Flare Read online

  Praying they wouldn’t hear me, I scrabbled through the leaf mould to the far side of the dell and into the bushes at the edge, then half crouched, half hobbled as fast as I could, cutting in a wide circle back towards the village.

  It took me the best part of quarter of an hour to get there, hurrying from bush to bush and freezing at the slightest hint of movement.

  My palms were sweating and my head was thumping like a drum by the time I reached the first garden fence, my courage all but gone before I’d even started on my hazardous course of action.

  Keeping low, I used the fence as cover and crept towards the street we’d driven through when we’d seen the two cyclists with their packs full of looted gear. I’d heard white-vest talking about bikes earlier, and so I had to assume that they were linked.

  When I reached what I thought was the right spot, I rolled over a fence and into the garden beyond, immediately getting tangled in the undergrowth.

  The lawn hadn’t been cut in months by the look of it, and children’s toys were scattered at random in the long grass like brightly coloured mantraps, tripping me as I tried to make my way silently to the side of the house and the path that led past an old wooden shed to the street.

  The houses were dark but I could see the faint hint of flames from the street, and as I sidled along the path and peered around the corner, I saw white-vest and several other men sitting around an oil drum, flames licking up from it to illuminate their faces as the drank yet more beer and smoked cigarettes from cartons of two hundred that were littered around their feet.

  They’d clearly done well out of the disaster so far, but I wondered how long they’d last when they realised their microwave ready-meals were no longer on the menu and they had to find real food to cook.

  I shook my head to clear it. Now was not the time to be making silent jibes about lifestyle, not if I had any chance of helping Emily and Ralph. I put the stray thoughts down to my lack of water, and looked in vain for anything I might use to quench my thirst.

  Nothing presented itself, however, so I moved in a crouch to hide behind a pair of metal bins that gave me a good view of the road and its occupants while keeping me firmly hidden.

  I stayed crouched there for about ten minutes, watching the comings and goings around the fire. While the houses on this side were semi-detached, the ones on the far side were terraced and all crammed together with tiny gardens that were little more than scrubby patches of brown earth, and if I was to have any effect at all I realised that I needed to cross the road without being seen.

  Drawing back to the shed, I tried the door gently. It moved, but the hinges were rusty and the squeak they gave was enough to raise the dead.

  I froze, heart in mouth as I waited for a shout of discovery, but none came and after a long minute I moved the door again, this time lifting it slightly as I pushed.

  It still groaned, but not so loud now, the noise more than covered by the laughter and conversation coming from the fire, and in moments I had it wide enough to slip inside.

  It was pitch black inside the shed. I hadn’t thought this far into my plan, trusting that I’d find the things I needed, but without being able to see I was at something of a loss. The small space smelled strongly of creosote, old wood and mouse droppings, and I ran my hands through all manner of unidentifiable, cobweb-covered things looking for anything that might do as a light source.

  After several minutes of searching I found an old torch, the batteries almost dead but giving out just enough light to see by after being in the dark for so long.

  Shining it around, I realised that no one had used this place for months. Dust and cobwebs were thick on every surface, the workbench holding tools that had rusted to their clamps.

  Checking the lower shelves, I repressed a shudder as a spider the size of my hand darted into cover with alarming swiftness. Working with as much haste as I could while remaining quiet, I looked through the shelves until I found what I needed. Stuffing it all into an old garden sack, I turned the torch off but kept hold of it, then exited the shed and crossed the back garden again, going back over the fence and along several houses until I reckoned I was far enough away from the fire not to be seen.

  I was about to climb another fence when I saw a footpath, a narrow dirt smear that separated two of the fenced gardens. It was littered with dog mess, but I picked my way along it, pleasantly surprised that my ankle was bearing up well.

  I paused at the end of the footpath, leaning out past a hedge to check the road in both directions. Once I was sure I was clear, the fire and its complement of men a good twenty metres away and all but lost around a slight curve in the road, I hurried across to the far side and straight into the first garden.

  This was where my plan got a little hazy. I’d seen from the car earlier that all the gardens were linked, a concrete path running between house and garden just wide enough for one person, passing every front door in the row, so I could get as far along the road as I needed to without jumping any more fences. But could I really do what I was planning? Despite everything, even knowing that the people around me would quite deliberately and cheerfully tear myself and my friends apart if they caught us, I was about to put them and their dependants at risk, possibly even kill some of them. Could I honestly justify my actions? My father, a civil servant for most of his adult life, and a particularly law-abiding man, had once said to me, ‘don’t do anything you couldn’t put your hand on your heart and justify in front of a jury’. Despite our disagreements about other things, that particular quote had stuck with me, and I’d always tried to follow the spirit of it, if not the letter.

  But now I was about to change all that. For the first time in my adult life, I was going to break a law, risking lives in a cold, calculated attack that could very possibly leave someone dead.

  My hands shook as I checked the contents of my bag, making sure everything was there. Once I was certain, I moved along the path, ducking under windows and keeping to the shadows as much as I could while the whole street seemed to be congregating around the fire out on the road.

