Cal tried to wrestle the gear stick into reverse. It wouldn’t go. He felt it with both hands, finding a ring on the shift, pulling it up and allowing the stick to slot into place. He revved and let the clutch rise.
The engine stuttered, then cut out. The passenger window exploded, hands reaching in. There was no sunlight left inside the car, three more people now on the bonnet, so many on the roof that it was bowing inwards, the metal creaking. He turned the key again, forgetting to push in the clutch. The car juddered, people falling from it into the crowd.
Cal swore, pushing in the clutch, trying the ignition, revving it hard with his right foot. The whole car was rocking now as the people outside attempted to roll it over.
He let the clutch rise slowly. It bit, groaned, then the car jolted backwards. It didn’t get far, the sea of bodies behind it blocking the way. Cal stomped on the accelerator, shunting his way through them. The car growled, flattening anything behind it as it gained speed.
Cal slammed on the brakes, remembering to push in the clutch as well. He wrestled it into first, spinning the wheel all the way round as he pulled away, not caring that people were bouncing off the bumper, not caring that he drove right into a kid that he’d played football against yesterday, not caring that the car was bucking wildly because of the countless squirming bodies beneath the wheels.
He just drove down the hill as fast as he could, screaming silently through the sun-drenched, ruby-red stained glass of his windscreen.
Brick
Fursville, 12.17 p.m.
The torch lay just inside the door, on its side. Brick turned it on and it spat out a weak light, hardly enough to illuminate the gloom.
The first thing he saw was his computer, lying face down on the floor, its screen throwing out a ghostly aura. He scanned the room, waiting for a shape to come flying at him, for teeth to lock into his face, his throat. But it was strangely still in here, like he’d stepped into a painting, the quiet broken only by the soft whirr of his laptop and the thrashing beat of his pulse.
Then a portion of the darkness moved, smoke against shadow near the far wall. From here it looked like a burlap sack, a lump of cloth bundled into itself. A groan escaped it, followed by a soft sob and a clump of unintelligible words.
Don’t just stand there, get the laptop! his brain commanded, but the sight of Lisa there, so hurt, so damaged, was too much. He wanted to go to her, to help her, to carry her out of this place and take her to hospital. He wanted her to be like she had been before last night, annoying and selfish and bossy, yes, but also funny and kind and sexy as hell when she chose to be. It wasn’t too late.
The lump shifted again, a long limb flopping out and hitting the floor with a sound like a foot stepping in a puddle. Another followed, making Brick think of a spider caught in running water, unfolding itself before scuttling off. But this thing – It’s not a thing, it’s Lisa! – wasn’t going anywhere. She giggled, the laugh like cut glass, becoming another low, choked groan.
‘Lisa?’ he asked. He couldn’t stop himself.
She raised her head, her eyes pockets of darkness in the flesh of her face. A bruise fanned out from her nose and her mouth was a ragged hole that opened and closed in a bandana of blood.
Lisa observed him, tilting her head first one way, then the other. She attempted to crawl towards him, but her left wrist was bent back at an impossible angle, the tips of her fingers almost lodged in the crook of her elbow. It couldn’t hold her weight, and she crashed down.
The basement went dark, and for a second Brick thought he was going to faint. Lisa had done this trying to hurt him. She had broken herself. Even now she was trying to get to him, using her legs to shunt herself forward, her face sliding wetly. It was this that spurred Brick on. The longer he stayed here, the more damage she’d do to herself.
He walked towards the table, never taking his eyes off her for more than a moment. He picked up the laptop, folding it closed, feeling for the dongle and finding it in the USB port. Lisa had raised her head again, studying him. The change of angle meant that he could see her eyes. One of them was completely red, swimming in blood. In spite of her injuries they burned. She looked possessed.
