Don’t find me, please don’t find me, she thought, her heartbeat so loud that the whole street must have been able to hear it. Footsteps rose up from the other end of the garden. Daisy pulled her knees to her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible, even smaller than she actually was, as small as the woodlice that scuttled up her shoes. Please God don’t let them know where I am, I’m begging you.
The noises grew quiet. Still Daisy didn’t dare move, even though her skin burned and she could see a blade of glass glinting in her arm, even though her shoulder and ankle throbbed. She hunched herself into the silence, her eyes screwed shut, praying, praying, praying.
Voices. She could hear them, although not well enough to make out what they were saying. One of them she recognised. It was the old Scottish lady who lived next door, Mrs Baird. She always gave Daisy a little box of Quality Street at Christmas and a five-pound note for her birthday. The other voice was a man’s, just a deep rumble. Incredibly, they were laughing.
She couldn’t bear it any more, not knowing what was going on. She eased herself up from the corner, skirting round the walls of the shed, careful not to trip on any loose firewood. Taking a deep breath, she peered through the grime-covered window.
The ambulance men were there, both of them. Only the second one was a woman, not a man. They were standing next to the fence in a puddle of broken glass. Mrs Baird was leaning over from the other side, pointing up at the box-room window. The man shrugged, looking at the garden. Daisy ducked, but she couldn’t stop herself from peeking out again.
The lady paramedic walked into the house through the back door. The man was shaking hands with Mrs Baird – Those are the hands he pushed me out of the window with! The hands he tried to kill me with! she wanted to scream – both of them laughing again. Then he followed the woman inside.
Daisy watched the door swing shut, half relieved that, for some reason she didn’t understand, they seemed to have given up looking for her but half wishing that they would stay outside, because she knew that they were going to take her parents now, knew that they weren’t going to let her say goodbye. She sat back down beneath the window, put her head in her hands and started to cry.
Brick
Fursville, 4.30 p.m.
Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change.
Brick felt like taking the laptop out of Fursville and hurling it into the ocean. It was driving him crazy. He’d been sitting in the foyer for four hours now, and for the last forty-five minutes or so he’d had the computer on his lap repeatedly loading up his Yahoo page. Apart from the adverts there was nothing new every time the page displayed. Just his desperate question and some tosser’s idea of a funny reply. Brick wished he could find PWN_U13 so he could throw him down in the basement with Lisa and watch her claw his throat out. Let’s see who had psycho problems after that.
Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change.
‘Come on, you piece of junk,’ Brick shouted, grabbing the laptop by its screen and shaking it. The battery was dipping towards quarter full now. If it died . . . well, he didn’t want to think about that. He should be conserving it, but the longer he sat here the more anxious and angry he got. He swore, ready to start tearing his hair out. ‘Just work!’
Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change.
This time he actually smashed his fist down on the keys, writing kjhhjuk in the question box. He deleted it, replacing it with ‘How would you like it if I smashed you on the floor and stamped on your stupid electronic guts?’ He poked return, unsurprised when Yahoo couldn’t find him an answer. He clicked back onto his page. No change. Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change.
Even though it wasn’t yet five o’clock it seemed to be growing darker in the foyer, colder too. The thought of that blanket of night unfolding across the planet, ready to bury him and Lisa together, was terrifying. In the dark he’d have no idea if she’d got out, if she was stalking the corridors, if she was standing right next to him . . .
His whole body shuddered and he pushed the image away. Something would happen before then. He’d work out what to do.
Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change.
His anger was like something living inside him, tendrils worming up his throat into his brain, making it scream. His temper had never been very stable, the short fuse inherited from his old man. His dad’s moods could change like a light switch being flicked, one second happy and laughing and joking around and literally – literally – the next his eyes would go dark and that smile would run from his lips and his hand would be out. Crack! Don’t mess around, Brick. Act your age, Brick. Just eff off and mind your own business.
Brick wasn’t as bad as that, no way. But there had been times when he’d shouted at Lisa, when she’d got on his nerves so much that he’d almost lifted his hands to her. Almost. The closest it had ever come was when they’d been drinking cider at her house when her parents were out and he’d thrown his glass into the corner of her room. He couldn’t even remember why he’d been so furious that day. Something to do with her ex. He’d seen white, the whole world burning phosphorous. And in the second or two it took that feeling to pass he could have done anything. Luckily, he hadn’t hurt her. He honestly didn’t think he could hurt her – except in self defence – he just wasn’t that sort of guy.
As for hurting the laptop, though. He wouldn’t have a problem with that if his temper reached a thousand degrees again.
Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change. Refresh. No—
He’d got so used to the routine that it took him a few seconds to realise that something had changed. There was another answer below the first, and the shot of adrenalin that rocked Brick’s system almost meant that he couldn’t read it. He took a deep, shuddering breath and closed his eyes for a second, feeling a little calmer when he opened them. The response was from somebody called CalMessiRonaldo.
wtf man? are you serious? this has jst happened to me too. i was at school and everybody attacked me for no reason, chased me onto the street and i had to steel a car to get away. i think i ran some people over. why is it happening? what do i do?
