Strangers

30

The silence away from the school was somehow more frightening than the noise they’d left behind. Thussock was deserted; a ghost town, devoid of all life. Although the lights in most buildings remained unlit, the street lamps enabled the family to see more than enough. It was as if the entire place had been frozen like a paused DVD. Wherever they looked they could visualise the exact moments when people’s lives had been unexpectedly interrupted during the course of the long day now ending. Cars had been abandoned in the middle of the road. The doors of many shops and houses had been left open. A stray dog mooched around for its missing owner, edging forward when it saw Scott and the others, then yelping with panic and running away in the opposite direction. Scott stepped over a river of water flowing into the gutter from a hosepipe which had been left running for hours. Nearby, a courier delivery remained incomplete, the back of a truck half-full of boxes left wide open, its contents untouched. A rain-soaked child’s pushchair lay on its side in the middle of the pavement, its young passenger long gone. Thussock felt eerie and unsettling, as if someone had casually flicked a switch and erased the entire human race save for this one dysfunctional family left skulking through the shadows, avoiding the light as if they were vampires.

They’d been walking unchallenged for almost a quarter of an hour when Scott stopped. He changed direction and led them down a dark alleyway. ‘Where are we going?’ Michelle asked, talking in whispers despite there being no one else around to hear.

‘Back to work.’

And Michelle began to slowly make sense of their surroundings. She’d never seen it like this before, but she was sure this was close to where she’d dropped Scott off on those few occasions he’d actually managed an uninterrupted day’s work at Barry Walpole’s yard.

He handed George to Michelle and told her to wait near a solitary street lamp by the entrance to the yard, out of plain sight but where he could still see them. Scott then jogged across the yard and forced his way into Barry Walpole’s caravan-cum-office.

He’d triggered the alarm. Scott made straight for the metal key cabinet mounted on the wall by Barry’s desk. He broke into it quickly with a screwdriver, nerves and the shrill alarm noise combining to keep him moving at speed. Keys flew everywhere as he prised the door open and he dropped to his hands and knees and scrambled around on the grubby floor, feeling the constant noise boring into his brain now, clouding his already confused thoughts. And then, right under the desk, his outstretched fingers found what he’d been looking for. He snatched up the keys to the truck and ran back outside.

His family had gone.

‘Michelle,’ he shouted, but he could hardly hear himself think over the never-ending klaxon. Where were they? Had he pushed Michelle too far with what he’d done to Dez and his family? He hadn’t had any choice. It was them or us… it was the only way. He ran over to the truck, no longer sure if he even believed himself.

No time to waste. Helicopters overhead. Easier to find them in the truck. Then again, maybe he should just leave alone? If it wasn’t for George, he thought, he probably would have.

He started the engine and pulled away, accelerating hard down the driveway, figuring Michelle would most probably have tried to get home as there was nowhere else left to go other than back to the school. He’d barely made it halfway to the road when Phoebe jumped out at him from the shadows, scaring him senseless. He slammed on the brakes, virtually standing on the pedal to bring the tired old truck to a stop. Michelle got into the front with George as Tammy and Phoebe clambered onto the flat-bed behind. ‘Drive,’ Michelle yelled at him once she was sure they were safe. He swung around a sharp left turn, then accelerated again. She was confused. ‘You’re going the wrong way. You should have turned right for the house.’

‘We’re not going to the house.’

‘What?’

‘I told you, we’re getting out of Thussock.’

‘You’re not thinking straight, Scott. Everything we own is back at that house. I’m not saying we should stop and pack it all up, just get a few essentials. Our documents, some food and drink, clothes…’

‘No.’

‘For Christ’s sake, it’s on the main road out of Thussock. It’s the most obvious way out of here.’

‘Exactly. That’s why we’re going this way.’

‘But what about the girls? They’ll freeze on the back of this truck.’

‘They’ll be all right.’

Michelle didn’t bother arguing. What was the point? When had he last listened to her, anyway? Maybe if he had, they wouldn’t all be in this fucking mess.

Scott was pushing the truck harder and harder, braking then accelerating, driving like a fucking maniac. The road began to climb – Michelle felt it rather than saw it – and from the shapes of the dark silhouettes on either side, she worked out roughly where they were. They were driving over the hills behind their house now, retracing the route Scott had taken that Saturday afternoon when they’d first arrived in Thussock.

As the road reached its peak then began to descend, Scott braked hard, bringing the truck to an unexpected, juddering halt. Michelle clung onto George with one hand and steadied herself with the other. In the back, both Tammy and Phoebe lost balance and lurched forward, falling against one another and butting heads, yelping with pain. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Michelle screamed at him, but he didn’t answer, he just left the truck. Incensed, she picked up George and followed him out. He’d stopped a short distance ahead and was standing on the white line in the middle of the road, staring into the distance. ‘I can’t handle this, Scott. You need to…’ She shut up when she saw what was up ahead.

Just beyond the fracking site was a blockade. Scores of soldiers. Plenty of firepower. And it wasn’t just the road, she realised: the blockade stretched for as far as she could see in either direction. ‘They’ve sealed us off,’ Scott said, sounding numb, barely able to believe what he was seeing. ‘The bastards have sealed off the whole bloody town. We’re not going anywhere.’