Chapter Twenty-One
A couple of miles along the narrow forest road that led to the nature reserve, I stopped and got out to inspect the roadkill. It was the third lump of flayed mess we’d seen since we’d followed the brown tourist sign off the main road. It was fresh. A deer. Whatever hit it must have dragged it along the road because half of it was missing. I got back into the cab and moved on.
“What do we do if we meet another vehicle?” Lola asked.
I shook my head. It made sense that there would be other people like us, but I didn’t know the social conventions on how to engage in these circumstances.
“Friend or foe,” said Jack under his breath.
I drove on. We crept under old oaks and then out into barren drifts of gorse. The road was held aloft by a landscape that had never let it bed in. Every lump of roadkill made my knuckles whiter, as though the carcasses were jinxes that would make unknown vehicles come racing round the next corner. I found I was hunched over the wheel, head between my shoulders, in that dumb, instinctive way that people have when they drive under a low bridge.
I steered us as far as the next brown sign and turned into a narrow lane that was blessed with a little tree cover. After a short way, it widened into a small car park beside a high metal fence. There was no visitor center, no buildings of any kind, just a stony track—a walking path as wide as a road—leading past the fence, down a steep slope into the valley. I idled at the top of the hill.
“Is this it?” I asked Lola.
“I guess. But I thought it would be—more than this.”
If we couldn’t find a hideout here, we’d be forced to camp in the forest again. Or worse, on the open moorland.
The pickup crunched onto the path, and we rolled down the slope in first gear. Behind the fence, red deer grazed, their heads bobbing up as we passed. In the next pen were curly-horned sheep.
“Look, Mum-may,” said Billy, “sheeps.”
“Mouflon,” said Charlie.
How long since we’ve eaten meat? I didn’t think I could slaughter a sheep. Joni probably could, if we could get her back into hippie-homesteader mode. The road hugged the flank of the hill and lowered us gently down. Another large pen spanned the valley floor, its steep sides thick with trees. We passed the information board, and I saw that it contained lynx. Charlie pressed against the window, but couldn’t spot one. We skirted the lynx enclosure and reached the end of the path in front of a log cabin–style shelter. Under the overhang were some information boards and a few screwed-down tables and chairs. A shuttered window suggested there might even be a small snack kiosk.
“Bingo,” said Jack.
Lola looked at me for confirmation that she’d done well, and when she saw my face, allowed herself a small smile.
“If we can just hide the car, this is perfect,” I said. “Good job, Lola.”
We all got down from the cab, and I pulled off the tarp to let the kids out of the back. They took in the new place with a lot of blinking. One of them ventured behind the building and gave a shout of joy: there was an adventure playground with zip wire! They all raced off.
“Hey, hey!” Jack called after them. “We need to get under cover.”
“Give them five minutes to stretch their legs,” I said. “Just while we get sorted. We’re going to be out in the open anyway.”
“All right. What shall we do with the car?”
Behind a set of gates at the far end of the building stood a couple of four-wheeled bikes and just enough space, if we shifted some stuff about, for the pickup. Even if the shelter was open on one side, we figured it was better to get the car under cover. We parked it and hefted a couple of bales of hay onto the bonnet for good measure, to disguise the heat or infrared or whatever the helicopters might be able to detect.
“If there’s some food here, we’ve really hit pay dirt,” Jack said.
“Ta-da,” said Joni. She had taken the crowbar to the door of the kiosk and waved her hand at a basic kitchen.
“Mummy?” Charlie appeared from the opposite direction.
“Come on, love, we need to get inside.”
“I think you should see this.” He took my hand and led us back past the building, following the line of the lynx enclosure. He trailed his other hand along the chain-link fence, coming to a halt with his fingers looped through the diamonds.
“There,” he said.
Just beyond where he stopped, the wire gate of the lynx enclosure was propped open with a brick.
“There’s more,” he said.
“What?”
“You won’t like it.” He walked down a short path that led to another high enclosure that stretched out of sight ahead of us. Charlie stopped short of a small log cabin.
“Hide,” said Charlie.
“What?”
“It’s a hide. Where you view the animals.”
