Dead Man Walking. Paul Finch

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СКАЧАТЬ issue was resolved half a second later when they heard a scraping of slate on the path behind, and then a casual, tuneful whistling.

      As always, it was Strangers in the Night.

      They stood rigid. Thanks to the crazy mountain acoustics, he could still be over a hundred yards away. Alternatively, he might be much closer.

      Heck pushed the women forward. ‘Go, go …’

      ‘Which way?’ Hazel moaned.

      ‘It doesn’t matter, just go …’

      She took the left-hand path, heading to higher ground again. They were no longer concerned about noise. It was impossible to move quietly anyway. Loose slate clattered under their feet as they grunted and groaned their way up a zigzagging path that was so steep it might have been designed for goats. Only after ten minutes did it level out again, though now the ground ramped up both to the left and right of it, forming a gully. They ran on regardless. Soon walls of sheer rock hemmed them in from either side. After a few minutes, Heck, who was at the rear, stopped to listen – perhaps in some vain hope that merely keeping going would have been enough to put their pursuer off. It was amazing how quickly the clamour of Gemma and Hazel running on ahead faded. But it was equally amazing how the sound of someone advancing up the path behind them – heavy breathing and stumping footfalls – grew.

      Heck sped on, thirty yards later running into the back of Gemma, who had halted for some reason, bowling her over.

      ‘What the hell …?’ he stuttered.

      ‘We’ve got trouble!’ she said, jumping back to her feet.

      Hazel snapped her torch on. Its beam played over the rough surface of a plank barricade, which blocked all further progress along the path.

      ‘Oh God,’ Hazel said weakly. ‘I forgot all about this.’

      The barricade had been painted with crude crimson letters:

       DANGER! DO NOT USE VIA FERRATA UNSAFE!

      ‘What does this mean?’ Heck demanded.

      ‘It’s a Via Ferrata … don’t you know?’ Hazel was ash-pale in the torchlight; her hair hung in sweat-sodden strands. ‘Via Ferrata … it’s Italian, it means “iron road”.’

      ‘Oh … bloody hell,’ he said.

      Gemma still looked perplexed.

      ‘They have these in mountains everywhere,’ Hazel added. ‘It’s like a fun thing. You know, for climbers and hikers. Plus it helps them get from one ridge to the next.’

      ‘You’d know it as a cable-walk or monkey run,’ Heck explained.

      ‘You mean like a rope bridge?’

      ‘Bit more solid than that.’

      ‘Except that this one’s closed,’ Hazel said. ‘It’s been closed for about five months. The pins will have rusted or the cables frayed, or something.’

      ‘So … is that it?’ Gemma asked, incredulous. ‘This is as far as we go?’

      Heck turned his torch on and shone it up the canyon walls on either side, but they were sheer, offering no visible escape.

      A shot was fired.

      It was difficult to say how far back along the passage it was fired from. And thankfully it wasn’t a clear shot, caroming from the left-hand wall and ricocheting from the right, before smashing a hole through the planking on the left of them. Both Gemma and Hazel dropped to crouches, the latter just managing to suppress a scream. Heck spun to face the barricade.

      ‘Either he can’t see us, or he’s a crap shot, or both!’ he said, tearing with his fingers at the splintery-edged bullet hole, then stepping back and kicking with his right foot. ‘Either way, we’ve no choice now!’

      ‘You’re going across the bridge?’ Hazel said, eyes bugging.

      ‘Not just me,’ he responded.

      Gemma joined him, ripping and rending, pulling the planks apart until there was space for a body.

      ‘Go!’ Heck ushered her through, then leaned down and grabbed Hazel by the arm.

      ‘I’m not going through there,’ she said hoarsely.

      ‘Hazel … if this guy’s who I think he is, he used to open women up like tins of dog-meat.’

      ‘But it’s not safe …’

      ‘We’ve got to try.’ He yanked her to her feet and hauled her through the shattered barricade after him.

      On the other side, they crossed an open flat area like a small plateau, before hitting a rusty iron safety-barrier, which was the only thing stopping them pitching over an edge into a terrible gulf.

      ‘Here!’ Gemma said, emerging from the fog on their left.

      They felt their way along the barrier, the plateau narrowing until soon they were on another ledge. This narrowed too until it was replaced by a timber catwalk. The safety-barrier now gave way to a row of upright steel pegs, each about three feet tall, equidistant from each other and connected by chains, though both the pegs and the chains were corroded, and in some cases missing. The footing comprised loose, uneven planking, which creaked and shifted. Just thinking about the bottomless mist underneath it stiffened Heck’s hair. Again, they could only progress in single file and now did so by hugging the left-hand rock-face, which though it sloped as it ascended away from them, was rubbed smooth by the numberless hands and bodies that had sidled along it, offering no purchase if the structure suddenly collapsed – which it threatened to constantly, shaking, shuddering, pins swivelling in their holes.

      Some fifty yards later, they reached a chunk of timber decking jutting from the cliff-face. This at least felt secure, though it was small, no more than four feet by four. From here, the only progress possible lay out across the chasm courtesy of the Via Ferrata. In appearance, it was a V-shaped bridge constructed entirely from steel cables so old and rotted they were crabbed with rust. Two cables in particular served as hand-rails, one on either side at roughly waist-height, connected by occasional lengths of wire to the single cable serving as the footway. This was thicker than the other two, but any person walking along it would have to tread with care, each foot planted crosswise as though he were traversing a tightrope. By the foggy light of their torches, the structure protruded no more than ten yards before this too was hidden in fog.

      They stood there, paralysed.

      ‘If this thing’s unsafe,’ Hazel said in an eerie monotone voice, ‘we surely can’t risk it all at the same time. I mean, the combined weight …’

      Immediately, the wires and cabling along the ledge behind began to vibrate. Heck stared at Hazel, then at Gemma – even she wore an expression glazed by fear. The metallic vibrations resolved themselves into repeated heavy clanking: the sound of footfalls approaching. Still none of them moved.

      ‘How far to the other side?’ Heck asked dry-mouthed.

      Hazel swallowed, as though about to СКАЧАТЬ