Adrenaline

by Robert Young

  By the time dusk surrendered to night, I was feeling sharp and positive, upbeat. I rolled up the sleeping bag and packed away my things.

  At the lake there was a calmness and peace that further heightened my mood and when I stripped naked and eased myself into the water it was jarringly cold, but served to further sharpen my sense of clarity and alertness.

  I dried off in the open air as I washed underwear in the cold clear water and then hung the damp clothes up around the bushes and trees where I had slept and my backpack and belongings were hidden. They would, I hoped, go unnoticed by the casual observer, but help me locate my things later on when I returned in the darkness. Perhaps I would even have some clear moonlight to help.

  I dressed again in clothes still clean from my pack and feeling fresh and energised, decided to take another baby step. Out of the bag and into the daylight was one thing. People next.

  Just one or two to start me off and probably best if they were strangers.

  Chapter 18

  They have left Roth to his own devices since he appears so eagerly to have embraced what they have bestowed. He requires no help and any revelations at this point may obstruct his development which they both agree, has been encouraging, although will ultimately require control.

  It is Laing they seek now. Laing whom they watched collapse so quickly when just the hint of truth was displayed, who took instant flight and boarded a train somewhere. He has failed to resurface and they suspect that his tactics are as simple and naive as straightforward denial. They are right.

  Days have passed in their search for him and the signs he has left them are as crumbs through the forest, leading them back. His scent is the clearest thing now as they close in, something that he will learn in due course to recognise alongside the many things that Laing must learn if he is to avoid letting this consume him. He has lasted this far, so he has a chance, has potential.

  The question is, does he have enough?

  Chapter 19

  I head for the nearest hill and crest it with a touch of excitement which is dashed when I fail to see any lights nearby. But my disappointment does not last long and at the peak of the next climb I see, not twenty minutes walk away, what I am looking for.

  The village is small and on my approach I cross not just ploughed fields but narrow, muddied lanes with distinct tire marks running through the dirt. At the edge of the village is an old well that has been restored and adorned with flowers. The houses I pass have well-tended gardens and one a thatched roof.

  Soon I notice the steeple of a tiny church, a village notice board tidily arranged with A4 sheets of paper detailing upcoming parish events, a pub quiz and car boot sale.

  This is falling together perfectly, as though my internal radar was automatically tuned in just as sharp and clear as the rest of me.

  Past the church I see a small sign pointing up a narrow lane and after a short walk the lane opens out to reveal a very old, very cosy looking pub.

  The poise and sense of purpose falter for just a flicker at the threshold but I press on through the low door, ducking slightly and look around for the bar. On my right hand side is a long low-ceilinged room with an open fire at the far end. It is glowing softly and crackling and the tables either side of it are vacant.

  The bar, to the left of the room is long and low, what with the rack of glasses suspended from the ceiling, but this just adds to the cosy feeling as the patrons are required to lean and bend in below this to engage the landlord.

  There are three patrons tonight. An elderly looking man with a dog at his feet and his wax-jacket still on sits in a window seat opposite the bar and sups on a pint of dark ale.

  There are two younger-looking men standing and talking at the end of the bar, their coats tossed over stools and their attire tells me two things: one works on a local farm, the other has never done so.

  The expensive knitwear, embroidered logo on the breast, over the gingham shirt and pristine jeans tells of a man whose means have allowed him to relocate to a large house in a small village, away from the noise and crowds of wherever those means were made.

  The other wears clothes that look as though they have worked as hard as he has. The weathered skin of his face, untamed hair and large rough hands are all outdoors and hard graft.

  Both men are laughing as they talk, sharing tales and jokes. There are laughter lines around both men's eyes and an easy demeanour that suggests not just that they are friends, but also a little drunk.

  When I walk in, the pause that everybody takes is notable.

  It must be, of course, that in a quiet little country pub like this, passing trade is not just a rarity, but next to unheard of. I am not wearing hiking gear, am alone, and not familiar. Of course they are staring.

  Meeting each gaze levelly, I step into the room and the silence holds until I break it. An affable greeting to the landlord who nods his response.

  I make a show of perusing the choice of drinks and then have a tiny moment of panic when I wonder not only whether I have brought my wallet, but whether there is cash in it.

  I find it in my pocket and full, having stopped at a cash point before boarding the train nights before. I slip a tenner out and place it flat on the bar.

  ’Pint of that, please,’ I say as I tap one of the hand pumps.

  The landlord nods again, flips a pint glass off the rack over his head and begins working the pump.

  When he asks for the money, he does something odd. He places the glass down in front of me, says ’There you go,’ and then looks me in the eye. It is only for a moment and then he drops his gaze and mutters the price at me so quietly that I have to ask him to repeat it and then hand him the tenner despite not hearing him clearly when he does so.

  As he operates the till I look around the room and spot a row of books on a shelf near the old man.