He led me forward a few paces, and then pulled my arm to make me stop.
Beyond the hide, alongside the high wire fence, a corpse lay spread-eagled in the dirt. My body sucked in air with a small gasp.
“That’s not the bad thing,” Charlie said.
I followed his pointed finger to an information board detailing the behavior and habitat of the Eurasian wolf, and beyond that to the wide-open gates of the wolves’ enclosure.
“What about us?” I threw a small rock at the body, disturbing a few languid flies. “Haven’t we got enough to contend with, without wolves and wild cats roaming the forest?” I launched a handful of gravel at the keeper, and it spattered down onto the desiccated skin of her wax jacket.
“That’s not very nice, Mummy.” Charlie pulled at my arm. “The wolves would have died in there. Like the cows—you let them out.”
“Cows are not going to attack us in the night, Charlie! Have some sense.”
“Wolves aren’t actually nocturnal; they could attack us during the day, too.” He stopped when I thrust my hands into my hair. “Anyway, she just gave them a chance to survive.”
“What about giving us a chance?” I sounded like a petulant toddler.
Charlie walked over to read the information board. I joined him, looking over my shoulder into the surrounding stand of trees. They could be anywhere. Watching us. Some of the half-eaten carcasses we’d seen on the road—which I’d assumed were roadkill—were large animals, easily as big as a small child. As big as Billy. Billy! What if he wandered away from the zip wire into the trees?
“Come on, Charlie, we need to get back.”
“Just look at this, though.” Charlie was pointing at the board, where there was a map of the wolf enclosure. “There’s another building over here. It says ‘Research Station.’”
“I don’t think we’ll be doing much research. Let’s get back to the others before the wolves do.”
Charlie sprang into action and raced ahead of me up the path. I took the opportunity to throw another rock—hard—at the body of the treacherous keeper, but I missed, and it rattled the wire fence. Such a high fence: must be ten feet and topped with razor wire. Designed to keep wolves in and idiots out. And that gave me a new idea.
“Tell me again. Why are we planning to lock ourselves into the wolf enclosure?” Woody was not convinced.
“Because this shelter is completely open, so the wolves or lynx could get to us. But we’ll be safe from the animals inside the wire fence. And if the helicopters pass overhead, they’ll think our heat imprint is just the wolves.”
“There are nearly twenty of us. That’s a lot of wolves.” Woody held his ground.
“If we break into that building on the far side of the enclosure, then they can’t detect us at all,” Lola said. “If we have to sleep outside, the Cleaners think we’re wolves, and if we get inside, then the heat cameras can’t see us: full stop. Win-win.”
“We could also let a couple of the deer and sheep out of their enclosures.” This was Jack. “The wolves would surely take them before attacking us?”
“Good idea,” I said. “Do that, too.”
Jack strode off, full of purpose.
“And what if the Cleaners do spot us, and we’re stuck inside a wire enclosure? How would we get away?” Woody’s cronies were lingering within earshot. He had reinstated himself as their leader, and challenging me seemed to be his favored method of regaining lost status. He swaggered about, hiding his anxious restlessness with exaggerated movements.
“If we’re hidden, the Cleaners won’t find us, will they?” said someone from our side of the divide. “Unless you run off and bring them back again, Little Pecker.”
Woody’s gang stood behind him, but didn’t leap to his defense. Hedging their bets.
“The wolves could still be in there for all you know.” Woody was shouting now, losing it. “Then you’ll be shut inside with them. And you’ll be eaten like the meatheads you are.”
The meeting degenerated into yelling. Charlie held tight to my hand, rattled by the aggression. I squeezed his hand three times, our code. He squeezed back: I love you, too.
Woody was railing now. Jack was back in the fray. Lola held her head in her hands. The last thing we needed was for the group to splinter and break apart. What we needed was cohesion. Or failing that, compliance.
“Boys!” I shouted. They couldn’t even hear me. “Hey, boys!” Nothing.
A loud clanging broke through the hubbub. Everyone spun round. Joni had a massive saucepan in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other. She clanged again.
