Living Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

do, it’s now or never.
    ‘Come on, then, don’t waste the rest of your life!’ the man with the hurley challenged him.
    Eoin raised his shotgun and aimed it. He waited a few seconds, but only to slow down his breathing and steady himself, so that he wouldn’t miss.
    The man took two steps towards him, and he fired, jolting his shoulder. Between the two rows of kennels the shot was deafening, so that it sounded like three shots, instead of one. He hit the man directly in the face, just where his scarf covered his nose, and blasted the top of his head off. His entire brain was blown out of his head and landed on the tarmac ten metres behind him.
    The man dropped the hurley and half-turned around, as if he had heard somebody calling his name. Then his knees sagged and he collapsed on to the ground, face downward, and lay there with his feet still frantically jerking. Eoin could have imagined that his legs were trying to obey the brain’s final instructions to run away.
    He reloaded the barrel that he had fired, but then he stayed where he was, in the softly falling drizzle. He was ready for the rest of them, if they came for him.
    He heard a dog yapping. It was Gaybo, a small prize-winning Munsterlander. He heard a van door slam, and he cocked his shotgun. But then he heard the distinctive whine of its transmission as the Range Rover drove away, followed by the van, which had a rattling exhaust. Within a few seconds, they had driven down to the main road and gone. He saw their red tail-lights disappear behind the trees, north towards Barrell’s Crossroads.
    Eoin walked slowly back to the house, past the empty kennels with their doors wide open.
    Holy Mother of God, I’ve killed a man , he thought, as he reached the front door. I’ve actually killed a man. He’s dead. But in a way, that’s my life over, too. How can anything ever be the same?
    It was nearly five o’clock now, but it was still dark, and he wondered if it would ever get light again.

3
    Katie looked up at the clock on her kitchen wall and said, ‘Maybe I should ring them again. Maybe they can’t find us.’
    Barney her Irish setter cocked his head on one side as if to show her that he understood her anxiety completely, but couldn’t think of anything useful to suggest.
    She put down her mug of coffee and picked up her iPhone, but before she had even had the chance to switch it on, the doorbell chimed. Barney immediately wuffled and trotted out into the hallway.
    When she opened the door, there he was, at the bottom of the porch steps, sitting in a wheelchair. Because it was raining so hard, the paramedics had covered him with a yellow waterproof cape with a pointed hood, so that he looked like some kind of giant gnome. Katie couldn’t even see his face.
    ‘Good morning to you, ma’am,’ said the female paramedic. ‘Here he is – we’ve fetched your friend for you.’
    The male paramedic lifted up a dark grey overnight case and said, ‘His things are all in here, such as they are, and all his medication. There’s written instructions from Doctor Kashani on the dosage.’
    John pushed back his hood. Katie had seen him regularly in hospital, of course, since both of his lower legs had been amputated, but under the naked porch light she was shocked at how much weight he had lost, and how much he seemed to have aged. He was smiling at her, and his eyes were bright with pleasure and relief, but his hair was grey and scraggly and cropped short, when it used to be long and black and curly, and his cheeks were sunken in, so that she could see the contours of his skull. When they had first become lovers, he had looked so handsome and muscular and saintly. Now he looked as if the paramedics had wheeled him here on a visit from Glyntown Care Centre.
    ‘Barns, how are you, boy!’ he called out, in a wheezy voice, but Barney stayed in the hallway, behind Katie, as if he wasn’t at all sure about this strange wizened man in a wheelchair.
    ‘Do you want