Up on the hill, the ruin looked much reduced against the bone-white sky. I realized it wasn’t a tower or a turret or anything so mysterious, just a squat brick building: some kind of abandoned industrial relic, perhaps an old mine head, whose roof had long since fallen in and no one cared enough to clear it up. Even the trees around it looked scrubby and juvenile in the cold morning light.
I turned my attention to my injuries. In the glove compartment, I found wet wipes and cleaned my forehead, which was cut open as well as swollen. The blood had gummed up the one eye, and I already had a blue bruise that would spread nicely. But I’d escaped quite lightly, all things considered. The Beast growled back to life with an emphysemic rattle, and the clock showed it was just after 6:00 a.m. My mouth was parched, and I could smell myself. I loaded up Horatio and headed for the next place on the map.
I clicked the radio on and hummed along even though the white noise shushed me. “Peep, shush, peep, shush” went the radio, flailing around for stations that didn’t exist. At the top of the dial, it fixed on a frequency, and the car filled with pips. It was more irritating than the white noise—insistent, nagging—so I switched it off.
I was lost. The map showed that I’d missed a turn, but I could follow this lane down via a watermill and pick up the trunk road. The hamlet around the mill was on my list of sites to check, so I decided to go there first. I turned left onto a one-car lane that you’d normally drive slowly for fear of meeting another vehicle, but I sped along between high hedges. A mile or so farther on, I passed a couple of ramshackle cottages, both with vans parked outside. Buzz-infested, for sure. I didn’t even brake.
Down a hill and over a stone bridge, the road turned sharply left in front of a gate and into a field. I struggled to make the turn and, as I flashed by the gate, I saw a small figure streak behind the hedge. I hit the brakes. Backed up.
There. Way across the field, a boy was scrambling over a fence toward an old barn. I grabbed the map: the barn lay at the end of a track that joined the road a few hundred yards ahead. I slammed the car into gear and raced down the lane, spinning the steering wheel into the turn, so that the wheels scrambled for grip before we picked up speed again and came to a skidding halt moments later outside a hay shed. I jumped out.
Water gushed from a tap against the wall of the barn, and I stepped forward to turn it off. The ground was littered with empty cans of pop. The air was still.
My heart gave a loud thud, as though I’d come back to life, and then I was running into the barn, clambering over the bales, shouting Billy’s name and throwing aside a pile of sleeping bags that lay on top of the hay, screaming for whoever was there to come out, show themselves, tell me where my son was. No one was there, just a half-dozen sleeping bags and a few grubby clothes.
“Billy? Billy!”
I stopped to listen for a reply. Outside the barn, farther down the dirt track, I heard the crackle of bicycle tires over gravel.
I jumped down from the hay, landing heavily in the dirt, and just caught the movement of the bikes as they turned out onto the lane. I ran to the car and spun round after them.
Way ahead of me, the hunched figures weaved across the road with blurred legs. I wrenched the gear stick into manual and forced the car into second, the engine furious as it engaged. I gained on the boys in seconds: there were five of them, the smallest one at the rear careering across the lane as he looked back over his shoulder to check on me. He went up onto the verge and righted himself, pushing ahead again down the center of the road. I revved up right behind them, snapping at their tails, and slid my window down.
“Stop!” I screamed at them. “Tell me where Billy is.”
The boy in front waved one arm round in a circle, and the little peloton broke into two halves, a couple of boys veering off into a field and the others turning down a side lane hidden by the high hedge. I shot past, braked, fishtailed to a stop. In reverse, the car weaved and whined until I had enough room to make the turn. I forced the gear stick back into first and the car jumped forward, its great haunches bunching up to thrust us round the corner into the narrow lane, where I only saw the small boy who had come off his bike and was lying in the middle of the road as I ploughed right over him.
Chapter Eleven
The crows followed us home. Or at least there were black birds keening in the sky as I drove to the camp. I left the car on the dirt track and walked the final stretch. By the gate, an oil lamp stood on the dirt-packed ground, encircled by dead moths. I bent to turn the dial and extinguish the spasming flame. Under the hedge next to the lamp, hidden in a little hollow of branches, slept Peter in a blanket. Our sentry had still not abandoned his post.
He was much sturdier and heavier than Charlie, but I scrambled him out of the hole and into my arms. His head lolled against my shoulder, face turned to mine with his lips tight: still defiant. The kid was a good friend to Charlie. Maybe one day, when all this was over, he would be his best man, and we would all laugh and shake our heads in disbelief at his humorous tale of how we survived by hiding out in the forest: a band of thieves. I carried him up the short slope to the yurt and laid him down on my mattress. He rolled onto his side, and I tucked the blanket back around his legs.
Then I went to my own tent, looking for a spare sheet or a sleeping bag: a shroud to cover the dead boy on the back seat of my car.
Joni was talking to me. I could see her mouth moving. It was possible I was going to vomit, because my mouth kept filling with saliva, and my skin spiked with sweat. That was it, I had car sickness. It would be okay if I could focus on the horizon, but I couldn’t see that far, trapped here inside the wood. I kept very still and tried to slow my pulse by concentrating on it, the way I had when I was a child, lying alone in a dark room with fruit bats darting outside the window grille.
The kids ate their breakfast. Peter and Charlie on one log, Maggie and the Lost Boy on another. No Billy. No Lola. They chewed in slow motion, as if the food were very dry. And they watched me without looking my way. I had an urge to lie down right there in the dirt, but it didn’t seem appropriate. Joni was talking to me again.
“Marlene?”
“It looks worse than it is. I’ll be okay after a cup of tea.”
“What?” She stopped in front of me, holding tissues in one hand and disinfectant in the other. “I told you to stop your humming. It’s freaking the kids out.” She pushed my head back and started wiping blood out of the cut on my forehead. It hurt, the way she did it.
After a while, the kids got up and dropped their bowls into the washing bucket and whispered between themselves about who would take it down to the stream. Peter picked up the sponge and went. The others filed to the tent to get dressed. Maggie tried to sneak down to the car, presumably to peek at the dead boy, and for once the Lost Boy let her go. A word from Joni stopped her short, and she scuttled into the trees.
“Did you see Billy or Lola?” asked Joni.
I shook my head.
“Are they the same kids you saw at the store?”
I supposed so.