‘We prayed that we’d never have to use them, naturally,’ Si’s mom said back over her shoulder. She stopped by the stairs and coolly picked up a heavy ornament of St Michial from a side table. ‘If it ever came to it, we’d told ourselves, we’d wouldn’t use them. We’d leave ourselves in the hands of God.’
She began to repeatedly smash the ornament at an area of the wall beneath the stairs, sending a thin coating of painted plaster flying everywhere. Si’s father pushed his way past with apologetic smiles as he rushed towards the rear of the house.
‘Turns out we needed them after all. To defend you!’ Si’s mom chuckled, like she’d said something incredibly funny or ironic.
Tossing the ornament to one side, she heaved on the inlaid handle of a door she’d uncovered beneath the plaster.
With the cracking of even more plaster, the door swung open. Behind, there was a thin compartment built into the wall. Inside, fixed to a rack, were two rifles that were every bit as monstrous as the guns being used by the police.
‘Mary!’ From somewhere to the rear of the house, Si’s father cried out urgently. ‘They’ve moved round the back!’
Si’s mom grabbed one of the guns and a belt of ammunition hanging alongside it.
‘Si, bring the other gun and belt!’ she barked as, lithely slipping the heavy belt over a shoulder, she darted towards the house’s rear.
Grabbing the gun as ordered, Si chased after his mother.
‘Stay here,’ he told Chrissy. ‘This looks like it’s going to be dangerous!’
Chrissy knew she stood stay where she was. Jial knew she should stay there too, telling her, ‘It’s good advice.’
Chrissy chased after everyone anyway, watching in amazement as Si’s mother clipped an ammunition cartridge into the huge gun even as she ran. By the time they’d all reached the kitchen, Si’s father had already drawn down a steel plate covering the rear door. Si’s mother brought her gun’s butt up to her shoulder, aiming it through the window at a police officer rapidly approaching across the garden.
‘Stop or I shoot!’ she hollered as loud as she could.
She fired anyway, a warning shot that completely destroyed the window. A hailstorm of glass and wood splinters scattered across the garden.
The officer threw himself to the ground.
‘This is crazy, Will!’ the officer irately yelled out. ‘You’ve got to let us take Si in! You know that!’
Si’s father didn’t seem to be listening. Reaching up to the top of the window, he let the steel covering drop into place. He quickly latched it securely against the sill and walls.
‘We can’t hold them off for ever.’ With a nod of her head, Mary indicated to Si that he should hand the gun over to his father.
As Will took the gun, loading it as swiftly and expertly as Mary had only moments before, Chrissy wondered if the pair of them wouldn’t be able hold off a whole army for at least a week.
Slipping on the heavy ammunition belts around their shoulders and waists, Si parents instantly took on the grim, determined expressions of hardened, professional soldiers. Chrissy had never understood how the small but wiry Mary and the sedate, steadily weight-gaining Will had managed to have a son as athletically agile as Si. Now, maybe, she was beginning to see how it was possible after all.
‘Upstairs: I need to cover the windows,’ Will declared as he and Mary glanced about their house, taking in the situation.
‘We won’t let them take you, Son!’ Mary reached across to Si, giving him a tearful hug. Just as Si was about to ask for an explanation, Mary unintentionally cut him off with a surprisingly cheerful, ‘Don’t worry!’
Don’t worry? If this wasn’t a time to worry, Chrissy thought, when was?
Instantly recognising her concern, Jial reached out to grab her hand. Chrissy smiled, grateful for Jial’s calming influence.
‘They’re not supposed to be doing this: the police, I mean,’ Jial reassured her. ‘They should be calming things down. Instead, they’re only making things worse.’
‘Worse?’ Chrissy scoffed. ‘Jial, even for you, that’s one heck of an understatement! They’re trying to kill us!’
‘They’re panicking, nervous because the angels are disappearing–’
‘There’s no need for this Will!’ a policeman shouted from somewhere out in the rear garden.
