The Fury (23 page)

Daisy was burning.

She sat up, noticing that her skirt was smouldering gently, slapping at it until the dull embers died out. Smoke hung in the air all around her, a silvery gauze that looked more like morning mist. It smelled bad, like when her mum sometimes pulled hair from the brush and threw it on the fire. She was lying in the middle of the weed-littered path that led past the pavilion up to the sea. What was she doing here? She clambered to her feet, staring through the smoke to see that one of the food places, the one with the big soft drink on the roof, was on fire.

The whole place was a mess. The little shack on the other side of the path, the one with the hot dog, was totally gone. Further down was a huge crater in the concrete, so charred that it looked like a vast hole in the ground. The kind a giant spider might suddenly crawl out of.

There was a man standing there, a man with a gun
. And with that thought the memories returned, fighting each other to be first in line. She’d seen something in her head, like a badly filmed home movie of Cal being shot. It had been horrible. She’d told Rilke, and they’d come out here with the gun.

Rilke. Daisy couldn’t sense her, the way she’d been sensing people recently, those little ice cubes in her mind. She couldn’t see Cal or Brick up there in her head either. There
was
an ice cube, though, one with a room that looked like a dentist’s place, with the big chair. She could see a poster with a kitten on the ceiling, but there were no people in the ice cube.

What had happened? Rilke had shot the man, hadn’t she? And it was okay, because he had been a nasty man, a really nasty man. He was the one who had been going to kill Cal. It hadn’t been very nice, watching the man die, even though he’d deserved it. But then what? Daisy had seen something inside the man, a fire that howled, that tried to pull itself loose. She must have passed out and seen those things in a dream.

So why the smoke? And where was everybody? She started down the path, feeling woozy. Great big metal needles stuck out of the ground, like hedgehog bristles. Daisy looked up, wondering if they’d fallen from the big wheel. It was lucky nobody had been spiked. There was a pile of rags up against the pavilion doors, and she almost dismissed it until she realised who it was.

‘Rilke!’ Daisy yelled, stumbling over the cracked ground. The girl’s face was covered with soot, and there was no sign of life. ‘Help!’ Daisy yelled. ‘Somebody please help!’

What were you supposed to do if someone wasn’t alive? Breathe into their mouth or something. They’d done it at school with a plastic dummy, the ABC rule. ‘A’ was for . . .
A heartbeat?
It didn’t sound right, but Daisy pressed her fingers against Rilke’s neck, praying to feel something there.
Pulse-pulse-pulse-pulse
, rapid, like a rabbit’s. Daisy almost cried with relief, stroking Rilke’s long, dark hair away from her face.

‘Is anyone here?’ she called out again. Then, more softly, ‘I’ll be right back, Rilke, I’m going to find help. It’s going to be okay.’

She set off again, heading for the front of the park, towards that gaping crater.
Please don’t let anything come out of it
.

‘Hello? Cal? I need you!’

‘Daisy?’ It wasn’t so much a shout as a groan, uttered from somewhere to her right. She walked towards the splintered remains of the hot-dog stand, treading carefully over the rubble. There were a few crates beyond, and half a breeze-block wall that was covered in scribbled writing. Past it she could see a pair of feet, one in a trainer and the other in just a sock. They were moving.

‘Cal?’ She ran round the wall to see Cal sitting on the path. He was a mess too, and some of his hair was missing, giving him a funny bald patch just above his right ear. He saw her coming and tried to get up, collapsing onto his bum. Daisy crouched down beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder. There was a big rip across the front of his T-shirt. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I think so,’ he said, patting his hands over his body. ‘Seem to be all there, anyway.’ He smiled, but it obviously caused him quite a bit of pain. ‘Help me up, yeah?’

Daisy grabbed his arm and he used it to pull himself to his feet. He stood for a moment, his hands on his knees, his eyes scrunched shut.

‘What the hell happened?’ he asked. ‘I feel like I was hit by a lorry.’

‘Guys?’ Daisy turned to see Brick limping towards them down the same path. He had coal-dark rings around his eyes, like a raccoon, and there was blood dripping from his left arm. Daisy was glad to see him, especially when he gave her a weak smile. ‘You alright?’

‘I’m okay, but Rilke is hurt. She’s not waking up. She needs help.’

‘She breathing?’ Brick asked. Daisy nodded. If she had a heartbeat then she had to be breathing, didn’t she? Brick coughed, hacking up a rust-coloured gob of spit. ‘Got to get the fire out first. If people see it they’ll call the fire brigade or send for the police.’

