The Ice House by John Connor Read Free Book Online

overalls and gloves on, and was sweating heavily, but didn’t dare strip them off until he was in the car. His hands were especially uncomfortable. He glanced back. She was still there, ten paces further down, looking up at him. He moved a bit higher then checked his field of view using the rifle scope. He could see nothing, no one following, no cars coming up the road, no movement back at the house. No sirens. No reaction. The longer that continued, the more it bothered him.
    The valley here was deeply wooded but all the trees were low, stunted things, not much higher than bushes. There was a kind of scrappy, dry grass coming out of the soil, but it was thin and looked thirsty and brown. It grew about as high as his knees. The ground was hard, cracked like in a drought, dusty, the soil a faint shade of red. Here and there were flowers, but not many. Earlier in the day he had thought he could smell wild rosemary, but now the only thing in his nostrils was the smoke he had inhaled down in the house. He saw lizards scampering away from him, heard the clicking of crickets, the whirring of cicadas. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky but luckily it was far from high summer. He needed water, but he wasn’t too uncomfortable.
    He set off again as soon as she caught up with him. After five more minutes he got to a prominent stand of rocks he had seen from the house and climbed round them, then up onto a high ledge. They were big, broken slabs of stone, rising above the little trees, giving him a good field of fire. As she scrambled up behind him he warned her to stay below, in cover, then lay down and started searching, using his eyes first, then checking through the scope. Still he could hear no sirens, though the dissipating smoke cloud was high in the sky now. Why hadn’t the neighbours driven up? He didn’t understand it.
    He checked the ridge opposite. There was no sign of Jones’s man, so he started to scan around him, working methodically. As he concentrated, his mind kept flicking back to the girl. She looked really scared now, but the horror hadn’t even started. Both her parents were dead. He felt a weight in his stomach thinking about it. He had played a part in that. The whole situa­tion was totally fucked up, well beyond his comfort zone. Why hadn’t he seen that it would be like this two weeks ago, back in London, when it had all started?
    He slid back off the rocks to where she was standing, squinting up at him. ‘Ten minutes more,’ he said, ‘then we’re over the top.’ She looked like she hadn’t heard him. He repeated it, then wondered whether he should try to say something encouraging to her. But he didn’t have a clue what. He didn’t know how to deal with children.
    ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Why are we climbing up here? Why are we running away?’
    He pointed up to the ridge line. ‘There’s another valley over there. My car is there. We can use that to get out of here.’
    ‘Your car? I don’t want to get into your car.’ She took a step back from him, a look of obvious fright on her face, her lip trembling. ‘My dad will be back soon,’ she said, like it was a threat. ‘I want to wait for him. I don’t want to go anywhere with you. I don’t know who you are.’
    He put the gun down and stared at her. He hadn’t seen anyone else when he searched, but he was sure they were here, somewhere in this valley. They would know what route he was taking, they would be reacting right now. The time to discuss things was therefore not now. But if she went back down to the house they would kill her. He was sure of that. ‘The explosion in your house wasn’t gas bottles,’ he said. ‘It was a device, a bomb. Someone triggered it on purpose, to kill people. That’s why we’re running.’
    She frowned at him. ‘A bomb? I don’t understand … to kill who?’
    He opened his mouth to tell her, then shut it. He couldn’t start on that. He needed her to be in control,