“We need to find the keys.”
Paula lit her cigarette and took a draw. “One thing at a time.”
Carlotta made to enter the garage but Paula blocked her way.
“Where are you going?”
Carlotta looked up. She was half Paula’s size.
“I’m going to find the keys.”
Paula held her gaze momentarily, then stepped aside.
Carlotta went down the side of the garage and I went after her. It was cramped inside with only enough room for us to move in single file. I got as far as the corner while Carlotta squeezed around the front of the vehicle in order to get to the driver’s side. She reached under the wheel arch and busied herself with something. Then, with a pneumatic hiss, the door behind me opened and a courtesy light blinked on.
I climbed aboard just so that I could see how many seats there were. There looked to be more than enough. Carlotta went and examined the driver’s seat. After a brief search, she appeared with a set of keys.
“How did you know where to look?” I asked.
“I used to play hockey,” she said, as if it was self-explanatory.
“And…”
“Our coach driver was always forgetting his keys. He had a spare set on-board just in case.”
“Oh,” I said.
“He used to let me drive it round the car park.”
It took a moment for me to realise what she was saying. “You can drive one of these things?”
“Yeah? It’s not hard.”
She leaned across the wheel and inserted the key in the ignition. The engine started first time. “Let’s go.”
No sooner was the door closed than she was reversing out of the garage.
Once we were outside, a small group of women gathered at the door. Paula stood at the front with Nastya. As the door sighed open, Paula clambered aboard, eyeing Carlotta suspiciously.
“Main gate’s padlocked. We’re not going anywhere.”
Carlotta didn’t seem to be listening. She was too busy fussing around the steering column. After a few moments she came up holding a key.
“Try this,” she said tossing it across to Paula.
Paula caught it easily. She looked at the key then looked at Nastya. Then the pair of them moved off in the direction of the gate.
*
Carlotta drove the coach with the same rugged self-assurance she had displayed with the golf cart. She had to turn the coach around so that it was heading back towards the service road and I had the job of moving the women out of the way while she did so. This was not as simple as it seemed as a lot of the women appeared to have no road sense whatsoever. I literally had to herd them like sheep to give the coach room to manoeuvre. But then, once the coach was pointed in the right direction they surged forward in an attempt to get on-board. There was no sense of them queuing, it was everyone for themselves.
Once they were all on-board I looked for Paula and Nastya.
Carlotta indicated for me to climb aboard. “I’ll drive around and pick them up at the gate.”
“What if they can’t get the gate open?”
“They’ll get it open. Now, come on.”
“I’m not coming.”
“Don’t be so bloody stupid. Those things’ll be here any minute.”
“I’ve got to go back,” I said. “Millie’s back there. I can’t leave her.”
Carlotta turned off the engine and got out from behind the wheel. “You’re not serious?”
“’Fraid so.”
The women on the coach started drumming their feet.
“Okay,” Carlotta came down the steps, jumping down from the last one.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m coming with you.”
“You can’t. You have to drive the coach.”
Carlotta sat on the bottom step.
“Carlotta, please,” I begged. “You have to get them away from here.”
“I don’t have to do anything of the sort. I came here for you, Bronte. If you’re going back then I’m coming with you.”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I’d done my bit, I’d got the women to safety. Now I needed to see to Millie.
“You don’t understand. Millie…”
“Is lying out there injured. But I saw what you did with that bubble thing. She’s as safe as she can be for now. You, on the other hand…”
I gave her a dismissive gesture. “I have to go. She needs me.”
“And so does this lot.”
Paula and Nastya appeared running.
“Gate’s open,” Paula gasped. “We’d best be off.”
“The monsters are here,” Nastya said. “We saw them.”
Carlotta looked up from her step. “Bronte’s not coming. She has to save her friend.”
“The hell with that!”
I expected Paula to try and manhandle me back onto the coach. She certainly looked capable of doing it. Instead she jerked a thumb behind her.
“The shrimp men are forming up behind those out-buildings. Couple a dozen of ‘em, I reckon.”
Carlotta looked up at me and arched her eyebrows. The four of us just stood there.
The chittering sound, which had never left us, had grown now to a constant atonal hiss.
Eventually, Paula said, “This is bloody ridiculous. We need to get on the coach.”
I turned back towards the road and paused.
For once, Paula was right: it was ridiculous. But I couldn’t leave Millie, I just couldn’t.
Nastya said, “We have to go.”
The chittering sound had changed, it had moved up a gear, incorporating a rhythmic chirp. That didn’t sound good. That didn’t sound good at all.
Carlotta stood up and walked over to me. “What’s it to be, Bronte?”
I was confused. I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. When I looked at the coach I could see the faces of the women pressed against the glass, desperate to see what was happening.
