Flare (32 page)

No, this was the long, slow burn of loving someone that I knew was too good for me, a person I’d come to rely on so completely that I couldn’t imagine waking up and her not being there.

Of course knowing how I felt and acting on it were two very different things.  What woman wouldn’t run a mile if you told her you loved her after little more than a week in each other’s company?  Even in my heyday I’d been bad with things like that anyway, and just the thought of trying to tell her how I felt made my stomach turn inside out.

Melody stirred next to me and I pulled away to see her eyes crack open, flaring wide in a moment of panic before she realised where she was.

“Hey, it’s ok”, I said, brushing the top of her head with my hand.  “I’m right here”.

She yawned and then pulled a face.  “I need to clean my teeth”.

I nodded.  “We all do.  When we get home we’ll make sure we all get properly clean.  You smell”.  I poked her in the ribs and she giggled, then her face grew serious.

“Dad, what if those men find us again?”

“They won’t”.

“But what if they do?”

I sighed, not knowing what to say to make her feel better.  I finally settled on the truth.

“I’m never going to let anyone hurt you ever again”, I said seriously, “and if we see those men then Emily has a gun and she’ll shoot them.  She’s a soldier, you know”.

Her eyes grew wide.  “Really?”

I nodded.  “Really.  And she’s a really good shot”.

Melody leaned forwards.  “Are you?”

Emily glanced back in the mirror and smiled.

“I am.  Better than your dad, anyway.  Perhaps, if your dad thinks it’s ok, me and
my
dad can teach you how to shoot when we get back to the farm.  How does that sound?”

Melody turned to me hopefully.

“Can I dad?  Please?”

I shrugged.  “I don’t see why not, if you really want to”.

She nodded.  “I do, because if I can shoot then I can stop anyone from hurting me if you’re not there”.

“But I’ll always be there”.

She turned away, looking down at her hands.

“I thought mum would be too, but she went away”.  She glanced up at me out of the corner of her eye.  “You don’t know what’s going to happen, do you?”

I opened my mouth to reassure her, then realised I was falling into old habits, so instead I took one of her hands and kissed it, regardless of the filth that caked her skin.

“All the time I’m alive, I will keep you safe.  If I ever have to go away for any reason, then you’ll be with Emily, or Ralph or Harriet.  You’re right, I can’t promise that I’ll always be there, but all the time I am
I won’t let anything happen to you. Do you believe me?”

She nodded and took her hand back, hiding it in her lap as if embarrassed.

“I’m hungry”.

“So am I, but we’re going to a place that has food, and nice people.  It’s run by a woman who was a chief inspector in the police, her name’s Lindsay and she’s really nice”.

“Will we be there soon?”

I glanced at the empty space on my wrist, my watch most likely still sitting next to my bed in Hove, if the house was still standing.

“Uh, not too long”.  I leaned forward and saw that we were going about fifty miles an hour.  The speedo didn’t go much higher and from the shaking and rattling, neither would the car.

“Maybe an hour or two.  Why don’t you try and get some more sleep?”

She nodded and curled up, head on my chest and feet tucked under her legs.  In a few moments she was breathing deeply, eyes closed as she drifted off into dreams that I prayed were pleasant ones.

Chapter
51

I came to with a start as the car pulled up, jerking awake and almost knocking Melody into the footwell.

Emily wound her window down and leaned out to wave at someone.  I blinked a few times and realised that we were outside the gate to the farm near Stafford.

The man nearby was unfamiliar, but the woman with him was the same one who’d let us through earlier.  It was hard to believe it was the same day, and that only hours before we’d been here eating breakfast.

After a brief check and a smile for Melody, the woman opened the gate and let us through.  We bumped down the track and pulled into the yard, having to squeeze past an army Landrover parked there.

I thought that odd and glanced down at the registration.  My blood went cold as I recognised it.

“Emily”, I said, pointing, “recognise the vehicle?”

She nodded, reaching for the pistol and pulling it into her lap, then put the car in reverse and was about to pull away when Lindsay came out and waved to us.

Emily glanced at me.

“What do we do?”

“Let’s see what she has to say.  Maybe they found it abandoned”.

Stopping the engine, Emily wound down the window again as Lindsay walked over, pushing through the crowd that was beginning to form.

“You’re alive!”  She said with obvious relief.  “Thank god”.

“Why wouldn’t we be?”  Emily asked, one hand still on the pistol that was now tucked between the door and the seat, out of sight.

Lindsay pointed at the Landrover.  “One of our patrols came across two men driving your car, and they said they’d found it next to two bodies so they took it.  They got brought here for some food so we could find out what happened but they kept changing their stories so we locked them up in the feed shed”.

“You’ve got them?”  I asked, glancing at Melody to see if she was following the conversation.  I could see by her expression that she was.

Lindsay nodded.  “We have.  The latest story is that you attacked them for no reason and they managed to get away by stealing the car and driving off, then they came looking for help.  What happened?”

I put a hand on Melody’s shoulder.

“Lindsay, this is my daughter Melody.  Those two arseholes broke into her grandparents’ house, killed her grandma and then kidnapped Melody.  When we tried to get her back they put a knife to her throat, and we gave them the vehicle in exchange for Melody”.

Lindsay’s face, already drawn, darkened as her brows drew together. 

