Читать книгу The Blame Game - C.J. Cooke - Страница 17

I can hear someone screaming. No, not screaming. A mechanical whine, a machine somewhere that whirs.

I open my eyes and immediately bright light squared off by a window blinds me. My eyes adjust and I see I’m in a room with a small rectangular window to my right. Plaster is peeling off the wall beneath the windowsill. I can hear shouting down the hall. All a bit Mad Max in here. A white sheet is drawn across my legs. My T-shirt and jeans are covered in dirt and blood stains. There’s dried blood all over my arms. I feel like someone’s beaten me with a metal bar.

My mind flicks through reasons that I might be in hospital like a slot machine spinning its three wheels printed with cherries and bells. Three sevens line up, and I remember.

The crash.

It comes to me in vivid, broken flashes. The sound of the car whipping round. I was sure I’d died. I was sure we’d all died. Did we hit a tree? I remember the car coming to rest virtually upside down. Helen was shaking like she was having a fit, her teeth chattering. I told her it was OK, that everything was OK. Her breathing slowed. After a few moments I managed to make out something she said.

He just came out of nowhere.

A tear slid down her cheek.

Who? I said. Who came out of nowhere?

The van. He just slammed into us.

I told her I loved her.

I love you too. I’m so scared, Michael.

I thought those were the last words I’d ever hear.

I think back to last night, when I chased after the guy who’d been trespassing outside our beach hut. I didn’t want to make much of it to Helen but when I got to the top of the bank I saw someone running towards a white van that was parked about a hundred yards away from the hut. I shouted, ‘hey!’, and this guy turns and looks at me, holding his hands at either side of his shoulders as if to say ‘what?’

I stopped dead in my tracks and gave a gasp. He looked exactly like Luke. Same sandy-blonde hair, same build, same face. I felt all the blood drain from my face.

‘Luke?’ I called out. ‘What are you doing here? Luke?’

He took a few steps towards the van, then jumped in and took off, the tyres kicking up white stones. I was so stunned at the sight of him that I didn’t react, at first. Then I started to run after him, thinking that if I could get the registration plate I could report him. He sped off down the path and took a right. There was no way I was going to catch up with him so I cut through the trees. Daft, on hindsight, but I was in a daze. Luke is dead. It could have been Theo. But why here? And why now?

I’m lucky to have made it out. The rainforest is fifty miles thick. One wrong turn and I’d have been in deep kimchi.

The bleep of the heart monitor tugs me back into the present.

I sit up and try to speak but my mouth feels full of cotton wool. I think back to the fire at the bookshop. The bookshop wasn’t just my pride and joy. It was an offering, an act of supplication to Luke. And they burned it down.

We’re not safe here. They won’t stop until we’re all dead.