Brick reached for another sweet, but the seven or eight he’d already eaten were dissolving unpleasantly in his empty stomach. He belched acid, swallowing it back down with a grimace. What now? Should he tell him about Hemmingway, about Fursville, or would that be too risky? He honestly didn’t think it was a cop – and even if it was there were rules against this sort of thing, weren’t there? Entrapment or something. And surely the police would have a better grasp of English than this guy. He banged his head gently against the wall behind him, trying to knock a plan loose from his brain. He needed some kind of proof that the kid had been through the same thing.
Rick_B: What happened after?
He posted the question, thinking about the way that Lisa had seemed to snap out of her fury, go back to being herself, the way she had forgotten what she had done. The memory scratched and bit inside his head, her blood-soaked voice pleading with him to let her go. Then the sight of her slumped and broken against the wall, still trying to get to him. He coughed out a painful sob, refreshing the page to see two posts waiting.
CalMessiRonaldo: i sh!t myself, thats what happnd after. what do u mean?
CalMessiRonaldo: actually i got a call from my mate, one of the ones who attacked me if thats what you mean. she didnt remember what shed done. where are u?
There was no way the police could know that, right? They might have found out that he’d been attacked by reading his Yahoo question, but they couldn’t know that Lisa had gone back to normal as soon as he was out of sight. He flexed his fingers, nodding to himself as he typed.
Rick_B: I’m on the coast, a place called
And that was as far as he got before another thought crossed his mind. This guy had been attacked in the same way as him. But did that mean he wouldn’t attack Brick – or vice versa – when they came face to face? He’d kind of assumed that maybe they had something in common, that maybe they were immune to each other or something, but he knew absolutely nothing about what was going on here. He certainly didn’t know the rules of how this thing worked. The last thing he needed was another crazy trying to kill him – he’d end up with a pavilion full of locked doors with psychos behind them. His very own Bedlam.
So what, then?
Brick deleted what he’d written, starting again.
Rick_B: I’m in Norfolk, on the coast. I can tell you where to meet me. We need to be sure we can trust each other, that we won’t try and kill each other, okay? Where are you?
He posted it. They didn’t have to meet at Fursville. Pretty much the whole of Hemmingway was a ghost town, just the fertiliser factory inland, then the Sainsbury’s about three miles to the north on the road over to Winterton. There were a few houses up that way, old people in bungalows mainly, but he’d never encountered any of them close to the park. He just couldn’t see a bunch of old grannies climbing over the fence to sit on the rotting wooden horses of the carousel. He refreshed the forum.
CalMessiRonaldo: london, oakminster. i can prob get to u in a few hours if i can get out thecity,. tell me where, i gotta get out here real soon
Crunch time. Yes or no. Brick’s fingers hovered over the keys and he chewed his bottom lip like it was another sweet. He was better on his own, he always had been. He wasn’t good with other people, they either picked on him or pissed him off. And this kid, with a name like CalMessiRonaldo, was probably some footballer or something. Pretty much number one on Brick’s list of people he hated, and people who hated him. If he told him about Fursville then the chances were they’d end up killing each other anyway, even if they weren’t affected by what was going on.
But the alternative was worse. The alternative was that he stayed here by himself, Lisa dying in the basement – if she isn’t already dead – him slowly going crazy in the creaking, rusting remains of his childhood paradise.
Rick_B: You need to head north, right up the coast. There’s a village called Hemmingway, Googlemap it, just up from Hemsby. It’s deserted. About a quarter mile from the village sign there’s a track going off to the right, to the beach. Loads of dunes and stuff. At the end of it is a car park, well overgrown, and an old toilet block that’s boarded up. That’s not where I’m staying, that’s just a place we can meet without being seen. If you’re leaving now you can get there for eight. If you’re late, just wait there overnight and I’ll try again tomorrow. DON’T BRING ANYONE ELSE. Okay? If you’re not alone I won’t even show myself.
He read it back through, feeling ridiculous, like he was doing a hostage negotiation or something. But it paid to be careful. He posted, read it through again, then typed something else into the text box.
Rick_B: Good luck.
He closed his eyes, letting his head drop. He felt exhausted, which wasn’t a surprise considering what he’d been through. He didn’t want to sleep, though. He didn’t want to close his eyes now and wake up to find that darkness had fallen, that he was alone here with his nightmares.
He logged back on to Yahoo, wondering whether he should wipe his original question, at least until he found out what happened when he met this guy. He clicked onto it, the arrow hovering over the ‘delete question’ option, his thumb ready to tap the trackpad button, and he almost didn’t notice them until it was too late.
He scrolled down the page, his eyes widening, his pulse quickening as he took in what he was seeing:
There are currently 8 answers to your question.
Cal
Oakminster, 5.05 p.m.
Cal sat in the driver’s seat of his mum’s Freelander convertible, the engine purring quietly and the nose nudged out of the right-hand garage door. He’d put it in neutral so that he could rest his foot off the clutch, and his leg jiggled with nervous impatience as he kept watch on the gate. To his left was the car he’d escaped in, the blood now dried into vein-like rivulets along its sides and shattered windscreen, its roof caved in like a fruit bowl.