  As I turn back to the bar, the two younger men, who I take to be in their mid-forties, have not resumed their conversation. I raise an eyebrow and a smile at them and the wealthy indoorsy-looking gentleman looks immediately into his pint and drains half of it quickly.

  The other man, sinewy and thick set, regards me for a moment before nodding slowly and smiling uncertainly back at me.

  They must never get non-locals in this place.

  The change is dropped into my hand with a grunt and I collect the full glass, slurp the top half inch of it and then head for the books.

  If I can settle into a chair by the fire with a book and a pint, I will consider this baby-step taken.

  Perusing the range of beaten up paperbacks, I settle on a Michael Crichton and turn to the old gentleman seated in the window. His dog, I note, has raised itself from his feet, and moved to the other side, sitting up next to the man’s legs. The dog's head is turned toward the door. Maybe it has caught the scent of a fox, or maybe it is just restless and keen to get back outdoors.

  ’Evening,’ I venture and the man picks up his glass, takes a swallow and sets it back down. Then he rises slowly from the seat, produces a cap from his pocket, places it on his head, says ’Bill. Gents,’ toward the bar and then follows his dog out of the door.

  Well that will be his regular pint-at-the-local-then-home-to-bed then. Or something like that.

  The paperback is a page turner and I venture to the bar twice more, each time the same mumbling from the barman and diffidence from the two men whose conversation has dropped to a far more subdued level. Halfway through the third pint I look up from the book and find the bar empty.

  I had intended, once the courage had kicked in after a few pints, to attempt a little conversation with the locals but had my confidence dented by their manner. Now I was down to the semi-mute landlord.

  ’Early closing tonight.’ He was clear and definite and had there been room for doubt it was dispelled by the loud clang of the bell.

  That's when the pains began.

  Chapter 20

  Roth is bored tonight, bored
like last night.

  He does not need to satisfy the craving because the craving has been satisfied many times of late and he wonders what will happen if he ignores it for a while, is tempted to find out.

  For the early part of the evening he tries something that he has not done for some time and goes to the cinema. The film he chooses is a violent one and on his way in he notes the length of the queue at the ticket desk and decides to walk right past it. He asks for a large coke at the refreshment counter and ignores the request for money from the attendant who does not repeat it when Roth holds eye contact as he slowly clasps the straw in his lips and drinks.

  The attendant checking tickets tears in half those of the couple in front of Roth and points them on their way and then he looks at the floor and chews his lip until Roth has passed by.

  It is the most fun he has. The gore and the simulated torture on screen make Roth yawn widely and he walks out long before the credits roll.

  Not too far away he spots a group of five young men walking in a group. They are wearing shorts and t-shirts and one carries a football under his arm. They are talking about the game they have just played and Roth does not deviate from his course right through the centre of the group until the last moment when it is clear that they have all moved away from him. He adjusts quickly and thuds a shoulder into the tallest of the group who rocks back on his heel and shouts in surprise and protest.

  Roth turns as the group gather and eye him. The tall man is still angry at the shoulder-charge and has the courage of five-to-one. He tosses his backpack to the ground in an angry gesture. 'What the fuck are you doing?'

  For a moment Roth looks silently back at the man, his frown, his thrusting chin, squared shoulders.

  The moment the confidence falters and the shoulders drop Roth snatches the bag and dashes away, fast enough to get clear of them, not so fast as to leave them behind.

  The man curses and gives chase and shouts something to the others. Quickly they are all at full tilt in Roth's wake.

  They will catch him when he lets them and he lets them catch him beneath the cover of trees in the park at the end of the road. There he lets them think that they have won the hunt and then he lets them see that they are in fact the prey.

  The tall man is first and goes down fast and in a blur in the shadow. Then each of them is kicked or punched to the ground before they can retaliate or scatter and when he feels that they will not rise again to challenge him but are all conscious and terrified, he goes back to the tall man. It is his luck.

  Roth lets them watch.

  Chapter 21

  I managed to get out of the door and past the landlord without betraying too much of the pain that I was in but the look on his face as I passed through the room was an unfamiliar one. Revulsion and fear tinged with relief that I was leaving. Perhaps he thought that I was about to throw up all over his bar.

  I save that for the car park and then the narrow high-hedged lane.

  The lane is darker now, its enclosed space more claustrophobic, and seems longer to walk back along than it did on the way here. Not only longer but more winding, more blind corners and for a moment, as the spasms in my stomach subside momentarily, I consider that I have perhaps taken a wrong turn. This makes no sense though since the lane forms an incline and I am going down it, and walked up the slope to get to the pub, but it is confusing nonetheless and not a little disconcerting.

  A fox bounds from a hedge to my right and its shoulders rise immediately. I have only ever encountered the more relaxed and confident urban fox and this countryside edition seems all the wilder. I wait quietly for it to move and then take a step forward to chase it off. It bolts for the far hedge and jumps into it.

