Runners

by Ann Kelley

  ‘Would you like a biscuit?’ she asked her doll, pushing a berry at where a mouth might be. Used to entertaining herself, she played bus kids with Rosebud, plus other twig dolls. She told them to be quiet or they’d be caught.

  ‘Look out, they’re coming to get you,’ she whispered, dropping gravel on them. Leaf plasters were applied to their horrible injuries. She cuddled up with Rosebud on the carpet of leaves and told her a story about three goats and a bridge with a monster under it. It had always frightened her – the monster wanting to eat the Billy Goats Gruff, but she had asked her mother for it time and again. The five-year-old couldn’t remember what had happened to the billy goats or the monster. It was something she didn’t want to think about. At the same time, she wanted to know the ending. Sid would make a happy ending.

  ‘And they all lived happy-ev-after,’ she called out, triumphantly, forgetting that she needed to keep quiet or Sid would be cross.

  A robin leaned on match-stick legs from a bough and watched the child for a moment, and sang its evening song, a melancholy, sweet melody. Lo curled up on the leaves and switched the torch on and off, on and off, shining it onto her hand, trying to see through to the other side. She fell asleep after a while, and a little later the torch battery died.

  Sid’s foot hurt – a blister. He removed his trainers and shoved them in the backpack, thinking that if they had laces instead of Velcro he could have tied them around his neck like a soldier would have done. What luck that he had managed to save the backpack! Lo’s boots stuck out of it. He marched along the cracked tarmac, the poker resting on one shoulder like a rifle. If only he had a real gun! He stopped every now and then to listen for traffic. Nothing. Then the unmistakable whir of a helicopter. Whup, whup, whup. He dashed into the ditch and crouched under a thick bush. The helicopter swept low over the road coming from the direction of the town. He waited until he could no longer hear it before getting out and continuing his journey. He hadn’t seen or heard an airplane since he was little. Only military helicopters now.

  A boarded-up service station was the only building he passed. Torn paper on a news-stand proclaimed:

  MORE FLOODS.

  MANY DEAD AND MISSING.

  EASTERN COUNTIES INUNDATED.

  On another tattered news-sheet, months old, were the words:

  NO MORE OIL! And in smaller type: LOOTERS SHOT.

  He knew all about that. Looters shot in the streets; shops boarded up; curfews; tear gas, and then the awful day when everything changed. Every time it came into his mind he had a panicky feeling as if his heart was about to burst. It was easier not to think about it. It was quite easy after a while, blocking it out. He could pretend it just hadn’t happened.

  Afterwards, they’d been in a TA truck with several other kids, all crying and wetting themselves, if not worse, and after about an hour of terror the vehicle broke down. And when the soldier had got out to see what was wrong, Sid had told Lo to be very quiet and they had got out and run away and hidden in a large wheelie bin. He tore off the armbands with the sunshine motif and buried them in the garbage.

  They had stayed in the rubbish bin until it was dark. Lo had sobbed with shock and fear and he had cuddled her, even though she smelled of rotting food and urine. Neither of them smelled too good. He had no idea where they were. A long way from home, that was sure. Not in the ghetto. And he had looked after her. As his mother had implored him to.

  He found them safe places to sleep, hid during the day in empty buildings, then in that old bus with the ferals. Runners. Surviving. That was the first time he had heard the word Runners.

  At night, in the dark, the bus kids had told their stories – how their parents had tried to hide them from the soldiers, and the screams when they had been taken. The barbaric scenes they had witnessed. Shootings, beatings. All the children cried out in their sleep.

  One night, when he was scavenging in a burnt-out Labmeat store, he nearly bumped into a thin girl of about sixteen. She was wrapped in a dark cloak with a hood. She was pretty, with large dark eyes, a dimple in her chin, and as the hood slipped he could see that her head was shaved.

  ‘Where you from then?’ she asked him, eyeing him up and down, not worried, now that she could see that he was only a skinny kid. Not a lad to be scared of.

  ‘East of here. You?’

  ‘Rather not say.’

  ‘Oh! Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘Rather not say,’ she whispered, looking around anxiously. They had carried on searching the aisles.

