Lindisfarne (Project Renova Book 2) Read online

  Lindisfarne

  (Project Renova Book 2)

  Terry Tyler

  ©Terry Tyler 2017

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without the express written permission of Terry Tyler.

  All rights reserved.

  Many thanks as always to my husband, Mark, my sister, Julia, to Gary Brown, and to Amy, for accompanying me on the first of many visits to Lindisfarne, and for her wonderful photographs used on the covers of this series.

  Thanks also to everyone who enjoyed Tipping Point enough to download the sequel.

  CONTENTS

  A summary of the events described in Tipping Point can be found in The Story So Far at the end of the book.

  Part One: January ~ May 2025

  Chapter 1: Lottie

  Chapter 2: Heath

  Chapter 3: Wedge

  Chapter 4: Vicky

  Chapter 5: Heath

  Chapter 6: Lottie

  Chapter 7: Wedge

  Chapter 8: Aria

  Chapter 9: Wedge

  Chapter 10: Vicky

  Chapter 11: Wedge

  Chapter 12: Heath and Aria

  Chapter 13: Vicky

  Chapter 14: Wedge

  Chapter 15: Vicky

  Chapter 16: Alex Verlander

  Part Two: Five Months Later

  Chapter 17: Doyle

  Chapter 18: Vicky

  Chapter 19: Heath and Aria

  Chapter 20: Lottie

  Chapter 21: Heath

  Chapter 22: Wedge

  Chapter 23: Vicky

  Chapter 24: Heath

  Chapter 25: Vicky

  Chapter 26: Doyle and Verlander

  Chapter 27: Aria

  Chapter 28: Lottie

  Chapter 29: Heath

  Chapter 30: Lottie

  Chapter 31: Vicky

  Chapter 32: Doyle and Verlander

  Chapter 33: King Edward Bay

  The Story So Far

  Author's Note

  Other Books by Terry Tyler

  Part One

  January ~ May 2025

  Chapter 1

  Lottie

  3 a.m. January 12th, 2025

  Smash!

  I'm halfway down the stairs when I hear glass shattering in the kitchen.

  I freeze. OMG. There's someone down there. Breaking in. And I'm standing here in total darkness.

  I woke up ten minutes ago with serious biscuit cravings, and was concentrating so hard on getting off my squeaky camp bed as quietly as possible—so as not to wake Mum—that I forgot to pick up the bloody torch.

  I hear the back door opening, footsteps, low murmurings, but they're drowned out by the snorts and splutters of the wildebeest in the front room. Ozzy. He came 'just for a couple of nights' a few weeks back, and has been snoring on our couch ever since.

  Ah—he pauses just long enough for me to hear a voice say, "Over here, Da'."

  A familiar voice.

  I can't believe it. It's Joel.

  We’ve met before. When he and his psycho dad tried to rob us outside B&M Bargains in Jarrow. Which makes this my fault, 'cause I told Joel where we lived.

  I didn't let Mum know I'd revealed the exact location.

  Now they're rifling through our kitchen, and I'm itching to charge down and see them off, but I made a New Year rez to think before I act instead of leaping in like a prat, so carefully, carefully, I step backwards, up the stairs.

  Think. Fast.

  I need to tell Kara, not Mum. Mum panics too much, but Kara is super-switched on, and, more importantly, has a gun.

  Phil is snoring beside her. I am so not going to live with a guy, ever; how do you sleep next to that racket? I jiggle her shoulder, her eyes spring open.

  "Whassup?"

  I put my finger to my lips.

  She nods and eases herself out of bed. I knew I'd made the right decision.

  "It's Joel and his dad," I whisper. "They're in the kitchen."

  "Shit."

  She wakes Phil and they both slip feet into shoes, then feel under their pillows. Aha. Two guns, then.

  "Go wake Heath," Phil whispers. "Leave your mum and Rowan for now."

  Roger that. Rowan made the situation ten times worse, that day in Jarrow, by calling them 'revolting thugs' in her chippy little posh voice.

