The Dust: Book Two - Pursuit by David H Sharp

been parked up for a few minutes but no one had appeared.
    ‘Who is it?’ Lou Pepper asked.
    Roger placed his finger on his lips to quieten the little girl. ‘I don’t know?’ He whispered.
    ‘Is it Angel?’ Lou also whispered back, Roger shook his head.
    The driver’s door of the old army truck then slowly opened and a man jumped out, Roger hadn’t seen him before but he looked a ‘wrong 'un’. From the other side of the truck two lads came into vision, Roger’s heart skipped a beat, he recognised them, it was the two hoodlums from Hexham. What the hell were they doing here? Surely this was too much of a coincidence, Roger couldn’t make sense of it. This part of the country was too open and too sparse for them just to ‘bump into each other’.
    Lou poked her head above the window sill to take a look, curiosity had gotten the better of her. She wished she had never looked, as the face that confronted her made her shoot straight back to the floor. ‘That’s h-h-h-him.’ She stuttered like the scared little girl she was.
    ‘Pardon?’ Roger hadn’t noticed Lou sneaking a look and wondered what she was going on about.
    ‘The nasty man, that’s him.’ She had her arms wrapped around her chest comforting herself. ‘He was the horrible one that me and Angel ran from.’
    Roger looked down at Lou and then back up at the curly haired man now opening up the back of the truck. It wasn’t a coincidence, he was tracking them down.
    ‘Please make him go away.’ Lou stared to cry. ‘I don’t want to back with him.’
    Roger crouched down by the side of the little girl. ‘I promise you I won’t let him anywhere near you, okay?’
    Lou nodded slowly and then clung to Roger.
    ‘I need to take another look.’ He prized the little girl away gently and stroked the top of her head. ‘We may have to move, I need to see what they are up to, okay?’ He spoke slowly and surely so Lou could understand, he could see she was quite distressed.
    ‘Okay.’ Lou whispered. ‘But please be quick.’
    Roger could now see women dismounting the truck one by one, he could see a young girl helping another down to the road. The two boys were flanking the older man and one of them seemed to be holding what looked like a shotgun. One of the woman, very slim and pale skinned with lank shoulder length hair walked away from the group and was pointing at the man in the middle, she seemed to be shouting.
    ***
    Iris O’Neil watched on as the skinny woman with narrow eyes walked over to Gold and his two lap dogs. What the hell was she doing? She was going to get them all killed.
    ‘You’re a disgrace.’ The woman shouted. ‘You can’t just keep us all prisoner, you can’t just rape whoever you see fit.’
    Sarah Hardcastle was still deeply traumatised after what had happened up in the barn, her daughter Naomi was trying to help her but she just felt cold and numb. She could hear the shouting going on in front of her and could see a woman waving her arms about in anger but she couldn’t work out exactly what was going on. She felt another hand on her shoulder.
    ‘Are you okay my dear?’ Iris asked. ‘You don’t need all this. Come over here with me.’ She then led Sarah and Naomi through the other women and to the back of the group out of harm’s way.
    ‘You are despicable.’ The thin woman continued to berate Lonny Gold. ‘You are supposed to help us, protect us but you are worse than evil.’ She took another step towards Lonny and Archie stared to laugh. Harry James looked over at him, he could see it in his eyes, Archie was enjoying it, he wanted a fight.
    Lonny Gold stood firm, just stared at the slim woman moving ever closer. He could hear the rant spewing from her poisonous mouth but the words didn’t register, she was just becoming an irritant, hell she was ugly anyway.
    Pulling the handgun from his belt he released the safety catch and without saying a word he let off two rounds into the skinny woman’s face.