There were three bodies on the pavement outside the pub. All men, all face down and sprawled in a semicircle, as though they’d been flung from the door and dropped where they fell. The body nearest me—an age-withered man, swamped by his clothes—held in his outstretched arm a lead with a threadbare collar still attached, as though he were being dragged along the ground by an invisible dog. Another of the men had his glasses trapped uncomfortably between his pudgy forehead and the paving stones. The third wore shorts and sandals with socks. There was no blood, no rictus grins of pain, no hands grasped around swollen, air-blocked throats. No sign of what might have killed three blokes outside a pub.
I staggered back half a dozen steps and clattered into the signboard, which folded up and crashed down with a backfire crack that echoed up the street. Would the kids have heard that? Would they come running? As the echo faded, the muted atmosphere returned; there was no sound of car doors opening on the far side of the bridge. I moved out into the middle of the road and walked along the white line until I was level with the pub door, which was propped open by an overturned bar stool. The interior was blank, silent—no music or voices or fruit machines spitting out jackpot coins. But the sunlight picked out a female hand—wearing too many rings—still grasping the leg of the bar stool, though the rest of her body was hidden by darkness. I backed away to the other side of the street and slumped against a parked car. Farther down the road, a hatchback was wrapped around a lamppost, a hanging basket embedded in its windshield. In the other direction was the desolate cricket field. There were no signs of human life.
I drew in a slow breath, let my ribs expand, and blew out through my nose as I counted to five, then pushed away from the parked car. This is actually happening, I told myself. This is happening right now. You need to think. Get your ducks in a line.
In a smooth motion, I turned my back on the bodies and steadied myself by planting my hands on top of the car. And screamed.
Staring up through the driver’s-side window was a silently screeching woman, teeth bared, lips stretched where she had slumped and slid down the glass in a macabre parody of the blowfish that Charlie liked to perform on the patio doors. I staggered out into the road and ran a few steps down the white line until I realized I was surrounded: pub to my right, blowfish woman behind me, the crashed hatchback up ahead. And my family waiting in the car.
Oh, God, did I just scream out loud? Did they hear that?
I sucked air through my nose and panted it out, each breath more ragged than the last. I needed to think. But my thoughts overlapped, speeding up to a blur like the colors on a pinwheel, so I couldn’t focus on any one thing. I turned round and round in the middle of the road—a broken toy—my wellies clop-clopping over the white line, and the creaking hinges of the pub sign goading me. My mind strobed with thoughts of a man’s face pressed into the pavement, a woman’s teeth grating against glass, virus or poison or plague, an empty dog lead, bodies like carrion, infection everywhere, Joni demanding answers, Mummy always comes back.
Do something.
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and dialed 999.
“Sorry. The service requested is not available. You have not been charged for this call.”
I hit redial. The robotic voice returned. “Sorry. Please hang up. Sorry. Please hang up.”
Sorry.
For days we had thought there was no signal, but maybe the network was overwhelmed. Maybe the police themselves were overwhelmed. All at once—the thought seemed to whip around me, looking for a way in—I knew these bodies were only a glimpse of something bigger.
Blackness writhed in my guts, and I pressed it down, kneading my belly with both fists until the bad energy frothed into my legs. Then I could hardly hold them still. I kicked off the wellington boots and marched down the middle of the road, away from the pub and the blowfish woman, breaking into a run as I neared the second car, which became the starting line of a sprint. I raced the full length of the high street, pressing down through pistoning thighs, pumping elbows and fists in wide arcs, gulping oxygen until the metallic tang of blood iron filled my mouth, and I was forced to slow down.
I stopped at a mini-roundabout. The town fizzled out into a country lane, the white lines sweeping off along the tree-tunneled road. I let my hands rest on my knees, my stomach heaving with air but voided of the fury. It took a few seconds for the sparkles to clear from my eyes.
Mummy always comes back.
What if they come looking for me? Little feet stampeding, desperate to be the first over the stone bridge, racing around the corner of the pub. Billy, always bringing up the rear, overtaking the others when they stopped in their tracks—thrilled to be winning for once, running right past them, right into the bodies. Falling over them. Onto them. Touching them.
I had to get back to my children. Pounding along the white line again, snatching up my discarded wellies, glancing at another body lying half-hidden down an alleyway, too fleeting to register beyond the simple jolting shock of it. Keep running. As far as the pub, where I pounded to a drumroll stop in the street again.
The bodies were still there, in my peripheral vision. I hadn’t touched them or gotten close enough to breathe the same air; surely I hadn’t been exposed to whatever killed them. I pulled myself back together, literally: hauling my disheveled hair into its band, tucking my shirt into my jeans, pulling on the wellies. Otherwise, I could hear the conversation:
“Mummy’s got no shoes on!”
“Why have you got no shoes on, Mummy?”
“Why, Mummy, why?”
At some point, I was going to have to explain, but not now.
Directly across from the pub was a village shop. It was painted British racing green and had a display of quaint bags and biscuits in the window, every last thing decorated with a retro Union Jack. I pushed at the door, which opened with an old-school tinkle. The store smelled of dusty newsprint and stale chocolate, but nothing worse: I could see no bodies in either of the two aisles. A drinks fridge, dark and silent, was within reach to my left. I grabbed two liters of semi-skimmed milk that were still quite cold. Then I jogged back across the high street and over the bridge to the car, the shop door jangling a warning behind me.
Chapter Four
“Let’s go for a nice walk,” I said to the kids on the way back to the camp. We agreed to climb to the top of Bury Ditches, the hill fort, which was the highest point for miles around. With no phone, no Internet, no TV access—nothing but static on the radio—I needed to get a wider view. Joni was drumming her fingers again, staring out of the passenger-side window; the kids were hyperactive with tension. Maggie and Billy fought over elbow room and traded bizarre insults, while Charlie and Peter, hidden by the bulk of Horatio, sang “Dumb Ways to Die” in falsetto, until Lola screamed at them to stop. Everyone—even Maggie and Billy—shut up until we got to the fort.