“Enough,” she said. Her thick hair had matted into a magnificent, frizzy aura that glowed like Aslan’s mane in the late sun. “There’s food here for one decent meal. It’ll be served in the building inside the enclosure.” She stomped inside the kitchen and slammed the door. The moment hung around us. I stepped into it.
“Right, let’s get ready for a slap-up dinner. Jack, can you let out some of the sheep like you said? Woody, could you and your boys raid the vending machines for drinks and snacks? Lola, take three boys and load as many hay bales into the back of the pickup as you can. You two”—I pointed at a couple of the younger boys—“go and ask if you can help Joni.”
They hesitated. For once, I realized with a degree of relish, I was not the scary one.
“She won’t bite you. Go on.” They moved toward the kitchen.
As I hoisted Billy onto my shoulders and got Charlie to put on his backpack and help Maggie with hers, there was a loud crash of glass and a whoop. Woody’s boys had smashed their way into the vending machine. The noise of industrious vandalism followed me down the path toward the high wire fence.
As we rounded the corner, there came a swinish cry behind us. The Lost Boy ran from the shelter, dashing a few steps in the wrong direction before Maggie called out, “Boy!” and he spotted us. His skinny legs blurred in his frantic rush to catch up, and he slammed right into me, his face buried in my hip. His body was too stiff even to shiver. Maggie took his arm and placed it round my waist, and he let it rest there. Charlie’s and Maggie’s wide eyes moved between the boy and my face.
“What happened?” said Charlie.
The Lost Boy, of course, said nothing.
“He thought he’d been left behind. Maybe he got left behind once before.” I waited in case there was a nod, but he was still rigid. “We promise we won’t leave anybody behind, especially this boy.” I gave his shoulder a jiggle. “Okay?” The slightest pressure against my hip could have been acknowledgment. “Now, let’s go and get settled down in the wolf enclosure for the night.”
The research station was an underground bunker. It was clear that the wolves spent their time on top of and around it—the area was littered with bones, lumps of fur, and trodden-down patches of grass. But it was deserted now. The land sloped down to the entrance of the bunker, and I lifted away a wooden slat that secured a big set of double doors. There was no lock. We stepped into a short tunnel, wide but barely higher than my head, that led into a cave-like room. Two horizontal windows at head height gave a wolf-level view of the surroundings. There was nothing in the room beyond the dirt floor, just a couple of benches that the kids could stand on to peer out. A single door opened to the outside of the enclosure: that would placate Woody. Even though I’d given him the plum job of vandalizing the drinks machine in the hope of getting him on my side, he still behaved like a mistreated dog in a shelter; he tolerated me giving him food, but snapped if I got too close.
Jack arrived with a few more boys. After all the activity, they sat down on a bench, rendered awkwardly idle. Jack bustled about with our few belongings, but soon ran out of things to do and stood with his hands on his hips. His hair just brushed the roof.
“This is ideal, really.” He sounded disappointed.
“It’s underground, but dry. Even better than a cave,” I said.
“Hmm.”
“What do you want, Center Parcs?”
He still looked glum.
“Too posh for Center Parcs, okay. Club Med?”
He almost smiled.
“I can’t stretch to the Four Seasons, I’m afraid. Not for all seventeen of us.”
He finally laughed, but still shook his head. “When it said ‘Research Station,’ I thought there might be equipment here. You know, like a radio.”
“Ah, but we do have a radio.” I held out the car keys. “Do you want to fetch the truck?”
He grabbed the keys with a muted “yes!” and jogged along the tunnel into the light.
“Did you learn how to reverse in your one lesson?” I yelled after him, but he just waved the keys in the air and kept going. He won’t crash it, I told myself. It’s not very far, he can’t possibly crash it. I turned to my kids. Charlie sat on a bench, unpacking the contents of his backpack in a neat line. Maggie was struggling to lift Billy up so he could see out the window. He pressed his face against the glass.
“Oooh,” he said, in wonder at the outside world where he’d been only moments ago.
“I don’t know why you’re saying that because there’s nothing even there,” Maggie said, dropping him unceremoniously back down.
They were all being so perfectly themselves that it made me smile.
