The Valley 43

Melissa found the question incredibly unfair, she was the youngest of the constables and Brown the oldest; if anyone should have been able to come up with an idea of what to do, it was him. Her mind raced for a few moments as she thought about the situation. She hoped that Brown would come up with something, but when he didn’t she spoke. ‘Where’s Kerwin?’ she asked. She had been listening for any further shotgun blasts, and was relieved that there had been none; she hoped that meant her fellow constables were currently safe, but the absence of such noises told her nothing of what was going on at the farm. ‘He went back into the house after shooting the inspector,’ Brown said. ‘He Hasn’t come out again.’ He was relieved by that, though he couldn’t help worrying about what the teen might be doing in the house. The patrol car he had arrived in sheltered him from the house but did not stop him feeling as though he was being watched, and possibly being sighted on with the shotgun; it was a feeling that made his skin crawl, as though his body was being explored by a tarantula. ‘Are you safe?’ Melissa hoped so, though she found it hard to believe that he could be under the circumstances. ‘Safe enough, for the moment,’ Brown said, unable to conceal either the lack of certainty or the apprehension he was feeling. ‘Good, stay safe,’ Melissa told him, as if she expected her friend to foolishly risk his life. ‘I’ll call Inspector Stevens and see what he says; armed backup should be on the way, hopefully they’ll be here soon and can sort things out.’ She ended the radio call and switched to her mobile phone so she could call the inspector. Kerwin snatched up the bag of saleable items he had dropped in his sister’s bedroom and left again without delay. He thought about searching Amy’s room for anything worth taking, but decided against it, the odds were it wouldn’t be worth the time it would take to make the search. He slung the bag over his shoulder when he got to the foot of the stairs so he could grip his shotgun with two hands as he approached the front door. Reaching out, he opened the door slowly and cautiously; he didn’t think either of the constables he had seen when he first looked out into the yard were armed, if they were, he was sure they would have returned fire when he shot the sergeant and the inspector, he wasn’t about to risk himself stupidly, however. He peered around the yard for any sign of the constables but saw nothing, he assumed they were still hiding behind the patrol car - he had seen their heads when he looked out the window after collecting his bag. Just to be on the safe side, and to encourage the constable to keep out of the way and to not do anything stupid, he fired off both barrels from his shotgun as he moved hurriedly across the yard to his Land Rover. His shots were not intended to harm the constables, whom he couldn’t see in any case, they were merely to keep their heads down. In that they succeeded for, he saw not so much as a hair to indicate there was anyone in the yard with him by the time he reached the driver’s door of his Land Rover. ‘Mike, Michael, what’s going on up there? Are you alright?’ Melissa asked hurriedly, abandoning the call to Stevens so she could try to find out what the new shotgun blasts indicated; she hoped it wasn’t a sign of something bad, though how it could indicate something good, she didn’t know. Her concerns grew the longer she waited for an answer. It was almost a minute and a half before Brown responded to the radio call, time in which he cowered behind the patrol car, afraid that the slightest move on his part would draw more fire from the murderer. ‘I’m uninjured, so is Josh, but I’d hardly say we’re alright,’ he said, speaking in as low a voice as he could manage to keep from being overheard. ‘We’re still using the patrol car for cover.’ ‘What were the last couple of shots about?’ Melissa wanted to know. ‘IF you’re staying under cover, what was Kerwin shooting at?’ ‘US!’ Brown said. He sounded a little calmer, but there was still a note of alarm in his voice. ‘I don’t think he was actually trying to kill us - for which he was more than a little grateful - I think he was just trying to get us to keep our heads down.’ ‘Is he still in the house?’ Melissa still had her mobile phone in her other hand and she could hear from it, faintly. Inspector Stevens voice as he demanded to know what was going on. There was a prolonged hesitation from Brown as he worked up the courage to raise his head above the bonnet of the patrol car, against which he was leaning, so he could look around. He exposed himself for no longer than was absolutely necessary, dropping back down into cover after the briefest of glances. ‘No, he’s not in the house anymore,’ he said quickly into his radio once he was safe again. ‘He’s in his car. I think he’s getting ready to leave; yes, he’s just started the engine. What do we do?’ The answer was obvious to Melissa and she gave it without hesitation. ‘Stop him.’ After everything Kerwin had done they couldn’t simply wait for the backup that had been requested and hope that it would arrive before he got away; in her mind that would be tantamount to aiding and abetting his escape. ‘How’re we supposed to do that?’ Brown wanted to know. ‘I don’t know, any way you can think of,’ Melissa told him, She couldn’t believe that she seemed to be the only one capable of thinking of solutions. ‘Run his car off the road or something.’ ‘Don’t do it, Melissa,’ Jack said in his most authoritative voice. He realised what the young constable was intending the moment she dropped her phone and radio and bolted from the living room, and was determined to stop her before she got herself hurt. ‘Melissa!’ He hurried after her, but wasn’t quick enough to catch her before she made it out the front door. ‘Hat’s going on, what’s she going to do?’ Sophie chased after her friend, worried and curious, but, like Jack with the constable, was unable to catch up with him before he disappeared through the front door, which he left open. Sophie wanted to continue the pursuit, if only to satisfy her curiosity, but stopped herself when she remembered that Tara Wright was still in the living room; the young teen may have calmed after the ordeal she had gone through that morning but that didn’t mean she could be left on her own. Frustrated, she left the door ajar and returned to the living room, where she kept an eye on the teen Jack had saved while listening for anything that might tell her what was going on outside. Jack reached the patrol car that had been parked to block the narrow road in time to see it race away up the road. What she was doing was the same action he would have taken were he in her position, but he would have like her to show a little more caution. There was nothing he could do to stop her, short of turning into Superman, which left him with just a couple of options; he could remain where he was and watch as Melissa continued on the road on a collision course with the Land Rover that had just left the Wright Farm, or he could give chase on foot and hope that he could somehow limit the potentially fatal disaster he could see looming - he chose the latter option. Kerwin was astonished to see the patrol car heading up the road towards him as he left the yard. He Didn’t know which of the village’s constable was behind the wheel, and he didn’t really care, he was more concerned with the fact that there was no space for him to get past the patrol car, if he tried to go to his right he would be stopped by the copse of trees, while on his left there was the wall, and the ditch on the other side of it, that separated him from his family’s field. His foot lifted off the accelerator momentarily, doing so without him thinking about it consciously, but once he realised what he was doing he pressed his foot down so he could speed up again. He hoped that whoever was behind the wheel of the patrol car would lose their nerve and turn away before there was a collision, after all, his Land Rover was more likely to come out better off. It wasn’t until the last moment, when he could see that it was Melissa’s behind the wheel rather than one of the other constables, that he realised the car was not going to turn away; by then it was too late for him to do anything but brace himself for the impact. When it came, both quicker than he had expected and with more of a delay - the final second or so before the two vehicles collided seemed to slow until it passed at a fraction of the proper speed, enabling him to take in every detail, right down to the look of grim determination on Melissa’s face - sent a shock up his arms and made him fly forward, unhampered by the seatbelt he hadn’t bothered to put on, and into the steering wheel. It was fortunate that there was not enough time for either vehicle to accelerate to too great a speed, it meant the impact was less sever than it could have been. His chest hurt, as did his arms, but not so badly that he couldn’t move, albeit slowly and with much muttered cursing. Kerwin threw open the door at his side and stumbled from the Land Rover; the moment he was on his feet he looked around, knowing that he was not out of danger, and wanting to determine where that danger was going to come from next. In front of him was the patrol car Melissa had stopped him with, it looked as though it had been welded to his Land Rover. Neither vehicle was going to be moving any time soon, that much was obvious, and from what he could see, Melissa was as stuck as her car; she was struggling to cope with the air -bag that had opened protectively, which he was glad about. Beyond the patrol car was Jack Wild, who was approaching the crashed vehicles slowly and cautiously and, as far as he could see, without a weapon; since that was the case, Kerwin dismissed him as a threat. Turning to look back up the road to his family’s farm, Kerwin saw something that worried him much more than either the author or the trapped constable; the second patrol car, carrying the two constables who had come to arrest him, was creeping towards him. The speed of the patrol car’s approach could not have been more than one or two kms an hour, but he still didn’t like to see it heading his way. He reacted automatically to the threat by diving back into the Land Rover, the pain his chest forgotten, to retrieve his shotgun from the passenger seat. He brought the weapon up to his shoulder the moment it was clear of the vehicle and sighted along the barrel at the windscreen of the patrol car. Brown saw the shotgun and reacted instinctively to it being aimed in his direction. He spun the wheel and pushed his foot down on the accelerator in a vain effort to avoid being shot. The patrol car lurched forwards and to the left, doing so as a double flash signalled that Kerwin had fired both barrels of his shotgun. The windscreen shattered under the impact of two loads of shots but Brown had no time to worry about that; the patrol car smashed trough the wall and buried itself nose - first into the ditch on the other side of it. It felt like the spotlight was on the patrol car. A solar paneled spotlight which shone brightly on the car which ploughed through the wall,