Fearful Symmetry

by C F Dunn

  Dan thrust keys into Matthew’s hand. “Take my Audi – it’s fitted with Charlie’s booster seat. I’ll go in Emma’s car. The tracker will cause enough confusion to give you a few extra minutes before they realize she’s not in it.”

  “I took it off my car earlier. I… I didn’t want them following me,” I stuttered.

  Dan paused, then gave an odd grin. “I’ll make sure they follow me,” he said, and shrugged his jacket on, checked the monitor for signs of movement and then, taking a breath, said, “Good luck,” and he and Harry ran for the cars.

  Theo began to whimper. Still in her father’s arms, Rosie said, “Mummy, Theo wants Bear.”

  “Emma, we haven’t time,” Matthew began, but I was already making for the dining room. I snatched up the bear, tucking it into Theo’s rompers. An almighty crash splintered the air and I dropped one of the bags, swinging around. Retrieving it, I ran back to the hall to seize the first coat that came to hand, as the front door reverberated with a second crash. Matthew grabbed my arm and dragged me from the hall as daylight broke through cracks in the wood. We made for the kitchen door, but a quick glance at the monitor revealed dark figures hugging the shadow of the walls.

  “Take the children. Get to the car.” Matthew flung the pantry door open. “Rosie, go with Mummy.”

  “Daddy!”

  The flagstone rose and yawned and I threw the bags ahead of me and ran down the steps as he lifted Rosie down to me. “Rosie, remember the game,” he said, and then to me, “If I’m not by the observatory, leave. Don’t wait.” A resounding blow shattered the remains of the door. “I’ll distract them. Go!” And Matthew shut the flag, cutting him from view. Moments later, the air cracked, punching our ear drums. Rosie covered her ears, and Theo’s mouth opened beneath my hand. I clamped it firmly and warned Rosie to stay quiet. I swallowed to clear my ears and found them whining. The small space choked with dust. In the ensuing silence, I stretched to hear any sound other than our own breathing and persistent ringing. “Remember the game,” I mouthed to her. Above, faint at first but becoming louder, steps – rapid, heavy-footed, booted – muffled voices. Then a shouted warning, furniture overturned, glass breaking, running. A succession of deafening bangs punctured the air somewhere in the direction of the dining room and, through minute fissures in the planks of the kitchen floor, a savoury smell, redolent of winter evenings… Thin at first, it grew and blossomed: smoke. Theo began to fret against my hand. “Shhhhhh,” I said, although my heart thrust against my ribs in an attempt to escape.

  Taking my hand from his mouth and gathering the bags over my arm, I backed towards the rear wall in the darkness. I felt the hard outline of the trunk of silver, then the crumbling surface of rough bricks. I found the loose brick, removed it, and pulled the iron-cold lever. A rush of cool air – free of smoke – greeted us, and Theo began to kick and squirm, building himself up to a full-throttled scream. “Please…” I begged into the nest of his hair. Bending in the low tunnel, stumbling blindly against the damp bricks, I led the way, protecting Theo’s head with my hand, Rosie’s little breaths marking her passage behind me as she clung to the hem of my sweater. And all the time I listened for sounds of discovery and pursuit, for a triumphant cry from unknown voices as Matthew was cornered and subdued.

  I could taste fuel in the back of my throat before my eyes adapted to the thin lines of dull daylight filtering through the garage floor. Stopping beneath the heavy wooden inspection hatch, I listened for any sounds above me. Theo’s fingers wound in my hair, tugging, but he had stopped struggling and seemed to be listening with me. Faint noises came from within the house, but no nearer than that. My finger against my lips, I pointed up towards the hatch, making my fingers walk, and Rosie frowned and nodded. I gave her her coat to put on, and her bag to carry, and wriggled Theo into his snow suit. Putting him down, I listened again, heard nothing, and holding my breath, slid the inspection hatch along its rails, grit grating. Cautiously, I raised my head until my eyes levelled with the garage floor and became accustomed to the stronger light flooding through the open doors. Tracks in the drifting snow marked where the Aston Martin had slid and fled. Dan’s dark blue car stood at the other side of the garage. Anyone standing in the courtyard or in the kitchen of my home would see us cross the empty space. It was a matter of timing. I knelt in front of my daughter. “Rosie, we have to get to Dan’s car, but we mustn’t be seen.”

