See her eyes calculating.
See her not moving.
“What are you doing?” Tomasz says, alarmed.
“Go, both of you.” She looks at Seth. “Take care of Tommy.”
“NO!” Tomasz shouts, lunging back for the hole, but Seth instinctively stops him.
“Regine, that’s crazy!” he says.
“I’ll slow it down,” she says. “You can get away.”
“Regine!” Tomasz cries, pulling against Seth’s arms.
There’s a tearing sound as the Driver starts ripping through the tall grass, slowly now, almost leisurely, as if it knows it’s got them.
“Go!” Regine shouts. “Now!”
“Regine –” Seth says.
And Tomasz breaks from his arms, evading Seth’s grasp as he dashes back through the hole in the fence, avoiding Regine, too, as she tries to step in front of him. “Tommy!” she shouts.
But Seth can see him reaching into his pocket, see him pull out a small plastic cartridge, see his stubby fingers working frantically –
See the flame of a cigarette lighter as it dances in the air.
“Tommy?” Regine asks.
Tomasz drags the lighter along the edge of the tall, willowy grass, still brittle even after the rainfall, still very ready to burst into flames wherever Tomasz touches the lighter. He flicks it off. “Come!” he shouts at Regine, dashing back through the hole in the fence.
Regine looks at the rising flames, spreading so quickly that billowing smoke is already hiding the Driver. Seth sees her wait, motionless, for the smallest of seconds, but then she follows Tomasz through. They turn right, down the embankment, hoping there’s a way out at the end of the fences.
And they run like hell.
37
“That’s my lighter, you little thief,” Regine says as they run, Seth continually looking over his shoulder for the Driver, but the flames are now burning so high he can see them over the tops of intervening fences.
“That’ll spread,” Seth says. “Everything here will burn just like the other side of the tracks.”
“Sorry,” Tomasz says.
“I want my lighter back,” Regine says.
The space between the back fences and the steep embankment is too narrow to run on comfortably. They’re having to move as fast as they can with one foot flat on the ground and the other up a steep slope.
“It’s not following us,” Seth says, looking back again.
“Not yet,” Regine says.
They reach the end of the row of houses, bursting out into the parking lot of a small block of flats down from the sinkhole. Seth veers left, away from his own street.
“No!” Regine calls, out of breath. “We have to get away from the prison. There’s no chance of losing it if we don’t.”
Seth stops. “What? Why?”
But she’s already running in the other direction, up toward the sinkhole and the High Street, Tomasz right behind her.
“That’ll take us right by it!” Seth calls after them, but they don’t stop. “Dammit!” he shouts and goes after them, grabbing his still aching chest –
Still aching, but –
They run to the edge of the sinkhole and stop, crouching down. Tomasz peeks around the corner of an overgrown shrub. “Nothing,” he says. “The van is still there, but nothing else. Just lots of smoke.”
“Come on then,” Regine says. She dashes across the street, Tomasz after her, both exposed to the van for a quick, horrible second. Seth follows, glancing toward his house, but nothing is moving. They hide in the bushes on the other side of the street. “My chest,” Seth says, hand on his heart. “It’s –”
“We will go back to our house,” Tomasz says. “We can help you there.”
“Too far to go on foot with that thing after us,” Regine says. She turns to Seth. “Do you know anywhere to hide?”
Seth looks up to the High Street, thinking past all the smaller stores he’s been into and out of, all the way to the supermarket at the top of the hill.
“As a matter of fact,” he says.
“Dark in there,” Tomasz says, peering through the glass door of the supermarket after they’ve raced up the High Street.
“It’s perfect,” Regine says, nodding at Seth. “Good one.”
Seth looks back in the direction of his house, where smoke is still rising. “Do you think we killed it?”
“Death itself cannot die,” Tomasz says.
“It’s just a man in a suit,” Regine says. “It’s not death. We shouldn’t even call it an ‘it.’” She ducks inside and is lost in shadows almost immediately. Seth makes to follow her, but Tomasz remains firmly in place, biting his lip.
“Is dark,” he says again.
“Come on!” Regine calls from inside.
“We’ll be in there with you,” Seth says to him. “And you’ve got the lighter.”
Tomasz takes it out of his pocket, turning it over in his fingers. “Is not mine. Is Regine’s. She ask me to hold it for her.” He glances up at Seth. “As way out of temptation.”
“She said you stole it.”
Tomasz shrugs. “People ask for what they need in different ways. Sometimes by not even asking for it at all. What my mother always say.”
Regine comes stomping out of the darkness. “I’m serious, Tommy. The only thing in here that’ll hurt you is me if you don’t move your short little ass.”
“You smoke?” Seth says.
She stares at him. “That’s what you want to talk about? Are you kidding me with that shit?”
“Come on, Tommy,” Seth says, turning to him. “We really do need to get inside.”
Tomasz looks surprised. “You called me Tommy.”
“I did.”
“I prefer Tomasz, please.’
“She calls you Tommy.”
“Is allowed. Is Regine. For you, Tomasz I like better. Is making more sense this way.”
He follows Seth and Regine into the darkness of the store. They walk back through the silent aisles, their feet sliding on the dust of ancient food scattered everywhere.
“This’ll do,” Regine says, turning to Tomasz. “Give me the lighter.”
“No,” Tomasz says, shaking his head. “You are done for the smoking, you said. No more smoking for me, says Regine.”
“It’s still mine, and I need to see if Seth here’s going to die of a punctured lung.”