Dive into Chris Whitaker's unputdownable literary thriller, All the Colours of the Dark.

CHAPTER 4

Pines rose through golds and blue shadow, the light leaves swept aside as he followed trails that skirted the town limits. A long way above he’d see Loess Hills buffeting the Missouri River, the low climb of industrial air over cities and farmland pinned by silver silos.

A Dodge with no fender sank in the earth, no wheels, just left for the wild, for kids to bullseye the windshield.

A leaflet caught in the spindles of Eastern Redbud. The pinks wrapped a smiling Jimmy Carter, shirtsleeves rolled up like he was close to the kind of people he was calling on to vote for him.

The lake came to view. A faded sign warned of an undercurrent. In the summer, kids jumped from slick rocks the colour of emerald. A boy named Colson had gone swimming and never came back and rumour had it he lived at the bottom, watching the girls legs as they kicked, choosing the right moment to reach out and take one.

Patch picked up a flat rock and counted six skims as the water coined toward blades of common reed.

He balanced along the broken slats of the old Monta Clare railroad, arms out, the steels red and warped.

He watched a scissor-tailed flycatcher dart from its perch.

The scream stopped him.

A hard scream.

Down into a high-sided valley he saw splinters of a navy van, the brush so thick he moved nearer still. Maybe it was a Rad Rod or a Ford.

He knelt in the dirt as he saw her.

Misty Meyer.

For a moment he figured she was out with a boy and he’d misread it. She was in his math class, his age but passed too easy for more.

Then he saw the back of a man, his hood up despite the heat.

Patch desperately looked around for anyone at all. Anyone who could handle this, who could ease the responsibility, the acute burden of seeing a girl in trouble.

Another scream.

He whispered a curse, reached a hand up and touched the eye-patch as his mind ran to Silver-Tongue Martin, and Wild Ned Lowe. The band of fearless.

He moved.

Misty screamed as Patch slid down the bank.

He bent low and wished he had his slingshot as he picked up a rock.

At ten feet away the man heard him and turned.

A balaclava hid all but the dead of his eyes.

Patch held his breath, hurled the rock and dropped low as he took the man down at the knees.

“Run,” Patch yelled.

Misty stood frozen as fear claimed her muscles. Shirt torn, her bag in the dirt. Dazed like she’d been dragged into a nightmare.

The man rolled over him.

“Run,” Patch managed to whisper it, his lungs empty. He felt a hand on his throat and he begged Misty with his eye.

Snap from it.

Finally, she saw him.

She was tall, a track star. Their eyes met, and then she turned and pumped her arms and lit through the woodland.

The man was up and moved to follow but Patch was right up with him.

He pulled the dagger for the second time that morning.

The man grabbed his wrist and twisted.

Sun hit the blade till it met Patch’s stomach.

He fell back to the ground and clutched at the wound and the forest around turned to night but he saw no moon and no stars.

The next day an army of walkers would beat the woodland to find a purple eye-patch with a silver star.

Chief Nix would run over every bad man in a hundred miles.

His mother would fall apart entirely.

His best friend Saint would stalk the streets when hope had long since burned, getting herself into another world of trouble.

None would yet know of the evolving tragedy that would be their lives.