  Heath's already awake; he's zipping up his jeans. I open my mouth to say something but he puts his fingers to his lips, and reaches under his pillow, too. Bloody hell, have they all got them?

  "Stay up here," he says. No way! I'm not scared now I know we're armed, and this is exciting. I let him go out first, joining Kara and Phil on the landing, and they creep down the stairs, holding their guns out like on cop shows. Awesome! My heart is in my throat, I'm seriously pumped. I tiptoe behind them, down the hall. As soon as they get to the kitchen, Kara flicks on her torch and it all goes crazy.

  "The fuck?"

  That's Psycho Dad. He whizzes round and leaps on Kara before she can do anything, wrestling her to the ground, holding her wrists flat against the floor, but Phil's got his gun to his head, and Heath's grabbing Joel by the arm, twisting it up behind his back.

  "Ow, get off!" Heath's got his torch in his mouth, shining on Joel's face. He looks dead scared. I want to laugh.

  Oh, but there's another guy, with a knife, and he's pulling Phil off, but Phil whips his gun round; he doesn't fire it, he belts Third Man on the side of the head with it, Kara's kicking Psycho Dad away, giving it all she's got, Joel's crying and begging Heath not to kill him, and I go up and knee him in the nuts, just for good measure. It's all grappling limbs and fuck yous flying round the room.

  Kara's torch falls out of her grip and I grab it, and see the third man's knife skitter across the kitchen floor as Phil shoves him down and holds his wrists behind his back. Kara's standing up with her foot on Psycho Dad's chest and her gun pointing at his head, and Heath's got Joel in some kind of wrestling hold.

  We win.

  "Anyone hurt?" Phil calls out.

  "Aye, me, dipshit," says Third Man. His head is bleeding.

  "Stop your noise, it's only a graze." Phil looks up at me. "I could do with a bit of light."

  We have lamps for emergencies only, to save fuel, but if this isn't an emergency I don't know what is, so I leap over the room to the one on the dresser.

  Joel is crying, and his dad's spitting fury. Result! Next minute everyone's there, flooding into the room to see what the hell's going on. Ozzy's last, yawning, rubbing his stomach and saying, "I'm having a nightmare, right?" He's such a dick. I woke up the right people.

  Mum looks dead worried, and she pushes through everyone to get to me.

  "I'm fine." I put my hand up to stop her throwing her arms around me. Wish she wouldn't do that; I can handle stuff better than she can, most of the time.

  Joel's dad, still lying on the floor with Kara's foot on his chest, grins up at Mum. "Hello, beautiful. Pleased to see me again, are you?"

  Phil jerks his head up. "You know this arsehole?"

  Uh-oh. We've got some explaining to do. Our run-in with them was on a girls-only trip, and we didn't tell the guys because we knew they'd come over all macho and say it wasn't safe for us weak little females to go out on our own.

  Kara says, "I'll tell you later."

  Mum backs away, and Heath kicks Psycho Dad in the kidneys.<
br />
  "Shut the fuck up, moron," he says, proper growling. Whoa. Never seen Heath do angry before. He's always super-smiley-calm.

  The fun's over. Phil makes them sit at the kitchen table and gets the first aid box out so he can attend to Third Man's head, while Joel and Psycho Dad flop down, dead sulky. Kara and Heath still have them at gunpoint. Psycho Dad is muttering and swearing, and Joel's still snivelling, the little turd. Good. Then, out of nowhere, Scott pipes up.

  "Um, you broke in to steal food, right?"

  The two men carry on giving us evils, but Joel turns his baby blues in Scott's direction.

  "Aye, well, we're hungry. We've only got tins of veg left, and rice an' sweets an' that. Like, nowt proper. We thought you'd have plenty, didn't we?"

  Scott raises his big thick eyebrows above his big thick glasses. "You could have knocked on the gate and asked us. During daylight hours."

  Psycho Dad laughs. "Yeah, right."

  "I mean it." Scott looks at Kara, then at Phil. "They're hungry. Why don't we just, you know, give them some food?"

