She climbed it carefully, every muscle in her body screaming at her that they needed to rest. Beyond the fence was a dirt track. It was wide enough for a single vehicle, with a telltale line of grass and weeds growing along the center where the wheels hadn’t touched them. Beyond the width of the dirt track was another fence demarking the boundary of the next field. It was much like the one she had just climbed, and, feeling resigned to the task, she moved towards it. The field beyond this fence was a mess. Plants lying on their sides, having been dug up by the rain, were scattered all over the field. For as far as she could see the ground looked more like marshland than soil. She hesitated at the sight of it, and then another thought stopped her from climbing the fence.
She wondered how tired her mind must be that she hadn’t thought of it when she first entered the field. These fields had to be part of a farm, and farms had buildings. If she followed the track she might find a shelter of some kind. If nothing else, she might find a barn she could hide in from the rain until she had rested and recovered from this night’s exertion, and a barn would have a pitchfork, or at least something she could use as a weapon. With any luck, though, she might find a nice comfortable farmhouse, complete with ready hostages, a nice hot bath, food, a bed, some decent clothes and shoes, and a half decent weapon.
Of course, anyone in pursuit of her would almost certainly catch her up while she hid there, but she knew that she couldn’t keep on going forever. Sooner or later her body would just refuse to take another step.
She hesitated for a moment, wondering which way she should follow the dirt track road. To her right, the road disappeared beneath the branches of more trees. These looked like they had been planted in rows, possibly an orchard of some description. She didn’t really want to go back under trees, although that way would be easier because the road slanted a little downhill. The way to the left slanted a little upwards—only a little, but she didn’t relish even that slight extra demand on her muscles. On the other hand, the path that way was clear of trees and seemed to end in total darkness between her and the horizon. It was the sort of darkness that might be caused by the non-reflective wall of a farmhouse or a barn on a night as dark as this. She decided the left way was far more promising, and so it was the left way that she elected to follow.
Despite how tired she felt, her heart began to float at the thought that she might finally have salvation from the trials of the night.
Competing with the fear that hypothermia was getting the better of her body was the certainty that she was starting to come down with a cold. Her nose simply wasn’t working as well as it would under normal conditions. Nevertheless, she could smell sheep from the field that was now to the left, the field she had crossed to get where she was. The smell was faint, at least two days old, the rain had tried its best to wash all traces of the scent from the air, and her cold was trying to hide what was left, but it was definitely there. She wondered where the sheep had gotten to. It was possible they had been taken elsewhere to feed, but where? The field on the other side of her had been growing potato plants. That field was little more than a quagmire now, and it seemed unlikely that any of the plants would survive to be harvested.
Up ahead now, the building the light seemed to vanish into was beginning to take shape. It was a large building, not so much a barn but more of a storage shed for the farm’s heavier equipment. It had two large, darkly painted wooden doors that seemed to take up the entire side of the building. The doors would almost certainly be locked, but she was reasonably sure she could force an entrance and find shelter there, and maybe even transport if she had to.
Perhaps she wouldn’t need to. As she closed the gap on the storage building, another structure appeared alongside and slightly behind it. This had white walls that reflected well even in the limited moonlight. The only reason she hadn’t seen it earlier was because the large storage building had blocked it totally from her sight. It was a farmhouse of the type she had dreamed about when the idea that she might find shelter on this farm had first occurred to her.
She uttered a small prayer of thanks to the Goddess as she became certain of what she saw.
As she neared the end of her trek, she reached the gate of the field that she had crossed to get here. It was a nice wide gate, plenty of room to herd a lot of sheep through at a time. But it wasn’t the gate that caught her attention so much as the metallic box that sat on a pole just to the side of it. It was a nice red box with yellow markings which had been somewhat worn away after a few years in the sun and the rain. The markings made it clear what the box was intended for. It electrified the fence, or at least the chicken wire part of it. No doubt it used only a light charge to deter the sheep from trying to escape, but the point was that it wasn’t on. She had been over that wire twice tonight and hadn’t felt even the smallest of deterrent charges. True, there were no sheep in the field and therefore no reason why the power to the fence should be on, but she couldn’t resist the urge to smile. This might be the first piece of luck she’d had since she’d gotten away from Khosi. If the power was out here, it might be out in the farmhouse. No power in the farmhouse could mean there wouldn’t be any anti-Herbaht security measures.
It wasn’t too long before she reached the storage building. She checked the main doors, and as she had expected, they were locked. The main doors themselves had the thumbprint reader that was the standard lock for most houses in the London area, but these doors also had a padlock and chain device, doubling the security of the storage facility.
She left the doors alone, not touching either the padlock or the doors of the building itself for fear that they might be alarmed in some way, especially if they protected what she imagined they were protecting. Instead she moved slowly to the edge of the storage building and peered around the edge at the house.
