Stay calm, just stay calm, he told himself. They don’t know who you are, they’re not going to come after you.
Then why was the guy in front climbing out of his ugly green Fiat? It was a middle-aged man, dressed in sweats and trainers like he was going to the gym. He stopped with one leg in the car and one leg on the motorway, stooped over, frozen. The Mercedes behind was closer now, the driver gunning the engine. Was he speeding up?
The Fiat man seemed to remember what he was doing, dragging his left leg out of the car. Then he turned to Cal.
‘Oh no,’ Cal said as the man’s face changed, his cheeks sagging like old cloth, his lower eyelids drooping to reveal the red-veined orbs of his eyes. He staggered forward like a marionette, throwing himself at the raised bonnet of the Freelander just as the Mercedes slammed into it from behind.
Cal’s car lurched into the back of the Fiat, the man caught in a bear trap. There was a crack, a spurt of blood from his misshapen mouth, then he vanished between them. The impact threw Cal forward, his face hitting the centre of the wheel hard enough to honk the horn. He crashed back, wondering why the airbag hadn’t gone off, trying to make sense of the world through the supernovas that detonated in his vision.
Fiat guy had to be dead, Mercedes guy wasn’t moving. But Cal could make out other people climbing from their cars further down the queue. There were seven or eight of them making their way towards him, all with looks of concern, some with phones out, others beckoning urgently to the police van in the inside lane. One by one, as they stepped past an Argos lorry maybe twenty metres away, their expressions changed, their pace increasing as they lurched and stumbled towards his car.
Cal fumbled it into first gear, praying that the crash hadn’t done any damage as he hit the gas. There was a deafening crunch, the squeal of metal against metal, but the Freelander didn’t budge. He looked over his shoulder at the Mercedes crammed up against him, its bonnet crumpled and smoking. He was pinned tight between them. He swore, wrenching the stick into reverse, flooring the pedal and shunting the car back a metre or so.
A hand thumped his window, somebody trying the handle. Cal didn’t look, just threw it into first again and rammed the back of the Fiat, freeing up another bit of space. Somebody was screaming, half-words buried in the noise as they battered the glass with their fists. One of the people from the queue – a teenage girl – was trying to climb onto the bonnet but Cal reversed again and sent her tumbling to the floor. He managed a little more momentum this time, knocking the Merc back far enough for him to break out.
He swung the wheel all the way to the left, nudging the wrecked Fiat out of the way. There was hardly any room between it and the lorry to his side but he didn’t let up, squeezing through, serenaded by more shrieking metal. Somebody was on the back of the car trying to tear through the canvas roof, two black blisters of eyes boiling through the hole he’d made.
More people were surging up the aisles between traffic, and for a second Cal thought they had him, that there was no way out. Then he squeezed past the lorry to see that the car in front of it was a Smart car. He pulled hard to the left again and rammed it. He was only doing twenty but the weight of the Freelander pushed the tiny thing in front out of the way like it was a toy, rolling it onto its side and clearing a path onto the hard shoulder.
Cal accelerated onto it, passing the police van close enough to rip its bumper off, hitting fifty in five seconds. The man on his roof had gone. Up ahead he could see the source of the smoke he’d spotted earlier, a car that had come off the road, punched through the barrier and down the bank to the side. It sat in a field, surrounded by people, hundreds of them, swarming all over it the same way they had swarmed over him back at school. They didn’t seem to care about the black clouds that billowed from the engine, they were just tearing and scratching and kicking and even biting at the metal like starving rats trying to get at the meat inside a bin.
He eased his foot onto the brake as he drew level, slowing to about twenty before realising what he was doing. Some of the people on the smoking car looked up, a couple of them tumbling free from the pack and starting to run up the slope towards the road. The crowd behind was catching up too, a tide of flesh filling his rear-view mirror.
