He hesitated. Something told him that she was losing hope. “Si, I meant what I said. When I’m satisfied this is over, I’ll drive you down south myself. If there’s a police station still standing I’ll go there with you and help you find anything that’ll be of use in finding Max.”
She smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
His doubt remained, but it was overpowered by the need to get out there and find out what they were dealing with.
When they got close to the top of the hill, Clive followed Dan’s lead and lowered himself to the ground. The hill was both an asset and a nuisance, he thought now. While it gave them a good vantage point from which to watch the neighbouring farm, they risked being seen at the top if they weren’t careful.
“No-one is to stand up here, do you understand? As uncomfortable as it is, it’s best if we keep low to stay out of sight.”
Clive had done his share of surveillance before he’d moved into protection. It was a tedious business at times, but not now. Now he was fascinated. Was this all a big misunderstanding or something far more sinister than that? He wanted to assess the situation before they went over there.
They must have been lying there on their stomachs for more than an hour. They passed the binoculars around, taking turns to watch the neighbour’s farm. So far, Clive hadn’t seen anything of note. He was just thankful that it was a dull day, so there was no fear of sunlight catching on the lens of the binoculars and giving their position away.
“We ought to put something up here,” he said thoughtfully. “Something made of glass that’ll catch the light so we don’t have to worry about being spotted.”
“Jesus,” Annie whispered. “How much time are you planning on spending up here?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shuffling backwards until he was a good five yards back down the hill.
The others followed him.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? I thought you agreed it was best to sort this sooner rather than later.”
“We did,” he said simply. “But by sooner, I don’t mean immediately. Now. Are you ready, Annie? Let’s head back down. If anyone’s watching, I don’t want them suspecting we watch them from this hill.” He said that mostly for their benefit. It was likely that the neighbours already knew they were being watched.
Clive pushed himself back into a squat, alarmed by how much his knees ached in protest. He hoped it was just a case of being stiff after their journey up here.
“Si is watching your back, Dan. And the house. There’s no need for you to move, but try and listen carefully.” He held his hand up. “I’m not trying to frighten you. It’s just a precaution.”
“Okay,” Clive muttered as they stopped outside the gate of the neighbour’s house. It looked a lot shabbier up close. “I’m your uncle. The others are relatives too.”
“Yes. Good idea.”
Neither of them said a word after that. Just in case. From the hill, the trees that surrounded the house hadn’t seemed all that imposing. Now they loomed over the house, casting the yard into gloomy shadow. He wondered if anyone was watching them. The whole place made him uneasy.
They made their way up the grubby, cracked path to the front door.
Annie reached up and rapped the door sharply with the brass knocker. She stepped back beside him to wait.
Clive stared straight ahead as they waited, aware that they could be seen by anyone looking out the top floor windows. Or anyone hiding behind the trees. Weapon or no weapon, this was the worst part of knocking on strangers’ doors.
After a minute or two had passed, Clive stepped forward to knock again. Perhaps there was no-one there; perhaps they were all down at the river doing whatever it was they did down there. He didn’t want to speculate: there was no point.
The door opened before he reached it. Clive stepped back, not wanting to miss any detail. The inside of the house was dim. It dated back to a time where people didn’t fuss about orientation and light. The hall was wallpapered, and what little he could see if it was faded and tatty. It was clear this place didn’t get a lot of sun, so he knew it was age that had caused the damage. He stepped closer.
The man in the doorway was in his early fifties. He looked after himself: that much was clear. His clothing, though untidy, was expensive. Chinos and a linen shirt. He wasn’t dressed like a farmer. No, it was obvious to Clive that this guy was more used to pink shirts and cufflinks.
Clive held out his hand, certain of two things: the man’s hands would be manicured, and he’d have the obnoxiously strong grip of someone who referred to himself as a master of the universe without any irony whatsoever.
“Clive Staunton.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. Clive didn’t mind. To him it wasn’t dead time but an opportunity to learn more. The house was quiet. With no other noise in the background, they would have heard anyone talking in there. Now, he didn’t quite know what that meant yet. Had the others been instructed to stay quiet? Or had they gone out?
“Miles Sanderson. How can I help you?”
Clive was partly right. The hands were well-maintained and soft, but his grip was no firmer than normal.
“We’re your neighbours,” Clive said, careful not to sound too enthusiastic. “From just down the road.”
“Ah yes.”
Clive inhaled deeply. What was the smell? Coal smoke, he thought. And something else. There was no trace of cooked food in the air, even though Clive imagined a house like this would surely have a solid fuel burner. The windows were the original single-glazed wooden framed ones. The floorboards under the man’s feet were worn and scuffed. Clive would happily bet that no work had been done to this place in at least thirty years.
“What is it you want? I’m busy.” He was getting fidgety now, shifting from one foot to the other and rubbing his stubbly beard far more frequently than was necessary.
“Is that so?” Clive said slowly, calculating. “I’ve had the opposite problem. It’s hard to keep oneself busy with no television or radio. How have you been keeping yourself occupied?”
