Thunderbolt by Wilbur Smith (reading strategies book .txt) 📕

He picked up a bag and, as if this sort of thing happened every day – who knows, perhaps it did? – he calmly pulled it down over his head.

Amelia, Xander and I looked at one another.

‘Er, no thanks,’ I said.

Barrel-man kicked the bags across the dusty floor at us.

‘I’m not sure it’s negotiable,’ said Xander.

Mo, his voice small, said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not so bad.’

‘It’s all relative, I suppose,’ said Amelia. She lifted a bag from the heap and, trying to put a brave face on things, gave me a weak smile before pulling the bag over her face. Xander followed suit.

They were right, of course. We didn’t have a choice. Still, I was seething inside as I slotted my head into the last bag available. It was damp, scratchy, and it smelled of rotten fish. But sackcloth is porous, meaning we could breathe through these bags, despite the duct tape Barrel-man and Flip-flops used to secure them, noose-like, around our necks. Using the same tape, they also secured my hands behind my back again.

I’m not exactly claustrophobic, in that I can cope with being cooped up if necessary, but I don’t like it. Plunged into the darkness of that sack, a fluttery feeling of panic rose up inside me. To head it off I closed my eyes, shutting myself inside my own head rather than staring into the blackness of the sack, and I forced myself to take long slow breaths.

Now that I couldn’t see, my other senses pressed in. The horrible fish-stink of the bag blotted out everything else smell-wise. In fact, the smell was so strong it filled my mouth as well as my nose; I swear I could taste bad fish. The sackcloth was rough and damp against my cheeks, forehead and chin, and the noise of the room was muffled but still somehow louder than it had been: scuffling footsteps, Barrel-man’s jabbering, the deeper growl of Flip-flops talking to him.

Somebody took hold of my forearm. I pulled away at first, but the fingers tightened around my wrist again, pulling me forward. Blindfolded like that, we were taken outside one by one. Whoever was leading me was actually quite gentle. He had a palm in the small of my back and he steered me forward, making me feel less like I was about to nose-butt a wall. As I emerged into the compound, I heard a dog barking. It sounded close by. Outside, my guide led me twenty-two steps before turning me around to sit on the warm metal lip of a pickup’s lowered tailgate. He leaned me backwards and swung my legs into the tray. Amelia was already in it; I rolled blindly onto her ankle.

‘Ow!’ she said.

‘Sorry.’

‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘Yeah. What about Xander?’ I said.

‘I’m coming, I think.’ Xander’s voice was off in the direction of the dog. But soon he was banging down into the corrugated metal beside me, and saying, ‘That’s kind of you, thank you very much,’ with just enough sarcasm to make me smile under my hood. We jostled about until we were sitting in a line with our backs pressed to the same side of the pickup’s hold. I was in the middle with Xander on my right and Amelia on my left.

Under my breath I said, ‘We’re together at least.’

Quietly, Mo chipped in: ‘I’m here also.’

‘Good,’ I said, and I meant it. I was pleased to hear his voice.

The pickup’s engine rattled to life and the tray shuddered beneath me. Doors banged shut. ‘Brace yourselves,’ I said, too late. We all lurched sideways into each other as the truck jumped forward. But we quickly righted ourselves. Until the pickup hit a pothole and swerved left, jumbling us all up again. The trouble was that, without being able to look at the scenery, let alone the road itself, I couldn’t anticipate what was coming. None of us could. This was going to be an uncomfortable journey.

‘How far is it?’ I asked in the general direction of Mo.

‘It depends.’

‘If you’ve been there before, surely you must know,’ I said.

Amelia snorted. ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘There could be traffic.’

‘You reckon? It felt like we came ashore pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It’s not like –’

Mo cut me off. ‘Not traffic,’ he said. ‘But the roads. They are rough, damaged by the weather. Sometimes we have to go around.’

As if to underline Mo’s point, at that moment the pickup lurched over what felt like a boulder-sized rut. I bounced clear off the tray and slammed back down into it with an audible – and painful – thump.

‘What’s the best-case scenario, journey-time-wise?’ asked Xander, once we were rolling smoothly again. He didn’t sound rattled, just interested, but he’s always great at keeping calm.

‘An hour and a half. Two, perhaps. If we’re going where I think we are,’ Mo replied.

‘Where’s that?’

Mo didn’t reply at first. The pause became ominous. Eventually he said, ‘Let’s just wait and see, shall we.’

I have no idea how long the journey took. It was like the storm again: with my head in that bag my sense of time evaporated. The physical battering the road and truck delivered as we bounced and jerked and thumped over what seemed to be never-ending sharp-edged rocks was all-consuming. In reality the tyres were probably just clattering across dried-out ruts, but it felt worse. I know it’s stupid, but I began to suspect that the driver was hitting obstacles deliberately.

To begin with, sitting separately, I felt like I might actually be thrown clear of the truck. Why not let that happen? Help it, even, by jumping to my feet and leaping out. I thought about telling the others to do that with me but really, it would have been stupid. We couldn’t see where we were jumping and for all I knew one of the guards was probably in the back with us, keeping an eye.

By sitting close we wedged ourselves together to ward off the smaller bumps, but every now