Dead People. Ewart Hutton
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of lights over the earth-moving machinery.
He got into the pickup, and we set off. Lurching and swaying on the rough track. No one speaking. One of those ramrod silences. I watched the track unrolling in the headlights, waiting for the moment to break it.
I saw the ground rise ahead and leaned forward into the gap between the front seats. ‘After we go over that rise we’ll be out of sight of your camp.’
‘So?’ he asked, puzzled.
‘When you’ve gone over the top, slow right down, as if you’re negotiating a deep puddle or something, but don’t stop.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t want them to know that I’m getting out.’
‘What the hell do you want to get out for?’ Jeff protested.
‘Who’s “them”, Sergeant?’ Tessa asked, picking up on the important question.
‘I don’t know, Doctor, it’s just a hunch that I want to run with.’
‘This is crazy.’ Jeff shook his head despairingly.
‘Be careful,’ Tessa said, turning round. This time, as she looked at me, I hoped that she was seeing a little bit of the Apache in my soul.
I paused, crouched down, with the door open to get the feel for the car’s motion, and then tumbled myself out of the cab, and rolled a couple of times with the momentum. And stayed down, flat on the ground, still and quiet. Which was not Apache training, but more to do with the fact that I had winded myself.
I sucked in air, and watched Jeff’s brake lights flicker like an overworked Aldis lamp as he continued up the track. If there were anyone out there watching, hopefully they would assume that I was still in the car.
Or was I just being crazy? Allowing a spook impulse to drive me to mad and essentially pointless acts? I suppressed the thought. Just as I had already buried the one that told me I was showing off for Tessa’s benefit.
I kept low and worked myself up along the hidden side of the rise to the top of the saddle. At that point I dropped to the ground and crawled over, keeping my head below the skyline, until I could see down into the construction camp.
Donnie was working on setting up the lighting. Standing on top of the machines, moving over them like stepping stones, stringing lamps onto an invisible wire. As I adjusted to the soft swish of the wind and the backdrop of the night, I started to hear the sounds of the generator and a radio playing rock music coming up from the camp.
I started to get really cold. The chill in the wind pressing in on my head, the damp cold clutch of the bare ground working its way in through my clothes. Instinct told me to move, to jump-start my circulation, but I knew that if I really wanted to find out if there was anyone else out there, I was going to have to stay totally still.
I heard the sound of the engine announcing Jeff’s return. I smiled childishly to myself. He hadn’t stayed very long. It didn’t look like an invitation for coffee and comfort had been forthcoming.
The sound drew closer. Donnie had almost finished setting up the line of lights, and nothing else moved down on the site. It looked like I had been wrong. Then Jeff’s engine note changed. Out of gear. He had stopped.
The sound of his horn was an auditory shock that broke the night up.
And it confused me. I only realized that it was a signal when I saw Donnie jump down off the top of the last earthmover in the line and trot towards a parked pickup. What had Jeff found? I tried the binoculars on him, but he was too deep in shadow.
I was about to stand up and run down the hillside to find out when I saw him. A fragmentary movement in my peripheral vision. I swung the binoculars, and when I managed to focus I picked out a dark, crouched figure slipping in and out of the shadows formed by the lights over the line of machines. Unseen by Donnie, who had now left the camp, and was driving towards Jeff’s pickup.
I got up and started running down the hill, keeping low, hoping that the figure would be too intent on his purpose to look my way. I measured out the imaginary parabola in front of me that would intersect with the line of machines.
I was back to being Geronimo until something hard, at ankle level, took my feet out from under me. I was catapulted into sudden bad momentum on a steep, stone-pocked hillside.
Which reached terminal velocity with my face in a puddle, and my mouth chewing on gravel, while I tried to pinpoint what, precisely, was wrong with my head.
I stood up. The dizziness flared up behind my eyes like the collision instant in a particle accelerator. The pain localized and seared, as if a hot poker was being thrust into my ear. I buckled, drooped onto my knees, and tensed against a spasm of nausea.
This Apache needed help.
Everything had shifted into a fuzzy state. But I could still make out Jeff and Donnie’s headlights off to the side and below me. I stood up again, slowly and carefully this time, intending to call out and attract their attention. But I soon realized that that process involved too many complex actions. Instead, I decided to keep it simple and utilize gravity. I stumbled down the slope in a series of wide, wandering lurches.
They were changing the front wheel on Jeff’s truck. I staggered into their light, feeling like a demented old hermit who has just spent the last forty days fasting on locusts and thorns.
‘There’s someone in the camp …’ I gasped, my tongue working like an unfamiliar reptile.
They leaped into Donnie’s truck and drove off with the rear cab door flapping open. It was only later that I discovered that I had been expected to get into it. Some hope.
I was still sitting on the running board of Jeff’s truck, my head in my hands, waiting for my world to come back into some sort of order, when they returned for me. ‘Are you all right?’ Jeff asked, and I heard the concern in his voice. ‘What happened?’
I knew better than to shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’ Did I have a memory of something that had suddenly appeared out of the darkness to run for a moment beside me? Or had that happened in a parallel universe? ‘I think I tripped. But I might have been nobbled.’
I heard his breath draw in. ‘God, you look terrible …’
‘What’s happened with the machinery?’
‘Don’t worry about that now. I’m going to get you into the truck. I’m going to get you to a hospital.’
I didn’t argue. I saved that for the duty nurse at the Dinas Cottage Hospital who confronted us. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we don’t have an A & E department here.’
‘He’s had an accident,’ Jeff protested.
‘Which is why you’ll need to carry on to either Newtown or Aberystwyth, where they have the proper facilities.’
I didn’t want to go to Newtown or Aberystwyth. They were too far away. I could wake up there to find an officer who outranked me telling me that I was off this case and back on the trail of mutilated sheep.
‘I want to stay here,’ I said feebly, letting go of Jeff and grabbing at one of the tubular metal wheelchairs that were lined up by the entrance desk.
‘You can’t,’ she stated officiously, trying to block me.
‘I can,’ I returned defiantly, wriggling into possession of the chair.
‘You can’t use that,’ she squealed, ‘those are for the use of our patients.’ She appealed to Jeff. ‘You’ll have to take him out of here, or I’ll have to call the police.’
‘I am the fucking police!’ I yelled at her, holding my warrant card out in front of me like a silver cross against a vampire. ‘I