  I could hear dozens of voices now, with children shouting and playing as they ran in and out of the gardens, one running right past me as I froze in the dark, almost shouting in shock as the little lad barrelled out of his house and into the street with a tin of chocolates clutched in his hands and a wild grin on his face.

  My heart felt like it was about to burst, and by the time I moved again my hands and legs were shaking and my knees felt like jelly. I made it another two houses before I decided that I was close enough and pulled the stolen items from my bag, setting them out at my feet and looking around to make sure that the low hedge shielded me from view.

  Confident that I wasn’t being observed, I opened the box of matches and took two out, laying them on the path, then picked up the can of lighter fluid and gently pushed the letterbox open, squeezing the tin as hard as I could and liberally dousing the carpet inside with the foul smelling liquid. I sprayed yet more into the inside of the letterbox itself, then coated the outside too before throwing the empty can back into the sack and shoving it behind a bin.

  Taking a deep breath I lit the first match, my hands shaking so badly that the flame went out. Tossing it aside, I lit the second and this time the flame sprang to life, its yellow glow making the fluid on the door glisten.

  Knowing that I couldn’t delay, I held the letterbox open and dropped the match onto the wood inside.

  It lit with a whoosh, flames spurting out and burning my hand, arm and face. I stumbled backwards, the smell of burnt hair matching the hot, stretched feeling of the skin on my cheeks.

  Within seconds the hallway was on fire, flames licking hungrily at the carpet, door and walls, throwing crazy shadows through the glass that made up the top half of the door.

  I heard a shout from the street and ran without thinking, back along the path to the end of the street, not noticing the pain in my ankle as I rode the wave of adrenaline and
let it carry me out of sight of anyone coming to investigate.

  I hit the end of the path and ducked behind the last hedge, peeking back out to see if anyone had seen me.

  I needn’t have worried. The whole street appeared to be packed into the front garden, staring in surprise at the flames that were now bright enough to see from even this distance.

  “It’s Jamie’s house, where is he?” Someone shouted.

  “He’s in the woods”, someone else replied, “someone get a bucket or something!”

  Seeing my chance, I fled across the road while they were all busy, taking the footpath back to the fields and following the treeline until I was close to the oak and the group of men below it, their faces thrown into sharp relief by a small fire one of the had made.

  This was where it could all go wrong. I looked back towards the village and was surprised to see a glow from the fire I’d set, a thick pall of smoke beginning to form over the street. It had spread far more quickly than I’d imagined, and I hoped that would help my cause.

  Stepping into a thick stand of trees, I hid myself as best I could among the narrow trunks and deepened my voice, trying to make myself sound like one of the villagers.

  “Jamie”, I shouted, letting the very real fear I was trying to control enter my voice.

  “What?” Came an answering call from below the tree.

  “Your house is on fire”, I shouted, “we need help before all the other houses go up!”

  “You what? You’d better be pulling my fuckin’ leg”.

  “I ain’t, go look!”

  A few moments later two forms hurried past my hiding place.

  “Shit, look, you can see it from ‘ere”, one said nervously.

  “Oh fuck”, the other, a man in a lurid green t-shirt, breathed, beginning to run towards the village, “my fuckin kids are in bed, come on, what are you fuckin’ waiting for?”

  The last was screamed as he sprinted, his companion and several others from the tree following with shouts of alarm.

  That should have been the moment to strike, to let the others know that there were only two or three men left to guard them, but as Jamie’s words sank in I dropped to my knees, overwhelmed by the urge to vomit.

  My kids are in bed, he’d said, and as I realised what I’d done I began to throw up violently, huge convulsions that sprayed the forest floor with what little was left of my breakfast.

  The crunching of feet on dry leaves made me look up, helpless, as two of the remaining men came to investigate the noise.

  “What, had too much beer?” Said one, laughing, then he leaned closer and comprehension dawned.

  “Hang on, you’re one of the… oof!”

  He dropped the ground bonelessly, his friend turning to see what was happening just as the butt of a shotgun smashed into his neck where it met his shoulder.

  He just about had time to gasp and reach for his neck as he collapsed, Emily stepping over them and grabbing me roughly by the collar, hauling me mercilessly to my feet.

  I stared up at her through tear-filled eyes, seeing Ralph at her shoulder, carrying her Bergen and the second shotgun.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Emily asked, but I could only shake my head, unable to tell her that I’d most likely just murdered someone.

  “Well whatever it is, we don’t have time for it”, she continued, pushing me roughly back towards her house, “not if we want to get in the car and get out of here”.

  Between her and Ralph they got me pointed in the right direction, alternately guiding and shoving me until I managed to put one foot in front of the other and keep going, unable to take comfort in the fact that I’d saved my friends when the price was so very high.

  Chapter 17

  I don’t remember much of the walk back to the car. I remember Emily physically pulling me through the hedge when I stopped and just stared at it, and I remember catching the worried glance she and her father threw each other when they thought I wasn’t looking. I was looking; I was just so wrapped up in my own misery that I didn’t care.