Then he heard it. Although heard was the wrong word because this was nothing to do with his ears. There was something in his head, something that wasn’t him, a voice that at the same time wasn’t a voice. It seemed to grab time and pull it to a halt, the people all around him running in slow motion like those new hi-def cams they used for the football. The voice seemed to be the opposite of noise, a profound silence that cushioned the world and yet which still somehow communicated with him. And in that instant Cal knew exactly what was inside that car.
It was a person, somebody just like him.
And they needed help.
The world unspun like a clockwork toy that had been wound up tight, reality snapping back. The screams from outside were deafening now, more people pounding and scraping at the Freelander. Past faces ravaged by hate Cal could make out the car below, bodies squirming all over it. He accelerated hard, swinging to his left, grinding past flesh and bone as he headed for the broken barrier. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he got to the wreck, but he had to do something.
The lightning came before the thunder. The car in the field erupted in a ball of white heat that sent charred corpses spiralling out in all directions. Cal had time to see a fist of smoke punch up towards the heavens – and something inside that smoke, an impossible shape of blue flame which opened its mouth and howled – before the shock wave hit the Freelander, peeling away the people outside and blowing in the passenger windows. He shielded his face, poisoned air clawing into his lungs, the 4x4 bouncing on its wheels so hard he expected it to roll over.
By the time he lifted his head the worst of the explosion had passed. Smoke still gushed skywards like liquid from the blazing car, but there was nothing in it except darkness. The engine had stalled and Cal turned the key to bring it back to life. He swung the wheel to the right, accelerating away from the carnage, away from the burning shapes that ran and howled and fell in his mirrors.
There was one police car on the hard shoulder but he passed it with plenty of room. The queue continued up the motorway, faces peering out of car windows at the smoke-darkened skies, but the exit was clear.
‘Continue on the current road,’ said the satnav. Cal wiped the ash from his stinging eyes, trying not to think about the people who had been on the car – twenty, thirty, maybe more, all dead; trying not to think about the person inside it, the wordless voice somehow begging him for help, which had vanished like a radio being turned off the moment the car had exploded; trying not to think about the shape in the smoke, that figure of flame which screamed as it rose.
He let the fresh air empty his head, and drove on.
Daisy
Boxwood St Mary, 6.58 p.m.
Daisy crawled through the garden like a lioness, the ones she enjoyed watching on the telly. They were so graceful, so quiet, and she tried to imitate them as best she could as she crept forward on all fours, making sure to always stay hidden in the overgrown bushes.
She hadn’t seen anyone inside the house for ages. The horrid ambulance man had last appeared maybe half an hour ago. It might have been less. He’d gone back inside after smoking a cigarette, chatted to some police in the kitchen, then they’d all filed out and that was the last she’d seen of them. Of course they might still be inside, hiding in the shadows, ready to jump out at her . . .
The thought of it, of that ambulance man’s horse face braying at her, his rough hands pushing her out the window, stopped her dead. She twisted her hand in the long grass, locking herself to it, smelling the roses and the rhododendrons and the buddleias. It reminded her of her mum. Her poor mum. It had come back and had been eating her brain, just like before. The tumour had made her act weird last time, but only twitches and tics and the occasional word that
came out wrong. This was so much worse. She had killed Dad, she had killed herself.
It wasn’t the cancer, though, Daisy thought, remembering the note. She said it wasn’t the disease. It was something else. She knew what was coming, that she was going to hurt you.
The thoughts were painful and she pushed them away, untangling her hand and creeping towards the back door. There was a big, bald patch of lawn between the last bush and the house. If she crawled over that then anybody inside would be able to see her. She glanced right, the flowerbeds full of thorny things, and past them the passage up the side of the house. To the left, Mrs Baird’s garden. The nice old lady’s apple trees hung over the low fence, a pool of shadow beneath them.
Daisy skirted towards them, grateful when she plunged into the shade. She could hear something on the other side of the fence. It might have been Pudding and Wolfie, Mrs Baird’s cats. She started forward again.
