The Fearless (4 page)

‘When I say run, we run,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t stop until we get to Sol’s house.’

I heard the back door rattle, and a bang as if someone had kicked it hard. Then another, and a splintering sound. I looked over my shoulder to see the Fearless woman clambering through the hole she’d kicked in the door, her lips pulled back in a snarl.

‘
Quick!
’ Mum hissed. We slipped out of the front door and Mum locked it. Then we dragged the recycling bin and the rubbish bin, both of which were almost full, in front of it. ‘
Go!
’ Mum said in my ear.

I got to the gate first, fumbling with the latch. From inside the house there was an animal-sounding howl, and then a gruff shout: ‘
It’s locked!
’ I wrenched the gate open and ran out into the lane, Mum staggering after me. Pure terror sang through my veins; I could hardly breathe. When I looked over my shoulder I saw Mum clutching her knife in one hand, the other pressed against her bump, her hair hanging in sweat-soaked strings around her face.

‘Keep going,’ she gasped. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

I heard that howl again, echoing up into the trees, and crashes as the Fearless tried to break down the front door. I tried to run faster, but my legs felt weak; I wasn’t sure I could keep going. Acid burned up into my throat, nearly choking me.

Behind me, Mum moaned and fell to her knees on the track.

I ran back to her. Another shout – ‘
There’s something in front of the door!
’ – and more crashes drifted towards us. ‘Mum, get up!’ I said, frantically tugging on her arm. She shook her head. She’d dropped her knife. ‘You go, Cass. Run. Get to Sol’s.’

‘No, I’m not leaving you!’

I heard the sound of glass breaking. It sounded as if the Fearless had given up trying to get out of the front door and were smashing their way out through a window instead. I pleaded with Mum to get up. Then I heard another sound from the top of the lane.

A car.

It was coming towards us, fast.

Headlights burst out of the darkness, so bright they blinded me, and the shriek of the engine filled my ears. There was no time to get out of the way. I flung a hand across my eyes, screaming, hearing Mum screaming too, time seeming to slow as I waited for the car to slam into us, and wondering how much it would hurt.

The vehicle jerked to a halt just inches away from us, the engine stalling. I heard a door open. Then a voice. ‘Clare? Cass?’

Mr Brightman.

He helped me to my feet, then Mum. ‘Where’s Pete?’ he asked her and, when she didn’t answer him, ‘Clare?
Where is he?
’

‘He’s – he—’ I started to say, but the words stuck in my throat.

‘They were soldiers!’ Mum said. ‘
British soldiers!
’

Mr Brightman stared at us, his face pale in the light from the Range Rover’s headlamps.

Down the lane, I heard the Fearless woman call, ‘
Come on! I heard them!
’ and one of the men make a roaring sound.

Mr Brightman ran back to the Range Rover, yanking open the back door. ‘Get in, quick.’

I scrambled in next to Sol, who was sitting bolt upright. In the front, Mrs Brightman was gazing out through the windscreen. She didn’t look round as Mum clambered in too and sat with her arms across her bump, bent over.

‘Mum,’ I said as Mr Brightman slammed the door and got back into the front. ‘
Mum
. Are you OK?’

Then I heard a ratcheting sound from the front of the Range Rover. Mr Brightman was holding a gun with a long double barrel.

‘Everyone strapped in?’ he said as he opened the window next to him a few inches. ‘This could be a bumpy ride.’

I quickly fastened my seatbelt, and helped Mum with hers.

‘I’ve locked the doors,’ Mr Brightman said. ‘Everyone hold on, OK?’

He twisted the keys in the ignition, revved the engine, and we jolted forwards. Even with my seatbelt on, I had to cling to the edge of the seat. The Range Rover bounced down the potholed lane, Mr Brightman steering with one hand and pointing the gun out of the window with the other.

Suddenly, a shape jumped in front us, silhouetted in the headlights. The Fearless woman. There was a thump and the Range Rover skidded sideways. Sol, his mum and I screamed. Mr Brightman swore and yanked on the steering wheel, never slowing. He fired the gun out of the window once, twice. ‘
Simon, slow down!
’ Mrs Brightman shrieked at him.

‘Slow down?’ he yelled. ‘Are you crazy, woman?’

He fired again, and at last, we reached the road. Mr Brightman put the gun down on the floor between the seats. I sat back, trembling.

To start with, the road was empty, but not for long. As we drove, we started to see more vehicles – cars, vans, even buses and lorries – heading in the opposite direction.

