Runners

by Ann Kelley

  Sparrows nested in the space between the roof and the guttering of the hospital and starlings strutted on the paved area in front. Sid felt a sudden affinity with the birds he was named after. He liked their speckled breasts, which, caught by the sun, looked as if they had been knitted from green and gold sparkly wool. They chattered at the sky in whistles and clicks and chirps. Ivy grew all over the walls, hiding the nests of robin and blackbird. There were vegetable plots on three sides. A woman stretched up to gather runner beans from a tepee of bamboo sticks, and he saw blue veins standing out from behind her knees, dark sweat patches under the arms of her faded shirt.

  He went into the main entrance and through to the wards, crouching down so the nurse behind the desk wouldn’t see him, and sneaked past to the side room where his friend lay under the drapes of a limp mosquito net. The puppy wriggled, its long legs dangling from the makeshift sling. Flies hit at the dusty window. Buzz was on a saline drip, and unconscious. His head had a fuzzy covering of reddish hair. He looked like a young bride under a muslin veil. Like Sid’s mam in the photo.

  Sid removed the khaki T-shirt from his pack and placed it at the end of the bed with his lance on top of it. ‘Just came to say goodbye and good luck,’ he murmured, saluted and crept out again.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ON THE HIGH MOOR, a south-westerly breeze cooling his skin, Sid breathed in the scent of gorse flowers. The puppy whined and stuck his dark face out of the sling and tasted the air. He seemed to have recovered from his beating. As gently as he could, Sid emptied him out onto the grass, where the puppy shook himself and woofed. Then he rolled over and offered his pink belly to Sid’s hand.

  ‘What’s your name then, fella, eh? What’ll I call you?’ The tall puppy, which was a bit of this and a bit of that, but mostly water spaniel, with dense curly brown hair, licked his wounds briefly and bounded off a little way, and turning, came back to Sid’s side and licked the boy’s ankle. Sid found a flattish boulder with a shallow hollow in the surface and poured water into it for the dog to lap. It was soon gone and he refilled the natural bowl. When the dog had had his fill, Sid dipped the bloody shirt in the water, swooshed it around, wrung it out and put it on.

  They chased butterflies and lounged in the grass, Sid stroking the dog and talking to him, telling him about Lo and how they were going to visit her. He cleared nettles and made a hollow in the shade of a stone hedge, dozed a little, and woke to find the puppy curled up beside him, licking his wounds.

  He threw a stick and the puppy ran after it and brought it back to him.

  ‘Is he a good dog then, is he? Is he?’ The dog growled happily as Sid fondled him.

  ‘That’s what I’ll call you – Izzi – after Isambard. We’ve both got names to live up to, eh?’ He scratched the dog on its head and gently squeezed its floppy ears. Izzi licked his face enthusiastically. He’s like Lo, Sid thought, he’s forgotten his mam already.

  After eating an apple and sharing a couple of biscuits with Izzi, he set off again, keeping the sea behind him on one side of the land and the sea in front on the other. Sid whistled softly to himself, content, as he had not been for a long time. Bats jinked in the darkening sky like swallows of the night. He came to a high point and looked down towards a furrowed field where scarecrows were strung up in a row on a fence. Terrified, for a moment he thought they were crucified men. He must be lost. He couldn’t recognise any of the landscape. There was no bosky valley planted with nut trees where he expected it to be. Only a windswept moor with stunted thorn trees tortured by the prevailing wind into horizontal forms, like crippled old people. Where was Freedom Farm? He had been sure he had come in the right direction. He was suddenly weary and the little dog was limping, head down, tongue lolling. He picked him up and carried him for a few hundred metres, but still couldn’t recognise the rough moorland. He stumbled over rocks and scratched himself as he fought his way through brambles, gorse and bracken, the still blood-soaked shirt torn and sweat-stained.

  They spent the night under a hedge, close to the hidden nest of a skylark that kept very still and quiet, its small heart beating fast under pale feathers. While they slept a meteor shower lit the sky briefly like a far-off firework display. A barn owl silently lifted a vole from the cracked earth. Rabbits munched on the grass by the faint blue light of stars.

