Every footstep on the loose gravel outside the house had seemed deafening and it had only gotten worse after she’d reached the car and pulled the handbrake up so she could push it out to the road.
Once she was out the gate, she found to her relief that there was no need to start the car yet. She’d been pushing and trying to gradually turn the wheel at the same time when it became harder and harder and the thing suddenly began to roll away. That was when she’d realised the road sloped downhill. She was able to jump in the driver’s seat and coast almost half a mile before she needed to start the engine.
Even so, she’d convinced herself it hadn’t been enough, especially as she’d become stuck in that seemingly endless network of narrow roads and lanes.
But it must have been. Finally, she spotted a sign up ahead for the motorway. She’d kept the windows down and listened carefully for the growl of the Jaguar’s engine behind her. She’d heard nothing. She’d seen nothing.
She relaxed when she got on the motorway. Now she was safe. She hadn’t been on an even footing with them on the roads Annie knew like the back of her hand. Now she was fine. She could see behind her. Even if they’d gone on ahead the quick way to block the road, she’d be able to see them in plenty of time and avoid them. Or stop, turn around, and take a detour.
She gripped the wheel. Now wasn’t the time to relax. Even though there was nobody on the roads, it still took more concentration than usual. There were cars and trucks everywhere, just abandoned where they’d stopped. She supposed there was no-one to come and clear the roads now. And no point in bothering. Annie had seen the army shepherding people into a train station down in London. Were they still busy doing that? Or had they moved on to setting up checkpoints and preventing people from moving around?
She shivered when she thought about that. The last thing she needed was to be locked up.
No. She couldn’t let that happen. She had to get down there and find Max quickly.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have much to go off.
When it started to get dark, Si felt her bravado slip. Her eyes were itchy and dry. She could have been in Wesleygate by now if she’d only thought to let the air out of one of the Jaguar’s tyres before she left. Then it wouldn’t have mattered if Annie and Clive heard her. It would have delayed them long enough to stop them following her.
She laughed to herself. As if they’d have followed her. It was probably all in her head. Maybe they were relieved she’d gone. One less mouth to feed.
She’d been racking her brain to try and visualise what was going to happen afterwards, when she found Max. Where would they go? They might have no choice but to go crawling back to the farmhouse.
Perhaps it would be different with Max. After all, he had skills the others needed. She wouldn’t feel like a burden on them then. She’d be able to help him with whatever inventions he dreamt up.
Si squinted into the darkness. She’d need to stop soon. It was already becoming hard to see obstacles up ahead. She’d been dead set on driving through the night until she found him. She was beginning to change her mind. She’d had to slow down a lot. It didn’t feel as safe as it had half an hour ago.
She shuddered. Anyone could be out there. What if they’d blocked the road up ahead? She couldn’t think why anyone would bother, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.
She thought about stopping for the night. After all, with the engine off, her car would be indistinguishable from all the other cars strewn about. She frowned then, remembering something Annie had said about seeing people’s breath condensed on the windows. Perhaps that wasn’t a good idea if someone looked too closely.
She slapped the steering wheel. Where was she supposed to go? The night spread out in front of her like a trap she couldn’t avoid. It would be at least fourteen hours until it was bright again. Bloody winter. Where the hell was she going to hide out that long? She wasn’t even tired.
She thought for a moment about the petrol station where they’d led those men. At least she knew the layout of it. But no. She shivered. How the hell was she going to get any sleep with those men there, cold and dead.
No.
She drove on a little further, wondering what she was going to do. Then she saw it off in the distance. The pylons all grouped together, towering over the squat building behind them.
A power station, she realised.
Probably the most useless place in Britain right now.
Pete
Josh shook his head. “What the hell have you gotten us into?”
“What have I gotten us into?” Pete looked at his brother in disbelief. “I had no choice. Zane wasn’t asking, Josh. He was telling us to do this.”
Josh snorted. “Zane’s a vegetable. He’s not making us do anything.”
“Zane, Harry, it’s all the same.” Pete narrowed his eyes. “You know that. This wasn’t my choice. If you’d only been able to set up a radio instead of fucking about when you were supposed to be working, we’d—”
“Fucking about?” Josh hissed. “I wasn’t fucking about. I was trying to figure out how to get a radio working. Do you have any idea how hard that is without the proper materials?” He stopped and looked around. “We’ll talk about this later.”
Pete was about to answer when he realised his brother was right. They shouldn’t fight here. It would make them look reckless and that was the last thing they wanted. Harry had picked them to do this because they were calm and level-headed, unlike the others.
Harry had disappeared back into the house after shouting for Ian and ordering him to find them a car.
“Right,” Ian said when he’d led them around the back to a huge garage. “How about this Escort? It’s an old thing but it’s got a full tank. Reliable too, these old Fords. Not that either of you would remember.”
Pete nodded, looking around at all the other cars that were parked in there. “So Harry’s moved everything over here then, eh?”
