Stonemouth полностью

‘You better get behind me,’ Phelpie says, moving slowly towards Jel. And, in the midst of this, just in the way Jel sort of shrinks, bringing her arms in, and moves towards Phelpie, pressing close to him while he puts a protective arm round her shoulders, I realise, of course: Jel and Phelpie. They’re an item.

‘You got a gun or anything?’ Ryan asks. He’s also trying to position himself somewhere behind Phelpie, though without making it too obvious.

‘No,’ Phelpie says. ‘I’ve got fuck-all.’ He takes his phone out with the free hand not holding Jel’s shoulder. ‘Calling your dad.’

Fraser looks wild, hair messed, blood about his mouth and smeared across one cheek, his face ruddy. He’s carrying the gun down at his thigh. Big-looking thing. Flat.

‘Automatic handgun, not a revolver,’ I say into Ellie’s phone, like this makes any fucking difference. I stop the call. I look at Ellie’s phone screen. I had a Nokia like this myself. I find the phone book, flick down to the Fs. Ryan tries to get Jel to move behind Phelpie, who is edging backwards and slowly holding both hands up and out, palms forward, fingers spread.

‘All right, Frase?’ I hear him say, trying to sound calm.

‘Fuck off!’ Fraser yells, only six or seven metres away now. ‘You keep the fuck out of this, Phelpie!’

‘Aw, I’m just sayin, like, Frase—’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Fraser screams, still striding forwards.

We’ve all sort of pulled back a little without even noticing, except Ferg, who seems immobile, frozen with fear or something, off to one side, still with his phone in front of him, pointing at Fraser now so he must have swivelled a bit. The rest of us have retreated; the blankets and towels are in front of us. I’m furthest back, then Ryan, Jel and Phelpie.

I could still run. I can’t — I’m not going to — but maybe I should. Too late now anyway. It’s all too late. Oh fuck, this mad fucker’s going to fucking kill me. I’m fucking dead. I wait for some revelation, to discover I am religious after all, or some feeling of resignation or something, but I just feel annoyed, concerned. I feel some fear, but it’s not bowel-loosening, not trembling or collapsing terror, just a sort of acknowledgement that this could be it and it all ends here and, well, what a bastard, eh?

Fraser’s maybe five metres away. He brings the gun up, pointing at me. He looks at something over my shoulder, his face contorting with some emotion I’m not even sure I can decipher.

I have to look round, though I glance down at the phone in my hand as I do, and thumb the call button.

And of course it’s Ellie, running towards us through the last shallows of the surf like she thinks she’s the fucking cavalry.

‘Fraser!’ she yells, though I can hardly hear. Movement somewhere to our left, south, as I turn back to look into the eyes of Ellie’s brother over the top of the gun.

‘You fucking leave him—’ Jel starts screaming, and Ryan and Phelpie both have to grab her as Fraser and I glare at each other.

‘We shoulda fuckin hunted you down five fuckin years ago, you cu—’ Fraser is saying, quite quietly now, when something bounces off his head from the right, knocking him staggering to the side as whatever it was goes somersaulting up into the air. It’s a mobile phone, as thrown by Ferg, who starts towards Fraser, taking a single giant leaping step as Fraser turns, only half staggering now, recovering, and points the gun at Ferg.

The noise of the shot is quite flat: a single sharp point of sound, then nothing, and even most of that sound energy lost in the wide expanse of nothing around us. Fraser wasn’t quite steady when he fired and the recoil sends his right arm back and makes him stagger a little further back again.

Ferg folds, clutching at his right side, then pitches forward onto his knees. ‘Fucking aow, ya bastard!’ he bellows, then, still kneeling, looks at the palm of the hand he’s holding against the bottom right part of his ribs. It comes away covered in blood. He looks up at Fraser. ‘Cunt,’ he says calmly, as his face goes grey. He collapses back on his haunches and rolls over onto his left side, going foetal, holding both hands over his wound.

Jel is screaming and kicking and writhing in Ryan and Phelpie’s arms. It looks like it’s taking all their combined strength to keep her there.

Fraser shakes his head and points the gun back at my head. I can hear Ellie somewhere behind me, shouting, as the movement I glimpsed earlier resolves into two grey-black wolfhounds coming tearing across the sands, darting between Fraser and the area of blankets and towels. Fraser jerks back from them, gun hand going up. The gun fires again and the shot tears the air over my head. The wolfhounds are turning hard, barking furiously now as they come back towards us. Fraser points the gun at the dogs, starts firing.