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in the Mess tonight. Or maybe he wouldn't, the others might see it as a sign
of weakness. You saved a colleague because it was your duty, and for no other
reason. He'd do the same for any of them and not feel anything personal, just
see that it went down on record.
On the drive back he would scribble out his report Just a brief encounter:
attacked by the enemy hurling cars off a rooftop, fought to the last. The
corporal would countersign it. And if any of those fucking rookies had
anything to say they would be court-martialled. The country was in a State of
Emergency, you couldn't afford to be squeamish. Soldiers were trained for
battle, and in battle you killed the enemy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DON'T TOUCH me, Jon, please!
Sylvia tensed, every nerve in her body rigid, tried to think of a plausible
reason which she could put into words. I've got a headache. Husbands had given
up believing that one twenty years ago. It's the wrong time of the month; he
knew already that it wasn't. I'm too tired. She'd once told him that sex was
better when you were tired because you were more relaxed.
She bit her lip, resisted the urge to knock his hand away. Please don't touch
me. I don't want you, I want my own husband back because he's out there in the
dark and cold. Alive. Oh God, Eric's alive.'
Jon wanted her tonight and there was no way short of a determined physical
resistance that she was going to stop him. She groaned, eased her legs apart.
Shut your eyes and think of England. No, think of Eric.
It was Eric in the darkness of her bed. It had to be; everything else had just
been a bad dream. No, it wasn't Eric's feel, not his way. Her mind flipped
back to the other morning and suddenly her whole body began to prickle and
tingle. There had been no fear because it was Eric ail right. Not even rape
because she had been more than willing. So strong, so fierce, every thrust so
meaningful.
Jon was lying with his full weight on top of her now. His naked flesh was
repulsively smooth, his strength barely that of a callow youth. She turned her
head away, tried to avoid his lips. Screw me then and get it over with; let me
be back with Eric.
No way was she going to make it to an orgasm. She let him ride her, her
feelings beginning to slip away like a piece of driftwood going out with an
ebbing tide. Sobbing softly to herself. Oh, Eric, I want you. I don't care
what they've done to you, I just want to be with you.
j3imly she was aware that they were no longer coupled, that he was lying
facing away from her. Oh how I hate you, Jon Quinn. This is all your fault. If
it wasn't for you I wouldn't be here now, I would be out there with Eric; like
him\
Her mind was made up. She would go to her husband. Not now, maybe not
tomorrow. But before the winter set in and trapped her here with this man who
only wanted her body.
Day after day Eric Atkinson had squatted up on that slope watching the
smallholding below him, virtually an aerial view, the cottage a matchbox
house, the two people dots which he scarcely recognised. Only the woman.
He had moved further back up the slope almost to the fringe of the big forest.
Fear ate into him day by day, the knowledge that the hairless male had the
means to kill him instantly if he got close enough, indeed he had almost done
so already. He saw him shoot a rabbit on the edge of the patch of ground where
he grew his vegetables. Unbelievable, terrifying.
The coney had been grazing a row of cabbages, had not heard the man's
approach. Its ears went up and it bounded away, a blur of grey at full speed.
Bang!
The report echoed, the hills taking it up, magnifying it. Atkinson started,
almost fell back, clutched at his ears trying to shut it out.
Bang. Ba..ng...ba..aaa...ng. Like thunder rolling before a storm. But he could
not take his eyes off the scene below. The rabbit stopped as surely as if it
had run into an invisible barrier, rolled over on to its back, the white of
its belly uppermost, legs kicking, the motions growing weaker and weaker until
finally it was still.
The man walked forward, not hurrying^ confident, the death-stick cradled under
one arm, reached down and retrieved the dead creature by its back legs,
carried it back towards the house.
Eric watched him until he disappeared inside. Still heard the killing sound.
Bang.. .baa-ng...
The same would happen to him if he ventured too close to the building. The
other had already tried to kill him once. He could run now, escape, leave this
place. He would have done so had it not been for the woman. His woman.
Instead he would watch and wait from up here. Incapable of forming any other
plan, he could think of nothing else.
The days were shorter, colder. The leaves had begun to fall from the trees
leaving the branches stark, no longer a protection against the chill westerly
winds, and the dense bracken lay brown and flattened by the rain and sleet
storms.
Eric had attempted to make himself a shelter out of dead branches and bracken
because the thorn bushes no longer shielded him from the elements. He had
worked on it for a whole day and that night a gale had demolished it. He would
have to move on up to the forest, find himself a place amongst the thick firs.
The idea did not appeal to him. The forest was alive at night, wild dogs that
howled and bayed as they hunted their prey. And people who had moved up here
crept stealthily through the trees and fled at the first sign of a stranger.
He did not seek any company other than his own and that of the woman down
below.
He was permanently hungry too. The wild fruit was becoming mildewed and sour
and he was having to rely almost solely on rowan berries. He had long since
given up setting deadfall rock traps for rabbits because it was a waste of
time. He never caught anything.
Grey skies stretched to the furthermost hills and beyond, low cloud that
brought hill-fog and fine drizzle. He shivered, knew that he would have to go
into the forest. First, though, he had to find some food of a more substantial
nature.
During the summer months he had feasted ravenously on the small tubers which
grew at the base of the long-stemmed plants with the white flower. They were
scarce now, harder to find because the flowers had died down. Armed with a
knife, one he had taken from the Quinn workshop, he embarked upon another,
more desperate, hunt for the bulbs.
It was painstaking work, his stomach urging him on. Scrabbling with his
fingers, hacking until he broke the knife blade; finding one or two, cramming
them into his mouth, spitting out the soil, obsessed with his task.
So obsessed that he did not see the snake until it was too late! The adder had
burrowed deep into a pile of dead leaves, its hibernation already begun, its
colouring rendering it almost invisible. Something awoke it, a sharp pain as
the jagged knife nicked its body. It turned, spat, struck blindly and
instinctively.
Eric Atkinson screamed, dropped the knife, stared in horror at the wriggling
reptile which was now visible, a black zig-zag on its back. Excruciating pain
and terror, revulsion. His fear of snakes went back further than his memory;
to that day when his parents had taken him to Whipsnade Zoo. He had virtually
had a fit in the reptile house, gone hysterical, angered his parents because
they did not understand, had tried to force him to overcome his phobia, had
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