The Breach by M.T. Hill

Author:M.T. Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan

The Journalist

Shep leads her deeper into the woods, tracking unknown quarry through a dampening matrix of tree limbs and undergrowth. Soon it’s too dark to see, so he puts on a headtorch and angles it low. She trails the light in dazed reverence, there in person but not properly there, as if operated by proxy. A cold nose and wet feet, and the bin bag already heavy with condensation. Her heart thuds distantly but it’s full in her mouth. Her senses are blunted but sharply present in the taste of blood. The cold is getting into her bones, but her skin is slick. The ground is soft and bodily, and the air is crisp. Strongest and strangest of all is the feeling that Shep really does want to get them lost.

Beyond a clearing, humming with invisible life, Shep and Freya reach a dilapidated brick wall that bulges precariously in several places along its length. A barrel of new-looking razor wire runs along the top, secured in place with masonry bolts. Freya doesn’t need to tell Shep that the wall is too tall for her. Instead, she stands there while Shep, silent and concentrating, searches for a good spot from which to try and get over.

‘Here,’ he says, trampling nettles. ‘They forgot to join the wire.’

She’s seen him hunt like this before – at Big Walls. One eye closed, he ducks low, digs in his toes, pushes in his fingertips, and lifts himself up. Graceful, like he’s underwater. He pushes the razor wire aside and hops back down, silent but for a tiny boot scuff on landing. It’s not just careful, it’s studious. He assesses and tests and mutters to himself.

‘How solid are your toes?’ he asks her. He angles his head towards a pair of bricks he’s worked loose. ‘Footholds here. I can give you a leg-up.’

Freya smiles weakly as Shep kneels in the mud. He cups his hands, long fingers interlacing. ‘Best you don’t think too much,’ he says. Freya steps up from his hands with a groan and feels him tense and wobble with resistance beneath her. She pushes off, not caring – not in that instant – if it hurts him. A quick sadism, cut through by the harshness of the wall on her palms. A flash of dream-Stephen climbing her body, planting his mouth above her pubic bone, working his splitting face into her lower abdomen—

Freya’s on the wall. Clumsy, but up there. Shep grins up from the dim below, teeth blue in a black frame. ‘Now straddle it,’ he says, and the fillings in his molars flash. A lurch of fear, but she does it, one leg in the everyday and one in the new, and Shep seems impressed, eager. ‘Here,’ he says. He passes her a headtorch.

‘Pull it on,’ Shep tells her. ‘Tight. Your dust mask as well. It can’t be loose.’

Freya does as she’s told.

‘Now, recce the place. Sweep left first, the far side. Can you see anyone?’

The suggestion shocks her – does

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