Page 38 of 59 Minutes

FRANKIE

‘Do you have any games at your place?’ the girl says, suddenly, her voice aimed at the two men in the front. Her voice is overloud, drunk with nerves, gripping Frankie’s fingers so tightly she nearly cries out in pain.

‘What, like Monopoly?’ says the passenger. ‘’Cos if you mean PlayStation an’ that, it won’t work. Not after. The generator’s for emergencies only.’

‘I meant like Monopoly then, Cluedo and stuff,’ the girl says. ‘Board games.’

‘We’ve got Risk,’ the passenger says. ‘But we can make our own fun anyway.’ The driver stares at him sharply but says nothing.

The girl looks at Frankie. It’s just for one moment but it’s a look she would recognise anywhere.

A ladies toilet look. An ‘I saw someone was bothering you so let’s walk out together’ look.

It tells Frankie that this girl has also seen the car.

That to stand a chance of getting out of this, the men mustn’t spot whoever is following.

The men must be distracted by any means possible.

‘What are your names, guys?’ Frankie asks.

It comes out stiff and wooden. For a moment, the men say nothing and she swallows drily, imagining that they’ve also seen the moonlit outline of the car.

That any second, the truck will shudder to a stop and they’ll pile out like kids playing soldiers.

Then shoot whoever is following them in the head.

The passenger shrugs at the driver. ‘The young one knows full well who we are, what does it matter if this one knows our names too? I’m Jimmy.’

‘I’m Ashley,’ the driver mutters. ‘Ash, to friends.’

‘And I’m Sandy,’ barks the one in the back, right in Frankie’s ear. She feels his hand grab hers awkwardly and pump it up and down, looking amused. This is funny to them?

‘And we’ll be your flight attendants for this journey into the apocalypse,’ says Jimmy.

Yes. This is funny to them.

‘I’m Frankie,’ she says. ‘And I’d love to know more about where we’re going. Did you say it used to be a farm?’

‘Used to be, yeah,’ Sandy says. ‘Do you have farms where you’re from?’

‘Are you joking?’ The pause suggests not. ‘Yes, we have farms in the north of England.’

He’s fidgeting next to her, his spreading legs land-grabbing more and more space so she can feel the muscles in his leg against hers, the flesh of their hips pressed together.

She gasps for air and tries to hide it. She nearly slips off the seat as they turn a corner and then notices a seat belt dangling from the ceiling, designed for the middle passenger.

She pulls it down, expecting to be met with derision or complaint, but when she tries to clip it in, Sandy lifts one buttock out of the way and lets her. She nods at the girl to do the same.

‘I love farms actually,’ she says and it sounds like total bollocks. Because it is. ‘Will you tell me about yours?’

‘Well, for starters, it’s not a farm anymore. We told you that.’ It’s Ashley butting in from the front, but the snarl feels put on.

‘Sorry,’ she says, but it’s probably obvious she’s not. Resting Bitch Voice, Seb calls it. ‘What, um, what’s it like, how big is your … ex-farm?’

‘Our compound,’ Sandy says.

‘Yeah, sorry, your compound.’ You deranged pricks .

‘We’ve not got as much land as we used to,’ Jimmy says.

‘We used to have a hundred acres but most of it was owned by the Duchy and when Mum fucked off and then Dad died …’ He and Sandy interrupt each other to tell a complicated story about the king when he was still the prince and how the Duke of Cornwall owns this and that and does this and doesn’t do that.

Or shouldn’t do that. She can’t follow it, she doesn’t give a wild shit, but it’s keeping them distracted, and they’re not looking in the mirrors.

Right now, that is the only thing that matters. One life/death challenge at a time.

Otis drives a rattly old work van by day, with bumps and dents that Frankie’s never thought about before. Has he already bashed into a pole? Hit another car? Slid too close to the hedge and banked it? Or is it him following carefully, just out of sight?

The Mercedes is the great love of his life.

A vintage powder-blue, older than him with little nubs instead of proper back seats, an engine that needs perfect conditions to start – too cold, too hot, too wet, no hope – and an ancient CD player and radio.

Nowhere to put a baby’s car seat, but there is … there was … plenty of time for that.

He loves that car and he drives it almost holding his breath, like any scratch or nick will appear gouged out of his own skin in sympathy stigmata. He hand-washes and waxes it himself every Sunday and—

Thud.

‘What the fuck?’ shouts the man in the passenger seat as the truck is suddenly jolted from behind, a dull noise of metal on bumper. It’s too light a touch to hurt anyone, but the seat belt snaps taut across Frankie’s stomach, her heart rate so fast it foams over into nausea again.

Frankie stares into the rear-view mirror now and everyone else – except Ashley, the driver – turns awkwardly to look out the back.

Jimmy leans out of the window, pointing the gun back down the road and firing.

The girl drops Frankie’s hand to cover her eyes and ears, curling her body into the brace position. Ashley slows.

‘Don’t fucking stop, dickhead,’ shouts Sandy.

‘You can outrun this twat,’ says Jimmy, leaning out with the gun again, but the bumpy lane jiggles his arm around and he doesn’t fire. This time.

Ashley lurches forward then, much faster than before, slingshotting into a turn at over fifty mph. Frankie wraps her arm around the girl as the truck spins around another corner but is then slammed from behind.

As Ashley grapples with the wheel, Sandy shoots forward.

He knocks the back of Jimmy’s head with his own, the sound of a coconut shy, and then slumps back down in the back.

Jimmy continues forward from the passenger seat, slicing through the windscreen, leaving a man-shaped hole in the middle, just as the truck collides with a huge tree and something else slides into them from behind.