  “Like fairies,” she whispered.

  “Like fairies,” I confirmed. “When I open the door, you must run like an otter as quick as you can and into the car without making a sound. Listen and do exactly what I say. Do you understand?”

  She hugged Ottery. “And then we find Daddy?”

  “And then we find Daddy,” I confirmed again. I checked the courtyard for signs of movement, snow lodged and freezing in the cracks, outlining the grey setts in a grid. “Ready?” I lifted her, Theo next, and climbed out last, keeping low. Counting silently to three, I pressed the button on the keys. The lights flashed orange as the locks released. “Run!” We crossed the garage floor and I opened the car door. Rosie scrambled in across the driver’s seat to the other side and I all but threw Theo into the back seat and the bags after him, had the keys in the ignition and the car in reverse before the first shouts came from the Barn. “Hold on!” Shunting the gears of the unfamiliar car, I shoved my foot on the accelerator, lugging the car door shut before the entrance to the arch could tear it off as we plunged through it. The drive was clear in front of us, but it wouldn’t be for long. “Rosie, get into the back seat and strap yourself and Theo in.”

  “I can’t lift him.”

  “I know; just do the best you can.”

  “Mummy!” she wailed. “Our house is smoking… Mummy!”

  “I know, Rosie.” I concentrated on not skidding on the freezing patches of snow. New flakes were beginning to gather, obscuring the tyre marks of the fleeing cars. I left the hard track at the point where the drive bent and dipped out of sight of the house, the tyres sinking slightly into the softer ground, tussocky grass cloaked in snow brushing the underside of the low-slung chassis. The silver dome of the obsolete observatory came into view. There was no sign of Matthew. “Where are you? Where are you?” I uttered, peering at the low building, when he appeared out of nowhere, slamming against the car in his haste. He wrenched my door open, tossing the case in first.

  “Move over!” Matthew took my place and, not hesitating, flung the car forwards around the observatory and towards a stand of young trees. “Buckle up,” he warned, and without slowing raced into the thick of them, the car jolting in the bumps, sliding over exposed tree roots, low branches whipping and scratching like nails. The car launched over a bank, hung suspended for a few seconds, before hitting the road at an angle. Matthew straightened the car and I tasted blood in my mouth, a flap of broken skin where my tooth had cut my lip. I swivelled in my seat.

  “They’re OK,” Matthew said, and a glance in the back confirmed it, Rosie white-faced, Theo bewildered. Only then did I see the soot-blackened skin on the back of his hands, smeared under his jaw, and the charred sleeves of his shirt. “Stun grenades,” he said, shortly.

  “The house?”

  His mouth tightened and I saw in the rear mirror a thickening column of smoke rising above the retreating trees.

  “We have our lives,” he stated. He took the corners tight, speeding up as we came out of each curve, gradually increasing the distance between us and our burning home, handling Dan’s car with precision, despite the deteriorating road conditions. I squeezed between the seats and checked Theo was secure in the child seat. The powerful engine upped a notch. “This should buy us some more time; they’ll think we’re heading for the border and by the time they find we’re not, we should be clear.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re leaving the country, but not for Canada.” He checked the car clock, barely taking his eyes from the road through the falling snow, now t
hickly whipped by a keen wind. “This weather’ll make it harder for them to track us, but we must get to the airstrip before dusk or risk its closure. Joel should be almost there by now. The road forks up ahead. We take the left road further into the mountains and away from the border. They won’t be expecting that. What the…?” He swerved to avoid a dark car parked part way across the road. Ahead, sharp blue lights pierced the muted colours of the snow-ridden sky.

  “Matthew! They’ve set up a road block!”

  He slowed, taking care not to over-brake as a uniformed officer flagged us down. “Stay calm. There’s an ambulance over there; someone’s come off the road. Looks bad, God grant them peace.” He reduced the car’s speed until it crawled at an agonizingly slow pace past a group of people gathered around a gurney balanced at a precarious angle on the slope. As we passed, a blood-red chassis, the sleek bonnet bent in a corrugated snarl, lay rammed against a boulder. A broken doll of a woman, blank eyes staring from her stark, white head, bent awkwardly on the deflated bed of the airbag.

  Like before. Like a lifetime ago.

