“I hate to mention this,” said Jon, after a while, “but what will we eat in the future?”
“Carry on the begging routine?” I said doubtfully.
“You’d dare?” snorted Bane.
“No... The whole area’s going to be on red alert. And I really thought we could trust those three. Even Louis. If we couldn’t trust him... I don’t want to go near anyone. But Jon’s right, what are we going to eat?”
Bane grimaced. “We’re heading into a much wilder area. Fewer towns and therefore fewer hiking trails. Not many opportunities to beg food anyway. The isolation’s good for evading the EuroGov but as for what we’re going to eat... we’ll have to go a bit slower and spend more time practicing those hunting and gathering skills.”
My heart sank. Slower. What about those Alpine passes? And what hunting and gathering skills?
We floated on in a bleak silence. Lunchtime came and went without any of us suggesting we broach our meager food supply. Our stomachs rumbled. The afternoon wore on, and on we drifted. The banks remained forested and non-threatening as we struggled not to doze. Nothing at all happened except, sun or no sun, our teeth began to chatter.
“Is anyone else frozen to an icicle?” asked Jon.
“Just slightly,” I shivered. “Perhaps we should get out now. We must’ve come kilometers; they’ll never bring the dogs this far.”
“We’ve come tens of kilometers.” Bane sounded cold but satisfied. He cupped his phone carefully in a shaking hand to check our position yet again. “We’re going far, far, faster than we could walk, so I vote we stay afloat as long as the river is going the right way.”
“Heard of something called hypothermia?” said Jon.
“Oh, stop whining. D’you really want to walk all those extra kilometers?”
“Hmm.” Jon said no more.
“WAKE UP, YOU TWO!”
My eyes flew open. After the threat of rapids finally forced us to disembark, Bane had driven us mercilessly to our feet—my legs feeling precisely like jelly, so cold I could barely feel them and wholly unable to support my weight—and got us walking. But despite the need to get our blood moving, we hadn’t gone far. Couldn’t go far. We’d stopped in the first well-sheltered hollow we found and after putting on my dry thermals to collect wood, I’d slipped into the sleeping bag to try to warm up a bit while Bane got the stove lit. I must’ve nodded off.
“Calm down, Bane, the way we’re shivering, I don’t think hypothermia is imminent,” I mumbled.
“Neither do I, but the food’s ready.”
“Huh?”
I rolled over and focused as he placed a steaming pan and the three fork-spoons down by my head and slithered in beside me. On Bane’s orders, Jon had zipped all three sleeping bags together to make one giant one, wrapped in foil blankets, so we could share what little heat we had left. Jon and I must’ve actually warmed up a little, because Bane felt ice-cold.
Jon hadn’t stirred. I prodded him with my elbow. “Jon, food.” Jon carried on snoring. I shook his shoulder. No reaction.
“Try howling like a wolf.” Bane’s flash of weary humor drew an equally weary smile from me.
“Heard that,” muttered Jon, surfacing at last.
A real wolf was howling, somewhere not a million kilometers away. I opened my eyes. Moonlight bathed the hollow; it was deep night. I’d gone and nodded off again! I still felt chilled; inside, in my core. Bane was a lukewarm shape on my right, Jon a shivering weight against my side.
How late was it? Would the rocks I’d put to warm in the stove pan still be hot? Easing free of Jon, I began to slide out to check. Bane woke with a start and produced something that glinted in the moonlight. “Who’s there?”
“Me. Relax.”
“Margo. What’re you doing?”
“Checking those rocks. Jon’s still freezing and I don’t feel too warm myself.”
“Oh. Me neither.” Something less sharp and deadly appeared in his hand, glowing. “Hmm. We’ve only been asleep a couple of hours. The stove will have only just gone out.”
I felt the pan and drew my hand back quickly. “Yep, still hot.”
Plundering the rucksacks for our spare socks, I filled each one with rocks, and Bane arranged them around the edges of the bag, where we were least likely to roll against them. Several more wolves took up the song as I climbed back in and of course, that’s when Jon woke up.
