I sat up, leaning to the front of the house. For a second I wondered where I was and how I got there. Then came the sound of the truck and racket of thin metal resounding with hits and the high whir of power tools.
As the memories flooded back, I tried to calm my breath from racing away for a second time.
I decided not to look around the corner or to the body. I tried not to think of her name. I tried not to remember when I’d seen her around Cowithick so many times before. Outside the school. In the newsagents talking to Dan.
Mrs Finch. Madeline Finch. I tried not to remember her gossiping with Mum.
Screwing up my eyes, somehow I held back the scream as her face loomed in my mind with her smile looking back from around the shelves in the newsagent.
No, I told myself in silence and pressed my palms against the brick, leaning against the wall to steady myself as I rose to my feet. I held still as I let go of the wall.
Looking back in the direction of my hideout in the shop, I turned, for a fleeting moment considering peering back around the corner to see if it had really happened.
Despite knowing what I’d see, I couldn’t stop myself from taking those few steps to look, pausing only when I spotted the heap on the road. But it wasn’t a heap. She was a person. She was Madeline Finch.
About to turn away, a soldier at the checkpoint stepped away from the main group, rushing toward the one who’d issued the command. I heard him trying to talk but all I made out was dull noise. Nearly at his colleague, he pulled the gas mask from his face. The soldier he ran to shook his head.
Sweat poured down his bright red face as he looked between the other soldier and the woman’s body. I heard everything he shouted.
“Why? We don’t know if she was infected. We have to check first, then send them to quarantine. We can’t just kill everyone.”
The other soldier stepped toward him, slinging his rifle over his shoulder by the strap and pushed his hands out to stop the other man getting any closer. When the one without the mask continued to shake his head, the other soldier pulled off his mask, revealing his red sweating face.
“Those are not our orders, Private. Now get back to the line or I’m having your rifle.”
The private pushed out his weapon for the other to take. “I’m not killing our people without a very fucking good reason.”
“There’s no fucking cure. If we let any one of them live, we’re all fucked. You,” he said, jabbing his finger at the other’s chest. “Your wife and your unborn kid.”
I watched, unable to turn away from the exchange as the words slowly digested in my head. As I tried to think about what he was saying, both of them turned in my direction.
Ducking out of sight, I had no idea if they’d seen me and I ran, knowing I had no other choice but to get out of the village.
With the cold road felt through the thin soles of my slippers, thoughts of escape cycled in my head. There were two ways out by car, both using the single road cutting the village in half. The blocked north entrance was where I’d run from and I could only guess the southern entrance would be the same.
But Cowithick wasn’t some suburban housing estate. A handful of houses had plenty of space between them and there were many ways to get out of its circle and past the ring of meadow to the surrounding fields tall with corn in the summer.
This time of year they’d be fallow, not providing any cover if the army were patrolling. But in an area to the east, a little way from my house, an evergreen wood led out to the main road.
I knew the woods well, having played there since I could walk. We’d spent most of my childhood with friends, playing hide and seek and scaring ourselves half to death when we thought we’d got lost.
I once spent a night out there with my best friend Paul, but it was too creepy at night. Although we would never tell our parents the reason, it was the one and only time we had the courage to do so.
Noises kept us wide awake and we didn’t sleep a wink.
After that we played there less and less; our enthusiasm for the place had waned and we started taking school more seriously. When we discovered games consoles, we never visited again. But through the woods you could easily get to the junction of the main road whilst staying in perfect cover.
I thought of Paul as the echo of his name died in my head, thankful he was away with his parents seeing his grandad somewhere up north for Christmas.
The woods were the place to head to, but taking the direct route meant going past my house and reliving the nightmare that started this all off.
Still running in the opposite direction of the roadblock, my nerves pulsed as a loud gunshot flashed into the air, as if I’d been shot. Tripping over my slippers, I picked up my feet when I felt no pain and the echo fell away.
Soon I regained a rhythm and with the corner of the street opening out, I saw movement, a dark figure in my path. I didn’t linger to see if it was a crazed maniac or trigger-happy soldier.
Instead, diving to the left, I rushed past the short garden gate, glaring at the handle of the front door in hope it would open if I slapped it down.
Tripping up the steps I’d only just seen, my palms