  For a brief moment I stare at the small hole in the foliage that swallowed the fox, wondering at the strange way it reacted and then with a piercing scream it has burst from the hedge again and races, ears flat, back into the road and away around the bend at full sprint.

  Something in there appeared to have startled it, though I heard nothing before that scream.

  And then I am doubled over again, cramps in my stomach spreading through my chest and seeming to crush my ribs. My lungs cannot pull in air and I retch, long and hard and dry. My eyes and cheeks and throat strain with the force of it and it feels as though it will not stop, as though it has somehow set in permanently, locked into the muscles.

  I can feel the sweat beading across my brow and slowly each muscle, tendon and sinew in my body is snapping bowstring-tight, stretching and tensing and my vision begins to blur, begins to turn white, blinding bright, and there is a roaring in my ears that must be the rush of blood that is soaring through my head.

  Too late I note that the sound is not natural but mechanical, that the light comes from without and is drawing closer. I am unable to do anything about the car coming around the bend at me and as the reality strikes me the thought runs through my head whether the driver will even see me, bent over like this, but just plough on regardless, assuming that some badger or rabbit has just run out of luck.

  So when it sweeps past without slowing and I find myself sitting on the verge with my back against the hedge it takes me a little while to realise that it was not me that moved. Or more specifically, I did not move myself out of the way.

  Someone moved me.

  Two someones, who were imposing and shadowed and standing before me as I curled up again and succumbed to another wave of shattering pain.

  Through the racking cramps and heaving there is little that I can see or hear though I am desperate to know who these men are and what they want.

  I can discern snatches of conversation and am struck by the level tone of their exchange and the fact that they have made no attempt to communicate with me, in spite of my condition.

  I hear the word 'unworthy' and then one of them says something that sounds like 'become a liability' and then I note that the other voice sounds less contemptuous. It mentions words like 'time' and 'potential' and counsels against rashness.

  There is then something like acquiescence where the contempt and disgust were, and what sounds like an agreement. Then nothing and I am aware that I am alone again and that the fearsome agony is abating.

  It will not be gone long, and neither perhaps will the two dark figures who have left me. Were they the two men from the pub earlier, come to scare away the interloper? Had I somehow offended them? I could not imagine how, but they had both of them been quite definitely not welcoming.

  Either way, I have the feeling of a respite, of a chance to grasp and I must move. I must escape this lane and hit open ground again and I must seek what I need.

  *

  I might not want to think about this too much but the last time I felt good was after the deer. Not the haunch of venison in the thrown-together casserole over a camp fire.

  The fresh kill, the hot blood.

  As I crossed the fields back at the edge of the village I tried to rationalise what was happening to me. I was sick, though the symptoms defied any kind of logical analysis.

  I had a hyper-sensitivity to sunlight. Not just a strange psychological aversion to daylight which that first day in my flat had seemed to afflict me as I taped black plastic bags over the windows, but a real physiological reaction to it. I had felt markedly feverish during the day at the beginning, had suffered a raw, searing burn on my arm from leaving it exposed to a shaft of sunshine when sleeping.

  Then there were the burns I had woken up with in hospital. The burns that had meant that I had been bandaged from head to foot and that had since left no evidence that they had ever been there. Also the bloody bramble scratches on my arm the other night that left bloodstains inside the sleeping bag but no trace on my skin.

  I had also gone days without food or been unable to keep it down when I had eaten for the most part. Indeed the only thing I had managed was a virtually uncooked steak, and then later the venison. Which came directly after the blood.


  So.

  There were rare conditions, medical conditions, which left people unable to cope with sunlight. Or perhaps something which has left me deficient in certain important nutrients. Nutrients that are only present in blood. Or in sufficient concentration in blood that only by consuming it fresh the way I did adequately makes up for this shortfall.

  But the deer was two nights ago now wasn't it? Maybe whatever it was that I needed was fading again. Maybe my body could no longer produce or store this mystery nutrient or mineral due to whatever condition I had contracted and this craving I had was to replace it.

  This was good. This was good because if I was right, then there were probably pills that I could take, a simple treatment to correct things that topped up my levels of whatever-it-was and I needn't go round drinking blood from animals any more.

  And hadn't I felt less afraid of the daylight after drinking from the deer? This must all be linked. In replacing the missing nutrient, mineral, vitamin, my other symptoms were relieved. I had only to seek out a doctor and I may yet escape this nightmare.

  But first, these debilitating stomach cramps must be kept at bay, and I must find something to sacrifice for the purpose.

  Chapter 22

  I am at full stretch as I clear the gate, and I know that even in my lithe, athletic younger days I never moved with such speed.

  There can be little on two legs or four that I cannot outrun, save for certain large African predators or their bounding prey.

  But what pursues me is neither two nor four legged. Or rather, it is not their legs that concern me, but the wheels that carry them.