Chapter Three
I grasped for Billy in the purple part of the night, certain he was frozen through. I dug into the covers for his hand, which was warm, and laid my palm flat across his shoulder blades to check for the rise and fall of breathing. I fell back onto my mattress, listening to a silence so deep it had its own complexity—the pitch and roll of waves—and when I woke again it was to an ashy dawn, as gray as the remains of the campfire where Horatio still slept. Wherever he’d come from, he was in no hurry to get back. I shrugged on a fleece and unzipped the tent flaps, which were laden with dew.
Maggie was already outside, fussing about something.
“What’s up, Princess Margaret?”
She held up both hands. “Which one is my favorite finger?”
“The pinkie?”
She dropped her hands into her lap, looking away. I had done wrong; now I was dead to her.
“The sore thumb?” I tried.
She ignored me. One strike and you’re out. Game over. For a second, I shone so brightly through my daughter she became translucent, and I saw myself sitting there, raw as a ripped hangnail. No wonder I found it hard to like her sometimes. I reached over and kissed her unwilling head. Charlie was subdued, too. Even Peter managed to sit still for a while. Our listless mood was in contrast to the bustling forest, which chattered with life. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle or some other woodland creature straight out of Beatrix Potter scurried past wearing a bonnet and carrying a pattypan. Maybe that would have pleased Maggie.
I went back to the tent to get dressed, and Charlie sidled up, slipping his hand into mine and making me startle.
“What happened to the cows, Mummy?”
You can protect kids from everything but their own curiosity. I told him I didn’t know exactly, but for some reason they hadn’t been milked.
“Why didn’t the farmer get help?” he asked.
That was a very good question.
“What will happen to the cows?” he said.
“I don’t know. They might get mastitis.”
“Will we get mashed eyes—”
“You can’t catch mastitis. Try not to worry about the cows.”
He looked away into the trees as though he could still hear their screaming. I stroked his hair back from his forehead.
“I’m scared,” he said.
“How big is your worry, Charlie?”
“The cows were horrid. But it’s good that Horatio’s here. About a seven or six?” He went quiet, fingers seeking inside my grasp, velvety as a mole.
“A six isn’t so bad.” I squeezed his hand three times, our secret code for I love you.
“Peter reckons their udders will swell up with milk and burst.” He scanned my face for signs of confirmation. Of course, I lied. He squeezed my hand four times—I love you, too—and ran off to tell Peter.
Joni stumped up the slope and dumped shrubbery into one of the big cooking pots. By way of a morning greeting, she told us how she “wiped out down by the crick,” ripped her shirt, but found this pile of edible greenery from which we could rustle up all manner of herbal treats. “It’s a fricking supermarket out there,” she said, jabbing a finger at the wilderness, her eyes lit up like a kid peering into a golden treasure chest. I poked at the forage with a wooden spoon. Joni gave the kids a bucket and sent them to fetch washing water from the stream. They raced off and she turned on me.
“There’s a whole bunch of big birds way off. Buzzards. Circling.” She mashed the pond weed into the pot, lips pursed with effort.
“That’s what birds do, isn’t it?” We’d wound ourselves up tight the night before, lying outside under the stars like teenagers with a Ouija board, but in the pragmatic light of morning, the knots slipped and the anxiety eased. In my experience, there was a rational explanation for everything. “Peter’s on about fires. Charlie’s fretting over the cows. Now birds? Please don’t tell me you think this is some kind of omen.”
“It’s not a fricking omen.” Joni separated watercress leaves from the stalks like she was wringing a neck. “The buzzards are circling over that farm. Think about it: the cows are dying.”
I opened the cooler and stared at the contents—we’re out of milk—while I thought about it.
“So let’s drive to the village.” I let the lid drop. “We’ll find out what’s going on. And if we can find a shop that’s open on a Sunday, we’ll get some fresh milk.”
We gathered the kids, squeezed Horatio and the big boys into the boot so we’d all fit in one car, and for the first time since we’d arrived on Friday morning, left the camp.
I slid my foot off the accelerator and let the automatic engine haul us along the dirt track out of the forest and across the field. We had the windows down, patrolling the landscape on all sides. A kids’ CD was playing quietly on the stereo: a scene from The Wind in the Willows. A plummy voice intoned, “There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worst of all, no way out.” I clicked it off.
