“Well, there are many conflicting reports about the existence of these camps—”
“They exist. We are hearing about thousands of survivors, no food or water or medical assistance, children separated from parents, healthy people locked in with the sick—”
“Well, we must leave it there, Dr. Nygaard. The Norwegian ambassador to the United Nations. We can cross live now to our correspondent in New York, Charles Carter, who is at the UN. Charles, is there much sympathy for the Norwegian stance?”
“Well, the secretary-general today praised international efforts to stamp out the virus”—a strain of music stole over the reporter’s excited words—“the unprecedented scale of the”—a languid trumpet shushing him—“new legislative powers”—until the drowsy mood washed his voice into oblivion, as though he, too, had succumbed. I let the music play. In the darkness, a woman’s voice all around, clear and pure and hard as my rocky pillow when I lay back against the wall of the tunnel. Joni joined in when the woman sang “Stormy Weather.” How she and her man weren’t together, while outside the mine, it was raining all the time. The pitter-patter came down like the scutter of lazy drums and, as though hypnotized, I knew the words. In the dark I closed my eyes and sang along.
Chapter Twenty
“Giant jungle nymph,” said Charlie.
“We’ll squeeze into two cars,” I said, scraping the bottom of the jam jar.
“Hercules beetle,” said George the First.
“I had driving lessons,” said Jack. “Well, one. I could drive your old car, and then we’d have three?”
“Assassin bug,” said Charlie.
“Could you boys play Bug Bingo somewhere else?” I said. “We’re trying to talk.” Jack kept pressing the button on the car fob, the LED reddening his face as the dingy morning light seeped into the cavern. I took it off him, before the battery was also a thing of the past. “We don’t have enough petrol for three cars. And anyway, it’s a moot point until we find Woody. What do you think, Joni?”
She was kneeling over a gas stove that wouldn’t light. “It’s too risky to go outside.” She looked at Lola, checking that she was listening. “So he’s going to have to find his own way back. We have one more day, tops, before we need supplies. Then we need to move on. And Harry’s burnt fingers look infected too, no fever yet, but—”
“So we need to get something for him,” I said. “Maybe we could get to a shopping center. Hide inside—”
“Listen to this, Mum,” said Charlie. “The assassin bug wears a coat of ant corpses! Perfect disguise—its only natural predator thinks it’s a giant ant.”
“Seriously, boys, sit over there and play your game.”
“It’s educational,” Charlie said.
“Good. Educate yourselves over there.”
They shuffled across the cavern, past the younger kids building rock towers, taking the crackers and jam with them.
“All right,” said Jack, “I’ll check the map for one of those out-of-town shopping centers.”
“But what if the Cleaners are watching them?” said Lola. “Seems kind of obvious.”
“If we’re out of food, we don’t have a lot of choice,” I said. “We have to move.”
“Sacred scarab,” bellowed Charlie.
I slapped myself with both palms on the forehead.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Greene?”
“We can hide in plain sight”—I pointed at the roof of the cavern to indicate the sky—“so the Cleaners think we’re giant ants.”
I was about to explain the full genius of my plan when a shrill whistle from outside got Woody’s gang running toward the clearing. We trailed after them down the tunnel, into the thin daylight.
Woody stood at the center of his minions’ orbit, his arms limp while they exalted in his glory. He was covered in mud, apart from his face; maybe he’d splashed it with water in the river, or he’d pushed the tears away with the backs of his hands until they formed two curtains of grime, pulled aside to reveal his anguish. His friends didn’t acknowledge his distress—or didn’t know what to do with it—and instead harried him for details of what he’d done on his adventure.
He scythed them down with a dismissive “Stuff.”
“I’m glad you came back,” I told him, after his friends gravitated away.
He looked off down the ghost railway and made one of his soft pops. “We don’t need you to look after us.”
“Apart from all the food—and the car,” I said. He stepped around me toward the mine. Like my kids, he didn’t realize that I needed them.
The sound of scuffling feet brought my attention back to the clearing, where a line of boys was breaking into a run, scuttling toward the portcullis gate. Instinctively, I turned to check on the whereabouts of my kids. Then Jack appeared from the trees on the other side, pulling up his trousers and hollering. I scooped Billy up in my arms and caught Maggie’s hand as I started to run toward the tunnel, away from the spanking sound of a helicopter.
“You led them right to us, Woody!”
I could hear him protesting as the last kid scurried in through the gate, which Lola struggled to lock with a padlock. I glanced around the yard outside, but there were no obvious signs of habitation. Car hidden. No rubbish. Jack had us well drilled. But the sound of the helicopter expanded to a rapid heartbeat. I could imagine trees cowering in the downdraft.
“Hurry, Lola,” I said, just as the lock ground home, and she raced into the darkness ahead of me. I staggered behind her, Billy bumping against my thighs in the crouching run. We reached the cavern, which was full of noise and orange light.
“Stupid little pecker!” one of Woody’s own minions yelled.
“It’s not Woody’s fault,” I said, “and we don’t have time for squabbling.”
Joni moved round the cavern, extinguishing lamps as she went.
“Where does that tunnel go?” I asked Jack, pointing to the passage on the far side from the entrance. “We should get deeper into the mine.”
“There are tons of them. We haven’t explored them all, but if we stay left, we’ll come to an old water shaft that leads to the surface in case we need an escape route. Comes out by a big farm, like a dairy. There’re other ways out, but they’re flooded—”
“No, the dairy is perfect,” I said. “Let’s hope the cows are still alive. If we get in the shed, the helicopter won’t tell the difference between our heat and theirs.”
“Assassin bug,” said Jack.
“Exactly.”
Angry shouts of “little pecker” bounced off the hard stones of the tunnel. Scuffles broke out in the darkness. Woody moved toward the tunnel that led back to the bolted portcullis. I blocked his way.
“Where you off to?”
“I must’ve led them here,” he said, staring down the tunnel, the sound of the helicopter rising over the hubbub.
“And you’re thinking you could lead them away again?”