Apocalypse Cow (27 page)

What sounded like hiccups started up from the back seat. They grew into cries, then sobs, then a long wail. The car trundled down the road, its siren of grief setting curtains twitching as those who had barricaded themselves in at home looked out to see a small Volkswagen Beetle carrying five people into the unknown.

15

Out of the frying pan

Terry drove in a maniac, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and Brown, who he hoped was still speeding off in the opposite direction or, even better, being eaten alive by the rats. He kept glancing in the rear-view mirror at Mary. She was staring off into the distance and lolled every time they turned a corner. A stunned silence now filled the car. Every time Terry blinked, he caught a quick replay of David dancing across the living room. He felt little grief, his emotions cauterized by the heat of the battle, although he knew a heavy dose of guilt was in the post.

It was only a short hop to the train station, and what lay beyond the turn-off lent support to their decision to take the car onto the railway line. The road they were on led to a big roundabout, where most mornings one encountered mild tailbacks. Now it was utterly impassable. The road was chock full of cars, many of them on the pavement where they had tried, and failed, to cut the line. At points they were five abreast, filling road and pavement from hedge to hedge, some
of
them fused together where two drivers had tussled like twentieth-century Ben Hurs in their Ford chariots. A few vehicles had even tried to drive through the gardens flanking the road. The rear end of an SUV stuck out from a hedge, its front wheels dipped into a fish pond. It had failed abjectly in its first real attempt at the off-roading it was supposedly designed for.

Terry turned on to the station approach road, then stopped on the bridge spanning the tracks and looked down. He used to go to a similar bridge over a station as a skinny eleven-year-old, he and David hanging over the railing, dropping long skeins of saliva onto passing trains and throwing pebbles at the station guard in the hope of getting a chase. He felt a sudden spurt of sadness for his cousin, more for the boy he had been than the man he had become. What really shook him, though, was the juxtaposition of the pleasant boyhood memory and the scene below. Bodies were liberally scattered across the platforms, some of them still clutching their briefcases and laptop bags in clawed hands. At the nearest point within his sight, a jet-black Graco pushchair lay on its side. The blankets had spilled out. A dark stain drew a ragged line from pushchair to platform edge.

Terry gripped the wheel harder, knuckles whitening as his fingers sank into its foam cover. His thoughts were simultaneously painfully slow and lightning fast. It took all his strength not to open the door and run screaming down the middle of the street. He was concentrating on breathing, deep in and deep out, when a hand came to rest on his bare thigh.

‘Are you OK?’ Lesley asked.

The combination of the breathing and the soothing warmth of Lesley’s hand on his leg brought him back under control.

‘I’m fine,’ he said.

He looked back at the station, this time focusing solely on the information he needed to garner. There were no visible blockages on the line and at the end of the platform a shallow ramp led down to the tracks. Getting down shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

‘Mind if I ask what all that was about?’ James asked from the back seat.

Terry turned round to find James had passed the comatose baton on to Mary, who was now as unresponsive and glazed as James had been following the incident with the squirrels. By contrast, James’s eyes were bright and alert, and he had his arm around Geldof. The boy looked a little uncomfortable with the sudden display of fatherly affection.

‘Mistaken identity,’ Terry replied unconvincingly.

‘Bullshit,’ James responded. ‘But we can talk about that later. Firstly, what’s the plan for getting out of here?’

‘We thought we could take the car onto the railway line and head for the Chunnel, get out of the country,’ Terry explained.

‘Good idea,’ James said. ‘Only one problem.’

‘If you’re wondering how we get the car down—’

‘Not the problem I was thinking of,’ James cut in.

Terry blasted air out of his nostrils. Up until thirty minutes ago, for the duration of their acquaintance James had divided his time between hash-induced daze and self-inflicted vegetative state. Now he was picking apart the plan. However, Terry could not help but notice that the dithering, vagueness and hippie interjections had vanished from James’s speech. It was as if he was a new man, or rather an old one. Geldof had mentioned his father was ex-military. The re-emergence of the soldier could be useful.

