Читать книгу Giant Killer - John McNally - Страница 10

He drank her blood.

They were, after all, in vampire country. Thick forest, thicker snow, a picture-book landscape of peaks and abandoned castles.

Finn was no vampire, of course, nor even a flea, but he had to eat to stay alive, and Carla’s scalp was pockmarked with tiny wounds where he had broken the skin to feed³, using a spike of metal he’d picked up in Shanghai as a sword. Carla’s once-luxuriant hair had been his sanctuary on the never-ending death march, a jungle thatch that had given him cover, warmth and sustenance.

For five months, mostly at night, Baptiste – their captor, and one of Kaparis’s worst Tyros – had dragged them across the ancient spine of the world: up through the Taklamakan Desert, through icebound mountain kingdoms, then across an endless frozen plain, until mountains rose once more, thick forests full of bears and wolves. The only clue to how far they’d come in the faces of the few peasants they saw; even at a distance and wrapped up against the cold, they had grown pale and round-eyed.

Baptiste, bearded and unholy, had no other function but to go on in dumb, endless flight, driven by an urge he could make no sense of. His brain had been so damaged as he escaped Shanghai with the girl that he could barely remember who or what he was. All he had left was a brute sense of purpose, a homing instinct, and a capacity for violence. He knew the girl was his prisoner, but little else. And he had no idea, nor could he conceive, that she carried a thirteen-year-old boy in her hair called Infinity Drake, who was just 9mm tall …

Finn finished his drop of blood and wiped his mouth. “It’s less sugary. You’re getting weaker.”

“Between you and the fleas, I’m surprised I haven’t run dry,” Carla complained, resisting the urge to scratch.

The thuggish form ahead of her grunted and yanked the cable that shackled them together and bound her wrists. She staggered on.

They were traversing the tree line below a steep ridge, Baptiste and Carla high-stepping through deep snow. Finn climbed through her hair to take him in.

How do you kill a giant?

How do you kill someone two hundred times your size? Finn had been trying to figure it out for three thousand miles. Even in this zombie state, Baptiste was still many times faster and stronger than them, many times the murderer.

Finn’s plan was always to attack, but Carla knew better – if they could just hold on long enough, they would eventually get close enough to civilisation to summon help.

Right from the start (when Carla had thought Finn was just a kid on an army base in England who hung out with her older sister), they had enjoyed seeing the world in entirely different ways – America versus Europe, art versus science, girl versus boy. Sometimes she thought it was only the pointless circular arguments that kept them alive, as she slogged on through the real world and Finn ran around her head, full of crazy ideas—

“Hit him with a rock!”

“Build a signal fire!”

“Steal his knife!”

It was a strategy that had lost ground since Yo-yo had gone missing – Finn’s faithful idiot of a dog, who’d trailed them every step of the way from Shanghai. If Carla attacked, Finn had assured her, Yo-yo would join in. Trouble was, since wolves had closed in a few nights before, Yo-yo had kept his distance.

Was he even still alive? The further they’d gone, the weaker they’d all become.

One thing was certain – the brutal trek might never end, but one of them surely would, unless something happened soon.

How do you kill a giant?

Finn, lulled by Baptiste’s pace through the snow, suddenly got a flash of inspiration.

“Hey! We could hypnotise him!”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” said Carla sarcastically.

“No, listen. We went to this show once,” said Finn, trying to remember the night in a theatre with Uncle Al and Grandma. “Next time we stop, stare at him, tell him he’s feeling sleepy, then – click your fingers!”

“Click. Right,” said Carla.

“Then loop the cable around his neck and pull like hel—”

“You know what I’m going to do if I ever get out of this?” Carla interrupted.

“What?” said Finn.

“Shave my head. I’m going for the totally bald look. That way no one will ever climb into my hair agai—”

“AAAAAAA!!!”

Baptiste stopped dead and his sudden cry echoed around the valley like a rifle shot.

“What is it?” said Finn.

Carla followed the thug’s gaze. There, peeping just over the top of the ridgeline ahead … was a cross of stone.

Saliva dripped from Baptiste’s open jaw and he fell to his knees, gasping, overcome. Whatever he was looking for, he’d found.

“UUUUH!!”

Carla couldn’t believe it. Finn couldn’t believe it. There he was, a metre away, his neck exposed. Helpless in shock. For the first time. Helpless …

How do you kill a giant?

“NOW CARLA!!!” Finn screamed, but her instinct beat him to it.

Adrenalin surged and with her best softball hitter’s cry, Carla jabbed her bound wrists forward to loop her shackle round Baptiste’s exposed throat, then she yanked back – hard – with every ounce of her weight and being.

Baptiste gasped, reeled and rose.

“YES!” screamed Finn, nearly pulling a clump of Carla’s hair out in excitement as she rode the back of the raging, exploding form, clinging on like a rodeo champ as they fell back – SPLASH! – like a great whale in the snow, turning and careering down the slope in a snowball fury, Carla hanging on for dear life, Finn confused, crushed, the mad frozen world tumbling and … THUMP!

They hit something, stopped dead. A boulder?

“GAHH!” – with his free hand, Baptiste forced the shackle from his throat to take desperate rasping breaths – “GAHH! GAHH! GAHH!”

Carla pulled harder, every cell of muscle stretched to breaking point, every sinew hard as nails. “GAHH! GAHH!” cried Baptiste, as they lay locked in the snow, moments stretching to eternity … He was dying … he was dying …

Until the wolves came.

OWWOWWWOOWWW!

Finn saw them first, charging down the slope, leaving powder trails like missiles.

“INCOMING! CARLA!”

OWWOWWWOOWWW!

Carla looked up and in that split second – “GHAUH!” – Baptiste flipped like a salmon, slipped the noose and grabbed the back of her scrawny neck, and before she knew it she was thrown onto her back in the snow – SLAM – and Baptiste was above her, drawing back his fist—

RRRRAAW! The first wolf hit him all claws and teeth.

Baptiste, furious, beat it away as if it was a fly, then roared caveman-like at the rest of the incoming pack.

“AARRRRRRRRRGHGHGH!”

Fear ran through the wolves and they scrambled to avoid him, sudden cowards. From the snow, Carla saw high above the mayhem an eagle break its glide, disturbed, and at the same time … she felt the earth explode.

BRBRBRRBRRBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR …

Thunder rose from the mountain. She saw Baptiste’s momentary confusion, then – WHAM! – the mountain hit him as a wall of white, a wall of energy, of cascading snow.

“Avalanche!” Finn yelled in her hair. “Hang on!”

But nothing could be heard, nothing could be sensed in the all-encompassing chaos, the liquid totality of it …

BRBRBRRBRRBRRRRRRRRRRRBRBRRBRRBRRRRRRRRRRR …