Cry of the Hunter - Jack Higgins [72]
Fallon didn’t hesitate. Almost without thinking, he dropped to the ground and moved across the track. For a moment he stood poised on the edge of the embankment, straining his eyes into the darkness, and then he took a step forward and lost his balance. He rolled over and over down the bank, crashing through a plantation of young fir trees, the branches whipping his sides. The darkness became a whirling mass of coloured lights and the pain enveloped him. That terrible pain that started somewhere in his chest and flooded throughout his entire body, gripping his lungs in a paralysis so that he had to struggle for breath.
He came to rest against a larger tree and lay there for several minutes until his breathing was easier. When he got to his feet he stood swaying in the darkness, reaching out his hands before him as if looking for something to hang on to.
He started to blunder down through the plantation, the branches slashing across his face and a terrible panic moved in him and he began to run, staggering through the trees with his head bent and his right arm held up as a shield. He fell several times but each time scrambled to his feet and ran faster, as if something terrible and nameless was at his heels.
He crashed out of the plantation, caught his foot in a tussock of grass, and went sprawling down a short slope into a ditch. He clawed his way out of a foot of muddy water, soaked to the skin, and found himself on the main road. He started to run at a jog trot into the darkness, the rain lashing against his face. He didn’t know why he was running – it was simply that he had a long way to go and so very little time – so very little time.
Through the trees ahead of him he noticed a red glow staining the sky and he began to laugh foolishly. Perhaps it was hell that was waiting for him there in the darkness. He turned the bend in the road and halted. Some fifty yards along on the right hand side of the road there was a road house and a great, red neon sign sizzled in the rain. For a moment he stood there, swaying, and then he stumbled forward towards it.
He crouched down in the shelter of a low wall and peered over the top. The sound of music drifted from an open window and now and then a snatch of careless laughter. There was a car park over the wall and he moved cautiously towards the entrance. There seemed to be no one about. He moved quickly inside and ran from vehicle to vehicle trying the doors desperately. Within a few moments he had found an old van that was unlocked. He wrenched open the door and his hand probed across the dashboard. The keys were hanging where the owner had left them.
He put a foot on the running board and a hand grabbed him by the shoulder and a voice said, ‘Now then - what the hell do you think you’re doing?’
He didn’t bother to reply - he had no time for words. His hand jerked the Luger from his pocket and he turned and wiped it across the white face, dimly seen through the darkness. The man sank to the ground with a low groan and Fallon scrambled into the cab, pressed the starter, and reversed out of the car park. Within a few moments he was rushing through the darkness, the headlights slicing a path before him.
His lights picked out a white sign-post when he was still some little way from it and he braked hard and leaned out of the window to read the sign.
He was on the right road. Carlington was fifteen miles away. He moved into gear and drove away. The most the van would do was fifty and he pressed his foot flat on the boards and lay back in the seat, his hands steady on the wheel, his eyes peering into the darkness.
The night was playing tricks on him. At one moment it seemed dark and then it would lighten in some curious way. He screwed