Num8ers

by Rachel Ward

  “You’re a true countryman, aren’t you? Chucking stones at an owl.”

  “Too right, they’re always shooting something or setting their dogs on it, ripping something to shreds. I reckon I’d fit right in.”

  The owl was still protesting, but a long way away now. Its voice seemed to emphasize how alone we were, the dark space all around us. As we listened, I felt the cold taking hold of me. We might manage one night out here, but we’d have to find something else tomorrow.

  I was so awake now that sleep was out of the question. All I could do was lie there and listen and try not to think too much.

  I thought Spider was asleep, but after a while I felt his hand inching over my blanket until he found mine. And we lay there, hand in hand, waiting for the light to creep back into the sky. And we were both awake when we heard a new sound thudding through the heavy night air — a helicopter.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Can you hear that?” I asked. Stupid question.

  “Mm.”

  “Do you think it’s just a helicopter?”

  He knew what I meant. Just a helicopter taking someone somewhere, going from A to B. “I dunno.”

  He moved away from me, crawling through the undergrowth. It was still dark, but there was a hint of blueness in the sky when we looked back the way we’d come yesterday. It was over there that the noise was coming from.

  “It’s just hovering there, Jem. Shining a light down. There’s other lights, too.” I could hear him worming his way back to me, then he was there, right beside me, rolling up his blankets. “Come on, Jem. We’ve got to get a move on. Looks like they’re onto us.”

  “Spider, it’s dark. We haven’t got a flashlight, remember?”

  “We’ll just have to do our best. Better to move in the dark, anyway.”

  “Yes, but…” I was going to point out the mud, the fences, the barbed wire, but another noise cut in then. The sound of a dog barking. It was coming from behind us, too. Lights, helicopters, dogs. I had a sick feeling in my stomach. This was a proper manhunt. I shut up and started bundling up my belongings.

  We blundered out of the copse and set off down the hill. You couldn’t see where you were putting your feet, and the ground was so rough we both kept stumbling and tripping. I put my right foot into a dip and staggered forward. I dropped my bags and flailed my arms blindly, trying to rescue my balance. My right hand found something to grab on to, but it dug into me as it moved under my grip, and I still fell forward. Something ripped across my face as I sank down onto the ground and let out a string of curses.

  “Where are you?” Spider’s voice came through the dark.

  “I’m here! I don’t know where I fucking am!”

  “Don’t move. I’m coming.”

  He found his way back to me, at first nothing more than a dark shape against the darkness. As he came close, I could see his face was furrowed with concern. “Jesus, Jem, you’ve fell in some barbed wire. Here…” He gave me his hands and pulled me up onto my feet.

  I gasped and cursed again as he squeezed the wound on my right hand.

  “Have you got a hankie or something?” he asked. I reached into my pocket and found an old tissue. He took it and gently wiped my face. It hurt like hell. My hand was screaming, too. Spider ferreted about in a bag, pulled out one of his T-shirts, and ripped a strip of it off. He wound it ’round my hand and tied it in a knot. He was taking charge again, doing his best, but even as he did it, my confidence was slipping away.

  “We’re stuffed, Spider, aren’t we?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re gonna get us today. Worse now, the dogs will pick up the smell of the blood, won’t they?”

  “I dunno about that. I think that’s sharks, the blood thing. Anyway, we’ve got a head start and we’re on the other side of the river. We should just keep going, find somewhere to hide out. I think we need to be in a building, so the helicopter can’t see us. They use those cameras, don’t they? Pick up on your body warmth, but I don’t think it works through buildings. Here—” He picked up my bags. “I’ll take these. Are you OK to carry on for a bit?”

  “Yeah, s’pose.”

  He set off and I stuck close to him this time. It was taking ages to get light, because it was cloudy. I glanced behind me, but the top of the hill was blocking the view back. Stupid, anyway. Did I really want to see the people following us? I caught up with Spider again, and we trudged across the fields.

