Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,33
checking things out. After a bit, he pulled up and nodded toward the other side of the road, where a big old station wagon was parked.
“That’s the one, Jem. Get all the stuff in the bags. Let’s do this quickly, and no noise.” He held his long, bony index finger up to his mouth and winked. He was loving this.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Stay here. I’ll just suss it out.”
Spider swung out of the car and darted across the road. He did a quick tour ’round the station wagon and came back.
“Yeah, that’s fine. No wheel lock or nothing. Get all the stuff together, blankets and everything.”
“Just a minute.” I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the bill to McNulty. I scrabbled about for a pen and found an old pencil stub. In the smallest print I could manage, I wrote in the corner of the letter: The end—12252023. A parting gift to the cruel bastard.
“What the hell are you doing?” Spider hissed at me. “We’ve got to go before the neighbors’ curtains start twitching. Come on!”
I dropped the letter onto the floor, gathered up my stuff, and got out of the car. Spider was already at the driver’s door of the new one, fiddling at the lock with some sort of tool. It gave a satisfying click, and he got in and opened the passenger door. I went ’round, chucked all the stuff onto the backseat, and got in quickly, trying not to make too much noise as I shut the door. Spider was doing his thing under the steering column, and soon the engine sparked into life and we were off, easing through the sleepy streets, nice and quiet.
It took us ages to get out of Basingstoke. What a complete nightmare, like they’d designed the roads to keep you trapped there forever. We drove ’round in bloody circles for about twenty minutes, until I spotted a sign for Andover — I’d seen on the map that that was one of the next towns west. As we headed away, Spider heaved a sigh of relief. “Reckon they should bomb bloody Basingstoke, leave London alone.”
Even at half-six there were plenty of cars around.
“Try the radio, see what’s happening,” Spider said.
I didn’t want to know, kind of wanted the outside world to stay outside, for it just to be me and Spider in a car, traveling, but I switched the radio on anyway, and pressed a few buttons randomly until I found some news.
“The death toll from the London bombing has risen to eleven overnight, with twenty-six of the injured still hospitalized, two of them in critical condition. Forensic experts are now engaged in a painstaking search of the site, sifting the debris for evidence of the perpetrators and for clues confirming the identity of the dead. Police are still appealing for two youths seen running from the scene minutes before the explosion to come forward, and are set to release security camera photos at a press conference later this morning.”
“Switch it off, Jem. Don’t say nothing about the car, does it? P’raps they haven’t sussed it’s us yet.”
“They probably wouldn’t say everything they know, though, would they? It’s not going to take long, is it? Karen will have reported me missing, and they’ve got the security camera footage….”
“The best thing would be to find somewhere to hide out, camp out somewhere in the woods. Wherever there are people around, it’s danger for us.”
My heart sank. What the hell did either of us know about camping out? Two kids from London? “Spider, have you been camping before?”
“Nah, but how difficult can it be? We just need enough food and water, and some blankets, find somewhere sheltered. We’ll be fine — commandos, yeah?”
I laughed. “I’m not going commando.”
“No, you retard, living off the land. Catching stuff, eating berries. We can do that.”
“We’ll be in the bloody hospital ourselves by tomorrow night if we’re picking stuff and eating it. We’ll be poisoned. If we don’t freeze to death.” I looked gloomily out the window at the alien patchwork of fields and hedges. It was about as friendly as the surface of Mars: no shops, no houses, no people, no life. True enough, London was a dump, but at least it was some sort of civilization, not like this endless, muddy, dull green wasteland. “Why can’t we just stay in the car? Park it out of the way?”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Listen, I think we should drive for another half hour or something and then