One Shot Kill - Robert Muchamore Page 0,17

daylight and they still passed horses, carts, and even a gang of prisoners repairing roads, under the eye of grizzled French guards.

Fortunately there were no telephones out here and the local Gendarmes4 didn’t have radios. So unless they encountered men dispatched specifically to look for them, they’d be long gone by the time anyone realised that they’d seen Lorient’s most wanted ride by.

When they reached the abandoned farms of the buffer zone, they found a stream where the horses could drink and settled down in the grass.

Rosie was shocked by how much Edith was sweating when she helped her down off the horse. Edith drank water and nibbled some pieces of fruit, but she doubled over and vomited within minutes of eating them.

‘Let it all come out,’ Rosie said, as she held Edith’s hair back.

‘I can’t get sick now,’ Edith said, clutching her bony fists with frustration. ‘I’ve got to fight it.’

Rosie tried to keep cheerful for Edith’s sake, but her weakness was no surprise. Edith had barely eaten in a week and she’d spent days on a filthy cell floor while covered with open wounds. Rosie suspected that the vomiting and sweats were signs of an infection spreading into Edith’s bloodstream.

‘I feel dizzy,’ Edith said. Then she sobbed. ‘I was ready to die. No offence, but you shouldn’t have tried to rescue me.’

Rosie didn’t reply, but largely agreed. Eugene had known that the rescue was a huge risk. Perhaps if she’d stood up to him he’d be alive right now and so would Madame Lisle.

As the afternoon wore on, Rosie wiped Edith down to keep her cool and tried getting her to drink as much as possible. Eventually Edith fell asleep. After pulling Edith into the shade, Rosie pulled off her own boots and socks and spent a long time sitting with her feet in the stream.

Rosie kept vigilant for search parties as she washed the outside of her boots and wiped the blood off the machine gun. Then she took the map of their escape plan from her backpack and felt miserable as she studied markings and notes made in Eugene’s handwriting.

They’d planned to take photographs and make up a false identity for Edith while at Madame Lisle’s house, then set off as soon as it started getting dark. They would then have ridden fifteen kilometres across country to a single-track railway which supplied coal to a power station at Moelan sur Mer.

War played havoc with train schedules, but Eugene had somehow confirmed that the power station was still operational and fed by a nightly delivery of coal. The train didn’t stop, but was easily boarded when it slowed to a crawl on a hilly section of track near the village of Lisloch.

Eugene’s plan had involved riding the coal train fifty or sixty kilometres to wherever it got to at daybreak. Then they’d have used their wits to make their way to Paris, but they’d hoped to find themselves in a lightly-policed rural area with immaculate documentation and all their major headaches behind them.

Rosie had no idea if she’d be able to get Edith aboard the slow-moving train on her own, she had no way of making up false documents and with a fever setting in, Edith urgently needed to see a doctor.

*

Rosie felt too edgy to eat, but she forced herself to nibble fruit and cheese as it grew dark.

‘Time to wake up,’ she said gently, as she crouched over Edith.

The skinny body had its head resting on Rosie’s backpack. She nudged Edith several times, but nothing happened. Rosie was wary of inflicting pain and there was hardly any part of Edith that wasn’t injured, but after a third nudge Rosie grabbed Edith’s shoulder and rolled her on to her back.

‘We have to leave or we’ll miss the train.’

As Edith’s body moved, Rosie felt an extraordinary blast of heat. Edith was like a little furnace. Her dress was soaking, and while Rosie didn’t have a medical thermometer it didn’t take one to see that Edith was burning up. She put her thumb against Edith’s eyebrow and slowly raised the lid. The pupil reacted to the sudden change in light but she didn’t wake up.

Rosie found the pulse in Edith’s neck and counted fourteen beats in six seconds. You’d expect a hundred and forty beats per minute if you’d jogged a couple of kilometres, but Edith’s heart rate should have been under half that after four hours’ sleep.

Rosie felt overwhelmed by the responsibility that had fallen on her.