Adrift 2: Sundown by K.R. Griffiths Read Free Book Online

tired the previous evening that he hadn’t bothered, instead leaving it close to the house. He was glad of that now; less distance to run in the storm.
    He reached the tractor and yanked open the door, and had hauled himself into the seat with a grunt before his mind processed the image his eyes had seen properly, the odd detail that had lurked in his peripheral vision as he ran from the house.
    He froze, his hand still on the open door, his arm getting soaked, but all of a sudden, he didn’t notice the rain at all.
    What the hell was that ?
    Just for a moment there, during that monochrome snapshot taken by the storm, he could have sworn he saw something moving beyond the main barn a few hundred feet ahead of him. Something big. He might have dismissed it as an animal, maybe even one of his own, but for the fact that in that brief instant, Barry was certain that whatever he had seen was walking upright.
    Like a man.
    Righteous anger sparked deep in his gut. It wasn’t just the rain and the silage that had ruined his year; it was the sickness in the animals: a relentless tide of poor health that no vet seemed able to stem nor adequately explain, and which slowly ate away at the cows and sheep. Way more deaths among the sheep, particularly, than at any other time that Barry could recall. And all in the same year that he received several offers for his land from the wealthy bastards who owned the land adjacent to his own.
    Strange folks, the Rennicks, no doubt about that. When a sheep had once broken through the fence and ended up on Rennick land, Barry caught a glimpse of the house, which seemed almost deliberately hidden by trees, and could have sworn he saw people dressed in robes, like monks. Local rumour had it that the Rennicks ran some sort of commune out there in the woods. When the locals had taken a few drinks, those rumours darkened: the Rennick family was involved in strange rituals , they said. Occult practices , they said. Satanism .
    There were a lot of them, Barry was sure of that. Maybe they wanted his land to expand their…whatever the hell it was.
    Too bad for them.
    The Reid family farm had been handed down through the generations, and it didn’t matter if the Rennicks added a couple of zeroes to their offer. What mattered was that Barry’s father had charged him with maintaining the farm and passing it on to his own son someday, and there was no way he could sell it. It simply was not possible. When an agent representing the Rennicks turned up at Barry’s doorstep with an offer, he told them exactly that.
    And then the animals started to get sick.
    Barry was no fool; it was impossible for him not to put that particular two-plus-two together, but he had never had any concrete evidence.
    So far.
    Someone had been poisoning his livestock for months, Barry was sure of it, slowly tightening the financial noose around his neck. And now he had seen the bastard, right there on his property; had caught him red handed as he skulked around in the pre-dawn.
    Barry squinted into the darkness, searching for movement and seeing none, and thought about the old shotgun he kept back at the farmhouse, and which he had never found a use for beyond firing a blast in the general direction of foxes.
    Bad idea, Barry. You might just get angry enough to fire that weapon.
    He felt adrenaline coursing through him like rocket fuel, and gritted his teeth.
    Besides, you don’t need no gun for this.
    He climbed down from the tractor cab with a grunt, balling up his fists, and headed purposefully toward the distant barn. By the time he reached it, Barry was almost sprinting, working himself up into a thrumming mess of fury. He burst into the dark building, drawing in a breath to holler a wordless roar of attack as he charged at the intruder like some marauding Viking, and stopped abruptly, surprised.
    It looked empty.
    Barry frowned, and unclenched his fists. Flicking on the overhead fluorescents, he bathed the barn in a cold, white