Hooded Man by Paul Kane Read Free Book Online Page A

did.
    Stevie .
    Robert was suddenly aware that he could no longer stay here. That if he did he might just break down and start bawling his eyes out in front of all these people, in front of Mark. The pain was still too real for him, still too close.
    “I’ve got to go,” he said, voice shaky.
    “Wait...” Mark started, but Robert was already walking away from the boy, from the market.
    “I’m sorry,” Robert called back over his shoulder, pulling up his hood as he went. He strode past Bill, who was haggling with another man over the ‘price’ of an onion.
    “Off s’soon?” said Bill. “Any joy with them rabbits?” When Robert didn’t answer him, he laughed and said: “Thought not. Better luck next time, eh? We’re ’ere most Wednesdays, all day...”
    But the voice was fading as Robert broke into a run. He sprinted across the field, not daring to look back. He just needed to return to the safety of the woods, the cover the trees and foliage gave him.
    Just like Mark, he had his own hiding places.

 

     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    A S D E F ALAISE sat back in the seat, he’d pull down his sunglasses occasionally and glance in the wing mirror of the Bedford armoured truck. From this angle it was difficult to see the extent of the line, but he knew it stretched right back along the motorway, zigzagging its way around the stationary cars with skeletons at the wheels. From the air it would have looked like a convoy: one of the wagon trains from the Old West, or even an army during the crusades (as a student of history, these kinds of comparisons amused him). But instead of being on horseback or in wagons, his men were encased in Challenger 2 battle tanks, Warrior Mechanised Combat Vehicles, Hummer muscle jeeps, Land Rover Wolves, open top WIMIKs, and other Bedfords: some capable of carrying up to twenty troops. Keeping them all in line were motorbikes patrolling the length of the convoy, ridden by his trusted elite, brought across the Channel with him.
    Like Tanek, driving this truck. The olive-skinned man stared ahead at the road, changing gears every so often, but never taking his eyes off the route ahead. De Falaise admired his single-mindedness. It reminded him of his own. He recalled the first time he’d come across the soldier, in a small provincial town in Turkey. De Falaise had been engaged in a highly illegal gun-running operation when the virus struck, and was quite grateful that people began dropping like flies: he’d been well on his way to getting caught... or killed. He subsequently decided to make his way towards Istanbul, with a plan to somehow travel through Europe and get back home to France. The plan wasn’t very clear in his mind, mainly because it was every man for himself in the region at that precise time. What money he had acquired from the deal meant nothing, and De Falaise was beginning to regret handing over the firearms he’d snuck across the borders. Bullets now seemed to be the only way to get anything, and the only way to stay alive.
    He certainly hadn’t expected to run into his soon-to-be second-in-command outside a small watering hole there. The bar had been quite full, some of the men inside immune to the disease that was sweeping its way across the world, some of them in the later stages of it and desperate to drink themselves to death. De Falaise had realised long ago that there was no point in attempting to outrun the virus, nor was there any point in trying to avoid the people who were coughing up blood everywhere. If it was his time, then so be it; he’d meet the Devil and shake his hand. Who knows, maybe he’d even get a line of congratulation or two for services rendered. As it turned out, De Falaise was one of those spared, so perhaps his ‘good’ work hadn’t gone unnoticed after all. The Devil looks after his own , isn’t that what they always said? If so, then he’d also looked after this hulking great brute of a man who’d been taking on all comers in