Not Alone, page 12
Only then do I help Harry out of his dusty raincoat, carefully adding it to the inside of my outdoor gear sack, as he stands shuddering, and it’s now I realize his trousers are wet at the crotch.
‘Oh, Harry . . .’ I pull off his wet things too, and help him clamber up into the driver’s seat together. Our shoes go inside the sack last of all, which I hang from the excess cord off the back of the driver’s seat alongside my pack. Finally, I can tug the door shut, clunking us locked and safe as Harry crumples in my lap.
‘We’re alright,’ I whisper, over and over, as I rock him. Slowly his shudders relax into shivers and his cries into sniffs.
I open his mandarins, but he just sits there, hugging the tin.
Yet a weight has lifted off me with Harry safe inside the car. The Cruiser a new safe bubble. The windows are scratched and filthy, with white fractures perhaps from failed attempts to get inside, but they’re intact – bulletproof according to Jack’s letter. He must be right: every other car in the garage has been smashed into by debris or scavengers.
I abandon the idea of going back upstairs for those last sacks of winter supplies. I can’t leave Harry down here and can’t face forcing him through the dark again . . . and neither of us will want to come back down if we both go up. And if we sleep in our own bed, what then? Come tomorrow, Sim might make things harder.
The possibility of Jack alive and in Derbyshire swirls inside me. I feel years late, every moment still here painful, wasted. I can’t allow Sim to prevent us – anger flashes, making the Fear ebb a bit. Enough that I gently untangle myself from Harry, stowing away his untouched mandarins and settling him in the passenger seat in his dry clothes and just his mask, and make myself climb back out into the garage and into my outdoor things.
‘Mummy!’ Harry’s eyes are wild with the door shut between us, those frown lines that are so like mine creasing his forehead. ‘The air’s funny – I can’t breathe!’ He sucks at his mask, holding it tight to his face, as if it’s a snorkel and the air’s been cut off, until I open the door a crack again.
‘It’s just old in here. Nothing bad can get inside,’ I say, ‘just like our flat.’ I place the air meter on the dash and he peers at it closely.
Slowly he nods, looking around properly, worried eyes returning to mine. ‘I’m not really Outside here?’
I shake my head. ‘Just promise not to open anything, might still be dust in hidden places.’ I leave the door ajar, Harry watching and needing a thumbs up and my mask lifted for a snatched smile before I step away.
Jack hid the wheels – stacked sideways to preserve the rubber – in the back, inside the hard impenetrable shell of the Cruiser. I cover them with the horrible nylon groundsheet to avoid any flurries of dust contaminating Harry’s precious airspace as I roll and heave each one out – thudding awfully to the ground. I strain to listen for any sign someone’s heard us as I pull the back seats upright and fretfully wipe at dust in the crevices and grooves of the boot, before throwing the groundsheet down to cover it all, stowing our bags of supplies – secure and stable – on top, and shutting the boot up again. I have a moment of panic, worried for Harry and fighting the urge to rush back upstairs, clean him up properly and seal us inside the flat.
But I focus on the work. The tyres grind unnervingly along the ground in the dark, the torch balanced in one hand. I try to focus on Harry safe inside the secure body of the Cruiser, and Jack’s note, and on the training Adders used to make me do in the gym, pushing weighted prowler sleds and lifting kettlebells. And not the darkness. Not something grabbing and pinning me down, not Sim somewhere in Hitchin.
The Cruiser is already jacked high enough to roll the first wheel into position and I fumble for the wheel studs Jack described in his letter.
Moths flutter at my back. I strain, inching the heavy wheel round on the spot until I can feel the studs catching.
I hear Adders’ voice in my mind as it clunks solidly into place: There it is!
Cheered, I screw on each wheel nut with the wheel wrench until they’re tight and the wrench clicks.
As I squat at the back wheel, I notice gouged striations on the fuel cover that weren’t there earlier. I reach a hand out to feel the sharp, jagged edges and tug at the cover to reassure myself Sim didn’t get inside it yet.
