The Fourth Bear полностью

“You ask a lot of questions for a very puny and insignificant human, don’t you?” said the Gingerbreadman as he stopped the search for the gun and stared at Jack with just the kind of look you wouldn’t want from a psychopath.

“It’s my job,” replied Jack, sensing that if he didn’t find the gun and gain the high ground, he might be pushing up daisies quite soon.

“Who needs a gun anyway?” asked the Gingerbreadman, catching Jack by the wrist. He tried to pull away but was held fast in the big cookie’s iron grip. The Gingerbreadman smiled cruelly as he placed his other hand on Jack’s body, meaning to pull his arm off, just as you might twist the leg off a roast chicken on the dinner table.

“I like this bit,” he announced, his cherry eyes flashing cruelly. His grip tightened around Jack’s wrist, and he started to pull. He smiled. He was having fun. Jack’s face contorted with the pain, and he gave a cry of agony as he felt the tendons stretch tight in his arm.

But the Gingerbreadman didn’t pull his arm off. Abruptly, he relaxed his hold. Jack looked up at him, but the Gingerbreadman was looking past Jack, his licorice eyebrows raised in exclamation.

“Careful,” he said to Mary, who had found the Holland & Holland and was now pointing it at him. “You might hurt someone.”

Mary slid off the safety with a loud click. “That’s the idea.”

The Gingerbreadman’s licorice mouth drooped at the corners. “Be careful, miss,” he repeated as he let Jack fall into a heap at his feet. “That’s a .600-caliber elephant gun loaded with Nitro Express cartridges. It has a muzzle energy of over eight thousand foot-pounds—the recoil can dislocate a shoulder!”

“I’ll be careful,” replied Mary evenly. “Just step away from Jack and lie facedown on the ground with your arms outstretched.”

They were less than ten feet apart, and Mary couldn’t have missed. The Gingerbreadman took a step back but didn’t lie facedown. He stared at Mary and narrowed his eyes, wondering what course of action to take.

“Have you ever killed anyone, miss?”

“JUST LIE FACEDOWN ON THE GROUND!”

“No,” said the Gingerbreadman simply. “I’ve been locked in St. Cerebellum’s for twenty years, and I’m not going back. If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to fire.”

Mary’s finger tightened on the trigger. She was in no doubt that the Gingerbreadman would have killed her after he had dealt with Jack and would kill again, given the chance. There was no decision to make. She would shoot him. In the back, if necessary—and to hell with procedure.

The Gingerbreadman, despite his resigned attitude, was not out of tricks. He turned and jumped to one side, leaped back again and then ran away, zigzagging crazily. He knew, as Mary soon found out, that a heavy elephant gun wasn’t designed to follow a fast-moving object, and by the time Mary had him in her sights, he jinked out again. Mary gave up following him and held the gun still, waited for him to leap back into her sights, and then she squeezed on the trigger.

There was a concussion like a thunderclap, and for a moment Mary thought the gun had exploded. She was pushed violently backward, caught her foot on a tree root and fell over in an untidy pile. When the smoke had cleared, the forest was empty. She had missed; the Gingerbreadman had escaped.

“You all right, sir?”

“Fine,” said Jack, rubbing his shoulder and standing up as the distant wail of sirens brought the outside world once more into the forest. “What about you?”

“Pissed off I didn’t kill him, sir.”

“I can understand that.”

Mary reloaded the rifle from the cartridge belt the Gingerbreadman had discarded and walked slowly up the road to make sure that he wasn’t wounded and lying out of sight. She looked around carefully, satisfied herself that he was long gone and then picked something up from the ground before she returned to Jack.

“I didn’t miss after all,” she announced, showing Jack what she’d found. In her hand was a single gingerbread thumb.