  ‘How old are you?’ she asked when they met in the next aisle.

  ‘Fourteen. You?’

  ‘Small for fourteen, aren’t you?’ she said, not unkindly.

  He was silent, humiliated. This was the first girl who had spoken to him since he had started to notice girls. He didn’t look fourteen. He was small, like his dad. Skinny but fast. He’d always come first at the hundred metres at school. He stood tall, fixed a grim look on his face, trying to look older.

  ‘I am fourteen,’ he said, firmly, as he looked into her dark eyes.

  She smiled. ‘I’m sixteen. You’re all right. I’m the one who shouldn’t be here.’ She shifted the damaged box of out-of-date Labmeat she had found so that it sat less awkwardly under her arm.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t you know? The Population Reduction Programme? Only kids between eight and fourteen are allowed to live in Fortress Kernow now. And only the fit ones.

  ‘But why?’ he’d asked. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Too many people, aren’t there! Reducers are rounding up Runners and transporting them to the camps.’

  ‘Reducers?’

  ‘They work for the TA, the soldiers, and chase the Runners, like me. Why are you running, then?’

  ‘Got my little sister to look after, haven’t I! She’s five.’ He suddenly felt aware of the responsibility he had taken on. And full of rage. Furious that his father had not taken notice of Mam’s warnings.

  ‘Well, good luck, Titch! See ya.’ She held his head, kissed him on the mouth and ran off.

  Confused, happy, he looked towards where she had run, but couldn’t see her.

  Too late he thought of other things he should have asked her. Why were kids between eight and fourteen allowed to stay in Fortress Kernow? Where was she running to? Would she be safe? He hoped so. He tentatively licked his lips, tasting her.

  Images came unbidden into his mind, especially when he was trying to sleep: in a vain attempt to save their pets from the DARP some people had thrown their dogs out to fend for themselves. Stray dogs found other strays and formed packs. They were shot on sight. Sid saw again the spilling guts, heard the yelping and dying sighs of a mob of terriers and mongrels.

  But the things he couldn’t rid his brain of were Dad’s helplessness that last day, and his mam’s face, the O her mouth made, the look in her eyes as she was dragged away. He would never forget that.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HE WAS PLEASED about finding the flooded quarry. Maybe he could catch fish in it. Fishing had been banned since years before The Emergency – he knew that from school. There weren’t enough fish left in the sea. Man had taken too many of them. And now the acid water was killing them so they were in danger of extinction. But this wasn’t the sea, it was a lake. He could make a fishing line and hang it over the side of the boat like he had seen people do on the telly, before the electricity had gone. Before the ghetto. He thought of all the useless stuff he had learned at school – Maths, Mandarin, Geography. Why hadn’t his father taught him useful stuff, like how to make a camp, and fishing? Why hadn’t he realised things were going terribly wrong and got them somewhere safe? He was a useless father. He hated him. He was glad he had had the accident. Sid’s eyes filled and his throat tightened. He wanted to scream out loud but was afraid to in case someone heard.

  ‘What would you do, sir?’ he silently asked Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

  ‘You are d
oing very well, my little friend. Don’t worry. Live for the day, and you will survive.’

  He kicked a pebble along the road, dribbled it, did a tricky back-flip, became a football ace and promptly lost it in the ditch. A little brown bird flapped squeaking from the ditch into a hedge. Sid did some karate moves as he walked, slashing the air with his hands, killing with one blow. He’d done judo too, but preferred karate. In his and Lo’s bedroom in the ghetto he’d had a poster showing the six striking surfaces of the hand. It occurred to him that he would never see the room again. It was such a dreadful thought that he couldn’t manage to think beyond it. Frowning, he flicked his hair out of his eyes.

  His stomach rumbled and he had a sudden yearning for porridge. He imagined he was eating a bowl of creamy porridge with honey on. Saliva filled his mouth. He picked blackberry seeds from between his teeth and sucked them.

  His back was burning. He took out his T-shirt and flung it around his shoulders but it kept slipping off so he wrapped it around his hot head, like a turban. A khaki T-shirt was on the top of his wish list, second only to a gun. He would be invisible, camouflaged like a real soldier.

