Chapter 50 George
George
It’s been about twenty minutes since Miles and Faith began their trek out of the forest. Reubyn and George have been stood at the front of the motorhome for thirty seconds or so, picking and prodding at the hatch with their fingers, trying to figure out how to open the panel to reveal the engine.
George scratches his head. ‘Reubyn, go have another look at the dashboard. This must open from the inside.’
Reubyn nods and heads back into the bus.
‘I don’t think that’s where the engine is,’ Jessie says. ‘It will be in the back.’
George glances over his shoulder at her.
She’s stood a few yards behind him, her arms are folded, and her eyes are puffy and red.
He turns his attention back to fiddling with the panel.
George runs his fingers around its edge, trying to find a latch, and then, after about twenty seconds, it pings open by half an inch.
Reubyn must have found some button or lever on the inside.
George lifts the panel and reveals a space roughly the same size as a regular car boot. And it’s empty.
‘The engine must be somewhere else.’ He looks at Jessie. ‘Maybe we should try the back.’
She looks at him, deadpan. ‘Yeah, maybe we should try the back.’
They walk around the rear of the bus and find a larger hatch with a prominent lever.
George grabs it and opens up the panel, revealing the engine.
It doesn’t look massively different to what you’d find under the hood of a car, albeit on a larger scale.
Along one side is a set of tools, different-sized wrenches neatly clipped into a line.
Two of them are missing, he notices. Then his eye is drawn to the starter battery, and George immediately knows something is wrong. Very wrong.
‘The battery’s been tampered with,’ George says. He’s no mechanic, but even he can see that. The cable clamps have been disconnected from the battery terminals. And not only that; one of the cables has been cut clean through.
Reubyn and Jessie draw closer. From their faces, they’ve realised it, too. The motorhome hasn’t malfunctioned or run out of power. It’s been deliberately disabled. It’s been sabotaged.