Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

forever. I wanted to do so many things with my life. To go to so many places. To try and help other people.

I talked about it all with Harry. As for him, we knew he would probably be fine. He had been released before, with the doctor’s permission, and he would likely be again. But me? I could go back to the hospital, and try to get out in the longer term, but it would kill me inside, and if, and when, I got released, I’d still be a sentenced criminal. A murderer. Unable to work with children. Unable to take a lot of jobs. Unable to travel to certain places. A lot of my life would be over.

I thought about all of this, as one day the rain came, and didn’t stop. For days it poured down torrentially, morning, noon and night- lashing the tent, running the slope, imprisoning us inside. Even going out to pee was a challenge.

Three days of it went by, then four, then five, then six. It was incessant. The air was damp. The ground was damp. Everything inside the tent started to smell of damp, and sweaty socks, and feet, and stinking bodies. Even if we did wash our clothes, we had nowhere to dry them. I couldn’t get the fire going.

Everything became grey, and wet and miserable. The sky a dull squib that dimmed all the light. And then, on the seventh day of the deluge, I got my first tick bite, on my arm. I picked the thing out carefully, only to get another in my thigh just two days later. “For all the beauty in God’s creation, He makes these evil little bastards, that dig into your body and give you a degenerative disease which slowly attacks your joints and your brain.” Harry said, as he checked me to make sure I’d gotten all of it out. And he was right. And malaria, and typhus, and all these other horrible parts of nature. They were the risks you diminished in a house. And oh, how I now craved warm radiators, and a cosy bed, and a hot bath.

By the tenth day I had cabin fever, and I had to get out. So I pulled up my hood and trudged down the saturated ground amongst the bare and sleeping trees, slipping twice in the muck and getting my hands covered in it. I waded on through, and out into the open, under that eternal-seeming overcast, craving some vitamin D.

But the rain did eventually stop. In the days proceeding its absence, the temperature plummeted, and stronger winds blew. The next week they brought snow with them, and my mood finally picked up with the change of scenery.

We’d been there five or six weeks by then, and the land was beautiful and white and ethereal-looking, just like it had been on that first day. I left Harry at the tent carving a piece of wood into a rabbit, and I walked away through the shin-deep snow to meditate under a pine bough.

The snow stopped falling as I sat there, then it started again, blowing in strengthening icy gusts under the fat sky. I finished my meditation and lifted myself to my feet. The grey trees creaked as they bowed back and forth. The bird tweets echoed through the hollow, deposited walls of snow. Then, about thirty yards away, I saw someone. Watching me.

Chapter 62

I t was just a glimpse- to my right amongst the trees- thick, padded, outdoor clothes, a man’s figure, tall.  I panicked and looked away, heading quickly in the opposite direction towards the tent. I wanted to run, but it would be too obvious.

“Hey!”

I kept walking.

“HEY!”

I halted, almost froze, and looked back as he got closer and stepped into the trail that my footsteps had broken. Footsteps that led back to the tent. I glanced down the glaring whiteness of the hill, and up it, then back at his sheening waterproof black trousers, high leather boots, and navy-blue Helly Hanson jacket. He had wide, brawny shoulders that swaggered a little. A thick neck and a black bushy beard flowing out of his strong chin. He looked like an artic expeditioner. His face was young, and handsome- about mid or late twenties- and now he was ten yards away. All six foot three of him.

“Some weather, eh!” he boomed in a deep southern English accent I guessed was from Bristol. His hands went into his jacket pockets as he stopped before me. His legs planted wide, his shoulders drew back, “What are you doing out here?” He asked.

I stared back at the brown eyes under the thermal beanie hat. “Just out for a walk,” I tried to sound convincing. “You?”

“I’m camping.” He said.

His eyes searched into me inquisitively. I dug my nails into my palms. “In this?” I asked, keeping my back to my trail and spreading my arms to the woods. The thick snow fell down between us.

“Yeah, why not?” He gave a low, grunting chuckle. Then he nodded firmly, in the direction of the tent. “Is that smoke not yours?”

“What smoke?”

“I was walking along the side of the loch back there, and I saw smoke. Just guessed it was yours?”

A few snowflakes landed on his hat, then melted into it. There was a moment of awkward silence.

He already knows it is, I thought.

And he only had to see the footprints anyway.

I scrutinized his face. His thin nose, thick lips, the bare cheeks above his beard flushed with exercise. His eyes were lively, clever, but looked kind enough. And I was past caring. I was tired of hiding. They would find us sooner or later anyway.

“Yeah. I am actually camping too.” I conceded. I felt myself breathing out my resistance and fear, “With my friend over there. I just wasn’t sure if you were