Terry swallowed his irritation and raised his chin. ‘Go on.’

‘If you want to get to the Chunnel, you need to get on the Carlisle line, which leaves from Central Station.’

‘Yeah, so?’ Terry said. ‘We change lines down there.’

‘This line ends in Queen Street Station, on a low-level platform. We’d have to go through the city centre, possibly on foot.’

Terry thumped the wheel. ‘Shit. I forgot about that. How dangerous do you think it would be?’

‘Pretty damn dangerous, I would say,’ Lesley remarked.

‘Not as dangerous as sitting here having a wee chat while there’s a maniac with a big gun trying to kill us roaming around,’ Geldof chipped in from the back.

‘Good point, well made,’ Terry acknowledged.

He drove down the ramp and into the car park.

‘We need to change cars,’ Terry said. ‘This old banger’s never going to make it down the tracks.’
It’s also too recognizable
, he thought. ‘I never thought I would have to say this, but does anybody know how to hot-wire a car?’

‘We won’t have to,’ Lesley said, pointing at a bulky Land Rover Discovery. ‘We can take that one.’

Sticking out from underneath the car was a hand. In that dead hand was a key. Terry pulled up in the space beside the Land Rover and cut the engine. ‘So who’s going for the key then?’

‘I saw it, so I’ve done my bit,’ Lesley said, glancing nervously around the car park.

‘I guess I’m it, then. Again,’ he said.

He eased open the door and stepped out. The Beetle’s engine ticked and a bird twittered in the trees on the other side of the railway line. Beyond that, all was still. Terry
rounded
the Land Rover and bent down for the key. He tried not to look, but he could not help tracking his gaze up the hand, along the arm and into the pulverized face of the man who had died cowering beneath his car. Terry snatched the key and leapt into the driving seat, slamming the door behind him. He fought to gain control of his breath, which was again coming in ragged spurts, and waved the others across.

Lesley came first, skipping smartly around the vehicles and into the front seat. Geldof and James took longer, shepherding the bewildered Mary. Once they were all inside, Terry locked the doors. The car purred into life and Terry reversed it out, bumping over the corpse without hesitation. To his left, at the end of the parking bay, was a flimsy-looking chain-link fence. The Land Rover burst through it with ease and rolled down the ramp. The only hairy moment came when Terry tried to mount the line. He came in at too shallow an angle and the wheel rebounded from the track. The car began to tip, the two wheels closest to the tracks biting on air until it stabilized. On the next attempt, Terry managed to bump onto the line.

They rattled along in silence. Terry was unwilling to go above fifteen miles per hour. He did not trust his driving skills to keep them upright, and overturning would leave them stranded on foot with beasts, human and animal alike, on the prowl. Plus the bouncing of the tyres thumping over the sleepers was bad enough at such a slow speed, setting his teeth chattering. He didn’t want to go faster and end up with somebody throwing up in the car.

For the first five minutes of the journey, they were hemmed in by trees. Terry kept his foot poised over the accelerator, ready to throw caution to the wind and hammer it should
something
large come blundering out towards them. Soon enough, however, the trees thinned out, revealing rows of houses. They passed the high-rise blocks of the working-class neighbourhood of Maryhill, jutting up like a row of middle fingers sending their regards to the posh areas nearby. Terry saw something in the sky beyond, framed against a bank of slate-grey clouds, at first just a speck but growing ever larger. It was a helicopter. He stopped the car and cut the engine.

Lesley raised an eyebrow and mouthed, ‘Brown?’

The sound of the chopping blades reached them as the squat green craft slipped between two of the tower blocks and banked towards the railway line. The side door was slid back and something that looked suspiciously like a machine gun was poking out. The helicopter was so close Terry could make out the head of the soldier crouching behind the gun, earmuffs clamped to his head. On the balconies of the high-rise flats, doors were opening and people emerging to wave and call at the troops. Their voices were lost in the din of its blades.

