She looked down at her little brother, his face crumpled with worry.
‘Look Jakey, it’s safe right now. They only come out at night, the Bad Boys. We’re perfectly safe in the daytime,’ she said, not entirely convinced by her own assurance.
‘But last time you went out, you were gone for ever. I thought . . . I thought you were . . . dead.’
‘I’ll be fine, Jake. I’m just going to check on our neighbours, that’s all. You can watch me out of the window of Jill’s bedroom, okay? Keep an eye on me as I do the rounds.’
Jacob stared at her silently. His face looked unhealthily pale and unnaturally older; skin rumpled with the bumps, grooves and lines of unceasing worry. She wondered if he had a suspicion of what had happened to Dan. If he’d guessed that he must be lying dead down some back-street . . .
Don’t do this Leona, think about something, anything, else.
Now really wouldn’t be a good time to fold and start sobbing, not whilst she was trying to settle down Jake’s jangling nerves.
‘I’ll be fine. Now, let’s both finish our pilchards, okay?’
She wanted to check on the DiMarcios’ house, a few doors up. The DiMarcios’ next-door neighbours had been broken into last night. Leona had heard the noises; very unsettling, chilling noises. It had all proved too much for her and she had scooped Jacob up and taken him into the back room to sleep, where the sounds of the house being ransacked were, at least, muted.
Shortly after they had finished their breakfast she stepped out of the front door, and her heart skipped a beat; she spotted gouge-marks in the green paint on the front door, around the lock. Someone had been working on it, trying to jimmy the door quietly. She wondered if it had been one or two of the gang members discreetly hoping to break into a house on their own, whilst their colleagues were busy elsewhere? Or someone else?
Either way, it suggested their turn was approaching, if not next, then soon. The thought of them, all of them, the bad boys, streaming into the house, raucous shouts, smashing, grabbing . . . and finding Jacob, and finding her . . .?
Time was running out.
She desperately wanted to locate some other people they could group together with. She’d be more than ready to share the tinned food and bottles of water they had left. It wouldn’t last them quite so long, but she would happily trade a week’s sustenance for some others that she could feel safe with; preferably adults, older adults.
Leona found herself remembering a childhood fantasy she’d once had: living in a world populated only by teenagers - the beautiful people, young, alive, energetic and fun. It was an essay she’d written at school. A world that was one long party, nobody to boss them around, no parents to tell them what time the party had to end, or to turn the music down, or how much they were allowed to drink, or getting them up early the next morning so they wouldn’t be late for school or college.
She laughed weakly. Well, that was it, she’d witnessed that little fantasy of hers being played out in the avenue over the last few nights. But it was no fantasy - it was a nightmare, and it reminded her of a book on the required reading list for her English Literature A-level.
Lord of the Flies.
She headed down the short path, out through the gate and on to St Stephen’s Avenue. The casually discarded refuse was beginning to build up now. Not just discarded bottles and cans, but broken pieces of furniture, smashed crockery. A mattress lay in the middle of the street, stained with drink, some blood, and other things she didn’t want to think about.
It was their sex-pit.
That’s where they were doing it, with their gang girls, their Smurfettes.
The house to the right of the DiMarcios’ had been ‘done’ by the gang; that much she knew already. She’d seen them breaking into it last night. But her heart sank as she approached the DiMarcios’ home. They had been paid a visit as well. Leona had been hoping to hook up with them. She liked Mr and Mrs DiMarcio, trusted them even. Mr DiMarcio, Eduardo, was a cab-driver, a big round man originally from southern Portugal, whose laugh was loud and infectious. He was fun. But she also knew he could handle himself. Last year he’d caught a couple of lads trying to break into a car parked down this street; boys from the rough White City estate nearby who’d spotted this avenue as a soft target and started to prey on it. Mr DiMarcio had handed out a hiding to them both. She vaguely recalled the boys had tried to press assault charges, but she wasn’t sure it had got anywhere close to going to court. By contrast, Mrs DiMarcio was slim, always well-groomed and came across as very cultured, well-educated. Leona wished she’d accepted their offer to take her and Jacob away from all this on Tuesday, even though it might have meant the chance of missing Mum or Dad coming home.