Ian ignored him. “Okay, lads. The addresses. You’re going to have to find your way as best you can without maps. The mechanic’s house is 358 Springer Road, Wesleygate. I’m not certain, but I think it’s just off the main street that runs the whole way through the town. The garage is just off the northbound exit for Wesleygate. We’re still trying to find the girl’s address.”
“Why don’t you just ask him?”
“Because he thinks we’ve got her. Didn’t Harry tell you? It would only raise his suspicions if we asked him where she lived when we could just ask her. Especially seeing as he managed to hold out on us for this long. Anyway, this should be enough to go off.”
Pete nodded after repeating the address a few times so he wouldn’t forget it.
Ian’s expression became serious. “They killed Mo and the other lads. They almost got Zane. You two better pull this off.”
“Why didn’t you go, then?”
“Shut up, Josh,” Pete snapped, elbowing his brother.
Ian scowled. “I wanted to. Believe me. Harry said no. That I was too close. We’re all counting on you two.” He glared at Josh. “So you’d better put your snobbery to one side and get on with it. I don’t care how long you have to stake those places out. You do it and you do it to the best of your ability, do you hear?”
Pete nodded. “Well get them.”
“Good. You’d best get going then.”
“Wait,” Pete said. “They shot Zane. They’ve got guns. We’ll need guns too.”
Ian shook his head. “I suggested it to Harry, but he said no. There’s a risk you’ll shoot them and he won’t have that.” Ian leaned closer. “She’s just a kid who has no idea what she’s doing. You’ll be fine. Don’t screw this up.”
“We’re actually doing this, then,” Josh muttered.
They’d just got on to the motorway. Pete figured the garage was the best place to start. Josh hadn’t said anything since they drove away from the big old house. “We don’t have a choice.”
“Of course we h
ave a choice. You must know what’s going to happen to those people if we find them and bring them back to Harry. Zane’ll torture them.”
“I know,” Pete said quietly. “But they did kill Mo.”
“Kill Mo? Jesus, Pete. You would have killed Mo on multiple occasions if you’d had the chance. You hated him.”
“Yeah, well.” None of this made sense. None of it. All they could do now was try and dig themselves out of this mess by making themselves useful. If that meant screwing up the lives of strangers they’d never met, then so be it. “If not for Mo then we’ll do it for our own sakes.”
“I can’t do it, Pete. I can’t. It’s not right.”
“Well we’ve got to. This takes us off the hook about the radio.”
“Off the hook about the radio? We shouldn’t have been on the hook about the radio. I told him hundreds of times that I’m not an engineer. He wouldn’t listen.”
“That’s Harry.” Pete sighed. He was still reciting those addresses to himself for fear he’d forget them. Any other time he’d have told them to Josh and asked him to remember them, but he wasn’t sure he could trust his brother now. This was a lifeline, possibly the last one they’d ever get. Josh didn’t seem to appreciate that.
“What do you mean, that’s Harry? That’s no excuse! It’s just proof that he’s not to be trusted. What’s to stop him turning around at some point in the future and deciding he wants me to reinvent the telephone?”
Pete shrugged. He didn’t want to think about that. “It’s going to be different if we get this right. You saw how much he wants those people. If we get them, we’ll be stars in his eyes.”
Josh groaned.
“What?”
“You’re not thinking clearly. We’re free now. We could go pick up Mum. Get the hell away from all of this.”
Pete turned to look at him, disgusted by his brother’s tone. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. We’ll go where he can’t find us. Somewhere miles away from here.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ll figure it out.”
“Oh yeah? With a tank of petrol and whatever food we can grab from the house? I thought you were smarter than that, Josh. We can’t just drive until we find a town that’s far enough away. Nobody’s going to want us there.”
“Why not? We have…” he shook his head. “I have skills.”
“What? Your degree in chemistry? Or a few months’ work experience in the City?” Pete shook his head. His brother was unbelievable sometimes.
“My skills are more marketable than yours—not that you’ve got any.”
“I do. And mine are probably more in demand right now than the ability to suck up to some arsehole banker.” He slowed down and took the exit for Wesleygate.
He slammed on the brakes when he realised that the charred ruin they’d just driven past was the garage they were headed to. He reversed back, staring at the place in dismay. “How the hell are we going to find them? Harry spoke like it was a sure thing, but look at this place.”
Josh said nothing.
“Don’t you care? Don’t you see? It’s this or nothing. We don’t have a choice. Think, Josh. Let’s not fight each other. I shouldn’t have said what I did about your degree. We’ve got to put our heads together and find them. We’d be heroes if we got revenge for what they did to Mo.”
Josh turned to him, eyes wide. “Can you hear yourself? My god, Pete. You’re talking about trading someone’s life to make Zane proud of you. Are you serious?”
“I don’t want him to be proud of me.”
“Sounds like it to me.”
“I don’t give a fuck about what he thinks, Josh. I just want to stay alive and this is the only way I know how.”
Pete
“Come on,” Josh said tightly. “Let’s go. I don’t think we’re going to find anything in here.”
