Flare (10 page)

The moment my shotgun was through she slammed the door, then turned and led us through the house to the kitchen, flinging the back door open and hurrying out into the garden.

The garden was small, little more than a grassed box with a low hedge that looked out over a playing field at the rear.  Emily moved straight to the corner of the garden and forced her way out through the hedge where the two corners met and the brush was thinnest, then turned and helped first her dad, and then myself through.

We were horribly exposed, with only the back gardens of her street blocking us from view on one side.  On the other three sides the field spread out for hundreds of metres, showing anyone who cared to look exactly where we were.

“So what now?”  I asked, my thumb stroking the lever on the shotgun so rapidly I had to force myself to stop.

“This way”, she said, and led us across the field at an angle towards the nearest treeline.  “There’s a patch of woods just past the edge of the field.  No one goes there, so we should be safe until the sun goes down or they get bored and leave, whichever comes first”.

I nodded and followed, falling further and further behind as my ankle began to protest at the sudden exercise.  The others slowed to allow me to keep up, but I could see the frustration on their faces as we crawled across the field in plain view for the world to see.

We’d almost reached the treeline when I glanced back, seeing something that made my heart sink.

Pouring out of Emily’s back garden was a veritable flood of people, all of them armed and heading in our direction.

Gritting my teeth I ran for the trees, ignoring the screaming pain in my ankle as I caught up with the others, all of us running from the men who wanted nothing more than to kill us, or in Emily’s case, far worse.

Chapter
15

I was almost doubled over in agony by the time we reached the trees,
my ankle a throbbing mass of pain that brought tears to my eyes.

“I’ve got to stop”, I gasped, “I can’t keep running”.

Emily and Ralph both slowed, her seemingly fresh but the old man breathing like a bellows as he fought for air.

“Not as fit as I used to be”, he wheezed, leaning against a tree.

Emily looked around, then pointed to a large oak with low branches.

“If we can’t run, we climb.  Come on”.  She ran over to the tree and jumped up, catching and branch a
nd easily pulling herself up, Bergen and all.

I hobbled after her as fast as I could, Ralph following behind.  I could hear his lungs rattling now, the sound registering even over the pain in my foot.

As we reached the tree I put my back against the trunk, knowing that seconds counted if we were to get out of reach of the men following us.

Emily leaned down and took Ralph’s shotgun, then reached out for his arms while I made my hands into a stirrup and boosted him up.

The old man was incredibly heavy, years of manual labour turning him into a lump of solid muscle that was almost too much for me to lift, even for a moment, but Emily caught his wrists and somehow he scrambled up onto the lowest branch, then began climbing to the next.

“Grab hold”, Emily said, lying on the branch and reaching down again
, grabbing my shotgun and then coming back for me.  I could hear the shouts of the men following us now, and I took hold of her arms while my one good foot scrabbled at the bark for purchase.

I’d never been so scared in my life, not even when Ralph had us on the wrong end of his shotgun the night before, but despite the adrenaline surging through my system I just didn’t have the strength to haul myself up.

I hung there, waving and twisting while Emily grimaced with the strain of trying to hold my weight, unable to do more than scrape my foot uselessly against the trunk.

“They went this way!”  The shout was less than a dozen metres behind.  I let go of Emily and dropped to the ground, nearly screaming as my ankle tried to buckle again.

“The shotgun!”  I whispered furiously, but then I caught a glimpse of movement in the trees behind me and I bolted, tearing through low scrubby bushes, brambles and nettles until my ankle finally gave out and I plunged down a bank into a small dell, rolling over and over until I came to a halt against a fallen tree.

Panic had me now, my breath coming in short gasps and blood thundering in my ears, but I still retained enough sense to haul myself over the fallen trunk, burying myself in the loam on the other side and then freezing, sure that they would hear my panicked breathing and be on me like hounds on a fox.

Only they weren’t. 

Twenty seconds passed, then thirty, then a minute, and still I lay there unmolested.  As the rushing in my ears began to fade and I got my breathing back under control, I realised that I could hear voices, the loudest belonging to the man in the vest who had spoken to us earlier.

“Tell you what”, he was saying from not far away, “throw the keys down and we’ll call it even”.

“The hell we will, there are three of us up here, with two shotguns.  They can fire and I can pass them cartridges all day if we need to.  So why don’t you and your mates just go home?”

