“Have you got your belts on?”
Charlie helped the younger ones cross the strap over their laps and click it home. I smiled at him via the mirror, but he just stared back. The rolling of the vehicle swayed his chin from side to side in a repetitive motion that made me think of disturbed animals in a zoo. They were all doing it. I tilted the mirror up so I could watch the sky behind us.
“We’ll get something to eat soon, kids,” I said.
“There are mints down here.” Jack started rummaging in the center console, stretching out his long legs to make room to open the flap and get at the sweets. His knee banged into the radio and the car filled with loud static. I jabbed at the illuminated buttons, but only set the thing searching through stations with the same high-pitched wail and rhythmic tone that had provided the weird soundtrack to my nighttime search for Billy. It was only then I remembered that I’d left the shortwave radio behind in the cavern. I looked away and caught sight of myself, silent screaming in the wing mirror: gargoyle face, all teeth.
“What about this?” Lola yelled over the noise and held up a section of map. “There’s a wildlife park. About”—she measured the distance in thumb-sized increments—“eighty to one hundred miles away?”
“Good, but no motorways,” I yelled back. “Turn that bloody noise off.”
Jack was prodding at the radio. I found the right switch on the steering wheel, and with a final beep it cut out.
“No!” he said. “Turn it back on, Mrs. Greene. Listen.”
I pressed the switch and he swore under his breath, until the dial came round to a high frequency, where it locked on to a signal.
“There,” said Jack. “Listen.”
A rush of static and then a montage of repetitive pips and birrs. It meant nothing to me, but still I knew it was a lifeline. Morse code.
Chapter Twenty-One
A couple of miles along the narrow forest road that led to the nature reserve, I stopped and got out to inspect the roadkill. It was the third lump of flayed mess we’d seen since we’d followed the brown tourist sign off the main road. It was fresh. A deer. Whatever hit it must have dragged it along the road because half of it was missing. I got back into the cab and moved on.
“What do we do if we meet another vehicle?” Lola asked.
I shook my head. It made sense that there would be other people like us, but I didn’t know the social conventions on how to engage in these circumstances.
“Friend or foe,” said Jack under his breath.
I drove on. We crept under old oaks and then out into barren drifts of gorse. The road was held aloft by a landscape that had never let it bed in. Every lump of roadkill made my knuckles whiter, as though the carcasses were jinxes that would make unknown vehicles come racing round the next corner. I found I was hunched over the wheel, head between my shoulders, in that dumb, instinctive way that people have when they drive under a low bridge.
I steered us as far as the next brown sign and turned into a narrow lane that was blessed with a little tree cover. After a short way, it widened into a small car park beside a high metal fence. There was no visitor center, no buildings of any kind, just a stony track—a walking path as wide as a road—leading past the fence, down a steep slope into the valley. I idled at the top of the hill.
“Is this it?” I asked Lola.
“I guess. But I thought it would be—more than this.”
If we couldn’t find a hideout here, we’d be forced to camp in the forest again. Or worse, on the open moorland.
The pickup crunched onto the path, and we rolled down the slope in first gear. Behind the fence, red deer grazed, their heads bobbing up as we passed. In the next pen were curly-horned sheep.
“Look, Mum-may,” said Billy, “sheeps.”
“Mouflon,” said Charlie.
How long since we’ve eaten meat? I didn’t think I could slaughter a sheep. Joni probably could, if we could get her back into hippie-homesteader mode. The road hugged the flank of the hill and lowered us gently down. Another large pen spanned the valley floor, its steep sides thick with trees. We passed the information board, and I saw that it contained lynx. Charlie pressed against the window, but couldn’t spot one. We skirted the lynx enclosure and reached the end of the path in front of a log cabin–style shelter. Under the overhang were some information boards and a few screwed-down tables and chairs. A shuttered window suggested there might even be a small snack kiosk.
“Bingo,” said Jack.
Lola looked at me for confirmation that she’d done well, and when she saw my face, allowed herself a small smile.
“If we can just hide the car, this is perfect,” I said. “Good job, Lola.”
We all got down from the cab, and I pulled off the tarp to let the kids out of the back. They took in the new place with a lot of blinking. One of them ventured behind the building and gave a shout of joy: there was an adventure playground with zip wire! They all raced off.
“Hey, hey!” Jack called after them. “We need to get under cover.”
“Give them five minutes to stretch their legs,” I said. “Just while we get sorted. We’re going to be out in the open anyway.”
“All right. What shall we do with the car?”
Behind a set of gates at the far end of the building stood a couple of four-wheeled bikes and just enough space, if we shifted some stuff about, for the pickup. Even if the shelter was open on one side, we figured it was better to get the car under cover. We parked it and hefted a couple of bales of hay onto the bonnet for good measure, to disguise the heat or infrared or whatever the helicopters might be able to detect.
“If there’s some food here, we’ve really hit pay dirt,” Jack said.
“Ta-da,” said Joni. She had taken the crowbar to the door of the kiosk and waved her hand at a basic kitchen.
“Mummy?” Charlie appeared from the opposite direction.
“Come on, love, we need to get inside.”
“I think you should see this.” He took my hand and led us back past the building, following the line of the lynx enclosure. He trailed his other hand along the chain-link fence, coming to a halt with his fingers looped through the diamonds.
“There,” he said.
Just beyond where he stopped, the wire gate of the lynx enclosure was propped open with a brick.
“There’s more,” he said.
“What?”
“You won’t like it.” He walked down a short path that led to another high enclosure that stretched out of sight ahead of us. Charlie stopped short of a small log cabin.
“Hide,” said Charlie.
“What?”
“It’s a hide. Where you view the animals.”
He led me forward a few paces, and then pulled my arm to make me stop.
Beyond the hide, alongside the high wire fence, a corpse lay spread-eagled in the dirt. My body sucked in air with a small gasp.
“That’s not the bad thing,” Charlie said.
I followed his pointed finger to an information board detailing the behavior and habitat of the Eurasian wolf, and beyond that to the wide-open gates of the wolves’ enclosure.