His bag was on the back seat of the 4x4, along with three carrier bags stuffed with crisps, sweets and drink. With any luck he wouldn’t need it. With any luck his mum would come through the gate, see him sitting in her car and have a massive bug-out – mad but not psycho mad. He shuffled in his seat, feeling like his insides were lodged in his throat. His right hand gripped the wheel so hard that he didn’t think he could let go even if he wanted to, his left resting on the gear stick. They told the true story – he was pretty sure he’d have to make his getaway a quick one.
He didn’t know yet what his plan was, if the worst came to the worst. The guy he’d talked to online, Rick_B, sounded weird. Cal hadn’t got a good vibe from the few messages they’d exchanged. What kind of person picked an old abandoned toilet in an old abandoned village to meet in? Yet his message had sounded pretty genuine.
And what option did he really have? He couldn’t exactly head west into the most heavily populated city in Europe. East was Southend and the ports, twenty-four hour industrial hubbub. South were the endless queues into Dartford Tunnel. Sure there were a few quiet places around here – hundreds of fields within driving distance, plus the country park where he could shelter in the trees. But what was he supposed to do? Live like Stig of the Dump for the rest of his years? At least if he headed north he’d be moving away from the city into the ghostlands of East Anglia.
Somebody walked past the wheelie bin outside the gate and Cal jumped, his twitchy right foot revving the engine. It was an old man shuffling along holding a Waitrose bag that was almost as big as he was. Sunlight glinted off his specs. He didn’t look in. On the other side of the street one of the neighbours was loading something into her car. The sound of the door slamming and her feet crunching across the gravel seemed to carry too far, too loud, on the heat.
Cal ducked down in the leather seat, keeping his head as low as possible. He turned on the radio to try to calm his nerves, flicking impatiently through the stations and settling on Kiss. Something trancy filled the car, making him want to floor the pedal right now and just get the hell out of there.
There was a thump. Cal’s head jolted up to see the wheelie bin lid open. It slammed shut to reveal his mum behind it. She grabbed the handle and pulled it into the drive, that hollow rumble the loudest thing in the world.
What if she attacked him – She won’t, she won’t, she can’t – came at him like the others, tried to open the door and pull him out so she could stomp on his head with her Uggs? It was his mum, for Christ’s sake, his mum. The closest she’d ever come to hurting him was a gentle slap when he was nine because he’d sworn at her. Even that had hurt for much longer than it should have. A slap from your own mum is like a sledgehammer to the face. They were powerful that way.
‘Please be normal,’ Cal whispered.
She was halfway down the path when she heard the mutter of the car engine. She stopped, putting her hand up over her face, peering at him through a mask of shadow. In her purple top and black jeans she looked a bit like Bat Girl. Cal gripped the wheel, the fake wood slick inside his sweat-drenched palm. His words dried up inside his mouth, his tongue suddenly like sandpaper.
A car drove past on the street outside and his mum peeked over her shoulder. When she turned back to Cal she lifted her hands, her bright red nail polish like rubies, and shrugged dramatically.
‘Cal, what the hell are you doing?’ she said, her voice muted. Cal let out a breath that he hadn’t even realised he’d been holding. Suddenly the sun seemed twice as bright, the leaves on the trees and bushes a brilliant shade of green that hadn’t even existed until now.
She was okay. She was normal.
His mum let go of the wheelie bin and it rocked back on its wheels, rattling. She took a step towards him.
‘Turn that engine off right now, young man,’ she said, walking towards the garage. Cal grinned at her, reaching for the key.
‘It’s okay,’ he shouted, wondering how the hell he was going to get the gun back into his dad’s safe without her noticing. ‘I was just having a laugh.’
‘You’re going to be in big truuuu, yumman,’ she said. Cal froze. His mum’s face had come loose. One side of her mouth was drooping, her left eye too big, too red. She took another step, swaying this time. ‘Get out the car, get out, Caaaaaaaa . . .’
His name stretched from her lips, horribly distorted, dripping out alongside strings of saliva. His mum lurched across the last ten metres of the drive, her face slipping even further like a mask that had been badly glued on. She hit the bonnet of the Freelander hard enough to jolt the car, her hands squeaking on the metal as she clawed her way towards his window, still groaning that guttural version of his name. This close, Cal could see that her eyes were like hot coals, full of darkness and yet blazing with heat.
‘Mum?’ Cal said. He shook his head, unwilling to believe what he was seeing, even though deep down he had known this is what would happen, even though there was nothing left of his mum in the thing that pounded on his window with small, brittle fists, coating it with spittle as her voice grew into a banshee scream. ‘Mum, I’m sorry.’
He put the Freelander in gear and pulled away slowly, so as not to hurt her. She ran alongside, thumping the windows hard enough to leave smudges of orangey blood there. He pulled out onto the pavement, not looking where he was going. His eyes were on the rear-view mirror, on the figure that lumbered after him like a zombie, her face so familiar, and yet so alien. She lost her footing on the gravel and plunged from view, and it took everything he had not to stop the car and go to help her.
