Something was biting him in the leg and he looked down to see the little boy there. He knocked him away as gently as he dared, kicking the woman who followed in the face. The last guy was big, but Cal remembered his Choy Li Fut training. He stepped behind him, locking his right leg around the man’s knee then shunting hard. The guy tripped, dropping like a felled tree, his head cracking on the concrete path.
Cal glanced up the street to see people hammering down it. He had maybe thirty seconds before he was swamped. He ran to the gate, ignoring the fire that burned in his muscles and lungs. There were actually two people inside, the second a white-haired old lady with crooked fingers coiled around the girl’s legs. The girl was kicking out at her, her face twisted by fear and blunted by shadow, her screams amplified by the narrow passageway. Cal tried the gate but the handle wouldn’t budge.
‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘Let me in!’
The girl ignored him, her cries reaching a crescendo as the old woman sank her teeth into her leg. Cal glanced up the road again. Fifteen seconds. He swore, took a step back, then kicked out. A jarring pain tore up his leg and his back but the gate didn’t budge. He paused, breathing in through his nose, taking up a guarding stance then kicking out again with every ounce of strength he had.
The rusted lock snapped, something metal clanging down the passageway as the gate swung open. Cal ran through it, booting the old lady like he was taking a penalty. He grabbed the girl under her arms, ignoring her screams and her punches.
‘It’s okay, trust me, I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said, the words only half formed in his breathless panic. He clamped her to him as he sprinted out into the garden, dodging one of the mob who was back on her feet then tearing open the Freelander door. The woman who had climbed inside the car was unconscious – or dead – and Cal grabbed her by the hair and tried to pull her free. She wouldn’t budge, her limbs locked between the seats. The hail of footsteps was deafening now, each panted breath audible.
‘Don’t run,’ he said, putting the girl down and grabbing the woman with both hands. Her body slid from the car like a bag of meat, slopping to the ground. The girl took a few steps away from him but stopped when she saw the crowd pounding down the street – maybe twenty people now, all howling. She looked up at him, her eyes so wide with shock they didn’t look real.
‘You can trust me, I promise,’ he said. The kid at the head of the crowd – one of the skateboarders, Cal thought – had almost reached them. ‘We need to go.’
He held out a hand and she took it, letting him help her into the driver’s seat. He climbed in next to her, slamming the door just as the skateboarder drew level. Momentum carried the kid past and he slipped on the gravel, disappearing with a yelp. The girl shuffled into the passenger seat as Cal slung the car in gear and floored it, barrelling down the street, the chaos and the carnage once again safely contained in the cracked glass of his rear-view mirror.
The only one who spoke was the satnav lady, and even she seemed relieved to Cal as he happily followed her directions out of Boxwood St Mary back towards the A11. He didn’t take his foot off the gas, finally remembering to breathe when he hit the slip road that led back onto the dual carriageway. Only when he was doing seventy in the outside lane did he notice that his entire body was as rigid as stone. He let himself relax, tremors taking the place of the tension.
‘Continue on the current road,’ said the lady.
Cal glanced over at the girl. She was curled up in the passenger seat, making it look huge. Her face was ashen, like she’d been completely drained through the cuts on her arms and neck. Her long hair swayed like seaweed in the gale from the broken windows. She stared out of the windscreen through watery blue eyes, but Cal knew she wasn’t seeing anything except maybe a replay of whatever it was she’d been through.
‘That lady’s name is Miss Naggy,’ he said, his voice too loud despite the howl of the wind and the heavy thrum of tyres. It was a stupid thing to say, but Cal didn’t have anything else. He glanced at the road then back at her. ‘She lives in the car and tells me where to go.’
The girl didn’t budge. At least she wasn’t trying to attack him, that could only be a good thing. A car was coming up fast behind him and Cal braced himself, indicating left and sliding into the inside lane. The BMW wobbled a little as it blasted past but it didn’t stop. Cal checked his mirrors then pulled out again to overtake a lorry. If he moved past people quickly enough they seemed to go back to normal before anything bad happened.
