"Don't hang about, Shav. Put your foot down," Laura called out sourly from a heap somewhere in the back.
They sped down the road at ninety, but the sirens which had risen up in the background were growing louder.
"We're not going to outrun them," Veitch said, glancing over his shoulder.
"I know." Shavi took one look in his side mirror, then threw the van across the opposite lane in the path of a lorry. Its horn blared. Church and Veitch both swore as they instinctively threw their heads down.
The van missed the lorry by a few inches, bounced over a curb and careened down a B road leading into the heart of the fells. Shavi gunned the engine along the deserted road and didn't let up until they had put a few miles between them and the main road. A village called Eggleston flashed by and the road branched in several directions. Shavi chose the southern route; the police would have to be lucky to follow them immediately. By then the others had just about recovered from the chase.
"You mad fucking bastard!" Veitch looked angry, but there was a note of respect in his voice.
The others in the back were fine, if bruised, but they were all aware their predicament had taken a turn for the worst.
"We're going to have to abandon the van," Veitch said. "After that stunt they're going to be looking out for it on every road."
Laura peered through the rear windows at the landscape, a windswept smudge of greens and browns, patches of firs, areas of dark scrub beyond the fields that lined the road, leading up to the high country in the north. "Great. We're back in Deliverance country. Where are we going to find another van round here?"
"We aren't." Veitch motioned for Shavi to pull up a rough side lane which led behind a thick copse. "We're going to keep well off the roads. All roads." Aghast, Laura dreaded what was coming. "We've got plenty of supplies, tents, we can live rough. If we lose ourselves out there, with all the shit that's going down they're not going to have the time or equipment to find us."
Church nodded thoughtfully. "It's a good plan."
"It's a plan," Laura said in disgust. "So's lying in the middle of the road until something runs us over! Listen, I'm not a camping kind of girl. What we've done so far, fine. At least there was, you know, civilisation nearby." She looked back out the windows. "All I can see are blisters, no bathrooms, cold wind and rain."
"You'll live," Veitch said dismissively. He grabbed the books of maps. "We'll have to use this to navigate. The way I see it, we can pick a good route south from here to the Pennines. They'd have to really want us to come after us."
"They really want us," Church said.
They removed all their rucksacks, tents and provisions, shared them out, then drove the van as deep into the copse as it would go. The leaf cover was thick enough to ensure it would take a while for it to be discovered. Sirens wailed across the open landscape as they moved hurriedly south away from the road. They crested a ridge where the wind gusted mercilessly, and then they were in open countryside.
The going was slow. Although Ruth was much recovered, she flagged easily and had to take many long rests, even over the first five miles. The A66, the main east-west route across the north country, appeared in the late afternoon. They waited in the thick vegetation by the roadside for nearly ten minutes until they were sure there was no traffic nearby, and then scurried across, ploughing straight into the fields beyond.
According to the map there were only four villages between them and the next main road ten miles away. The rest of the area was eerily deserted: just fields and trees and the occasional scattered farm. Although they needed to be away from the main thoroughfares, the isolation unnerved them. They knew the old gods were not the only things that had returned with the change that had come over the world; other things best consigned to the realms of myth were loose on the land; some of them frightening, if harmless, others sharp of tooth and claw, with a wild alien intelligence. None of them relished a night in the open countryside. That thought stayed with them as they marched in silence, trying to enjoy the pleasant Birdsong that rang out from the hedgerows and the aroma of wild flowers gently swaying in the field boundaries.
As twilight began to fall they neared the first of the villages marked on the map. Ruth suggested they pitch camp somewhere within the village boundaries, for safety. If they were going to risk a night in the wild, there were plenty of opportunities ahead. She looked ghostly white in the fading light and she had twice headed over to the hedgerow to be sick; the whole journey was taking its toll.
Her voice sounded so exhausted they all agreed instantly, whatever their private doubts.
Darkness had fallen completely by the time they reached the village and the golden lights were gleaming welcomingly across the night-sea of the fields. They hurried down from the high ground with an exuberance born of the potent desolation that emanated from the deep gloom shrouding the rest of the landscape; sounds which they could not explain by bird or foraging mammal pressed heavy against their backs; movements of shadows against the deeper shadow seemed to be tracking them in adjoining fields.
Laura cried out at one point when a figure loomed out of the night. It was only a scarecrow; even so, there was something about it that was profoundly unnerving. The clothes seemed too new, the shape of the limbs beneath oddly realistic; as she passed she had the strangest sensation it was turning to watch her. She could sense its disturbing presence behind her as she continued down the field and suddenly she was thinking of the man on the train turned into a figure of straw. When she felt a safe distance from the scarecrow she glanced behind her, and instantly wished she hadn't. Although it could have been her troubled imagination, she was sure there were two red pinpricks staring out of the shadows beneath the pulled-down hat. Watching her.
The village was an odd mix of country money and rural decline: a handful of run-down sixties council houses cheek-by-jowl with sprawling ancient dwellings, overlooked by an Elizabethan manor house. There was only one main street, not blessed by street lights, and a couple of brief offshoots. Somehow a small pub and a tiny shop had survived the decline that had afflicted many similarly sized villages. There warm night air was thick with the aroma of clematis and roses which festooned the houses on both sides of the road. Everywhere was still and silent; although lights shone from the occasional undrawn curtains or crept out from slivers between drapes, there was no movement anywhere.
"We ought to ask if it would be all right for us to pitch our tents within the village boundaries," Shavi said with his usual thoughtfulness. He selected a house at random and wandered up the front path among the lupins and sunflowers. His rap on the door was shocking in the stillness. A second later the curtains at the nearest window were snatched back with what seemed undue ferocity to reveal the face of a middle-aged woman. She bore an expression not of surprise or irritation at being disturbed, but of unadulterated fright. When her searching gaze fell on Shavi she waved him away furiously and drew the curtains with a similar, and very final, force. He returned to the others, looking puzzled.
"I told you," Laura said, "Deliverance country. Don't bend over to tie your shoe laces. You'll be squealing like a little piggy."
"There's always one miserable battleaxe in every village," Ruth said. "Knock somebody else up."
"You don't have a trace of innuendo in your body, do you?" Laura noted.
Shavi tried the next house, then one a few doors up the street and one across the road; the response was the same in all of those that deigned to peek through the curtains: fear.