Road of the Dead (5 page)

I liked it.

It made me feel good.

I heard a car starting up, and when I looked over at the gas station I saw the Land Rover pulling out of the forecourt and heading up the road toward us. From the way Abbie was watching it, I guessed the driver was Vince. He was a big man. Heavy-headed, like a farmer. His face was ruddy and his hair was thick and brown.

Abbie turned to Cole. “Are you sure you don’t want a lift?”

“No thanks.”

The Land Rover pulled up beside us. Vince rolled down the window and slowly gave Cole a good looking over. When he was done with that, he turned his attention to me. He didn’t seem too impressed.

“It’s all right, Vince,” Abbie explained quickly as she walked toward the car. “They’re Rachel’s brothers—Ruben and Cole.”

Vince looked at her.

She smiled tightly. “It’s OK. They’re just…”

Her voice trailed off as she realized that she didn’t actually know what we were doing here. Vince frowned at her for a moment—none too pleased—then he looked around and nodded gruffly at Cole. Cole held his gaze and nodded back. Vince glanced at me, this time trying to appear sympathetic, but it didn’t work.

The truth was still plain to see: He wanted to say the right thing about Rachel but he didn’t know how to do it, and he wanted to know what we were doing here but he didn’t want us to know it.

He looked back at Cole again. “You staying in Plymouth?” His voice was deep, burred with a West Country accent.

Before Cole could answer him, Abbie opened the passenger-side door and climbed up into the Land Rover.

“They’re thinking of staying the night at the Bridge,” she told Vince.

A flicker of surprise crossed his face as he looked at her. She looked away and fastened her seat belt.

Vince said to Cole, “The Bridge ain’t up to much.”

Cole shrugged. “Neither are we.”

“I don’t know if they’ll have any rooms…” He glanced over his shoulder as a clanging sound rang out from the gas station, followed by a lazy laugh. I looked down and saw the man in blue overalls holding his hand as if he’d bashed it on something. The others were pointing and laughing at him. As Vince turned back and put the Land Rover in gear, his face seemed suddenly welcoming. “Jump in the back if you want,” he said to us. “I’ll give you a lift down the Bridge. If they don’t have any rooms you can come back to our place.”

Abbie’s eyes widened.

“Thanks,” said Cole, “but I think we’ll just walk.”

“You sure?”

Cole nodded.

Vince reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a pencil and scrap of paper. “I’ll give you our number,” he said, scribbling on the paper. “Just call us if you need anything—OK?” He passed the scrap of paper to Cole. “There’s plenty of room at our place if you change your mind. No one’ll bother you.”

Cole slipped the paper in his pocket and thanked him again. Vince gave us a final nod, then glanced over his shoulder, reversed the Land Rover across the road, and sped off down the hill.

T
he light was beginning to fade as we headed down the hill toward the village. There wasn’t any real darkness to the sky, just a peculiar absence of light. It felt as if the day was dying but the night had forgotten to come down.

In the valley below us, the village was still empty and dead. We’d watched the Land Rover passing through it and disappearing around the corner at the end of the main street, and once it had gone the world had seemed to stop moving again. The gypsy camp was lifeless. The gas station was still. I wasn’t even sure that
we
were moving. I knew we were—I could hear our footsteps. But even they were shrouded in stillness.

Sound, silence, light, dark…there was something about this place that deadened everything.

“What do you think?” Cole said eventually.

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I think there’s
some
thing weird going on, but I don’t know what it is.”

“What about Abbie?” he asked.

“She’s frightened. She doesn’t like us being here. I think she feels guilty about something.”

“Rachel?”

“Maybe…I don’t know.”

“She didn’t mention the raincoat.”

“No,” I agreed.

“What d’you think of her husband?”

“What do
you
think?”

Cole shrugged. “I don’t trust him. Don’t like him, either…not that it matters.”

He lit a cigarette and we continued walking in silence.

As we approached the filling station, I looked over at the gasoline tanker parked by the pumps. It was an old rigid-chassis Bedford from the 1970s, similar to one that Dad used to keep at the yard—small and squat, four wheels at the back, two at the front, laddered steps leading up to the cab. The man in the blue overalls was still struggling with the fuel hose, but the group of men had stopped watching him now—they were watching us instead. There were four of them: a couple of metalheads, a crazyeyed guy about eight feet tall, and a skinny little man in a ratty red suit.

“Keep walking,” Cole said to me.

“What?”

“Just keep walking and don’t look at them.”

I did as he said, trying not to think about them, looking straight ahead—but I could still feel their eyes on us. They were the kind of eyes you can never get away from: redneck eyes, hillbilly eyes, Neanderthal eyes. Humanimal eyes.

“What are they doing?” I asked Cole.

“Nothing…just watching. Don’t worry about it.” He touched my arm. “What do you know about gas tankers?”

“What?”