“Oh, this and that.” He stepped closer and pulled the door with him, which Clive found very interesting indeed. “Look, forgive my bluntness, but what is it you want?”
“Well, a few things really.”
“Oh? What’s that? Come to borrow a cup of sugar, have you?”
“And if I had?” Clive had seen all he was going to see. He was growing bored of this. Under normal circumstances, this man wouldn’t be worth a second glance. Law-abiding on the surface, probably avoiding tax, but that was a problem for HMRC to deal with.
These weren’t normal circumstances. This guy’s arrogance might be his undoing, but it was also what made him dangerous. And he certainly wasn’t just going to cooperate and play fair. Even so, they were outnumbered. The sensible approach was to try and put their differences aside.
Clive didn’t care about losing a silly battle of wills or ego: he was looking at the long-term outcome.
“We’re willing to forgive the fishing rods and the misadventure with the sheep in order to work together.”
Beside him, Annie shifted uncomfortably. To her credit, though, she said nothing.
Miles sneered. “Why would we want to do that?”
This guy didn’t make it easy, Clive thought wearily. “We’ve just come from London. It’s chaos down there.”
“So have we. So what?”
“Well then you’ll know how much calmer and safer it is here than it is in London. Or any city, for that matter. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”
“Is that a threat?” Miles’s voice brimmed with fake outrage.
Clive was struggling to maintain a polite facade and he realised too late that Annie had lost that struggle.
“Look, you paunchy twat,” she snapped. “Don’t think you can move here and take the piss. If you come near us again I’ll kill you myself.”
He slammed the door.
Annie gasp
ed, spinning around to Clive. “Shit. I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay,” Clive muttered. “We’ve seen all we needed to see.”
Annie
Annie was still boiling with anger by the time they got back to her house. She’d met a lot of assholes in her time, but that guy was something else. Even so, she wished she hadn’t lost her temper like that.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, speaking for the first time since they’d left the neighbour’s house. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Clive just shook his head. “It’s fine. He’s not an easy man to talk to. I was close to losing my cool too.”
“Yes, but you didn’t.” She sighed. What had she been thinking?
Dan was climbing over the fence into the yard when they walked around the side of the house. “Well? How’d it go?”
“Let’s go inside.”
Annie forgot her frustration when they walked in the kitchen door and found Olivia sitting at the table with a shotgun.
“What are you doing with that, love?” Clive hurried over to her.
“Oh, relax dear. Simone was dead on her feet, poor thing. I sent her off to get some sleep. She could barely keep her eyes open.”
Annie sat down heavily at the table.
“How’d it go?”
She pushed Dan away, still disgusted at herself for failing to control her temper. “I lost it. Clive was doing so well and I lost it. I snapped at him.” She groaned, remembering Miles’s smug face and overconfidence. “I threatened to kill him.”
She glanced at Dan, nervous to see his reaction. To her surprise, though, instead of berating her, he started to laugh. “Seriously?”
“I wish it wasn’t true, but it is. I said I’d kill him if he came near us again.”
He took her hand.
“You’re not mad?”
“No. He deserved it. I hope it freaked him out.”
She was about to say that it might have, but that he’d now be wary of her. She didn’t. It was so nice to see Dan smiling for a change and she didn’t want to ruin it.
“Okay,” she said. “So what are we going to do? I’d rather strike and catch them off guard than sit around waiting for them to make their next move.”
“I’ll get to work on the barn so we can move the sheep in there,” Dan said.
Clive nodded. “Good idea. No harm in being cautious.”
Annie thought about everything that had happened since the power cut. The fights. The shooting. The garage. It all became clear then. “We could burn them out.”
“What? That’s barbaric.”
“During the day. Not while they’re…” she shook her head. “Look, it’s the only thing I can think of. It doesn’t hurt them but it takes away their reason to stay here.”
“They’ll come after us.”
“We’ll be ready.” She sighed and looked around. At the roughly plastered kitchen wall they’d fixed up and painted. At the pictures on the sideboard they’d restored. Pictures of the house in various states of ruins, of her and Dan beaming and covered in paint. They’d fixed this place. They’d built it. And she wasn’t going to hide out here waiting for a bunch of entitled bankers to start helping themselves to their property.
“But it’s not—”
She yawned. “Think about it. Talk about it. Maybe it’s a crazy idea. I don’t know anymore. It’s all I’ve got. All I know is I’m tired and I’m going to lie down for a while.”
No-one said anything. She left the room, playing back the events of the afternoon in her mind. Was her idea crazy? She was so tired she didn’t know anymore.
The hallway was cool and dark. It was a refreshing contrast after the heat of the wood burner. Her chest constricted with anger at the thought of that man, Miles whatever his name was, thinking he could lord it over everyone. She told herself he wasn’t worth thinking about, but that didn’t work. She didn’t bother turning on her torch. There was no need—she knew her way around the house in the dark. She passed the door to Si’s room. It was the smallest room of the house—really it wasn’t more than a big storage cupboard they’d never gotten around to shelving. But it fit a single mattress and with Terry’s injury it had made sense for him to take the second guest bedroom with Clive and Olivia in the other one. Si hadn’t complained about sleeping on an airbed with worn sheets and a tired old sleeping bag.