We watched the buzzards soaring with the brutal grace of skateboarding teenagers, up to nothing that was ostensibly no-good, but menacing all the same. Their cat-screech cries cut through the uproar of rooks until, in response to some secret signal, the birds swept away and silence revealed itself like a genie. At the top of the dirt track, the Beast splashed through a ford in a shallow stream, and we accelerated onto the main road.
It was just over five miles to the outskirts of Wodebury. The town was little more than a village, but it must’ve at least had the basics—a shop, a post office, a pub. Somewhere we could find an explanation for why we were the only car on the road. We passed St. Sebastian’s church, with its standard-issue Norman tower and gnarled yew tree. The grass, diligently mown into cricket-pitch stripes, only emphasized the decrepitude of the graves, whose stone faces were streaked with tear tracks of mascara-black algae.
“They used to plant yew trees in graveyards”—Lola’s voice so close it made me jump—“because people believed they drank the poison left by the bodies.”
An empty church on Sunday morning? Maybe the service had already finished. I had no idea what time people went to church. In any case, it was deathly quiet. Silent as the grave.
“Hey, kids, this must be the dead center of town!” I said. No one laughed. My brain churned out wisecracks, passed down like family heirlooms from my father, on some kind of inappropriate autopilot.
We rolled past a handsome rectory, and then a school, windows dark, as were those in the row of sandstone almshouses opposite. We followed the road to a junction, where I accelerated away. Billy whooped as he bumped back against his seat. Charlie urged me to go faster, and I complied—anything to distract them from the traffic signal, which no one else seemed to notice had no light, no power.
At the next junction, I turned toward the town center. We cruised round a bend, and I had to swerve around the rump of a car that was sticking halfway out of a driveway. I could feel Joni staring at my left cheek, wanting eye contact. But I couldn’t face the discussion, the speculation; giving voice to my worries might make them real.
I squinted at the road ahead and pulled over before a single-lane stone bridge that arched across a shallow river. Beyond was a village green with a pristine cricket pavilion to the left and a pub off to the right. There was no one crossing the bridge, or fishing in the river, or playing on the green. I turned off the engine, which tutted in the awkward silence. The kids started to move and unstrap their belts.
“You all stay here with Joni,” I said and got out. “No exceptions. Do not get out of the car.” I looked at each one in turn, including Joni, to make sure they got my point. “Do not follow me.” And, just as I pushed the door closed on Billy’s wide-eyed face, I added, “Mummy always comes back. Okay?”
The door slammed as they broke out into protests. It muffled their noise, and the hush enveloped me. It was as quiet as fresh snow, and I was loath to be the first to sully it.
My wellies clopped as I walked onto the bridge. Greenish lichen prickled my fingertips as they trailed over the stones. Tree limbs creaked. The bridge narrowed at the highest point, where I stopped and looked across to the pub. There were a few cars lined up in the car park—a Range Rover rubbing shoulders with an old banger—and one van stood with its doors open, blocking the driveway. A refuse sack lay ripped and eviscerated, its contents scavenged. A barman’s tray sat on a lone picnic table—the smokers’ table—a pint glass still upright with murky liquid and fag ends floating inside, the rest in a shattered pile on the ground below.
I crossed the bridge and walked into the car park, past the abandoned van—keys still in the ignition—and the picnic table, which was thick with wasps. Then around the corner into Wodebury high street, toward the front door of the pub, whose artfully distressed signboard promised real ale, gastro fare, and good cheer. I stopped beneath the painted crest of the Whiten Arms, which swung and moaned on its gallows.
There were three bodies on the pavement outside the pub. All men, all face down and sprawled in a semicircle, as though they’d been flung from the door and dropped where they fell. The body nearest me—an age-withered man, swamped by his clothes—held in his outstretched arm a lead with a threadbare collar still attached, as though he were being dragged along the ground by an invisible dog. Another of the men had his glasses trapped uncomfortably between his pudgy forehead and the paving stones. The third wore shorts and sandals with socks. There was no blood, no rictus grins of pain, no hands grasped around swollen, air-blocked throats. No sign of what might have killed three blokes outside a pub.
I staggered back half a dozen steps and clattered into the signboard, which folded up and crashed down with a backfire crack that echoed up the street. Would the kids have heard that? Would they come running? As the echo faded, the muted atmosphere returned; there was no sound of car doors opening on the far side of the bridge. I moved out into the middle of the road and walked along the white line until I was level with the pub door, which was propped open by an overturned bar stool. The interior was blank, silent—no music or voices or fruit machines spitting out jackpot coins. But the sunlight picked out a female hand—wearing too many rings—still grasping the leg of the bar stool, though the rest of her body was hidden by darkness. I backed away to the other side of the street and slumped against a parked car. Farther down the road, a hatchback was wrapped around a lamppost, a hanging basket embedded in its windshield. In the other direction was the desolate cricket field. There were no signs of human life.
