Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

The old Korean man behind the counter shrugged. ‘What you say?’

‘I ’AID… I ’EED YOU TO ’IVE ’E ALL YOUR ’ONEY!’ Bob’s voice boomed across the racks of convenience goods in the petrol station. A trucker taking his pick from some microwavable snacks in a fridge unit looked their way.

Liam lifted his own sock up to reveal his nose and mouth. ‘Excuse the big fella, he’s not so good with a sock on his head.’

‘This is robbery?’

‘Aye, yes… yes, I’m afraid it is.’ Liam shrugged guiltily. ‘Really sorry about that. We’re going to need some of that money in your till there.’

The old man nodded, understanding. ‘Ah…’ and then ducked down out of sight.

‘Uh?’ Liam hadn’t been expecting the old man to be quite so co-operative. He looked at Bob. ‘Well, that wasn’t so hard.’

A moment later the old man reappeared holding a rusty old Korean model AK47 held together by duct tape. ‘YOU LEAVE NOW!’ he yelled, his finger resting on the trigger and looking dangerously like he was halfway pulling on it.

‘Maybe we should — ’

The gun went off, five rapid-fire rounds before the old weapon clicked. Jammed. Several polystyrene ceiling tiles exploded in showers of plastic snow, most of the bullets whistling past them. But one caused a puff of crimson to erupt from the side of Bob’s head; an ear, almost completely intact, flew across the racks and landed among the refrigerated snacks not too far from the trucker.

Bob shouldered their shotgun.

‘Hoy! No!’ Liam pushed the barrel up as the weapon boomed. The rack of cigarettes behind the old man’s head exploded with a shower of tobacco shreds and paper.

‘Just get that till!’ barked Liam.

Bob passed the gun to Liam, leaned over and grabbed the till embedded firmly in a counter housing. Plywood cracked and splintered, chocolate bars and scratch cards spilled on to the floor as Bob shook the till vigorously. The whole counter unit was lifted clean off the floor. With a loud crack, the till pulled free and the counter crashed back down again.

‘Sorry ’bout the mess there!’ Liam grimaced, before he pulled the sock back down over his mouth.

Maddy had only just finished filling the motorhome when she heard the rattle of gunfire inside the petrol station’s convenience store. Another shot, deeper, the boom of a shotgun. Then a second later what sounded like a bull charging around inside.

‘Oh Jesus!’ she whispered. ‘I said be discreet!’ They were meant to be holding the store up for some quick cash, not levelling the place to the ground.

A moment later she saw Liam emerging, followed by Bob carrying something that looked almost as big as a bank safe in his arms.

‘Becks!’ she called out. ‘We’re leaving! Now!’

The Winnebago’s engine started up with a roar of an accelerator pedal pushed down too hard — Becks’s first go behind the wheel.

Liam tumbled up the steps inside, Sal helping him up. He collapsed on to the seat at the back, hyperventilating. Bob followed him inside and tossed the till on to the floor. The vehicle rocked on its loose suspension under the heavy impact. SpongeBubba wobbled and lost his footing.

‘Woo-hoo!’ he chirped merrily on his back, stubby paddle feet whirring ineffectually in the air.

Maddy slammed the door shut on them, cursing under her breath as she ran along the outside of the motorhome, pulled open the passenger side door and clambered up on to the seat beside Becks. ‘Go! Go! GO!!’

Becks eased the gearstick into Drive and the SuperChief bucked forward like an eager racehorse let out of a trap. The front of the RV clipped the rear of the rig parked up beside the petrol pump next door, sending showers of sparks and a twisted aluminium bumper across the forecourt.

Becks spun the big wheel round, finally regaining control of the Winnebago as they barrelled out of the petrol station’s exit ramp and up the slip road on to the interstate. At least at this time of night they weren’t roaring up only to join a road clogged with bumper-to-bumper commuter traffic. They had three lanes almost to themselves. Becks gunned the accelerator.

‘Slower!’ barked Maddy. ‘Slow down! Keep it under fifty! We don’t want to get pulled up for speeding!’

‘Affirmative.’ She eased back on the pedal and the complaining whine of the vehicle’s engine settled back to an almost soothing, muted grumble.

Maddy eased herself back in her seat. She let go of the dashboard in front of her. Her nails had left crescent-shaped dents in the plastic.

She turned round in her seat to see Rashim and Sal hefting SpongeBubba back on to his flat paddle feet and Bob and Liam pounding at the till like a pair of dim-witted cavemen trying to chip flint shards from an unbreakable boulder.

Jesus. Not the first time she found herself wondering, What kind of a Mickey Mouse team is this?

‘My God!’ she hurled at them, exasperated. ‘What the hell was that?’

They stopped what they were doing, all of them staring expectantly at her. A bizarre menagerie seemingly sharing the same wide-eyed question on their faces — not good?

She shook her head. ‘I’m pretty sure I said we should try and be discreet about this!’

20 September 2001, Harcourt, Ohio

It was an abandoned elementary school they ended up looking at. Many of its windows were boarded up and covered with fading graffiti, and those that weren’t, were either broken or smeared with foggy green blooms of moss. The playground beside the main entrance foyer sprouted tufts of grass and weed between fissures in the tarmac. Along one side, a row of gently rusting bicycle racks emerged from a bed of several years’ worth of windswept autumn leaves.

The fact that the school was a couple of miles outside the nearest town and — apart from a gang of kids goofing around at night with cans of spray paint, some time long ago — it looked like no one had been here recently, coupled with the fact that it still had a tappable link to the power grid, made it pretty much a perfect temporary place for them to set up shop.

Actually, they’d found it quite by chance. A stop at a diner in the middle of one-strip town, Harcourt. A blink-it-and-miss town in the middle of Ohio’s faded industrial heartland — the rustbelt, some called it. By the look of the lifeless smokestacks and fenced-off warehouses, it had once been a very promising industrial town. Bob had pulled over on the gravel car park in front of the diner and they’d gone in for a toilet and breakfast bagel break.

The diner was empty apart from them and one young waitress in a green check dress and apron slumped across the end of the counter reading a newspaper. SpongeBob and Patrick quacked and guffawed from a TV on the other end. Rashim smiled at the sight of that.

After bringing them the pot of coffee and breakfast they’d ordered, the waitress found a reason to loiter by their table — wiping down others nearby, changing ketchup bottles and salt cellars that didn’t need changing — clearly bored witless with her own company and intrigued by the diner’s first and only customers that morning.

Her name was Kaydee-Lee Williams — at least that’s what the plastic name tag on her chest said.

It was Liam who broke the ice and asked her about the town. She was pitifully keen to answer. ‘Oh, Harcourt’s, like, totally dead. Been dying for years. Ever since they closed down the auto-parts factory. That’s all this town was really, a place for a couple of factories to go.’ She shrugged. ‘When the auto parts started getting made in China, the factories closed. Just like that. Simple.’

She told them how the town’s population shrank each year. There was no future here, people were moving away, particularly families with young children. That’s how they learned about the school in Harcourt, Green Acres Elementary. The school Kaydee-Lee said she’d once been to. No need for schools any more in a dying town, she’d said.