to check on Tom, who was still asleep on the back seat.
'Perfect. He sleeps, we worry.'
Ruth glanced at him askance. They had barely spoken since they had restarted the journey, lost in their own thoughts. 'Patience is a virtue,' she said.
'I don't trust him,' Church said quietly. 'I don't like being manipulated and that's what he's doing with all his talk that says nothing.' When he glanced at Ruth for a response, he saw how exhausted she looked; her experience at the service station was taking its toll. 'Why don't you close your eyes for a while?' he suggested.
She shook her head. 'Every time I do that, all I can see is that bastard coming at me in the toilets.'
'You'll get over it. I've seen you in action-you can cope with anything.'
'Is that what it looks like? In my head I feel like I've fought every step of the way through my life to keep it all from falling apart.' She watched the grey light disappearing over the horizon ahead. 'My dad always expected great things from me. He was the one who pushed me into the law. I think he had this idea I'd be some bigshot barrister.'
'Don't you like the job?'
'There were other things I could have done,' she said noncommittally. 'But I suppose my dad's attitude made me focused. Now I don't think I could loosen up if I tried.'
'You can never shake off those chains that keep you tied to the past, can you?' He thought of Marianne and the night swept in.
The driving was hard. There were too many lorries winding their way to Bristol, too many coaches with weekend trippers, cars bumper-to-bumper, filled with anxious, irritable people desperate to get out of the city for a breath of fresh air, even though they were destroying it with each piston pump and exhaust belch. Drivers threw themselves in front of Church in suicidal bids to win the race, forcing him to slam on the brakes, cursing through gritted teeth. There were a thousand accidents waiting to happen in sleepy eye and stressed hand; the desire to escape was voracious, coloured by all sorts of ancient impulses. Church put on London Calling by The Clash to drown out the noise of the traffic, but Ruth had turned it down before Strummer had barely started to sing so as not to wake Tom; Church couldn't tell if it was through kindness or because she was afraid of what their new companion might have to say.
Newbury and Hungerford were long gone and they were on the flat, unspoiled stretch of countryside somewhere near the Ridgway. Swindon's lights burned orange in the sky ahead. Church flexed his aching fingers off the steering wheel. It would be late by the time they reached Bristol and they still had to find somewhere to stay. In the back seat, Tom stirred, mumbled something, then hauled himself upright to lean on Church and Ruth's seats. 'We need to find something to eat,' he said bluntly.
'Right away, Tom,' Church replied acidly. 'Have to keep you well-fed after your long sleep.'
'Can we try to get along?' Ruth asked. 'This is a very small car for-' She paused suddenly.
'What's wrong?' Church asked.
Ruth leaned forward to peer through the windscreen. 'What's that?'
'What's what?' The traffic was too heavy for Church to take his eyes off the road.
'A flash of light in the sky over to the south-west.'
'A UFO? I can give you Barry Riggs' number if you like. I'm sure he'd like to take you to his secret base.'
'Maybe it was lightning,' Ruth mused, still searching the skies.
'Actually, Salisbury Plain's over there somewhere,' Church continued. 'They had a big UFO flap down near Warminster in the sixties when all the believers and hippies used to gather on the hilltops to wait for the mothership to come.' He glanced in the mirror to see if Tom would rise to the bait, but the man ignored his gaze.
There was another flash and this time they all saw it: among the clouds, lighting them in an orange burst like a firework. 'That's not lightning,' Church said. 'It's more like a flare.' His attention had wavered from the road and he had to brake sharply to avoid hitting the car in front, which had slowed down as the driver also saw the lights.
'How long until you can get off this road?' Tom asked sharply.
'We don't need to get off this road.'
'How long?'
The tone of his voice snapped Church alert. 'Not long. I remember a junction somewhere on the outskirts of Swindon. Why?' Church glanced in the mirror, but Tom had his face pressed against the passenger window scanning the night sky.
There was another burst of light somewhere above them, so bright that Church saw the ruddy glare reflected on the roofs of the cars around. Ruth gasped in shock.
'What's going on?' Church thumped the horn as another distracted driver strayed across the line into his lane. 'There's going to be a pile-up in a minute!'
Ruth tried to crane her neck to see upwards through the windscreen. 'I think there's something up there,' she said.
'Probably the army on helicopter manoeuvres with no thought for anyone else as usual,' Church said. 'Jesus Christ!' He swung the wheel to avoid hitting a motorbike weaving in and out of the traffic. The rider kept glancing up at the sky in panic as he gunned the machine. Cold water washed up Church's spine. The traffic had become more dense, with no space to overtake. He was glad he was in the slow lane, with the hard shoulder available for any drastic evasive action.
Tom was becoming more anxious by the second. 'We must leave this traffic as soon as possible,' he stressed.
'I'm doing the best I can,' Church snapped. 'Do you think I can pick up the car and run with it?'
Ahead of them something big swept across the motorway about thirty feet off the ground. It was just a blur, a block of darkness against the lighter night sky, but its size and speed made Church catch his breath.
'What the hell was that?' he exclaimed.
'My God,' Ruth whispered in awe. 'Was that alive?'
The shock rippled back through the vehicles in a slewing of wheels and a sparking of brake lights. A red Fiesta gouged a furrow along the side of a Beetle before righting itself. There was a burst of exploding glass as a car in the centre lane clipped the one in front. Both cars fishtailed, but miraculously kept going.
Church was afraid to take his eyes off the road, but he had the awful feeling that something terrible was about to happen. He wound down the window; above the rumble of the traffic he could hear an odd noise, rhythmic, loud, like the rending of thick cloth. After a second or two he suddenly realised what it sounded like: the beating of enormous wings.
He shifted the rearview mirror. Reflected in it was Tom's troubled face, his jaw set hard. 'What's going on?' Church barked. 'You know, don't you?'
Before Tom could answer, a column of fire blazed from the black sky on to a blue Orion, shattering all the windows with one tremendous blast and, a split second later, igniting the petrol tank. The car went up like it had been bombed. And then all hell erupted.
A shockwave exploded out, driving chunks of twisted metal and burning plastic like guided missiles, shattering windscreens, careening off roofs and bonnets, imbedding in doors and wings. The vehicles closest to the blast were the first to go. Some were travelling too fast and simply ploughed into the inferno. Others, attempting to avoid it, swerved, clipped other vehicles and set off a complex pattern of ricochets that rippled across the motorway. A lorry, its windscreen a mass of frosted glass, crushed a Peugeot before slamming into the side of a coach. The coach driver fought with the wheel as his vehicle went over on two wheels, then back on the other two, before toppling over completely in a bone-juddering impact that crushed two more cars. Church caught sight of terrified white faces through glass and felt his stomach churn.
And then there was chaos as vehicles thundered into each other, smashing through the central reservation, piling up twisted wreckage in a deafening Wagnerian cacophony of exploding glass, screeching tires and rending metal, until it seemed all six lanes were filled with death and destruction. The flames leapt from collision to collision, feeding on ruptured petrol tanks, until a wall of fire blazed across the whole of the motorway. Another column of fire lanced down from the heavens, blowing up a living fountain of flame that soared high above their heads.
