Wanted by Emlyn Rees Read Free Book Online

instinctively navigating him through the minefield of potholes, rail ruts, torn-down fences and cracked concrete slabs that littered this forgotten, forsaken corner of the world.
    As well as allowing him to see what was in front of him, his goggles were also automatically tracking the other members of his team, casting them as three separate green pulses, designated with a number from one to three, against a rolling green grid of pixellated terrain.
    Ten years younger than himself and Spartak, the twins – numbered two and three – were moving fastest. He watched the spacing between them rapidly increase as they continued to deploy into the approach pattern he’d ordered.
    He forced himself to move faster too, imagining Spartak attempting the same. ‘This growing-old shit, this thought of having our asses kicked and beaten by motherfuckers younger than ourselves . . .’ the big guy had once said ‘. . . a part of me hopes I get killed before that.’
    Danny knew the feeling. Once this was over, he was finished. No more. Not for himself and not for anyone else, no matter how good the cause. He was done. He wanted to be a father again. To make up for all of the lost time when he’d not been there for Lexie. He didn’t want to have to prove himself any more. He just wanted to be alive and allowed to grow old.
    But first he had to finish
this
. . .
    Reaching the crumbling concrete plinth of the decrepit station platform, Danny took the ten steps to its top in four swift strides. He ran on through the desolate, wind-whipped waiting room, with its mosaic of broken tiles, forgotten seats and smashed glass.
    He’d been braced for the strangeness of the place, but it still freaked him out. It was just so . . .
gone.
Nothing remained. Not even memories. No one had stayed behind. All gone. Everyone who’d ever lived there. Parents watching that their kids didn’t stray too close to the tracks . . . Workers smoking cigarettes, waiting for the train to take them home . . . All their hopes and dreams, the everyday worries clamouring inside their heads. This wasn’t even a ghost town. It was too dead now even for that.
    Danny rushed on through the ticket office, past the creepers and curling timetables on its cracked, weather-beaten walls. Then on down into the car park at the front of the station. There, up ahead, was the old entrance to the town. His muscles were aching, screaming, but he could not afford to slow. Not out in the open. Seeing his own shadow running before him, he inwardly cursed the brightness of the moonlight. Danger pulsed through him. Adrenalin flowed. He wondered,
What if I’ve already been seen?
If he had, he’d know soon enough. Or, rather, he wouldn’t. Because he’d be dead.
    Using whatever cover he could – saplings, overturned bins and skeletal cars, each stripped down, twisted and cannibalized for parts by whichever crazed criminals and professional looters had been high, greedy or desperate enough to plunder a hot spot – he made it as far as the railway station gates.
    He stopped there, breathless, and hunkered down low. He checked the open street beyond: more desolation and decay; a row of shops with cracked windows; a tree growing up tall through the busted windscreen of a rusted bus in the middle of the road.
    But he saw no threats. No people. No life. Not even a stray dog or a rat. The only heat signature his goggles picked up now was of Spartak forty metres away.
    The howling wind continued to blow. Ice-cold rain drilled down. Didn’t matter how tight you wrapped yourself up against the elements, water always got in. The same cold water that could seep down granite crevices, expand and crack them apart, trickled down his neck now.
    And while he wouldn’t normally have given a damn, with his Geiger counter still high in the red, each fresh blast of wind and cold drop of rain came at him like a forceful tap on the shoulder, reminding him that he and the others were at risk of