Arcadia (45 page)

“What about you?”

“Shut up,” she says. “Go.”

“Are you—”

“I can't move.” He looks at her feet. One of them's turned at a funny-looking angle. “Don't just fucking stand there, kid. Run!” She sounds so desperate that he takes a few steps away. It's like wading through a dry and thorny pond. The horse makes another helpless effort to right itself. He sees Soph dragging herself closer to it, whispering to it, flinching away as it throws its head in a frenzy of pain. Up on the crest of the slope above a man's shape appears against the torchlight. The outline of his head is horribly deformed. “Don't stop!” Soph hisses at him. Tears fill his eyes and then his heart. He blunders away alone.

  *  *  *  

Dawn finds him crammed in a muddy hole under an elder bush. He tried to keep going downhill but he got stuck and can't go any farther, it's impossible without his other shoe, and anyway he's exhausted and heartsick. He came to a road at the edge of the heath but it ran out and left him in a morass of green. He squirmed in as far as he could and hid. From time to time he can still hear distant barking. There's no one to tell him what's happening. His face and hands are filthy but there's no one to show him where the water is. He doesn't know which way is north or south or east or west or which way he's going to go next.

The people with the dogs are like villains in the comics. He imagines cruel men with mad-eyed leering grimaces who shout boasts and order destruction.
Kill them all!
If they find him he's dead. Ellie and Wolf are probably already dead, and Soph too. He's used to people dying but this is different. When They take people it's quiet, they just disappear, like Ol, walking down the hill with a vaguely puzzled look, never to be seen again. Slipping into the water with a white hand guiding them down. Not torchlight and teeth and howling. He can't stop thinking about Soph sitting on the heather, angry, afraid, all by herself. He should have got her away. In the comics the hero would have helped her up—
Lean on me
—and they'd have limped off to hide together, battered but defiant.

In the comics Ellie would have gotten away too. She had her boots on. She'd have kicked her way through the dogs to her horse, Drum, and ridden off into the night, leaving the villains cursing and waving their fists.
The princess, she rides like the wind!

It's not like that. He's dirty and empty and hiding in a ditch.

No one's going to come and rescue him.

He cries for a while, feeling horribly small.

When he starts getting shivery and stiff he makes himself wriggle out from under the elder bush and back through the mess of branches onto the road. It's barely a road at all, just a crumbling lane which vanishes under a turbulent lake of bramble. He's supposed to keep going downhill but it's all blocked that way.

He can't be on his own. It's not possible.

It's a drier morning, the clouds higher and thinner, streaked with blue holes like torn clothes. The curve of the high heath above hides all but the tops of the satellite dishes. It's very quiet where he is, his little patch of solitary ground. No one knows where he is.

He stands for a while, waiting, but there's nothing to wait for. No one's coming.

He knows what he'd do next if this was the comics.

It's completely stupid. It's the stupidest idea ever. He's not in the comics. He's Rory, aged ten.

Nevertheless, oddly, every other idea sort of fades away beside it. He can imagine standing there for a very long time waiting to discover something else to do, and nothing changing in all that time, just small birds occasionally darting in and out of the bushes. It's the stupid idea or nothing, then.

Perhaps he is in the comics after all, he thinks as he starts limping painfully back up towards the heath. Where else would someone ask him if he wanted to see God?

H
e can't go the wrong way. The big dishes dominate the horizon above. There must still be people there too, because he can see smoke rising. The smoke's thick and very dark. They must have made a big fire. Every so often there's a snatch of noise which might be a shout or an argument or the dogs again. It's not even that far away. He didn't make much of an escape in his one shoe.

The only things growing here are gorse and heather. It's too exposed for anything to survive that isn't scrubby and prickly. The gorse gathers in squat clumps, tilted by the prevailing winds. There are places where he can use it as cover.

Narrow trails wriggle through the heather. Animal tracks, probably. He's little enough to tuck himself down in them if he has to. He finds one that zigzags up the slope, towards the dishes and the smoke and the noises.