“Gah, wolves! I take back my complaints about the smelly tent, Bane. Any tent’s better than none, even if it is just psychological.” But his shudder had nothing to do with the wolves. “Ugh, I’m so cold!”
“Careful, we’ve got those hot stones in here now, around the edges. Hopefully that’ll warm us up.” The fantasy of another pan of warm soup materialized in my brain and almost escaped via my tongue—I swallowed it back. Hot rocks were pretty much unlimited: soup wasn’t.
Jon eased away from me as though suddenly conscious of the absence of the usual sleeping bags—or even blanket—between us, so I rolled over and snuggled up to Bane. Bane’s fingers found my cheeks, traced their way to the nape of my neck and drew my mouth to his. Yep, he was definitely the warmest. Though far from thawed out, and only fortified by a scant few hours sleep, I shared his relief. We’d escaped—as far as we could tell.
We stole a couple more kisses. We were surely far too tired to fall into great temptation, quite apart from...
“Do you two mind?” protested Jon.
“Why is this the one time you’re not asleep?” complained Bane.
“I’d blame the wolves, but actually I can’t sleep for the smacking sounds.”
“Well, for your information this is entirely medicinal—just warming her up, y’know?”
“Need any help with that?”
Thud. A gasp of pain from Jon. I caught Bane’s arm as he lunged over me again.
“Bane, knock it off.”
“I’ll knock his bloody block off!”
“Enough, you hit him already, and yes, he asked for it.” I couldn’t keep the anger from my voice, not when Bane had been so, so forbearing about the sleeping arrangements and everything. “If you don’t like it, Jon, keep your stupid remarks to yourself!”
Silence.
“Jon? Did he knock you out?”
“No.” Jon sounded subdued. “Some sense into me, maybe. I was just... thinking better of my... stupid remark. Sorry.”
It wasn’t clear if the apology was for me or Bane or both, but after a moment Bane said stiffly, “Did I hurt you?”
Jon snorted. “On the list of things likely to kill me at the moment, the bruise is fairly low.”
“Good. Night.”
“Night,” muttered Jon.
“Night,” I said.
Ahh-wooooo, said the wolves. Good night, helpless little humans.
***+***
9
A DISTINCT LACK OF BUTTERED PARSNIPS
Bane and I woke with sniffles and Jon something more like a full-blown cold. It would be him, he’d been the most tired before. We slept a couple of extra hours out of consideration for our general exhaustion, then breakfasted on some of the perishable food, which was doing just that: perishing. Bane bolted his portion and went back to going through his stuff, over and over.
“It’s not there, Bane,” I said finally, as he made to take everything out yet again.
“Gah!” He snapped his rucksack shut again. “How could I lose something that valuable? To say nothing of useful!”
When we’d tried to check the news first thing, Juwan’s phone had been nowhere to be found.
“You probably dropped it when we heard the dogs. S’pect you pocketed your phone automatically, but you’re not used to having a second one, are you? Yours is actually much more valuable to us, anyway, because it’s untraceable and has trig mapping.”
“I know, I know. It’s just... well, it wasn’t even mine, was it?” Not that Juwan was likely to be needing it, unfortunately... “Come on.” He heave
d his backpack on at last. “We’ve got to get away from that river. The EuroGov aren’t totally stupid, y’know. Okay, they probably won’t come this far, but we don’t want to take the chance.”
Jon’s “just a cold” lasted for several days, but he trekked stubbornly on, refusing the rest day Bane eventually offered him.
“Unless we can do better than this,” Jon said, as yet again we had to supplement our day’s gathering with a sachet, “we’ve simply got to get where we’re going as fast as we can.”
But the hungrier we got, the slower we went. A single sachet served as soup for breakfast and we had no lunch. We set snares every night, and caught nothing. Nettles were the only supposedly edible thing we could count on seeing—every forest clearing had flourishing patches.
“Told you boiling got rid of the stings,” I said, the first time we resorted to eating them, and cooked seconds at their eager request.