Unnerved, I keep working. And with the last wheel on and the jack stands dismantled, I find a manual foot pump in the boot to top up the air in the soft tyres, despite it not being on Jack’s list, and with only a vague idea of how hard to make them. When I’m done, I stay crouched, hands smarting and body aching, breathless again. I realize I am wedged between the side of the Cruiser’s dusty bonnet and a caked concrete pillar. The torch throbs. My skin cools quickly, sweaty and itchy under my clothes – only my face burning still and irritated by the dust where it’s not covered by my mask and hood. Now that the job’s done, fear of the dust and the dark squeeze at me again.
Harry blinks out at me from the driver’s window, a little bundled-up grey figure in the pale flickering light.
Guilt wells up. All the times I’ve returned to the flat to a scared and clingy Harry, and wet floors or nappies when he was smaller. All that I’ve put him through today . . . and now, trying to wrench him from all he knows.
I grimace suddenly at the sight of a small splintered ribcage amongst the leaves and grit beneath the car, near to the driver’s side wheel I’ve just finished working on. Someone tried to take shelter here. Someone small who was all alone.
Harry’s thin little hand on my dusty shoulder makes me jump. He squeezes. Twice.
‘Don’t touch that!’ But I fly to my feet, the torch flaring. ‘What?’ I whisper, straining to hear dreaded footsteps, waving away singed moths and their tiny smoking trails in the air around me.
Harry points. Fingers of dust reach down from the roof towards the heat of the torch, snapping and sparking, making the air thick and acrid. Making me feel ever more conspicuous in this dark corner of the garage. But blinking my stinging eyes, I see what Harry’s spotted through the barred windows of the garage. A light. Up high in the far-most block of flats. Moving down a stairwell.
My heart thunders. I force Harry to wipe his hand clean. Then with the torch pulsating and stretching into a thin desperate flame, I force myself away from him and the Cruiser and towards the shutter at the entrance of the communal garage.
I watch that light moving – second floor. My boots crunch too loud across the ground, my breath hitching the faster I go.
There’s no manual crank to wind the shutter up and the reel won’t budge when I reach up and try to turn it. I give the shutter a frustrated shove. It rattles, a firm web of thick resisting metal glinting in the torchlight.
The smoky flickering light of my torch picks out long thick nails hammered just under the shutter reel like broken teeth, stopping the shutter from being wound up. Fresh silver scratches mark the red-rusted metal. Sim! On tiptoes I tug uselessly at the nearest nail.
I turn, sprinting back towards the Cruiser, the torch guttering out, blackness racing in to smother me.
The bones under the car and the many I know are all around us feel like monsters suddenly waking up in the darkness, joining the chase like that light in the block behind me. I imagine how quickly something undead might pick itself up and close in on me, its bones and rotten flesh somehow stronger than me, smelling of death and musk and man.
I blunder in the dark, choking on panic, reaching out for the Cruiser, until my eyes start readjusting. A flash of Harry’s frightened eyes through the windscreen. And instead of black everywhere, I can see greys and edges. A thin spread of moonlight. I find the driver’s door and scrape the crisper key of the two into the ignition. Nothing. The Fear throbs. But I force myself to remember Jack left us one last thing to try.
Little fingers cling to my elbow. ‘Mummy, don’t go—’
But I’ve already pinged the bonnet open with the lever and felt my way to it, locating the battery and straining to get the wires of the jump-starter on correctly in the dark. Right side was red. Red is positive.
I scramble back to the driver’s side, feeling for the ignition with the key again, excitement threading its way into the Fear. That light in the distance at ground level now.
But I fumble it, the key slipping loose – a dull flash of silver swimming down into the blackness of the footwell. Frantic, I grope for it, growing hot at the thought of disturbing whatever’s accumulated in the crevices and at shedding caked dust from my overalls into Harry’s airspace.
It’ll start.
Jack’s voice is clear and calm in my head. It makes me pause, take a breath.
I rip out of my overalls and gloves in the cold garage, reaching into my trouser pocket for the other key with its worn metal and fat fob, letting my breath out slowly as I feel for the ignition with my finger and plant the key carefully in. As it turns, I brace everything. The engine whirrs twice and then hums into life. We both yelp as it reverberates through us – so much louder than I remember. A gentle glow rises from the dashboard, picking out Harry’s face in greenish highlights.