  We reached the front of the house without incident and they hurried me towards the car, still sitting where we’d left it but now with the driver’s window smashed in and the car thoroughly searched, the glove box left open and Jerry’s maps scattered all over the back seat.

  Emily got in the driver’s seat while Ralph shoved me unceremoniously in the back and climbed in after me, unwinding the passenger window so that he could poke his shotgun out.

  “We’re ready”, he said, and Emily started the engine, then pulled a U-turn and headed back the way we’d come that morning.

  I finally looked up at that, realising that we would have to drive past my brutal handiwork.

  “Can’t we go another way?” I asked, but Emily shook her head.

  “Not a chance. There’s no way out of the estate the other direction, it just goes around in a big circle. We want to get back to mum and dad’s, we have to drive past them. Are you up to using a shotgun?”

  I shook my head. The thought of hurting anyone else was almost enough to make me weep. I’d always thought I was strong, and maybe I was, but I challenge anyone not to crack up in the face of what I was going through right then.

  “Fine, well just keep your head down if it goes wrong. Hang on”.

  She turned the corner and I couldn’t help but stare. Not only was the house I’d torched in flames, but the fire had spread to the next one and was threatening a third. Thirty or so people had formed a bucket chain, using what little water was available from water butts and bottles, but they stood little chance of dousing the raging inferno.

  “What the hell did you do?” Emily breathed, picking up speed and jinking to avoid the few people running across the road to add their paltry water supplies to the chain.

  “I…” I stopped, seeing something that cut through the fog in my mind like sunlight on a rainy day. Picked out in the headlights was a man I recognised as Jamie, two children in his arms and tears running down his face past a huge grin as he clutched them to his chest.

  The children were squirming, clearly unsure why their dad was making such a fuss, but to me it was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my chest and suddenly I could breathe again.

  “I did something really fucking stupid”, I said, “but it worked”.

  I could hear the crackle of flames through the window, bringing back vivid images of Brighton on fire, but then the night was split by a huge shout.

  “Fucking stop them!”

  The man in the white vest ran out into the road and scooped up his golf club from where it lay by the fire, running after us and hurling it as hard as he could in our direction.

  It went wide, curving off into a front garden and burying itself in a hedge, but I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we turned the corner and the street and its occupants were lost from view.

  “You want to keep your speed down love”, Ralph said, as calmly as if he were giving a driving lesson and not escaping from a bunch of violent looters, “there’s a few cars abandoned on the road and it won’t do us much good if we crash”.

  “Yes dad”, she replied in a weary tone, “I’ll be careful. Shall I take the long route or the short one?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “The short one, I reckon. Your mum’ll be fit to burst with worry, let’s not keep her waiting longer than we have to”.

  She nodded and took a left, heading down country roads that to my eye looked identical to the ones we’d followed the other way that morning.

  “How long will it take us to get back?” I asked, looking down and realising that the front of my t-shirt was stained with vomit.

  Ralph saw where I was looking but didn’t comment, instead opening the Bergen and pulling out a plastic water bottle which he passed to me.

  “About half an hour, maybe forty minutes, we don’t get no interruptions on the way”, he said as I almost ripped the top off the bottle and drank most of it in one go.
>
  The warm, plastic-tasting water was unbelievably good and I drank a little more before pouring some on my t-shirt and trying to get the worst of the vomit off.

  When I’d finished I looked up to see Ralph watching me, his brow furrowed.

  “What happened back there?” He asked bluntly. “You sort of fell apart for a while”.

  I shrugged, still uncomfortable with how close I’d come to committing one of the most heinous crimes I could imagine.

  “I set light to one of the houses to distract them”, I said finally, “but when I told the guys who were guarding you, one of them started panicking because he thought his kids were in there and I…” I tailed off, unable to finish the sentence, but Ralph was looking at me with a surprising amount of compassion and not a little understanding.

  “Well”, he said, clearly uncomfortable with showing his feelings but needing to make his point, “I don’t rightly blame you for feeling like you did, I reckon I would’ve felt the same. I take it that was him in the street trying to squeeze his kids to death?”

  “Yeah, so they’re ok, but when I think how close it came…” I stopped again, feeling absurdly close to tears. “You must think…”

  “That you’re a good man who did what he could when he could have run away and left us”, Emily broke in, glaring at the mirror. “You made a tough call in a difficult situation, but the result is that we all got out ok and no one died, so I call that a win, don’t you?”

  I couldn’t fault her logic, and I was emotionally mature enough to know the difference between genuine remorse and moping, realising that I was getting perilously close to the latter.

  “You’re right”, I said, forcing myself to smile, “and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how well you handled yourself today”.

  “Oh really? How do you mean, precisely?” There was something in her tone that made me realise I was walking into a trap, but I couldn’t for the life of me see what it was or why it was there. It reminded me of the sudden arguments I’d had with Angie, and the conversational pitfalls I’d never seen until too late.