I got my breath back along with my focus. This didn’t seem like a farm. We must have come out at the wrong place. It was impossible to see outside the tiny walled garden—we could be right near the mine for all we knew. But then the boys started filing away around the side of a greenhouse, following Jack’s voice, and I hauled Billy back up off the grass before I could lie down in it and just capitulate.
It was a farm. We stepped out of the secret garden and dashed across to the dairy. Gangrene clogged the air. The kids recoiled, but we pushed them inside and slumped down in groups next to the high metal gates, where the surviving cows kept themselves away from the dead ones. One heifer came and leaned over us, breathing a hot reminder down my neck, making me shudder back up to my feet. Their water trough was trickling and fresh, so I got Charlie and Maggie to drink and scooped up some handfuls for Billy. The cow just stared at me with her big eyes. I told her I’d open the gates before we left.
We sat down on the concrete. I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to scratch out the feeling of being prey. The helicopter had been coming in to land as we left the cavern. Surely the Cleaners realized right away that we were inside the mine. We must have left footprints. By rights, I should have felt that shot, that hand in the dark.
I twisted to speak to Lola, just as Jack bent to the ground and pressed his face into his hands. He gave a short bark of anguish. Lola spun toward me, one hand spread in a starburst of shock over her mouth.
“Do the roll call again,” she said, pulling at the neck of Jack’s shirt. “I’ll do it myself.” And she ticked her long finger at each of the boys. “There’s sixteen of us here. Is that right?”
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, I heard in my head, who got left back down the hole?
“We were seventeen, including myself,” I said. “I counted as we went out.”
“Harry from 5b,” said Jack, muffled by his hands. “Harry Whatsisface.”
“Berman,” someone said.
“Harry Berman,” Jack confirmed.
There was a long silence. Two of the cows pushed at each other and seemed to stir up the air, so the gangrene reek caught in my throat, and my mouth filled with saliva. I swallowed it down.
“Do you think they got him?” Lola whispered. The question mingled with the rotten air.
I nodded. “I think maybe he distracted them from us.”
Jack stood up. “I’ll go back for him.”
“I’ll go. I led the Cleaners to us.” Woody.
I squeezed my nose between my fingers until flesh-colored stars appeared. I had taken a short philosophy course at university once, half a module when I was trying to round out all that maths and economics, and I remembered a problem the ethics tutor set: There’s a group of you, hiding from a murderer in an old house, and you have a baby that won’t stop crying. If the murderer finds you, he will kill you all. Do you suffocate the noisy baby for the sake of the group? There was another example: something to do with being trapped in a cave and a fat person gets stuck in a hole that’s the only way out. “The morally good action benefits the greatest number of people,” we parroted. We were eighteen, narcissistic; we killed the baby, we hacked the fat kid with our crampons. We held aloft our hefty moral code and brought it down repeatedly on the heads of anyone who threatened our principles. I looked over at Charlie and Maggie sitting on the dungy ground, Billy sucking his thumb. Nowadays, my principles were about as firm as my pelvic floor. And yet the outcome was the same: neither maternal instinct nor higher intellect has time for heroism.
We had to leave Harry Berman. It was the right thing to do, a no-brainer: sixteen lives versus one. Morally good odds. And yet—and yet I couldn’t formulate the words. Woody and Jack were still bickering over who most deserved to go back and get themselves killed, when Lola jumped up and raced outside. Coming round the corner from the walled garden was a sopping wet Harry Berman, who ran into Lola’s arms and let her drag him inside the cowshed.
“What happened, you numpty?” said George the First, who had been crying for his classmate only moments before.
“Lost a shoe and stopped to put it on. I shouted but no one else stopped, and I didn’t have a torch. Took the wrong tunnel into a flooded bit.” He squirmed under all the eyes turned on him. “I wasn’t in a pair, was I?”
They all slapped him on the shoulder and congratulated him on finding his way out in the dark. I stood back and watched my hands shaking with relief.
“Thing is, Mrs. Greene,” he said. “The Cleaners are down the mine. I could hear them in the tunnels.” We had to go. Hiding among the cows would shield us from heat cameras overhead, but not the Cleaners on foot. We had to run again. Outside the dairy, on the far side of the yard beside the farmhouse, stood a huge double cab pickup truck. It wouldn’t be comfortable for the kids under the tarpaulin in the back, but we didn’t have a lot of choice.
“Right.” I pointed at Jack and Woody. “If one of you still wants to be heroic, you can get into the house and find the keys to that truck.”
Woody felt most inclined to redeem himself, and while he braved the buzz to get the keys, I marched through the stackyard, into a shed, where I found a selection of lawn mowers and a stash of fuel. I slid a can behind each seat of the truck. Then we loaded the schoolboys into the bed of the pickup, lying top to tail like sardines, and secured the tarpaulin so we wouldn’t lose any more on the way.
The cab stank of petrol and stale smoke and unwashed bodies, and even opening all the windows did little to improve the air quality. The truck clawed at the gravel as we spun across the yard and out through the gate. We followed the narrowest roads, heading as directly east as we could manage, putting distance between us and the mine. The long chassis pitched and rolled like a boat, and I nearly lost it on a tight corner, swearing as I slowed down, before my speed crept up again, one fear taking precedence over another. We shot across a junction, not bothering to stop and look, and the miles clocked up. Our knuckles returned to flesh color. Eventually, we started speaking again.
“What am I looking for?” Lola fished in the glove compartment, pushing aside CDs and empty cigarette packets to produce a lurid map of tourist attractions: England was covered with enormous standing stones, roller coasters, and llamas. She spread it out across her and Jack’s laps, both crammed into the front seat next to me.
“I bet there are Cleaners everywhere by now,” he said. “Especially in high-density areas.” His fingers slid over the gray blob ahead of us.
“Let’s stay on the back roads and out of the towns,” I said. “Take us somewhere remote. What about all this national park?” I waved my hand over the green areas that flanked us. Cannock Chase. Hop up into the Peak District. On into the Moors. But then what? Jack was right: we were probably moving from one search area into another.
“I’m hungry,” said Billy, but without much urgency. I twitched the rearview mirror down to see him in the back seat.
Joni sat by the far window. My three and the Lost Boy were crammed in the remaining space. Two schoolboys who couldn’t squeeze in the back were scrunched into the footwells.