Nesbitt shoots. Lots. I thought he’d be better than he is.
The Hunter’s squatted down and is on the phone and then shooting back at Nesbitt and I’m almost on her. But she’s made the call now. I’m running fast toward her. She turns and shoots at me but misses badly. She’s spooked. Nesbitt shoots at her but the Hunter is off, running down the slope toward Pilot’s house. She’s fast but I think I can reach her before she gets there. I’m lurching down the slope but the slope is helping the Hunter too and she reaches the patio and she’s shooting everything. Everything. It’s like some Hollywood movie gone mad.
I reach her but she’s pulling at the vines and falling backward toward me to the ground. Backward, black shiny hair in a ponytail moving toward me, her hand still gripping the vines, though I know from her body that she’s already dead.
She lands on the ground. Her face is blank. There’s a bullet hole, small, deep and perfectly round, in her forehead.
And Gabriel is kneeling there, his gun pointing at me. His arm straight. His face blank too.
“It’s me,” I shout, holding out my arms just in case.
Nesbitt skids to a halt beside me, saying, “And me.” Then he says, “Shit!”
Pilot is lying on the floor, slumped sideways. The little girl is kneeling beside her, holding her hand. There are two red stains on Pilot’s body, one on her shoulder and one on her stomach.
Gabriel leans over Pilot, feeling for a pulse. “She’s still alive.”
I tell him, “There were four Hunters watching the house. They’ve phoned in, contacted base or whatever they do. We have to go.”
“There might be more at the car. They may have got Van.”
Nesbitt says, “I’ll check. If I’m not back with the car in two minutes you’ll know there’s trouble.” And he’s gone.
Gabriel crouches down to the level of the girl and speaks to her slowly and quietly in French. She doesn’t say anything and is still holding Pilot’s hand. Gabriel asks her something. She nods. He takes Pilot’s hand from her and she runs inside the house.
I go to the side of the house and climb onto a low wall from where I can see down the road, and I hear the engine before I see our 4x4 reversing at high speed toward us. Van and Nesbitt are inside.
I go back to Gabriel. “Nesbitt’s here.” There’s a screech of car tires at the other side of the house to confirm it.
Gabriel picks up Pilot and she screams.
Gabriel says, “I told the girl to get whatever she needs. We’re going in one minute.”
And he carries Pilot round the side of the house.
Ten seconds later the girl appears, wearing clumpy boots and carrying a small, pale pink rucksack that looks like it’s going to burst open. I go to her and grab her hand. But she snatches it away and runs round the corner of the house to the car.
On the Road
We’re in the 4x4, hurtling along a track, probably away fast enough but no one dares say it yet. The way Nesbitt has been driving we’re more likely to be killed in a car crash than by Hunters’ bullets.
Gabriel and I are sitting in the back of the car. Pilot is laid out across us, her bare feet on my lap. Surprisingly they smell of peppermint. But the main smell in the car is fear. The air is heavy with it. We’ve been driving for three hours and hardly spoken: every minute further away feels like we really have escaped. I can see the side of Van’s face and her jaw is more relaxed now but even she was scared. Van has given Pilot a potion to take the pain away and thankfully she’s been asleep since she took it. Up to then her screams were getting to me, getting to us all, I think.
I turn to Gabriel. He’s holding a cloth over Pilot’s stomach. The cloth is all blood now. Pilot looks like she won’t survive another minute but she looked like that half an hour ago. Two Hunter bullets are still in her. Van took one look at the wounds and said she couldn’t remove the bullet in Pilot’s stomach and, the way she said it, I knew that was it. There was nothing we could do. It would just be a matter of time before Pilot would die.
The girl is kneeling in the footwell by Gabriel’s legs, smoothing back Pilot’s hair and whispering to her.
Gabriel asks me, “You OK?”
I don’t know. I say yes and turn away to stare out the window.
“Well, I’m not,” Nesbitt says. “I’m desperate for a piss.”
The car comes to a sliding stop. We’re in low hills, farmland. Who knows where. Nesbitt switches the engine off and gets out. The rest of us sit in silence, letting the dust settle.
Nesbitt stands by the car and pees. “Boy, do I need this.”
Van asks Gabriel, “How’s Pilot’s pulse?”
“Faint. Slow.”
“She has strong healing powers but the poison from the bullets will eventually overpower everything.”