‘Got any water?’ Cal said. Brick shook his head, jogging towards the burning stall. Cal ran after him, hobbling in his one shoe.

Daisy followed, still not wanting to get too close to the crater. By the time she had skirted around the edge Brick and Cal were pulling the front wall of the drinks stand free, releasing a fresh plume of smoke. The fire flared up as it gorged on the fresh supply of air but Brick didn’t hesitate, stamping and kicking on the flames until the plume of smoke began to wither and die. He stumbled away, coughing so much that Daisy didn’t know how he could manage a breath.

‘Where are the rest of them?’ he said when he had finished, clutching his wounded arm. Tears painted black stripes down his face. ‘You see them?’

The rest of who?
she thought as Brick and Cal set off again. She ran after them as they wove through the spikes in the ground, trying to keep up, not wanting to be left on her own.

‘There,’ she heard Brick yell. He turned the corner by the carousel, vanishing behind more debris by the side of the path. Daisy heard a voice, a panicked shout, and suddenly there were more ice cubes sliding around in her brain. Even before she turned the corner she knew she was going to see three people there, two boys and a girl.

‘We weren’t with him!’ the girl was shouting, holding her hands up in surrender as Brick stormed towards her. Her hair was red, almost the same colour as his, and her face was streaked with dirt and smoke. ‘We didn’t know him!’

‘Brick, hold up,’ said Cal. ‘I think they’re telling the truth.’

Brick stopped, taking a deep, rattling breath. The little boy in the Batman T-shirt edged cautiously around him, sidestepping towards Cal and casting quick glances at Daisy. The dentist ice cube was his, she realised, and she could see more now – a man in a white suit screaming through a face mask and reaching for him over the chair.

‘Adam,’ she said, seeing his name in the ice. He turned at the sound of it, his bloodstained brow creasing. She held out her hand. ‘Come on, it’s okay, you’re safe here now.’

He walked to her straight away, not looking back, and she took his hand.

‘Do you want to come inside? We’ve got some food and some fizzy drinks.’

He didn’t smile, but he didn’t let go either. Daisy looked back at Brick, who was pacing from one side of the path to the other like a caged tiger. Cal was just behind him. The girl and the other boy were terrified. Daisy could feel their fear inside her, like the ice cubes were melting, bleeding their emotions into hers. She didn’t like it.

‘Who was he?’ Brick said. ‘Christ, he must have been carrying a bomb or something.’

‘I picked him up,’ the overweight boy was saying. ‘The same way as the others, only he had the gun and he . . .’

‘It’s okay,’ said Cal. ‘Right, Brick? It’s okay. We can trust them. Everyone just calm down.’

Brick snapped his hands up in an angry shrug. More blood dripped over his fingers, pattering on the ground.

‘It’s just the three of you?’ he asked. ‘Nobody else?’

The boy and the girl looked at each other, but it was the little kid by her side, Adam, who gave it away. Daisy saw a silver car inside his ice cube, a big one, and something thumping and shrieking in the boot, something with blood on its breath.

‘There’s one more,’ said the girl, looking up the path that led out of the park. The plump boy finished for her.

‘But it isn’t one of us.’

The redhead’s name was Jade. The fat kid was Chris. They told Brick this as they walked back down the side of the Boo Boo Station and out through the gap in the laurel hedge. Daisy had taken the little boy inside and Cal had gone to check on Rilke. Brick kind of wished he had their job and they had his, but he didn’t trust them to be able to deal with the situation.

He certainly didn’t trust the boy and the girl beside him. Whatever they said, they’d brought the gunman here, they’d led him to the park. He looked at his arm, an ugly gash across his bicep. At least the blood had slowed to a trickle, he wasn’t going to bleed out. He’d been lucky. They all had. Who the hell carried a bomb on them?

And yet there was something at the back of his head that told him it wasn’t a bomb, a memory scratching against his skull. He’d been looking right at the man when he’d exploded; hadn’t there been something there, something crawling out of him with a body of fire?

Don’t be an idiot, Brick. It’s the adrenalin talking
.

‘It’s just there,’ said Chris. He nodded towards a silver car parked at an angle on the kerb. It was a snob’s car, a Jag or something, huge. There were bloodstains on the bonnet. Brick could already hear thumps from the boot, and a weak, groaning cry.

‘We didn’t have a choice,’ said Jade. She had an accent that Brick couldn’t quite place. Something northern. ‘That guy, the one with the gun, he knocked him out and stuck him in the boot. Woke up, I don’t know, half an hour before we got here and he’s been trying to beat his way out ever since.’

