It was a two storey building, purpose-built as two flats, sitting in the middle of a short row of similar buildings. The upper flat had a small balcony with flowers and a hanging basket. A small, black cat tapped its way over the railing and eyed Simon curiously. The lower flat, with which he was concerned, had a small yard, too overgrown and cluttered with black bags to be called a garden. One bag had been gutted, probably by the cat, and its contents – tea bags, spaghetti, fast food containers – lay strewn over the bottom steps down to the door
After knocking, Simon felt himself sway and grabbed the wall to steady himself.
Get it over with, he told himself, though he didn't quite know why.
Get on with it.
Forget about goodbyes.
By the time the door opened he was holding on to the wall with both hands to stop himself falling. His shock at seeing Will sobered him somewhat. It had only been a day since he had seen the man at the edge of the cliff, weeping and tripping over his feet in the dark, swinging torchlight left and right, clothes muddy and torn. Today, if it was possible, he looked worse than he had then. His white shirt was saturated with sweat and his skin was eerily pale. Where he had colour, he was blotchy. He looked as if he was about to throw up.
“Firdy sent you?” Will said. “He's laughing at you.”
“Are you ready?” said Simon.
Will reached behind him and a skinny boy in a grey tracksuit approached them. He didn't appear to be into his teens. He had his father's eyes, red from crying or lack of sleep, or both.
In the hallway, Simon noticed a mess of unopened letters in plastic supermarket carrier bags. There were dozens of bags and cardboard boxes stacked up on top of each other, sinking into the ones beneath. There was a sense of the walls closing in.
“Where is Firdy?” asked Will.
“He's in the van.”
Will's eyes were wide and haunted as he gazed at the two heads visible through the windscreen; Firdy and Sarah.
Simon smelled the alcohol on Will and realised that this was the source of his nausea. It also explained Firdy’s sloppy driving on the way here. It hadn't just been nerves. Thanks to Will, they were all drunk. Whatever the Third was doing, it had connected them. He could feel Will's nausea, his anxiety, his desire to let go and have this all over with, quickly. Knowing their origin, he reeled away from the feelings and succeeded in maintaining his sense of self.
He wondered if Will's inebriation was part of the reason for Firdy's self-disclosure with the diary. For better or worse, the truth had emerged. He only hoped that Sarah never found out what happened to their father.
As Will lead the boy out of the flat, he turned to Simon and said:
“Did you do what I said? Did you tell her you loved her?”
“It's time we weren't here, mate,” Simon said and Will backed away from him, from his words. They both looked confused, disappointed and afraid.
*
As Firdy slid open the side door, Will strained to see what was in the darkness. They all heard the slither of the thing dragging its rope over the wood panel floor. Its eyes glinted. Otherwise, the back of the van was in total darkness.
“In,” said Firdy. When neither Will nor Zak moved, Firdy grabbed the boy by an arm.
“Okay, okay,” Will said. “Let's get this over with.” He shoved his son inside -
“What's going on, Dad? What's in here? What is it?”
- and followed him in.
“It's going to be okay.”
The familiar lie.
Firdy shut the door on them, sealing them in darkness.
“Economy class,” he said. “Room for three more.”
*
Sarah couldn’t breathe; her thoughts choked her. She asked Simon to wind down his window, but the wind roaring at them made her demand to have it shut again.
Firdy wrenched the wheel left and the van lurched. A scream came from behind. Zak, presumably. The sound was muffled. Will, presumably.
Simon faced forward, relaxed but alert. He appeared to have accepted his part in all this, which frightened Sarah most of all.
She was the only one who could make a difference. Whatever it was that turned Simon into this thing, this automaton, it could read his mind, but she remained free to think. Whether they lived or died was her responsibility, she realised, and the knowledge weighed heavily on her. She would only make things worse if her plan went wrong. First, however, she needed a plan.
She tried to reassure herself with the knowledge that a fate worse than death might be waiting for them. It worked.
The element of surprise, Simon used to tell her, would make up for what she lacked in size. Don't let them see it coming.
See what coming? she thought.
A sudden change in direction threw her from her scheming into Simon’s shoulder, who sat steadfastly throughout the turn, having anticipated the bend. The jolt to her shoulder sent shockwaves through her. She felt faint.
They were off the main road now and Firdy weaved the van through backstreets, over speed bumps and between cars that were parked bumper to bumper on either side. They rolled beneath overhanging branches, around blind corners. After six or seven minutes descending ever deeper into this suburban terrain, Firdy stopped the van and told Simon to get out.
Sarah wanted to whisper to him that it was going to be okay, that she would take care of this, the way he had taken care of them since their mother died and their father disappeared, but nothing came out. Her eyes were closing.
“Go to sleep,” Simon said and she did.
*
When she woke, they were moving again. It was strangely comforting. As long as they were moving they were okay, she supposed, until she heard wailing behind her.
