“No.” Bane’s voice was a weary rasp. “They can’t be far behind us. We cannot stop. Soon as Jon comes round, we’re moving.”
I flopped down on the ground—but Bane had Jon awake again before I’d even got unconscious myself. Staggering upright, we hauled him to his feet by sheer brute force. He managed a few hops and his good leg crumpled. We managed not to fall this time, putting our heads down and plowing on, carry-dragging him between us.
Jon told you to leave him behind at the beginning, an evil little voice said in my mind. He was right. You should have left him. Now you and Bane are going to die too, because you were so sure you could make it with Jon along. Stupid, Margo.
But we weren’t sure we could make it with Jon, I told that little voice. We just knew we couldn’t leave him behind to be dismantled…
Bane thought you could make it, whispered that little voice. Or he’d have left him. Bane got it wrong…
Oh shut up, I retorted.
We didn’t speak. Soon we scarcely thought. We just walked. And walked. And walked.
Step, step, step, heave Jon’s arm further over my shoulders, step, step, step...
The wind was getting up; its icy slap against my face drew my attention from the mindlessness. But Bane’s arm, lying under mine across Jon’s back, was oddly warm. His left arm. Oh no. He’d had no antibiotics at all, today. I didn’t bother trying to look at him. Too dark. Nothing to be done.
Step. Step. Step. Jon slipping… heave. Step. Step. Step.
The rising wind made it hard to hear, but still no sounds came from behind us. Surely we hadn’t stayed in any of the streams long enough to throw them off the scent?
Finally a trip from Bane or myself—two seconds later when we all hit the ground I’d already forgotten which—had us lying flat out, gasping. When Bane didn’t drive us straight back to our feet, I shifted to feel his forehead and arm. That insidious rising heat was definitely back.
“Any suggestions, Doctor Margo?” His voice would’ve been dry if he hadn’t been panting so hard.
“I’ll just have to kiss it better,” I panted back, and leant over to press my lips to his brow.
“Best medicine in the world. Come on, let’s get up…”
I made it to my feet, but my arms shook like jelly and try as we might we couldn’t get Jon up between us.
“We’ll have to rest, Bane,” I gasped, as we lowered Jon back down as gently as we could.
Jon’s level of consciousness had been debatable for some time. But now his voice came thinly out of the blackness between us. “Bane?”
“I’m here.”
“Take Margo and go. You’ve done everything you can. Just leave me here, I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Fine. I won’t. Doesn’t make any difference now. Go.”
“No,” I snapped, biting back the evil voice in my head saying, Told you so. “We’re not leaving you. We just need to rest for a bit, then we’ll carry on.”
“Bane,” Jon ignored me, “Do you want them to catch Margo? For pity’s sake—for her sake—leave me.”
A long silence from Bane. Jon clearly wasn’t wasting his arguments.
“Sorry, Jon,” said Bane eventually. “I’m under the thumb of a very determined young woman, and I don’t think she’ll hear of it. Anyway, Margo’s right. We just need a bit of rest.”
I let out a relieved breath. Under my thumb, yeah right, Bane would leave Jon if he had to, to save me, but the threat of capture would need to be rather more imminent and the alternative considerably more impossible.
“Lie down, Margo, I’ll keep watch first,” said Bane, ignoring Jon’s eloquent silence.
“Seriously?”
“Well, I’ll try. I’ll put an alarm on a ten-minute snooze. Have a good listen each time. After a bit, I’ll give you the phone and you can do the same.”
“Okay.”
Bane moved to lie on my other side. I snuggled to his too-hot body, Jon shivering against my back... inspiration struck. Stiffly, I got up and climbed over Bane.
“Huh?”
“Go in the middle, Bane. You make a lovely radiator.”
“Oh.” Bane rolled over into the space I’d left and I snuggled up to him again. On his other side Jon made a happy little noise...
...Bane was shaking me awake—he pressed the phone into my hand.
“Put it under your ear, I think I missed a few.”