‘When I go the wrong way she tells me off,’ he went on. ‘Well, she usually tells my mum off, that’s why she called her Miss Naggy. It’s her name, not mine.’
Smooth, Cal, he thought. You’re so great with kids.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked her. She didn’t reply, didn’t even seem to notice him. He thought about leaving her alone. Maybe she was in shock or something, and he wasn’t sure what you were supposed to do with people like that. Wasn’t there a rule about not letting them go to sleep? Or was that for something else. Constipation or something.
Concussion, idiot, his brain said, and he snorted a laugh. The noise made the girl jump. She snapped out of whatever trance she’d been in and gazed fearfully at Cal. He saw her fingers stray towards the door handle – Christ, don’t do that, kid, you’ll be pâté on the motorway – and he held up his left hand to show that he wasn’t going to hurt her.
‘It’s okay, please don’t be scared.’ The road ahead looked clearer and he pulled back into the left-hand lane, slowing down so that the noise inside the car was more a summer storm than a full-blown hurricane. ‘My name is Cal, you can trust me, I promise you.’
She shuffled further back into her seat, curled up like a hedgehog.
‘Where are we going?’ she said. Or at least that’s what he thought she said, her voice was a whisper bound up and carried off by the wind.
‘Somewhere safe,’ he replied. ‘At least, I think so. I’m not sure. But I’ll look after you, don’t worry, okay?’
There must have been something friendly in his face because the girl seemed to relax. She rested her chin on her knees, those huge eyes never blinking.
‘Miss Naggy wants you to put on your seat belt,’ Cal said, realising that neither of them was wearing one. He clipped on his own. ‘She’ll tell us off if you don’t.’
The girl looked at him, then at the built-in console where the voice came from. She reached up and pulled the belt over her curled-up legs, clicking it into the socket. They’d driven another half mile before she spoke, her voice so soft and so full of sadness that Cal felt a lump rise inside his throat.
‘Everyone hates me.’
‘They don’t,’ he said before he’d thought about what he could follow it with. ‘There’s just, I don’t know, something wrong with people. It’s making them do things they don’t want to. Like zombies, you know?’
She didn’t respond.
‘Everyone has been attacking me too. It started at school, all my friends, they tried to . . .’ he faltered, the words scared of being heard. He coughed them out. ‘They tried to kill me. Then people from the street, people I’d never seen before in my life.’ He’d wiped a tear away before he even noticed he was crying. ‘Then my mum.’
The girl looked back at him, her mouth hanging open, and a jarring blast of adrenalin tore through Cal as he thought she was about to throw herself over the seat and sink her teeth into his throat.
‘Your mum tried to hurt you?’ she said. Cal nodded. She stared at something a million miles away, deep in thought. There was a moment of revelation there, some awful understanding. Then she lowered her head to her raised knees and began to sob, great heaving cries. Cal’s hand hovered over her for a second or two before landing on her shoulder. Her whole body jolted at the touch but other than that she didn’t acknowledge it. He gently stroked his thumb back and forth, the way his mum had always done with him when he was upset.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, keeping hi
s voice low, soothing. ‘It’s all going to be okay, I promise. We’ll find out what’s going on and then we’ll know how to stop it, we’ll fix it, then our mums will be okay, they won’t be angry with us any more. I promise.’
He was making a lot of promises for a guy who knew nothing about what was going on, but what else could he do? It didn’t seem to be working anyway. If anything he’d made the girl cry even harder. He put his hand back on the wheel, seeing a huge green sign advertising Norwich in fifteen miles and Yarmouth in forty. The satnav said they’d be there within an hour. They would be late, but he was pretty sure Rick_B, whoever he was, would hang around.
