One Shot Kill - Robert Muchamore Page 0,16
finally muttered.
Rosie doubted Eugene would survive more than a few minutes, but despite being in agony he seemed anxious about being captured. She crouched down and picked the rugby-ball-shaped pill out of the blood.
‘Do you want it?’ Rosie asked, as tears smudged her vision.
Eugene parted his lips. His face felt cold as Rosie balanced the pill between his teeth and then pushed up his lower jaw to crush it.
‘I let you down,’ Eugene croaked.
As Rosie took the machine gun and made half a step back, the cyanide paralysed Eugene’s breathing and his body began convulsing from a heart attack.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rosie felt like breaking down. At least fourteen people had died in four crazy minutes and it might have overwhelmed her if she hadn’t had to concentrate on helping Edith.
‘I can’t carry you far,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m not as strong as Eugene.’
Rosie stripped her equipment pack down to essentials: three grenades, pistol, machine gun, her ID, Madame Lisle’s bandages and iodine plus the first aid kit, money, maps, compass, some food and refilled water canteens.
Rosie helped Edith down the stairs, then piggybacked her a dozen paces through the gore in the hallway and left her sitting on the doorstep at the back of the kitchen. There still might be Gestapo in the bushes, so Rosie didn’t hang about as she belted across to the stables, with Eugene’s blood-crusted machine gun slung over her shoulder.
There was a saddle room at one end of the stables, but Rosie had only ridden a few times and had never prepared a horse herself.
Which way round did a saddle go? How tightly? How would she know which horses were good for riding? Should they take one horse or two?
‘I’ve got no clue,’ Rosie confessed, once she’d dashed back to Edith. ‘Do you think you can help?’
Edith had found a pair of Madame Lisle’s rubber boots by the back door. They were slightly too big, but made walking on her badly scarred feet more bearable. She moved across to the stables with an arm around Rosie’s back, but the sight and smell of horses seemed to rejuvenate her.
Friendly heads poked over the stable door and Edith gave two animals handfuls of fresh grass to keep them calm as she led them out and talked Rosie through fitting the saddles.
‘You’re sure you’re OK to ride?’ Rosie asked. ‘It might get hairy.’
‘If I can cling on to Eugene, I can ride a horse,’ Edith said.
It took nearly ten minutes to get the horses ready. Edith asked for her own pistol and Rosie considered running back to the house to get one, but they heard a car approaching and cars only meant Germans, because civilians in the military zone weren’t allowed petrol.
After giving Edith a lift into the stirrup, Rosie mounted her horse as voices sounded fifty metres away, around the front of the house.
‘We were ambushed,’ a German was saying. ‘At least half-a-dozen guns blazing at us.’
Rosie gave her horse a little kick and said gee-up, but the animal regarded this with contempt.
‘Not like that,’ Edith said. ‘A little higher up, and give it more of a snap.’
Rosie looked back anxiously, half expecting men to come running around the house aiming rifles while her horse stood rigid.
‘Gee-up.’
This time Rosie kicked a little too hard and the horse shot off in an indignant gallop, almost knocking Rosie off backwards.
Edith was alarmed as Rosie’s horse stormed off. ‘Hard on the reins,’ she yelled. ‘Got to show her who’s boss.’
Rosie pulled the reins more in hope than expectation. The horse came to a complete halt, but Edith had galloped up alongside, and the presence of Edith’s horse seemed to act as a calming influence on Rosie’s. After their jerky restart, the two animals began trotting side by side.
As the newly arrived Germans took in the full extent of the carnage inside and around the house, the two teenagers vanished out of sight behind the stable block, then down a slight hill and on to a footpath that ran between the surrounding fields.
‘We’ll put a few kilometres in, then find a spot where we can hide out until dark,’ Rosie said.
‘I know all the tracks around here,’ Edith answered, as Rosie noticed that blood was already seeping into the back of Edith’s clean dress. ‘But we should pick up the pace, are you ready for a gallop?’
*
Rosie never got comfortable in the saddle, but the pair rode for thirty minutes without incident. They skirted around villages to avoid being seen, but it was