Chapter Twenty-Two
Woody and his little gang, which had dwindled to three of the younger boys, occupied the space in front of the single door to the outside, hunched beneath an invisible dome of bitterness. Every now and then, the whole group turned, a many-headed beast, and glanced our way before ducking back down to whisper their grievances. Only the foolhardy would dare to approach this little stronghold. The exclusion took me back to my own school days. At least now, though, I had a pretty good idea of why I found myself on the outside.
I watched them without looking their way, while the conversation swaggered around my own group. Hyped-up on the unexpected success of deciphering the Morse code, my kids were already celebrating, their noise engulfing the room. Of course, we had no idea where NZ 86041 12884 actually was in layman’s terms. And we didn’t know what we would find there. But we boasted confident speculations about getting a map and being out of danger by this time tomorrow.
“See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya,” said Charlie.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Woody’s finger slip inside his mouth, and, though I couldn’t hear it over our delirium, I knew he gave a soft pop while he took it all in.
“Shh.” I laid a hand on each of my kids’ shoulders to calm them down. “Others are trying to sleep.” What I was trying to convey to their immature consciences was: some of the others might not feel like celebrating quite so soon, leaving behind loved ones without knowing if they’re dead or alive. Or leaving them in a shallow grave in the middle of a field. We might be battling away, but we had long since lost the war.
“Let’s lie down to sleep now.”
There was a lot of grumbling about the scratchiness of hay, but they eventually settled. Joni stayed on the bench, munching through a bag of trail mix. Lola and Jack propped themselves against the wall and whispered behind the barrier of their knees. I lay back in the hay between my boys and watched a cool sliver of blue-black sky framed in the long window.
A change in air pressure disturbed me. Or maybe even woke me. The light was different—it was so black, I couldn’t tell the windows from the walls. It must have clouded over. It must be much later. A soft click told me the outside door had been open and was now closed. I tried to reach silently for Charlie’s backpack, where I knew there was a torch, but the hay rustled beneath me, setting off ripples of sound as my noise prompted other bodies to rearrange themselves in their sleep. With stealth no longer an option, I rummaged in the bag and clicked on the Maglite, flickering the beam first over my own brood, who were all there, and then straight to Woody’s corner. He was gone. I checked behind the pickup, where we’d left a slop bucket for overnight emergencies, but there was no sign of him. I swore behind my teeth and stepped over sleeping bodies to the door.
Outside, the torch was pathetically inadequate against the bulk of the darkness. The door clicked behind me, and I heard a crunch of gravel to one side. The light barely made it the few feet between me and Woody, who was fastening his trousers. I dropped the beam so that it pooled between us, and we both stood in the dark outside the circle of light.
“What are you doing out here, Woody?”
“What do you think?”
“We brought a bucket inside for that.”
“Go back in then, if you’re scared.” The hard edge of his voice bounced my concern away.
“We shouldn’t be taking risks now, not when we’re so close to getting there.”
“Getting where?” His question faded into the dark.
“I don’t know until we find a map. But I feel sure we have to check it out.”
“As sure as you were when you thought my brother was involved in some plot to kidnap your son?”
The wind drew a long breath through the trees.
“That’s what I thought.” He walked toward the door, and my torchlight trailed after him. “You’re just winging it. For all you know, the Cleaners could be sending that Morse code so we go straight to them. Save them the bother of finding us.”
“That could well be the case, so we’ll have to be careful. But what else are we going to do? Do you really think if we hide, they’ll just leave us alone? If they find us, they will kill us.”
Woody’s feet turned back into the light, the white rubber caps of his trainers glaring.
“How many people have the Cleaners killed?” His voice was quiet.
“I saw them shoot the hermit, and they killed our dog. But who knows how many others—”
“And how many people have you killed, Mrs. Greene?”
I licked my thumb and used it to rub away the hard little scab behind my ear, then tasted the tingle of blood.
“I have killed one person. By accident. It was an appalling mistake, but—”
“And what about the other kid? Peter. Was he an accident?”
“Yes! He got burnt, he couldn’t survive those injuries, it was a mercy killing. And that wasn’t even me.” My whiny voice hung in the air like the steam rising off Woody’s piss. I sounded like Maggie: It wasn’t me, Mummy; it’s not fair, Mummy.
“And you wanted to leave Harry Berman behind at the mine.”