My hands are sticky with sweat as I yank off the jump-starter, shut the bonnet, and bolt back to the driver’s door. My outdoor gear – roughly shaken and balled up – is slung inside the sack, a sterile cloth daubed over my hands and face, just my mask kept on.
‘OK, here goes,’ I whisper as I strap us both in.
My feet tremble over the pedals as I try to remind myself how this works: clutch, brakes, accelerator. I switch on the sidelights – though only one works – and not the full headlight beams, as if even now I’m trying to be discreet. The lowest point of the shutter is well below my eyeline.
‘Harry’ – I stare at that shutter and the too-small gap beneath it – ‘close your eyes for the first bit, OK?’ I want to promise it won’t be scary, but I can’t. ‘Remember how we flew across the carpet in the box upstairs?’ I reach a hand across to squeeze his, once.
I shove the gearstick into first, then grab the handbrake and push it, juddering, down.
A tentative tap on the accelerator and the engine revs. I hold it, but we don’t move – the brake pads must be rusted on after all this time! I press harder – foot to the floor, engine growling, clutch starting to stink of burning rubber – and cheer as the wheels suddenly ‘pop’ and we lurch forwards.
Harry’s hands fly to the edges of his seat but he lets out a brief brave – unconvincing and truncated – whoop alongside mine. The wheel joints squeal and the engine pumps loudly as we move through the confines of the garage. We speed up sickeningly, the shutter hurtling towards us.
Then there’s an awful squealing of metal as the shutter crumples and we punch through.
14
We’re out! I hold my chest, my lungs tight, making my breath shallow and fast. Head fuzzy. Cruiser still rolling forwards.
‘Alright, Harry?’ I can’t move, the seat belt has me pinned to the chair. ‘Harry?’ The dash lights tremble in the dark.
‘Mummy!’ His little voice is gasping.
I wipe at condensation on the windscreen, but still can’t see much through the scratched, dirty glass and with just the one dull and now blinking sidelight on. Except – just there – the shifting and fuzzy glow of a light somewhere ahead. Pressing my foot down again, I weave us forwards, squelching and crunching through bobbing saplings and piles of leaves, branches and roof tiles, guttering and decayed packaging. Harry jerks from his window as we pass night-grey thickets of snowberry bushes. This feels fast, even though the comforting but still trembling dash lights show barely twenty miles per hour. I feel a nervous giggle bubbling inside me. I remember learning to drive and having this same sensation: of going faster than I think I might be able to control.
Harry’s cry makes me look up, feeling sick. I flick the headlights on, the dull beam picking out leaves and kicked-up dust in all shades of grey – making me slam my hands across the air vents, but they’re all closed already. Through the debris, the yellow-grey light also lands on cars parked either side of us, and four people spilling across the gap ahead, leaving little room for us to get past.
I feel myself lift off the accelerator a touch.
Punch it! Jack’s voice shouts. They’re playing chicken with you.
I think he’s right, but I’m not sure I can zoom at people as if prepared to plough them down.
We’re metres away now. I’m wound tight in my seat, clasping the steering wheel, the darkness smothering everything but what’s straight ahead. Sim is shouting, face scrunched and eyes blazing. And I can’t help seeing him as an angry, snarling dog.
There’s a split second where I wish I could explain, convince them not to think badly of me. Yet the Fear – overwhelming, blinding – is pounding, my throat and lungs itching. And I pull Jack into my mind, his hand firmly in Harry’s. Me and Harry: we have to do this.
And that little warm glow of hope that’s been there since I read the letter has me veering right – hard, the wheel stickier and heavier to turn than it should be. The Cruiser bounces over pavement and scrapes along the wall of the next building, the whipping of grass and weeds and mounds of fungi sounding underneath us, leaves and dust whirling. Harry is frozen, silent, face scrunched tight. I yelp, yanking the wheel to avoid a dead tree trunk, plunging us through night-grey vegetation.