  Matthew let out a low moan, and colours of anguish filled the car with metallic grief. I felt his pain in the heart of me, a palpable weight, leaden, plumb-dead.

  “That policeman’s staring at us. He’s coming over.” I grasped his arm. “Drive, Matthew, you must drive!” He came to, shaking his head and accelerating away as if escaping the image of his dead granddaughter. We drove on some miles before he spoke, his throat tight with pain.

  “I didn’t think… I never thought I’d see her like that… like her sister…” He swallowed. “Why did she do it? Why didn’t she do what I asked?”

  I stared blindly through the driven snow, seeing that first fatal crash that welcomed me to Maine, and Matthew – unknown to me then – bending into the twisted car to close the eyes of the dead woman, as if she mattered, as if he cared. He carried with him more experience of death than anyone – and now this.

  “She wanted to help, Matthew. She thought they would follow her and give us a chance to get away.”

  “She didn’t need to do that – to do anything.”

  “Yes,” I said quietly, “she did.” I pulled myself back to the present. “Do you want me to drive?”

  He cleared his throat, glanced into the rear-view mirror and shook his head once. “It’s not far. We need to be ready. Rosie, do you have the document folder I gave you?” She held up the brown leather folder she had been clutching all the way. “Good girl. Give it to Mummy, please. When we get there, you might have to run very fast. Do you remember when we played our running games and how Thompson’s gazelle evade cheetah?” Rosie made her fingers scuttle in a zigzag motion in the air. “That’s it. When we get to the airstrip you’ll see our plane waiting there and I want you to be a gazelle and run towards it as fast as you can.”

  “Will you be Chasing Cheetah, Daddy?”

  “Let’s see who can get to the plane first,” he evaded, “and then when we’re airborne, you can help me fly.”

  Rosie clapped her hands. “I’ll win! I’ll win!”

  “Emma,” he said more quietly, “I’ll get us as close as I can. I’ll carry Theo. Get to the plane. Joel’ll be there to help you on board.”

  I looked behind us at our son. “You think they’ll be waiting?”

  He took longer than I hoped to answer. “We’ve done everything we can to hide our trail – the plane’s registered at another airfield, the flight plan falsified – but somehow they knew we would take this route.”

  Aghast, I looked at his grim face. “How? Why?”

  “Did you see the black car we nearly ran into where Maggie was?”

  “Yes, but… You said yourself the car’s skittish in snow. It was an accident, Matthew, it must have been.”

  “Was it?”

  I felt sick. “They must have followed the car.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  I stared blindly at the maverick snow, seeing Maggie’s twisted form instead. “You always meant to use the Aston Martin as a diversion, didn’t you? That’s why you insisted on keeping the colour and make. For someone keeping a low profile, I always wondered why you had such a distinctive car. You were going to draw them away from us if anything happened, weren’t you? That would have been you lying in that ditch, Matthew, not Maggie. She knew, she must have done.” Wind buffeted the car, sending dry snow scudding against the windows.

  “She must have guessed, but in using this route she’s ambushed our head start. They’ll know it’s not me in there and they’ll widen their search pattern. Still, with any luck we can use this snow to our advantage. My eyesight’s better than theirs in low light, and the wind will cover our tracks. Hopefully they won’t be able to find us. Nonetheless, once in sight of the plane you’ll have to run as fast as you can, because that’s where they’ll focus their attention once they realize we’re not heading for the border. Do you think you can do that?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Let’s hope there’s no reception committee,” he said grimly.

  “Amen to that,” I agreed.

  He increased speed and I clung to the door handle, bracing myself against the turns. Something slid from my shallow coat pocket and rattled to the floor and disappeared under the seat. A car’s rear lights dawdled in front of us as it negotiated a blind bend. “Hang on, Rosie,” I warned as Matthew overtook with no more than an inch to spare. A sign whipped by.

  “That’s the airstrip. There’s an old logging track to the north of it. If we can throw them off our trail long enough, we’ll make it into the trees. We’re losing the light and they won’t spot us in this snow.” He checked the mirrors. “Get ready; we’re nearly there.”

  I forced a light tone. “Rosie, do you have your running legs on?” She kicked her legs in acknowledgment. The car slowed, veered off the road and was between trees on a track only Matthew could see, as dark trunks squeezed what little light there was from around us. He switched off the headlamps and we trundled forwards across the uneven ground.