The DiMarcios’ front door had been smashed open.
She knew they hadn’t been away. Leona had seen the curtain twitching on Wednesday.
She wondered whether they had managed to escape; perhaps when the house next door was being ransacked they had decided the smart thing to do was to leave their house, to creep out, hopefully to find someone further up the street who would take them in. If they’d come knocking on her door, she would have opened it to them in a heartbeat.
She looked round, diagonally across the avenue back towards Jill’s house. Upstairs she could see the little blonde tuft of Jacob’s head looking out at her. He waved. She waved back and then stepped up the DiMarcios’ path and in through the open front door.
The mess inside was horrendous. The floor was strewn with broken things; plates, dishes, expensive-looking crockery, Mrs DiMarcio’s beloved china cats. The walls were gouged, scratched and scuffed, ragged strips of their lovely expensive wallpaper had been torn away, graffiti sprayed here and there.
In their kitchen, it was obvious the room had been stripped clean of anything remotely edible or drinkable. The Bad Boys had been through it like a horde of locusts.
Leona was relieved not to have found any signs of violence done to the family, so far. She quickly checked through their lounge and dining-room which opened on to a conservatory and a small area of decking beyond that. Everything was dislodged, moved, overturned or broken.
With a growing sense of relief that they had vacated before the Bad Boys had arrived, she decided she had to at least take a quick look upstairs. She needed to know that they’d got out okay. She took the stairs quickly, not wanting to spook herself by taking one at a time and cringing with each creak.
She jogged up to the top of the stairs. Only to find Mr DiMarcio’s thick, rounded legs sticking out of the doorway to their bedroom.
‘Oh God, no,’ Leona whimpered. She took a few quick steps across the landing towards his body and saw the rest of him lying in the doorway. His head was battered and bruised. His face almost unrecognisable with swellings and bumps and abrasions. But he had probably died of blood loss from the stab wounds. There were several of them on his chest, his lower arms, his hands.
He was fighting them off with his fists.
She could imagine him doing that, throwing big hard punches at them, flailing at them furiously, shouting curses at them in Portuguese. But they’d brought him down with their knives; slashing at him, like a pack of dogs bringing down a bear.
‘Oh, Mr DiMarcio,’ she whispered.
She knew he would have only fought like that to defend his wife. With a heavy heart she could guess what she was going to find in the bedroom if she stepped over his body and looked inside. She resolved not to go in, but looking up at the wall opposite the doorway, she caught sight of Mrs DiMarcio’s bare legs in a cracked mirror on a chest of drawers. Her bare legs, scratched and bruised, and blood, dark and dried on the bed-sheet beneath.
She felt a momentary rush of nausea. It passed quickly, swept aside by an overpowering surge of rage.
‘You fucking bastards!’ she found herself hissing angrily. She knew if she had a gun in her hand now, and one of those evil little shits was cowering in front of her, she’d be able to pull the trigge
r.
‘You fucking bastards!’ she screamed angrily. Her voice bounced back at her off the walls, and then it was silent.
Except it wasn’t.
She heard movement. Someone was upstairs with her, and, probably startled by her cry, had been thrown off balance and kicked something by accident that rolled noisily across the parquet floor in the next room and came to a rest.
Oh shit, oh God, oh fuck.
Run? Yes.
She turned quickly, stepping across Mr DiMarcio’s feet and heading for the top of the stairs. She bounded down them, nearly losing her footing and taking a tumble. At the bottom of the stairs she chanced a look back up but saw nothing, and heard nothing either. She headed towards the open front door and out into the morning sunlight.
She sprinted across the street, weaving around the broken furniture towards Jill’s house. As she reached the gate, she chanced another look back, and saw a curtain upstairs twitch ever so slightly.