“Nobody wanted to leave him behind.”
“Well, I make it one for the Cleaners and two for you.” Woody stepped forward so that his eyes flared for a second and were doused by shadows. “So tell me, Mrs. Greene. Who should I be running away from?”
Back in the hay, I rolled over in my sleep and gasped aloud as something sharp pricked my cheekbone. I sat up, and found it had drawn blood. I sifted through the green strands of grass down to the hard-packed earth below. There I found a white tooth. I lifted my hand to my mouth, and when it came away, a second incisor came with it in a puddle of bloody drool. My tongue slid into the gaping hole left behind, and I whimpered as the pressure popped out my canine, which arced in a languid rotation down onto the soft hay, where it bounced once and slipped between the strands. I pulled my lips over my teeth, as though that would keep them in, but my mouth filled with blood, and I had to swallow it. I lay back down in the hay to tongue my wounds. But the movement set off a bloom of warmth beneath my legs, and I bolted up again to see blood dilating out from between my thighs, and I screamed exactly the way I had once when I was pregnant with Billy and thought I was losing the baby—which only the day before I had considered aborting because Julian didn’t want to know about another child, and I didn’t see how I could manage a third as well as the business, and it took a bloodletting, a moment of horror, for me to realize that I could never let that baby go. I pressed my thighs and my mouth together to keep my blood inside.
I sat up in the hay. My heart kicked me in the ribs just like Billy had later in the pregnancy. He was there, sleeping beside me. My teeth were there, safely in my mouth. The dawn was there. I got up and downed the dregs of the can of Tizer to wash away the taste of blood that came from picking at the scab behind my ear. It was bigger than ever with strands of hair dried into it like a fetid little nest. I needed scratch mitts, like a baby. I headed for the door, expecting to navigate past several boys. But the space was clear. Woody and his gang were gone.
Outside, as I followed the path toward the main shelter, Charlie’s warning about the wolves hunting at first light ran round my head like an earworm. When I glanced over my shoulder, the high fence of the wolf enclosure was already out of sight, shrouded in a mist that would make perfect cover for predators. Stones clattered to my right. I faced the misty wall again, expecting to see one of the boys. Instead, there was a clang of metal. The noise was smothered by the fog. Silence.
“Woody?”
Scuffling over hay bales. I was near the main shelter.
“Woody, are you there?”
My feet turned themselves back toward the wolf enclosure. But the gate to the lynx pen was closer—I should run there instead, get inside. Another metal clang from the shelter, and the mist ahead of me started to swirl. I backed away from whatever was stirring it up, and my heel caught on the lip of the grass verge so that I rattled back against the fence. I groped along in the direction of the propped-open gate. The footsteps crossing the gravel were light, stealthy. I found the gate and stumbled to get inside, grappling it shut.
“Mrs. Greene?”
A boy emerged from the mist. I was standing with my arms rigid to keep the gate closed. We stared at each other through the metal diamonds.
“Were you scared?” He made this sound like it defied the laws of physics.
I unfurled my fingers from the gate and came out from inside my pen.
“Unlike Red Riding Hood, I can comprehend the possibility of being gobbled up by a wolf. So, yes, I was scared.”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault. What’s your name, anyway? Where’re the others?”
“Kofi. And they’ve gone.”
I pushed my hands into my hair and tipped my head to the sky. Make it stop.
“What do you mean ‘they’ve gone’?”
“They took one of the ATVs from the shelter.”
“I don’t even know what an ‘ATV’ is.”
“All-terrain vehicle. Four-wheeled bike.”
“For God’s sake.”
“They’re going back to school.”
“I don’t believe this.”
Kofi waited with a patient face, as though I simply needed time to believe this.
“Why?” I asked.
He hesitated: a good kid, torn between a rude truth or a downright lie.
“Don’t worry, Kofi. I know Woody hates me and doesn’t trust me for toffee, which is quite understandable in the circumstances. What I mean is, what does he hope to achieve by going back to the school? Why is he going there?”
Kofi shrugged. “I suppose—it’s home?”
First Joni, now Woody. Why this fixation with home? Making homes was my living. Or, at the very least, playing house. But now the concept had as much relevance to my life as some arcane point of algebra.
“Fine. We’ll go after them. How many went?”