‘Simon, don’t you think we should be going north too?’ Mrs Brightman asked as Sol and I twisted round to see if anyone was following us, and saw nothing but the dark, empty road behind us. ‘If the Fearless have come up from the coast—’

‘Diane,
look
at them,’ Mr Brightman said, indicating the slowly-moving lines of traffic on the other side of the road, the vehicles’ headlights shining brightly into the Range Rover. ‘They’re going nowhere, and the Fearless’ll pick them off like flies. Hope is ready. All we have to do is get there.’

I gazed out of the window at the vehicles on the other side of the road, trying to process the knowledge that I’d never see Dad again; that the life I’d always known had come to a sudden, brutal end. There was still part of my brain that kept insisting all of this was a dream, and that soon, I’d wake up back in my own bed, and nothing would have changed.

The inside of the Range Rover filled with dazzling light. I saw a pair of headlights on our side of the road, coming straight towards us. Mr Brightman swore and hauled on the wheel. The other car swerved too, just in time to avoid ploughing into us, and bumped off the road into the ditch. ‘Idiot,’ Mr Brightman snarled.

‘Cass,’ Sol whispered. It was the first time he’d spoken since Mr Brightman rescued me and Mum. ‘What did they look like? The Fearless, I mean?’

I swallowed. ‘Like – like ordinary people,’ I whispered back.
Except for the eyes
, I reminded myself.
Don’t forget the eyes.

A shiver wrenched down my spine.

Mr Brightman had been right about the traffic on the other side of the road. By the time we reached the motorway it had stopped moving altogether. People were sounding their horns, but there was nowhere they could go. We kept having to swerve to avoid people driving up our side, and at one point, we passed a van that had crashed into the central reservation, its front caved in, another car all the way up the steeply sloping verge opposite with its windows smashed and its tyres shredded. We were the only people who seemed to be going south.

Then I started to see them: shadows and shapes, trying doors and thumping their fists against windows. We were going so fast it was hard to see them properly, and I wondered if I was imagining them.

Right until one of them leaped over the central barrier and out in front of the Range Rover, and Mr Brightman tried to swerve and didn’t manage it. A body flipped up onto the bonnet and a face thumped against the windscreen: a snarling, bloody face with silvery eyes. I screamed. Somehow, Mr Brightman kept going, swinging the Range Rover from side to side until the Fearless let go and slid off the bonnet, leaving a spider-web of cracks on the windscreen where he’d hit it with his head. One of the headlights was out too. As we sped forwards I saw his body tumbling towards the steep bank at the side of the motorway, and then he was gone.

Beside me, Mum let out a cry, arching her back, her eyes screwed shut. ‘Mum!’ I shouted. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘The baby,’ she groaned through clenched teeth. ‘It’s coming.’

Mr Brightman glanced back over his seat. ‘What did she say?’

‘She says she’s having the baby!’ I said. Mrs Brightman twisted her head to look round over the seat, her eyes wide. ‘
What?
’

Mr Brightman swore again. ‘Clare, we’re half an hour away if the road stays clear. Just hang on, OK?
Hang on
. I’m going as fast as I can.’

Mum hung her head, grinding her teeth together, lost in her own little world of pain.

I reached for Sol’s hand and we clung to each other, our fingers locked tight.

Not long after that, we turned off the motorway, leaving the lines of traffic behind. But even though the narrow lanes we were racing along were almost empty, and the few cars we did pass were heading towards the motorway despite Mr Brightman’s frantic gestures for them to turn round, in my head, I was still there. I kept thinking about the Fearless making their way along the rows of cars; finding doors that were unlocked or smashing windows; reaching in to—

No, no, no, don’t think about that
, I told myself.

Mum hadn’t said a word since she told us the baby was coming. What if she gave birth right here in the Range Rover? I had no idea how to help someone have a baby. I don’t think
any
of us did – Dad was the doctor and he . . .

Don’t think about that either.

And the baby was coming early . . . one of my friends’ brothers was born three months early last year. They got him to hospital, but there was something wrong with his lungs, and he—

STOP, OK?
I ordered myself.

We drove through a village where lights blazed from windows, doors stood open and, in one driveway, a car burned so fiercely I could feel the heat of the flames through the window as we passed. And nearby . . .