Nettles became the mainstay of our morning and evening stew, quite often the only component. They didn’t taste bad—a bit like beans—but talk about monotonous! Sometimes we found dandelions, and occasionally wild garlic, which we couldn’t eat in any quantity, but the taste made a nice change. Too early for acorns and most nuts, but once or twice we found wild fruit trees with ripe fruit—we filled up the scentSeal food bag, then loaded our packs as well. No choice now. Starvation was a far nearer danger than bears.
“I am never going to look at a nettle in the same way again,” I said, as I munched our breakfast stew. Bane had put aside the bare minimum of sachets we’d need for crossing the Alps, but all the others were gone now.
“I’m never going to be able to look at a nettle again!” But Bane dipped his spoon into the pan with alacrity and passed it on to me.
“I’ve never had to look at a nettle,” said Jon faintly, “so I don’t know what I’m missing.”
Bane and I glanced at each other. The light-hearted remark was so welcome. Jon had gone very quiet again. He was pale and thin and had energy for nothing other than walking and sniffing for food. Every time we successfully identified an edible plant, we’d give it to him to smell. He’d found several more patches of edible mushrooms, and a number of times his pausing and making me look more closely around an area had resulted in a find.
Light-hearted remark or not, he lay down on the moss that evening without even taking off his backpack, and went to sleep as though he’d been clubbed over the head. I spread out the sleeping bags myself and wrapped them in the foil blankets, then started shredding nettles into the pan with leaden hands.
“Bane,” I said, when he came back with the wood, “where did you put the sachets?”
“We can’t. We won’t have enough...”
“Bane, we’ve no choice! There’s nothing in these nettles—okay, five percent protein or whatever, better than most plants, blah, blah, but it’s nothing compared to meat! They fool our brains, but they can’t fool our bodies. What’s the point worrying about what we’ll eat going over the Alps if we’re not going to get there? Hand one over!”
Bane pulled a face, but rummaged in the bottom of his main compartment, and came out with one of the little foil packets. My stomach ached dully. I could’ve ripped the packet open and eaten it raw and dehydrated and to hell with the other two...
“Found something?” Bane eyed my handful of leaves hopefully.
I scowled at my bookReader. Put my hand over the bottom of the screen and showed it to him. “Is it a match? Take a good look.”
Bane took a leaf and held it by the screen, comparing. “Yep.”
I drew the Reader away momentarily—held it out again. “Sure? Look closely.”
Bane rolled his eyes and checked again. “Yes, it’s definitely the same plant.”
I groaned.
“What? Can’t we eat them?”
“Well, you just confidently identified them as one plant, which is edible, and also as another, which is poisonous, so no.” I flung the leaves into the nearest bush.
A pheasant exploded from underneath.
“Grab it!” I yelled.
“Get it!” Bane blocked the bird’s path. It swung around and hurled itself into the air, heading for Jon. He lunged for the flapping thing—it swerved and pretty much flew into my chest. My desperate hands closed around it.
“Meat!” said Bane.
“Protein!” I licked my lips. A while since even the cutest and furriest animal had looked like anything else. All the same...
The pheasant scrabbled frantically, head bobbing from side to side.
“Uh, get your knife, Bane, hurry up…”
“Oh... yeah... uh...”
If a dangerous human came into sight, Bane would’ve had that knife in his hand in about two seconds, but now he just groped around in his jacket, muttering. The pheasant went on struggling, eyeing us with wide, panic-stricken eyes.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” The books were pretty clear. Turning the bird around carefully so as not to lose it—I’d have sat down and wept!—I gripped it round the neck; twisted and yanked as hard as I could. “Ugh!” The bird’s head hung by a few folds of skin, its feet jerking spasmodically. “Think I overdid it!”
“Margo! I’d have done that!”
“Yeah, in about half an hour when you found your knife! Poor thing was frightened out of its tiny mind. Better to be quick about it.”
Bane bit his lip. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me. Shall we eat it now or keep it for later?”
