Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,40

him into the road. But perhaps the numbers were a two-edged sword. What if I didn’t just have a hand in causing death — what if I could save lives, too? And if I had saved Spider today, could I save him on the fifteenth?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Our bags were still lying where we’d chucked them. Spider fished out the one in the river with a branch, and we both found some dry clothes, turning our backs on each other while we got changed. I was too cold — almost panicky cold — to worry if he was peeking, and too busy getting myself dry to think of sneaking a peek at him. In the hurry to leave, I hadn’t got any spare underwear from Val — frankly, I didn’t want to think about what she might wear under her clothes — so I kept my soggy bra and panties on and just changed my jeans and top. I put on as many dry layers as I could find, with Val’s coat on top, and we bundled our wet clothes together in one bag and set off again — cold, shocked, and shivering.

Walking away from the river, we hit another series of rolling hills. More green waves, going on forever. Our adventure in the river had left me feeling dog-tired. My legs felt like lead as we trudged along. Not surprisingly, a bit of the spring had gone out of Spider’s step, too.

We were still aiming for a little knot of trees on top of a hill. I was beginning to think they were like one of those mirage things in the desert, disappearing just when you got near them, but eventually Spider got to the top of one hill and gave a little shout —“Hey, we’re here!”—and amazingly, we were. We scrambled down the other side and up the last rise, and into the relative cover of a little clump of woodland.

I sank down at the edge of the trees and looked back at the way we’d come. I couldn’t believe it was so far. “Look how far we’ve walked! No wonder I’m knackered.” I flopped backward, not caring what I was lying on.

“If we can see all of that, anyone there could see us. Let’s go farther in,” Spider said. I didn’t know what was happening to him: It was like he’d suddenly swallowed a sensible pill or something.

I groaned, struggled to my feet again, and followed him into the middle of the woods. He’d gathered up all the bags and found a place between four tree trunks to settle down. Although you could still see out to the fields when you stood up, when you were sitting down the plants and bushes blotted them all out. We were hidden.

The ground was hard and uneven. Spider had spread out the blanket he’d been carrying. You could still feel lumps and bumps underneath you, but it softened it a bit.

Spider was sitting propped up against a tree trunk, but I lay down flat and looked up at the trees above me. It was weird. Although I knew the trunks were pretty straight, they looked like they were bending together over me as they stretched up into the sky. Their leaves were black against the brightness, making a lacy pattern, almost too complicated to look at. It was like they were hypnotic. If you let yourself go, you started to get all mixed up in your head, and you could imagine that you were high up, looking down hundreds of feet to the leaves below you. The wind was swooshing through the branches, making this amazing spaced-out sound — it could have been wind or water or even traffic. Really soothing.

“I can’t believe we just did that,” I said after a while.

“What?”

“Walked all that way.”

Spider snorted. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool what you can do when you have to. Perhaps we’ll walk all the way to Weston.”

“How far’s that?”

“Haven’t got a clue. A long way, man.”

I groaned again, and shut my eyes, and let my mind focus on the noise, only the noise…

When I woke up, my head was aching and my mouth felt disgusting — dry inside and sticky ’round my lips. I had to struggle to remember where I was, and even when I sat up and looked around I wasn’t sure if it was morning or evening. My watch said five past four, which I guessed was the end of the afternoon, but it could have been the next morning,