I turned the wheel and sped away, just as the two drones skimmed over the blank face of the abbey.
The pickup flew through the long grass with a sound like the wind in my hair. Faster. The speed gauge went into the red. I steered straight toward the cliff edge, all the while checking the sky behind me. It was hard to judge the distance of the drones. They seemed to move closer together and apart again. With a small gasp, I realized they had turned and were following me.
I let them grow larger in the rearview mirror, and when I was sure they were flanking me, I braked hard, the truck stopping abruptly in the dry grass. Out of the cab and into the bed, I unscrewed the tops of the petrol canisters and laid them down. Fuel sopped round my feet. I vaulted over the side, back behind the wheel, jerking away across the field again, veering in a wide arc toward the cliff. In the wing mirror: two drones, up high, eyes in the sky. The petrol sprayed up in a wake behind me. I held the wheel steady with my knees and started scrabbling in the center console. The driver was a smoker, that much was obvious from the smell. There must be a lighter, matches. I scooped the detritus onto the seat. Nothing. “Fuck’s sake!” The truck swerved as I leaned to reach the glove compartment. I pulled the satnav cable out of the socket and fumbled the cigarette lighter into place instead. Ahead, the cliff edge approaching. Behind, the drones approaching. My thumb found the small knob and pressed it down. Come on, come on. I opened my door wide, the hinges screaming, the truck filling with the roar of wind buffeting, grass thrashing. Come on. The cliff was just yards away now, my body’s cells straining to keep me away from the edge. Click. I pulled the red-hot lighter from the socket and gripped it tight in my fist as I rolled out the open door, through the soft cushion of long grass, and onto the ice-hard ground that lay beneath.
I didn’t see the pickup go over the edge. I may have heard an explosion, but my head was ringing from the fall. I pulled my limbs back into their rightful places and got up. There would be pain later. But the smell of petrol was all around me, scattered wide from the back of the vehicle. I ran a little way along the path that the car had scythed through the grass, and held the lighter to a clump of sodden stalks. A flame caught right away, and I started to run, fast. A loud slap—like someone shaking out a bedsheet—and I knew the wind had taken control of the fire. It skirted away from me, racing with ruthless energy along the line of fuel toward the abbey. I ran counterclockwise to the galloping flame, praying that the kids had already started down the steps. I risked a look back at the drones, couldn’t see anything beyond the reams of smoke, my hot shield. I ran on, hiding in plain sight, until I reached the stone steps.
A dozen small figures straggled down the hill ahead of me. Joni brought up the rear, slowed down by Billy in her arms. Thank you, thank you. I took the steps two at a time, a shooting pain through my right shoulder telling me it had taken the brunt of the landing.
“Mum-may!” Billy called out as I caught up on the steep incline. Joni stopped and turned to grin at me. But I shooed her on; the whole hillside was covered with dry grass, the landscape volatile. Already, smoke poured over the cliff edge, the abbey face lost to us.
“We have to get across the river,” I told her.
“Carry me, Mum-may,” cried Billy.
With the elbow of my right arm swaddled in my left hand, the pain was bearable.
“I’m sorry, Billy, I can’t. Joni’s got you.”
She caught my eye and nodded once, noting my discomfort. “I got you, Billy. Let’s get out of here.”
We reached the final curve, stepping onto cobblestones just as a roar of flame came tearing down the hillside. The narrow streets quickly clogged with smoke, blowing all ways in the wind, and as the waiting children started scrubbing at their stinging eyes, I urged them down a side street that seemed to descend toward the sea. A spike of panic at a dead end. My shouts lost amid coughing as the smoke came after us like a monster I’d created. But then: “This way,” shouted Lola, and we plunged into an alley that brought us onto a larger road beside the river inlet. Outside the labyrinth of cobbled streets, the smoke cleared, and we stopped running, caught our breath. A quick head count, and we were all there. I gathered Billy into an awkward, one-armed squeeze. Over the ragged rooftops, smoke blossomed. The fire must have been huge, but it wouldn’t conceal us forever. I turned back to the coastline. The headland was a dark shape beyond the town, which was itself beyond the river.
“Why’s there no fricking bridge?” said Joni. The wide river inlet was flanked by storm barriers—a concrete cervix—that protected the harbor. But we couldn’t cross it. A stone wharf that jutted out into the water led only to an ornamental anchor.
“It’s further up.” I herded the kids onto the reeking mudflat left behind by the receding tide, and we staggered upriver to the same bridge we’d crossed not half an hour before. A tattered line of Union Jack bunting struggled against the wind. The children pattered across the span of the bridge, silent and watchful. A flag rope dinged against its pole. Boats nodded in the water. Charlie tugged at my arm.
“Couldn’t we—?”
“I don’t know how to sail a boat, Charlie.”