Emily’s voice held not a trace of fear, and I couldn’t help but wonder at her ability to stay so calm and focused in what had to be the worst crisis she’d ever faced.  Even as the reality of my own situation struck home, I couldn’t help but feel admiration for the woman.

“Nah, I want that car.  Any idea how long it takes to get all the stuff back from town on bikes?  Car’d be much better”.

“Is it really worth lives?”

“Could ask you the same”.

“What guarantee have I got that you won’t keep waiting for us if we throw the keys down?”

“Ok, I’m fuckin’ bored of this.  Throw the keys down now or we’ll set up underneath the tree.  You can’t stay up there forever”.

“Try me”.

White-vest began to snap out orders, detailing several of his men to go back to the village for chairs, beer and food.  Fairly sure now that none of them knew I was still on the ground, I cautiously climbed back over the fallen tree and inched my way up to the lip of the dell, raising my head over the edge only as far as my eyes.

My heart sank when I saw how many of them there were.

Almost twenty men now stood around the tree, although far enough back to avoid the worst of any sudden shotgun blast.  The leader leaned against a smaller tree at the edge of the clearing around the oak, scratching himself with one hand while the other still held his club.

I slid back down into the dell and over the trunk again, making sure I was well out of sight in case any of them decided to explore, then took stock of my options.

My first thought was that I didn’t have many.  Even if I was a skilled fighter, which I most certainly wasn’t, there was no way I’d be able
to take on so many opponents.  Even fighting one or two of them was enough to make me want to piss in fear.  That left two choices, or maybe three.

First, I could try and make my way on foot to the nearest decent part of town and see if I could find someone to help, but that was unlikely to say the least.  Not only
could I barely walk, but I didn’t know anyone in the area and the chances of them deciding to help a total stranger when they had their own worries were slim to none.

Second, I could walk away.  I could cut my losses, try and find my way back to the cottage and tell Harriet… Tell her what?  That I’d been too scared to try and help and her husband and daughter had died because I was a coward?  No, that didn’t bear thinking about, and just the thought of leaving them when they needed me most filled me with a self-loathing that I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with.

So it had to be option three, only I wasn’t sure what that was.

And so I lay there, occasionally crawling up to the lip and looking over as the morning turned into afternoon, the heat becoming almost unbearable even with the shade of the trees keeping the worst of the sun off.  I was desperate for a drink, the feeling made worse when several of their number returned with coolers full of beer and began handing
around cans.

They stood or sat in small groups, some on chairs that appeared from the village, others on the bare earth while they waited for us to give up
and either come down or throw the keys.

It was hard to know how long I’d lain there, watching them smoking, talking and drinking, but it had to have been several hours when their leader waved a few of them to one side and had a low conversation with them, too quiet for me to hear from this distance.

After a few minutes of conferring, two of them went around the clearing, tapping some of the others on the shoulders and motioning them back towards the village while others stayed where they were, talking and laughing.

By the time the ones tapped on the shoulder
had slipped away, I counted seven left.  Still too many for me to tackle them head on, but I’d always prided myself on my ability to think outside the box, and if I had any hope of Ralph and Emily getting out of this alive, I needed that skill now more than ever.

Chapter
16

By the time the sun dropped over the horizon I felt half-delirious with thirst, my tongue several sizes too big and my head thumping painfully.  I could have slipped away and tried to find water but I’d been too scared, both of being seen and not finding my way back.

There were still half a dozen men sitting around the tree, and from the occasional reappearances the leader had made throughout the day, his threats more and more esoteric each time, I had the firm feeling that this was now less about the car and more about his pride, maybe even his standing in the eyes of the others.

His last visit had been about an hour before dusk, one of the others daring to ask when they could leave only to have him roar at them incoherently before stomping off back to the village.

I’d nearly been discovered several times throughout the day, the lip of the small dell I lay in perfect for those who wished to relieve themselves, seemingly competing to see how much of my hiding place they could splash with urine, the smell only adding to my headache.

More than once I’d been tempted to give up and crawl off into the bushes, but the imagined look on Harriet’s face was enough to keep me there, along with the understanding that Emily and Ralph were most likely relying on me to do something to help.

I’d made and discarded a dozen plans during the day, all of them either risky, unworkable or downright stupid, but as the air cooled and small creatures began to rustle in the leaves around me, I knew that I had to find a way to distract the men around the tree.

Then it came to me.  Not much would draw these men away, but there was one thing that they would value more than the car and the potential for sated lust and violence that capturing my friends would provide.

