No time to waste. Helicopters overhead. Easier to find them in the truck. Then again, maybe he should just leave alone? If it wasn’t for George, he thought, he probably would have.
He started the engine and pulled away, accelerating hard down the driveway, figuring Michelle would most probably have tried to get home as there was nowhere else left to go other than back to the school. He’d barely made it halfway to the road when Phoebe jumped out at him from the shadows, scaring him senseless. He slammed on the brakes, virtually standing on the pedal to bring the tired old truck to a stop. Michelle got into the front with George as Tammy and Phoebe clambered onto the flat-bed behind. ‘Drive,’ Michelle yelled at him once she was sure they were safe. He swung around a sharp left turn, then accelerated again. She was confused. ‘You’re going the wrong way. You should have turned right for the house.’
‘We’re not going to the house.’
‘What?’
‘I told you, we’re getting out of Thussock.’
‘You’re not thinking straight, Scott. Everything we own is back at that house. I’m not saying we should stop and pack it all up, just get a few essentials. Our documents, some food and drink, clothes…’
‘No.’
‘For Christ’s sake, it’s on the main road out of Thussock. It’s the most obvious way out of here.’
‘Exactly. That’s why we’re going this way.’
‘But what about the girls? They’ll freeze on the back of this truck.’
‘They’ll be all right.’
Michelle didn’t bother arguing. What was the point? When had he last listened to her, anyway? Maybe if he had, they wouldn’t all be in this fucking mess.
Scott was pushing the truck harder and harder, braking then accelerating, driving like a fucking maniac. The road began to climb – Michelle felt it rather than saw it – and from the shapes of the dark silhouettes on either side, she worked out roughly where they were. They were driving over the hills behind their house now, retracing the route Scott had taken that Saturday afternoon when they’d first arrived in Thussock.
As the road reached its peak then began to descend, Scott braked hard, bringing the truck to an unexpected, juddering halt. Michelle clung onto George with one hand and steadied herself with the other. In the back, both Tammy and Phoebe lost balance and lurched forward, falling against one another and butting heads, yelping with pain. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Michelle screamed at him, but he didn’t answer, he just left the truck. Incensed, she picked up George and followed him out. He’d stopped a short distance ahead and was standing on the white line in the middle of the road, staring into the distance. ‘I can’t handle this, Scott. You need to…’ She shut up when she saw what was up ahead.
Just beyond the fracking site was a blockade. Scores of soldiers. Plenty of firepower. And it wasn’t just the road, she realised: the blockade stretched for as far as she could see in either direction. ‘They’ve sealed us off,’ Scott said, sounding numb, barely able to believe what he was seeing. ‘The bastards have sealed off the whole bloody town. We’re not going anywhere.’
31
They didn’t have any other choice now. Other than surrendering themselves to the military, going back to the house was the only option left.
Scott parked the truck on the grass at the side of the house rather than on the drive, hoping to make it less obvious that they’d returned. Phoebe ran to the door but Michelle called her back. It was still open from where it had been kicked in by soldiers this morning. This morning, she thought, was it really only this morning? Was this day ever going to end? ‘I’ll go first,’ she said, but Scott had other ideas and he pushed her out of the way. She followed him in and flicked on the hall light. He immediately switched it off again.
‘Too dangerous. Don’t want anyone knowing we’re in here.’
‘You really think anyone cares?’
He wasn’t going to discuss it. He grabbed her wrist tight and pulled her closer. ‘You leave the fucking lights alone and you do exactly what I tell you, got it?’
He handed George to Michelle, made sure the girls were inside, then propped the broken door shut with an upturned shoe rack. ‘I need the toilet,’ Phoebe said. He glared at her.
‘Be quick, then get into the living room. I want all of you in the living room, got it? You stay out of sight at the back of the house.’
Michelle ushered Tammy through. Scott waited for Phoebe to finish, then made sure she followed. He went into the kitchen and grabbed a little food and drink, pausing at the window. It appeared deceptively calm out there now, but he knew it was just an illusion. They were trapped between the chaos at the school on one side and the military lines securing Thussock on the other. No man’s land.
The girls were sitting on the sofa, George perched between them, while Michelle anxiously paced the other end of the room. There were no street lamps visible here, but the intermittent moon provided a little illumination through the French window. Scott dropped an armful of food onto the coffee table then shut the door. The silence in the room was ominous, the tension unbearable. Tammy stared straight ahead. George looked from face to face, hoping for reassurance from someone but getting nothing. Michelle chewed her nails and watched the others, Scott especially. Phoebe was sitting with her hands in her lap, eyes wide with fear. When she spoke there was a noticeable waver to her voice. She was right on the edge. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ Scott answered quickly, getting in fast before anyone else could speak. ‘For now we’re just going to sit tight and wait.’
‘Wait for what?’ Tammy demanded. Michelle felt her guts tighten.
‘No, Tammy, this isn’t the time.’
‘Then when is?’
‘Your mother’s right,’ Scott said. ‘Shut up. No one will have expected us to come back here, so we wait for the situation back in town to get sorted, then we leave. Simple. As long as we stay away from everyone else, there’s no chance of any of us getting infected by this damn thing.’
‘Unless one of us already has been.’
Tammy’s words silenced all of them. She couldn’t be right, could she? Scott and Michelle individually tried to work their way back and remember if any of them had been left alone long enough to have been infected. They couldn’t have caught it from that body on the grass outside the school, could they? It was all too much for Michelle. The idea of one of her girls being violated… she couldn’t bear to think about it. ‘No one’s been infected…’ she mumbled. ‘We can’t have been.’
‘So all we’ve done,’ Tammy said, not letting go, ‘is leave one prison cell to end up in another. We might as well have stayed at the school, or even in that Portakabin. Oh, but we couldn’t stay there, could we, Scott, because you screwed that up as well. You got Mum’s friend and her family killed.’
‘We don’t know what happened. Anyway, they weren’t my concern.’
‘And we are?’
‘You’re my family.’
‘But we don’t matter really, do we? As long as you’re okay, that’s all that’s important. You don’t give a damn about anyone but yourself.’
‘Tammy, please…’ Michelle begged. ‘Don’t…’
‘No, come on,’ Scott said, goading her, ‘let her have her say.’
Tammy stood up, face to face with her step-father. ‘You just keep backing us into corners.’ She looked at Michelle. ‘Can’t you see it, Mum? We had our freedom back in Redditch, until he screwed up and we lost that. You keep making our world smaller and smaller, Scott, adding more and more restrictions. You brought us here to the middle of nowhere and you even managed to fuck that up.’