I started back towards the coach. Carlotta let out a little whoop and pulled herself up the steps. Paula and Nastya went next and I followed.
Carlotta switched on the engine while I was standing on the stairs waiting for the other two to take a seat. The coach had only moved a short distance when something struck the door behind me. I thought at first that we’d hit something. But when I looked around, I saw a ghost white demon struggling to keep the door from closing. The door mechanism juddered, unable to close completely while two of the demon’s legs were trapped.
Paula loomed over me. Holding onto one of the seats she whacked at the thing’s limbs with her pool cue. She had little effect missing more times than she struck home. The coach hit a speed bump then throwing Paula on top of me. When I looked again the demon was gone and the door was closed.
As the coach swung around onto the service road, the headlights illuminated a solid wall of demons flooding out to block our path. Most were quick to move aside as the coach wheeled around but others were simply mown down, clattering under the wheels, spraying enough bodily fluid across the windscreen that Carlotta had to activate the wipers. One of the creatures managed to gain purchase on the near-side mirror and looked to be trying to pull itself up onto the roof.
I could see the big open gates ahead of us and Carlotta suddenly raked the wheel hard to the left. The demon’s body was caught between the gate and the side of the coach. There was a terrible tearing sound and, for a second, I thought we were wedged fast. Then something gave way and I watched as the demon and the side mirror were ripped away.
From the back of the coach we could hear the sound of more bodies impacting against the body work but by that point I was past caring.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After what they’d seen, the women turned subdued and quiet. We had been lucky to escape with so few casualties and we knew it. The woman who’d been bitten in the neck was the most badly injured and one of the other women – who turned out to be a nurse - had
managed to patch her up the best she could. I went down to see her after about half an hour of driving to find her draped in a blanket. When I tried to talk to her she seemed not to hear, just stared grimly ahead. The woman who was sitting next to her just shrugged.
Bizarrely, several women had managed to smuggle out some food they’d found in the Student Union offices. Large multi-packs of crisps and several packets of biscuits were divided up and distributed around the coach. For my part, I wasn’t hungry. What I really wanted was a cup of coffee and a smoke. I went and sat behind Carlotta who had her window open and was luxuriating in the cool rush of air. She was doing an amazing job of driving the coach although she didn’t like having to shift down the gears as she approached a junction. Instead, she tended to speed up as we approached. Luckily, there wasn’t much traffic on the road at that hour of the morning so she seemed to be getting away with it.
“Where are we headed?” I asked.
“No idea. I’m just trying to get out of London.”
“Okay,” that made sense. We couldn’t stay where we were.
“Any thoughts where we might head for? I did think about trying to find a hotel.”
I didn’t know what to say. It would cost a fortune to accommodate everyone even for one night and fifty women turning up without a reservation was bound to draw attention. If Kohl had tracked the women to the university he could certainly track us via hotel registrations.
I briefly considered taking them all to my dad’s house but quickly realised that that wouldn’t work. His neighbours spotted me soon enough when I went home so the arrival of a multi-ethnic cabal of witches would not go unnoticed. The only other possibility was Ma Birch’s place. Isolated and difficult to get to it had a garden large enough to hide a coach in with enough rooms that we could make ourselves reasonably comfortable. It wouldn’t be ideal but it was somewhere that we’d be able to go-to-ground for at least a couple of days before anyone from the village started getting suspicious.
“Head towards Norfolk,” I said.
“Norfolk? What’s in Norfolk?”
I briefly outlined my plan.
“Okay,” she said. “Norfolk it is then.”
I sat back in my seat, took out my phone and rang Millie. My call went straight to Voicemail. The same thing happened when I tried to ring Marcus.
“Hey!” Paula was standing over me. “Who are you ringing?”
“My friend,” I didn’t bother to look up. “She’s the one who was injured.”
“Yeah, well that’s too bad.”
And with that, she snatched the phone out of my hand and threw it out the window.
“What the hell are you doing? Carlotta! Stop the coach.”
Paula planted a hand on my shoulder as I made to stand up.
“And I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”
I pushed her hand away. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Seems only fair. First thing your lot did was to take our phones off us. Didn’t want us talking to anyone, telling them where we were.”
Paula dropped her hand.
“My friend put her life on the line for you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she was already moving off down the coach. “I’m sure we’re all very grateful.”
*
I had only intended on shutting my eyes for a few minutes but, when I next opened them, bright sunlight was filling the coach’s interior. Carlotta must have driven through the night before pulling off the motorway and into a service station. The coach was largely empty and there was no sign of Carlotta. When I asked one of the other women were Carlotta was she placed her flattened hands by the side of her face and mimed someone sleeping. I assumed that Carlotta must be still on the coach so I decided to leave her to it while I went to explore.