  The way he says it, it makes total sense. Like, no one's thought of doing that. Makes the whole situation, with all the guns and blood and stuff, look a bit OTT.

  Kara bites her lip. "That's what we offered to do last time we met them. Only they decided to hold us at knifepoint, instead."

  "That was then." Scott yawns, pulls his t-shirt down—he's wearing these kiddish little shiny, royal blue boxers, skinny white legs hanging down like bits of cotton—and goes to the worktop where they've pulled a load of tins and packets out of our cupboards. We watch as he finds carrier bags, and starts filling two of them.

  "What you doing?" Ozzy looks totally freaked out.

  "They need to eat, same as us." He frowns at the open cupboards, takes out two tins of Stagg chilli, and looks back at Oz. "If you really believe in all that equality and fairness stuff, this is what you do."

  "Yeah, but not the Heinz macaroni cheese. That's my favourite."

  "Shut up, Ozzy." Kara sighs, and lowers her gun. "Scott's right. I suppose."

  The atmosphere in the room has changed. Joel's still got a quivering lip (ha ha!), but the two older men relax. The friend even thanks Phil for dealing with his head wound. I can't believe it. I mean, Scott's right about giving them food, but I'm disappointed it's all simmered down. And they should pay for what they put Mum through. I see her shake her head and walk back upstairs, and Rowan doesn't look too happy either, though that's more likely to be because she thinks all common people should be exterminated. Next thing, Psycho Dad is apologising to Phil, Joel's wiping his eyes and saying thank you as Scott hands him the bulging carrier bags, and the friend is offering to mend the glass they broke.

  Un-fucking-real.

  As they shuffle out of the back door, Joel turns to me. "I'm sorry," he says. I give him the finger. Can't forgive him for acting like he fancied me when he was only after our swag. When they've gone, nobody says anything, until Heath breaks the silence.

  "I know that was the right thing to do, but it doesn't feel right."

  Phil folds his arms. "Doing the right thing sometimes doesn't, but it was."

  "Yeah, it was," says Ozzy. "Gives us a bit of credit with Lady Karma, too."

  I glance at Jax, and he rolls his eyes. Ozzy's the biggest of all the men, he must be six feet two at least, and he's got these dead muscly arms, but he just stood there watching.

  "I can't believe you let them off," Rowan says. "Why didn't you offer them counselling, as well?"

  Kara nods. "Phil, the dad held a knife to Vicky's throat."

  "Okay," says Phil. "That, I want to hear about. Now."

  Kara gives a brief outline of our previous encounter, and Phil and Heath start acting all macho and protective, just like Kara said they would. She ends by saying, "If you were there, you might not feel quite so forgiving."

  Phil holds his hands up. "So what do you want me to do, kill him? He's an arsehole, you're right, but at the end of the day he's just a hungry arsehole. It's all very well sitting round the fire at night and talking about the world becoming more dangerous, but we've got to think about how we deal with that danger. If we always fight fire with fire, regardless of the situation, we're adding to the problem, not helping resolve it."

  "Damn it." Kara shakes her head. "Why are you always right?"

  "I still don't feel okay about this," Heath says. "What he did to Vicky—"

  "You want me to call him back and put a bullet in his brain?" Phil leans on the table, palms down, and looks first at Kara, then at me and Rowan. "Do you promise you won't do that again? If any of us are threatened, we all need to know about it."

  "Brownies' honour," says Rowan. Kara doesn't say anything.

  Sport over, then.

  We're all tired next morning—I was lying awake having fantasies about Joel slumped on the floor, begging my forgiveness—but it's a gorgeous sunny day, sparkling frost on the roofs. When we open the front gates, the thin covering of snow on the pavements is untouched, because there's no one to walk on it. Nice.

  I'm dead excited about going to this island, but I keep a lid on it while Mum and I pack our stuff up. She's nervous, because it's possible Dex will be there. Dex was her partner for six years before bat fever, but he’s cleared off with the woman he was screwing behind Mum's back. Naomi. Who, Mum told me last night, is expecting his baby. She thought I should know. I was furious. I don't know why she's nervous, I'd just poke his eyes out. She's not talking about it, but I know it's on her mind. I got on fine with Dex, mostly, but she's well rid of him, especially as she's finally, finally got it together with Heath.