Brick leant into the screen, reading the message again, then again, then again, trying to work out if it was real or if it was another idiot who thought he was a comedian. There was nothing in it to suggest it was a joke. Although it was hard to get a sense of somebody through a written message, Brick got the feeling that this guy – this kid, if he was attacked at school – was scared.
He typed a response beneath the kid’s answer.
Look, I’m not messing around, this really happened to me. If you’re being serious then I need to talk to you.
He paused, reading back over what he’d written and then deleting it, starting again.
I need to talk to you. I’ll start a forum. I’ll call it
He stopped again, trying to think.
Hated, okay? It means we can talk where nobody will see it. Be quick, though.
He posted it, checking the battery life of the laptop, then set up a new forum.
Tell me what happened? Are you on your own? Has it happened to anyone else? I don’t know what to do.
He thought about writing more, telling the kid about Lisa, but something was holding him back. This might be a trick, the police’s way of finding out where he was. It was unlikely, but there was no way of telling for sure. Not yet, anyway. He’d wait to find out who he was, wait to see if he thought he could trust him. But he couldn’t stop that calming blue wave of relief from damping the fire in his gut at the thought that maybe he wasn’t in this alone after all.
‘Come on, CalMessiRonaldo,’ he said. ‘Don’t keep me waiting.’
He looked at the clock on the screen. 4.42. Then he settled back against the wall.
Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change. Refresh. No change.
Cal
Oakminster, 4.45 p.m.
C
al pulled another jumper from the chaos of his wardrobe, stuffing it into the duffel bag on his bed. He’d already packed half a dozen T-shirts, all of his jeans and tracksuit trousers, and two more jumpers. He’d emptied his underwear drawers and wedged in a second pair of trainers. The little pack with his toothbrush and other stuff from the bathroom sat on his pillow along with his mobile phone charger.
Part of him still thought this was a stupid idea. But it was the same part of him which insisted that what had happened that afternoon was just a big misunderstanding, that there really had been a stampede from the stands and he’d simply got caught in the middle of it. It was the same part of him that claimed Nas hadn’t meant to strangle him, that those people hadn’t jumped on the car so they could kick the living crap out of him.
That part of him was wrong.
They had tried to kill him, his friends and his teachers and strangers off the street. And if they had tried, then it made some kind of horrible sense that other people might give it a shot too. Other people like his mum. If that happened, then he needed to be ready.
He pulled his coat from the hook on the back of the door. It was summer, hotter than he could ever remember it being. But he didn’t know how long he might be out there.
Out where? he asked himself as he laid it into the bag. Where are you gonna go, Cal? He didn’t know, not yet. He’d think of something, though. He wouldn’t be on his own. No, because everybody loves Callum Morrissey, right? Everyone loves him so much they just want to hug him and hold him until he falls to pieces.
And maybe he wouldn’t have to go anywhere. Maybe his mum would come home like she always did and give him a big cuddle and tell him that it would be okay, she’d look after him. That’s what mums did, right? But even she had been acting weird that morning. She’d been acting just like his friends had before they tried to kill him. Ignoring that fact might cost him his life.
He had a quick check inside the wardrobe to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, then he hefted the bag from the bed – it weighed a ton – and out into the upstairs hallway. He walked into his parents’ room, an instinctive sense of guilt gripping him as he entered their walk-in wardrobe. Tucked at the back of a bottom shelf was his dad’s safe.
He got down onto his knees, pulling out the musty collection of old shirts and throwing them to the side. His dad didn’t realise that Cal knew the combination. The fact was he’d known it for about three years now, and it had taken him almost that long to work it out. Pretty much every time his parents had gone out Cal had been in here trying out different sequences of numbers – birthdays, memorable dates, telephone numbers, mathematical equations he’d learned at school. Nothing had worked, but he’d never given up. He hadn’t even known what was in the safe. His dad – whenever he was around, which wasn’t often – had refused to tell him. It had become like a secret mission, like he was a spy and the safety of the world depended on him eventually cracking the secret. He’d grown obsessed with it.
Eventually, when he was fourteen, Cal had worked it out. He’d been talking to his mum and dad over dinner one night. They’d both been in a great mood, better than he’d seen them in ages. And they’d been telling Cal about how they first met, at a party in the West End.
You were gorgeous, his dad had said, flashing his mum a look that Cal hadn’t really understood back then but which he knew all too well now. You were my very own perfect little 36, 24, 36.
The numbers had been a mystery, but the next day when he’d got home from school he’d given them a go, unable to stop giggling when he’d heard the safe click and the small, solid door swung open.
It did so now, the memory powerful enough to loose an insane surge of laughter up his throat. He choked it off, glancing into the bedroom to make sure he wasn’t being watched before turning his attention to the safe. Inside were the same things he’d first seen three years ago. On the right-hand side was a pile of money – tens, twenties and fifties all bound together in neat little bricks. The amount changed every time Cal looked, but he’d counted it once and it had totted up to over a hundred grand – more than enough for Cal to steal a few hundred quid every now and again and not be found out. Next to that was a small, flat black box which contained his mum’s most valuable jewellery. Resting on the box was a portable hard drive that he was pretty sure just had their family photos and things on – he’d never bothered investigating.