Annie stopped and frowned. Something was niggling at the back of her brain; something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She cleared her throat softly and knocked on the door.
“Si?”
She waited. She tried to think back to how the girl had been the last time she saw her, but she couldn’t remember. There’d been so much going on.
“Si? It’s me, Annie. Can I talk to you?”
There was no answer. What if she was asleep? Annie knew she should go to bed and wait until morning, but something was nagging at her. She twisted the handle and pushed the door open.
“Si?”
The room was empty, the sleeping bag pulled messily over the sheet and pillow. Annie stared at it for a few moments.
Shit.
She hurried back down the hallway towards the front door, praying that she’d got this all wrong. After all, there’d been someone in the house at all times since they got back. How could Si have gotten away unnoticed? It was crazy.
Annie held her breath as she opened the door. It was dark now, so she had to take a few steps out to see anything. She was apprehensive about doing that: what if the neighbours were hanging around? They’d already shown themselves capable of lurking around in the dark and messing with things that didn’t belong to them.
She swallowed.
Si’s car was gone.
She hurried back to the kitchen.
“She’s gone.”
“What?”
“Si,” she said, pulling at her hair as she tried to get a handle on what this meant. “She’s gone. She’s not in her room.”
“Maybe she’s in the bathroom.”
“No. She’s not.”
“She could have gone out for a walk.”
Annie sighed. “Her car is gone.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” She slumped down on a chair, no longer interested in sleep. “I knocked on her door to check on her. She’s not there. Her car is gone.” She stared down at her hands. The signs had been there, of course. It had been obvious that Si was restless. But they’d all been focused on the more immediate problem of the neighbours.
“How the hell could she have gone? We’ve been here this whole time.”
“Maybe she left when we went to talk to the neighbours.”
“No,” Terry muttered. “Olivia and I were here. We would’ve heard.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No. Don’t you think I would have told you?”
Annie closed her eyes and tried to regulate her breathing. “There’s no sense in trying to work out how. The car is gone.”
“I don’t blame her,” Clive said quietly. “She’s waited long enough to find Max. I promised her I’d go with her tomorrow and then we all got sidetracked by this business with the neighbours. I should’ve known she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She said she’d wait, but I suppose she wasn’t going to tell us what she was planning.”
“No.” Annie shook her head and sighed. “I would’ve tried to stop her. It’s too dangerous out there. She’s alone. She’s not even twenty. She’s going to get herself killed.”
Olivia gasped—a horrible strangled sound.
“Olivia, it’s…” Clive sighed and turned to the others. After a few seconds of silence, he just shook his head. His expression was graver than Annie had ever seen, and it was made even more frightening by the long shadows cast by the single lamp they’d set up on the dresser.
“At least we know where she’s headed.”
Annie shook her head. Her mind was racing with everything Si had told her about the afternoon her boss w
as taken away by those men; with flashbacks of the shootout in the petrol station. A man named Harry was responsible, and it sounded like he was running a big operation if he’d needed a mechanic to keep up the maintenance on his cars.
“They’re gangsters,” she whispered.
Clive nodded. “And I think it’s safe to say they were gangsters long before the power cut.”
Annie was restless now. It felt almost painful to sit here when Si was driving straight into danger. “We’ve got to do something. She can’t have gotten far. When did she leave?”
Olivia looked blank. Terry shrugged. “Sorry. I was asleep.”
“She was there when we came down the hill to go to the neighbours. So not long.” He groaned. “How the hell did she pull it off? We walked along that road. She didn’t pass us.”
“She must’ve gone the other way.”
“Other way?”
Annie closed her eyes. Si was a bloody idiot for taking off like that. She had no idea where she was going. As far as Annie knew, she had no idea where they were keeping Max either.
“Tell me about the other way.”
“It leads back to Middleton,” Dan said. “The village we talked about. From there, you can loop back around the back roads to York. Or to the motorway.”
“Right,” Clive said. “So there’s a good chance she’s still nearby, driving around in circles trying to find her way.” He hissed out a breath. “Even so, we can’t do anything tonight.”
“But we’ve got to. She might still be near, like you said. She’s not going to stop until she finds him.” She groaned. Why hadn’t she seen it? She hadn’t wanted to—that was the answer. She’d been too caught up in Dan and catching up on sleep to think about how Si must be feeling.
“This is crazy,” Dan said. “We can’t just take off in the dark. We’re all exhausted. We’ve got to think of a way to deal with the neighbours.”
“They’ll kill her,” Annie hissed. “Don’t you see? We promised to help her and we gave her excuse after excuse. We’ve got to go. Now.”
“No,” Clive said. “It’s dark. What are the chances of us finding her in this light? If she hears another car or sees a pair of headlights, she’s going to pull in and switch her lights off. She can’t hide when it’s bright. Plus she’s just as much in the dark as we are. All she has is the name Harry.”
Fighting Darkness: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller (Fighting to Survive Book 2) Page 5