‘Weird thing is, when we’re not anywhere near him he acts normal,’ said Chris. ‘Like now, shout something to him and he’ll probably shout back.’

They both looked at Brick expectantly. He nodded his head.

‘I know. They’re all doing that.’ He sighed, swearing under his breath. They couldn’t leave the car out here, the first person who saw it would call the police. They couldn’t bring it into Fursville either, there was nowhere big enough to get it through the fence. They could take it to the car park where he’d met Cal and Daisy last night, but he didn’t fancy a ten-minute drive with a feral in the boot. Fursville had a car park of its own. It was locked up but they could probably find a way in.

Whoever was inside must have heard them, because the voice got louder, still muffled but now audible.

‘
Please, let me out, I promise I won’t tell
.’

And suddenly it was
Lisa
inside that car, clawing for oxygen in the heat, scraping at the lock with her nails. Brick clamped his eyes shut until the image disappeared.

‘You got the keys?’ he asked.

‘They’re in the ignition,’ Chris said.

‘We can park it in there,’ he said, pointing at the Fursville lot. ‘You’ll have to ram the fence. We’ll hide the car, work out what to do with him later.’

Chris nodded. He wobbled over to it, taking a deep breath before sliding into the driver’s seat. Jade stayed by Brick’s side.

‘Ain’t getting back in there,’ she said when he looked at her. She didn’t offer an explanation, just folded her hands over her chest as if she were cold.

Brick walked down the pavement, the boot-man’s voice now a series of howling barks. The thumps got louder, the metal boot lid shaking as he pounded it from inside. Fifty metres down was the entrance to the Fursville car park, the main gates bolted shut. The fence here wasn’t so big, though.

Chris swung the car out then lurched back onto the kerb, ploughing into the fence with a sound like fingernails running down a blackboard. The engine growled but he didn’t let up, revving hard until the wire snapped and the car jolted through.

‘Over there,’ Brick shouted, pointing towards the huge hedge which separated the car park from Fursville. There was a small wooden office – a garden shed, really – where you’d once had to pay a quid. ‘Drive in as far as you can, the other side of that building.’

Chris obeyed, steering the car over the rough dirt until the bonnet disappeared into the hedge. It penetrated as far as the middle of the roof before hitting something and crunching to a halt. There was a cacophony of rustling snaps and grunts before Chris appeared, batting branches away from his face. He stepped gingerly away, looking forlornly at the battered Jag.

‘Dude, my dad’s gonna murder me when he sees his car,’ he said, blanching when he realised what he’d said. He bared his teeth in a bitter, humourless smile. ‘Again.’

The voice from the boot was even louder now, the snarls of a caged animal. But the car was pretty well hidden, Brick thought, the small office concealing it from the road. He’d grab some boards from the park and cover it up properly once they’d decided what to do about the man inside.

‘Come on,’ he said, turning and heading towards the ruined fence. ‘Let’s get back. Something tells me we need to talk.’

Cal laced up his spare trainers, grateful that he’d thought to pack some before leaving the house. He removed his smoke-blackened T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms and pulled on clean ones before joining the others.

They all sat in the restaurant, huddled around a table on the far side of the room to where Schiller still lay like an ice sculpture on the sofa. Outside it was thirty degrees and golden; inside, behind the boarded-over windows, it was half that even with the dozen candles that sputtered and spat. But it felt safe here. It felt quiet. It felt hidden.

Cal cast another look at Rilke. He’d checked her pulse and her breathing outside the pavilion, where she’d been lying, then he’d carried her here. She was curled up on the floor in the corner, covered with a tablecloth, her head resting on a bundle of clothes which he’d taken from his duffel bag. She’d had a pretty bad thump to the head, the lump there like someone had sewn an egg beneath her skin. He didn’t think it was too serious, though. He’d got lumps like that before playing footy and they went away after a day or two.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Jade said, nodding at Schiller. ‘Why is he so cold?’

‘Tell us about you first,’ Brick said. ‘I want to—’

‘Do you want some crisps?’ Daisy interrupted, earning a glare from Brick. ‘Or some chocolate, or a drink?’

‘We haven’t got much,’ Brick said. ‘We should be conserving it.’

Daisy looked at the table, obviously contemplating something. Then she scraped back her chair and pulled two packets of crisps from the carrier bag behind her. She walked to the new kids and handed them over, flicking a defiant look at Brick that clearly said,
Too bad, you big meanie
. Cal smiled, everybody waiting for Daisy to pour some Fanta into a couple of glasses they’d found in the kitchen. The big bottle was too heavy for her and quite a bit of it fizzed out onto the tablecloth, hissing like acid.

