is a struggle to breathe steadily, and he's gritted his teeth without noticing, until the sound of them grating together makes him relax his jaw. Unsteadily, he rises to his full height and stretches his back. A long shiver runs over his body. His fingers are too cold to feel much. Before he freezes, or summons the virus back, he has to make a move. Now or never. For Tom and the poor bastard who lost his arm on the beach. They might get him, but he'll do some damage first. Yes, go. Go now. Pumping faster, his heart spreads a welcome heat through his body.
Running bent over, close to the grass verge between the drainage trench and the road surface, Dante makes it as far as the front gate then drops down from sight of the front windows. There it is: the pale stone of the wide front wall; the large square paddock-style garden, unkempt and clotted brown with leaves; the roof indistinct and lost amidst unpruned foliage: the dilapidated hovel Harry and Arthur entered in May and never since. The guttering is half gone, and the skeletons of two large floral arrangements are sunken beside the door.
He clambers over the wooden gate, not wanting to risk the clinking of metal or the squeak of hinge by using the latch, and drops to the path on the other side. He is in. Every nerve sings in soprano; his ears seem to hear the snapping of twigs on every side; there is a rush of blood and hormones to his head; panic rises like a wave and tries to swamp him into flight.
He runs to the left side of the front garden and follows the hedge all the way to the corner. Long grass, thick with rain, drenches his jeans to the knee. Branches from the hedge bordering the side of the front garden whip his face. Clouds cover one half of what's left of the moon and stars. But that is good. If someone were to walk out the front door, it would be hard for them to see him crouched down here. But if they do not need to use their eyes to find a trespasser, what then?
Wide-eyed with emotion, he remains still, and watches the property from his corner, looking for the next hiding place like a mountaineer peering up to see a crack or ledge in which to place his chalky fingers. A stone wall protects the cottage from the road, and scruffy hedges grow down both sides where lines of poplars and thorn bushes bend out of the privet, offering shelter from the winds and concealing the two barren fields beyond. The rear of the property is lost to him.
Screwing up his eyes, Dante examines the outside of the cottage. There are two storeys with sightless windows, glazed and set back inside grey brick. From the sides, it is protected completely from an outer view, and any inspection from the front is partially obscured by the wall. Subtly and in a disorderly fashion, it is as if the building has been shaped into a hideout that no one would suspect of foul deeds because no one can see it. But now he is on the inside, he must be certain he is not seen from those blank windows. Looking for a way in will follow.
Through a tiny chink in what may be curtains on the top floor, he thinks there is a slither of reddish light, but beside that, if indeed it is a light, the building suggests total abandonment. Squinting, he peers across the silhouette of the gables and chimney breast, and then down the walls. At the sides of the building, two narrow grass paths, obscured by the overhang of privet and tree limb, lead away to shadow. The rear garden?
Clinging to the trench of night at the base of the tree row, he moves down to the side of the cottage to check the back, raising his knees high above the wet grass as if wading through murky water. Then along the length of the cottage, between the treeline and house, he moves slowly through a funnel of total dark with one hand placed against the stone wall of the cottage for support, while his other arm knocks wet tree branches from his face.
From out of the shadow, he emerges, grateful, his heart pounding up around his ears, and sees the rear garden: long, devoid of flowerbed and tree, covered with long