Chapter Three, ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier–Shit!’
It gets worse from there.
Some of them have heard things, others have no idea. You’ve got to understand that we’re pretty remote here—no one knows anything past their own front door; big things don’t happen to people like us.
It’s on my walk up to the top of the street that I realise it’s all changed forever. There was a scream outside when I was still in one of the shops, and that’s actually what prompted them all to get going: the rest of my job was easy, at that point.
“Alright,” I say, as they crowd against the front doors, trying to see out; I feel like a schoolteacher. It’s dead quiet again. “You can use the back door, if you can find it.”
They don’t even wait to hear me finish the sentence. There are a good few of them being responsible citizens, keeping it calm and trying to get out in as clean a line as possible, but then you always get one: a straggler at the back who panics at the steady movement of the line, who charges a little too hard and ends up taking out one of the little old ladies in front of him. It’s always like that, even without a war.
They’re usually the first to brag about things like this.
The glass smashes behind us.
The line doesn’t take long to disband, and the last of them are gone by the time I look round to the window—and I don’t know what I’m expecting, but when I see what caused the damage it actually settles me. I can do this. You see, someone has thrown a brick into our shop: it sits there, bored, upon the floor, waiting to be used—but whoever our thrower was, they haven’t bothered to follow it up with any concrete action. Finally, I think, it’s not just me who doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing; I walk straight out of the shop.
Were they one of ours? I hardly think a trained soldier—enemy or otherwise—would resort to a brick if they’ve already got a capable weapon in their hands.
But I don’t have time to think much more than that on the subject. The street has gone to shit.
The high street—strange for a typical Tuesday morning—is blocked: there’s one stationary car after another, and that would be fine, except they’re all empty—the headrests are the only passengers. They are mute and don’t tell me a thing, but one of the engines is still running, as if whoever was driving it had to make a run—as if that was their only option, as if the tyres of the still-idling car couldn’t have taken them far enough, fast enough.
Someone’s left their dog in the back seat, an ugly little terrier—it yelps and pushes its whole awful body against the window over and over; eventually it figures out that the passenger door is open, so it sprints right out across the road and past the bus stop. I lose sight of it and hear a bang, and the dog is screaming and screaming as it runs back up the pavement and drags its little bloody body past my shop. I daren’t look at it any longer. I don’t want it to make eye contact with me, or I’ll be cursed just the same—I turn my head, and force myself to survey the rest of the street to my left.
One man is asleep in the entrance of Greggs, and I watch him closely—until I realise that there’s dark stuff sprayed all over the window behind him. I should have taken the back door, too.
I don’t go out into the street just yet—these are only the things I can see from my spot in the doorway. It’s a good thing, too, because it turns out there are soldiers everywhere—not ours—and the unfamiliar sight sends me stumbling back into the shop. It’s a good position, actually, once I close the door, because I’m hidden by the door frame: from here, I can see most of what’s passing, and I’ll be honest, it doesn’t look good. I was going to crack the door to hear if anyone’s coming, but I don’t need to: they’re shouting, firing; someone is screaming again, and it takes me a while before I can settle myself down enough to think.
I take another peek at the window: they’re moving in twos, threes, all dotted around; not in a big long line like I had expected, but then they don’t need to be. They already outnumber our lot, from what I can see. I don’t know how I’m going to get up the street again: I’ll get blocked off here if I don’t do something quick. I could follow out the back door like all the others, yes, but that would take me far away from the main road, across the car park, right up to West Port Road before I can even think about turning back again, and by then I’ll be too far away to hear Emily if she shouts for me. Where is she?
I feel vindicated, even though it leaves me sick. I was right.
I wonder if she’s seen the dog.
Finally, blissfully, I can hear the crack of a gun from one of the flats upstairs—somehow I know it’s my own side, although I don’t know how they got their hands on a weapon like that. It clears the section of street enough for me to run, as long as I can stick closely to the walls. And that’s all that it takes: I run, faster than I’ve ever done before. For the first time that afternoon I feel like there’s a wave of protection behind me, and it forces me further than I would have gone. We don’t have any equipment, no real weapons assigned to us (unless you count the madman upstairs), so I decide to duck into one of the last shops to get my hands on something, anything, to protect myself. My choice is a good one: it’s one of those shops that really do sell anything; bright lighting, items that go untouched for years, the kind of shop that’s still selling plastic buckets and spades well into winter.
I take refuge in the hardware aisle, give myself a break: I did well to run that far, but my lungs are heaving. There’s no one else here, so I let myself huddle over my knees and get my breath back—loudly. While I’m down there, I take a good look at the things on display. It’s all the usual stuff that would bore you to tears if I really went through it: rollers, floor tiles (seriously, who is buying floor tiles from a place like this? No one, apparently, according to the dangerously stacked shelf), a screwdriver set. Alright, so we’re now onto something. Whatever it is, it’s got to be sharp, something I don’t have to let go of if things get too messy and I have to run. I take one of the screwdrivers, and I’m reading the back of the packet when a loud clatter at the door disturbs me.
I consider hiding until I’m suddenly confronted by a man in bloody denim shorts.
“Alright?” he says to me, calm as anything, and squats down to the bottom shelf: he selects a single spanner, as if it was the sole thing he came in here for, then he stands upright, gives me another nod, and leaves the shop without even paying.
I drop my screwdriver set back on the display. Christ, he’s right. I grab a spanner of my own, and a thick pair of pliers, just in case—I don’t know what I’d need them for, and I certainly don’t intend to use them, but they look aggressive and that’s good enough for now.
***