  If I’d felt exposed the day before, it was ten times worse today. If the helicopter came our way before we found somewhere to hide, we’d had it. The skin on the back of my neck was pricking, anticipating the thudding of the chopper blades getting closer and closer. We walked solidly all morning, sweating in our thick coats despite the icy wind, not speaking — there was nothing to say. We came across a couple of farms, but the buildings were all together: house, barns, sheds. Wouldn’t take anyone long to search them. We needed something more remote.

  It took us several hours to find a barn. It stood in the corner of a field and was made of metal — great tall legs, a crinkly metal roof, and no sides. It was on its own, beside another little knot of trees, no houses for miles. There were piles of hay stacked up like hairy yellow bricks forming walls along two sides. Once we got nearer, we saw something else under there — a ramshackle metal fence with cows inside. They raised their heads as we approached, snorting and snuffling. I’d never been close to a cow before, only seen them on TV — no joke, they were massive.

  “No way,” I said to Spider. “Not here. Not with those things.”

  “They’re behind a fence,” he said doubtfully. I could tell he was as wary as me.

  “Yeah, but look at it. It’s only held together with string.”

  The cows were still watching us, like they were expecting something. Then, without warning, one of them suddenly went berserk and butted into the one next to it, sending shock waves through the lot of them as they scattered and then regrouped.

  That was it. “We can’t stay here. We’ll get trampled.”

  “There’s nowhere else, is there, Jem? At least there’s some shelter here. Look, if they get out we can climb up the hay, can’t we? Cows can’t climb, can they?”

  “I dunno.”

  We sat down on a hay bale and looked at the cows. A couple of them were still eyeballing us, but most of them had gone back to nibbling the hay. One of them lifted its tail, still eating, and a stream of brown liquid poured out. I have never seen anything so gross in my life. Instinctively, I held my hand up to cover my mouth, as my empty stomach heaved. I looked away, but Spider’s jaw had dropped, and he was staring at it in horror, completely mesmerized.

  “That is one sick cow,” he said, eyes still on it. “Either that or someone’s been feeding it curry. Last time I had curry, bloody hell…”

  “Shut up!” I managed to say before the dry heaves silenced me again. Hunched up, I staggered out of the barn and stood a few feet away, bent over with my hands on my legs, trying to calm my stomach down and suck in some fresh air. After a bit, I could hear Spider walking over toward me.

  “You alright?”

  “No.” I felt his hand on my back. It rested there for a second, then moved gently up and down, soothing me. I focused on his hand, where it touched me, and my stomach muscles gradually unwound. Even though I was feeling better, I stayed bent over for a while, not wanting to dislodge his hand. I’d never been one for physical contact, but this was comforting, warm. When I straightened up, Spider was just standing there, not looking at me but staring into the distance. He let his hand fall off my back. The wind was whipping across the fields, with a bit of an edge to it now.

  “Better?” he asked, without turning his head.

  “No, well, yeah.” I wanted to say thank you to him, for calming me down, making me feel better, but that would have been too soft. Instead, I followed where he was looking, back the way we’d come. “How long do you think we’ve got? B
efore they catch up with us?”

  “Dunno. I can’t hear the helicopter anymore.” We stood there for a bit, both straining to pick up the heavy, choppy drone. Maybe it was just the wind getting up, drowning it out, but the noise didn’t seem to be there anymore. I started shivering, and Spider put his arm across my shoulder.

  “Come on. We’d better find the best place to hide. We need to get somewhere in the back, right behind that hay.”

  Again, faced with something to do, Spider launched himself into it. Talk about bloody Action Man — he was throwing bales around, piling them up, shouting instructions at me. He was making a sort of tunnel; one minute he’d disappear, crawling on his hands and knees, the next he’d come backing out lugging another bale. Then he came out frontways, a big stupid grin on his face.

  “Here, get in.” I must have made a face, because he said, “It’s alright. Come on, or I’ll come out and drag you in.”

