by Moody, David
She might have spoken again, but another helicopter drifting overhead drowned out her words.
Scott needed to pee. He went to the bathroom and emptied his bladder. He washed his face with ice-cold water. I need to stay focused. He leant his head against the mirror and breathed in deeply, trying to stay calm and in control. What did he do now? Had he truly backed them into a corner here like they’d said, or was there still a way out? The waiting was unbearable.
When he went back out into the hallway, Tammy was there. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he gasped. ‘What the hell are you doing? You scared the shit out of me.’
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. In the low light he could just about make out her face. She was crying.
‘What are you doing back here?’
No reply.
‘Where’ve you been?’
Still nothing.
‘You’ve got a fucking nerve coming back after what you said to me. You’ve no fucking respect.’
‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘I was wrong.’
Scott shook his head. In a night filled with impossibility, this was the hardest thing of all to take. ‘Wait... you’re apologising? Fuck me, I’ve heard it all now.’
She didn’t react. She didn’t even move other than to lift a hand and wipe her eyes. She cleared her throat. ‘I should have listened to you. I was scared... I didn’t know where I was going out there. I just ran and ran... almost got lost.’
‘But you come back?’
‘I wanted to see you. I felt so alone out there... there was no one looking out for me, no one protecting me. It made me realise I’d been stupid. I know I’ve been a bitch to you, Scott, but...’
‘What?’
‘But when I was out there, completely bloody terrified, I realised how much we all need you. How much I need you. All along you’ve been trying to keep this family together, but I just couldn’t see it. I was angry. I was stupid.’
He leant back against the wall and stared at her. ‘Why leave it until now? You could have made this all so much easier for everyone.’
‘I know,’ she said, and she took a step forward. ‘I wish I could have the time again.’ He could see her more clearly now. Her skin was pale, porcelain-like, her hair falling in soft curls down either side of her face. She’d been a little kid when he and Michelle had first got together; a snotty-faced rebel full of resentment and spite. Christ, she’d made things difficult for all of them. And though he’d certainly noticed it before today, her gradual transformation was now complete. She was a woman now, her emotional maturity finally catching up with the physical changes her body had undergone over the last few years. ‘I wanted to make it up to you, Scott,’ she said.
She started to unbutton her shirt, letting it fall back off her shoulders. He stared at her pert breasts, not sagging like her mother’s. Cellulite and stretch-mark free skin. Her young, inexperienced body. He checked himself. The dulling effect of the beer faded quickly. Was she playing him? ‘Do you think I’m fucking stupid?’
‘Nope,’ she said, and she bit her lip as she watched him watching her.
‘This is bullshit.’
‘It’s not, I swear. I’m sorry.’
And then he remembered. He cursed himself for being so easily distracted. ‘Wait... this isn’t right... Did you see anyone else while you were out there?’
‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was light and airy, strangely soothing.
‘You know exactly what I mean. Are you infected?’
She laughed. A cute nervous giggle. ‘I didn’t see anyone else. I got halfway to Thussock then turned back because I was scared and I didn’t know what else to do.’ She took another step closer, almost touching him now, and took his hand in hers and held it against her chest. Her breasts felt so smooth, so soft and so cold. ‘We might not have long left. I wanted to come back and show you how sorry I am. I wanted to make it up to you.’
She stood on tiptoes and kissed him gently on the cheek, then pulled him into the kitchen. He followed at first, then stopped and pulled back, yanking his hand from hers. ‘You’re infected.’
‘I didn’t see anybody out there, honest I didn’t.’ She hopped up onto the kitchen table and sat and watched him. He was holding back, obviously unsure, and she wasn’t surprised. She’d expected this. Yet more traffic thundered past outside. She opened her arms to him. ‘Come on, Scott... please...’
He grabbed her wrist when she lunged for one of the knives in the knife block on the table. She screamed with pain as he twisted her arm around behind her, forcing her up onto her feet and pushing her against the wall. He pressed his full weight against her. She was right, he did want her, had done for a while, but it was too late for that. ‘You dumb fucking kid,’ he said. ‘Did you really think I’d fall for that bullshit?’
She screamed again, sobbing now for him to release her. ‘You’re hurting me... please.’
‘Do you think I care? After all the grief you’ve caused?’
‘It wasn’t me, it was—’ she started to say and he yanked her wrist upwards again, threatening to pop her shoulder from its socket.
‘You’re all as bad as each other,’ he whispered, his mouth just millimetres from her ear, his weight crushing her. ‘I don’t know how I managed to stay sane living with so many moaning, miserable bitches.’
‘Let her go, Scott.’
Scott looked around, surprised. Michelle was standing in the kitchen doorway. Christ, she looked bad. One side of her face was lumpy and misshapen, her right eye black and swollen, almost completely shut.
‘How did you get out?’
‘You said we’d need double-glazing, remember?’ she said, her voice slurred and her words hard to discern. ‘You were right. I forced the French window open. Now let her go.’
‘Fuck you,’ he said, turning back to face Tammy.
‘No, Scott, fuck you.’
