“Stay here,” he warned, making sure they all saw his gun. “Don’t any of you move a bloody muscle.”
* * *
* * *
Lorna pressed her face against the caravan window and watched the truck’s taillights disappear from view. Behind her, Kieran blocked the door.
41
“One of you get the gates closed,” Jas ordered as he tried to force the kitchen door open, “and put a fucking van in front of it to stop any other fucker getting out.”
Paul Field immediately jumped into action, keen to get away from Jas more than anything else. Melanie watched from a cautious distance as Jas shoulder-charged the door again and again. Inside the kitchen, Ainsworth tried to kick his way out in the gaps between Jas’s attempts to batter his way in. Eventually, between them, they’d done enough damage to the door to be able to get it open. Ainsworth staggered out into the cafe, as unsteady on his legs as any of the dead. Melanie shone a torch in his face and grimaced. He was badly bruised, one eye swollen shut. He dropped to his knees in front of Jas and spat out blood.
“What the hell happened to you?” Jas demanded. “Who did this?”
“Lorna,” he replied, barely able to speak her name.
Jas turned and glared at Melanie. “Find her.”
“But she’s probably gone—” Melanie started to say.
“They can’t have all got out. Get the rest of them rounded up.”
* * *
“So that all went well,” Kieran said. “Nice rescue attempt.”
“Fuck you,” Harte spat at him. “We got most people away.”
“But not all.”
“There’s still time,” Lorna said. “Jas can’t keep us locked up in here.”
“Seems to me like he’s going to try,” Kieran replied, looking through the window over Lorna’s shoulder. “See that? He’s got someone blocking the gate with a van.”
“Well, that’s us screwed then, isn’t it,” Howard moaned.
eight='0em' width='2em' align='justify'>“Not quite,” Kieran said. “There’s another way out.”
“Bullshit. You’re taking the piss,” Harte said quickly. Forgetting himself, he squared up to Kieran, who didn’t react.
“How do we know you’re not pulling a fast one on us?” asked Howard.
“You don’t. Now shut up and get out of sight. Someone’s coming.”
There was a sudden scramble as people disappeared into other rooms in the caravan and hid under beds. Lorna crouched under a melamine table in a cluttered dining area and listened as Kieran went outside. She could hear him talking, and she could hear Melanie’s voice too.
“Nah, I’ve checked in here,” he said, “it’s empty. They must have got away in that truck.”
“Jas is going mental. He’s scaring me, Kieran.”
“He’s been scaring me since it all kicked off this morning. Stick with Paul and Will and you might be okay.”
“You sure they’re not in there?”
“I’m telling you, Mel, this caravan’s empty. I was going to try around the cesspit next. Thought I heard people around there just now.”
Lorna heard footsteps moving away, then Kieran returned to the caravan. She poked her head above the table and he beckoned her out. She hissed for the others to come out from their hiding places too.
“So where’s this other exit?” Lorna asked. “I’ve never seen it.”
“How did you get in?” Howard asked Harte.
“We came in over the wall. Harry, the guy who just took off in the truck, was into rock climbing and all that stuff. The rope’s probably still there if you fancy it.”
“No need for that,” Kieran said. “There is another way.”
“Why should we believe you?” Lorna said. “You’ve been up Jas’s backside for days. You’re just bluffing…”
“I know how it must look, but I was just covering my back, that’s all. It seemed to make sense to stick close to the guy who was making most noise.”
“We can argue about this later,” Harte said. “Where’s this way out?”
“I’ve been here since the start,” Kieran explained. “I found this place on the morning everyone died and I decided to stay here. I didn’t think you could get anywhere much safer than a bloody castle.”
“So? Get to the point.”
“So ere only a few of us here to begin with, and we thought we’d got the place completely sealed off. But we were just sitting there one day, and Jackson appeared from out of nowhere.”
“How?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He found another way in. He got in through the bloody dungeons.”
“Okay, so how do we get out?”
“The exit’s at the back of the gift shop. Follow me and I’ll show you.”
42
Kieran led the others across the courtyard in darkness. Harte had barely taken two steps out of the caravan when someone grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. It was Michael.
“Thought you might have been on that truck.”
“No such luck,” Michael replied. “What’s going on?”
“The guy up front is Kieran,” Harte explained. “He says he knows another way out of here.”
“And can we trust him?”
“Don’t see as we have much choice right now.”
The small group—four men and two women now—walked across the courtyard rather than ran, taking a wide, indirect route to avoid Jas, Ainsworth, and the others, most of whom were gravitating around the van now blocking the gate. The door to the gift shop had been left open by Bayliss and Melanie when the sudden movement of the truck had abruptly interrupted their lovemaking.
“Who the fuck’s this?” Kieran asked as they crowded into the gift shop, Michael bringing up the rear and closing the door behind him.
“I’m Michael,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you too.”
“Michael’s the dad-to-be from the island,” Harte explained.
“Then what are you doing here, you muppet?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” he replied. “Now where’s this exit?”
“In here, somewhere,” Kieran said unhelpfully as he began searching through the few boxes of supplies which had been left in the gift shop. He found what he was looking for on a shelf—torches. It didn’t matter that they were novelty kid’s torches made in the shape of castle turrets, as long as they worked. He handed them around, then distributed packs of batteries from a wall display behind a long-unused till. Lorna was the first to get hers working. She shone it around the various faces.
“Michael, this is Howard, Caron, and Kieran.”
“And you’re all that’s left here now? Harry got the rest of you away?”
“As far as we can tell. I think everyone’s accounted for.”
“Too late now if they’re not,” he mumbled as he went deeper into the shop. “Now what exactly are we looking for?”