Terry saw the spit of the gun, a trace of smoke coming from the barrel. The now all-too-familiar sound followed immediately. He instinctively threw himself towards Lesley, but his boxer shorts caught on the gear stick, pulling him up short. His forehead crunched into her nose.

‘Owwwww!’ Lesley said, blood springing up at her nostrils.

Undeterred, Terry freed himself, squirmed onto her seat and crammed her face into his chest. She wriggled against him, smearing blood all over his T-shirt, but he held tight and braced himself for the impact of bullets. The clatter of the gun continued, but the car remained undamaged. The helicopter was hovering where he last saw it, pouring fire down onto
something
hidden from his view. Then it crept forward and down until it was skimming the rooftops of the houses close to the railway line.

‘I thought they were shooting at us,’ Terry said.

‘Now why would they do that?’ James asked, his eyes narrowing.

Terry was saved from answering by the appearance of a flock of sheep through a gap in the trees up ahead. They streamed across the tracks, heading for a patch of wasteland on the other side. The helicopter hung behind them like a huge green sheepdog, spewing out bullets. Some of the animals dropped, heads and limbs vaporized by the heavy ammunition. The rest kept moving and soon they were gone, leaving behind a breadcrumb trail of dead and wounded. The helicopter thundered across the railway line, raining down fire on the flock, then disappeared behind a derelict warehouse. The balconies emptied, the residents turning dispiritedly inside to wait once more for rescue.

‘I think you can get off me now,’ Lesley said.

Terry looked down. The lower half of her face was smeared with blood, although the flow had slowed to an ooze. The bridge of her nose was swelling up.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘I appreciate the life-saving sentiment, but I think you’ve broken my nose.’ She gingerly touched the battered appendage. ‘How bad is it? Do I look like W. C. Fields?’

Terry held her face in both his hands. He bent forward slightly, then stopped himself when he realized he had been about to plant a kiss on the injury site.

‘It’s not that bad,’ he said, inching back until he was in the driver’s seat. ‘It gives your face character.’

Lesley rummaged in the glove compartment and came out with a packet of hankies, which she used to clean off the blood. Terry gazed after the departed helicopter. The pilot could have spotted them and might file a report about a car on the railway line. He had no idea if only Brown was on their tail, or if their images had been handed to every soldier and policeman in the country with a message saying they were the terrorists. He did know they would have to be very careful.

‘Do you have anything you want to tell us?’ James asked.

Terry glanced over at Lesley, who had finished off the cleaning by inserting two little twists of ripped-up handkerchief into her nostrils. She nodded.

‘I’ll tell you while we drive,’ Terry said.

He edged around the sheep, one of which glared at them with its one remaining eye and bared its teeth, and began to talk.

It took Terry, with interjections from Lesley, less than twenty minutes to lay out the whole sorry tale. There were no more incidents as he drove, although from time to time he caught flashes of movement in his peripheral vision and heard what could have been gunfire. By the time he finished, they had reached the entrance to the tunnel that would take them into the city centre. Terry stopped the car.

‘If I hadn’t been military myself, I wouldn’t believe you,’ James said. ‘But I know what the army is prepared to do for victory. The things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done …’ He tailed off.

‘If you’d rather not come with us, we’d understand,’ Lesley said. ‘But we need to get out of the country.’

‘No, we need to help you,’ James replied. ‘Fanny would have
wanted
us to make sure the government didn’t get away with it.’

James’s metamorphosis was remarkable: so much so that Terry was a touch freaked out. Such a marked swing could be a sign of mental instability. Also, Terry did not like the tortured, faraway look that came into James’s eyes when he recalled his military service. Clearly something very wrong had been done to James, or he had done something very wrong to someone else. Either way, it had loosened the cogs of his mind. All the same, he was the only one of the group with any combat experience, unless you counted the occasional hour Terry and his workmates had wiled away at Laserquest.