He drove in silence for the next few minutes, the satnav lady chirping up and navigating him around a series of roundabouts. It was a while later that the girl stopped sobbing, her face rising from behind her kneecaps. Cal smiled at her as gently as he could, not wanting to say anything else in case he set her off again. But she seemed like she was cried out, wrung dry. She looked up at him, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
‘You really think there’s a way to make things normal again?’
The look she gave him, suddenly so full of hope, of trust, meant there was only one answer he could give.
‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘I really do. Whatever this is, we’ll work it out together. I promise.’
She wiped her nose again, sniffing. Cal leant over and popped the glove box, a half-empty pack of tissues inside. He gestured at them and she took one, patting her eyes dry then scrunching it up and tucking it in her sleeve. She took a deep, juddering breath that seemed to shake some colour back into her cheeks.
‘Thanks,’ she said, a ghost of a smile in her thin lips, her pale eyes. ‘My name’s Daisy.’
Brick
Hemmingway, 8.48 p.m.
He was late.
Either that or he was dead. Where had he said he was coming from? London? If things were as bad as Brick thought, that was one hell of a journey – a gauntlet of ten million psychotic people trying to slaughter you on the street. Thinking about it that way, it would be a miracle if he made it here at all. That made his stomach crunch up, like he’d eaten something bad. As much as he hated to admit it, he really didn’t want to be on his own.
He rested his head on the warm sand, enjoying the comforting touch of the evening sun – not too hot, not yet muffled by the evening chill. He was lying on the slope of one of the dunes that ran the length of the beach, one of the big ones that would have looked at home in the Sahara if it wasn’t for the wavy sea grass comb-over. Ahead of him was the unbroken slate of the sea, almost perfectly waveless, so smooth that he half thought he could run right over it to Holland or Denmark or whatever lay beyond the horizon.
On the other side of the dune was a short stretch of pine forest, a bed of soft-needled trees into which the sun was slowly sinking. A dirt track led from them to a small concrete car park, the ugly square block of the toilets sticking up like an ulcer. There were boards over all the doors and windows, smeared with graffiti too windblown and rain-washed to read. The soft lap of the waves and the whispering pines made him feel inexplicably at peace.
Maybe the guy had decided not to come. Brick hadn’t exactly been a charmer in his messages. He tried to think back to what he’d written, unable to recall a single word other than to come alone. That in itself had been a pretty stupid thing to say – if CalMessiRonaldo was like him then he wouldn’t exactly be mobbed by friends right now. Why had he been such an asshole?
Blame it on stress, he thought, twisting a long strand of grass between his fingers. Blame it on shock, on fear. But the truth was much more simple than that. He was an asshole. He promised himself he’d make an effort to be nice as soon as the guy showed up.
If he showed up.
He wished he had a watch, or the phone he’d dropped when he was riding away from the garage. Norfolk was as flat as a pancake, which meant the daylight stretched right out into the evening, but once it hit ten it would get dark. Really dark. He’d have to be back at Fursville by then or he’d end up spending all night on the beach.
An ant struggled past right under his nose, its feet moving so fast they were just a blur as it attempted to negotiate the crumbling sand. He lowered a piece of grass in front of its nose, watching it climb on board before gently letting go. The ant scuttled off along it, vanishing into the tangled web.
‘You’re welcome,’ he said, sitting up to stretch his spine, trying to shake the blood back into his legs. The knees of his jeans were wet. How did sand always manage to stay moist even on a day like today? He was brushing the blotchy stains with his hands when he heard a car, distant but unmistakable.
He ducked back down, peering through the mess of sea grass, his heartbeat rising along with the pitch of the engine. It seemed to take an eternity before it finally showed itself, the thing that trundled from the treeline not a car but one of those baby Land Rovers. There was something – Blood? – spattered all over the crumpled bonnet, as bright as paint. The passenger windows were wound down, or broken, and a massive crack stretched diagonally across the windscreen, making it difficult for him to see inside. The car limped over the concrete and pulled up next to the toilet block.
Nothing happened. Nobody got out.
