Page 35 of 59 Minutes
FRANKIE
Frankie watches the woollen heads of the men bob to and fro in the front of the truck, the rhythm determined by these bumpy, swinging lanes that they seem to know intimately. The man next to her presses against her leg. She inches away and feels the tremor of the girl against her other leg.
The mist outside swirls and the air inside the truck feels thin and finite.
The individual smells not mingling together at all but at war.
She can almost taste the cake breath of the man next to her and the sour tang from the girl.
The smell of fear, leaking out into this confined space.
She smelled it enough on herself and Seb when they were little, back when their dad still drank.
Will he start again after this? Maybe he reached for a tin as soon as he heard the news.
Will Mum be safe? Will Cough? She feels a pang, something dormant stirring.
‘We’re going to be nice and cosy back at ours,’ the man next to her says, as he jostles for space, reconnecting with her leg.
‘A couple of nice girls, a good lot of grub and all the time in the world.’ The passenger in the front laughs at this.
Everyone here is facing the same existential crisis, a missile literally on its way followed by poisonous fallout …
but they’re acting like they’re throwing a party.
Next to her, Frankie feels the girl gulping back tears. Her whole body is trembling, still wrapped in her school coat. Frankie offers her hand and the girl grabs it and threads her fingers through Frankie’s. The girl’s phone drops to the floor.
Frankie’s parents are in La Palma, not just Spain but an island off Spain, surely one of the safest places in Europe to be.
Her brother is even further, her silly, caring brother and his whip-smart wife and lovely children, all in Dubai.
And to think, she’d been uneasy when he said they were headed there for winter sun.
So far away, so hot, so near to places that made her vaguely uneasy.
In that sense she’s lucky, everyone she loves is accounted for, even her aunties.
They’ll be better off in Manchester than here.
But they won’t know where she is. Maybe they’ll never know and that will be their form of fallout.
She touches her tattoo through her sleeve.
Her favourite line from The Waste Land .
Will she be identified by it one day? What about this girl?
Will her family ever know what happened to her?
A wave of nausea breaks across Frankie’s gut.
‘I feel sick,’ she says. ‘Is it much further?’
‘Not much further,’ grunts the driver.
‘I need to get out or I’ll throw up,’ she says, and realises it might be true.
‘You complain a lot,’ says the front passenger.
‘It’s been said.’
‘We’re not stopping now,’ the front passenger says, more to the driver than her. ‘But we’ll crack a window.’
The man nearest her presses a button and the window slides down slowly. He stops it halfway, the gap not even big enough to fit her head through, but a rush of cold air now tousles her hair and chills her skin. It is strangely invigorating. Proof of life.
‘Where are we actually going?’ Frankie asks. ‘Are you sure your house is big enough for extra people?’
‘It’s not a house,’ says the man next to her. ‘It’s a farm.’
‘It’s a compound,’ the driver says, sharply.
‘It’s a base, is what it is,’ says the passenger cheerfully. ‘An HQ.’
‘For what?’ Frankie says. The men pause, the driver and passenger look at each other.
‘We told you,’ the passenger says, puffing his chest just a little under his green faux fatigues. ‘The Devon Militia.’
‘You’re not from round here so we can’t expect you to know,’ the driver says, his voice softer. ‘Last line of defence since 1558. The militia defended Devon through every major war until—’
‘Until now,’ the passenger cuts in. ‘Don’t matter what they say, it never really stopped. We never stopped.’
‘Do you mean,’ Frankie says, carefully, ‘like Dad’s Army ?’
There is silence.
‘Not like fucking Dad’s Army ,’ the passenger says and slaps the dash. The driver accelerates in response and the girl grips Frankie’s hand even tighter.
As the truck swings around the bend, the moonlit wing mirror shows a glimpse of something following them. A shape, a blur almost invisible through the mist. It disappears as the truck turns. She holds her breath, looks carefully at the others’ faces but they don’t seem to have noticed.
Another bend, another quick slice of reflection.
It’s a car. Silent in the mist.
Could it be Otis?
She stares but it’s gone again, the angle lost. Still, no one seems to have noticed. She takes a long, deep breath to try to slow her racing heart, closes her eyes and bites her lip to stop from making a sound.
The men are now arguing over the exact nature of the Devon Militia, which sounds like a tissue-thin, deadly mix of bad ideas, historical hubris and rural weaponry. It is certainly not official.
Meanwhile Frankie’s mind wheels around, trying to work out what Otis will do next if it is him?
The men are arguing about other ‘soldiers’ who have passed through the ‘ranks’.
Cousins, second cousins and uncles, from the sound of things.
They argue over whether they’ll have lived up to the pledges made when they were sworn in.
They seem to think that other ‘soldiers’ like them will also be scraping their way through Devon, gathering up the vulnerable and dragging them into their trucks, heading to this farm-cum-HQ.
How many other women and girls will be forced there? How did they snatch this girl?
Frankie peers carefully into the rear-view mirror but the angle is unhelpful and all she can see is her own terrified face.
Whoever it is could be seen if they follow too closely.
She saw the car, after all. And if these men see the car, they could shoot whoever is driving.
And even if it is Otis and he’s not seen, will he simply follow them all the way to this compound of nutters?
He has no idea who these people are or what they’re like, he can’t have seen how many there are let alone how many could be waiting.
Outnumbered and outgunned by all these blood relations.
Even if it’s just these three and the others have abandoned their posts – that’s still three to one.
Unless … she looks at the girl. Could she help somehow?
Plus Frankie and Otis … that’s three against three.
Three unarmed, uncoordinated, untrained strangers against three men with a gun, who have been waiting for this moment all of their rotten lives.
Fuck.