Chrissy looked up, noting for the first time that Will and Mary had been anxiously observing her conversation with Jial.
‘You know we’ve got take Si in,’ the policeman continued. ‘Let him go now, and we promise you he won’t come to any harm.’
‘Chrissy, your angel–’ Ignoring the threatening yells of the officer, Mary looked towards the empty space where she assumed Jial must be standing. ‘Can we trust her?’
Chrissy looked towards Jial, wanting her to answer Mary’s question.
Jial nodded. Chrissy nodded in reply to Mary’s query.
Another officer yelled out another warning.
‘If you keep him in there, Will, you know what’s going to happen!’
‘I’m prepared to take the risk, thanks!’ Will defiantly hollered back.
Even as he cried out, however, he used a wave of a hand, followed by a quietly whispered ‘Go!’, indicating that he wanted Mary and the others to somehow leave him. ‘I can take care of this!’
‘You might be, Will!’ the officer screamed from outside, almost drowning out Will’s orders. ‘But what about your neighbours? What right have you got to put them at risk? Don’t they have a choice?’
Will wasn’t listening. He was giving first Mary then Si a long, tight, loving hug, while refusing to lower his rifle.
‘See you soon, son!’ he said proudly, cutting off any questions or hesitation from Si with an authoritative, ‘Not yet: no time for explanations! Go!’
Mary had already rushed back to the gun compartment. Grimly grasping the rack, she wrenched hard on it, as if trying to pull it from the wall. The compartment swung aside, like a thick door, revealing an incredibly narrow passageway behind it.
The blast of a shotgun from the rear garden was immediately followed by the boom and rattle of the window’s steel plates shaking and buckling. They held in place, however, suffering little damage but a few indents.
‘The roof, Will!’ Mary shouted out, drawing everyone’s attention to the sounds of someone darting across the tiled roof.
‘I’ll handle it!’ Will replied, loping up the stairs. ‘Go! Now!’
Handing Si a lit torch she’d taken from the gun compartment, Mary almost pushed him into the crudely built passageway. She told him to lead the way before he had chance to refuse. Chrissy was next, with Mary following up the rear.
The passage was only slightly wider than the bricks that made up the steps steeply descending into the earth. It was damp, and smelled sickeningly of sewerage.
‘No loud noises,’ Mary warned. ‘Once we’re heading under the road, anyone might hear us.’
*
Chapter 19
‘Wow, this is all really impressive Mom!’ Si whispered back to Mary as they moved as quickly as possible through the narrow, dank tunnel.
‘You make it sound like we’re on some tour of a stately home!’ Chrissy hissed back angrily.
Their journey through the hedges had left Chrissy’s clothes ripped and filthy. Now they were also covered in thick, sticky spider web, damp moss and a rust-like mix of drenched, crumbling brick and clay.
What made it worse was that Jial still looked immaculate. She casually wandered ahead of her as if the brick walls didn’t actually exist.
‘Shhussh!’ Mary warned them once again. ‘Keep your voices dow–’
The first bars of Taylor Swift’s I Knew You Were Trouble began to shrilly ring out and echo around the confined corridor.
‘Your phone!’ Jial exclaimed, spinning around, her expression every bit as horrified as everyone else’s.
Panicking, unable to remember where she’d
put her phone, Chrissy began to frantically pat her pockets.
‘Back pocket, your right back pocket!’ Jial yelled helpfully.
Pulling out the phone with a gasp of relief, Chrissy switched it off. She mouthed an embarrassed ‘Sorry’ to Mary.
Mary wasn’t looking her way, however. Like Si, she was staring upwards, holding her breath as she intently listened for any hint that they had been heard.
After a few seconds, Mary indicated with a wave of her hand that they should begin moving again.
‘Quick!’ she whispered urgently. ‘Just in case!’
*
The tunnel opened up into the storeroom lying beneath the grocery store owned by Si’s parents.
When Mary closed the door behind them, it looked like a cluttered shelf, looking no different to the other cluttered shelves fixed to the room’s walls.
