30
The silence away from the school was somehow more frightening than the noise they’d left behind. Thussock was deserted; a ghost town, devoid of all life. Although the lights in most buildings remained unlit, the street lamps enabled the family to see more than enough. It was as if the entire place had been frozen like a paused DVD. Wherever they looked they could visualise the exact moments when people’s lives had been unexpectedly interrupted during the course of the long day now ending. Cars had been abandoned in the middle of the road. The doors of many shops and houses had been left open. A stray dog mooched around for its missing owner, edging forward when it saw Scott and the others, then yelping with panic and running away in the opposite direction. Scott stepped over a river of