“Okay…” I struggled into a sitting position. Didn’t want to fall asleep before I’d even checked the alarm. Then I lay down and used the phone for a pillow. Wasn’t awake long enough to notice if it was uncomfortable.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP…
I jumped almost out of my skin. Swallowed a groan and my racing heart. Sat up. Listened hard. Checked I’d hit the snooze button. Lay down again.
Did it again and again and again.
Listening… My bleary eyes were closing even sat up. Check alarm…
Wait.
A shout? A bark? Impossible to tell over the wind.
“Bane!” I shook his shoulder. Lunging over him to shake Jon, my hand found thin air and I fell on Bane—he started awake.
“What?”
“Jon? Jon?” I climbed over Bane, feeling around frantically. Nothing. The ground where Jon had lain was cold.
“What’s wrong?”
“Jon’s gone! And I heard something…”
“He’s what…? Oh, I’m going to wring his neck!” With this expression of fraternal concern, Bane started to crawl around as well. But we both knew what Jon had done. We wouldn’t leave him, so he’d left us. Maybe that evil voice had been speaking to him, too.
“He thinks this is going to help?” growled Bane.
“Doubt he was thinking much in his condition, just desperate not to get us caught. He couldn’t walk, he can’t have got far.” Stupid, stupid, Jon, you know we won’t leave you…
A dim shaft of light pierced the blackness. Bane’s flashlight, his hand shielding the end.
“There…” A trail of blood-smeared grass and disturbed loam led from Jon’s place into the forest. Back the way we’d come. The direction the noise had come from. I didn’t mention that. No need to test the bonds of friendship too far.
We hurried just as fast as we could go without losing the trail. Jon was crawling, he couldn’t go far, he couldn’t…
Another noise. A bark, definitely a bark. Bane froze, quivering. Every instinct telling him to turn and run the other way. Knew how he felt.
“If we don’t find him very soon,” he muttered, “we may as well give it up ‘cause we’ll never outdistance them even if we do…”
We hurried on, trying to go twice as fast and twice as silently, all at once.
Another bark. Closer. Bottom of this slope? Hard to tell over the wind. Bane stopped dead again. “Okay. We’ve got to go, Margo.”
It wasn’t okay, but… Bane was right, if we found Jon, we wouldn’t be able to get him away…
“Just a little further?”
“It’s your dismantling!”
I swallowed. Took his flashlight arm and drew him onwards.
An agonized cry from somewhere ahead...
“Jon!” We both hissed it and started forward. Quiet, quiet, quiet…
There… a light. A handheld spotlight. Not as good as François’s. In a clearing? Bane switched off his flashlight and we groped our way forward to the edge of the trees. There were two figures with the light, looking down at something on the ground.
“Should’ve kept a gun, tracker or no,” Bane muttered.
“Come on, sing, my little blind songbird,” came a harsh voice from one of the silhouettes. “Sing a pretty tune…”
A muffled groan.
“That’s not a tune, try again…”
Jon cried out—Bane raced through the darkness like a ghost and slammed into the nearest soldier, carrying him to the ground. I tore after him and arrived just in time to grab the barrel o
f the second soldier’s rifle as it swung towards the struggling pair. One-handed, the soldier yanked the weapon out of my feeble grip—I kicked the spotlight from his grasp instead. It tumbled across the grass and he spun round in shadowy confusion.
“Don’t move or I swear I’ll put your eye out... Ah, thank you.” Bane lurched to his feet, heavy rifle in his hands, and snapped, “Hold it, you.”
The second soldier held it. Even let me take his rifle from his unprotesting hands. I rolled the spotlight over with my foot so it illuminated the clearing properly and pointed the rifle in the right general direction, leaving the safety off to make it look a bit more serious.
“Perhaps you two should’ve kept watch instead of torturing a blind boy?” Bane was shaking with rage. “Now lie on the ground, face down. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
The soldiers exchanged an uneasy look. Obeyed. Bane promptly rammed the muzzle of the rifle into the base of the first soldier’s skull.
