Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,57

do to us? An old git like that couldn’t stop me, could he? I kept walking.

“Hey, you!” he shouted louder. I turned ’round. “You forgot your change.”

I went back and took it from him silently.

Outside on the street, I gave Spider one of the bags to carry, and he grabbed my free hand in his. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

We ducked into a side alley between two shops. It twisted and turned, behind houses and past some vacant lots, then out onto a canal towpath. We followed it along for a bit. A wall sprang up on the other side of me, and a train rattled past beyond it. We came to a tunnel. The path was narrow— a damp, cold, curved wall on one side, a railing on the other to stop you from falling into the canal.

Spider let go of my hand. “You go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”

It was difficult to see where you were treading, and my ankles kept twisting on the uneven path. Halfway along, I started to really lose my nerve. A figure appeared at the end I was heading toward: a big, dark shape blotting out most of the light. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see someone behind us, too — it was a perfect place to trap someone — nowhere to go, no one to hear you scream.

It was OK, though; the way behind me was clear apart from Spider. Not a trap after all, just a bloke walking along the canal.

We came toward each other in the dark. I wasn’t sure he’d even seen me; he just kept coming toward me in the middle of the path, like he was going to barge straight through me. He was silhouetted against the disk of light at the other end, his features blotted out. As he got nearer, I thought, He’s black, that’s why I can’t see much of his face in here. Then he got within twenty feet or so, and I saw with lurching horror that his face wasn’t black — it was blue.

It was blue and crawling with tattoos.

I swiveled around.

“Run, Spider! Run, run, run, run!”

He caught the terror in my voice, didn’t question me, just turned, and we ran. I could hear Tattoo Face behind me, heavy steps on the crunching gravel, breath rasping in and out of his lungs. It was so narrow in there, our bags were catching on the wall and the railing.

Spider slowed for a second, and I drew level with him. “Ditch the bags, Jem. Leave them there.”

I dropped what I had and he let me get past, then he threw the bags he was carrying back down the tunnel, straight at Tattoo Face. Even as I ran, I could hear the guy grunting, trampling plastic and cans under his feet. We were out into the open air now, belting back along the towpath the way we’d come only a few minutes before. We’d slowed him down with the bags, but not by much. He was a big bugger, but he could shift. I didn’t want to look behind, but I couldn’t help it, and when I looked over my shoulder, he was bearing down on us like a bulldozer.

“Here!” Spider grabbed my arm and hauled me off to the left. We ran down a rough slope until we reached another path, feeding off the main one. It led to a railway bridge: grim black riveted metal covered in graffiti. “Come on!”

We clattered up the steps. As we hurtled across the bridge, a train passed underneath us; must’ve been an express, because it blasted through, filling my ears with the sound of high-speed metal. It masked the noise of Tattoo Face’s footsteps, but as we started to go down the steps on the other side, I could feel the vibration of the bridge as he thundered across. He was right behind us.

The bridge opened onto a street, terraced houses one side, railway the other. Houses meant people — surely he wouldn’t kill us in front of witnesses. Would he? I started yelling, screaming as I ran, “Help! Help us! Call the police! Help us!”

There was no reaction. Either the houses were empty or people, hearing the noise, just sank deeper down into their sofas, turned the TV up a bit louder.

Spider wheeled around. “What you doing? Shut up! We don’t want the police. We just need to get away. Come on!”

“He’s going to kill us, Spider! We