“I was just wondering what that old tanker’s doing over there. It’s not delivering…the place is all closed up. It must be siphoning the tanks, I suppose. What do you reckon?”

“I know what you’re trying to do, Cole,” I said.

“I’m not trying to do anything—”

“Yeah, you are. You’re trying to take my mind off those freaks at the gas station.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it working?”

“Not really.” I glanced up. “You know they’re coming over to us?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

“No.”

The four men were crossing the road now, heading straight for us—Red Suit in front, the other three in a line behind him. Cole touched my arm again and we both stopped walking. I knew I
shouldn’t
stare—it was the worst thing I could possibly do—but I just couldn’t help it. I’d never seen a skinny little man wearing a ratty red suit in the middle of Dartmoor before.

How could I
not
stare at that?

Red Suit was smiling now—smiling at me. His closecropped hair was almost as red as his suit. His teeth were sharp, and his eyes were wrong. I didn’t know
how
they were wrong, but they were. Everything about him was wrong.

He stopped in front of us and put his hands in his pockets. The others stopped behind him.

“All right?” he said, staring at me.

I didn’t answer. I knew if I said anything my voice would come out all shaky, so I just kept my mouth shut and waited for Cole to do his stuff. I didn’t have to wait very long.

“You want something?” he said to Red Suit.

Red looked at him, still smiling. “I’m sorry?”

“You heard me.”

Red’s smile began to tighten. “Just saying hello.” He shrugged. “Saw you talking to Vince just now—”

“Is that it?”

Red looked confused.

Cole stepped toward him. “Is that all you want?”

“What do you—?”

“You’re in the way.”

The smile dropped from Red’s face and his eyes went cold. Behind him, the big guy started blinking like a madman and shuffling forward. Cole ignored him and moved closer to Red, staring hard into his eyes.

“You’re in the way,” he said again, very quietly. “If you don’t do something about it right now, you’re going to get hurt.”

Before Red could say anything, the big guy pushed past him and reached out for Cole. Cole hardly moved. He just dropped his shoulder and slammed his fist into the big guy’s throat. The big guy staggered back, his mad eyes bulging, and then Cole hit him again—a short right hook to the head—and he dropped to the ground like a sack. As he went down, choking and moaning and gasping for breath, Cole turned back to Red.

Red was already raising his hands and backing away, his shocked eyes flicking between the big guy and Cole. “Shit, man,” he said, shaking his head, “you didn’t have to do that.”

“I don’t
have
to do anything,” Cole muttered, flicking a look at the two metalheads. They were just standing there, staring at the big guy on the ground. His face was turning a weird shade of blue. The metalheads looked up at Cole, saw him watching them, and moved out of the way.

“Come on, Rube,” Cole said quietly, putting his hand on my shoulder.

As he led me past them, Red Suit and the metalheads shuffled backward to give us more room. Cole didn’t look at them. I don’t think he was even aware of them anymore. I was, though. As we headed off down the hill, I could feel their eyes burning into the back of my neck.

“You promised you wouldn’t do anything stupid,” I said to Cole.

“I didn’t.”

“You could have
killed
him.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t, did I?”

“Christ, Cole. Why do you always have to—?”

I was interrupted by a sudden shout ringing out from behind us. “Hey! HEY! You listening, breed?” It was Red. We both ignored him and kept on walking. “I’ll see you later,” he called out. “You hear me? Both of you—I’ll see you later…”

I looked at Cole. “He called you
breed
.”

“What makes you think he meant me?”

“He said he’ll see us both later.”

“I expect he will.”

As we moved on down the hill, I realized that we had another audience now. Over by the rutted track that led across to the gypsy camp, three figures were watching us quietly: a stocky old man with a broken nose, a wide-eyed little girl of about twelve, and an older girl with a baby in
her arms. Two dogs were sitting beside the girl with the baby—a lurcher and a three-legged Jack Russell. The girl was about the same age as Cole. Pale green eyes, raven hair, silent and still and beautiful. I looked at Cole. He was staring intently at her, and I could feel something moving inside him. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it didn’t feel right to feel it, so I quickly left it alone and got out of his head.

As we approached the three gypsies, they continued watching us. Their eyes were impossible to read.

“Did they see you hitting the big guy?” I asked Cole.

“Yeah.”

“Do you think they know who we are?”

“Probably.”

We were just about level with them now. I could hear the baby making quiet gurgling noises. I could see the shine of the girl’s jet-black hair. I could feel her eyes studying Cole as he nodded his head almost imperceptibly at the stocky old man. The old man didn’t move for a second, then he, too, nodded his head.

And that was that.

We passed them by without a word and continued on down to the village.

The way Cole said it, it sounded quite simple. “We’ll check in to this Bridge Hotel, get something to eat, then first thing in the morning we’ll start looking around the village.”

I thought about asking him what we were supposed to be looking around
for
, but I decided to keep my
mouth shut. I was too tired and hungry to think about it now. All I wanted was to get some food inside me and go to bed.