“We’d better keep it for later.”
“Huh?” Jon started as though he’d been dozing standing up.
“Pheasant,” I said.
“Oh... I didn’t dream that, then... We never catch anything...”
True. We’d scrambled after a number of rabbits and pheasants over the last few weeks—increasingly frantically as hunger began to bite. All the others had shown us a clean pair of heels.
“This is the last sachet,” said Bane, how many days later? I was seriously losing track... “Do we have it now, or keep it?”
The last one. We’d been making do with a sachet every other day, but...
“Perhaps we’d better save it.”
Bane plunged it back into his backpack.
“I keep thinking how one of us might get food in a town,” I said, starting to shred nettles.
“The question’s moot. No towns around here.”
“None?”
“None. This region’s practically deserted. We’d have to walk so many kilometers out of our way that we’d hardly gain anything even if we got food.”
“Oh. Bother. Pass me Jon’s bag...”
Bane handed me the scentSeal bag. Almost empty. Jon just stumbled along between us like a zombie now.
“Let’s see the map, Bane,” I said, once the stew was cooked and the last scrap consumed. “That might cheer us all up.”
“Doubt it.”
“Oh. Never mind.”
Cold struck up through the smooth tiles, seeping into bones and flesh. Sometimes heat filled the tiny cell, thick enough to choke on. How much more?
The silence pounded like hammer blows. Hum, scream, anything to break it but no, no, I must not speak.
Why...? Lips clamped together, and together, and together, aching with trying not to speak, to chatter with cold, to sing... why not sing? Maddening, surely...
No. I must not speak. Why not? Why?
Body aching, cold and pains mingled... Is it night or day? Are the voices even real?
Speak...
Sign here...
Then you can rest...
The pain will all go away...
The door creaks—they are here... real now... body tensing into cowardly knots... so confused, where, what, why... only know the pain will start now, the real pain...
Only know... teeth chattering, body shaking, hands seizing, heart hammering and lurching, agony in anticipation... and all I know... I must not speak. I must not speak. I must not speak...
“Margo, wake up...”
Someone was shaking me but I kept my lips tight closed, conscious only of an overwhelming need to remain silent and utter terror of what was about to happen...
“Margo? Are you awake? Talk to me...” Bane’s voice. A glow suddenly illuminated his face—he’d switched his phone screen on. “Are you all right, Margo? It was just a nightmare.”
A nightmare... yes. I shuddered. “I’m fine, Bane.”
I managed to relax, then peered at Bane’s face. His hair was plastered damply over his forehead and he looked a tad wild-eyed himself. Beside me, Jon was whimpering, hands fighting to escape the sleeping bag. We slept like a pile of puppies these days, the way we had when we got out of the river. It was the only way we could stay warm.
“Are you okay, Bane?”
“Fine. I had a nightmare too, though.” He reached over me and shook Jon firmly. “Something we ate, I reckon. Jon, it’s just a nightmare, wake up...”
Jon woke with a choked cry and jerked his fists clear of the bedding with unusual aggression. Bane grabbed his wrists.
“Jon, nightmare, calm down.”
Jon blew out a long breath... let his arms go limp. Bane released him.
“Thanks for waking me,” Jon said.
“You’re welcome. I suspect those berries. We’ve never had those before.”
“And we’re not having them again,” I said immediately. “Unless they’re the last edible thing in the forest.”
“I second that,” groaned Jon, turning on his side and closing his eyes again.
“Motion passed, then,” said Bane. Not protesting that food was food? His nightmare must’ve been bad!
I woke in the morning, head fogged from a night of horrible dreams, as Bane ran a hand up my ribs.
“Not thinking of misbehaving?” I mumbled. “I can be relieved you’ve got the energy, and slap your face at the same time, y’know...”
“Alas, no. Margo, you’re so bony.” Very unhappy he sounded about it.
“Speak for yourself, Bane. And Jon—s’like having a skeleton curled up next to me.”
The Three Most Wanted Page 10