“Woody and Joss Hartnell and Mo Hassan.”
I set off back toward the research station. “So how come you didn’t go, too?”
“There wasn’t room.”
I glanced down at him. He was one of the smaller ones in Woody’s gang, a late bloomer. He stared straight ahead, as though he weren’t used to anyone looking at him. The mist was retreating from the morning sun into the cool edges of the valley. Heavy dew revealed a white skein of ossified spiders’ webs on the metal fence of the wolf enclosure, their intricate bone-work ragged beyond repair. As we walked past, I slammed my hand against the chain link, and it thrashed, showering us with chilly droplets as the sound roared through the valley. Children’s voices answered, carrying across the flatland from the den. They were up and about. I hurried on, but Kofi was digging deep in his pocket for something.
“It’s not true, what I said before,” he announced to his hip. He pulled out a huge and filthy handkerchief to dry his dewy face. “I couldn’t decide whether to go with Woody or not. I cried.”
“You cried! Did the heavens open and a divine voice call you a sissy?”
“No. But Woody said I’d have to make up my mind or they’d go, and then I went and sat in the shelter and they left.”
“It sounds like you did make a decision.”
“I was too scared to go.”
“Or maybe you were brave enough to make up your own mind.” I put my hand on his shoulder, which he shrugged off straight away, but carried on walking beside me back to the den.
Breakfast was meager. A catering-size tin of cheese crackers without the thrill of cheese. The meal from the previous night had stretched our bellies again, reminding us how it felt to be full. Now we echoed with hunger, and it was all too much for Billy, who screamed for food until he was puce, and then collapsed into a snotty heap. While I calmed him down, Maggie raided another boy’s rations and stuffed his crackers down her maw before he could stop her. The den felt very small all of a sudden.
We should have been packing up and moving on, but once again we were stuck, debating which way to turn. By Kofi’s estimation, the boys had left over two hours ago. We could backtrack and try to catch them, but we didn’t know which route they had taken. If they even had a map. Or petrol. Or a clue. We could let them go, hoping they would reach the safety of the school and stay there, so we could send help once we found it. Or we could split up: Jack wanted to head to the school on the other four-wheeled bike, while the rest of us found a map and worked out the location of the coordinates. Then we could rendezvous at an agreed point later that night.
“I’ll go with Jack,” said Lola.
“No.”
“I can help persuade the boys to come back.”
“Two words, Lola: your mother. It would finish her off. Besides, I need help herding these cats.” I waved my arm around to take in my three, the Lost Boy, and the rest of St. Govan’s.
“I really don’t think Jack should go alone—” Lola started protesting.
Joni emerged from beneath the tarpaulin on the bed of the pickup and let a heavy canvas rucksack drop onto the dirt floor.
“No.” Her voice landed with the same dull thud. “Not happening.”
“But if you think it’s too dangerous for me, then why are you okay with Jack going? Is he expendable?”
“He’s not my child,” Joni said. She hauled the bag to the bench and started unpacking, her side of the conversation closed.
“I’ll go with him.” Kofi stepped forward. “I was thinking perhaps we should find a map and work out the coordinates first? Then we can tell Woody where we’re headed, convince him it’s safe, and it won’t seem so bad.”
While this was a good suggestion, Kofi was ignored. Behind him Joni had reached the bottom of the canvas bag and, with no fanfare, produced a map and a compass, the ones she had been carrying since we came to the woods. The compass she laid behind her on the bench. One by one, everyone followed my stare and turned to watch her. She lifted the cardboard cover of the Ordnance Survey map and unfolded each side until it was held wide in her arms, settling herself into a more comfortable position on the floor before inspecting it. She seemed oblivious to our rapt attention. After a few seconds, she folded the map up, ensuring the creases bent in the right direction.
“Joni?”
“Wrong map.”
Jack held out his hand. “Could I see it please, Mrs. Luff?”
“It’s the wrong map.”
“I’d just like to—”
“Check if you want to.” The map ruffled through the air toward Jack like a hen in flight. “But I’m telling you it’s the wrong fricking map. It’s grid square SO, not NZ. This map is for South Shropshire. NZ is somewhere else. Up north.”
I flapped my hand at Jack to prevent him from further startling the horses.
“At least we know now that OS maps show the right grid references,” I said. “Where can we find more hiking maps?”