The lights were out, though that wasn’t too surprising at this time of night. There were security bars across the lower story windows, and though the upper windows seemed to be free of such accoutrements, she could see the gentle winking red light from a small device attached to the frame of each window. It seemed that the upper windows were indeed protected by security shields. It was also clear that there was power reaching those shields. But the fact that the light was red rather than green, added to the fact that the water seemed to be hitting the window unabated, told Lara that the shields weren’t actually on. Lara often wondered about people who trusted their lives to a powered shield. What would they do should the power be cut? It was true that these things usually held a reserve charge in case of such a contingency, but even the longest backup lasted for no more than two hours.
Lara walked slowly over to the house, her feet complaining as they found the gravel path that surrounded the house before she saw it. The path was wide enough for a vehicle and seemed to form a barrier around the building.
She shivered with the cold and the wet. In there was shelter; in there was dryness, fresh clothes, and a bathroom. Her agility borne of experience and perhaps a little desperation, she climbed up the rough stucco-covered side of the building in a matter of a few seconds and poised outside the window, using what claws she had to dig into the stucco and hold her.
She tried the window, bracing herself as her hand passed through the area that the shield would’ve covered had it been on. It was better than she had hoped. The window itself was unlocked and could be opened fairly easily.
Suddenly her left foot lost its purchase in the stucco; she could hear the audible crack as her claws broke. Her right foot and left hand weren’t enough to support her, and she fell onto the gravel at the base of the house, leaving half her claws behind.
She lay still for a moment. That fall had made a lot of noise, despite the fact that she had kept her wits about her and not cried out as she’d fallen. Her feet hurt; they felt like they were on fire. The undersides of them were covered in dried blood from her walk through the forest, and the toes were in great pain because of the claws being torn out of the st
ucco. Every claw of her left foot had been torn from its moorings, as well as a couple from her right foot, and Lara feared that she might have partially de-clawed herself. Likewise, the hand she had been holding on with had lost a claw, broken at the root by the feel of it, and it was bleeding. At least that one would probably grow back again in time; perhaps the others weren’t as bad as they felt. Once she got into the house she would be able to examine the damage in better light.
Nothing stirred; there was no noise coming from the house. No sound of alarms calling the attention of the authorities. No lights coming on about the house. No heads poking out from behind curtains to see what was going on. She had gotten away with it.
She climbed slowly back to her feet and eyed the wall of the house. The pain in her hands and feet told her not to try that again, but the window above was now open, and it was still probably the easiest way in.
She shook her head. Her left foot had nothing left to grip with, and she doubted, even if she could climb that wall without the help of the claws she had lost, that she could stand the pain of such a climb.
She looked at the building and then across the field she had crossed and at the shadowed outline of the forest she had left. It seemed an age ago now that she’d stepped free of that forest. There was still no sign of pursuit, so perhaps they weren’t following her; she could use a little bit of luck. No sign of pursuit, no sound of following hounds, just the constant fall of the rain as it hit the house and the gravel path, finding its way to overloaded drains and the surrounding fields.
Then there was the open window, glaring at her, beckoning her. Her left foot still screamed in pain at the loss of her claws, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to climb the wall without them.
Speed, she told herself. If she took a run up and threw herself at the wall, the inertia of the run might give her enough upward momentum to reach the window without having to revert to her claws. She actually doubted that this would work, but she had seen certain martial artists do similar things on holomovies, and at this point she was desperate enough to try anything.
She walked slowly away from the window, wondering if she had enough energy to run even the short distance back to the wall. As she walked, she told herself that she needed to actually run up the side of the wall with her feet and not dig her claws in, which is what she would instinctively do if she didn’t concentrate on stopping herself. Her left foot had no claws left, but that wouldn’t stop her instincts from trying to use them.
Then she ran, staggering after just a few feet. She really was exhausted from the long exertions of the day. She knew she wasn’t going to make it. When her bare feet again reached the gravel path, they screamed at her in protest and refused to go any further. The next thing she knew, she had fallen flat on her face. She lay there, on the verge of tears from the futility of her situation, but she didn’t have the energy to cry. Instead, she promised herself that one day she would find the fiend who had invented gravel paths and kill him.
The rain had stopped. It took a few minutes before it really sank in. After several days of pelting down, the rain had stopped. Maybe the Goddess had taken pity on her after all. She looked up and was more than a little surprised to find the world shrouded in daylight again. She must’ve been so tired after everything that sleep had finally gotten the better of her.
She had to admit, she felt a lot better. Her legs and arms felt heavy with sore muscles and her left foot still screamed at her, but her hands and her right foot gave her no more than the occasional twinge.
In the daylight the world seemed somehow a much better place, or maybe it was simply that she was no longer under constant bombardment from the rain. The sky seemed bright, almost cheerful, the house seemed less menacing, and even the open window didn’t feel quite as malevolent as it had in the darkness.