  That same day Lo had been learning to read and write with Sweetpea and Sand in the shade of the spreading branches of a lime tree. Bees hummed high up in the lime flowers, and chickens pecked and scraped in the earth under the children’s feet.

  Lo wished she had hair like tiny Sweetpea, who twisted a chestnut brown curl around her fingers and sucked it.

  ‘Now, Pink, it’s your turn to read,’ said the older girl, who had long dark hair and wore a daisy chain around her brow, like a starry halo.

  ‘THE BLACK CAT SAT ON THE MAT.’

  ‘Very good, Pink. And the next line?’

  Lo was happy with her new name, unaware that it was the name of a flower, but preferring the colour pink to any other. Her fairyprincessdress had never been returned to her, but she had forgotten it anyway, and enjoyed looking exactly like her new friends in their green shorts and vests. She adored her fifteen-year-old, blue-eyed teacher, whose name was Hazel, and who always wore wild flowers in her hair. Her tinkling laugh made Lo feel safe. Her very own real rabbit had had three babies and she was allowed to keep one of them. She didn’t ask what was going to happen to the other two. They lived in a hutch with a big run surrounded by chicken wire with several other small creatures – hamsters and guinea pigs, chickens, ducks, even a young kid. Each of the small girls had a pet among these creatures.

  ‘I had a pussy cat once,’ said Sand, clutching a nervous brown hen. Her fine mousy hair was pulled into two plaits tied with green ribbons.

  ‘Did I have one too? asked Lo.

  ‘Don’t you remember, Sweetheart?’ said Hazel, their young teacher.

  ‘No.’ Lo sucked her thumb.

  ‘Did you have a mummy and daddy?’ asked Sand. ‘I’ve got lots of mummies now.’

  ‘Course I did…’ Lo wasn’t sure any more about her past life. She remembered Sid, though, and had for a while after she was taken to Freedom Farm cried herself to sleep thinking about him and wondering why he had gone away.

  ‘I had three Billy Goats Gruff,’ she said, smiling confidently at her small audience.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  AT FIRST LIGHT the puppy licked Sid’s face and woke him. They had a little Kworn and water and set off again after Sid had relieved himself against the stone hedge. Finding a trickle of water leading to a shallow, tree-shaded stream, Sid filled up the water bottle and washed his sticky face. Izzi sniffed the water suspiciously before drinking his fill and he walked stiff legged, wagging his shaggy tail, ears cocked, through the shallow water. He stood still and moved his head to follow a slight movement on the bottom, pawing at the water every now and then. He made a sudden snap with his teeth and Sid was amazed to see that the dog had caught a small trout.

  ‘Good boy!’

  He took the fish from the soft mouth and Izzi started stalking again. Sid joined him, standing still, legs wide, staring into the water. Soon he had four small fish. Sid made a firepit lined with stones, found his matches and made a fire with hairy lichens, dry bracken and dead gorse. He searched for sharp twigs with which to spear the fish. He waited for the smoke to die down and the hot embers to go grey then stuck the ends of the sticks into them. The smell of the cooking fish brought saliva to his mouth. He ate while they were still too hot, so they burned his tongue, but it was still the best food he had ever eaten. He shared it with the hungry puppy, who wolfed it down and put his head on one side for more.

  ‘You’re a born hunter, Izzi. We make a good team, you and me.’ The dog wagged his tail and gave a low woof. The dog wanted to go back to the stream but Sid called him and he obeyed. He needs company more than he needs food, thought Sid.

  Sid set of
f again to look for Lo, and in the back of his mind was the thought of the daisy girl: her shiny hair, her laugh.

  He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he found Lo, except that he wanted to reassure her that he hadn’t forgotten her. He wanted to see if she was happy and well or if she wanted to go with him. Where? He didn’t know. He ought to go back to Penzance to search for his grandmother – Grumps. That had been his main aim. But what good would it do if he did find her? Would she be prepared to hide a small girl from the Reducers? He had thought about this problem for days and had made a decision – he wouldn’t bother to look for her.