He's incredibly frightened. It's a crisp, buzzing, excited sort of fear. He whispers to himself as he sneaks up the slope, trying to make random words turn into a Plan.
See what's going on. Do that first. Do some recon. See what we can do after that.
Even if he could just find a left shoe that would help.

When he first sees people it gives him such a squeeze of fear he nearly pees. He's crouching by a thicket of gorse, pretty well hidden, and he's smeared in mud and bits of leaves and twigs by now, and it's just two people—men—walking around the corner of one building in the distance, not even looking his way, but still, it's enough to make him think about what he's doing. Going closer instead of getting away. The men look shaggy and bulky, like they're wearing furs instead of clothes. Wild men.
Barbarians
.

He can hear Soph pleading with him.
Go. Get to the sea. Now.

It's the fact that he can hear her voice so clearly that's the problem.

He waits crouched by that gorse bush for a long time. No one else appears. He hears the dogs a lot now. Often someone shouts angrily when they start up, telling them to be quiet. He thinks about turning back down the hill. He contemplates the idea with frantic eagerness.

He stays where he is, though.

He's on the broad flat top of the heath. There are nut-brown pools dotted around, and bits of fencing wire, and a couple of concrete huts too tiny to house anything but equipment, though they're not connected to anything, they're just plonked down in the waste. One of them's between him and the camp under the satellite dishes. He can see how he could hide behind it if he could get that far.

He ducks low and scurries across the heath. Every step he takes with his left foot is an unpleasant adventure. That sock's a murky brown mess now, saturated with squelchy water. He goes as fast as he can and gets himself tucked tight behind the concrete hut without seeing anyone else. He leans against it, gasping.

There's a soft rattle and a blur of brown movement. He flinches.

A bird's landed on the roof of the hut. It fluffs itself and peers over the edge at Rory with huge round black-ringed eyes. It's an owl, a stocky mottled owl with a nasty hooked beak and an expression of concentrated ferocity. It's not much bigger than Rory's head but it looks like it's thinking about eating him. It's entirely unafraid of him.

It glares. It shows no sign of going away.

“Hello,” Rory says. A muffled grumble of male laughter comes across the heath. Rory ignores it. He's safely out of sight of anything but the bird.

It twitches its domed head. Something about the movement reminds Rory of someone, of—

His heart plays a fast little dance.

“Lino?” he says.

It just sits there. Or stands there, whichever birds do. It nibbles in its feathers.

“Is that you?” Rory says.

It blinks. Its eyes are brilliant orange stones. It manages to look simultaneously furious and bored. Rory realizes his question wasn't very helpful.

“If you're Lino,” he says, “er . . . Hoot.”

It looks at him like he's a complete idiot.

“Well, I don't know, do I?” Rory says.

It swivels its head halfway around and then drops almost noiselessly off the roof, unfurling striped wings. It flaps and glides over the matching tawny brown of the heather, then drops out of sight behind a little furrow.

“Just a bird,” Rory says, cross with himself.

A barrage of shouting comes from the camp, and some metallic banging. He sneaks a look around the corner of the hut. The nearest of the buildings around the dishes is about as far away as Briar is from Home, across the Channel. There are two much smaller dishes sitting directly on the ground nearby, not much bigger than the ones people put on their houses, angled almost flat to the horizon instead of pointing at the sky. If he could get up behind them, he thinks, he'd still be hidden from the buildings. It sounds like most of the people and dogs are on the other side of the camp, near the fire, which he still can't see.

