I left the door pinned open, ran back to the cab, and the campervan sprang forward. We raced alongside a high grassy bank, hemmed into a rat run between moorland and sea. The other kids were ahead of me, spread out all over the road. I leaned on the horn as I approached the first group, and they automatically veered to the sides. I slowed down, still rolling, while Lola hung out of the side door, shouting at the boys to dump the bikes and get in, Joni hauling them inside. The first one vomited immediately onto the carpet. As I accelerated, I checked the wing mirror, but couldn’t see anything.
“How far away were the helicopters, Charlie?”
“Over the town.”
“Coming this way?”
“Yep.” He got up and staggered through the swaying cabin to look out the back window.
I braked for the next group of boys, who’d seen what was happening and stopped, leaving their bikes on the verge. Lola and Joni manhandled them on board. The motor home picked up speed again, lumbering along. The land dropped away and was replaced by a line of Victorian seaside villas as we raced into the next town. The final group of boys was ahead, still peddling. I sounded the horn, and they turned, swerving across my pathway. My mind flashed back to another set of bikes, a boy’s legs pumping, Woody’s brother. Lennon. But I shook it away. He is gone. We are still here. Focus. The boys ditched their bikes and were inside.
“That’s it!” yelled Joni.
There was a muted cheer. I pushed my foot down to the floor, as though I could force the motor home to go faster by sheer willpower. I swore at it, and the thing seemed to respond, building up momentum on the downward slope. Finally, the headland took on definition. It was maybe half a mile north.
“Charlie?” I shouted to him, but at that moment his face appeared next to mine.
“They’re here,” he said.
I resisted the urge to slow down as the road bent out of sight ahead of me, both arms held straight against the steering wheel as we pounded past parked cars. The road dodged over a bridge, and I was forced to brake heavily to make the turn, Charlie tumbling into the footwell, the cries from the back making me wince. The motor home was too huge, its front scraping against the stones as we ploughed across the bridge and barreled away. Charlie hauled himself into the passenger seat. As the road curved, it allowed a brief glimpse back down the coast road—the way we’d come—and we saw the intent shapes of two helicopters bearing down on us. But as the road twisted us to the north again, Charlie gave a shout, and his hand hit the dashboard. I squealed to a stop in front of a roadblock.
Solid red and white barriers prevented us from reaching the slipway. We sat in silence as the buffeting slaps of the helicopters caught up.
“Mummy!”
I switched off the engine. Rested my heavy arms against the steering wheel. Ahead, the white marquee on the road. People moving inside. Tables of equipment, food, medicine. A flag flying, a red, white, and blue standard snapping to attention in the wind. Now, a man in a white coat and hat running toward us, shouting words I couldn’t hear over the thumping of blades. His hat blew off and rolled twice before settling the right way up on the pavement. He hung over the barrier, waving his arms. His eyes bulged. I opened my mouth to reply, but my lips seemed to stick together.
“Mummy!”
The furious wind got louder, and my hair streamed in front of my eyes. I lifted an arm to hold it back. Joni and Lola had opened the side door and were on the road outside, Lola’s mouth moving as she shouted at me through the window, the sound of feet scuffling as Joni launched children toward the barrier, which the man shoved aside with his bulk to let them through. Greeting each boy with a huge hand on the shoulder, pulling them behind him, paternal.
“Mummy?”
In the rearview mirror, three sets of eyes fixed on mine. Then Charlie broke away to look out his passenger-side window and started to yell. The dark shadow of a helicopter slid down his face. A panicky whine of engines as it came in to land on the beach below.
“Mummy. Move. You have to move, Mummy.” His eyes flickered back to mine, and then he was tearing at his seat belt.
Move, I told myself. Get your children and move. Make this stop.
I scrambled my knees onto the seat and leapt into the back. I carried Billy in one hand and reached back with the other to pull Maggie through the door. Charlie hurtled straight into the arms of the man, who gathered him and the Lost Boy up and ran behind the roadblock. I covered the same few yards in what seemed like a single bound, and we hit the ground behind the barrier, where the man in the white coat had already stopped and placed Charlie onto his feet, holding his hips for a few seconds to make sure his legs were steady. The other boys tottered about, bewildered, like exhausted marathon finishers. Joni and Lola pressed against the iron railing, watching the helicopters like they were animals in a zoo.
“You’re safe now,” the man said in a heavy Scandinavian accent.
“Here? We’re safe here?” I was panting like I’d run a mile when I’d only taken a few steps.
“Behind the road break, yes.”
“Here is safe, there is not safe?” I indicated both sides of the barrier. “That’s it?”
He gave a tight smile. “That’s politics.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Inside another tent. This one was white and tasted of salt. I couldn’t be sure if that was from the sea air or the rehydration fluids. The man, Dr. Larsen, looked up from his clipboard to monitor the Cleaners, who leaned on the barrier, masks lifted to smoke. One by one, they dropped their fag ends on the road and returned to the helicopters down on the beach. When the doctor turned back to me, he still had one white eyebrow raised.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“They do not exist.” After a couple of seconds, he smiled, as though that were the only option left. His latex-covered thumb raised my hair to stroke what remained of the laceration from the car crash. He had already strapped up my arm, but it wasn’t broken. Now, he selected a pencil from his front pocket and puzzled over the clipboard for the correct place to write.
“The helicopters look real enough to me,” I said.
He lifted a pair of round steel glasses from his button nose, which was too small for his hearty baker’s face. His eye contact was like a pat on the shoulder. My body gasped in a sudden breath, and I used it to push down the tears that threatened to surge up and out. Dr. Larsen slid a drink across the table and busied himself with paperwork while I gulped at it. He checked the time on his watch and wrote down the exact hours and minutes.
“They’re covert,” he said, after I pushed the plastic cup away. “Black ops. While the UN is holding another meeting and agreeing on the exact words for a statement, someone—we don’t know who, we have ideas, but we can’t prove it—someone is paying these guys to eliminate the virus. Kill the host, kill the virus.”
“But if we had the virus, we’d be dead already.”
“It is possible for people to carry a virus without getting sick. Maybe that is also the case with the English Plague, but we don’t know for sure. It is like nothing we’ve seen before.”