‘Mom, just what–’
‘Later, Si, later!’
Sharply cutting off Si’s request for an explanation, his mom swiftly moved into the room, leaning her gun against a nearby table.
‘There’s food in a red box in the freezer,’ she continued as, with a nod of her head, she indicated the large refrigerator set by the door leading up to the store.
The store’s van stood towards the front of the room, facing garage-style doors that opened up onto a steep ramp leading out into the street. Standing alongside it, Mary began to quickly strip the store’s name off one side.
‘Chrissy, can you give me a hand on the other side?’ she asked, giving neither Si nor Chrissy time to start asking questions.
‘I get the impression Si’s parents have been preparing for this for a long time, don’t you?’ Jial said with a wry frown.
Chrissy had to agree. Taking off the store’s sign from the side of the van was easier than she’d imagined it would be. Far from being painted on, as she’d always assumed it was, the words were printed on a transparent film. Once you’d found its edge, it could be easily torn off as it appeared to be held in place by nothing more that static electricity. Like the tunnel, it was obviously just one more thing that Si’s parents had prepared in advance. It was as if they’d known all along that Si would end up being hunted down at some point.
Following his mom’s urgently yelled instructions, Si had hurriedly retrieved a large, red plastic box from the freezer.
‘Mom, can’t you just–’
‘It’s all preserved food, all pretty tasteless. But it’s enough to get you out of town and someplace else.’
One again, Mary used a nod of her head to instruct Si to place the box in the van’s cab.
‘Out of town?’ Si repeated, bewildered. Opening the van’s cab, he slipped the box onto the front seat. ‘Mom, what do you mean “someplace else”? Where? Where do we need to go?’
‘Not we. Chrissy can head on home.’
Mary had moved round to the front of the van, opening it up to tinker around inside the engine for a moment. She tossed something aside, slammed the engine compartment shut, and moved around to pick up her gun once more.
‘I’ll drive you to the town’s outskirts, then it’s a straight road across the desert. I know you can’t drive, but I’ll give you a quick, basic guide.’
She was in such a rush, she had grabbed Si by his arm and was almost forcing him into the van’s cab ahead of her.
‘Mom, Mom!’ Si protested, hanging back. ‘Sorry, but – I can’t drive at all!’
Si held up his gashed hand. His mom briefly stared at it, stared at the van’s stick shift, stared intently at Chrissy across the front of the van.
‘Chrissy,’ she said with renewed, gritty determination. ‘Sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to drive Si out of town. Trust me: his life depends on it!’
*
Chapter 20
‘You can’t Chrissy! What about your mom and dad?’
Jial frowned anxiously. Chrissy glanced nervously at Si and his mom, who both looked back at her expectantly.
‘But Si, he…’
‘Si can be taken by his mom, can’t he?’
‘I’ll call Mom and Dad: just to let them know I’ll be a little late!’ Chrissy said brightly to Mary, remembering how her phone had rung earlier.
Jial angrily stamped her foot. Mary grimly nodded her approval.
‘Okay Chrissy. But don’t go telling them anything about what’s really happening here!’
Switching her phone on once more, Chrissy pressed the instant dial to her home.
‘This is crazy, you know that Chrissy?’ Jial fumed. ‘I really really shouldn’t have been so lenient with you–’
‘It’s not working: there’s still no signal to my mom’s.’
Chrissy stared bemusedly at her phone, wondering why it had seemed to be working just a few minutes ago.
‘Perhaps they’re just blocking kids from contacting their parents,’ Si said. ‘Perhaps Mom could ring them on her phone to let them know you’ll be okay.’
Mary shook her head.
‘No, I don’t think that’s a good idea, Si. What are they going to think when they hear our house has been surrounded by the police?’
‘Dad! I’ve been so busy, I’d almost forgotten we’d left him back–’
Mary placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
‘He’ll be fine for now. The police aren’t going to risk an attack just yet, with all those heavy shutters down and your dad heavily armed. But I’m going to have to get back as soon as I can…’
She looked Chrissy’s way, her eyes narrowing in a way that implied she needed a quick decision.
