Aftermath

49

It hadn’t taken long for the Duchess’ prospective passengers to empty the supplies from the back of the truck and get ready to leave. They were loading the last few scraps and searching around the jetty for extra lifejackets when a noise distracted them. It was another truck approaching.

“Michael and the others?” Harry wondered.

“Must be,” Richard said.

“I’m not so sure,” Zoe said. They both looked at her and she explained. “I assume he knows his way around here?”

“Yes, why…?”

“Because whoever that is,” she continued, “they don’t have a fucking clue. Listen. They’re driving up and down the main roads, probably trying to find this place.”

“Shit,” Harry cursed. He knew she was probably right. “We need to get going.”

“You get the boat moving, I’ll get back to the helicopter,” Richard said. “I’ll take a couple with me, just in case.”

With that he turned and started to run. Harry watched him go, people suddenly crisscrossing around him, being marshaled by Zoe.

“One last flyover first,” he shouted, “remember?”

Richard stopped. “There’s no point while it’s still dark.”

Harry knew he was right. There was no chance of seeing anything yet. “But you will come back.”

“Once I’ve got you lot safely on your way.”

With that Richard ran on, closely followed by two others.

Zoe and Charlie Moorehouse remained on the jetty as the others boarded the Duchess. They were both armed with batons, although neither knew if they’d be able to fight. Harry wished he had his sword. Bloody hell, he couldn’t even remember where he’d left it. He was about to do a final head count and check everyone was accounted for when a van sped down the sloping road which led into the marina. It skidded to a halt just short of the Duchess.

“Let’s go,” Harry said, pushing Moorehouse onto the boat. “Get out of here before they start shooting at us.”

“Wait!” awoman shouted from over by the truck. Zoe took a few steps forward. It wasn’t Jas. It was Melanie, Bayliss, and Paul Field.

“Let us on, Zoe,” she said. “Please.”

“Where’s Jas?”

“He’s coming. He’s probably not far behind us. Please!”

Field and Bayliss approached, their arms loaded with more stuff from the back of their truck.

“There’s a few more boxes in there,” Bayliss said. “We should take as much as we can.”

Harry looked up. He could hear another engine approaching now. Was this another trick? An attempt to delay them so Jas could get his precious supplies back?

“Fuck the food,” he said. “We’ve got enough.”

“Please let us on,” Melanie said, tears streaking her face.

“Don’t trust them,” Zoe said. “They’re with Jas.”

“Not anymore,” she sobbed. “We just want to get away from here, same as you do. Please, Zoe…”

What choice do we have? Harry asked himself. I don’t know any of these people. But I know one thing: if any of them try anything, I’ll kick the fuckers overboard.

“Get on,” he said, and all three of them pushed past, clearly desperate to get away. Harry undid the mooring rope, then jumped back onto the boat. The Duchess felt uncomfortably low in the water. He pushed his way through to the cabin and took the controls. He fired up the engine and the noise and sudden movement was reassuring.

“He’s coming!” someone shouted from the stern of the boat. Harry looked back and through the sea of heads filling almost every available square inch of deck space behind him, he saw another vehicle driving down toward the jetty.

*   *   *

Jas jumped out of the beaten-up old Renault which had once belonged to Shirley Brinksford’s husband, and screamed with frustration and anger as the boat sailed away from the jetty. Ainsworth stood a short distance behind him, too scared to run.

They looked up as the helicopter flew overhead, guiding the Duchess away from the mainland and out toward Cormansey.

50

“Fuck me, it’s cold,” Michael said, wrapping his arms around himself before heading upstairs to check the bedrooms for some clean and dry clothes. Caron was in the kitchen looking for food, while Howard and Kieran were busy exploring the rest of the building, each of them finding the situation they were in unexpectedly strange. This sudden return to something almost resembling normality was jarring.

Lorna was in the living room with Hollis. By the looks of things he’d barely used the rest of the house, preferring to remain in this one room.

“I didn’t want to go far,” he explained. “I knew I wasn’t welcome in the castle anymore, but I still didn’t want to cut myself off completely so I decided to stay close. You can see the castle gate from upstairs. I thought you’d all leave at some point, and I thought I might be able to tag on with some of you.”

“We are leaving,” she said. “You heard the helicopter, didn’t you?”

“Thought I was imagining it at first,” he said, sounding close to tears. “What with all the grief I’ve been having with my ears, I didn’t think it was real. I thought I’d got tinnitus or something like that.”

“Did you see the truck leave?”

“What truck?”

“A few hours after the helicopter, some of them got away in a truck.”

“Didn’t see it. Tell you the truth, I fell asleep. I mean, I kept watch for a while after the helicopter had gone, but I figured that was probably it.”

“You daft bugger.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “If I’m honest, I felt so bad about what happened to Steve that getting away was the important part. That’s all I was really bothered about.”

“What happened to Steve wasn’t your fault.”

“I didn’t help matters, though.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. Anyway, like I said, we are getting away. We’re going to an island.”

Harte stood in the doorway, watching the two of them talking. It saddened him to see Hollis like this: a shell of the man he used to be. Irrespective of the low light, the expression on his face was hard to read. He didn’t seem to show any emotion when Lorna told him about the island. He either hadn’t heard properly, he didn’t believe her, or he just didn’t care anymore. Feeling like he was intruding, Harte walked away to look around the rest of the house again.

He’d found no bodies since they’d been here, save for a single motionless corpse he’d seen by torchlight outside, curled around the bottom of a rotary washing line. Whoever it was, it looked like hanging out the laundry had been the very last thing they’d done before their life had been brutally truncated. They’d managed to peg out a few items of clothing, and there they’d remained hanging for months: a couple of towels, a floral summer dress, a few items of children’s underwear … The clothes were little more than rags now, weather-beaten and faded. Before he’d even realised what he was doing, Harte found himself trying to fit together the pieces of the family whichght have lived here. A little girl, seven or eight years old, perhaps living with her mom (surely that was who it was lying dead in the garden). On a worktop in the kitchen he found an opened letter addressed to Mr. John Prentice. He wondered what John used to do for a living … tried to imagine where he might have been when he’d died. Had he