Brick walked to the corner, to the pile of bags that sat there. They had been emptied over the floor, a bottle of water half drunk and lying on its side and three or four packets of sweets. Still keeping his eyes on Lisa, and one hand on the wall, he edged around the room, crouching down and loading the sweets back into a carrier bag. There were five bottles of water left in the multipack and he snatched them too, then changed his mind and pulled three of the bottles from the cardboard, leaving them. He could always drink from the taps in the kitchen, and he didn’t know how long Lisa would be down here.
He put everything, even the laptop, into the bag, holding it in one clenched fist as he retreated towards the door. Lisa watched him move for as long as she could hold her head up, then it dropped once more. She uttered another moan, full of frustration, full of confusion, and it almost snapped Brick’s heart clean in two. He waited until the open door was at his back before speaking.
‘I’m sorry, Lisa, I don’t . . . I don’t know what to do. There’s water, and I left you some sweets.’ The sound of his voice was making her lurch, a hand sliding towards him. He noticed that one of her fingernails was hanging loose. He took a step back, stumbling over the junk in the corridor, hitting the wall hard enough to have his breath snatched away. He clutched the carrier bag to his chest. ‘I’ll find a way to help you,’ he said. ‘I promise, you’ll be okay. I promise.’
She made one last effort to look at him, her eyes inkwell black. There was nothing in that face, it was a half-melted mask that seemed to be sliding loose. Her mouth fell open, something bubbling from it, but Brick reached out and slammed the door shut before he could hear what it was, shouting out one last time:
‘I’m sorry!’
He secured the metal pole between the door and the wall again, not that he thought Lisa would be going anywhere. Then he walked up the stairs and turned left, heading down the corridor away from the fire door. He reached a double door on which a peeling sticker read: To all Pavilion staff. Remember to SMILE! And for some reason he obeyed that advice as he pushed his way through, his mouth peeling open into a corpse-like grin.
Yeah, no doubt about it, he was going nuts.
He was in the front foyer of the pavilion, the box office a small window in the wall to his right, and past that the main doors, sealed tight with more chains. On the other side of the room were the toilets, the stairs to the floor above the gift shop, and next to them – past a diorama of plastic jungle plants and a life-size stuffed leopard toy which looked as though it had come from one of the games stalls outside – were the doors to the theatre. A banner reading ‘Jurassic Farce!’ drooped from the wall like a creeper.
He collapsed against the wall amongst the plants, next to the glass-eyed leopard, taking one of the water bottles from his bag and quenching a thirst that had raged unnoticed until now.
He pulled out his laptop, expecting to see the screen cracked and useless. When the machine warmed up, however, he saw that it was just as he had left it apart from a dark, inky blotch on the top right corner of the screen. The battery sat at a little under half full, which was worrying because out here there was no power. A little box told him that he had been logged out because of inactivity, and he quickly typed his password back in, clicking the ‘Connect’ button.
The little blue light on the dongle flashed furiously as the screen reported waiting for network . . . connecting . . . authenticating . . . You are online! Then the box disappeared, leaving the browser window. He typed BBC News into the Google bar, the page loading up faster than it would have downstairs but still painfully slow.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Come on come on come on.’
He bent forward, his face practically up against the screen. What was he expecting? A headline reading ‘Zombie outbreak across the coun
try as people turn on each other’ followed by advice on how to cope. Stay inside, do NOT go out because random strangers WILL try to kill you. Be especially careful not to make out with your girlfriend as she may bite your face off. Or maybe there wouldn’t be anything at all. Maybe the BBC News site would be down. Maybe the whole internet would be down.
The logo flashed up, the page loading below it. Brick scanned the text as it appeared. ‘North Korea Nuclear Tests Condemned’. ‘Royal Divorce to Go Ahead’. And a whole raft of things about the Olympics. Not a single mention of savage mob attacks or unprovoked violence. Brick frowned. Maybe it was a local thing. He typed ‘Eastern Daily Press’ into Google and was directed to a front page full of reports about broken council pledges and a bit about some guy who collected pillar boxes. He found the date and time of the latest article. It had been posted eight minutes ago. The events at the garage had been, what, three hours before? Surely a riot in a quiet Norfolk town was more newsworthy than the fact that some saddo had a rare South African mailbox.