There was one more thing in the safe, and it was this that Cal reached for. It was heavy, so much heavier than it had any right to be, so much heavier than they ever looked in the films. The polished wooden grip fitted his damp palm perfectly, the dull silver barrel much longer than the toy Airsoft BB version Cal had in his bedside cabinet. He flicked out the chamber – six empty holes peering back at him – then shut it with a deft flick of his wrist. He cocked the hammer, the tendons in his hand biting with the effort, then he pulled the trigger. Click.
He’d played with this gun for three years, cocking it then firing in a thousand imaginary games. He’d even put bullets in it once, from the box marked .38s at the back of the safe, although he hadn’t dared pull back the hammer on that occasion just in case he’d blown a hole in the wardrobe wall, or his own leg. Cal found it hard to imagine his dad – who was balding, wore glasses and was usually mild-mannered and gentle – with the gun in his hand. His mum always described him as a ‘businessman’, although it was a business that involved monthly trips to Spain and lots of dodgy characters turning up at the house after dark. Cal knew the truth in his heart, of course, although he never wanted to admit it. His dad was one of the bad guys.
Cal picked up two bundles of cash – a couple of grand, he reckoned – and the box of bullets. Then he elbowed the door closed and spun the dial back round, hearing it lock. He paused for only a second, doubt nagging at the back of his mind. If he got caught outside with a gun, a real gun, then he wasn’t going to get a slap on the wrist and a lecture from the cops. He was looking at a long, long time behind bars.
But if he didn’t take it . . .
He saw the mob, those clawed fingers pinching him, knuckles pounding his skin, fat hands clamped around his throat. If he didn’t take the gun, sooner or later he would regret it.
‘Let’s see you come after me now,’ he said softly, aiming the pistol into the bedroom. But the thought of firing it, of actually shooting somebody, made him queasy.
He carried his stolen treasure back into the hall, placing the gun carefully in the bag, burying it in a nest of his clothes. He put one of the wads of cash in with it, then zipped the bag up tight. He looked at the other one, rifling it like a flick-book, the Queen’s unchanging face frowning back at him. Thoughts of new trainers or games for his Xbox bubbled up automatically to the surface of his brain but he snuffed them out. If things were as bad as they looked then this was survival money – food, shelter, maybe even transport to get him the hell away from here until whatever was going on had stopped going on.
He stuffed the cash into the pocket of the tracksuit trousers he’d put on when he was packing, throwing the bag over one shoulder. He struggled downstairs, through the garden room into the short corridor that led to the garage, leaving it by the door. Then he doubled back to the main lounge, stopping in the kitchen for a bottle of Dr Pepper from the fridge. The computer was on, the Yahoo answers page up where he had left it. It had been the first thing to appear on Google when Cal had typed ‘Why is everyone trying to kill me?’ He took a swig from his drink, the sugar perking him up, then he clicked the refresh button.
There was a comment beneath his answer, and Cal felt a mixture of relief and panic as he read it. Relief because he wasn’t on his own. Panic because if this had happened to somebody else as well it meant that things were really bad out there. He ran the mouse over the guy’s screen name, Rick_B, then he clicked on the link to a private forum called Hated. The chances were that the man was nothing but an internet creep who was trying to get kids to talk to him. It didn’t matter
if he was, Cal had the gun now, he could defend himself.
And maybe, just maybe, it was genuine.
‘Okay, Mr B,’ he said as the forum loaded. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got to say for yourself.’
Brick
Fursville, 4.50 p.m.
CalMessiRonaldo: it’s like i said, i was at school playing football and everyone started chasing me. not for a joke, i thought thats what it was at first, then they tried to stragle and punch me and they chased me right out the school onto the street and others came after me too, like shoppers. i only got away cos of the car. they would have killed me. what bout u?
Brick put another fizzy cola bottle into his mouth, chewing slowly as he reread the post that had appeared below his own. He swallowed, then reached out and typed.
Rick_B: My girlfriend tried to kill me, she tried to bite my face off. Then she pretty much battered herself senseless trying to get to me through a door. I’m holed up somewhere safe, somewhere no one knows about, need to find out what’s going on. Any ideas?
He posted it, then took another sweet from the Haribo packet. He adjusted his position on the hard floor, wondering whether he should go upstairs to the restaurant where there were comfy chairs and tables. He didn’t dare move, though, in case somehow he lost the connection to the one person who might be able to help him. He wanted to refresh the page right away, but he forced himself to wait for five minutes – actually counting slowly to 300 in his head, the immense quiet of the foyer almost sending him off to sleep again as he did so – before he clicked.
CalMessiRonaldo: no idea, scarin the sh!t out of me, tho. i’m at home, my mums gonna be bck any minute. you think shell attack metoo? where are you?