  I got down on my hands and knees, peered inside, and then started to crawl in. It hurt when I put my hand flat on the floor, so I just leaned on the fingertips of my right hand and shuffled through as best I could. It was pretty dark inside, but not completely black, and the tunnel wasn’t that long. After about fifteen or so feet it opened out into a little room, or really a cave. There was just enough room for me and Spider to sit side by side. I couldn’t see him too well, but I could smell him. The exertion of lugging the bales around, after walking for hours, and the fact that he hadn’t washed since God knows when — apart from a dunk in a river thick with mud — had increased the strength of his normal staleness to Olympic proportions.

  “What do you think? Cool, isn’t it? All we need to do is pull a bale across the entrance behind us and we’re sitting pretty. Shall I go and do it now, see how easy it is?”

  The thought of being sealed in there with him was too much. I lurched toward the tunnel again. “No, it’s alright. We can do that later, if we need to.” Emerging back into the barn, I breathed in deeply. Even the stench of the cow shit was better than Spider’s rankness.

  Spider crawled out of the tunnel, looking like a dog with two dicks. I didn’t mean to burst his bubble, but my hand was hurting, and I was tired and scared. I suppose I just said what was in my head, without stopping to think about it first.

  “Spider, if they do find us here, we’re stuffed, aren’t we?”

  His face changed instantly, like someone had switched off the light. And I hated myself for doing that to him.

  “Yeah, Jem. If they find us here, we’re cornered. We’ll be like rats in a barrel.” He got to his feet and came and sat on a bale next to me. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his thighs, head down. His voice was low, intense. “I won’t go quietly, Jem. I’ll fight them, Jem. I will.” I knew he had a knife with him. The way he was talking now, I was pretty sure he’d use it.

  I could feel anxiety shooting through my veins. “It’s not worth it, Spider. If they really corner us, we should give up. What have they got on us, after all? We didn’t do nothing at the Eye. They can’t pin that on us. You’ve nicked some money, but I doubt anyone’s reported that. We nicked a couple of cars. Big deal. If you start fighting — cut one of them — that’s different. They’ll throw the book at you.”

  “Jem, whatever happens, they’ll lock me up. You might be OK — you didn’t nick the cars, did you? There’s that knife thing at school, but a little white girl like you, Karen and Social Services on your side, no priors, they’ll go easy on you. But they’ll take one look at me — think about it. I check all the boxes, typical juvenile offender. They won’t think twice, just chuck me inside for a few months, a year. Lost in the system.” He rubbed his hands through his hair. “I can’t do it, Jem. I don’t wanna be locked up. I don’t wanna be just another kid they’ve thrown away.” He smashed his hand down into the straw next to him. I’d heard him go off on tirades before, knew he could work himself up into a temper, but when I looked at him, his face was all squeezed tight like he was going to cry. He was angry, yeah, but he was scared, too. “I won’t do it, Jem. I’d rather fight and die.”

  “Don’t say that, mate. Don’t ever say that.” And all the time I was thinking, Is that how it will happen? I put my hand on his back and moved it up and down, like he’d done to me before. He was so skinny, I could feel every bone in his knobbly spine through his clothes.

  He sniffed hard, wiped his sleeve across his nose. Then he sat up and looked straight at me. “Is it today, Jem?”

  I stared blankly at him, pretending I didn’t know what he was asking. “What?”

  “Is today when it all ends for me? You know, don’t you? Are they going to find us? Are they going to put a bullet in me like they did to that guy on the Tube?”

  I felt tears stinging my eyes. “Don’t ask me, Spider. You know I can’t tell you.”

  “Oh, Christ,” he whispered. He put both hands up to his mouth, like he was praying. He was breathing hard, eyes flicking left and right, panic in them as clear as day. It crucified me to see him like that. I couldn’t let it go on, so I broke my rule.

  “It’s not today,” I said quietly. “Spider, are you listening? It’s not today.”

  He dropped his hands down and looked at me. His eyes were red-rimmed.

  “Thank you,” he said, and he nodded. “I shouldn’t have asked, and I won’t ever ask you again. I promise.” He looked like a little boy, so serious and solemn.

  I wanted to put my arms around him and tell him everything was going to be OK. I suddenly thought of Val, the woman who had comforted him like that when he was little, and the words she’d said to me — was it only two days ago? — came ringing back into my head. “Take good care of him, Jem. Keep him safe.” This was all getting to be too much — I was in way too deep.