“The library.” “Motorway service station.” “Camping shop.” The kids were full of good ideas.
Lola went to the pickup and came back with the tourist map she’d used to get us here. She folded out our section and tapped it with a fingernail. “What about an airfield? They’d have detailed maps, right?”
Charlie was at my side in a moment with one finger in the air.
“No,” I said to him.
He let the finger slump to his side.
“No light aircraft,” I said to him. “No hang gliders. Definitely no hot air balloons.”
“Paramotor?”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s like a backpack with a giant fan attached—”
“No, Charlie. We will not be escaping by air. We’re not thrill-seeking. Quite the opposite, we will be thrill-avoiding.”
Now that we had jettisoned so much stuff, we were on the move in minutes. We jolted across the wolf enclosure, pausing only to contemplate a pile of sheep’s wool near the gate, which no one could recall being there before. I glanced into the dark spaces of the tree line as we drove past and was glad to power up the hill to the open moorland above. Jack appeared in my rearview mirror on the bike, and we followed the rolling road toward the town, in the direction of the airfield.
The grid reference was still daubed on the windscreen, and I found myself racing toward it. A donkey chasing a carrot. Could Woody be right? I thought. The Cleaners came after us with the stick, and now this is the carrot? I forced myself to slow down so that Jack could keep up.
The road turned quickly into a single-lane commuter route, and we rushed past nondescript houses, business units, and then farms. Although still semirural, this was the most populated area we had encountered for days. There were frequent crashed cars, mostly military, and the occasional corpse by the roadside. The bodies were slightly inflated, as though they had died while wearing a fat suit. No one inside the car said a thing. I flicked on the radio, and we listened to the bahs and bups of the radio signal, rolling through the Morse code message. Prompted by Lola, I turned off onto a smaller lane.
After we passed a massive garden center, the road bent round under some trees, and I slammed on the brakes. Cars, all facing away from us, blocked both sides of the road. Jack came to a jerky halt next to my window. I wrenched the pickup into reverse and backed down the lane. Jack spun the bike round and stopped beside me again. He gestured at me to roll down the window.
“There are people in the cars,” he said.
“Bodies,” I corrected him.
“The airfield is just at the end of this lane.” Lola tapped the map.
“Charlie’s not the only one who thought of flying away from trouble,” I said.
Jack switched off the bike and wandered into the car park of the garden center. Lola opened the door to go after him.
“Don’t—” I started.
“I won’t go near any bodies. I’ll just see if there’s another way to the airfield.”
I scrunched round in my seat to face Joni and the kids in the back.
“Pee pee?” said Billy.
“I want to go to a café,” said Maggie.
“Plane,” said Charlie, pointing to the other side of the road.
I scrunched round the other way and saw the tip of a white wing sticking up behind the hedgerow.
“Joni, can you keep the kids in the car? We shouldn’t be out here. Too much buzz.”
“I got it.” Joni opened her door and went to shout something under the tarpaulin.
“Mummy—” started Billy.
“Always comes back. Just stay in the car.”
I trotted across the lane and through the surreal line of palm trees that welcomed me to the garden center. There was a special offer on spring bulbs and pond netting. I turned from the buildings into the car park. Jack and Lola were clambering over a wooden fence on the far side. I yelled at them to come back, and they stopped to consider whether or not to ignore me.
A few cars looked abandoned, presumably by people who had decided to walk to the airfield. I cupped my hands round my eyes and peered inside the first one. There were no maps in the seat backs and no GPS. The second was the same, though there was a big cooler on the seat. I tried the door and it opened, but the stench told me that whatever was inside the box was beyond edible. Jack and Lola returned, and I told them to check the other cars. I tried another one, but the only map was a large-scale atlas of France and the Low Countries. Behind me, glass smashed. Lola punched the jagged edges away with the end of a brick and reached through to pop the door open. From inside the glove compartment, she produced a hidden satnav device.
“How did you know that was there?” Jack asked her.
“Circle on the windscreen,” she said, “left by the holder.”
While Jack was congratulating her on being “totes city,” I ran over and plugged the GPS into the cigarette lighter of the pickup. It burst into life with a beat of drums. I hit the button for home, just to test if it still worked. The screen went gray, and it started calculating a route.
“Hello, satellites,” I said to the sky. “Don’t be alarmed, but we’re still alive down here.”