After visiting the washroom I wandered around the shops feeling slightly disassociated from reality. I had no idea where we were, I’d expected someone to wake me earlier but no one had. My first shock was that I’d been asleep for six hours, my second was that we were approaching County Durham, several hundred miles north of where I thought we were headed. The temptation to confront Paula was almost over-whelming but in the end I settled on having a quiet word with Nastya. Seemed that Carlotta had told the pair of them about the Norfolk plan but Paula had scotched the idea largely, I think, because it was me who had suggested it. Nastya told me that Paula had said that I couldn’t be trusted and, as proof to support her findings, offered up the fact that I’d been caught trying to use my phone.
When I pointed out to Nastya that any one of the women could, at that moment, be using one of the service station’s pay-phones, she just shrugged. The most annoying part was that Nastya then wouldn’t discuss where it was that we were actually going. I stormed off, vowing to track down Paula and have it out with her only my heart wasn’t in it. Instead, I consoled myself with a coffee and a Belgian bun. It was only later while I was finishing off my cigarette in the lorry park that I finally caught up with Paula. She was smoking a roll-up and told me that if I really wanted to know where we going then I’d have to wake Carlotta.
Carlotta slept for another two hours and I didn’t have the heart to rouse her. When she finally did wake up I was waiting with a coke and a sandwich. Then, it was time to re-fuel the coach. Carlotta paid for it all on her credit card which came as a relief as I was the only other person on-board with a bank card.
I didn’t tackle the sensitive issue of our destination until we had been traveling for twenty minutes and Paula was safely out of the way.
As we passed a road-sign for Durham I said, as casually as I could, “So, we’re not going to Norfolk then?”
“They over ruled me,” Carlotta said. “I didn’t really know where we were headed and they were starting to get twitchy. One of the women was saying that their luck’s so bad they must have a curse on them.”
“They might have a point there.”
“Anyway, Paula seems to have it in for you. Don’t know why. She thinks you’re trying to double-cross them.”
“Really!” I didn’t trust myself to say anything else.
To think that I’d abandoned Millie for this!
Carlotta continued. “I tried to argue with her but she was having none of it. They want to get as much distance between them and London as they can. They were even talking about heading for Hull and taking the ferry over to Holland.”
“I trust you talked them out of it?”
“I just pointed out that nobody’d brought their passports.”
“Can’t say I blame them. So where are we going then?
She caught my eye in the driver’s mirror, “North of the border.”
“Scotland!”
“It’s very beautiful this time of year.”
*
It was turning dark again as we approached the Laing family estate, the short winter days making a mockery of the term ‘daylight hours.’
We had spent several hours driving through some of the most amazing scenery I had ever seen. It was so beautiful that I felt embarrassed when Carlotta asked whether I’d been to that part of Scotland before. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I’d never been to Scotland in my life. At one point we were driving along a long black ribbon of road and we were the only vehicle for miles. Mountains soared on either side, so tall that parts of the valley must have been in near permanent shadow. We were running parallel to a fast flowing river which kept appearing and disappearing. The colours either side of us were staggering: the undergrowth at ground level a rich russet red changing to browns and darker greens the higher you climbed. From our angle it was impossible to see the peaks as the trees higher up where obscured by mist.
Traveling through such majestic countryside had a calming effect. Even Paula appeared to relax.
Carlotta - in direct contrast - became more and more anxious as we drew closer to our destination. At first I put it down to the narrowness of the roads and the difficulty of manoeuvring such a
large vehicle around bends and corners which would have proven difficult in a family saloon, but it was more than that. She was worried about something.
“Is there anything I should know about before we get there?” I asked.
“About what?”
“Your family, for a start. I assume we’ll be meeting them.”
“Apart from Silas and myself, there’s only my mother and I doubt you’ll get a chance to meet her.”
That sort of threw me. “Oh, and why’s that?”
“She’s hosting the annual hunt ball this weekend. The main event kicks off tomorrow but people will be arriving all evening. So it’s not great timing.”
“Are you sure there’s going to be enough room for everyone,” I looked back down the coach. The women were getting fractious. They’d been travelling for most of the day. They just wanted to get off the coach.
“Have you managed to ring ahead?” I asked assuming that Carlotta still had her phone. “At least give them some warning.”
“I tried to get through at the service station. Had to leave a message.”
“What about Silas? I mean, couldn’t you contact him?”
Carlotta smiled, no doubt relieved to hear me break the taboo and actually mention him by name.
“He’ll be busy as well,” she said. “But I thought we might surprise him.”
I experienced an awful twinge of doubt at that. “Just so long as it’s a pleasant surprise.”
Neither one of us spoke for a while, then I said.
“What about the girls? Aren’t they going to attract a lot of attention?”
Carlotta concentrated on the road, we were approaching a steep incline and she had to change down several times just to keep the coach moving.
Bitter Moon Page 15