  Perched on some hay bales, we ate the rest of our stuff. I turned my back on the cows so they wouldn’t put me off eating. We shared the last bag of chips, and had a chocolate bar each, and a last swig of Coke. We ate slowly, trying to make a meal out of hardly anything. As we swallowed the last mouthfuls, we both knew. That was it. All gone. We were running out of options now. We’d have to take some action tomorrow. We had no alternative.

  Once we’d eaten, there was nothing to do again. We talked a bit, but there wasn’t much to say. We both knew we were in trouble, both felt ground down by it. After a while, we crawled into Spider’s hay cave, spread out our blankets, and curled up a little way apart from each other.

  It was dark now, really dark, but probably only about five o’clock. We lay there, talking a bit, listening to the cows. If you tried not to think about how revolting they were, how big, it was actually quite a mellow sound; you could hear them blowing air through their big hairy nostrils, moving around in the hay, munching away all the time. Every time one of them farted, Spider hooted with laughter. Easily pleased, some people.

  I don’t know how long we lay there. I couldn’t get comfortable. The bales were quite hard underneath, and the spikes of hay were scratchy, even through the blanket. My skin, with two days’ grime, was itching like mad, and so was my scalp. I felt sticky, horrible.

  “I could do with a bath, or even a shower,” I said, wriggling where I lay, trying to scratch my back against the hay underneath.

  “Doesn’t bother me,” said Spider.

  “Obviously,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “You stink, Spider. No offense, mate, but you do. And I stink, too, now, and I don’t wanna.”

  While we’d been talking, a noise had been building up in the background. Now, in a pause, I could hear drumming on the tin roof. It was raining. The noise was incredible, water battering down on metal. I wriggled out of the tunnel and sat on a hay bale, pulling my top over my head and unbuttoning my jeans.

  “What you doing?!” Spider had emerged behind me.

  My jeans got stuck on my sneakers. I yanked at the laces.

  “I’m going to get clean. Come on, come outside.” D
own to my bra and undies. Bare feet.

  I ran outside. It was lashing down. I could feel mud and crap splashing up my legs as great drops hit the ground. I didn’t care. It felt fantastic. Fresh, icy pinpricks hitting my defenseless skin. I tipped my face up toward the sky, rubbed my hands over it and over my scalp, through the bristles of hair. The itchiness was going away. I smoothed the rain into my skin, all over, then stood, faceup again, mouth open, catching raindrops on my tongue.

  I looked across to the shed. In the gloom I could see Spider leaning against one of the metal legs, smiling and shaking his head.

  “You’ve lost it, man!” he shouted. “You’ve really lost it.”

  “No,” I bellowed back. “It’s great! Come on out here!”

  “Na-ah. Not me, man. I got wet enough yesterday.”

  I ran over to him, laughing as my feet slipped in some mud and I almost went over. He backed away, but I grabbed his arm, then held both his hands and pulled him outside. Once he started to get wet, he gave in, started stripping off and throwing his clothes back into the barn. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. It’s mad!”

  I ran back out, twirling around with my arms outstretched, losing myself in the dark and the rain. Down to his briefs, Spider picked his way out to me gingerly, curved over, stomach sucked in, his body trying to defend itself against the cold. He was so skinny. You could see his muscles, not because he was buff, just because there was no fat hiding them. He stood there with his arms across his body. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. I was past shyness, carried away with the exhilaration, but he stood there, paralyzed with self-consciousness.

  “It’s freakin’ freezing!” he squealed. I laughed.

  “It’s refreshing!”

  “It feels like needles!”

  “Rub it in. Rub the water in, it’s fine.”

  He rubbed one arm, stiffly, then moved up to his shoulder. “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” He started to get into it, running his hands over his hair, turning his face up like me, closing his eyes. He let out a whoop of joy, and I watched him as he smoothed the water from his face and shoulders and chest, and it struck me suddenly. He was beautiful.