by Louise Welsh
‘Is someone there?’ The voice belonged to a woman.
Magnus froze.
Stevie whispered his name.
‘Is that you, son?’ The woman was in the hallway, just beyond the door. Her voice had a tremble born of fear, but it held determination too.
Stevie stepped back into the kitchen and pulled at his arm. ‘Magnus.’
He did not move. The voice could not belong to his mother, but he was rooted to the spot by all the fantasies he had dreamt, that she and his sister Rhona had escaped the Sweats and were living elsewhere, never knowing that he had survived.
‘Son?’ The hall door was opening.
‘Magnus.’ Stevie tried to drag him into the yard.
He batted her away. ‘I have to see.’ He heard Stevie cock her gun and said, ‘Don’t, it’ll be fine.’
The woman looked nothing like Magnus’s mother. She was small, with long grey hair and a wrinkled face. Her white outfit looked like a combination of wedding dress and hospital gown. It gave her a witchy air. She said, in a voice more anglicised than his mother’s, ‘Oh, I thought you might be him.’
Magnus backed away. ‘I’m not.’
The woman held a hand out towards him, as if ready to touch Magnus, to make sure he was not who she was seeking.
‘No, he was taller than you and better-looking.’ She seemed to see Stevie for the first time. ‘Have you come to rob and kill me or just rob?’
Stevie said, ‘We just need a few things. We’re friends of Col.’
The woman sat at the kitchen table. She took a cigarette from the pocket of her dress and lit it.
‘None of this is mine. I’m just looking for my son.’ Her eyes met Magnus’s. ‘I thought you might be him, but you’re shorter than he was and not as handsome.’
Magnus said, ‘I’m looking for my son too.’
The old lady took a long drag of her cigarette. She stared at Magnus and nodded, as if she already knew of his mission. Her tone was matter-of-fact.
‘He might be dead. Lots of them are. The Sweats keeps on carrying them off.’ She balanced her cigarette on the edge of the table, lit end facing outwards, so as not to burn the wood. ‘Give me your hand, palm up.’
Stevie said, ‘We don’t have time for this.’
But Magnus stepped forward and placed his hand in the old lady’s, his palm open. Now that he was closer he could see the charms strung around her neck: rosary beads tangled with St Christophers, evil eyes and love beads. She traced his lifeline with her finger.
‘It’s all written here, if you know how to look.’ Her washed-out blue eyes met his. A piece of ash crumbled from her still-burning cigarette onto the floor. ‘He’s not your boy, but you’ll find him.’
Magnus slid his hand free. He had never believed in the supernatural, was contemptuous of séance-goers and spiritualists who claimed to be able to contact the dead, but the women’s words calmed him.
‘Thanks.’ Magnus thought he should give her something, but could think of nothing. He nodded. ‘Thank you.’
The lit end of the cigarette made contact with the edge of the table, blackening the pine. Stevie pulled at his arm and this time he went with her.
The old lady called, ‘I’m going to find my son too. He’s alive somewhere, waiting for me. I see him waiting, in the lines of my hand.’
Thirty-Six
Stevie drove south while Magnus slept on the mattress in the back of the van, his gun by his side. She stuck to B roads, her eyes flitting often to the rear-view mirror, alert for pursuers. Magnus had made Stevie promise to wake him after an hour, but his reaction to the old woman in the farmhouse had disturbed her and she let him sleep on, hoping rest would cure any creeping psychosis.
The countryside had returned to nature. It was still possible to discern that there had once been farmed land, but the neatly defined fields had lost their edges. Hedges were wild and tangled; dykes were crumbling, fences tumbled. There were no herds of grazing cattle, but sheep and fowl flourished and Stevie was often forced to slow the van to avoid them. The route took her past farmhouses and cottages, through market towns and villages. She sealed her windows and picked up speed in the deserted streets, trying not to focus on the decaying buildings, the stench of rot. They passed through districts razed by fire and lone buildings reduced to burnt-out skeletons. It was strange to think of whole streets alive with flames and no one there to see or care.
