‘Keep yourself safe, more like.’
‘You’re out too, aren’t you?’
‘But Jackie and Dez… the kids… you engineered that… you made that happen…’
‘Fuck ‘em. And fuck you, too.’
He pushed past and ran on with George. Michelle knew she had to stick with him if she wanted to stay with her son. The sound of another two shots inside the classroom sealed the decision.
The outside world felt wholly alien now. There were still a couple of helicopters high overhead and whilst quieter than before, a never-ending buzz of noise continued to come from around the leisure centre. Michelle watched the rest of her family run on ahead, feeling bizarrely detached from everything now, almost as if she was watching events unfold on TV. Only the fear and the cold air and spitting rain reminded her she was still alive and a part of this. She watched Scott and wanted to wrestle George from him and take the kids away. I don’t know you anymore. Don’t know if I ever really did. We’ll never be safe as long as we’re with you.
They waited in the shadows between two more imposing school buildings until she caught up. ‘Move faster or you’ll get left behind,’ Scott said, his voice detached and unemotional. He looked around for Phoebe. ‘Which way now?’
She couldn’t immediately answer, could barely even think straight, traumatised with fear and struggling to make sense of her surroundings. She looked around again, then gestured down the side of the next school block. Scott sprinted along the wall of the building, using it both as cover and support. He stopped at the furthest corner, gesturing for the others to stay low and almost overbalancing with his son, then looked ahead.
Nothing. It was clear.
Most of the chaotic activity was still concentrated around the back of the school, the area from which they’d escaped. From here Scott could see the main gates. He’d expected to see a mass of soldiers and equipment there, but posts had clearly been abandoned in haste. Michelle grabbed his shoulder and swung him around. ‘You’re going to get us all killed.’
‘No, staying here will get us all killed.’
‘We’re not safe.’
‘That’s why we’re leaving. We can do this. We’re gonna run for the hedge over there, then follow it around to the gate and slip out the front. There’s no one there. We’ll get out, find a car, then get as far away from Thussock as we can, right?’ Scott looked into each face in turn, waiting until he’d seen something positive – a nod, a mumble, some kind of definite agreement, no matter how slight – before he moved.
Just a few steps away from cover and Scott was on his face on the ground, George squashed beneath him, screaming. He picked himself up and put his hand over his son’s mouth, trying to stop his noise. ‘Shh… they’ll hear us.’
‘Is he okay? George, love, are you okay?’ Michelle asked, trying to get closer. Scott turned his back on her.
‘I tripped, that’s all. Keep moving.’
He looked back and saw that none of them were following. Phoebe and Tammy were standing around something he couldn’t make out in the darkness. What did I just fall over? He went back and saw it was the body of a woman, facedown. A pool of blood glistened around her naked crotch, steam still rising. Her torn, blood-soaked knickers were around her knees. ‘Was she…?’ Tammy started to ask.
‘Infected?’ Scott interrupted. ‘Probably. None of our concern. We need to move.’
He shifted George in his tired arms, struggling with his increasingly heavy weight, and ran on. Phoebe still wasn’t following. ‘Come on, Pheeb,’ Michelle shouted at her.
‘Does this mean it’s got out?’
‘What?’
‘This woman… does this mean the parasite-thing got out of the leisure centre?’
‘Obviously,’ Scott said, ‘but it doesn’t make any difference. As long as we keep away from everyone else we’ll be fine.’
‘But it does, though, doesn’t it? It does make a difference.’
‘Listen to me. We’re going to just keep doing what we’re doing and get out of Thussock. We can worry about all this later.’
‘But wait,’ Phoebe said, still refusing to move, ‘I don’t get it. There was ages between all those other people dying.’
‘So?’
‘So why is it getting faster? Is it getting hungrier? It’s not long since it got that man in the leisure centre, is it?’
‘I don’t know. Does it even matter? Just shut up and move, for Christ’s sake.’
She still wasn’t going anywhere.
‘Does it mean there’s more than one of them now?’
Shit. She might be right.
‘We need to go,’ Scott said. This time he kept running, giving the others no choice but to follow.
And it was far easier to get away than any of them expected. A final breathless dash across a patch of open space and they’d made it beyond the school gates.
30
The silence away from the school was somehow more frightening than the noise they’d left behind. Thussock was deserted; a ghost town, devoid of all life. Although the lights in most buildings remained unlit, the street lamps enabled the family to see more than enough. It was as if the entire place had been frozen like a paused DVD. Wherever they looked they could visualise the exact moments when people’s lives had been unexpectedly interrupted during the course of the long day now ending. Cars had been abandoned in the middle of the road. The doors of many shops and houses had been left open. A stray dog mooched around for its missing owner, edging forward when it saw Scott and the others, then yelping with panic and running away in the opposite direction. Scott stepped over a river of water flowing into the gutter from a hosepipe which had been left running for hours. Nearby, a courier delivery remained incomplete, the back of a truck half-full of boxes left wide open, its contents untouched. A rain-soaked child’s pushchair lay on its side in the middle of the pavement, its young passenger long gone. Thussock felt eerie and unsettling, as if someone had casually flicked a switch and erased the entire human race save for this one dysfunctional family left skulking through the shadows, avoiding the light as if they were vampires.
They’d been walking unchallenged for almost a quarter of an hour when Scott stopped. He changed direction and led them down a dark alleyway. ‘Where are we going?’ Michelle asked, talking in whispers despite there being no one else around to hear.
‘Back to work.’
And Michelle began to slowly make sense of their surroundings. She’d never seen it like this before, but she was sure this was close to where she’d dropped Scott off on those few occasions he’d actually managed an uninterrupted day’s work at Barry Walpole’s yard.
He handed George to Michelle and told her to wait near a solitary street lamp by the entrance to the yard, out of plain sight but where he could still see them. Scott then jogged across the yard and forced his way into Barry Walpole’s caravan-cum-office.
He’d triggered the alarm. Scott made straight for the metal key cabinet mounted on the wall by Barry’s desk. He broke into it quickly with a screwdriver, nerves and the shrill alarm noise combining to keep him moving at speed. Keys flew everywhere as he prised the door open and he dropped to his hands and knees and scrambled around on the grubby floor, feeling the constant noise boring into his brain now, clouding his already confused thoughts. And then, right under the desk, his outstretched fingers found what he’d been looking for. He snatched up the keys to the truck and ran back outside.
His family had gone.
‘Michelle,’ he shouted, but he could hardly hear himself think over the never-ending klaxon. Where were they? Had he pushed Michelle too far with what he’d done to Dez and his family? He hadn’t had any choice. It was them or us… it was the only way. He ran over to the truck, no longer sure if he even believed himself.