Oh my God, someone was in there with me.
She hammered on the door with the palm of her hand, and a moment later heard the bolt slide and it creaked open.
‘W-what happened Lee?’ asked Jacob.
She looked at him and realised the time had come to start levelling with her little brother.
‘We’re going to have to defend ourselves Jake.’
He said nothing.
‘Okay . . . okay,’ she gasped, her mind racing. ‘You saw that film, Home Alone, right?’
He nodded.
‘Well like that, booby traps and stuff, okay? Just like the film . . . just in case the Bad Boys try coming in here.’
‘They won’t, will they?’
Leona found she was too tired and too frightened to even try putting an optimistic spin on this. If they were coming tonight, Jacob needed to know.
‘Tonight they might.’
He didn’t go into hysterics as she thought he might. He simply nodded and said quietly, ‘Okay, let’s get ready for them.’
CHAPTER 73
4.23 p.m. GMT Outskirts of London
South of Coventry there had been a roadblock on the M1 which had forced Jenny to take a roundabout route along some A roads clogged with abandoned cars, coaches and container trucks, and one or two B roads - some plugged with discarded vehicles and utterly impassable. She’d got lost at least twice before eventually finding her way back on to the motorway heading into London. She had wasted most of the day, cursing and crying with frustration as time ticked by and she seemed not to be getting any closer to her children. The arrow on the fuel of Mr Stewart’s car had been wobbling uncertainly over ‘empty’ for the last hour. Finding the M1 again cheered her up and seeing the distant sprawl of London ahead, lifted her spirits further . . . until she came across yet another roadblock.
Jenny slowed down as soon as she saw it; a barrier across the M1 and the slip-roads leading on to the M25. It was comprised of triangular blocks of concrete laid side by side, designed to prevent any kind of vehicle smashing through. Behind that was a barrier of barbed wire. And behind that, several dozen soldiers watched her approaching slowly.
She came to a halt in front of the concrete blocks, and climbed out.
‘You can’t come through. I’m sorry, love,’ shouted one of the soldiers across the barricade.
Jenny felt her shoulders wilt with fatigue and despair. ‘Why not?’ she called out.
‘Orders.’
‘Oh come on,’ she cried, ‘what orders?’
‘We’re not to let anyone through, either way, in or out of London,’ the soldier replied.
‘Why?’
The soldier shrugged. ‘Those are our orders, love.’
She felt anger welling up inside her. It erupted so quickly it caught her by surprise. ‘For fuck’s sake! You idiots are sitting here with your thumbs up your arses, and out there,’ she pointed back up the motorway, ‘people are killing each other for water and food.’
The soldier said nothing, his face impassive.
‘It’s like the end of the world out there! Women being raped, people fighting, killing. And you’re doing nothing! Just sitting here!’
The soldier continued to stare silently at her, but then finally, perhaps feeling she deserved some kind of response, he said, ‘I know it’s rough, love. My advice . . . just go back home, sit tight, and wait for this situation to work itself out.’
‘I’m trying to bloody well do that!’ She pointed to the city skyline behind them. ‘I live there! I just want to get home to my children. Please let me through . . . please,’ Jenny pleaded, her voice beginning to break.
She took a few steps forward, until she was almost upon the razor wire, only a yard away from the soldier who had bothered to reply.
‘Please,’ she whispered.
The soldier looked around, left and right, then spoke quietly. ‘Look love, we can’t let your car through, and don’t even think of trying any other roadways in. They’re all like this, blockaded.’ He lowered his voice still further, ‘But . . . there’s plenty of ways in on foot . . . all right?’
Jenny looked around. He was right. She could abandon the car somewhere on the hard shoulder, leave the motorway and walk in. The soldiers might have blocked all the roads, but of course London was a porous urban spread not just accessible by roads - there were cycle lanes, paths, kerbs, alleyways, unused scraps of rubbish-encrusted ground.
