Read Crash III: There's No Place Like Home for Free Online

didn’t need to. Her soft gaze said it all.  
    “She killed them both?” Michael said.
    “Come on, dude, you can’t blame her.” After spinning full circle, Lola turned her palms to the sky. “I mean, look at this place; we’re living in Hell. Who in their right mind would want to stay around during this?”
    Before Michael could reply, Lola said, “But whydid your dad hang them?”
    “We had looters about to burst into our house. He said that if we left Mum and Tilly there, they would think the owners of the house were dead and not look for us.”
    “Did it work?”
    While staring at the ground, Michael’s bottom lip turned down. “No, they had dogs with them. They sniffed us out as soon as they came into the house.”
    “Your dad didn’t think that one through then?”
    It hurt to speak with the lump in his throat. “No.”

    ***

    “One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four…”
    “What the fuck are you doing?” Lola said.
    “I’m counting.”
    “I can hear that, but why?”
    Although Lola walked by his side, Michael stared at the ground. “One, two, three, four… It helps me keep my mind off other things.” Whenever he woke in the middle of the night, he’d count. Counting kept the monsters away.
    “But they’re dead. They can’t hurtyou.”
    Something fell from one of the corpse’s bodies. Although Michael saw it in his peripheral vision, he didn’t turn to look. When it hit the water with a splash, he flinched. It sounded heavy enough to be a limb.  
    The roar of a loud engine spiked Michael’s pulse, and both he and Lola stopped dead. Despite looking around, they couldn’t see them. “Where are they?”
    “I don’t fucking know,” Lola said, “but we’ve got to get away.”
    “Where? There’s nowhere to hide around here.”
    When Lola looked at the bridge, Michael shook his head. “No way; there’s no way I’m going on there.”
    The sound of the engine got louder. “Where else do you suggest we go?”
    “Um…”
    “We don’t have time for ‘um.’ Where will we go?”
    “All right, don’t shout at me.”
    Red-faced and wide-eyed, Lola threw her arms up. “Where… will… we… go?”
    Where could they go? The vehicle would be in view any second now .
    “Fuck this,” Lola said and ran for the bridge.  
    Hesitating, Michael looked from Lola to the direction of the noise and back to Lola again before he took off after her.  
    The sound of a vehicle’s horn blared out through the quiet night. Whoever was driving that car didn’t feel the need to hide in London. It didn’t matter who they were, Michael didn’t want to meet them.
    The cold burned Michael’s lungs as he sprinted after Lola onto the bridge. Trying to stay out of view, they ran close to the side in a low crouch.
    As he ran along the wide pavement, Michael looked at the barrier next to him. Thick, stone pillars were topped off with a concrete plinth and a metal railing. There were hundreds of ropes tied all the way along the railing but the barrier hid the dead from sight. Not that he’d forget what he’d already seen.
    Then he saw the lights. “Run, Lola, run.”
    When Lola looked back in the car’s direction, she stopped. She then hunched down next to the barrier, plunging deeper into its thick shadow.  
    Michael dropped down next to her and caught his breath. Being this low down made it impossible to ignore the slow and steady creak of the ropes; it was almost as though the bridge was talking to them. As if it was laughing at them.  
    The vehicle got close enough to see it was an old truck with maybe three men on the back. When Lola touched him, Michael jumped.
    “Get down some more,” she said. “We can’t let them see us.”
    Michael pressed himself against a cold, stone pillar.  
    The vehicle got closer to the bridge and slowed down.
    Then it turned onto the bridge.  
    Fuck! Michael’s heart hammered so hard he felt like it would burst. He shook as he waited, vulnerable and