The Wasp Factory Read Online Free PDF Page B

eyes not blinking, its tiny nose not sniffing, its ears untwitched. I stared straight back at it and very slowly brought the gun round to bear, moving it first one way then slightly the other, so that it looked like something swaying with the wind in the grass. It took about a minute to get the rifle in place and my head in the correct position, cheek by stock, and still the beast hadn’t moved a millimetre.

    Four times larger, his big whiskered head split neatly into four by the crosshairs, he looked even more impressive, and just as immobile. I frowned and brought my head up, suddenly thinking that it might just be stuffed; perhaps somebody was having a laugh at my expense. Town boys? My father? Surely not Eric yet? It was a stupid thing to have done; I’d moved my head far too quickly for it to look natural, and the buck shot off up the bank. I dipped my head and brought the gun up at the same time without thinking. There was no time to get back into the right position, take a breath and gently squeeze the trigger; it was up and bang, and with my whole body unbalanced and both hands on the gun I fell forward, rolling as I did so to keep the gun out the sand.

    When I looked up, cradling the gun and gasping, my backside sunk in sand, I couldn’t see the rabbit. I forced the gun down and hit myself on the knees. ‘Shit!’ I told myself.

    The buck wasn’t in a hole, however. It wasn’t even near the bank where the holes were. It was tearing across the level ground in great leaps, heading right at me and seeming to shake and shiver in mid-air with every bound. It was coming at me like a bullet, head shaking, lips curled back, teeth long and yellow and by far the biggest I’d ever seen on a rabbit, live or dead. Its eyes looked like coiled slugs. Blobs of red arced from its left haunch with every pouncing leap; it was almost on me, and I was sat there staring.

    There was no time to reload. By the time I started to react there was no time to do anything except at the instinctive level. My hands left the gun hanging in mid-air above my knees and went for the catapult, which as always was hanging on my belt, the arm-rest stuck down between that and my cords. Even my quick-reaction steelies were beyond reach in time, though; the rabbit was on me in a half-second, heading straight for my throat.

    I caught it with the catapult, the thick black tubing of the rubber twisting once in the air as I scissored my hands and fell back, letting the buck go over my head and then kicking with my legs and turning myself so that I was level with it where it lay, kicking and struggling with the power of a wolverine, spreadeagled on the sand slope with its neck caught in the black rubber. Its head twisted this way and that as it tried to reach my fingers with its chopping teeth. I hissed through my own teeth at it and tugged the rubber tighter, then tighter still. The buck thrashed and spat and made a high keening noise I didn’t think rabbits were capable of and beat its legs on the ground. I was so rattled I glanced round to make sure this wasn’t a signal for an army of bunnies like this Dobermann of a beast to come up from behind and tear me to shreds.

    The damn thing wouldn’t die! The rubber was stretching and stretching and not tightening enough, and I couldn’t move my hands for fear of it tearing the flesh off a finger or biting my nose off. The same consideration stopped me from butting the animal; I wasn’t going to put my face near those teeth. I couldn’t get a knee up to break its back, either, because I was almost slipping down the slope as it was, and I couldn’t possibly get any purchase on that surface with only one leg. It was crazy! This wasn’t Africa! It was a rabbit, not a lion! What the hell was happening here?

    It finally bit me, twisting its neck more than I would have thought possible and catching my right index finger right on the knuckle.

    That was it. I screamed and pulled with all my might,