“Sit with me,” I said, and pushed my bum between them onto the bench. Billy planted himself on my lap; Maggie and Charlie snuggled up on either side. The Lost Boy squeezed next to Maggie. “I feel like I haven’t spoken to you in days.”
“You run in and you’re there,” said Billy, “and then you run out and you’re not there.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You must be frightened. I should be with you more.”
“It’s okay, Mummy,” said Charlie. “We know you’re trying your hardest.”
I closed my eyes. A lump of emotion appeared in my throat, and I fought to keep it down. Life seemed so complicated and, of course, it took a kid to see how simple it really was. A bubble full of pitiful gratitude burst inside me. No one else ever noticed that I was just trying my hardest. Not Julian, of course, who had seemed to think I was driven to work hard just to annoy him; and not the school or the other mums or the Daily Mail, who implied that being the breadwinner was somehow selfish; and not even me, my own hardest mommy-shaming critic, whose long finger of guilt damned me if I did and damned me if I didn’t. Charlie squeezed my hand three times, and my eyes fizzled as tears fought their way out. I cried for Marlene Greene, who never managed to have it all despite trying her hardest. I cried for Charlie and Maggie and Billy, whose mother was adding to their fear by crying in front of them. I cried for Peter and Lennon, who had the great fortune to survive the virus only to end up saddled with me. I cried for Horatio, who came back for me. And I cried for Joni, who loved so hard but still lost. I cried, and my kids wrapped themselves around me like vines until I was squeezed dry.
Maggie stood up on the bench. She took my face in both her hands and turned it up to her own. She smiled and clumsily wiped my cheeks with her hands.
“Don’t worry, Mummy,” she said. “You can go back to work soon. For a rest.”
I laughed out loud at my own snide joke echoing through my daughter. I gathered all the children into a hug that contained too many knees and elbows to be comfortable, and only let them go when we saw the pickup truck arrive outside with music blaring and kids hanging off the back like the world’s least threatening gang of child soldiers.
I took the wheel and reversed the truck into the tunnel of the research station, folding in the wing mirrors because it was a “honeymoon fit,” as my father would have said. As dusk slid down the hills into the valley, the rest of the kids came home to roost. I’d brought the hay bales with the intention of parking the pickup outside and covering it over, but once we saw that the conspicuous vehicle would fit inside, we burst the hay open and made a soft bed on one side of the room. Joni and her helpers brought the food down in a wheelbarrow, and there was plenty. Woody’s gang doled out cans and crisps. After a head count to make sure everyone was inside, I stood for a moment in the entrance and listened to the night. Like a traveler in a foreign land, I had grown accustomed to the strange soundtrack without ever needing to understand it. I was just reassured by its constancy. Not a part of it, but not threatened, either. And there were no howling wolves. I slid the wooden plank into place to seal the doors and closed our hideout into near darkness.
Inside, I accepted a plate of beans and mini sausages with a can of Tizer. I sat down in a circle with our kids and Jack. Joni sat close to us, but up on a bench. She had gone quiet again after her burst of activity. I let her be.
“But it’s not much use having the car radio if we can’t understand the Morse code,” said Lola.
“What is Morse code?” asked Charlie.
“It’s a way of sending messages without speaking. You use dots and dashes instead of letters.”
“Why don’t you just speak?”
“Maybe you can’t speak. Or you’re trying to be secret. Like when we squeeze hands.” I grabbed his wrist and did I love you: three squeezes. “Or I could signal by flashing a torch—dot, dot, dash, dash, dash—like that. It’s very useful.”
“But I don’t understand what the dots and dashes are,” he said.
“Well—” I struggled to find a better way to explain.
“I only know SOS,” Jack cut in. He wrote the letters in the dirt with his finger and made three dots next to the first S, three short-line dashes next to the O, and another three dots next to the last S. “I saw that in a film.”
Charlie got up to peer at the writing. “Oh, is that what that is?” He reached over to rummage in his backpack. He pulled out the Survival Skills book and flipped to the inside back page. He turned it so it was the right way for me to see and handed it over.
“Is that Morse code, Mummy?”
It was.