“Bane…”
For another second he remained, quivering, his knuckles white, then he reversed his grip on the rifle and brought the butt smashing down on the soldier’s head. Without a sound, the man went limp. The other soldier began to roll over; swiftly Bane struck him, too. Two unconscious soldiers.
Bane flung the rifle away from him as though he didn’t dare have it in his possession for another second. I made the one I held safe, and slung it over my shoulder, picked up the other and did the same. Deposited them both beside Jon.
Bane was already there. “Hey, mate, you awake? Jon?”
I took Jon’s head and cradled it in the bend of my arm. “Check his leg...” I stretched out to grab the spotlight and draw it closer, pointing at Jon’s thigh. Uh oh. Blood glistened everywhere.
“Where’s the t-shirt gone?” Bane started looking around.
“Margo?” whispered Jon.
“You are awake! Are you okay? What did they do?”
“Oh, nothing, mostly just kicked my leg and stuff. Don’t worry about me.”
Knowing Jon, not nice to think what “mostly” and “stuff” consisted of—at least he was conscious and making sense.
“Well, Bane’s going to sort your leg, then we’ll move. Come on, Bane,” I added urgently. “These two weren’t just out for a nighttime stroll.”
“Gah!” Abandoning his search for the missing “bandage,” Bane went to the nearest soldier, rolled him over, and began to search him. He transferred a few things to his own pockets before finally holding something up with a triumphant, “hah”. When he ripped the wrapper off and began to unravel it, I realized it was a proper bandage, complete with a cotton pad.
I sighed in relief and stroked Jon’s hair. “Can I borrow the light for a moment?”
“Yes. Why?”
Picking up the spotlight, I shone it around, careful not to raise it too far from the ground—it would show up a lot more if I pointed it into the distance.
“Just trying to figure out what these two were doing out here. If it was a net to catch us, we’d be in sight of the others, but there’s no one there or they’d have shown up by now. So what… Oh.” I raised the light a little further, for confirmation. The treeless area ran away from us into the distance in both directions. “It’s a fire break, not a clearing. These soldiers were supposed to spot us crossing it as we fled from the others. We must’ve been further ahead than they realized.”
Putting the light down, I took a magazine from one of the rifles. Ah, quick load, how convenient. I popped the catch to release the rounds, caught them as they dropped out and hurled them into the distant grass. Didn’t want the soldier shooting us in the back if they came round before we were out of sight…
“Yeah, we must have been.” Bane tied off the bandage and punched Jon in the arm. A dog barked. Closer. “Come on, let’s go.”
“For pity’s sake, Bane,” whispered Jon, “you’re not seriously going to take me along, even now?”
“Shut up!” snapped Bane. “Or I’ll clout you on the head too. Won’t make any difference when it comes to carting you around! Come on, Margo.”
I flung the magazines in the opposite direction to the bullets, switched off the light and chucked it into the forest, then dumped the rifles beside the soldiers. Until someone showed up with a flashlight, our sleeping friends were going to be pretty ineffective. But they might need more than a light, and the trackers in the rifles would ensure they got a medic a.s.a.p. They were definitely alive—one was snoring—but how healthy, I wouldn’t like to say.
Getting Jon’s arm over my shoulder, I bent my knees and groaning, Bane and I hoisted him up. We could lift him again… An irrational wave of optimism swept the demon of despair from my mind.
“You’re mad,” gasped Jon.
“Shut it!” we told him so fiercely that the demon seemed to let go of him too. He shut it, anyway.
Running when we could—downhill—we staggered on. Time seemed suspended. We’d not had anything like enough rest to carry Jon again and twice as fast. Every time we began to feel sure he’d fall to the ground, a bark sounded, closer, always closer, and a fresh surge of adrenalin drove us on…
…I’d lost a chunk of time and forest somewhere. Now we stumbled, shuffled, no more running, even the nearing barking couldn’t speed our steps. Any ideas, Lord? Angel Margaret?
On. On. On.
“Stop!” Jon’s voice, hoarse and totally unexpected. He was conscious?