‘Thank you,’ said Jade, downing the drink in one, then burping into her hand. ‘God that’s good. I haven’t had anything to eat or drink since yesterday.’

‘So what happened, then?’ Brick snapped. ‘Why are you here?’

‘You told us to come here, didn’t you?’ Chris answered, speaking through a mouthful of crisps. ‘Who was it that left the message online?’

Brick pulled a face, shrugging. He glanced at Cal as if it were his fault.

‘I saw it,’ Chris went on. ‘Look, this is what happened. I was at home, playing Fallout, was about nine maybe, half nine. Next thing I know my mum has snapped, she’s coming at me with a knife.’ He paused, frowning, like he’d only just realised what had happened. He sat back in his chair, pulling on his shirt so it wasn’t moulded to the rings of fat around his belly. ‘And she trips, right, she’s so . . . I don’t know, so savage, so mad, that she doesn’t look where she’s going.’ He stopped again, holding up his hands, his eyes a million miles away. The only sound in the room was the splutter of the candles and the chattering of Daisy’s teeth. ‘So I called an ambulance, right? But before they arrive someone comes into the house, some guy I’ve never seen before, and he starts punching me, strangling me. Only he trips over my mum, smashing his head on the table. I swear, it was like something from a
Monty Python
sketch.’

‘Then what?’ asked Brick when the boy didn’t continue.

‘To be honest, I don’t properly remember,’ Chris said. ‘I left the house, got in the car. My dad’s car. He came after me in the garage, but he’s like on crutches because of a toe operation, and he falls. So the ambulance people arrive and even before they get up the road I know what they’re going to do. They start tearing at the car along with my dad. They looked like animals. I just drove, somewhere quiet, used my phone to check the internet, which is where I found your message.’

‘You still got your phone?’ Brick asked. Chris fished it from his pocket.

‘No signal,’ he said, putting it back.

‘What about the others?’ Brick said. ‘What about that man?’

‘Well, that’s the strange thing,’ said Chris. He grunted out a laugh. ‘Well,
one
of them. I . . .’ He looked at Jade, and for some reason his cheeks flushed. ‘I . . . we . . . just knew where they were.’

‘I’m from Whitehaven,’ said Jade, filling the pause before it got awkward. ‘But I was staying with my friend Heather who’s moved down to Grantham, yeah? Anyway, we were in the taxi on the way to a gig in town, and I didn’t even want to go ’cos of my head, it was really bad.’ She felt her temples, as if trying to find the pain that had been there.
We had that too
, thought Cal, sharing a look with Brick,
the headache, it’s part of this
. ‘And the night’s just getting worse and worse because Heather isn’t even talking to me and I don’t know why and then the taxi driver crashes the bloody thing into a tree. Like, a proper crash and everything and we rolled over onto the side in this ditch.’ She wrapped her arms around herself again, pulling her legs up onto the chair for a moment before lowering them again. ‘And Heather is kicking me and scratching, but I just think she’s trying to get out because she’s underneath me, yeah? So I pull myself out the window then lean back in but she takes a
bite
out of me. I mean really.’ She held out her hand, a purple half-moon on her wrist. ‘And the next thing I know the taxi driver is going at me, even though . . .’

She stopped, looking like she was going to barf.

‘His arm,’ she said, her eyes filling. She put her hand to her mouth. ‘His wrist was broken, his hand almost coming off, but he was still . . .’

She looked at Chris. He lifted an arm as if to comfort her then chickened out, resting it back on his knee.

‘I got there a while later,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even know where I was going, I just
had
to go that way. And I see the taxi on its side and an ambulance and a police car, and I know she’s not there, but she’s somewhere close, so I park further up and go into the woods and she’s just sitting by a tree. And it’s like we’ve known each other forever, you know?’

Cal did know. He was feeling it now, as if he’d grown up with these guys, spent every waking hour of his life with them.

‘So we get into the car and drive a bit further until I’m just too tired to go any more, and we sleep in the car in this clearing. Then the next morning we both start feeling this thing in our heads, like . . . Like I can’t even explain it.’

‘Like a silence,’ said Cal. ‘But a silence you can hear.’

‘Yeah, that’s just like it. So we both had that silence and we know we only have to drive and we’ll get to where we need to be.’