Jack was up and heading toward the car with most of the others following him. I sat in the dirt with Charlie for a few seconds longer.
“Well done, Charlie.” He flushed all pink around the ears. The fact was, we’d had everything we needed right from the beginning, but I had been running around too quickly to realize it.
We easily picked out the phrase “SOS,” and the book listed an individual code that meant “start.” We listened again and again and got the start and the SOS, but beyond that it was too fast to make out the letters.
“This is rubbish,” said Charlie. “You could get a computer to do this.”
“Unfortunately, we no longer have an app for that. Or, indeed, anything else,” I said. “Let’s just take it one letter at a time. There’s a tiny gap after the letter, like in SOS it goes, ‘dot dot dot, gap, dash dash dash, gap, dot dot dot,’ right?” They agreed. “Okay, then let’s concentrate on the first one after the gap after SOS. See if we can get it.”
We let the rhythm of the Morse code wash over us. Eventually, there was a pause, followed by the code for “start.”
“This is it,” said Lola.
“Shh.”
“Dot dot dot.” S.
“Dash dash dash.” O.
“Dot dot dot.” S.
“SOS,” said Charlie.
“Shh!”
“Dash, dot, dash, dash, dot, dot.” The signal ran on, and I turned down the volume.
“It’s too hard,” said Charlie.
“It’s so quick,” said Jack. “I got dash, dot—then what?”
Lola sang the rhythm out. “Bah, bup, bah, bah, bup, bup.”
We all agreed. Bah, bup, bah, bah, bup, bup: dash, dot, dash, dash, dot, dot.
“That doesn’t make sense.” Jack scanned the book. “There are no letters that long.”
We sat through the message again. Picked out the pause, the “start,” and the SOS. Then: bah, bup, bah, bah, bup, bup.
“That’s definitely right,” I said.
“Okay, well, ‘bah, bup’ or ‘dash, dot’ is the letter N. So that would make ‘bah, bah, bup, bup’ the letter Z.”
I wrote “NZ” onto the windscreen with a stub of crayon. We all looked at it. The Morse code melody niggled away in the background.
“What does it mean?” Charlie asked. “New Zealand? Capital is Wellington.”
“It can’t be right.” Jack turned the pages of the survival book, as though there might be an explanation readily available.
“Let’s just carry on with the next letters and see what we have,” I said.
There was groaning. “It’s too hard.” “We don’t know what it means.” “What’s the point?”
“Just keep your eye on the ball, kids.”
“What?”
“Look.” I spun in my seat to face them all. “What is our long-term goal?”
“Find somewhere safe.”
“Right. And how do we do that?”
“Work out this message.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Listen to it over and over until we get it.”
“So shall we get on with it? Or would you prefer to sit here whining about how difficult it is until the Cleaners find us?”
“Get on with it.”
“Right.” I turned the volume back up, but the dots and dashes washed over us. There was more groaning.
“Stop thinking about how hard it is,” I said. “You’re wasting your brain power on thinking.”
Jack sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.
The electronic rhythm surrounded us. Lola was right about the bahs and the bups: it was easier to hear it as music than try to translate it to dots and dashes. We reached the long gap at the end of the transmission and then the start signal and the SOS.
“Ready,” said Jack.
“Shh.”
The code for NZ rushed by and then: “bah, bah, bah, bup, bup.” Lola sang it and we all joined in.
“Bah bah bah bup bup!” Jack ran his fingers down the page.
“A number eight.”
I wrote “8” on the glass.
Then we got “6,” followed by “0,” “4,” “1.” Painfully slowly, having to listen through the whole message again and again, we picked out a sequence of ten numbers.
NZ8604112884
“But what does that mean?” asked Lola.
“Coordinates,” said Jack. “We did coordinates on the orienteering course. It should be written like this.” He grabbed the crayon and wrote it again. “‘NZ’ indicates a square on a map, and then the first five numbers give a westerly point, and the second five give the northerly point. It’s quite a specific location.”
We carried on listening to the message until we had deciphered the second part, which returned to letters again.
My writing spread across the windscreen: NZ/86041/12884/DONT/GO/SOUTH.