This didn’t make any sense. Brick rested his head against the wall, chewing on his thoughts. When an old lady was so much as knocked over in the street the EDP gave it a six-page feature, how the hell could it have missed this? That garage must have been swarming with cops and paramedics all morning, juicy photos of bloody tarmac and shattered windscreens just begging to be taken. He typed ‘Garage, Hemmingway’ into Google, finding nothing but an address for the petrol station and a load of stuff about the writer, even though the names were spelled differently.
Something hit the main doors hard enough to make the chain rattle. A white shape bounced up past the filthy glass, squawking, another one joining it. Two seagulls. There was a flash of yellow as the birds fought. One flew off, the other in pursuit. Brick tried to swallow his heart back down into his chest, waiting for his hands to stop shaking before hitting the keys again.
‘Why does everyone hate me?’ he typed, scanning the list of results on the Google page. They were all from Q&A and self-help sites. He clicked the top one, Yahoo Answers, reading a few lines about some kid who didn’t have any friends.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Brick said as he clicked the ‘Back’ button. ‘But I think my problem is worse than yours.’
He deleted the last request, entering ‘Why is everyone trying to kill me?’ A couple of entries down, he saw it: ‘Everyone is trying to kill me!’ He clicked, only to see a video game site loaded up. ‘Everyone in Thieves Landing is trying to kill me, what did I do?’
‘Dammit,’ he said, going back to the search page, scanning about a hundred entries before realising it was pointless. He was frowning, and it hurt his face – the bite wound in his eyebrow was pounding. He should probably have washed it or something; if it got infected he’d be truly screwed. He opened a fresh bottle of water, splashing some in his palm and then over the ragged tear. It felt like there was a hot coal stitched beneath his skin.
He wiped his hands on his jeans then tapped the keys gently, trying to decide what to do next. After a minute or two he loaded up the Yahoo Answers page again, logging in with his ID. He chose the ‘Ask’ option, typing in ‘Why Is Everybody Trying to Kill Me’. Then he filled in the next box:
This isn’t a joke. My girlfriend just tried to kill me, for no reason. REALLY tried, she bit my face. Then I went to fill up my motorbike at the garage and suddenly there was a crowd of people coming after me. Someone tried to run me over and they would honestly have killed me. They chased me up the road. I’m serious. This ISN’T a wind-up, I’m really scared. Has anyone else had the same thing happen? If you have, please answer.
He read it through, making sure it didn’t give anything away about his location. He couldn’t do much about his identity – he had to use his Yahoo ID to post the question. But as long as nobody knew where he was, it would probably be okay. He selected the ‘Post’ option, waiting for the new page to load up. Looking over it again, the question looked absurd, so ridiculous that it made him doubt the whole thing. Had that really happened to him? Had he really been attacked?
His face burned, his body shook, his stomach churned on itself again and again and again. Yes, it had happened.
He closed the laptop to conserve the battery, folding his legs up to his chest and resting his head on his knees. All he could do now was wait.
Daisy
Boxwood St Mary, 3.17 p.m.
Daisy stared at the poster on the door of the school theatre, a lump in her throat the size of a house. It was the advert for the play, and where her name had once proudly stood was now a big black smudge. Underneath it somebody had scribbled ‘Emily Horton as Juliet’.
For a moment, Daisy decided she was just going to go home. After what had happened with Fred yesterday this was too much. Mrs Jackson and the rest of the drama club could throw themselves off a bridge for all she cared. It might have been a mistake, but more likely it was a joke, somebody taking the mickey. If they wanted their precious Emily Horton they could have her. The stupid girl was supposed to be Daisy’s understudy, and she hadn’t even known what that meant. She’d skimmed through the entire play looking for a character called Juliet’s Understudy before somebody had explained it to her.