About ten metres or so from the bush where she’d landed after her fall from the box-room window, Daisy saw the first shard of glass – about the size and shape of one of the steak knives in the kitchen. It was nestled in the dirt, a line of blood down one side. Sunlight shone through it, painting the grass a vivid shade of red, making Daisy think of cathedral windows. She half thought about picking it up and putting it in her art box, it was so beautiful, until she remembered it was her blood.
She stood up, not wanting to cut her knees and elbows on the twinkling scalpels of glass between here and the house, squatting to stay below the fence. It was hard walking like this but there wasn’t far to go. The noises to her left were louder now, but she could definitely hear the familiar ‘briiiow’ of the cats. It was the noise they made when Daisy snuck out some prawns or tuna for them after dinner, the noise they made when they were being fed.
But if she wasn’t feeding them . . .
Daisy glanced over her shoulder to see a figure half hidden behind the knotted trunk of one of the apple trees. It was wearing an ancient brown dressing gown, and smoky puffs of thin white hair billowed out from the pink scalp beneath. One small, black eye peeked out from the shade, looking right at her.
‘Mrs Baird?’ Daisy asked, coming to a halt, still on her haunches. ‘Is everything okay?’
The nice old lady was breathing hard, almost grunting. There was a clatter of wood and one of the cats – Daisy could never tell them apart as they were both black – jumped onto the fence. It wobbled, catching its balance, rubbing its head on Mrs Baird’s sleeve and making the same ‘I’m hungry’ protest. Mrs Baird ignored it, still staring at her with that one dead eye.
Daisy straightened, taking a few steps towards the back door. And she’d just grabbed the handle when the old lady threw back her head and screamed. It was a horrible sound, like she was having a heart attack or something, and Daisy almost went to her, her first instinct to help.
With a phlegmy cry Mrs Baird hurled herself against the fence, the wooden panels bowing under her weight. She lost her grip, disappearing with a sickening snap. That’s a broken bone, Daisy thought as her neighbour reappeared, her whole body trembling, great trails of saliva hanging from her pale lips. She was still grunting, the noise a pig might make. Daisy turned the handle, pushing the door, almost banging her head on it when it wouldn’t open. She tried again, using both hands this time.
It was locked.
There was another gut-wrenching noise, then something thudded to the ground. Daisy looked to see that Mrs Baird had managed to flop over the fence and was now lying in a heap trying to get up. Her arms and legs wriggled in the air, like a beetle on its back, her dressing gown open to reveal the velour tracksuit underneath. One of her slippers was gone, and there was something wrong with that bare ankle. It was pointing the wrong way.
Daisy turned back to the door, wrenching the handle, kicking the bottom hard enough to make the glass rattle.
‘Come on!’ she screamed at it, suddenly wishing that the police were still inside, that anybody was still inside. Mrs Baird was no longer trying to get to her feet. She had flipped herself over and was scuttling across the garden on all fours the same way Daisy had been earlier, her wrinkled fingers pulling out clods of dirt as she clawed forward.
Daisy kicked the door once more then backed away, heading for the side passage that led to the street. Mrs Baird was gaining, her sagging face filled with exhaustion but those piggy eyes more determined than Daisy had ever seen them. Her glistening mouth gaped wide, breathing in the same short, piercing double-shriek cries that might have been her name – Day-seee, Day-see, Day-see – broken and clogged with spit. She ploughed across the grass, her arms and legs moving too fast for an old woman, like there was a horrible clockwork machine under her skin.
Daisy turned and fled into the passage, not knowing where she was going, not caring about the voices she could hear from the street outside, just wanting to get away from the thing that crawled after her, that called her name with each wheezing breath.
Cal
Boxwood St Mary, 7.07 p.m.
‘Turn around when it is safe to do so.’
Cal really wished he could take the satnav lady’s advice. He wanted nothing more than to be able to swing the Freelander one-eighty, get the hell out of this weird little town and back on the dual carriageway.
