Blood Crazy by Simon Clark

as if she’d start crying. ‘He’s the first nice man we’ve seen. He might help us.’
    â€˜We don’t know him. He might … he might be on his way to work or something.’
    I nearly laughed. Big sister was still trying to pretend the world was sane.
    I told them, ‘I’m in trouble too.’
    The two youngest girls leaned forward, eyes round. ‘What you done?’
    â€˜Nothing really. But I think it’s the same trouble as you. Look, there’s no point in going into Doncaster. It’s full of … It’s not safe at the moment.’
    Vicki hugged the rabbit. ‘We’ve got to go to the police. We’ve got to tell them what happened.’
    â€˜What did happen?’
    â€˜It doesn’t matter.’ This was big sister, Sarah.
    A seventeen-year-old male can’t look at a girl without ticking off the usual list.
    Attractive? Nice breasts? Fit figure? Etc, etc … If you’re male and over fourteen you know what I mean. To that list I’d add
Was she intelligent?
The answer was a thumping
Yes:
Sarah had got looks and she was nobody’s fool.
    â€˜Where are you taking us, Nick Aten?’
    â€˜Have you eaten today?’
    â€˜No.’
    The younger girls chorused. ‘We’re starving.’
    â€˜Then I’ll drive somewhere quiet and we’ll have a picnic. I’ve got stacks of food in the back.’
    I drove away from town. Occasionally I glanced back at Sarah. Her eyes had a metal edge to them – also they told me they had seen a slice of hell this last forty-eight hours.
    I thought she’d say nothing for while. Shock can lock memories away in a steel box and bury it deep in the mind. But as I looked at her in the mirror her eyes locked onto mine and she told me what had happened to her.

Chapter Eleven
This Is What Happened to Sarah Hayes
    Sarah lived with her family on a farm. On Sunday morning, Day 2, she had got up, dressed, then gone out into the farmyard where her parents stood leaning with their backs to a wall.
    â€˜Morning,’ she had said, smiling. ‘Are Vicki and Anne out riding?’
    That’s when her father punched her in the face.
    â€˜Kill her, James. Kill her,’ shouted her mother. ‘Kill her before she hurts anyone else!’
    Shock numbed the initial pain of her father’s punch, but it knocked her back onto the dirt. Mother reached out for daughter, a knife in her hand, her eyes blazing hatred.
    Dazed, Sarah acted on instinct. She ran back to the house, clawed her way upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom. It was a solid door but the bolt wasn’t: designed for modesty not survival.
    As she backed away from the door someone knocked on it. Her father. ‘Come on out, Sarah, love. We’ve got to talk to you. It’s important.’
    If her father had tried he could have kicked in the door inside thirty seconds. But for some reason he talked. He told Sarah over and over how he and her mother loved her. And the plans they had for her. If only she’d unlock the door.
    Sarah, too shocked to think, sat on the floor.
    â€˜Come on, Sarah, love. Your mother’s making you a cup of tea. Open the door.’
    She couldn’t
think
what to do, so she did what her guts
told
her to do.
    She ran the water. ‘I’m just going to wash, then I’ll come out.’
    Leaving the water running, she climbed out of the window onto the flat roof of the conservatory. From there, she swung herself off the roof, hanging by her hands from the guttering, before dropping into the flower bed.
    Legs threatening to give way, she managed to jog round the house. As she ran she heard the sound of her VW Beetle.
    Her sisters had seen what had happened to her, got the car started and were desperately trying to drive the thing. Eleven-year-old Anne in the driving seat, revving the engine until it rattled, tried to get it in gear but didn’t know she had to