Goodbye, Cal tried to say. Then he floored the accelerator, lifted the clutch and roared up the street.
Brick
Fursville, 6.07 p.m.
Brick couldn’t believe what he was reading.
This is happening to me 2, got attackjed by my brother. :((((((( need help as I canb’t walk.
It was right at the bottom of the page, posted by somebody called EmoTwin3 literally two minutes ago. It was the twelfth answer. Above that was the eleventh, by JoeAbraham:
don’t call the police they tried to kill me I AM NOT JOKING. Happened last night, Only got away by jumping in a river. mum was one of them thought she was gonna strangle me. i’m at my dad’s place cos he’s away for the summer but there’s people all over and I ain’t going outside again unless I got somewheres safe. where u at bruv?
They’d both just appeared the last time he’d refreshed. Brick scrolled up the page, his hand trembling so much that he kept losing his place. He’d read the other entries over and over. Not all of them were serious; somebody had written ‘You guys are massively weird’ for answer number seven. But the rest were so similar that they could have been left there by the same person. He scanned through them for the billionth time, shaking his head as the same sentences leapt out at him.
. . . she broke my arm, she was trying to pull it right off . . .
. . . they all just came after me like they hated me . . .
. . . I went to the hospital and it was the same there, one tried to scalpel me . . .
. . . please help me I don’t know what to do . . .
They pretty much all ended along those lines, too – please help – like Brick was some messiah who could lead them all to salvation. The hell with that, though. He didn’t even know what was going on himself.
He put the laptop on the floor so he could stretch out his legs. Pins and needles radiated from his backside. He could just switch the laptop off and ignore everything he’d read. He could delete his question and the answers would vanish alongside it. He might even be able to convince himself he’d never seen them.
No. He couldn’t do that. He could no more leave a bunch of people to die than he could run over the ocean.
And they sounded so young too. That was why the messages had all seemed similar – the language, the spelling, the lack of grammar – they were written by kids. He couldn’t be sure, of course. There was just something in those messages that made him fairly confident that they weren’t adults.
The laptop sat open, the screen almost fully dark to conserve the battery but those messages still visible, staring up at him, imploring.
‘Okay, okay,’ he muttered to them. ‘But not before I know you’re not all gonna go psycho on me, okay?’
That was the best solution. He’d go out and meet CalMessiRonaldo, and if they didn’t end up tearing each other’s throats out then maybe he’d send word to the rest of them. This other guy might have some better ideas too.
He checked the clock. It was only a twenty-minute walk to the car park from here but he could do with stretching his legs properly, getting some air that didn’t smell of bird crap and rot. He pushed the lid closed with his foot, hearing it go to sleep. Then he set off back down the maintenance corridors, stopping at the top of the basement steps for no more than a second – It’s fine, it’s quiet, no need to check, no need to go down there, she’s fine – before it felt like his heart was about to slip from his throat and plop down the stairs like a slinky. And was it quiet down there? Wasn’t that a gentle scraping he could hear? Nailless fingers on wood? He almost ran the last few metres to the fire door, crawling and kicking through the chains like a man pulling himself from his grave.
Cal
M11 motorway, 6.10 p.m.
This was bad.
Really bad.
And it had been going so well, a clear path out of Oakminster, the main road free of traffic despite the fact that everybody was leaving work. He’d had to stop once, at the set of lights they’d just put in for the giant new Asda, but nobody had crossed. The woman in the car behind him had started to get out, but the lights had changed before she could stagger over.
The satnav had offered him a choice of routes: via Ipswich or Norwich. Some inner voice had drawn him irresistibly to the second option. Now he was wishing he’d ignored it. He’d taken the back roads onto the M11, happy keeping the Freelander at seventy in the middle lane, passing people too quickly for them to see him or sense him or whatever it was that was going on. Traffic had b
een fast on the motorway, and it was only about an hour after setting off, when he finally let himself think that he might actually be okay, that luck took a massive crap right on his head.
The electronic boards were flashing a warning at him – accident, long delays between junctions 8 and 9 – and he could see the gridlocked traffic from half a mile away. The inside lane had been barricaded by a police van, its flashing blue lights multiplied a hundredfold in the windows of the cars that purred motionlessly alongside it. Further down he could see a pillar of smoke rising almost perfectly straight into the calm blue sky. He slowed, keeping to the middle lane as the cars started to converge around him.
‘Take the next exit,’ the satnav lady suddenly barked at him, making him jump.
‘I’ll try,’ he replied. ‘But it isn’t going to be easy.’
The brake lights from the car in front blazed and he slowed from forty to twenty-five. Something big trundled by on his left, hydraulic brakes hissing, plunging him into shade. Behind him an old Mercedes was pulling up fast, the driver a hunched shadow behind the wheel.
This was really, really bad.
The car in front reached the back of the queue and stopped dead. Cal slammed on his brakes at the last minute, the Freelander rocking to a halt. Another lorry pulled up to his right, squealing, and it got even darker inside the car, the steep-walled containers on either side making him feel like he was inside a grave.