I drew in a slow breath, let my ribs expand, and blew out through my nose as I counted to five, then pushed away from the parked car. This is actually happening, I told myself. This is happening right now. You need to think. Get your ducks in a line.
In a smooth motion, I turned my back on the bodies and steadied myself by planting my hands on top of the car. And screamed.
Staring up through the driver’s-side window was a silently screeching woman, teeth bared, lips stretched where she had slumped and slid down the glass in a macabre parody of the blowfish that Charlie liked to perform on the patio doors. I staggered out into the road and ran a few steps down the white line until I realized I was surrounded: pub to my right, blowfish woman behind me, the crashed hatchback up ahead. And my family waiting in the car.
Oh, God, did I just scream out loud? Did they hear that?
I sucked air through my nose and panted it out, each breath more ragged than the last. I needed to think. But my thoughts overlapped, speeding up to a blur like the colors on a pinwheel, so I couldn’t focus on any one thing. I turned round and round in the middle of the road—a broken toy—my wellies clop-clopping over the white line, and the creaking hinges of the pub sign goading me. My mind strobed with thoughts of a man’s face pressed into the pavement, a woman’s teeth grating against glass, virus or poison or plague, an empty dog lead, bodies like carrion, infection everywhere, Joni demanding answers, Mummy always comes back.
Do something.
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and dialed 999.
“Sorry. The service requested is not available. You have not been charged for this call.”
I hit redial. The robotic voice returned. “Sorry. Please hang up. Sorry. Please hang up.”
Sorry.
For days we had thought there was no signal, but maybe the network was overwhelmed. Maybe the police themselves were overwhelmed. All at once—the thought seemed to whip around me, looking for a way in—I knew these bodies were only a glimpse of something bigger.
Blackness writhed in my guts, and I pressed it down, kneading my belly with both fists until the bad energy frothed into my legs. Then I could hardly hold them still. I kicked off the wellington boots and marched down the middle of the road, away from the pub and the blowfish woman, breaking into a run as I neared the second car, which became the starting line of a sprint. I raced the full length of the high street, pressing down through pistoning thighs, pumping elbows and fists in wide arcs, gulping oxygen until the metallic tang of blood iron filled my mouth, and I was forced to slow down.
I stopped at a mini-roundabout. The town fizzled out into a country lane, the white lines sweeping off along the tree-tunneled road. I let my hands rest on my knees, my stomach heaving with air but voided of the fury. It took a few seconds for the sparkles to clear from my eyes.
Mummy always comes back.
What if they come looking for me? Little feet stampeding, desperate to be the first over the stone bridge, racing around the corner of the pub. Billy, always bringing up the rear, overtaking the others when they stopped in their tracks—thrilled to be winning for once, running right past them, right into the bodies. Falling over them. Onto them. Touching them.
I had to get back to my children. Pounding along the white line again, snatching up my discarded wellies, glancing at another body lying half-hidden down an alleyway, too fleeting to register beyond the simple jolting shock of it. Keep running. As far as the pub, where I pounded to a drumroll stop in the street again.
The bodies were still there, in my peripheral vision. I hadn’t touched them or gotten close enough to breathe the same air; surely I hadn’t been exposed to whatever killed them. I pulled myself back together, literally: hauling my disheveled hair into its band, tucking my shirt into my jeans, pulling on the wellies. Otherwise, I could hear the conversation:
“Mummy’s got no shoes on!”
“Why have you got no shoes on, Mummy?”
“Why, Mummy, why?”
At some point, I was going to have to explain, but not now.
Directly across from the pub was a village shop. It was painted British racing green and had a display of quaint bags and biscuits in the window, every last thing decorated with a retro Union Jack. I pushed at the door, which opened with an old-school tinkle. The store smelled of dusty newsprint and stale chocolate, but nothing worse: I could see no bodies in either of the two aisles. A drinks fridge, dark and silent, was within reach to my left. I grabbed two liters of semi-skimmed milk that were still quite cold. Then I jogged back across the high street and over the bridge to the car, the shop door jangling a warning behind me.