Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,37

just waiting for a sniper to put a bullet there. The farther we walked away from the stile, the more exposed I felt. I couldn’t have felt more vulnerable if I’d been walking along that path stark naked. There was nothing around us, just grass and sky, more sky than I’d ever seen before, an obscene amount of sky. You don’t realize in a city how much space buildings take up. When you take them away, there’s just sky, huge and empty. There’s nothing between the top of your head and deep space, and it’s only gravity stopping you from drifting up and up, away from the earth. I was thoroughly freaked out. The only way I could tackle it was to look down at the path and put one foot in front of the other.

In front of me, Spider loped along with his familiar springy stride. I found myself studying the way he moved, his long legs going all the way up to his skinny arse. He’d always seemed so restless at school and around the housing projects, like it was difficult to contain his energy within those walls, those streets and buildings. Here, his legs seemed to eat up the miles. This tall black guy from London looked almost at home here. It was the right scale for him.

Not like me. Where he sprang along, I plodded, my head full of I can’t…I don’t want to…I hate this. As soon as we’d reached the top of one slope and I thought we were near the cover Spider had spotted, another hill rose up. They were like waves, stretching back as far as you could see.

Eventually we were walking along the edge of one field, with thick trees lining the other side of the path. There was the sound of water. Spider stopped and put his bags down.

“Wait here a minute,” he said, took a quick head start, and vaulted over the barbed-wire fence.

“What are you doing?” I shouted, but he didn’t reply, so I was left standing there like a prat. I sat down, facing the way we’d just come. If I saw people following us, what would I do? I didn’t have time to think of an answer because Spider was soon back, looking smug.

“There’s a slope and then a river, Jem. This is good news for us. We just need to wade along it for a bit, and then if they’ve got dogs they won’t find us. They’ll lose the scent. I’ve seen it in the movies.”

Well, I’d seen it in the movies, too, but did that mean anything? There was no stopping him, though.

“Here, chuck those bags over, and then I’ll help you.” I heaved them over to him, and then looked at the fence.

“I don’t know…,” I said dubiously.

“Come here, put one foot on the wire, and your hand on the fence post, and then spring up. I’ll get you.”

With no better idea, I just did as I was told. The wire bent under my weight, but I thought, What the hell, and tried to climb up. At that moment, Spider reached over and grabbed me under my arms and lifted me clean over, plonking me down safely on the other side. We smiled and high-fived each other. Then we gathered up the bags and set off through the trees.

The ground dipped sharply down. Sure enough, there was a river at the bottom, only about ten feet wide, fast-flowing and muddy.

“How deep is it?” I asked.

“Dunno, only one way to find out. Why don’t we chuck the bags over to the other bank, and then I’ll go in, test it out?”

“Why don’t you test it out first, before we go tossing our bags? If it’s too deep, we can’t get across, can we? So there’ll be no point having our stuff stuck on the other side.”

“Jem,” he said seriously, “I think we have to get across. I don’t think we’ve got an option. It’ll be OK, I promise.” He picked up the first plastic bag, tied the handles together, and started swinging it backward and forward, then with a bit of a grunt, let go. It sailed over the water and landed on the other side. He grinned, and set to work on the others. It was OK until the last one. He didn’t quite get it together, and it went too far up in the air and then straight down into the river.

“Bollocks!” he said and sat down, frantically scrabbling at his sneakers