‘Don’t look, kids,’ Mr Brightman said in a shaky voice, but it was too late. I’d already seen the man and the woman lying unconscious on the ground, the orange glow from the flames flickering across their faces. A figure crouched over them, binding their wrists with rope. Nearby, another small group of people sat on the ground, also tied up, their faces slack with despair.

I closed my eyes, so far beyond being scared now that I didn’t even know what I felt any more.
A bad dream, a bad dream, a bad dream
, I chanted over and over inside my head, as if saying it enough times would make it come true.

Once we were out of the village, Mr Brightman slowed the Range Rover down. ‘Diane,’ he said. ‘I need you to hold the gun while I look out for the turning.’

He tried to hand it to her, but she batted it away. ‘Get that thing away from me!’

‘Diane—’

‘I don’t want it! I don’t want
any
of this!’

‘Well, I hate to tell you this, but you don’t have a choice!’ Mr Brightman bellowed at her, and for some reason hearing Sol’s parents yelling at each other made my terror sharp and real again in a way nothing else had been able to. Tears welled up in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

‘Mum, Dad,
stop it
!’ Sol cried, bursting into tears as well.

‘Don’t you
dare
shout at me, Solomon!’ Mrs Brightman snapped.

Mum screamed, her head thrown back, tendons standing out in her neck.

‘Hold on, Clare!’ Mr Brightman shouted. ‘Ten more minutes!’

He thrust the gun at Mrs Brightman again, hunching forwards over the steering wheel and trying to see where he was going in the light from the remaining headlamp. A bright full moon had risen overhead, but trees covered the road, and the moonlight only broke through in a few places.

Then he exclaimed, ‘There!’ and yanked hard on the wheel. Through my tears, I saw a sign that said
Dockyard ½ mile. Permit holders only. Trespassers will be prosecuted
flash past.

A high chain-link fence flanked the road we were on now. Mr Brightman stamped on the accelerator and we surged forward, the engine howling. Mum cried out again. ‘Nearly there!’ Mr Brightman said.

Ahead, I saw lights. Mr Brightman put the brakes on so suddenly I was thrown forward and my seatbelt locked, biting into my neck. ‘This is it,’ he said, grabbing the gun back from Mrs Brightman. ‘All of you stay here. I’m going to find someone who can help us with your mum, Cass. When I get out, lock the doors behind me. Don’t unlock them till I come back.’

When he’d gone, Mrs Brightman jabbed a button on the dashboard, and I heard the locks clunk. The only other sound was Mum’s rapid breathing. Peering through the windscreen, I saw other cars in front of us, parked all over the place, and beyond them, huge buildings and gigantic cranes silhouetted in the moonlight.

Mr Brightman returned a few minutes later with another man carrying a powerful torch, a rifle strapped to his back. He tapped on the window, making us all jump. Mrs Brightman unlocked the doors again. ‘This is Ian Denning,’ Mr Brightman said, indicating the man with the rifle. He was about Dad’s age, and had a light-coloured moustache and sandy hair. ‘We’re going to get your mum to a boat, Cass. You and Sol stick with us, OK? Diane, I need you to get the bags out of the back.’

‘I can’t carry all those! They’re too heavy!’ Mrs Brightman said, sounding outraged.

‘So just take the essentials!’ Mr Brightman said. ‘For God’s
sake
, Diane!’

Mrs Brightman muttered something and pushed her door open. As she stamped round to the back of the Range Rover I saw she was wearing a pencil skirt and little heels.

It took her for ever to pick which bags to take, and watching her, I realized Mum and I had left everything at the house. All we had with us were the clothes we were wearing.

‘Diane, hurry up, for crying out loud.’ Mr Brightman marched to the back of the Range Rover and started pulling bags out himself. ‘These’ll do. Sol can carry his rucksack.’ Ignoring Mrs Brightman’s protests, he slammed the boot shut and hefted one of the bags onto his own back.

‘Ready?’ he asked me and Sol as he put an arm around Mum. We nodded. ‘OK, Clare, we need you to walk as fast as you can. Kids, stay close. You too, Diane.’

Mrs Brightman scowled at him. Her hair was coming out of its clip and hanging in her face.

We followed Mr Brightman and Ian Denning, who were helping Mum walk, through the haphazardly parked cars towards another set of gates, where people were standing in a messy, jostling queue. Some people were crying. Others had stunned expressions on their faces, as if they couldn’t believe this was happening. A girl my age with long hair even curlier than mine was lying on the ground screaming, despite her mother’s pleas to calm down.