Occasionally Stevie saw signs of habitation; a row of washing on a line, a well-tended kitchen garden, a few cultivated fields; but she did not glimpse any people. She supposed the sound of her engine sent them into hiding. Orkney islanders were wary of newcomers too.
Stevie was two hours into the journey and making good progress when she came across the first warning. A metal sign that had once been used to halt traffic at roadworks was propped in the middle of the road. A wooden board, painted with red lettering, was nailed to it. The brushstrokes were thick and clumsy. The paint had run in places and it was difficult to make out the words. She idled the engine for a moment, wondering if it was best to exit the van and approach the sign on foot, or drive right up to it.
The change in the engine’s rhythm woke Magnus. She turned the ignition off, took her gun from the passenger seat and stepped into the road. The sign was clearer now.
KEEP OUT
TURN BACK
PENALTY FOR TRESPASS
DEATH
Magnus crawled, bleary-eyed, from the back of the van. He had not shaved since they left Orkney and bristles had colonised his chin. He knuckled his face.
‘Where are we?’
‘Just outside Dounthrapple.’ Stevie pointed at the sign. ‘We may have a problem.’
Magnus had brought his gun with him. He kept it in his hand and walked to the side of the van.
‘Ah, Christ.’ His words were soft enough to be a prayer. He looked at her. ‘Do you think it might be left over from the Sweats? Maybe someone realised they were infectious and tried to save other folk from entering town and catching it.’
‘Could be.’ Stevie sounded unconvinced. ‘But it would be a long time for the sign to sit undamaged in the middle of the road, without getting knocked over by an animal or damaged by the weather.’
Magnus was used to his hopes being shattered. He gave a small, resigned nod.
‘What happens if we go back?’
‘A long diversion and no guarantee that we won’t hit the same warning at another junction.’
‘Shit.’ Magnus slapped the side of the van. He rubbed his face again. Stevie thought he might be close to tears, but when he looked up his expression was resolute. ‘We’ve come too far to go back now.’
They shifted the sign together. Magnus held out his hand for the keys and Stevie tossed them to him. He drove the van forward a couple of yards and then they each took a side of the warning barrier and dragged it back into place.
Magnus grinned at her from the driver’s seat. His beard leant the Orcadian a reckless, piratical edge. Stevie thought that in another life she might have liked to kiss him.
He said, ‘Who do you want to be? Thelma or Louise?’
Stevie returned his smile. ‘Neither, they both die at the end of the movie. We’re going to come out of this alive.’
Thirty-Seven
There were more warning signs on the approach to town. They were painted on walls, on the sides of buildings and the surface of the road itself. The words varied, but the message was the same: Death awaited trespassers.
Magnus said, ‘I’ll skirt town and rejoin the main route. We might still be considered trespassers, but at least I’ll be able to put my foot on the gas.’
The deserted landscape, littered with threats of death, was beginning to spook Stevie.
She said, ‘The anonymity makes it worse. I’d rather see who we’re dealing with.’
Magnus glanced at her. ‘Remember Internet trolls? They usually turned out to be sad fucks who lived with their mums. My guess is
, whoever wrote these signs is the same type, cowards, trying to scare us.’
‘They’re doing a good job.’
The first roadblock took them by surprise. Abandoned container lorries were slewed across the carriageway. Cars had been deliberately crashed into them. They sat at whiplash angles, their bonnets crumpled, windows crazed.
Magnus backed the van up and executed a quick, three-point turn. He took a left that would steer them away from the town, but they were met by another roadblock of lorries and smashed cars. ‘Shit.’ An open road to his right led into an industrial estate. Magnus looked at Stevie. ‘Do you have a map?’
‘I lost it, somewhere at the abattoir.’
‘Someone’s playing silly buggers. There are no road signs, have you noticed?’
