“All clean.”
The white figure pocketed the gun and moved back to the others. They said a few words I couldn’t hear, their voices too low against the background drone of the idling helicopter. Two of the soldiers cast a final look around the clearing and moved toward the trees. A soft rustle behind me and I whipped my head round, expecting to see Horatio. Instead, peeping round a tree on the verge of the farm track, was Charlie. Some twenty yards away. Nothing between him and these killers but a few trees. His eyes locked on mine and his composure chilled me to a steely focus: I made a zip motion across my lips, then raised both hands and held them over my eyes: hide. He slipped behind the foliage. A voice from the clearing drew me back round again. The third suit brought a tablet computer close to his wasp face and finger-pinched the screen.
“Wait.”
The white figures turned from the tree line.
“There are two here.”
They accepted the information with robotic indifference. The one with the tablet held out the computer as they came back onto the grass, gesturing to details on the screen. He pulled out a walkie-talkie and muttered into it. I turned to check on Charlie. No sign. My legs twitched to go to him, but the path was too open, and the undergrowth too noisy. Stay behind the tree, I willed Charlie telepathically. For God’s sake, don’t come to me.
“Let me see.” Back in the clearing, the shooter took the tablet and zoomed further in, turning it this way and that to get his bearings. Then he handed it back and pointed down the path that passed right beside me. He crossed the grass, past the overturned wheelbarrow, to the top of the steps. Just three stone steps and he’d be on the path. At least he would see me before he got to Charlie. I wanted to look back again, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the white figure, so close now. He stopped and looked around him, computing the strangeness of the Lonely Steps. His boot made contact with the stone acorn, a steel toe cap sending it arching down the slope to rest just ahead of me, where the undergrowth of the copse gripped the edge of the pasture. One starchy stride onto the middle step. He turned to the others and waved his arm at the dead man.
“Look at this place. The guy’s a loner. Are you sure there are two?”
“There’s two on the screen. We got two.”
The shooter shrugged and stepped onto the path. A few strides and he would be parallel with me. Then just one glance to his left—if I moved, he would hear me. If I didn’t move, he would see me. If Charlie moved—I would have to stand up, deflect the attention. Mother bird, lead them away from the nest. I could run. The biohazard suit might slow the soldier down, but I had nowhere to go. The undergrowth was too thick. The path led toward Charlie. And my legs were numb.
But how can I just stand there and die? What sort of mother leaves her children? Even to die. I put my hands on the ground and pushed myself into a crouch. If I ran to the right, the trees would provide some kind of cover—I could lead him away from Charlie and reach the farm track farther down toward the ford. If I could distract him, it would give me a head start. I picked up a hard twig knuckle. If I threw it behind him, made him turn away for just a moment—
“Target!” The voice from the clearing called out the warning. The soldier on the path took two steps forward. I dropped chest down onto the ground again. His arm levered up, gun pointing not at me, but farther down the track. I craned my head up as instinct shouted in my head—Charlie!—but Horatio was on the path, standing with his head to one side. He had come back for me.
“Just a dog,” the suit called. His wasp face bore down on Horatio.
Heavy footfall, and the white figure holding the tablet appeared at the top of the steps.
“Big dog, though,” it said, examining the screen, considering.
I heard Horatio’s tail bat the ground once as he looked up into the gun, confused by the featureless mesh of the face: the single eye of the barrel that watched him.
The white figure on the steps slid the tablet into his pocket, turning away.
“Yah, looks like our target. Clean it up.”
The suit fired a single shot into Horatio’s muzzle: the dog gave a low gruff, his long legs tried to steady the load, his claws gripping at dust. The suit turned away before Horatio even hit the ground. He pocketed his gun and followed the other white figures back up the Lonely Steps toward Moton Hall, crushing the dead wife’s plates underfoot as he went.
Corn stubble clattered against my boots as I ran. I left stealth behind in the wood and gave in to a blind urge to run, towing Charlie behind me like a balloon on a string. I careered to the bottom of the field and scrambled a fence to get to the camp. The buzz of the helicopter had receded, but I knew we would hear it again before too long. I gave Charlie the car keys and told him to start the engine. I didn’t want him to launch into a story about Horatio, or we’d have all that to deal with, too. No time.
I was calling their names as I reached the tents. They were all there—bar Joni—sitting on logs around the campfire. For a second, it was like the first day we arrived. The scene was everything I had been looking for back then: the team, together, collected and calm. But their expressions were inhuman. Like gazelles on the plain, heads snapped up as I ran in.
“We need to go. Now!”
Lola flitted off to find her mother while I stuffed some supplies inside sleeping bags. I shepherded the children toward the car, taking advantage of their compliant bewilderment to hurry them along. We stopped in a huddle beside the Beast, and I didn’t know whether to get in or not. Any second now, one of the little faces would split open and ask, “What are we going to do, Mummy?” and the question would burst the dam of my inundated mind, and I would scream, “Run or hide, take your pick!” Laughing hysteria into their startled faces. “Because you think I know what to do, don’t you? But that’s the big secret adults keep: we have no idea what to do. So your guess is as good as mine. Run or hide, kids? Run or hide?”
“You decide,” I would tell them, “because I don’t know how to help you. I just don’t know.” I slapped my hand over my mouth to hold it all in.
A grip on my shoulder made me jump. Lola.
“We should take Mom’s car. Yours is knackered.”
I looked at the Beast: battered and filthy, windows missing, the smashed headlamp slipped from its socket again. But that car had never let me down; it never stopped going. It felt disloyal to leave it.
Lola was asking, “What do we do, Aunt Marlene?”
The Beast’s engine was running. I put my hand on the bonnet. Warm. Leave it running. If the helicopter picks up its heat signature, the Beast can do one last thing for me and distract them for a few minutes.
“We go. Now.”
Lola started lifting the kids into the back seat of Joni’s car. Billy was fighting to get out, shouting something.