Unfortunately, things didn’t quite work out that way.

The trouble started on the narrow stone bridge that led into the village. We were about halfway across, and I was just telling Cole how the bridge was made from huge slabs of granite, and how it had probably been here since the fourteenth century, and he was doing his best not to yawn, when suddenly we heard the sound of a car roaring up fast behind us. We both turned around and saw the Toyota pickup racing toward us across the bridge. The big guy was slumped in the passenger seat and Red Suit was at the wheel, grinning like a lunatic as he put his foot down and headed straight for us. My belly lurched and my legs turned to ice, and for a fleeting moment I thought we were dead. I really thought we’d had it. And the weird thing was, it didn’t seem to bother me. I might have been petrified, but I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t anything, really. It wasn’t until Cole grabbed my arm and yanked me back onto one of the stone supports at the edge of the bridge, and the car flashed past us in a hail of laughter and shouting voices…it wasn’t until then that I started to feel anything at all. And even then I didn’t know what it was.

It might have been fear, or shock, or sickness…

Or it might have been some kind of love.

Cole had his arms around me, and we were balanced
on the very edge of a narrow pillar of granite about ten meters above a fast-flowing river. The shallow waters looked cold and coppery. Cole had his back to the river and was struggling to keep his balance. I went to step back onto the bridge, intending to give him some room, but he suddenly grabbed hold of me again and pulled me back.

“What—?” I started to say.

But then I heard it—the sound of motorbike engines—and I looked up to see the two metalheads screaming their bikes down the hill toward us.

Cole started edging around me, his eyes fixed coldly on the approaching bikes.

“What are you doing?” I said.

He didn’t answer me, but it didn’t matter. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to get back on the bridge. He was going after the bikes. I shuffled around to block his way. He shuffled back. I blocked him again. He stopped shuffling and looked at me, his eyes telling me to get out of the way.

“Don’t be stupid, Cole,” I said. “Stopping them’s not going to help us, is it?”

The bikes were starting to cross the bridge now. Cole looked up at them. I watched his eyes as they roared toward us, swerved halfheartedly, then straightened up and sped off into the village.

After a couple of long seconds, Cole turned back to me.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You can let go of me now.”

I hadn’t even realized I was holding him.

Five minutes later we were standing outside the Bridge Hotel. It was a big old stone building about halfway up the main street. White paint was flaking off the walls, revealing large patches of dull gray granite underneath, and the windows were thick with dust. The sign over the door showed a faded picture of the bridge we’d just come across.
THE BRIDGE HOTEL
, it said,
FINE WINES
&
BEERS
,
FAMILY DINING
,
ACCOMMODATION AVAILABLE
. A blackboard in the window advertised
LIVE FOOTBALL
!!, and a sign on the door said
NO TRAVELERS
.

“Looks nice,” I said.

Cole grunted.

The streetlights were on now, but there wasn’t much to see. The village was deserted. The streets and the pavements were empty. A lot of the houses had boarded-up windows and doors, and the only shop we’d seen so far was a closed-down newsagent’s with a whitewashed window.

“You ready?” Cole asked me.

I looked at him. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“We need somewhere to stay,” he said simply.

“I know, but have you seen what’s over there?”

He glanced over at the Toyota pickup and the two motorbikes parked in front of the hotel.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

“What about that?” I said, nodding at the
NO TRAVELERS
sign on the door.

Cole just shrugged. “What about it?”

I looked at him.

“We’re not Travelers, are we?” he said. “We’re halfbreeds. It doesn’t say anything about half-breeds, does it?”

“No,” I agreed.

“So what’s the problem?”

“Nothing…nothing at all.”

“Good—let’s get going, then.”

The main door of the hotel led us through into the stagnant air of a dimly lit corridor. A door on our right went through to the bar, and a pair of double doors on the left opened up to a dining room—or what used to be a dining room. There were still a few tables dotted around, and one or two dusty chairs, but apart from that, the room was as empty as everything else around here—the cigarette machine behind the door, the reception desk at the end of the corridor, the leaflet rack on the wall. All empty. Even the noise from the bar next door sounded empty—the loud voices, the chinking glasses, the drunken laughter. It was a noise filled with nothing, and I didn’t like the sound of it at all. But when Cole opened the door and we both walked in, and everything suddenly went quiet, I liked that even less.

It was a narrow rectangular room with a high white
ceiling and a grimy red carpet. A long wooden bar spanned the length of the wall to our left, and the rest of the room was taken up with a dozen or so tables and chairs. Sky Sports flickered on a widescreen TV fixed high on the wall at the back. The bar was packed, and most of the tables were full. There was no emptiness in here. Just a room full of staring faces, all of them staring at us. Old men, young men, old-looking young women—there were all sorts. All different, but all the same—sour and dead and unwelcoming.