“They did what?”  She spat through gritted teeth, and I suddenly remembered that she was, or had been, a police officer.

I nodded.  “When we got there, they were…”  I stopped, suddenly very aware that I’d been avoiding asking Melody certain questions.  Some my mind shied away from, unable to find a way to ask, but I didn’t even know what they’d been making her do when they took her away from the house.

I turned to Melody.  “What were they doing?”  I asked, “of course you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to”.  I gabbled the last bit, suddenly, horribly out of my depth.  Part of my brain was screaming the question,
did those bastards touch you?
but the rest of it refused to even think about it.

Melody looked everywhere but at Lindsay.

“Um, they, er, they were stealing things, and they made me knock on doors and say I was lost.  I didn’t want to do it, they made me!” 

Lindsay shook her head.  “It’s not your fault, dear, but I think you and I should have a little talk, maybe without your dad.  Perhaps your friend Emily might come along?”

We all looked at each other uncomfortably.  Emily and Melody hardly knew each other, but I knew that Melody would never speak in front of me if something darker
had
happened.

“Would you mind?”  I asked Emily.

She frowned but nodded.  “Sure, if Melody is ok with that?”

Melody shrugged, eyes still downcast, and fresh worry bloomed in my chest.

I opened the door and got out of the car, then helped Melody out as Emily came to stand next to us.

Lindsay came over and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Sorry to do this to you Malcolm, but we need to decide what to do with these men quickly, before word gets out and they get lynched.  Before we make that decision, we need the full facts”.

“Yeah, sure, just be gentle, ok?  She’s been through a lot”.

She squeezed my shoulder and held out a hand to Melody, who took it with a glance back at me before the three of them headed off into the farm building.

Left to my own devices and suddenly unsure what to do, I headed to the kitchen and found the evening meal being prepared.

One of the chefs recognised me and waved a spatula in my direction. 

“You came back then?  Find your little girl?”

I nodded.

“Good.  No food yet, but I can make you a cuppa if you like?”

“That would be wonderful”, I said, forcing a smile.  What I really felt like was going to find the men in the feed shed and tearing them limb from limb, but I’d let those shackles slip once and I vowed never to do it again.  I could still remember the feel of another man’s blood on my face as my knife punctured his lung again and again, and I shuddered at the thought.  No matter how tough I had to be to survive, the man I’d become that day scared me.

I sat with both hands wrapped around my mug, thinking these and other dark thoughts while I waited for Melody and Emily to return.

It seemed to take forever, but my tea was still warm when they came back through the door hand in hand, Emily with a relieved smile on her face.

She gave me a thumbs up with her free hand, and some of the ice around my heart melted.  Melody came over and sat on my lap, subdued but not upset, and I looked over her head at Emily as she found herself a chair and sat.

“How did it go?”

Emily looked at Melody.  “Sweetie, do you want to go and play with the other kids outside?  I bet they can show you the animals”.

Melody shrugged and looked up at me.

“Do you want me to, dad?”

I stroked her hair.  “Only if you want to, love.  We’ll be right in here, just make sure you stay in the yard, ok?”

She nodded and slipped off my lap, walking to the door slowly.  She stopped
and turned by the door.

“Those men can’t hurt me, can they?”

I thought about that for a second.  Lindsay didn’t seem like the type of person not to have them well under lock and key.

“You’ll be fine sweetheart, but I can go and check if you want?”

She considered this for a second, then shook her head.

“No, I believe you”.

She walked out into the yard and I looked at Emily, who had been served her own mug of tea.

“Well?”

She shrugged.  “They were using her to get people to open their doors so they could rob them, but they didn’t touch her.  One of them wanted to, but the other one wouldn’t let him, apparently”.

I released a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding.

“Thank god for that.  Do you think she’ll be ok?”

“She’s a tough kid, but she’s been through a lot.  I think she’ll be alright though”.

“Any idea what Lindsay is going to do with them?”

She picked up her mug and blew on the steaming brew.

“I don’t know, but whatever it is she’s going to do it quickly.  There are already mutterings from people, and she needs to do something if she wants to stay in control”.

“Yeah, but what?”

“The way I see it she’s got two choices.  The first is to send them out into the world without any supplies, let nature take its course”.

“And the second?”  I thought I already knew the answer but I had to ask.

She shrugged and looked down at the table before meeting my eyes.

“Well they can’t stay here, they don’t have the resources to spare.  The only other option I can see is execution”.

Chapter
52

In the end it was done quietly.

We stayed the night, a married couple making room for us in their corner of the barn so that all five of us slept almost nose to nose.  The evening was taken up by Emily and I making statements, much as we would have done had we reported a crime before the flare, each page signed and a declaration made that we were telling the truth.

“We have to observe the forms”, Lindsay had said when they were both finished, the paper disappearing into a tatty blue folder.  “We may have slipped a little but we’re a long way from barbarism”.

“I wish everyone else felt the same.  Maybe we’d have a chance at rebuilding then”.

She’d nodded at me and left, and we’d bedded down in the barn, only to be awakened just after dawn by Max, the farmer whose land it was.

He put a finger to his lips as I woke, then motioned to Emily.  I touched her shoulder and she woke instantly, then looked at Max and nodded.  We both knew what was happening, there could be no other reason for being woken so early and in secret.