  I walked in on them kissing, or about to kiss, yesterday morning, and they were doing the secret smiles shit all day, and I saw them with their arms around each other, talking dead close, in the kitchen last night. Heath's brilliant. He's got rock star hair and a motorbike—that's the sort of stepdad you want! If they got married Jax would be my stepbrother, which would be nice for me because Jax is sound, but weird for him, 'cause he fancies me. He doesn't say so, but I know. I couldn't fancy him, he's way too kiddish, only six months younger than me but he acts like a fourteen-year-old. He's got long hair 'cause he's a metalhead, but he tries to make it straight instead of leaving it in wild curls like his dad's, so it hangs in wavy clumps, and usually looks greasy. Ew! It's not easy washing hair now, but you still can. I tell him to, sometimes. I want to try my straighteners on it, but Phil says the generator is only for 'necessities'.

  I think not having tragic hair is a necessity, but am sensible enough not to voice this.

  Mum finishes her packing and looks around the room, dead sad, like when we left our house in Shipden. I don't know why.

  "It's been our home," she says, "and, despite all that's happened, we've had some good times here."

  "Yeah, but we'll have better times on Lindisfarne. It's going to be brilliant, I've got this feeling."

  "Don't get your hopes up, sweetheart. It could have been turned into a military camp. We don't know who'll be there."

  "Us," I say. "We'll be there. So they'll just have to make way, won't they?"

  When we go downstairs, everyone's finished packing.

  "I just hope we don't have to turn around and drive back again," Phil says. I love Phil. He reminds me of a wise old African chief—he should be wearing those big smock things in bright colours, big wooden necklaces and a crazy head-dress, instead of M&S dad-jeans and jumpers. He makes me feel safe. Like really having a dad.

  I say what I said to Mum, about anyone already there making room for us.

  "We might not want to stay, if the place has been taken over by rough types," says Rowan. By 'rough types' she means anyone who didn't live in a four-bed detached in Surrey before bat fever.

  "Let's just wait and see, shall we?" says Heath. "We can conjecture until we're blue in the face, but we won't know until we get there."

  Kara nods. "Amen to that."

  We've
nicked two minibus type taxis for the journey. Phil said we had to take two, in case one breaks down. I'm in the second one, with Mum, Jax and Ozzy, and Heath is driving.

  I don't feel sad when we drive away from the house. Life's an adventure now. When we found out that the virus was man-made, and that the plan was to wipe out everyone on the planet apart from boring straights and doctors and scientists, all the adults acted like it was such a big tragedy. They moped around, talking about it in low voices, and it seriously got on my nerves. I mean, it didn't change anything. We'd been living like this for five months, so what difference does it make whether a bunch of people manufactured the virus to kill us all, or whether it was a natural disaster? The end result is the same. Jax is the only person who gets this. I suppose it's shocking that there could be people in the world so evil that they would invent such a plan, but they're not going to stop us being alive, unless they nuke the whole of Europe, and if they decide to do that we'll all be dead anyway. So we may as well live life as best as we can now, mightn't we?

  I'm sure the people who thought up this Project Renova aren't moping around talking in low voices about all the people they've killed.

  On the dual carriageway there are no other cars, just black, bare trees on either side, like they're sleeping until the world starts again. Traffic cones everywhere. I think about road workers putting them out, then going home and coming down with the virus, and wishing they hadn't spent their last healthy day on earth putting out traffic cones on a dual carriageway.

  We get to this big long tunnel, called the Tyne Tunnel, which is totally dark inside, so Heath and Kara put on their headlights and drive dead slow. It's well spooky.

  "There might be zombies!" Jax says. Jax is pissed that the virus isn't turning everyone into zombies. Heath tells him to shush, because he's got to concentrate. When we come out the other side there's this big toll thing, with checkpoints where you used to have to pay. Looks like we still have to. Soldiers with guns are stopping us getting through.