She climbed to her feet, her entire body pock-marked from sleeping in the wet gravel that tried to stick to her as she rose. She tried to brush the worst of the gravel off as she looked around at the glory of the new day. She looked at the fields and the distant orchard, at the house and the storage building and the birds that seemed to be hanging expectantly around. She also looked out across the fields to the distant woods, no longer so ominous in the daylight. Had anyone been pursuing her, they would definitely have caught her by now. They must either have lost her trail in the rain, or maybe there had been no pursuit in the first place.
Again she eyed the window. It seemed somehow lower in the daylight, somehow more accessible. She would try another run up. Thoughts of her previous night’s attempt came to her, but she was a little rested since then, though she doubted she had been asleep for more than two or three hours.
She considered the gravel path, the bane of her previous attempt. Her bare feet hitting that rough, unstable surface had been agony. She needed to do something about that too. Maybe a plank laid across the runway would help. The thought almost made her laugh; if she had a plank long enough to cover the gravel path, she could lean it against the building and climb it instead.
The idea of covering the path appealed to her, but she could count the plank idea out, unless she fancied a walk back across the field to the forest where she might find a tree trunk that she might be able to drag back. No, the idea was silly, but maybe something else would do.
Prison rags were not the thickest or the most durable of garments. When issued to the inmates of the Cattery, though, there were no under things. The rags themselves were all that prevented the Herbaht from being totally naked. Lara hated the rags she was wearing; firstly, they marked her, and secondly, they stank with the collected filth of two dozen or more Herbaht stuck in the same cell.
Being naked was not something Lara relished; at least the rags covered her. Though the rags marked her as Herbaht and did nothing to hide many of her stripes or even her tail, removing them made her feel she was somehow more obviously Herbaht to any possible watchers than she had been before. Not that there was anyone watching; it was broad daylight, and the farm hadn’t stirred. No one was up. Perhaps they felt it wasn’t worth the effort with the rain ruining all their crops, or maybe it was simpler. Maybe the farm was deserted.
She placed one of the rags carefully on the gravel path and then tested it with her foot. Her foot still screamed in pain at her, but there was no new pain caused by the rough, sharp, and even pointed pieces of gravel. It would be a bit of a jump to the second rag, which she would place halfway between the first and the wall, and then she’d run up the wall and get into the house.
She limbered her legs before attempting the run up. Her muscles ached with the exertion they had given her the previous day, and she needed to loosen them as much as she could if she was going to make the speed she felt she needed.
Then she ran. She jumped to the first pile of rags and landed on them squarely with her right foot, her left foot then landing relatively comfortably on the second pile. Then her right foot again hit the wall first—her claws, oh no! Her claws found purchase in the stucco; she had forgotten to curb her instincts. Her claws held the wall, and her foot screamed in protest. Momentum was still with her. Her left foot went higher, and again her instincts tried to use claws to hold her. This time there were no claws. She threw her hands up more in desperation than anything and somehow caught the bottom of the window’s ledge. She hung there for a moment, almost unbelieving that she had actually gotten this high. It wasn’t exactly what she had had in mind, but from here she could pull herself up and drag herself in through the window.
Climbing into the room seemed to take more of an effort than she would have imagined, but the result once she was inside was well worth it. She was in a small bedroom with a nice soft carpet under her feet that felt so unbelievably comfortable after a night out in the rough. A single bed dominated the room, with the headboard up against one of the walls and the right side of the bed up against another. The bed itself was unmade, the mattress left bare and no pillows in sight. Beside the bed on the left side
was a small cabinet, home to a clock and a lamp. According to the clock, it had just gone eight-thirty that morning.
By the look of it, this was obviously the spare room, she thought to herself. There would be no clothing here; there didn’t even seem to be a closet or a wardrobe where she might hope to find such.
Her feet seemed to stick a little to the carpet as she walked to the door to get out. Her feet had pretty much scabbed over, but the dried blood itself seemed a little sticky and had a tendency to catch the carpet a bit. She also noticed that her feet were bleeding again in a few places where the scabs had broken off, and she was leaving small bloody footprints across the carpet.
She was sniffing the air constantly as she moved now, trying to tell if there was anyone else in the house, but her nose, all clogged up with what she feared must be a cold, refused to tell her anything conclusive. She could smell herd. They seemed to have been gone for at least two days, but she really couldn’t be sure. For all she knew, they had heard her enter the house and were hiding in another room in the house.
The corridor stretched the length of the house, and on the opposite side of the corridor from where she now stood was another door. A label on the door written in clumsy stick-on plastic lettering read, ‘Mandy’s Room, Keep Out!’ To the left the corridor went beyond the stairwell to a pair of doors beyond. To the right, at the very other end of the corridor, was a closed door with the word ‘bathroom’ on a plastic plaque hanging from a small hook. This was the room Lara sought more than anything in the world. It was true that she was hungry, but food could wait until she was clean again. So anxious was she to take a bath that, for the moment at least, the thought that she might not be alone in the house was forgotten. Instead she headed towards the bathroom with a purpose.
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