It's a horrible feeling going out into the open beyond the hut. He's too frightened now to worry about his soaked scratched foot, his bruises, his tiredness. His heart's pumping some kind of tingling ice all through his body. He feels electric. He passes a web of fence trailing lifelessly from a metal pole, one of a row of them. He can hear snatches of distant chatter now, and lots of barking. A bout of woofing is answered by a rough shout: “Shut up!” He keeps himself bent double. The backs of buildings are facing him but won't the dogs sniff him out soon? He can't stop in the open, though. He'll get as close as he can, and then he'll . . . and then he'll—

The owl swoops in front of his face. It gives him such a fright he can't help squeaking even though he's got to be as quiet as he can. It beats its wings jerkily, soaring and dipping, and then spins round and drops to the heather nearby, on his right.

It stares at him. He stares at it.

He can't stop. He presses on, closer. Then the bird's there again, right in his path, making the faintest whisper as it passes, swerving away, flapping up—it's a beautiful soarer but an ugly flier—and twisting to one side before coming back to earth off to his right. It settles, and stares.

Rory stares back. It probably isn't for a long time, actually, but every moment crouching still and exposed feels fearfully long. He's got to make up his own mind what to do. No one's going to tell him whether he's right.

He turns aside and battles across the heath towards the owl.

Now he's moving parallel with the broken fence, completely in the open. The only cover would be if he got all the way to the nearest buildings, a particularly grim pair of rain-streaked one-story outposts squatting beside a medium-sized dish with a faded logo in its bowl. He's just thinking about how far away they look when the owl lifts itself up and flits over to one of them in one ground-hugging guide, then drops onto its roof and sits there, a bit like a squat chimney.

It stares at him.

He steers towards it. What else can he do? An outburst of terrifyingly close barking sends his heart leaping into his mouth. He throws himself down in the heather but there's nowhere to hide, he can't stick his face in a carpet of gnarled twigs. Angry men yell at the dogs, but they don't stop barking. The men are coming closer. They sound like they're just on the other side of the pair of grimy buildings. He knots up with dread.

The owl drops lazily, swings around the corner of the building, and goes out of sight. The barking gets even more frenetic, and the shouts even angrier. “Stop it! Shut it!” A dog yelps like it's been hit. “Quiet!”

“Only a flippin' bird,” a second voice says, quite clearly. Both voices belong to men.

“You hear that?” The first voice is enraged. There's a thump and another pained yelp. “Only a bird. Stupid”—yelp—“animal.”

Dogs and voices recede, grumbling. Perfectly silent, the owl reappears over the roof of the building, circles neatly, and plops back to its perch on the roof. It looks at Rory.

“Lino,” he says to himself, and stands up. For the first time all day he feels a little spark of something like courage. He pulls himself upright and hurries forward. A little farther on and suddenly there's firmer ground underfoot, chunks of tarmac under the litter of the moor. The weeds are soft nettles and grass. A few moments later and he's under the cracked guttering of the nearer of the two buildings. He stands there for a long time with his back against the wall, breathing hard. When he looks up the owl's still there, watching him.

There's a letterbox-shaped window above him, its frame warped and splintering. Some desperately tenacious weed has got a foothold there and sprouted a few mangy purple flowers.

From inside the window comes a little moan of pain. Not a man.

Rory goes numb all over. He stares at the owl. It gazes back, completely unsympathetically.
Go on then
.

As quietly as he can, he edges around the corner. Now he's looking in towards the main group of buildings. The column of dark smoke is rising on the far side, by the building with the curved glass wall. The smell's much stronger, not just smoke but a thick cloying roasting smell as well. He catches his breath and ducks away as a man strolls into sight, coming past the fence around the building where Amber was. He was close enough that Rory could have seen his face if he'd turned to look. He had a dog on a leash, a big square-headed brown brute of a dog, and he was wearing a hood which looked like a dog's head too. The dog starts barking as if it saw him, but there's barking and yapping all around and the man didn't turn his way. Rory takes a few good deep breaths and then starts around the back of the building.

He's safely around the next corner and halfway to the door when it occurs to him: what if one of them's in there? But it's too late for that. A burst of raucous shouting comes from somewhere not far enough away. He charges to the door—it's half-open—and all but jumps inside the building, into stinking moldering darkness. His sock squelches on the floor.