Then we’re springing back over the kerb into the car park again. Something metallic clangs on the bottom of the car, and clunk, the front end hits a stationary vehicle – our headlights and dash lights wobbling, the other vehicle skidding aside as I accelerate harder.
And we’re free, bumping out of the estate and onto Whinbush Road, leaving the shouting behind us. I flick on the indicators by habit, the green glow pulsing erratically: click-click-click.
I snap them off again, wrenching the wheel one way then the next, avoiding bricks and more roof tiles, a shopping trolley, the prostrate shape of something awful. The windscreen wipers are smearing dust and squashed moths across the scratched glass as I wipe desperately at condensation on the inside, heaters not working – finally having to unwind my window to try to stop it fogging up.
Beside me, Harry thrashes to get free of his seat belt, crying.
The streets are dark and grey, empty – but I’m afraid to stop, even for a moment, with the headlights trembling and blinking, giving us only snatches of the view ahead, and making me fear the engine will conk out. So we hurtle through the streets like a dodgem car, derelict parked vehicles along the kerbs feeling – like they did when I was learning to drive – perilously close, and our front wheels clicking and complaining, that metallic clang still sounding from the rear bumper as if part of it is hanging off.
By the time we’re heading towards the A1(M) junction, smashing through drifts of fallen leaves and saplings sprouting right from the tarmac, releasing clouds of dust, Harry has wriggled free and is clambering into my lap.
Down the slip road we go, Harry curling into a tight ball, heaving great sobs against my chest.
We swerve past old cars and then speed north on the wrong side, hysterical laughter bubbling up out of me. The accelerator pedal keeps going softer then harder, the dash lights flicking to ‘electric mode’ for a second, only to nearly cause us to stall without any power coming from the electric motor, then back to ‘fuel engine’ with a rev. The sensors seem stuck, showing the battery as nearly fully charged on the dash – perhaps how it was when Jack last had the car running – when I know it must be weak or flat.
‘No more bangs!’ Harry cries, hands ready at his ears.
‘Sorry.’ I squeeze his arm gently as I search for a way to stop the hybrid system trying to switch to electric. ‘I promise to tell you if I know a big one’s coming, OK? We might have to get used to the little ones though.’
‘I want to go to bed. Had enough of Outside!’
I leave his words hanging between us, afraid to answer. After a while, my breathing settles and so do Harry’s sobs, and I sink lower in my seat, becoming accustomed to his weight sinking into me, and the illuminated yellow-grey patch of road ahead of us. Shrubs, saplings and old cars are black as we zigzag through, a constant scraping and clonking, disturbing puffs of dust and sudden streams of fluttering moths. The night sky is whale blue-grey, flecked with white, just like barnacles on its great back. Shit, I think, I’m tired. And dawn is hours away.
‘Are they pushing?’ Harry suddenly cranes to look behind us, worried.
It takes me a second to understand he means the men. ‘No, it’s got an engine. It burns—’
‘Like the wood stove?’
‘Sort of. And that turns the wheels.’
‘Wow!’ Harry reaches to pat the still-white interior metal frame, gently, like he might the gleaming shell of Emer the shield bug.
‘There’s more trees, Mummy!’ He points. ‘Why are those houses in the dark all short and fat?’
‘The buildings near our flat were just tall.’
‘Which one is ours? Where are the big poplar trees?’
Harry keeps straining to look around at the dark silhouettes, before abruptly hunching over and vomiting into the footwell, his mask flying down with it.
‘Does your throat hurt?’ I snatch glances down at him, trying to see if it’s just vomit or blood too that he is wiping away with his sleeve.
He mumbles a reply.
I panic, mind full and swirling, tears prickling, before I force myself to take a breath.
‘Lift your face.’ I hold his chin up, slowing so I can make quick inspections of his mouth, nose and eyes, the green glow of the dashboard making him look ghoulish and sick. Finding nothing, I help him swivel round on my lap, putting his hands on the steering wheel. ‘Is it the movement? Sit up properly and look straight ahead, it’ll help.’