It had been muffled, but it was a woman's voice, not Zak.
Simon’s arms were folded tight across his chest and his head nodded to a slow rhythm, the only signs of his effort to remain calm. His eyes appeared to be fixed on the road ahead, but they were glazed over; not without light, but far, far away.
Firdy looked up at the moon. There was a sense of pieces being slotted into place. They were all part of his game. His lips had drawn back into something halfway between a grimace and a smile. Sarah hoped that they might be pulled over by the police for speeding and she fantasised for a moment how that might play out, but was disappointed by what she saw. Firdy would go through the motions, politely answering all of their questions until ultimately he agreed to open up the back of the van, at which point he'd release the thing on the rope.
Nothing could stop Firdy now. He was tapping a drumbeat on the wheel.
The van bumped up a kerb and stopped sharply.
“Watch her,” Firdy told Simon and then got out.
He had parked in a gravel wasteland, flanked by ageing trees, dead grass and dirt. Three storeys of a fire-bombed building loomed over them. According to the fragment of a sign that remained it had once been a tacky nightclub and, judging by wording revealed by the fire, it had once had a life as a warehouse.
“What now?” Sarah whispered to herself as she watched Firdy walk around the building until he was out of sight. She jumped when Simon answered.
“I don't know what happens now,” he said.
“More people?”
Simon shook his head.
Without the grumble of the engine, the van was pervaded by an silence. Gradually, Sarah became aware of voices in the back. She couldn't make out the words, only the tone: urgent, furious, desperate.
“Who's back there?” Sarah asked.
They had seen Will enter with his son, Zak, but three others had joined them while Sarah slept. Firdy had collected them from three different locations and had ushered them into the van where Simon stayed to guard his sister, ready to assist Firdy if necessary. As each person approached the van, Simon met with a level gaze.
There were two men and woman. The men were polar opposites in many ways. The far taller of the two, Jonathan, never Jon or Jonny, had been dressed in a sharp, business suit, as if he was on his way to head office rather than a Transit van and dirt roads. A briefcase and umbrella would have completed his image. His mind, thrumming now in the back of the van, was a circuit board of ones and zeros. He was a man of few desires and made his decisions quickly. He didn't see them as decisions at all. Some alternatives were weightier than others. He went with the flow. It made him an efficient worker for the Third. He had delivered a lot of people and he had no more idea about what happened to them than Simon had. In his mind, these people had glowed until he had turned them off. He had known that his turn would come and now that it was here it wasn't so bad. He saw nothingness in his future. Becoming nothing, he thought, wasn't so bad.
Simon closed his eyes. He didn't want to know this, but stray thoughts were close all around. Their mental boundaries were dissipating and it became normal for one person's thought to spill into the mind of another.
The other man called himself Moody. Moody was probably his last name, but it had stuck, not only because of his disposition, but because of his love of all things military. When Firdy picked him up, he had been dressed in combat trousers and an army surplus jacket and, unlike Simon, had also opted for full camouflage. Even now he was imagining that he was being transported in an armoured personnel vehicle and that the driver had paused while the track ahead was checked for mines. In his mind, there were distant explosions.
He had nobody to leave behind. There had been no obvious leverage to get him here. Firdy had probably convinced him that this was his purpose. Be all you can be. Be someone you can be.
He was a good soldier, he was a weapon and he was willing to see the night through to its conclusion, no matter how sour for him. He only wished he had been asked to kill more people before the end had come.
The woman was the most focussed of the passengers. All her thoughts were edged with a desire to escape and the knowledge that what was happening to her was not fair. She had done as the Third had asked, despite her growing distress, and yet she was here anyway in the back of the van with that thing. She had to get free. She had to get free. This wasn't fair. She had a little girl named Olivia; she was only three years old. She had to get free.
Her anger raged through her like a forest fire. It flickered through them all.
“How many of us are there?” Sarah asked.
“Four like me,” Simon said. “We're all connected. And there's the boy, Zak, like you; dragged into this by no fault of his own.”
“It's not your fault,” Sarah said. “It's not.”
A tumble in the back made the van shiver.
“They're talking about escaping,” Simon said, staring out at the gutted building. “Any second now, they'll ask me to help.”
A bang rattled the metal wall that divided the rear of the van from the cab. The woman Sarah had heard earlier yelled:
“Get me out of here. Let me out. You in the front. I know you can hear me. You've got to let me out of here.”
“Maybe she's -”
“They can't run,” Simon snapped. “There's nowhere to run to.”
It doesn't matter, she realised. It didn't matter that there was nowhere to hide. She would run and this time she would keep going for as long as she could, because even an hour more might be enough to prevent Firdy seeing out his plan for them.
Before he could stop her, Sarah slid across the van into the driving seat.
“No, Sarah.”
Her hand found the handle.
“The cat will find you,” Simon said and reached for her, but she slipped away from him.
“I have to go,” she said. “For all of us.”