The Fearless Read Online Free PDF

We were going so fast it was hard to see them properly, and I wondered if I was imagining them.
    Right until one of them leaped over the central barrier and out in front of the Range Rover, and Mr Brightman tried to swerve and didn’t manage it. A body flipped up onto the bonnet and a face thumped against the windscreen: a snarling, bloody face with silvery eyes. I screamed. Somehow, Mr Brightman kept going, swinging the Range Rover from side to side until the Fearless let go and slid off the bonnet, leaving a spider-web of cracks on the windscreen where he’d hit it with his head. One of the headlights was out too. As we sped forwards I saw his body tumbling towards the steep bank at the side of the motorway, and then he was gone.
    Beside me, Mum let out a cry, arching her back, her eyes screwed shut. ‘Mum!’ I shouted. ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘The baby,’ she groaned through clenched teeth. ‘It’s coming.’
    Mr Brightman glanced back over his seat. ‘What did she say?’
    ‘She says she’s having the baby!’ I said. Mrs Brightman twisted her head to look round over the seat, her eyes wide. ‘
What?
’
    Mr Brightman swore again. ‘Clare, we’re half an hour away if the road stays clear. Just hang on, OK?
Hang on
. I’m going as fast as I can.’
    Mum hung her head, grinding her teeth together, lost in her own little world of pain.
    I reached for Sol’s hand and we clung to each other, our fingers locked tight.
    Not long after that, we turned off the motorway, leaving the lines of traffic behind. But even though the narrow lanes we were racing along were almost empty, and the few cars we did pass were heading towards the motorway despite Mr Brightman’s frantic gestures for them to turn round, in my head, I was still there. I kept thinking about the Fearless making their way along the rows of cars; finding doors that were unlocked or smashing windows; reaching in to—
    No, no, no, don’t think about that
, I told myself.
    Mum hadn’t said a word since she told us the baby was coming. What if she gave birth right here in the Range Rover? I had no idea how to help someone have a baby. I don’t think
any
of us did – Dad was the doctor and he . . .
    Don’t think about that either.
    And the baby was coming early . . . one of my friends’ brothers was born three months early last year. They got him to hospital, but there was something wrong with his lungs, and he—
    STOP, OK?
I ordered myself.
    We drove through a village where lights blazed from windows, doors stood open and, in one driveway, a car burned so fiercely I could feel the heat of the flames through the window as we passed. And nearby . . .
    ‘Don’t look, kids,’ Mr Brightman said in a shaky voice, but it was too late. I’d already seen the man and the woman lying unconscious on the ground, the orange glow from the flames flickering across their faces. A figure crouched over them, binding their wrists with rope. Nearby, another small group of people sat on the ground, also tied up, their faces slack with despair.
    I closed my eyes, so far beyond being scared now that I didn’t even know what I felt any more.
A bad dream, a bad dream, a bad dream
, I chanted over and over inside my head, as if saying it enough times would make it come true.
    Once we were out of the village, Mr Brightman slowed the Range Rover down. ‘Diane,’ he said. ‘I need you to hold the gun while I look out for the turning.’
    He tried to hand it to her, but she batted it away. ‘Get that thing away from me!’
    ‘Diane—’
    ‘I don’t want it! I don’t want
any
of this!’
    ‘Well, I hate to tell you this, but you don’t have a choice!’ Mr Brightman bellowed at her, and for some reason hearing Sol’s parents yelling at each other made my terror sharp and real again in a way nothing else had been able to. Tears welled up in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.
    ‘Mum, Dad,
stop it
!’ Sol cried, bursting into tears as well.
    ‘Don’t