Nine Mil by Robert Ryan

Author:Robert Ryan [Ryan, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-7757-5
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-02-25T20:42:00+00:00

Twenty-six

THE PINE BARRENS, NEW JERSEY. MONDAY DECEMBER 2

IT WAS A BIG house that had seen better times. Two storeys, eight rooms, grand in its day, but it needed paint and pesticides and a new roof. It had once been in a large clearing, but the forest had slowly colonised a lot of it, so it looked threatened and hunted. A collection of buildings were sprinkled around it, all the way down to the fast-flowing stream that cut through the sandy soil on its way to the Aker River.

They pushed Don and Ed into what had once been the main living room, now filled with crude homemade furniture. Ed felt the rifle butt hit him square between the shoulders and he went down hard, puncturing his hands with splinters from the boards. They did the same to Don, and he landed heavily next to Ed, making him wonder just how strong the floor was. They pulled themselves upright and looked around.

The walls were damp, with what had once been floral wallpaper, but now was blackened by mould, peeling off the walls. The ceiling was cracked and bowing alarmingly. The only decorations were two full gun racks and a selection of hunting bows and crossbows.

The two men were both tall and weatherbeaten, somewhere in their mid-forties Ed reckoned, and both dressed in rough workwear, baseball caps (one John Deere, one Ocean Spray) and Caterpillar-style boots. There had been six or seven in the woods, but these were the two that had brought them here, Lou and Fred, but he didn’t know which was which, they hadn’t volunteered much information when they herded them forward with a shotgun in their back. It didn’t matter anyway, they looked pretty interchangeable, with chiselled cheek bones, thin lips and blue, blue eyes under brownish hair that looked like it had been cut with a power tool.

Don examined the cuts and bruises on his arms, dabbed at the nicks on his cheeks the undergrowth had made. ‘I need a tetanus jab. You got anything for these cuts?’ he asked.

‘ATF,’ spat Lou or Fred suddenly.

‘Fuckin’ jackbooted Nazis,’ said Fred or Lou.

‘How many of ya are there?’ The accent was strange, not New Jersey, somewhere further south.

‘Two,’ said Don.

Ed rolled over in time to see him kicked.

Ed stayed calm. One had a Marlin rifle, the other a Remington shotgun. Too easy to provoke them into killing the two of them and burying them with the Explorer. Wouldn’t be found until … well, wouldn’t be found.

‘We ain’t ATF—’

‘Fuckin’ jackbooted Nazis I said!’ The Marlin barrel thwacked across his cheek and Ed spun back round, his head bouncing off the floor. He stayed there breathing hard, trying to contain himself. He could feel that anger there, telling him he was down, down in the pecking order, had to fight his way back up. Not against rifles, though.

‘Look Lou—’ began Don.

‘Fred,’ corrected the man. OK, so Fred is the one with the slight cast to his eye, the big silver American Eagle belt buckle, and the rifle.

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