“No, Charlie. We will not be escaping by air. We’re not thrill-seeking. Quite the opposite, we will be thrill-avoiding.”
Now that we had jettisoned so much stuff, we were on the move in minutes. We jolted across the wolf enclosure, pausing only to contemplate a pile of sheep’s wool near the gate, which no one could recall being there before. I glanced into the dark spaces of the tree line as we drove past and was glad to power up the hill to the open moorland above. Jack appeared in my rearview mirror on the bike, and we followed the rolling road toward the town, in the direction of the airfield.
The grid reference was still daubed on the windscreen, and I found myself racing toward it. A donkey chasing a carrot. Could Woody be right? I thought. The Cleaners came after us with the stick, and now this is the carrot? I forced myself to slow down so that Jack could keep up.
The road turned quickly into a single-lane commuter route, and we rushed past nondescript houses, business units, and then farms. Although still semirural, this was the most populated area we had encountered for days. There were frequent crashed cars, mostly military, and the occasional corpse by the roadside. The bodies were slightly inflated, as though they had died while wearing a fat suit. No one inside the car said a thing. I flicked on the radio, and we listened to the bahs and bups of the radio signal, rolling through the Morse code message. Prompted by Lola, I turned off onto a smaller lane.
After we passed a massive garden center, the road bent round under some trees, and I slammed on the brakes. Cars, all facing away from us, blocked both sides of the road. Jack came to a jerky halt next to my window. I wrenched the pickup into reverse and backed down the lane. Jack spun the bike round and stopped beside me again. He gestured at me to roll down the window.
“There are people in the cars,” he said.
“Bodies,” I corrected him.
“The airfield is just at the end of this lane.” Lola tapped the map.
“Charlie’s not the only one who thought of flying away from trouble,” I said.
Jack switched off the bike and wandered into the car park of the garden center. Lola opened the door to go after him.
“Don’t—” I started.
“I won’t go near any bodies. I’ll just see if there’s another way to the airfield.”
I scrunched round in my seat to face Joni and the kids in the back.
“Pee pee?” said Billy.
“I want to go to a café,” said Maggie.
“Plane,” said Charlie, pointing to the other side of the road.
I scrunched round the other way and saw the tip of a white wing sticking up behind the hedgerow.
“Joni, can you keep the kids in the car? We shouldn’t be out here. Too much buzz.”
“I got it.” Joni opened her door and went to shout something under the tarpaulin.
“Mummy—” started Billy.
“Always comes back. Just stay in the car.”
I trotted across the lane and through the surreal line of palm trees that welcomed me to the garden center. There was a special offer on spring bulbs and pond netting. I turned from the buildings into the car park. Jack and Lola were clambering over a wooden fence on the far side. I yelled at them to come back, and they stopped to consider whether or not to ignore me.
A few cars looked abandoned, presumably by people who had decided to walk to the airfield. I cupped my hands round my eyes and peered inside the first one. There were no maps in the seat backs and no GPS. The second was the same, though there was a big cooler on the seat. I tried the door and it opened, but the stench told me that whatever was inside the box was beyond edible. Jack and Lola returned, and I told them to check the other cars. I tried another one, but the only map was a large-scale atlas of France and the Low Countries. Behind me, glass smashed. Lola punched the jagged edges away with the end of a brick and reached through to pop the door open. From inside the glove compartment, she produced a hidden satnav device.
“How did you know that was there?” Jack asked her.
“Circle on the windscreen,” she said, “left by the holder.”
While Jack was congratulating her on being “totes city,” I ran over and plugged the GPS into the cigarette lighter of the pickup. It burst into life with a beat of drums. I hit the button for home, just to test if it still worked. The screen went gray, and it started calculating a route.
“Hello, satellites,” I said to the sky. “Don’t be alarmed, but we’re still alive down here.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I walked between the jammed cars, averting my eyes from the faces behind windows. It was unnatural. As though I were the dead one and they were all alive, stunned by seeing a ghost. Only my sense of smell suggested I was still living.
“Are you sure about this?” Lola said, with the brick still in her hand.
“The hermit was inside the kitchen alongside a body for long enough to bake bread, so he said, and he didn’t catch it.”
“But you’ll be really close to them. You might have to touch them.”
I peeped into a hatchback with two bubblegum-pink suitcases pressed against the glass. I couldn’t do that one. Lola bent down to the window from the other side and gave a little sigh before also moving on. Most of the vehicles had satnavs, but we weren’t wasting our time on those anymore: they didn’t work with grid references. Jack gave a shout from the grass verge next to a battered Land Rover. He had his hands on the roof and was staring in through the driver’s window. Inside was a man and a mound of yellow dog, both well concealed by a blanket of black that flickered occasionally like the flank of a horse. There was also a spiral-bound road atlas on the dashboard. I stopped on the passenger side and ran my fingers over the glass, which was etched from the inside with claw marks.
“Why am I more upset about the dog than all the people?” asked Lola, scrubbing at her eyes.
“Because it’s a manageable amount of grief,” I said. “It’s like releasing a bit of water from the dam so the whole thing doesn’t burst. It’s a survival instinct.”
“Is that why you’re not upset about Uncle Julian?” she asked.
“Julian? I am upset about Julian. And Peter. Lennon.” I rubbed a fist on the glass, as though I could scour out the claw marks. “Don’t forget about Horatio. William Moton. All these poor buggers in their cars. Do you want me to go on?”
Lola shrugged to show that she didn’t.
The atlas was tucked down close to the windscreen. I would have to climb inside the car to get it.
“Right, then, you two. Sod off and leave me to it.”
“But—”