Michelle smacked him on the back of his head with the claw hammer he’d used to seal up the doors. He let go of Tammy and slowly turned around, almost tripping over his own feet. He lifted a hand to his head and looked at the blood on his fingers, glistening in the half-light. He looked confused. Hurt. ‘Chelle, why did you—?’ She swung the hammer around again, shattering his jaw. Scott crumpled to the ground and she reached for Tammy’s hand and pulled her away. ‘We’re going. Find the car keys.’
Without waiting for her response Michelle ran upstairs to get the others.
✽✽✽
Ten minutes and she’d managed to prise open the bedroom door and get enough of their stuff together. They loaded it into the Zafira, still more helicopters circling overhead as they worked. The road out of Thussock was a steady stream of traffic now, an exodus. The military retreat told them all they needed to know.
‘Where are we going, Mum?’ Phoebe asked.
‘Home.’
‘What, to—’
‘Redditch, yes. Home, home. We’ll go and stay with Granddad.’
‘What about Scott?’
‘What about him?’
She started the engine, waited for another truck to pass, then pulled out onto the road. She glanced back in the rear view mirror at the house they were leaving and felt relief, nothing else.
They’d barely driven more than half a mile when they followed a bend in the road and reached the military blockade. The other vehicles had made it through, but she was unidentified and was flagged down. Guns and soldiers everywhere. For the briefest of moments she wondered if Scott had been right. Should they have stayed back at the house? Had she made a huge mistake?
Familiarly faceless figures appeared at every window. A solider opened her door and pulled her out. George began to scream. ‘Follow me,’ a voice barked. ‘All of you, now!’
Too tired, outgunned and outnumbered to even think about resisting, Michelle pulled her children close and did as she was told. The family were pushed roughly into the back of a large trailer which began to move, a lab on wheels from what they could see. There
were no explanations as DNA swabs were taken from the inside of their mouths and blood samples drawn, but they were beaten now, way past the point of being able to resist. The vehicle began to pick up speed, part of a convoy heading south.
It felt like forever but it could only have been a minute or two later when one of the faceless figures took off her mask. ‘All clear,’ she said. ‘Lucky escape there, Mrs Griffiths.’
‘Lucky?’ Michelle said, still struggling to speak with a mouth full of broken teeth.
‘Yes, lucky. You managed to get away before the accident.’
‘What accident?’
‘The accident at the fracking site.’
‘When?’
The woman paused, glanced at a colleague, then looked at her watch. ‘Anytime now.’
✽✽✽
Two low flying jets raced over the convoy, travelling in the opposite direction, back towards Thussock. And in the distance, the infected town died. A moment of silence, then a series of explosions and chain reactions tore the place apart. From the fracking site to the leisure centre, from the centre of town all the way to the grey house on the road south out of Thussock, the place was consumed by fire, heat, and intense white light.
FIFTEEN MILES SOUTH OF THUSSOCK
The van juddered to a halt. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ the soldier in the passenger seat said.
‘Just checking. Christ, can’t you hear her? They’ll have our bollocks if we don’t get her back in one piece.’
‘You know what they said.’
‘Yeah, I know what they said.’
Before the other man could argue – as he usually did – the driver climbed out and walked around to the back. He slid the viewing panel across and looked at her through the wire-mesh. ‘You all right there, Jackie, love?’
She was more than all right. She was bloody gorgeous. She sat in the corner of the cage just looking at him... wanting him.
But he’d seen enough tonight to know better. The noise from the explosion which had destroyed most of Thussock was still ringing in his ears. He slid the viewing panel back across.
‘Everything all right?’ his mate asked.
‘Perfect.’
FALRIGG
‘Told you sumthin’ like this was gonna happen,’ Arthur had said to his wife before he’d set out this morning. They’d known something had been wrong in Thussock all day yesterday. Bloody army had stopped them getting anywhere near the place. He’d missed his doctor’s appointment because of the road blocks. Inconsiderate buggers.
When they heard the explosions last night, ten of them had set out from the village to try and see what had happened, to see if they could help. They’d made it as far as the first of the peaks before being turned back. They’d seen all they’d needed to see, mind. It had been the fracking site, all right. Arthur had been telling people from the start that place was an accident waiting to happen. It was some kind of chain reaction caused by gas deposits buried underground, Jock had said. It was all over the news now, of course, but Jock had heard first. His son was a teacher at a school in Glasgow. If anyone knew what had happened, it’d be him. Probably no bad thing that Thussock had been wiped off the map, though, after everything that had gone on there over the last couple of weeks.
Still, life goes on.
Arthur found her by the stream which ran along the bottom edge of his lowest paddock. Poor thing looked like she’d barely managed to get away in time before the town had gone to hell last evening. She’d been caught in a blast, that much was clear, and quite how she’d lasted this long, he didn’t know. He didn’t think she’d be alive much longer. Maybe the water had helped keep her alive, or the shock, perhaps.