‘Him,’ said Jade, nodding at Adam. The boy wasn’t listening. He was chewing crisps but the slow, mechanical movements of his jaw were the only sign he was alive. ‘Man, we almost died. He was at the dentist’s, yeah? In this house on this normal kind of street. Where was it? Peterborough?’

‘Ely,’ said Chris. ‘Well, near there, anyway.’

‘He’d managed to hide in the attic, God knows how long he’d been there. This dentist, he went for us, but . . .’

She looked at Chris again and in that look Cal saw what they’d done. What they’d had to do.

‘He doesn’t talk,’ she went on. ‘We got his name from the label in his shirt. Poor little chicken.’

‘And the guy with the gun,’ said Brick. ‘What about him?’

‘He was the last,’ said Chris. ‘We were on the way here, following your message to come to the sea. Not that we’d have needed it, I mean something was pulling us out this way anyway, that same . . .
thing
that led me to Jade, then to Adam, then to that guy.’

‘Never told us his name,’ said Jade. ‘We show up at this farm, it’s not even that far from here, an hour maybe. And I knew it was a bad idea, ’cos there was blood everywhere, like
loads
of it.’ She shuddered. ‘So this guy comes up to the car and he’s just insane. Not like the others, not like the
feral
people. He was with it, just
crazy
with it, you know?’

‘He dumps an unconscious man in the boot, gets in and says he’ll shoot us unless we do what he says,’ said Chris. ‘So we drive up here, all of us, and we didn’t even need the satnav. We just knew you were in the park.’

There was silence when he finished. Cal took a sip of his own Fanta, ignoring the dirt on the glass. It felt good, crackling on his tongue.

‘I’m glad you killed him,’ spat Jade.

‘You see any explosives?’ Brick asked. Both Chris and Jade shrugged. ‘He had to have been wired with something, an explosion like that. Sounds like he was crazy, so he had to have wired himself, yeah?’

‘I guess so,’ said Chris, although he didn’t look sure.

It had to have been that, didn’t it? Whatever had happened had knocked Cal off his feet and into a dark dream that he didn’t think he’d ever wake up from. He’d come round eventually feeling like he’d been run over. Maybe the guy had had a grenade or something, one left over from the war that his grandad had brought home.

Or maybe it wasn’t that. He thought back to the exploding car on the dual carriageway, the shape that had risen from it on wings of fire, screaming.

‘We’ll never know now, I guess,’ Chris went on. ‘Guy’s splattered all over the place.’

‘You said your head hurt,’ said Cal. ‘Right before everything happened.’

Chris and Jade nodded.

‘And mine,’ said Daisy. ‘It was really sore for days. And I could hear it too, like a pulse.’

‘
Thump-thump
,
thump-thump
,’ said Brick. Daisy nodded, her eyes widening.

‘That’s it,’ she said, sitting up straight in her chair. ‘It was just like that,
just
like that!’

Cal’s skin tightened into knots of goosebumps, his scalp tickling like someone was breathing on it.

‘Things went bad right after my headache stopped,’ said Chris. ‘Like,
right
afterwards, within seconds.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ said Jade. ‘I even remember thinking
Maybe this night isn’t gonna be so bad
because my headache had gone, and then three seconds later or whatever we were in the ditch.’

It had been exactly like that, hadn’t it? Cal thought back, remembering the football pitch, the sunlight. The pounding ache between his temples had gone, like it had just been switched off. Then the whole world had come after him.

‘My headache was definitely gone when the ambulance man came,’ said Daisy.

More silence. They all looked at each other, and in their eyes they saw themselves, they saw their own confusion and fear.

‘What does it mean?’ asked Jade.

‘It was like something banging on my skull,’ said Brick. ‘
Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.
’

The sound seemed to shake Adam from his trance. The kid looked up at Brick, his jaw frozen mid-chew. He looked frightened.

‘
Thump-thump
,
thump-thump
,’ Brick was slapping himself on the head now. ‘It’s like something was trying to get in there, trying to break down the door.
Thump-thump
.’

‘Brick, that’s enough,’ said Cal. ‘You’re scaring him.’

Brick wasn’t listening, still rapping on his skull and uttering that one word like a madman. Adam was fully awake now, his eyes like saucers.

‘
Thump-thump
,’ Brick went on. ‘
Thump-thump
, just like that.
Thump-thump, thump-thump
.’

‘Brick,’ said Cal. ‘Just—’

And that’s when Adam opened his mouth, uttering a cry so shrill and so loud that Cal had to slap his hands to his ears, a cry that caused his glass to shatter into shrapnel, which swept across the room and extinguished every single one of the candles, plunging them into night.