He stood there while we counted another rumble of thunder: five miles. Then he gave a final pop and walked into the wind toward the hill.
I went the other way to the car. They were right about the helicopter picking up the heat from the bonnet; it would still be warm. I reversed out of the overgrown building, revving the engine to force the wheels over some rubble. A yellow light lit up the console: the petrol gauge was on empty. I slapped both palms against the steering wheel; we had left the fuel canisters under the hedge at the camp. It was only a couple of miles—the remaining fuel would get me that far—but it meant breaking cover again. I cursed my easily distracted mind. The railway tunnel swallowed the car beneath several yards of earth and stones where it could surely not be detected from above. As I trudged back out of the darkness, a querulous cry pealed through the air. I thought I knew all my children’s noises, penguin-like, but here were Charlie and Billy hugging each other in the mouth of the hill, dissolving in snotty tears, making sounds I had never experienced. They mewled again as I reached them.
“Don’t go,” Charlie managed. Billy contributed a vast mucous bubble that burst wetly into the air.
“I’m not going anywhere. I just moved the car,” I said, gathering them to me.
“I thought they made you go away.” Charlie gulped at the air. “And I had to stay here and be awful.”
“Orphan.” I herded them inside for pasta and platitudes. “You don’t have to be an orphan, not today anyway.”
The storm passed, but the children were rattled, and, though it was late, only the youngest slept. I gathered that the Wild Things had grown seminocturnal, larking about late into the night, keeping their spirits up to cover their fear. Joni had helped Lola to cook dinner and was now telling them a story. She was still heavy and dull, like a sedated version of herself, but it was a start. She got them settled down. But little surges of giggling would set them off again; it would be a long night.
“Madrid,” said Charlie. “Too easy.”
“Croatia?” I said.
“Zagreb. Still too easy.”
“Malta?”
“Valletta.”
“Nice one,” said another voice in the orangey darkness off to our right.
Charlie shifted position to curl up against my chest like a shell. As well as all the other things he liked to hoard, Charlie collected capital cities, and his favorite game proved to be soothing.
“All right: Slovenia?” I said.
“I don’t know how to say it, but I can spell it: L-J-U-B—”
The ferrety boy, George the First, as he was now known, shuffled closer and cut in over Charlie to pronounce “Ljubljana” perfectly.
“Slovakia?”
“Bratislava,” they both said at once.
“Sounds like a cake,” added Charlie.
“I’ll have a cup of Earl Grey and a large slice of Bratislava, please,” I said. It was a relief to hear a smile in their voices as they went off on a tangent, ordering outlandish fantasy food items.
Two shapes loomed up, and I warned Jack and Lola not to step on Billy, who was asleep next to me. Maggie was curled there too, gnawing on her thumb, next to the Lost Boy. The teenagers folded themselves cross-legged beside me.
“We’ve been wondering,” Jack started. “If you have a plan?”
Between us, we decided to wait in the mine until there was no sign of the helicopter for long enough that we could assume it had given up trying to trace us and moved on to another area. Then we would go back and get the hermit’s radio, find out where it was safe to go, and head there after stealing a second car from Moton Hall. But our fuel supply would only get us so far. Sooner or later, I realized, we’d be forced to stop running.
“All right,” I said. “Bright and early tomorrow morning, we start waiting.”
A crunching footstep, and another small face appeared in our circle of lamplight. One of Woody’s boys. His eyes darted over mine but rested on Jack’s.
“Is Woody here?” he asked.
“Thought he’d be with you lot.”
“Nope.”
In my head, I heard the soft pop of footsteps across soggy ground: searching, I assumed, for a muddy grave in the night.
Our camp stank of foxes. I could smell it from the car when I stopped next to a bike that looked the same as the one Lola had ridden earlier to the mine. I switched off the engine—the car was already running on fumes, and I didn’t want to get stranded in the middle of nowhere—but let the headlights roar through the dark trees. I followed shadows of myself up the slope to the tents. We had left it in disarray, but animals had obviously been through too. Food scraps, rain puddles collected in the white canvas of the yurt, muddy paw prints stamped all over. The place didn’t belong to me anymore, and I had an uncomfortable sense of being oversized and conspicuous, lit up like a beacon. I rushed through the camp toward Lennon’s grave. The darkness between the trees was no more comfortable than the light, though. I shrank and crept along behind the will-o’-the-wisp trail of my torch, every step forced by the pure desperation to get it over with. In the moonlit field, Woody was crouched beside the small cross.
“You found it,” I whispered.
“Lola already told us where your camp was.”
“Aren’t you scared of the dark?”
“Shitting myself.”
A shrill fox bark carried across the field. Eerie in the fog that followed the rain.
“Let me know when you’ve said good-bye, and I’ll drive you back,” I said.
“I got a lot to say. I’ll get back all right.”
“I’ll wait in the camp, give you some privacy.”
“Just go!” His shout lacked punch in the wide-open space. He felt it and got up, turning to face me. “Why are you following me? Do you want to kill me, too?”
I handed him the torch from my key ring. “I’ve got something to do near here,” I said, “which will take about ten minutes. Then I’ll come back and pick you up. It’s not safe out here.”