Pete sighed. He’d reached the same conclusion almost as soon as he saw the garage, but that didn’t matter. It was one of only two places they could go to. He cut the engine. “Let’s go have a look.”
Pete shuddered as they made their way towards the burnt out shell. He wasn’t sure why: he’d seen a lot of burnt out buildings on the way here. Maybe it was the fact that the garage had been mainly made from sheets of corrugated iron, which now hung at awkward angles to the exterior of the building, all blackened and buckled. They looked like they might fall down at any moment.
It was worse than it had looked from the road.
Gravel crunched under his feet and the smell of smoke still hung in the air. There wasn’t a soul around. Pete became more and more disheartened with every step he took. He’d assumed it would simply be a case of turning up to the garage and finding them there. There was nobody around.
He spun around to face Josh. “They’re never going to come back here,” he said. “Why would they? There’s nothing here.”
“I tried to tell you.”
Pete bit his lip and surveyed the damage. “Let’s just take a quick look inside and then we’ll go.”
They had a job to do and he intended to do it. Instead of turning left towards the back of what had once been the garage, he walked through the gap in the fence on the right. Inside was a scrapyard which looked unscathed even though the gap between the side of the garage and the fence was only about ten feet wide.
“Lucky the fire didn’t spread over.”
“Who cares?” Josh said, kicking stones and sending them flying into Pete’s shins.
“We might find car parts in there,” Pete said. “Or something else useful.”
“Unlikely. It’s a pile of junk.”
“It’s not like you to be so negative.”
Josh shook his head. “Let’s just check out the inside of the garage and go. We’re wasting our time.”
“This place is a mess.” There was crap everywhere. The whole place had been destroyed. The sky was visible through the ruined roof and it had rained since the fire.
“This whole place is hanging on by a thread.” Josh kicked a pile of metal and then bent to take a closer look.
“What is it?”
“It looks like a bike.”
“Oh.” Pete turned away, having lost interest already. He looked around at the blackened walls, desperately hoping to see something useful. What they needed now was weapons, not that they had any hope of overcoming Harry on their own. There was nothing there.
“No, look Pete. Bikes. Look where they are.”
Josh was pointing at a blacked frame in the middle of the floor. “So?”
“It looks like they were just dropped there. Why would anyone leave a bike in the middle of a garage, much less four of them? Think about it.”
Pete flushed. He hated it when his brother made him feel like an idiot. He couldn’t see the significance of it, no matter how hard he tried.
“We’re looking for five people. Four unknowns and one girl with purple hair who used to work here.” He turned and hurried to the roller door. It was warped and it wouldn’t budge when he tried it. He gave up and went to the back door. “Look at this.”
“What?”
“This. These brackets. Here. On the outside.”
“What are you trying to say, Josh? Because it’s not clear.”
“I don’t know, but it might mean something.” Pete doubted it, but for the first time in a long time, there was a light behind Josh’s eyes. He wanted it to stay like that.
“What do you think it is, then? What are you telling me?”
“I think something happened here, that’s all. I don’t know what. Four bikes. What if those four people cycled here? And the fire was something to do with them?”
Pete shook his head. As much as he wanted to encourage his brother and keep him out of the foul mood that had plagued him for days, he couldn’t see how it all fit. “But why? Why would they all go off together and then kill Mo and the others? And what do bikes have to do with it?”
Josh sighed.
“I don’t know, okay. I’m just looking for anything useful. Have you checked the desk?”
“Yeah. Everything’s burnt.”
“Come on then. Let’s go check the house.”
The street was a mess. They’d gone straight from that horrible country house to the garage. They’d passed villages, but this was the first time in days that Pete had been in a housing estate. He’d never seen anything like it. The rubbish bins were overflowing and piles of crap were building up in the gutters.
There were burnt out houses everywhere and even more burnt out cars. There were people around, but there was nothing human about the way they lurched about. Their jerky movements reminded him of the addicts he’d seen before all this happened.
“Jesus,” Josh hissed through his teeth. “The whole place has gone to shit.”
“You’re surprised? I thought you knew all this was going to happen.”
It’s one thing knowing about something in theory. This is another world completely. I’ve never seen anything like it. And it’s not going to end.”
“What about those jets?” Pete had been thinking about this a lot in the past day or two. “What if it’s someone coming to help.”
Josh shook his head bitterly. “I doubt it.”
“Why’d you say that? Why do you have to be so negative all the time?”
“I’m not. I’m being realistic. We haven’t seen any more planes for days. Maybe whoever it was got hit too. That would explain why they haven’t come back. Unless they were our enemies in the first place, in which case we don’t want them back.”
“There!” Josh hissed. “That’s number 358.”
Pete pulled up in the nearest available spot and cut the engine.
“What are you doing? We can’t see it from here.”
“Doesn’t matter, does it? We’ll go in and see if anyone’s there.”
“No.” Josh shook his head. “No, that won’t work. Think about it. That works if they’ve been there, but not if they haven’t. What are they going to do if they get here and see someone’s broken in?”
Fighting Darkness: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller (Fighting to Survive Book 2) Page 7