Steven didn’t move. This didn’t feel right. Routine had kept them alive for so long and this was not routine. First Jonas had been let out, and now they were being herded towards the big shed instead of the meadow. Steven started to feel bad. He didn’t exactly feel sick, but he thought he might quite soon.
‘Why aren’t we going to the meadow?’
‘Hup!’
‘Where are we going?’ said Steven stubbornly.
The huntsman paused and then gestured vaguely at the sky. ‘Helicopter.’
They all looked up, but saw nothing, heard nothing. Even so, Maisie began to sob loudly, which set Kylie off like a twin.
The younger children continued to move, searching the sky. Even Jonas moved his weight as if he expected Steven to start walking.
But Steven didn’t.
Instinct had served Steven well in his short life, and every instinct he possessed now told him something was wrong.
‘Hup!’ said Bob Coffin, poking and pushing at Jonas and Steven to try to get them started. ‘Get on now!’
‘We’re not cows,’ said Steven, shaking him off angrily. ‘We’re not bloody
Bob Coffin calmly pulled the gun out of his pocket and pointed it at Steven’s face. Steven ducked and Jess shrieked.
‘Helicopter,’ said the huntsman flatly.
There was no helicopter, but, galvanized by the gun, they all moved up the walkway made slippery by the rain.
Jonas wasn’t leaning too heavily on Steven, but it was still awkward to walk without stumbling. They were bumpingly close – all sharp elbows and hips. The loose end of the yard-long chain that had tethered Jonas to the fence for so long swung between them, the padlock bouncing off their thighs. Steven thought he should have unlocked it at the collar end, but whatever – it didn’t seem like a big problem after the gun.
They walked down the rutted concrete ramp into the big shed.
Steven looked around him at the room he’d only ever seen half of when fully conscious – and through a crack in a wall. It was bigger than he’d thought – big enough for a couple of tractors, at least – and almost empty. There was an old wooden bench on one side of the room, where he could see three knives laid out as if for supper at a grand house: neatly, and in order of length. There was a whetstone gripped in a shiny blue metal vice, a couple of lengths of heavy chain, some shackles and spring clips and a few rusting cans; Steven recognized 3-in-1 oil and Castrol grease from Ronnie’s garage.
His heart ached to think of it.
On one wall was the electric winch, its steel cable the only thing in the shed that glinted with newness. Bolted low on the wall directly opposite was a heavy curled hook. Directly between the two was a drain and a small dark patch – the only evidence, Stephen realized, of countless animals that had been butchered on the spot – the place where the head was severed from the neck and the blood leaked out.
Beside the hook was the half-open door to the flesh room, and Steven’s stomach rolled at what was to come. The memory of being enclosed in the cold, fetid flesh was shockingly clear.
‘I don’t want to! I don’t want to!’ Maisie’s continuing sobs echoed loudly in his head, joining forces with the rain beating on the iron roof.
Even if the helicopter were directly overhead, Steven doubted that any of them would hear it now. He wondered what they might look like through a thermal-imaging camera: an odd party of white blobs shuffling together across the shed, becoming greyer in the cold of the flesh room, and then disappearing altogether once they were inside the meat. Maybe a grey foot would protrude, or a charcoal elbow – but the crew overhead would have to know what they were looking for. What they were looking
Bob Coffin turned on a flickering fluorescent strip light and squealed the shed door shut on its un-oiled runners. As the yard and the kennels and the darkening sky disappeared behind them, Steven’s instincts gifted him a powerful mental image of the stone lid of an ancient tomb closing over his head.
Jonas saw the same things they all did: the bench, the vice, the winch, the chains. But he truly
But there was something wrong …
Jonas frowned and strained his eyes, and leaned away from Steven to see as much of the small room as possible. It was dark but his eyes were adjusting, and it shouldn’t be
When he realized what he was seeing – or what he wasn’t seeing – Jonas felt the world tilt under him. He stumbled and Steven grabbed him before he could fall.
‘You OK?’
Jonas shook his head.
He wasn’t OK.
None of them were.