Praying they wouldn’t hear me, I scrabbled through the leaf mould to the far side of the dell and into the bushes at the edge, then half crouched, half hobbled as fast as I could, cutting in a wide circle back towards the village.

It took me the best part of quarter of an hour to get there, hurrying from bush to bush and freezing at the slightest hint of movement.

My palms were sweating and my head was thumping like a drum by the time I reached the first garden fence, my courage all but gone before I’d even started on my hazardous course of action.

Keeping low, I used the fence as cover an
d crept towards the street we’d driven through when we’d seen the two cyclists with their packs full of looted gear.  I’d heard white-vest talking about bikes earlier, and so I had to assume that they were linked.

When I reached what I thought was the right spot, I rolled over a fence and into
the garden beyond, immediately getting tangled in the undergrowth.

The
lawn hadn’t been cut in months by the look of it, and children’s toys were scattered at random in the long grass like brightly coloured mantraps, tripping me as I tried to make my way silently to the side of the house and the path that led past an old wooden shed to the street.

The houses were dark
but I could see the faint hint of flames from the street, and as I sidled along the path and peered around the corner, I saw white-vest and several other men sitting around an oil drum, flames licking up from it to illuminate their faces as the drank yet more beer and smoked cigarettes from cartons of two hundred that were littered around their feet.

They’d clearly done well out of the disaster so far, but I wondered how long they’d last when they
realised their microwave ready-meals were no longer on the menu and they had to find real food to cook.

I shook my head to clear it.  Now was not the time to be making silent jibes about lifestyle, not if I had any chance of helping Emily and Ralph.  I put the stray thoughts down to my lack of water, and looked in vain for anything I might use to quench my thirst.

Nothing presented itself, however, so I moved in a crouch to hide behind a pair of metal bins that gave me a good view of the road and its occupants while keeping me firmly hidden.

I stayed crouched there for about ten minutes, watching the comings and goings around the fire.  While the houses on this side were semi
-detached, the ones on the far side were terraced and all crammed together with tiny gardens that were little more than scrubby patches of brown earth, and if I was to have any effect at all I realised that I needed to cross the road without being seen.

Drawing back to the shed, I tried the door gently.  It moved, but the hinges were rusty and the squeak they gave was enough to raise the dead.

I froze, heart in mouth as I waited for a shout of discovery, but none came and after a long minute I moved the door again, this time lifting it slightly as I pushed.

It still groaned, but not so loud now, the noise more than covered by the laughter and conversation coming from the fire, and in moments I had it wide enough to slip inside.

It was pitch black inside the shed.  I hadn’t thought this far into my plan, trusting that I’d find the things I needed, but without being able to see I was at something of a loss.  The small space smelled strongly of creosote, old wood and mouse droppings, and I ran my hands through all manner of unidentifiable, cobweb-covered things looking for anything that might do as a light source.

After several minutes of searching I found an old torch, the batteries almost dead but giving out just enough light to see by after being in the dark for so long.

Shining it around, I realised that no one had used this place for months. Dust and cobwebs were thick on every surface, the workbench holding tools that had rusted to their clamps.

Checking the lower shelves, I repressed a shudder as a spider the size of my hand darted into cover with alarming swiftness.  Working with as much haste as I could while remaining quiet, I looked through the shelves until I found what I needed.  Stuffing it all into an old garden sack, I turned the torch off but kept hold of it, then exited the shed and crossed the back garden again, going back over the fence and along several houses until I reckoned I was far enough away from the fire not to be seen.

I was about to climb another fence when I saw a footpath, a narrow dirt smear that separated two of the fenced gardens.  It was littered with dog mess, but I picked my way along it, pleasantly surprised that my ankle was bearing up well.

I paused at the end of the footpath, leaning out past a hedge to check the road in both directions.  Once I was sure I was clear, the fire and its complement of men a good twenty metres away and all but lost around a slight curve in the road, I hurried across to the far side and straight into the first garden.

This was where my plan got a little hazy.  I’d seen from the car earlier that all the gardens were linked, a concrete path running between house and garden just wide enough for one person, passing every front door in the row, so I could get as far along the road as I needed to without jumping any more fences.  But could I really do what I was planning?  Despite everything, even knowing that the people around me would quite deliberately and cheerfully tear myself and my friends apart if they caught us, I was about to put them and their dependants at risk, possibly even kill some of them.  Could I honestly justify my actions?  My father, a civil servant for most of his adult life, and a particularly law-abiding man, had once said to me, ‘don’t do anything you couldn’t put your hand on your heart and justify in front of a jury’.  Despite our disagreements about other things, that particular quote had stuck with me, and I’d always tried to follow the spirit of it, if not the letter.