  In the distance a shimmering shape hovered above the tarmac, and he slipped into the shallow ditch again. The drone of a vehicle became louder, a heavy drone, like millions of bees. It was an armoured car, camouflaged with zigzagged yellow and dark green paint, narrow slits as windows. It drove past fast and he waited until he could no longer hear it before he unfolded himself and crawled back onto the road. He whistled a tune he had heard a long time ago. Whistling made him feel happy. He was on an adventure, he told himself, going to save himself and his little sister, going to find Mam and Dad. Rescue them. They’d all live in the countryside with his grandparents, and Dad would be able to walk again and teach him to fish. And there’d be electricity again, and the telly, and air-conditioning. And they’d have porridge and toast for breakfast every day, and Mam would cook pizza. Not just on birthdays.

  But he knew it was all a dream.

  Sid remembered going with Gramps years ago to his sloping GM veggie plot overlooking a bay. There was a small rocky island with a castle on top. Or had he imagined that? It didn’t sound feasible, more like something from a book. But he did remember gulls following a plough, gleaming white against the dark soil, their harsh laughter. What he could do was find his grandparents. They lived by the seaside, the Far West, somewhere or other with a ‘z’ in the name. That was his quest.

  But first he had to find food. Potatoes, maybe. He knew where potatoes came from – not only in plastic bags from the market. He wasn’t stupid. He took to the fields and pulled at the leaves of every crop he came across. He dug with his hands and the poker at the dry earth, wishing he had the spade. Large white pearls hung by threads to the roots. He was pleased with himself. He could do this. He dug up a few more small potatoes. How do you turn these hard objects into mash or chips?

  The ploughed ridges caused him to stumble several times. Blackberries glistened in the hedges, blue-bellied flies hanging from them. He ate as many berries as he could. He yanked at a cabbage in another field, twisting it and slashing at the stalk with the knife. His fingers slid over squashed caterpillars that smelt of rotten cabbage. It must be after ten. At home he would have been in bed by now, reading with a torch under the duvet, Mam and Dad in the next room, arguing, Lo asleep. He could see windmills on the hillside and the square tower of a church a couple of fields away. The setting sun lit the windows as if they were on fire. If there was a church there must be houses and maybe a soup kitchen like in the city. His stomach rumbled at the thought.

  He crept up to the squat bungalow, keeping low. The domestic windmill hummed in the breeze. He left his backpack in a hedge, but thought twice and went back for it, and climbed over a wall to the rear that was covered in clambering yellow and orange flowers with round leaves. There was an open window to the kitchen through which he could hear the soft murmur of two people. He didn’t look in. Instead, he went round to the front door, still keeping low and close to the wall. A small dog barked from inside the bungalow. Sid froze and crouched down by bushes. The air smelled of earth and perfume. Like his mam. White flowers glowed in the gathering gloom. Bats jinked above him in the mauve dark. The dog woofed again. He swallowed.

  When he was younger he’d been scared of city dogs, Rottweilers and bull terriers, flea-bitten Alsatians howling on flat roofs or behind wire fences. His mam had been bitten by a dog once and wouldn’t have one in the house. Not that there were many left since the DARP, only the strays who had managed to avoid being shot.

  The yelp fluttered to a stop, one short woof before it gave up. He wondered how a pet dog had survived the cull.

  The light went out and he heard someone lock the door. They had forgotten to shut the window, or had deliberately left it to let a cool breeze in. No one did that in the city. Too scared of people getting in and stealing stuff. Unless they had bars. His friend Joe’s house had had bars and padlocks. When they were little he and Joe pretended they were in a castle and had sword-fights like the Three Musketeers – Joe’s favourite book.