‘Come on,’ Brick whispered. He worked his jaws, his ears feeling like they were blocked, the same way they did when he swam too deep. The strange silence clashed with the fear, making him feel weirdly seasick. The car was pointing straight at him and he got the feeling that whoever was inside was watching him, waiting for him to make his move. It was ridiculous, of course. Nobody would be able to spot him tucked behind the dune. Unless . . .
He looked to his left and right, scanning the beach. What if the guy hadn’t come alone? What if there was more than one of them? His friends might have spread out, flanking the car park, ready to attack him from all angles. He swore. Why hadn’t he brought a weapon? Fursville was full of metal bars and old tools, there were even knives in the restaurant. All he had here were his own two fists.
It wasn’t too late to retreat. If he slid down the dune he could walk back along the shore. They’d never be able to find him – unless they follow your footsteps in the sand. He swore again, his mind wheeling. He’d had hours to prepare for this, what the hell had he been doing all that time? Sunbathing and rescuing ants.
Calm down. You’re panicking like an old woman. Keep it cool, it’s going to be okay.
Was he supposed to make the first move? It was like one of those old spy films. He wiped a hand across his forehead, sand sticking to the sheen of sweat that had broken out there. He still felt that weird pressure in his head, a silence that was almost a sound. It was as though something was inside his brain, inside his thoughts, and he suddenly felt ridiculously exposed. He squinted, trying to make out the shape behind the steering wheel. There was definitely somebody there – What did you expect, Brick, a ghost? – but was that somebody in the passenger seat too?
The car horn blared and Brick almost screamed, his rasping cry lost in the flap of a dozen birds that took flight from the trees. Adrenalin was a white heat in his veins. Suddenly he was all too conscious of how uncomfortable he was, of the damp creeping into his clothes and the sand scratching in the crook of his elbows. The horn honked again, twice.
‘Get out of the car,’ he hissed into the dune. I’m not showing myself until you do.
His words were too quiet to carry, but they worked anyway. There was a loud clack, then the driver’s door swung open with a painful squeal. Somebody clambered out, and Brick had to lean to the side to see him through a loop of sea grass. It was a kid dressed in grey tracksuit trousers and a T-shirt. The boy brushed a hand through his hair as he scanned the car park, looking maybe sixteen or seventeen.
‘Hello?’ the boy called out, the tremors audible in his voice even from where Brick was lying. More birds blasted from the trees and he spun round, his hand moving towards his lower back. There was something
under there, Brick realised, a lump beneath his shirt. The kid had a weapon. Again that instinctive need to get away almost ripped him from the dune, numbed by the same weird, calm silence that sat like cotton wool inside his head.
‘Is anyone there?’ the boy called out, his words drifting effortlessly over the hot ground. ‘Rick?’
Rick? Brick thought, before remembering his login name. He felt an answer surging up from inside him of its own accord when he heard the sound of the passenger door opening. He clamped his mouth shut as the boy shouted something at the car, gesturing at whoever was inside. Brick couldn’t hear the reply but it didn’t matter. The kid had broken the rules.
He began to retreat. This wasn’t worth the risk. One teenage boy he could handle, but if there were two or maybe more in there then he was in trouble – especially if they started to attack him the same way as everyone else. The car was almost out of sight when the passenger climbed out. Brick paused, shuffling back to the top of the dune. The other person was a little girl, tiny next to the Land Rover, her face crumpled by anxiety. She was wearing black trousers and a burgundy polo with what might have been a school badge.
A boy and a kid, maybe brother and sister. Even if they did go crazy Brick thought he’d be able to handle them – so long as he took out the guy first he could easily outrun the girl.
I guess we’re about to find out, he thought. Then he ran his hand over his forehead once more and got to his feet.
Cal
Hemmingway, 8.55 p.m.
‘There’s nobody here,’ Cal said to Daisy.
‘Yes there is,’ she replied, looking up at him. ‘Don’t you . . . don’t you feel them?’