  “Over there,” he said, “can you see? Landing lights.” Specks of light danced between trees like fireflies, becoming brighter as we neared the perimeter. The outline of a jet appeared between flurries of snow, and my heart lifted. He slowed the car where the line of trees thinned, and stopped just short of a sturdy fence. Matthew scanned the airstrip over the top of the steering wheel. “This is as close as we get. It looks clear. Let’s go.”

  My foot tapped against something in the near-dark. “Hang on.” I fumbled in the footwell and retrieved a thin, smooth case. In horror, I stared at the mobile in my hand. “How long has that been there?”

  The muscles in his cheek twitched. “It’s irrelevant now; they know we’re here.” With a quick snap he reduced the SIM card to pieces and lobbed the phone into the thickest part of the woods. Without further comment, he climbed out leaving me gaping like the idiot I felt.

  “Matthew, I’m so sorry,” I said, following him. “I didn’t know…”

  He opened the rear door and handed me the document wallet. “I should have checked a long time ago. Rosie, climb out – quickly now.”

  “How do we get past the fence?” I shivered, craning my neck and squinting through the snowflakes. Matthew backed out of the car with Theo in his arms.

  “It’s a deer fence; it’s not meant to keep people out. Hang on to Theo. Rosie, come here.” He lifted her up as high as he could reach. “Climb the fence.”

  “Like my climbing frame,” she whispered, using the wide wire entwined with last summer’s growth as a scrambling net.

  “Careful!” I implored in a hushed undertone, but she was up and over and down the other side, jumping into the long, snow-covered grass.

  “You next, Emma. I’ll hand you the bags, and then follow with Theo and the case.”

  I made it to the top, balancing carefully, and Matthew passed the bags. I dropped Rosie’s dinosaur rucksack to her and
she swung it onto her back, and then let my own fall with a soft thlump into the snow. I lifted my leg over the wire, but my coat button caught. I tugged. “Wait…” I looked down, and something indistinct caught the corner of my eye. I strained into the dark of the woods. “Matthew!” I hissed, but he had already followed my gaze.

  “Move!” he said and, with Theo under one arm, started to scale the fence.

  I yanked at my coat and all but fell the rest of the way as the button detached and spun into the air, releasing me. I scrambled to my feet and grabbed the bags as a 4x4 emerged from the woods, stopping behind the Audi, illuminating us in search beams of headlights.

  From the top of the fence, Matthew shouted, “Get to the plane!”

  Snow flicking from her heels, Rosie was already running towards the jet where the door had opened and a flight of short steps lowered to the runway. A figure appeared at the entrance, beckoning to her – Joel. His head jerked up and he shouted something indistinct over the hum of the engine, gesticulating towards the distant main gates. Car headlights bounced and bobbed towards the plane, becoming gleaming level eyes as tyres hit the smooth surface of the runway and sped towards us.

  Caught in the lights, Rosie hesitated, her mouth falling open. “Run, Rosie, run!” I cried, gasping for breath, and she spun around and dashed towards the steps. From the perimeter fence behind us strong, thin beams of light jerked wildly in the gloaming, as black-coated figures climbed over and advanced at a steady run, spreading out like spiders on a web.

  Snow stung, my teeth ached, my lungs fought for air, but Rosie had made it to the base of the steps and Joel ran down to meet her, scooping her up and retreating into the plane. Jumping a runway light, I had reached firm ground with a hundred paces to go and with Matthew barely a dozen yards behind me, when something moved in my peripheral vision. Too late I heard Matthew’s shouted warning, and was knocked sideways. Winded, I lay for a moment face down, snow rammed up my sleeves, burning my cheek. “Emma!” I heard Matthew yell as a hand grabbed first one of my wrists and then the other, and started to secure them behind my back. I kicked up and back and heard a grunted exclamation as my heel engaged with something soft. My hands free, I clambered to my knees, then to my feet, but an arm hooked around my neck, pulling me down and anchoring me. I began to choke, and Staahl’s face flashed unbidden in my memory. A heavily haired wrist lay exposed and I sank my teeth into the flesh, tasting iron. He screamed an obscenity. Spitting blood, I wrenched away, swinging my bag and clouting the man on the side of his head with a wooden thud. He fell to the ground and didn’t move, his humanity hidden by a mask. Faceless.