Only he couldn’t. Something had made him pull off the relatively empty A11 just after Mildenhall – that same weird voiceless voice inside his head, making him ignore the instructions from the console, flick his indicator on and pull the car off the high street down a narrow road packed with houses.
There were people here. A delivery driver was unpacking crates from an Iceland van a few cars down, and a bunch of teenage skateboarders were messing around on the corner, one riding on the back of another, all of them laughing. They could have been Cal and his mates outside the library back in Oakminster, not a care in the world other than the constant ever-shifting mystery of who fancies who and what to do about it. He thought about Georgia, about Megan and Eddie and the others. It felt like a million years since he’d last seen them.
The delivery driver started to sniff the air as Cal pulled closer. The crate tumbled from his hands and a plastic carton of milk burst. He ran at the Freelander and Cal pressed his foot down a little harder, accelerating. The skateboarders had caught wind of him too. With a row of parked cars on each side there wasn’t any room to manoeuvre so Cal kept his speed at a constant twenty-five, hoping they’d get out of the way.
They didn’t, the first kid meeting the 4x4 head-on like a charging bull, bouncing almost straight backwards. The others were bumped aside by the bonnet, knocked into the gaps between the cars. Cal didn’t stop, even when the Freelander ran over something under its wheels, something big, something soft. He steered around the corner, guided by that strange radar in his head, a silence that seemed vast and unbroken even though he could hear the monkey-like shrieks from behind him, the sound of doors opening, the thunder of footsteps. There was a turning to the left and he took it, increasing his speed so that the little kids with the garden sale wouldn’t sense him until it was too late.
The road went down a hill, curving to the right then rising steeply again. Whatever it was inside his head was louder now, but still utterly silent. It reminded him of being at the bottom of the swimming pool, a perfect, pitchless peace. Even though he could see the crowd running after him in his rear-view mirror, even though he had no idea what lay ahead, it made him feel safe. It made him feel that he was doing the right thing.
He swung round another corner, the Freelander clattering over a pushbike that had been abandoned in the road. There was movement up ahead, a man running away from Cal, towards a small mob clustered outside a house on the left. There were four or five of them, a mix of men and women and even a little boy who didn’t look any older than five. The ones he could see wore the same expression of utter fury, so fierce that it turned their faces into demon masks. He sped up, somehow knowing the exact same thing that he had ba
ck on the motorway – that there was somebody close by who was just like him.
There was no time for a plan. Cal reached the mob in seconds and slammed on the brakes, the Freelander skidding into a low wall. A woman staggered towards him, howling as she tried to worm in through the broken passenger windows. Cal reached for his bag but couldn’t get it, the woman’s fingers pinching the flesh around his throat, her breath hot on his face. He grabbed the first thing he could find, a two-litre bottle of Dr Pepper, using it to batter her hands away. He opened his door and tumbled away from her onto the street.
What the hell am I doing?
Another woman reached for Cal with bloodied fingers. He swung the bottle like a baseball bat. It made a ridiculous boinging sound as it hit her head, spinning her onto the tarmac. The first woman was crawling out of the car and Cal slammed the door in her face, twice, then legged it around the back of the Freelander.
One of the adults in the garden charged at Cal, stumbling on the broken wall and giving him enough time to see that the others were clustered around a gated passage that led down the side of the house. Past the bars of the gate he could see a girl. She looked maybe eleven or twelve and she was screaming, but it was a different sound from the one the people on this side of the gate were making. It was filled not with hate but with terror.
He lifted the bottle over his shoulder, waiting until the man was almost on him before swinging hard again. It clipped his nose, a brittle crack echoing around the street. The man didn’t seem to notice, grabbing Cal around the neck and squeezing, flecks of blood spraying from his face with each snorting breath.
Cal thrust the bottle into the soft spot beneath the man’s chin, pushing up until the hands around his throat loosened. He swung the bottle at him. It hit, but exploded, the drink fizzing out like there were Mentos inside. The man gnashed at it, distracted, and Cal punched him in the face.