Flare by Paul Grzegorzek Read Free Book Online Page B

several long seconds, then turned back to me and smiled again.
    “What did you do to your foot?”  She asked, walking up to me and placing a hand on one of my arms to gently lower it.
    “We saw a truck”, I said, rubbing my arms to restore the circulation, “and I thought the driver was injured so we tried to get him out.  Turns out he was bigger than me and Jerry put together and dead with it, and he fell on me”.
    Just thinking about being buried under all that dead flesh brought the memory back sharp and clear enough that I could feel the panic rising in my chest again.  I took several deep breaths and pushed it away as she sat next to me and without asking took my bandaged foot, placing it carefully in her lap as she unwrapped it.
    “Who put this bandage on?”
    Jerry finally found his voice.
    “I did”.
    “Well it was nice of you to try and help your friend but it’s a good job I came along when I did.  It was on so tight the circulation was being cut off.  Another couple of hours and it would have caused permanent damage.  What do they teach you nowadays?”
    “I’m an astrophysicist, not a nurse!”
    “Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know how to tie a bandage.  My Emily could tie one better than this by the time she was five”.  She looked up at her husband, who still pointed the shotgun at the roof but glared at us as if he’d rather have it shoved in our faces.
    “Ralph, we need to get this boy to the cottage so I can look at his ankle properly.  I think it’s just a bad sprain but it might be broken.  How about you take him in the car and I’ll have young Jerry walk me back?”
    Ralph growled, squinted and spat, but to my relief did as he was told, helping Jerry to gather our equipment and stow it in the car while Harriet, surprisingly strong for her age, helped me out to the car.
    “Thank you”, I said with feeling as she guided me out into the night, “I really appreciate this.  I’m sorry about the lock on the barn, and of course we’ll pay for it”.
    “Oh shush”, she said, as if I were apologising for smashing a glass, not for breaking into their barn, “it’s not even ours anyway.  We’re caretakers, of a sort, and the farm isn’t producing at the moment anyway, so there’s no one breathing down our necks about repairs and such”.
    I was about to ask her what she meant when Jerry took me off her hands, easing me into the passenger seat while Ralph sat on the driver’s side, the shotgun next to his door where I couldn’t reach it.
    As he drove away slowly, following a track that led away from the barn and across the field, I glanced back to see Jerry awkwardly offer his arm to the old woman as they followed.
    “Thank you for helping us, you won’t regret it, I promise”, I said to Ralph, but instead of replying he just grunted and patted the shotgun, as if reminding me of who was in charge and what would happen if I tried anything.
    As if it was something I was likely to forget.  I knew, for better or for worse, that no matter what Harriet might think, we were completely at her husband’s mercy and should he decide that we were too much of a risk, there wasn’t much we could do to stop him from putting us in the ground.
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 10
      We pulled up in the yard of a medium-sized, two storey cottage that looked to have been built around the turn of the last century.  It was built of solid-looking red brick, with ivy liberally covering the wall nearest to us, two small windows peeking out from between the leaves.
    The yard itself was large enough to park half a dozen cars, with an open-sided stable that had been converted into a garage for a car that was currently covered with a dust sheet.
    On the far side of the cottage, I could just make out some kind of vegetable garden, plants growing in neatly ordered rows with some clinging to a framework of bamboo.  Just past that, I could see another shed, and from this came the lowing of a cow