“What?” whispered Bane thickly.
“Do not move!”
We’d already stopped, our bodies more than happy to obey even if our brains didn’t understand.
“Why?” I managed.
“Train tracks. High voltage...” Jon’s voice was labored, his head barely raised from his chest. “Just ahead…”
“How on earth…?” started Bane, but dismissed the question. “You smell or hear it, who cares? Margo, can you get your flashlight out if I try and take Jon’s weight?”
“Okay.”
I took my hand from Jon’s back and wriggled it into my pocket, eased the flashlight out. Got my hand cupped around the front and switched it on.
“Oh…”
“…hell,” finished Bane.
There in the shaded light of the flashlight was an electric rail. Bane had already stepped over one of the outer tracks unawares and his foot was just a couple of inches from the live metal. For a few moments we just stared at the insignificant looking obstacle. The tracks ran along a ridge rising from left to right; on the other side of them, the forest fell away again.
“Let’s just step back while we think about this.” I switched off the flashlight and very, very carefully, we did so.
“Never thought I’d see the day when we’d be stumped by a tiny thing like that.” Bane spoke almost under his breath. “But there’s no way we can lift Jon over.”
“Could we go along them?”
Bane turned and looked back down the slope. Lights twinkled in the trees behind us, in a long line. From the closest point came yet another excited bark.
“We’d be caught in minutes, now. We have to get over.”
“Then get over, you bloody stubborn idiots!” wheezed Jon.
I ignored him; more surprisingly, so did Bane.
“Let’s put him down, I need to get something…”
“We’ll never get him up again…” But Bane had already lowered Jon to the ground and from the rustling, was groping in his pocket.
“Here.” Bane produced a little strip of blister pack, three pills long… from a compartment in his pocket knife?
“What on earth is that?”
He popped one out and fed it to Jon, placing a precautionary hand over Jon’s mouth until he swallowed. “Stimulant. Very powerful. If Jon can support even a bit of his weight, we’ll get over okay. I was thinking of breaking these out anyway, but they last less than fifteen minutes so let’s keep the other two just a little longer.”
“Why only three?”
/>
“Had to sell your printer to get these.”
“Oh.”
“Wow.” Jon’s voice sounded stronger. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, shaking his head in bewilderment. “Am I dead? I feel heaps better…”
“So you should, but it’ll wear off fast enough, so let’s go…” said Bane.
Prudently, I switched the flashlight on and shone it on the rail, hooded once again with my hand, before we all staggered to our feet. Jon only needed help to rise. We got a good grip on him and cautiously shuffled forward towards the rail.
Bark-bark.
Our heads all came up at once.
“Where did that come from?” said Bane uneasily.
I waited, ears straining. Thunder rumbled overhead. Please, please let it be a trick of the wind…
Bark. Bark.
Quickly I clicked off the flashlight.
“It’s coming from the other side of the rail.”
***+***
18
SURROUNDED
For a moment we just stood, staring down the slope beyond the rails, hoping Jon would contradict me.
Bark bark.
That was from further along. There… a light gleamed. And another. And another. If we could turn and sprint alongside the tracks we wouldn’t be fast enough. It probably wasn’t two lines, it was probably a circle.
Trapped.
With unspoken agreement, we stepped back again and eased Jon to the ground. Dropping to my knees, I spread my hands to the inky blackness of the sky.
Shouts from behind. Barks from ahead. I didn’t open my eyes.
Lord. Lord. Lord. Lord. An almost wordless appeal. I fought free of despair enough to put words together. Is it time for acceptance? Was the van just a trial run? But we’ve come so far! Lord? Has it all been for nothing? Did we ever really have a chance?
“We’re totally surrounded,” said Jon.
“Thank you for that incredibly perceptive observation,” snarled Bane.
I said before that we’d get to Rome if You willed it. Well, it’s never been as true as it is at this moment. If You want us to get out of this, You’ll have to save us even more than normal. Save us, Lord. Save us, Lord… If it is Your will. Save us!
The Three Most Wanted Page 19