  There was no moon, clouds hid the stars. He lifted the window latch carefully and pulled it open wide enough so he could climb in, lowering the backpack in first. The room smelled of wallflowers. He put one foot in front of the next carefully, negotiating the furniture without bumping into it. There was a narrow hallway with doors off it. The kitchen door was open wide. He went straight to the fridge. As he opened it, light flooded the small room, and he closed the door quickly. The fridge hummed and juddered. He shut the kitchen door very quietly and went back to the fridge. Soy milk! He gulped some from the carton. Something meaty and cold sat in a bowl with a plate on it. He stuck his finger into it and sucked. Somehow, without thinking, he had eaten it all and found himself replacing the empty bowl in the fridge. He took a couple of packets of Labmeat and a chunk of cheese substitute. He didn’t like cheese substitute, but so what? It’s good for you, Mam had said, good for growing bones. He tried to squeeze two tins of baked beans in to the backpack, but couldn’t. Why hadn’t he left Lo’s boots somewhere on the way? He dumped the blanket on the table. Now there was plenty of room. He packed salt, beans, cheese substitute, a bottle of squash, the Labmeat and a box of matches. An unopened carton of dried soy milk caught his eye. Better have that for Lo’s growing bones.

  The bag was still overfull, so he regretfully replaced the squash. It was stealing to take anything other than food, he reasoned, but guiltily opened a drawer and removed a small sharp kitchen knife and a ball of string and put them into his bag. His eyes fixed on a biscuit tin next to a kettle. His mouth watered. The lid was stiff. He yanked it and it flew off, spinning across the worktop and crashing to the floor.

  The dog barked hysterically. A light showed under a door. Loud voices, a man and a woman. He had meant to leave a note apologising for taking the food but explaining that he and his little sister were starving. Now he couldn’t. He had to get out. Part of him wanted to give himself up, beg them to look after him and Lo, but he was scared. They might turn them in to the TA. Grabbing a handful of biscuits and the heavy backpack he made for the window. He plucked a pair of sunglasses from the table, put them on, then threw himself out, catching the strap of the backpack on the window stay. Wrenching it free, he tore a hole in his baggies. A man yelled – ‘Oi, what do you think you’re doing?’

  Sid crossed the garden and scaled the wall, shouts and the terrier’s excited yelps following him. His heart hammered in his chest. He shivered.

  He could be shot.

  He could be dead.

  Lo could be left all alone, and without him she would not survive.

  He ran for what seemed like miles, his legs shaking. But no one seemed to have followed him beyond the garden perimeter. Perhaps they had been scared, too. He stopped and checked that he still had his and Lo’s IDs and ran on through the darkness, laughing in fear and triumph. The blanket – he
thought – fair exchange for sunglasses and a knife.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LO WOKE IN the dark. A slight breeze wafting through the tunnel made a noise like a moaning child. She tried the torch but it was dead.

  ‘You bad girl,’ she scolded Rosebud. Her voice sounded loud and echoing. She closed her eyes against the dark and loneliness and cried quietly. Lying down again she scratched her head and clutched her doll.

  A small pregnant tabby cat crept into the tunnel, sniffed at the sleeping child, curled its lips at the fossilised fox shit, and after a perfunctory wash lay down and fell asleep close to the sleeping child, ears pricked, ever on the alert. After an hour the cat woke hungry, hunted and ate a mouse, scraped a hollow, shat, covered it and went back to the cave-like pipe, sniffed again at the fox spoor and the sleeping child and curled up on herself.

  Lo woke from a dream of her mother calling her.

  ‘Mammy,’ she said as she sat up.

  Sid was standing over her.

  ‘Watcha, Lo-lo, I’ve got food.’ He lifted the heavy backpack triumphantly.

  She rubbed her eyes. ‘I want a poo.’

  ‘Outside then, don’t do it in the den.’

  He led her out into the cool dawn. Birds sang. He took her away from the den and dug a hole with his hands and the poker in the leafy earth. ‘Cover it up when you’ve done,’ he said. ‘Here’s some big leaves to wipe your bum.’

  She giggled. ‘They’re not leaves, they’re plates.’

  Sid waited at a distance until she was finished, reminded her about kicking the leaves to cover the mess and led her back to the den. He wished he’d taken the spade from the shed. Perhaps he’d go back for it. He thought how their mam had always made them wash their hands and felt guilty that they hadn’t been able to do that for ages. He should get a washing supply from the lake. Yeah, he’d do that. Hygiene, that was the word, hygiene. Now wash your hands. He’d take the bucket back to the lake and fill it.