this beast close to the mountains, probably after our sheep again.”

An angry grumble grew among the crowd; Jamie could only assume that they had experience with wolves going after their animals.

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