  On the other hand, if Lo was unhappy, it was his duty to rescue her from the New-Earthers and make sure she was safe. He could look after her himself well enough. They could go back to the roundabout, he supposed, or to the old pig farm, or even the gravel pit lake. He thought of the little boat, the still water with the surrounding trees full of the sound of birdsong, the hovering green and gold dragonflies. Most of all he thought about the boat. Izzi would like it there. The little dog could catch fish for them. They could all swim in the cool water. Could he persuade the daisy girl to go with them? They could live happily ever after.

  If only!

  ‘Too much imagination,’ his mam had said about him.

  They wandered over the moors, lying in the sun or shade, chasing rabbits in tussocky grass. He took a pot shot at a nibbling rabbit about ten metres away. To his delight and horror it lurched over on its side, dead. Izzi ran to collect it and proudly delivered it to Sid.

  Recollecting the way the Reducer had prepared the rabbit for them to eat he made slashes at its tail end and peeled back the fur. It was more difficult than it had looked when Mal had done it. He didn’t do it cleanly, but he managed to remove most of it. He admired the rabbit’s pink shiny skin. Izzi played with the fur, worrying it and growling, licking at the odd bits of flesh that adhered. After throwing the steaming guts to the puppy, Sid dug a shallow firepit, glad he had matches to light a fire, and lined it with flat stones.

  Boy and dog ran and played together on the high moor, out of sight of the town and heliport. It was as if only he and Izzi were left in the world. That would be fine, he thought. We could survive together, look after each other. The country was a good place to live, he decided. After a meal of half cooked meat, which was quite disgusting, and made him want to gag, he gave the rest to the dog and zipped up the remaining matches in the waterproof backpack.

  But he hadn’t extinguished the fire properly and a sudden sharp breeze relit the embers and a spark escaped from the opened firepit. Bracken burst into flame around him. It happened in a flash, before he had time to stamp on all the small flames. Scared, he bolted.

  ‘Come on Izzi, run for it.’

  Behind them the moor was alight, smoke rising in a plume as fire nibbled and consumed dry grass, bracken and heather. Small creatures ran, terrified. Larks abandoned their burning nests and eggs. Soon a helicopter throbbed over the blackened land and fire-fighters were sent out to tackle the blaze before it spread as far as the town. Sid could hear the noise behind him as they fled.

  After traipsing through a valley of damp bog-land, where they drank at a small dark pool, he reached another barren moor, brown with dead bracken. They stalked a pheasant, and Sid marvelled at the colours of this exotic bird, the golden tail. He wasn’t hungry and anyway he thought it was too beautiful to eat, so he made no attempt to shoot it, though it would have been easy for him to do it, the bird was so slow, and flew awkwardly, like a chicken. He thought it might be a peacock, but without a spread tail covered in eyes.

  All at once he realised that he could no longer see the sea on either side. He hadn’t been concentrating, and now he wasn’t sure which way was which. Low clouds covered the hills and he heard a roll of thunder, like a giant clearing his throat. A flash of lightning came close after, and hail, like cold pebbles, fell on them. They ran across the open moor, over ancient stiles, past flattened cotton-flowers, through boggy places, looking for shelter. There were no trees, only stunted blackthorn leaning away from the interminable south-westerlies.

  Soaked and chilled, and concerned that lightning might be attracted to the metal of his rifle, Sid ran towards a small building in the corner of a field, which, when he got closer, he could see was a ruined shed. Maybe it had been an animal shelter, he thought, or a shepherd’s hut in the days when there were still herds of sheep and cows and pigs. He thought of the cow they had seen at Zennor, its glamorous eyelashes, the long tongue and hot breath, and wished he had some warm milk now. Ivy grew through the stacked granite blocks, and crows flew off, squawking in disapproval. A small part of slate roof still stood, and he crouched under it; the puppy, pink tongue lolling, shivered close by.