He turned the van into the estate, grateful for its grid system. It was closer towards town than he would have liked, but warehouses and workshops had always been located on the outskirts and if he followed the main drag through the estate he would eventually hit a fast road to Glasgow. Magnus rounded a corner and was confronted with another mash of bus, metal and cars. He hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand.
‘Jesus Christ.’
Stevie said, ‘Can you imagine how long these roadblocks took to set up? Whoever did this, they’re motivated.’
Magnus crunched the gears into reverse. ‘I’d like to string them up.’
Stevie stared out of the window at the low-rise buildings. DEATH TO TRESPASSERS was painted across the front of a tile warehouse in incongruously cheerful bubble letters.
‘I think it was a mistake to cross the first roadblock. We should have retraced our route while we still had the chance.’
‘We’ve taken too many diversions already. Every minute we waste, the kids travel further away from us.’
Stevie took the clip from her gun. She checked it and slotted it home.
‘Whoever erected these barriers will know we’re here by now.’
They emerged onto a roundabout. All of its exits were blocked by a wall of wrecked vehicles, except for one that led uphill, into a street of older houses. Magnus had never been in Dounthrapple before, but he was familiar with the layout of enough Scottish towns to know that it would take them into the old part of the city. Once they were up there, amongst the twists and turns of medieval streets, they would be easy pickings. He circled the roundabout, heading back the way they had come.
‘I feel like we’re in a computer game.’
Stevie said, ‘Do you hear that?’
He did. A heavy rumble of engines that seemed to make the road beneath them quake.
Magnus took the exit back into the industrial estate, but the street they had so recently left was no longer clear. Two trucks were manoeuvring into place halfway along it. They stopped, bumper to bumper across the tarmac.
Magnus’s mouth dried. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’
Stevie said, ‘I don’t know, but if they catch us, they’ll kill us.’
There was a gap between the truck on the left and the buildings that edged the street, a small unfenced lawn where workers might once have enjoyed tea breaks on sunny days.
‘Hold on tight.’ Magnus pressed his foot on the accelerator and raced towards the opening. He focused on the patch of grass, the edge of the building, the tail end of the truck, but he was aware of Stevie too, folding herself into a brace position in the passenger seat beside him.
He had mounted the pavement and was about to rocket through the gap, when an ice-cream truck slotted into the space. Magnus saw the jaunty plastic ice-cream cone on its roof, the cheerful ices decorated with hundreds and thousands painted across its bonnet, the instruction above the windscreen to Mind That Child! He turned his steering wheel hard right and did a doughnut turn into the middle of the road, wheels screeching and rubber burning. There was a second when he thought that he had lost control and the van was about to roll, but then he managed to straighten the wheel. Stevie was curled forward, her knees drawn up, her hands clenched over her skull, still holding her gun.
Magnus expected to see another roadblock being assembled, jamming the path ahead, but the way to the roundabout was clear. They were penned, their only possible route through the roundabout and up into the old town. Magnus was reminded of his father’s sheep, herded into runs by insistent collie dogs, before being taken to slaughter.
‘I’ve a horrible feeling someone wants us to go this way.’
Stevie’s voice was raw, a marathon runner who had hit their limit. ‘Let’s ditch the van and make a break for it.’
They had gone through so much to get mobile, abandoning the van would feel like giving in.
Magnus said, ‘They can’t have blocked off all the roads. Maybe there’s somewhere up ahead where we can loop back and get out another way.’
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’
‘Really? I feel great about it.’ It was the kind of stupid sarcasm he pulled Shug up for. Magnus was about to apologise when he saw a Humvee in his rear-view mirror. ‘Where the fuck did that come from?’
The armoured vehicle was racing towards them. Magnus pressed his foot to the floor but the Humvee was already a breath away from his bumper. Stevie rolled down her side window. She drew her gun and he realised that she was about to aim at the Humvee’s windscreen.
Magnus said, ‘There’s no point shooting at them. You’ll only be wasting bullets. That thing’s armoured like a tank.’
