Flare

Chapter 25

The car was wrecked. The blast from the shotgun had torn the engine into pieces that even Emily’s skills couldn’t reassemble, particularly not with the few tools we had to hand. The one thing that was on our side, however, was that the group had run off without their bags, leaving most of our own kit behind except the few items they’d pocketed.

Under Emily’s direction I worked quickly and silently, packing food, medicine and water into a rucksack and then adding the small stove and one of the bottles of gas, the other going in her Bergen when mine was full to bursting.

She took as much of the water as she could carry, along with the tent and all the utensils, then packed the rest of the space with food.

We tied our sleeping bags underneath, and Emily took the maps and torches from the car before picking up the shotgun and retrieving the box of shells.

She offered it to me but I shook my head. I couldn’t bear to touch it right now, although I knew I was making myself look weak.

In my heart I knew that she’d done the right thing. She’d saved my life, and in return all I could do was stare at her as if she were some kind of monster, but if it affected her in any way she didn’t show it.

Instead she worked with a practiced efficiency and within minutes we were ready to go.

“We need to find another vehicle,” she said as we began to walk, my ankle stiff but usable. “We’ll try for the next town, see if we have any luck.”

“What if we don’t find one?”

“Then we keep walking.”

And so we did. It was a long time since I’d done any serious exercise, and although Emily set a gentle pace I was soon gasping, my back bent under the weight of the rucksack and my socks beginning to rub uncomfortably in my trainers as they soaked through with sweat.

We met no one else on the road for the first hour, and neither of us suggested that we investigate the few houses that we passed. I was beginning to develop a healthy fear of anyone I didn’t know, and apart from a vehicle we had everything we needed.

As the day wore on the heat increased, giving me a headache that pulsed quietly in my temples. We were stopping for a few sips of water every couple of miles, but the truth was that we were sweating out far more than we were taking in and by late afternoon I wanted nothing more than to lie down in the shade and pant like a dog.

Occasionally we passed other people but they gave us a wide berth, some stepping off the road and into the fields or woods on either side when they saw the shotgun that Emily cradled in her arms. Only two cars went past us, one already full and the other speeding up and almost knocking us off the road in its haste.

The sun was on its way to the western horizon when we hit the motorway. The map told us it was the M3, the small lane we’d been following spilling us out onto the road with almost no warning.

It was strange to see such a huge stretch of road so empty, and I felt horribly exposed as we crossed it, climbing the central reservation and hurrying across to the far side and back onto the smaller road we needed to follow.

We didn’t talk much, both lost in our own thoughts and only discussing small things, such as which route to take when we consulted the map or letting the other know when we needed to find a convenient bush or tree.

I felt tired from more than just the unaccustomed exercise. Part of me was refusing to believe that I lived in a world where you could now kill someone with little or no consequence, where life was already becoming cheaper than a car boot full of food and water, but the rest of me knew I couldn’t go on hiding from reality.

If I was to survive, and more importantly help my daughter survive, I needed to get a grip on myself and learn to do whatever it took to keep going.

It’s a horrible thing to discover how weak you really are, and I was very much a product of my time, a latte drinking, crossword solving warrior of the written word, not someone who could shoot a person as calmly as if I was picking flowers.

I knew that I was being unfair to Emily. If I was a product of my time, she was as much a product of her training. She’d seen combat, spent most of her adult life in a profession where life was dear but death was a constant, very real threat, and she had acted to save us from that threat.

Without her, I’d most likely be a corpse on the side of a road somewhere, not living, breathing and still moving towards my daughter, no matter how far away we might still be.

As we trudged along the lane, surrounded on both sides by woods and fields that the evening sun cast in brilliant gold, I caught up with Emily, ignoring the twinge in my ankle as I picked up the pace.

“Thank you,” I said, and she turned her head to look at me as we walked, her expression unreadable.

“For what?”

“For saving us back there. I may have come across as a little ungrateful in the heat of the moment.”

She shook her head. “Not ungrateful, just, I don’t know, naïve maybe?”

I bridled at being called naïve, but if I was being honest with myself I couldn’t argue. We were in her world now, not mine, a world of quick thinking and life or death decisions, and it was something I wasn’t used to. Until last week, my hardest decision had usually been whether or not to have vanilla in my latte.

“I’m trying,” I said, looking for the right words to explain how I was feeling, “but it’s not easy. The way you shot that woman, no fear, no remorse. That’s not something I’m used to.”

Emily snorted. “Shows what you know.”

“Sorry?”

She stopped and turned to face me, brows furrowed in anger.

“There you are making all these grandiose proclamations when you don’t have a fucking clue. No fear, no remorse, my arse! I was scared shitless, but I’ve been taught to ignore the fear, push it aside so I can do what I need to do. And of course I feel remorse. You think I can shoot someone and not worry about it afterwards? All I can see is her face. I keep playing the moment over and over in my head, wondering if I could have done something different, if I acted too soon or too late. Besides, every time the shit hits the fan you run away and throw your guts up, so don’t go judging me until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes.”

She turned and strode off down the darkening lane, her back stiff and pace crippling. Not wanting to be left alone, even smarting with the rebuke, I hurried after her, my ankle beginning to hurt again after the day’s forced march.

I felt like I should be angry with her. She’d just told me that I was arrogant, thoughtless and absolutely no use when she needed me. She was being a little unfair, I thought, especially after I’d set the fire that allowed her and Ralph to escape, but I knew in my heart that she was right. If we were to get through this and bring Melody back safe, she needed me to be strong, perhaps ruthless, but certainly she needed me to step up more than I’d been doing so far.

I finally caught up as she reached the brow of the next hill, falling into step with her wordlessly. We walked that way in silence until the sun was just a sliver of light on the western horizon. Finally, when it was almost too dark to see, Emily spotted a place she deemed safe for camping, a small copse of trees about fifty metres from the road. As we worked together to put up the small tent and stow our things inside, I dared to hope that the silence was a companionable one, and that it would last as we crawled into the tiny space and bedded down for the night.