Gray swells of the river beneath our feet. The sound of water smacking every surface: keel, pillar, rock. Maybe on a calm day, it might have seemed possible. Maybe if I had the time to work out how to start a boat, the sea would be the most direct route to the white tent with the red flag, which was still probably three miles up the coast. But without that option we had to keep moving north as best we could.
I directed the kids along the coast road that bent around steep curves until we mounted the cliff top opposite the abbey. I scanned the sky for drones, but it was marbled with smoke, fire raging across the grassland and also, it seemed, through several buildings on the edge of the town. The heat must surely be a distraction—cover—but the smoke meant we wouldn’t see approaching drones until they were on top of us. In the other direction, looking north, the headland beneath which the Norwegian tent was hunkered was still in the distance. We had to move faster. Going straight along the beach would take too long, and that option would leave us totally exposed with nowhere to hide if the drones came. We stayed on the cliff top, the grand Victorian hotels as blank-eyed as the long-ruined abbey. We kept moving along the promenade, past endless memorial benches, all facing out to sea, as though that were the rightful place for grief. Billy whined, and I scooped him up with my left arm, wincing at the pain. A shout on the wind; ahead of us, Lola was pointing over the grass to a weatherboard shed, which advertised rental bikes. “Pier-to-Pier Cycling.” By the time I reached her, she had smashed the lock off with a rock and was hauling open the doors. We wheeled out the bikes—one boy asking, robotically, for a helmet—and straggled onto the coastal path, dipping below the promenade, which meant we wouldn’t be seen from the land.
“We can do this!” I shouted to Joni, who weaved unsteadily in front of me. Ahead of her, the younger kids hunkered over their handlebars, stabilizers taking the brunt of their lurches. Maggie and the Lost Boy wobbled away. Billy was perched on my crossbar, his shaggy hair blown back from his face. Despite the pain throbbing through my shoulder—it was my collarbone, I could feel it—I arched forward and kissed him on his soft spot.
The hard-earth path swooped downhill toward the headland. I could make out the dark shape of the slipway and the incongruous white gleam of the tent, though it was still too far off to see any detail. Billy shouted “whee” as we started to freewheel. My chest jumped with giddy relief, and I could have thrown my head back and laughed, larking along in the salt spray like it was a bank holiday. But then the bikes that had been streaming ahead of me clogged into a messy jam, and the expectant faces turned to me again. As I approached, I saw that the coastal path turned away from our destination. I swore into my teeth. A development of holiday cottages interrupted the path and forced it inland. The headland retreated behind the houses. I braked hard and had to grab Billy round the middle with my sore arm. My head swam with pain.
It was too steep to go down to the beach. And in any case, we couldn’t cycle on the sand. Better to move quickly on the road. I glanced back. The pall of smoke had consolidated into a column over the town. Charlie backed up until he was next to me.
“Looks like a volcano,” he said.
“Can you manage to cycle a bit further?” I asked him.
He nodded, still looking back: “You burnt down the town, Mummy.”
“Not all of it, love. Come on.” I cycled past the waiting children and round the dogleg that took us inland, thighs burning up the long slope, until it came out onto a road beside a windswept golf course. Once again, I could see the headland, which pointed out to sea like a long black finger. It was hard to tell in the darkening light, but it seemed far away again. Like a dream, where it slid off every time I got close. The drones could be on us in minutes, and what would we do—a dozen kids on bicycles? Inside me, contractions of panic multiplied in my gut.
Huge white shapes in the field opposite reflected the last of the daylight. I squinted down the road and read “Edge of the World Caravan Park.” I lifted Billy over to Joni and let my bike fall onto the grass verge.
“Wait here,” I said. “Whistle if you spot drones.”
I ran across the road and straddled the rickety wire fence. The dry grass was thigh-length, but I waded through it, past the static caravans to a row of motor homes that were lined up beside electrical boxes. Needs must. I hesitated by the driver’s door. I put a foot on the step and held the handle, then swung myself up to look inside. Four bodies, thick with flies. I jumped back. Too much buzz. I pressed my lips together to keep the nausea inside. The next motor home: a face slumped against the front window. I walked right past it to the third, put my foot on the step to look in, but when I heard Joni’s whistle I swung myself up onto the bonnet to see back to the road.
“Drones?” I shouted.
Charlie stood on the road, holding binoculars to his eyes. He lowered them as the other boys started running their bikes down the road, hopping on after a few steps and streaming away.
“Is it drones, Charlie?” I shouted again.
He lowered the binoculars and shook his head. “Helicopter,” he shouted. “There’s a helicopter coming.”
Of course there was. The drones were only trackers. The helicopter would have to make the kill.
I jumped down from the bonnet and hauled open the driver’s door. A body tumbled past me in an explosion of flies—the smell slamming me in the face—to land in a heap between me and the cab. I darted to the side door. Inside, another body. Needs must. You must. I pulled my sleeves over my hands, gulped down a breath, and went in, flailing my arms at the flies, grabbing the two feet, and using all my strength to pull the body out through the door. I fell backward down the steps, leaving the body slumped in the doorway. I went back, grabbed the back of the old woman’s jeans, and dragged her clear. In the door, through the hatch, into the cab. Retching from the smell. The engine shuddered to life. I pushed the gear stick into drive and the vehicle shot forward, ripping the campervan’s cables from the power supply and crunching over the grass, picking up speed as I approached the fence, opening the windows to let the sterile salt air blow through.
The motor home burst through the wire and bounced onto the road. I braked and jumped out. Joni was already running down the road, carrying Billy. Lola followed, herding Maggie and the Lost Boy ahead of her. I screamed at Charlie who was still staring through the binoculars. He scampered over.
“How far away is the helicopter?” I asked him, as he went in through the side door.
“Them,” he said. “There’s two of them.”