She nodded and thanked him quietly for the suggestion. She climbed into the car, turned it around and headed on back up the M1. She drove far enough away that she was sure they could no longer see her and then pulled over to the hard shoulder.
‘So, I’m going to walk across north London then, no problem, ’ she spoke to herself. ‘How far is that? A day’s walking?’
A day, if nothing holds me up.
She had managed to come this far. Home was just fifteen or so miles away now. Not so far. She decided nothing was going to stop her now. She climbed out of the car and looked across the industrial estate beyond the hard shoulder. It was deserted. There was little sign that anything was amiss there . . .
Other than the fact that on any other Friday afternoon there would be half-a-dozen people outside the delivery bay of that sheet-metal works, having a mug of tea and a fag break; there would be smoke coming from the chimney of that ceramic tile factory; there’d be a lifter moving those pallets of goods outside that distribution warehouse . . .
Jenny surveyed the lifeless landscape. Beyond the industrial park, looking south-west towards central London, the direction she had to head, she could see scattered pillars of smoke here and there, not from factories though, but from the shells of cars, homes, shops, where rioting had occurred over the last week.
There was activity in there, people there.
My children are in there.
She picked up the last couple of bottles of water and put them in her shoulder-bag. She slammed the car door and walked across the hard shoulder, swinging a leg over the waist-high metal barrier and stepped on to the grass verge. It sloped down towards the back lot of the deserted industrial estate.
‘Okay, then,’ she muttered to herself.
On Tuesday, or Wednesday, she doubted she would have dared to head into this kind of landscape alone, unarmed. But today was Friday. The last two days in that service station and overnight in that Travelodge, had changed her. She realised if the need came, she could handle herself, she could do what was needed to survive.
She spotted a short length of metal piping lying outside the sheet-metal works. She bent down and picked it up, hefted it in one hand, then in both, and swung it a couple of times, feeling mildly comforted by the swishing sound it made through the air.
It’ll do for now.
If she came across any young buck who fancied trying out his luck on her, she decided she would probably just swing first and ask questions later.
She checked her watch. It was just approaching half past; she guessed she had another four hours befor
e the sun hit the horizon. That would be a good time to find some safe, dark corner to huddle up in, and let the crazies, the gangs - whoever it was at the top of the predatory food chain - have their night-time fun.
Nearly home.
Tomorrow, some time in the morning, she was finally going to get home.
And Leona and Jacob will be there, no doubt frightened, but alive, well.
She swished the metal pipe once more into the palm of her hand with a satisfying smack.
‘Okay then,’ she said loudly, her voice echoing back off the corrugated iron wall of the nearest industrial unit.
CHAPTER 74
10.27 p.m. local time Over Europe
Andy looked out of the window of the 727. It was a civilian plane, one of the fleet belonging to GoJet; one of the bigger budget airlines flying the various European holiday runs. They were over Hungary right now, not far off Bucharest. Outside though, it was pitch-black. No faint strings of orange pinpricks to mark out major roadways, nor mini constellations of amber-coloured stars marking out a town or a village - just pitch-black.
The airliner was packed to capacity, every single seat taken, the vast majority of them filled with soldiers from various mixed, jumbled-up units, all of them stripped of their bulky kit, their webbing and weapons. Amongst them, a handful of civilians, contractors like Andy caught in the chaos, but lucky enough to have been scooped up in this hastily scrambled repatriation effort.
Westley was sitting beside him, the rest of the platoon - just six men - in the two three-seat rows behind them. They were all fast asleep.
‘Can’t believe we’re on our way home, like,’ said the Lance Corporal. He nodded towards the window. ‘What’ve you seen outside?’
‘Nothing, not a single thing,’ Andy turned to look at him, ‘I haven’t seen a single light since we took off.’
‘That’s not so good then, is it?’
‘No.’
‘You think it’ll be as bad back home, you know . . . as it was back there?’ Westley cocked his head, gesturing behind them.