‘I can’t let you go back there Mom. I’ll come back–’
‘No you won’t! Our only chance is that when I get back we surrender to the police, telling them they can search the house to look for you. By the time they find the secret door, you’ll be long away; provided, of course, young Chrissy here does the decent thing.’
‘Mom, please, you still haven’t explained–’
‘I’ll do it!’ Chrissy said firmly, ignoring the way Jial looked like she was about to tear all her hair out. ‘Although, you should know, as you’ve probably guessed; I’ve never driven before either!’
‘In we get then!’ Mary said, undeterred. ‘Chrissy, you sit next to me. I’m going to have to give you the world’s quickest driving lesson as I drive.’
*
Chapter 21
The van shuddered and the gears grated maddeningly as Chrissy crashed them for what was at least the fiftieth time in ten minutes.
She grimaced, the strain showing on her face. She struggled to stop the van weaving from side to side, the task made all the harder by the slipperiness of her sweat covered hands.
‘Wow, go careful with Dad’s van, can’t you?’ Si complained.
He forlornly stared through the windshield at the dusty road stretching out into the barren, almost desert-like land lying before them. The sign on the outskirts of town had said ‘Homehaven ten miles’ but he was seriously worried that the van was going to completely die on them before they even made it half way.
‘I mean, how many times do you have to change gear on a perfectly straight road?’
‘As many times as I want, as long as I can pretend it’s your neck I’m throttling!’ Chrissy snapped back irritably.
Driving the van wasn’t anywhere near as easy as Mary had made it look. Fearing that the juddering, struggling van was about to cut out, she violently revved the engine.
‘Your mom said you’ve got keep on changing the gears to make it run smoothly!’
‘If this is what you call smoothly, I’d hate to see what your jerky driving’s like!’
‘You know what Simon Menchester?’ Chrissy growled. ‘I wish I’d asked your mom for a crash course in using that gun of hers: because I’d sure remember how to use it on you!’
‘Hmn, good job she took it with her then, right?’
Si’s mom had refused to leave the gun with them, bluntl
y declaring, ‘They’d use it as an excuse to shoot you out of hand, no chances given.’ Shouting over her shoulder as she’d started running ran back through the streets towards Si’s house, she’d added next, ‘Just keep heading straight ahead. You won’t need any maps!’
Despite his mom’s advice, Si now called up the satellite map of Homehaven on his cellphone.
‘If my memory serves me right – yep, it does – fortunately it’s all straight road until we come to that sharp bend before Homehaven’s swimming pool. So, Chrissy; do you think you’ll have figured out how to turn this thing by then, or are we going to end up amongst the water slides and the fake bea– oowww! That hurt!’
He laughed as, with an irate grimace, her eyes still locked on the road ahead, Chrissy withdrew the arm she’d just jabbed him with. Although sitting between them, her legs extended before her and her feet on the dashboard, Jial hadn’t felt the jabbing arm that had harmlessly passed through her. The box on the seat was also no obstacle to her.
‘You’ve got to admit it’s pretty dire driving, Chrissy!’ Jial said gloomily. ‘At this rate, you’ve got plenty of time to learn how to drive as we won’t be there until next week!’
‘Do you want to drive this damn thing? Because you’re sure as heck–’
Chrissy was interrupted by her ringing phone; I Knew You Were Trouble again.
‘It’s Emma!’ Chrissy said, shifting sideways on her seat a little so she could withdraw her phone from her pocket. ‘Could you see what she wants?’
Quickly handing the phone to Si, she immediately grabbed the steering wheel once more.
‘Hi Emma,’ Si said gaily into the phone as he answered it. ‘Chrissy’s busy at the moment; can I help?’
Even though she was concentrating on driving, Chrissy still managed to hear a tinny, indecipherable version of Emma’s excited cries down the phone.