Her legs and the right side of her face were badly burned. Some of her clothes were fused to her flesh. She’d no hair left on one half of her scalp. That was what upset him more than anything. She’d probably been a good looking woman before this, he’d thought. She’d groaned with pain when he’d lifted her up and laid her down in the back of the Land Rover. The dogs had gone crazy, but he’d just shooed them away. Bloody animals.
She watched him through her one good eye, the left eye blistered and burned, glued shut with discharge, and she reached out for him with the one hand that still worked. She pulled him closer until he could feel her breath on his face, then closer still until their lips met.
TRUST
FRIDAY. 4:17PM
Once I get outside I’m fine. All the nervousness and trepidation disappears in seconds. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Focus on the run.
People often ask me why I do it, but I never give them a straight answer. They look at the state I get myself into and shake their heads. But they see only the physical effects. Truth is; I run because it’s the only time I ever feel completely alone. It’s the only time I’m fully separated from the distractions of the phone, the TV, the Internet, and other people. I usually fob them off with all the expected bullshit about keeping in shape and being out in the open, but that’s only half the story. When you’re out running like this, you’re everything and you’re nothing. You can pass a hundred people, and none of them know how far you’ve come or how much you’re hurting. None of them know where you’re from or where you’re going. I tell people I like that isolation. I sometimes tell them I like to clear my mind and think, but I never tell them what I think about.
When I left home about forty minutes ago, there was a bank of grey cloud building up on the horizon. I thought I’d beat the bad weather back but the wind picked up almost as soon as I left the house and now the sky is almost completely black. A moment ago the clouds finally swallowed up the last of the sun, and the sudden drop in temperature was sobering. I’m glad I’m nearly back now. There’s a hell of a storm blowing in, and I can feel the air pressure changing by the minute. My head’s pounding, and it feels almost as if gravity itself is increasing, making it harder to keep lifting my feet. I look up, and above me the clouds have stopped following each other. They’re criss-crossing the sky at random heights and different speeds, uncomfortably erratic.
I can see the war monument at the top of the last climb before home now and I know I’m almost there.
Christ, here comes the rain. A few spots become a deluge in just a couple of seconds, almost like running headlong into a wall of water. Bloody typical – I’ve run miles along footpaths covered by overhanging trees and streets lined with buildings but it’s only now, when I’m out here with absolutely no protection whatsoever, that this torrential downpour begins. The rain is hissing, filling the air with noise, and it’s so hard it hurts. Moments ago this cliff-top tourist track was dry and hard, now it’s dangerously unpredictable. Potholes and ruts are rapidly filling with water, making it almost impossible to see what I’m running through, and yet, somehow, the risk adds to the adrenalin rush. There’s a hundred metre drop just five metres to my left. I’m literally on the edge, but none of that matters because this is the real reason I run. Me, the cliffs, the sea and nothing else.
I dig in and push myself up the last section of steep climb to the monument, my legs having to work twice as hard now to get any traction. It’s downhill all the way home from here. Keep pushing. Don’t stop. Just a few more seconds.
The ground steepens again – the sting in the tail of this bitch of a climb – and the slope turns to steps, worn into the ground by countless ramblers and dog walkers who’ve come this way over the years. I slip, my foot sinking into a rain-filled pit I didn’t see, but I manage to keep my balance and keep myself moving. Can’t afford to lose momentum now.
Almost there. Last few steps.
And then I’ve done it. I pass the needle-shaped stone monument and the ground ahead of me levels out then drops away. My lungs are on fire but I know the pain will ease with the descent. I’ve followed this dirt footpath countless times since I’ve lived in Thatcham, but the view up here still takes my breath away no matter what. Even in the gloom I can see for miles in ev
ery direction, and the vastness of the sea and the land stretching away from here is humbling, reminding me in no uncertain terms just how small I am in the scheme of things. The rain is ice-cold, digging into me like needles, but suddenly it doesn’t seem to matter. I don’t feel it. Now I can see the gentle crescent curve of the bay up ahead. From here I can see virtually the whole of the village; a narrow strip of buildings dotted with occasional lights, sandwiched between the crashing waves on one side and endless fields and hills on the other. It looks as prone as I feel. And then I’m distracted as, out on the horizon, miles out to sea, a jagged flash of electric-blue light spits down from the belly of the clouds to the surface of the water. It’s gone in a heartbeat, but I can still see it in negative.
Seconds later, the thunder arrives. A low and ominous warning growl, so deep I can feel it through my pounding legs, followed by an almighty crack so loud it seems to shake the whole world. I slip again and almost fall, and now I’m starting to wonder if I might be in trouble. There’s still another half-mile to home, and I have no protection whatsoever out here, not even a tree. And I think to myself, if I get hit, I’m fucked. My brother knows I’m out, but I didn’t tell him my route. I’m exposed and vulnerable, but I love it.
Another flash of light. This time I’m looking down at my feet when it hits, but the lightning illuminates everything like someone’s taking photographs of the lone idiot out running. I splash through a puddle that’s too big to run around and I’m taken by surprise when it’s deeper than I expect. The ice-cold water soaks my feet, adding to the misery, but I keep going. I fix my eyes dead ahead, trying to pick out the outline of my bungalow on the hillside, aiming for home.