  ‘Good boy, Izzi. Good boy.’ Sid held him. ‘Don’t be frightened. It’s only a storm. Maybe your first, eh?’ Having the small creature to look after made him feel brave. It was like when he had Lo to care for. It made him forget his own fears. Perhaps that’s how his mam and dad had felt about him and Lo, he thought. They had had to pretend nothing bad was going to happen to them, because they didn’t want to frighten their children. At that moment he forgave his father for not taking them somewhere safe, away from the Reducers, before it was too late. It was not always easy to have the care of weaker creatures, he realised. Life was simpler when you only had yourself to think about. But he wouldn’t be without the dog now he had him. He needed the companionship of the puppy as much as the puppy needed him. This live Izzi was even better than the imaginary Isambard.

  Thunder exploded around him, and lightning pierced the moors. Hail turned to drenching rain, eased off a little, and stopped. The air was full of moisture; purple and orange clouds surrounded them.

  Water dripped from a yellow kingcup bent horizontal by the force of the storm. The little dog licked at it, tentatively.

  ‘Time to make a run for it, Izzi.’

  Sid set off downhill to cross a stream, but the rain started again, heavier than before; the sky blackened and lightning came again, scaring him. He watched as the only tree in sight was lit with a burst of fire and burned up.

  ‘Come on boy.’ He lifted the puppy, holding it close and stumbled over the boulder-strewn sea-field to a small stone bridge. There was a stream running fast under it, where it had been dry just a short while ago. Thunder cracked again and lightning came almost instantaneously. The storm was right overhead. He ducked under the bridge and crouched shivering up against the granite pile, holding the puppy close. He thought he was safe there. The bridge was hundreds of years old, he could tell by the lichens and moss that covered the stone. His father would have told him the history of the little granite bridges and the dry stone hedges if he had been here.

  But he isn’t, is he? thought Sid, and terror seized him as a rushing clattering noise assailed his ears and a flash flood plucked him and the puppy from under the bridge and swept them away. The stream was now a raging river, breaking the mud banks, churning the earth and taking debris – stumps of thorn bushes, gorse, bracken, brambles, boulders even, shifting them as if they were fragile flowers, turning all into a morass, a cauldron of thick brown soup. The force of water twisted the boy and separated him from the dog. He held his breath as he felt the water dragging him under. Black – it was black and cold. He was tumbled over and over, buffeted by rocks and logs. He sensed air for a moment and took another gasp of breath.

  A picture came to Sid of Brunel, a small man, with his tall black hat, bizarrely smoking a cigar, being swept along with him in the floodwater. Brunel had survived the tidal wave that broke through the damaged Thames Tunnel, saved by the water, which bore him along the tunnel and up one of the shafts, where his inert body was snatched from the tide. Sid kept that image in his mind. If Brunel could survive, so could he.

  At one time Sid thought he touched the puppy, but he wasn’t sure. His clothes were shredded from him, the backpack tugged him down. He tried to swim but i
t was hopeless. His lungs felt like they were about to burst. He was pressed down by the weight of water. He stopped fighting and let the flood take him, down, down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MAL AND THE REST of Heyl Exterminating Angels had their orders: find the Runners who had an established encampment somewhere in the hills between Zennor and Penzance. Women of childbearing age, concealing Runner kids, and surviving by growing their own food.

  Take them out. Reduce them all.

  His hip had healed, as had his shoulder and arm, though in wet weather he still ached. Age, he thought. I’m getting old. Mustn’t get old and useless – I’ll get reduced. His mates had joked with him about his missing week away from Heyl Reducer HQ.

  ‘Got a woman, eh?’

  ‘Where’s she to? Did she nurse you, then?’

  He had lost weight and muscle while he was recuperating. He had to try harder to keep up with his mates when they trained. He couldn’t run like he used to. Negotiating the bike round corners hurt his shoulder, though he didn’t complain. Plenty of others waiting to take his place if he wasn’t up to the job.

  He thought often of the roundabout kids and wondered if they were still alive, or had they died of hunger, or maybe they’d got sick and there was no one to look after them. He tried not to think about the little girl – Lo, she was called Lo. And he tried not to remember the other girl child, that first time he had been sent out on a Reduction exercise. Better not to remember, but he couldn’t control his dreams. He fought sleep, but when oblivion inevitably swept over him he suffered the same nightmare again and again. Except that it wasn’t a nightmare. It was true.