Yes, she’d go home and forget about the whole thing. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t slightly relieved at the thought of not having to perform to a hall full of people. But that relief was poisoned by something else, something that sat inside her stomach like too much food. She tried to tell herself it was disappointment. And she was disappointed, there was no doubt about it. There were other things down there too, though. Anger, definitely. Hurt. And fear. There was a great deal of fear.
Because she didn’t really want to go home. She didn’t want to have to explain to her parents that she’d been bumped from the lead role in the play. She didn’t want to see them hide their disappointment. She didn’t want them to order Chinese as a treat because they thought it would make her feel better.
It was more than that, though. She didn’t want to walk in through the front door and find her parents still in bed.
Daisy rubbed her temples, that same thump-thump drumming inside her skull. Then she walked into the theatre, a couple of lanky sixth-formers nearly bowling her over on their way out. Hoisting her rucksack onto her shoulder, she made her way down the short corridor that led to the second set of doors. She pushed through them into a maelstrom of movement and noise, a hundred or more kids running round the auditorium, leaping over the folding chairs, throwing balls of paper at each other. On the stage were a couple of girls from her class who’d been appointed scenery managers. They were trying to move a wooden picnic bench – Juliet’s balcony – into the wings.
Emily Horton was there too. She was on the other side of the boards, chatting with Kim and Fred. And she was wearing the Juliet dress. Her dress.
Daisy hesitated, the theatre suddenly huge, the stage boundless. In her whole life she didn’t think she’d ever felt so small. She walked up the steps towards the back of the stage, stepping through the curtain. In the sudden dark and dusty quiet the tears began, too many of them to stop. She wrapped the heavy curtain around her, the same way she sometimes did with her duvet, pressing her face against it and sobbing gently.
Why was everyone being so horrible? Was it just the stress of the play? Had she done something to upset them all? She waited until the moment had passed then wiped her eyes, hoping they weren’t too red. She didn’t want to look like a silly crybaby. Then she inhaled deeply and marched across the stage until she was standing next to Emily. The girl was taller than her by about half a foot. So was Kim. Fred towered over them all, looking at Emily and smiling. Daisy didn’t think she’d ever seen him smile like that before.
‘Excuse me,’ Daisy said. Nothing. She reached out, grabbing Emily’s collar. Emily looked down. They all looked down, their smiles vanishing like mice beneath a hawk’s shadow. Daisy’s voice was a whisper: ‘Um, I’m playing Juliet.’
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Emily’s eyes seemed to swell, bulging, then she turned away, carrying on her conversation. Fred and Kim both laughed at something she said but Daisy couldn’t catch it. Her blood was hammering in her ears, like there was a giant machine between her temples.
‘There’s been a mistake,’ she said, her eyes burning. Don’t cry, not again, be strong. ‘I . . . You’re still the understudy.’
She glanced at Fred, hoping that maybe he’d say something, stick up for her. She knew he didn’t fancy her or anything but they’d spent three months pretending to be lovers, they’d had some awkward laughs about it. That had to count for something, right?
Wrong. Fred was standing there checking his nails, as if he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. This was all his fault. Everybody had seen what had happened yesterday, when he’d spat in her face, and now they all thought she was a total loser, not even worth talking to. Daisy turned back to Emily, a hot, fat tear worming down her cheek.
‘But you don’t even know the lines,’ she said, brushing it away furiously. ‘You haven’t been to rehearsals.’
Emily still didn’t reply, grabbing the sleeves of her dress – too short, the ruffles only reaching the middle of her forearm – and tugging hard to try and make them longer. Daisy shook her head, tasting salt as the tears flowed freely again. That dress had been made for her, her mum had taken in the sleeves especially, and she’d hemmed it too so that it fell right to her ankles and wouldn’t trip her up. Emily was too big for it, packed in like a sausage in a casing. One sudden move and the dress would split.
‘You’ll rip it,’ she tried, but the three of them were laughing again, Fred practically in stitches at something Emily had said. Why did he find her so funny? She was being really rude, really cruel.
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