The Humvee held back on the roundabout, as if it was eager for him not to spin out of control before they reached their destination. Then it was back on them like a magnet, shadowing them through the winding streets of the old town. The van juddered over cobbles, past Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Marks & Spencer’s, Greggs and once chichi boutiques that had catered to tourists. The shopfronts were peeling, their displays emptied of merchandise, but there were none of the shattered windows and smashed-in doorways that had plagued cities in the wake of the Sweats.
Magnus’s wheels lost purchase on the cobbles and the van’s rear slammed against a metal bollard. Cans of petrol rattled in the back. His hands slipped against the gearstick as he dropped down into first and pulled away. He remembered the way the abattoir had erupted into flames – billows of fire, flowering against the night sky. An unblocked road forked off to their left. Magnus sped down it, the Humvee at his back.
‘You were right. We’ve got to make a break for it.’ He unclipped his seat belt and was aware of Stevie releasing hers. ‘Get ready to run.’
Magnus drove as fast as he dared, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the car door. The road was narrowing into an alleyway hemmed either side by brick walls. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
Stevie curled into a ball. She shouted, ‘Magnus!’ but he had seen the wall at the end of the alley and was already slamming on the brakes. Stevie straightened up and looked at the reflection of the Humvee in the wing mirror. The vehicle rolled back a few inches and peeped its horn. She said, ‘I think they want us to reverse.’
Magnus locked the doors. He put his forehead against the steering wheel, took a deep breath and then sat up and regarded the Humvee.
‘If they wanted us dead they could shoot us right here. No fuss, no muss. We’re like fish in a barrel, but they’re just sitting there waiting.’
The thought gave him some hope.
Stevie said, ‘This town must have been boring before the Sweats, imagine how dull it is now. Maybe they don’t want the hunt to end too soon.’
Magnus shook his head. ‘Christ, I hope you’re wrong.’
There was nowhere to make a run to and so he reversed out, the Humvee still at his back, its black-tinted windscreen masking their pursuers’ faces. Magnus was reminded again of his father’s collies, programmed to keep herding until the job was done.
The Humvee backed out of the alleyway. It blocked the road they had driven in on, leaving Magnus no option but to continue the ascent to the historic centre. Stevie was che
cking her gun again. She tied her hair back from her face, readying herself for combat. ‘What do you think they want?’
A tourist information sign pointed towards the cathedral. Magnus slowed the van to a crawl. There was no point in rushing now. ‘I don’t know, but we’re about to find out.’
Thirty-Eight
Adil was hanging from one of a line of gibbets in Merkat Square. He had been a thin lad and his body looked insubstantial, turning on its rope. One of Belle’s companions, the tall man called Rob, who had once worked for Kwik Fit, was hanging on a neighbouring gibbet.
A dozen or so people, dressed in black, were assembled in front of the cathedral. A woman stood at their centre. Her fair hair was coiled into a plait that hung down her chest. She held a long twist of rope, draped across her outstretched arms. There was a horrible sense of theatre to the arrangement: the black-clad group, the cathedral backdrop, the hanging bodies.
Stevie started to shake. She said, ‘We have to get him down from there.’
Magnus could not take his eyes from Adil – his blackened face, his soiled clothes. He remembered the boy eating soup with Shug and the rest of the kids, in the kitchen of the croft, after a Saturday morning football match. They had been muddy. Their cheeks flushed by the sudden heat of the kitchen after the chill of outdoors.
Alive. All of them, alive.
The boy’s feet were bare. Magnus could see his soles, the downward tilt of his toes. Adil had scored a goal that Saturday. He had lapped the green, arms outstretched like a champion.
Magnus took Stevie’s hand in his and felt her judder. ‘I’m sorry.’
It was his fault that they were going to die. Tears obscured his vision, but Magnus still could not take his eyes from Adil. The only good thing about dying would be not having to break the news of what had happened to Francesca, the boy’s foster mother. Magnus wished he had been able to see Shug one last time and tell him, whatever he might have done, that he was loved.