But now I was about to change all that.  For the first time in my adult life, I was going to break a law, risk
ing lives in a cold, calculated attack that could very possibly leave someone dead.

My hands shook as I checked the contents of my bag, making sure everything was there.  Once I was certain, I moved along the path, ducking under windows and keeping to the shadows as much as I could while the whole street seemed to be congregating around the fire out on the road.

I could hear dozens of voices now, with children shouting and playing as they ran in and out of the gardens, one running right past me as I froze in the dark, almost shouting in shock as the little lad barrelled out of his house and into the street with a tin of chocolates clutched in his hands and a wild grin on his face.

My heart felt like it was about to burst, and by the time I moved again my hands and legs were shaking and my knees felt like jelly.
  I made it another two houses before I decided that I was close enough and pulled the stolen items from my bag, setting them out at my feet and looking around to make sure that the low hedge shielded me from view.

Confident that I wasn’t being observed, I opened the box of matches and took two out, laying them on the path, the
n picked up the can of lighter fluid and gently pushed the letterbox open, squeezing the tin as hard as I could and liberally dousing the carpet inside with the foul smelling liquid.  I sprayed yet more into the inside of the letterbox itself, then coated the outside too before throwing the empty can back into the sack and shoving it behind a bin.

Taking a deep
breath I lit the first match, my hands shaking so badly that the flame went out.  Tossing it aside, I lit the second and this time the flame sprang to life, its yellow glow making the fluid on the door glisten.

Knowing that I couldn’t delay, I held the letterbox open and dropped the match onto the wood inside.

It lit with a whoosh, flames spurting out and burning my hand, arm and face.  I stumbled backwards, the smell of burnt hair matching the hot, stretche
d feeling of the skin on my cheeks.

Within seconds the hallway was on fire, flames licking hungrily at the carpet, door and walls, throwing crazy shadows through the glass that made up the top half of the door.

I heard a shout from the street and ran without thinking, back along the path to the end of the street, not noticing the pain in my ankle as I rode the wave of adrenaline and let it carry me out of sight of anyone coming to investigate.

I hit the end of the path and ducked behind the last hedge, peeking back out to see if anyone had seen me.

I needn’t have worried.  The whole street appeared to be packed into the front garden, staring in surprise at the flames that were now bright enough to see from even this distance.

“It’s Jamie’s house, where is he?”  Someone shouted.

“He’s in the woods”, someone else replied, “someone get a bucket or something!”

Seeing my chance, I fled across the road while they were all busy, taking the footpath back to the fields and following the treeline until I was close to the oak and the group of men below it, their faces thrown into sharp relief by a small fire one of the had made.

This was where it could all go wrong.  I looked back towards the village and was surprised to see a glow from the fire I’d set, a thick pall of smoke beginning to form over the street.  It had spread far more quickly than I’d imagined, and I hoped that would help my cause.

Stepping into a thick stand of trees, I hid myself as best I could among the narrow trunks and deepened my voice, trying to make myself sound like one of the villagers.

“Jamie”, I shouted, letting the very real fear I was trying to control enter my voice.

“What?”  Came an answering call from below the tree.

“Your house is on fire”, I shouted, “we need help before all the other houses go up!”

“You what?  You’d better be pulling my fuckin’ leg”.

“I ain’t, go look!”

A few moments later two forms hurried past my hiding place.

“Shit, look, you can see it from ‘ere”, one said nervously.

“Oh fuck”, the other
, a man in a lurid green t-shirt, breathed, beginning to run towards the village, “my fuckin kids are in bed, come on, what are you fuckin’ waiting for?”

The last was screamed as he sprinted, his companion and several o
thers from the tree following with shouts of alarm.

That should have been the moment to strike, to let the others know that there were only two or three men left to guard them, but as Jamie’s words sank in I dropped to my knees, overwhelmed by the urge to vomit.

My kids are in bed
, he’d said, and as I realised what I’d done I began to throw up violently, huge convulsions that sprayed the forest floor with what little was left of my breakfast. 

The crunching of feet on dry leaves made me look up, helpless, as two of the remaining men came to investigate the noise.