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

He shook his head.

We sat in silence for a while, trying to compose ourselves. I uncurled my hoody and looked at the blood stained through it. I adjusted it and tied it back on.

Harry looked lost in thought. I tried to think where we could go. I really didn’t know.

“The police helicopters could be out soon.”

“No, they won’t.” I said. “Don’t be so paranoid.”

“I’m not being paranoid. We’re marked now, police will have been informed. Maybe even news teams, they’ll find anyone in a city in hours.” He paused. “Maybe we could go to Scotland?”

I looked at him and wondered if he believed that it was some sort of divine coincidence that we both happened to be from there, the only Scots in the whole ward.

“Where about’s?”

“Well, I have a mate in Glasgow that could lend me some money, and there’s this place I used to go on school trips to when I was little. Glen Affric. It’s not that far from Inverness. It’s a nature reserve. Hardly any people. We’ll be safe.”

I gazed out through the gap in the bushes at the sheep fields and the flat land. You weren’t allowed wild camping in England. The laws protected all the rich people with their land. So inevitably we’d get found and pulled up if we stayed here. And he was probably right, we wouldn’t be safe in any city. The government follows you enough when you’re not even suspicious. Everyone was on the system, in a job, in a house, in a town.

“What about the Lake District or something?”

He shook his head. “Nah, we’re better up north. It’s just wilder, less people, they’ll never find us.”

“What will we eat? What we gonna live on?”

“The land. I know some stuff.”

“You can’t do that anymore.” I said sharply. “They’ve raped it too much. And it’s winter.”

“You got a better idea?”

“No.”

“Well, then the Highlands it is.”

I didn’t say anything else. I fell back and lay flat on the wet leaves of the bank.

I watched the clouds roll through the grey sky. I could feel the pain in my legs receding slowly. Very slowly. My thoughts returned to the hospital, and to Nina.

“You think she’s dead?” I said.

“Yeah, she’s dead. No doubt about it.”

If truth be told, she was in the back of my mind the whole time I had been running. And now, sitting in the silence, it all came flooding back. How a girl in such a vegetated, forlorn state, who was so thin and fragile-looking, had managed to break free, I didn’t know. She had broke through what I thought was unbreakable glass, then there was the five iron bars, and then squeezing and jumping through the window itself. It was quite a drop, but it was possible to survive it. Maybe she had survived. In the unlikely event she hadn’t broken her legs, then she was away too.

“Pretty impressive how she fit through those bars, eh?” Harry said.

“I know…, Surely they’ll be some sort of investigation now?”

“No. That’s the third suicide since I’ve been there. Nothing will happen.”

I turned my head slightly and looked at him. “You’re joking, nothing will happen?!”

“Nope.”

“Well, we should do something then.” I sat up. “We’ll report them to the care commission. Tell the papers. I’ll go to London and tell Mrs. Mack.”

“There’s nothing can be done. I tried it already. Papers wouldn’t listen and the care commission did nothing. Some staff even contacted it when they left. Nothing gets done.”

“The care commission didn’t listen?”

“No, and why would they? It’s the cuts of their bosses that are causing most of it. Our chance went when that inspector passed through the door.”

I thought about Mack. Even if I did risk everything to find her and tell her, what could she do? She hadn’t been able to get me off. The justice system protected these people. She had talked about these things enough and not being able to change them, “having her hands tied behind her back.” No, she wouldn’t be able to help.

We lay in silence as the sun kept sinking down. It gradually got darker, and the trees and the land and everything around us turned into black shapes and shadows.

PART 2

Chapter 26

O ur cuts stopped bleeding, the blood dried and crusted over, and our thirst had been partially quenched by the river. We watched the moon came up.  I put on my wet, blood-stained jumper and ripped jeans and we tiptoed out of our hiding place under the shadow of darkness. We seemed to be miles from anywhere. The lonely landscape was a series of black figures. But in the distance, we spotted what we had been looking for- the orange glare of a single cottage, its garden leading off to a plantation forest for the perfect ambush point.

As we neared it, we made out the lights shining from the windows with their curtains closed. We crept closer, constantly surveying the surrounding area for any sign of movement. A long winding pot-holed road ran up to its driveway, in which sat a lone blue jeep.

We turned and walked in the direction heading away from the house, then turned and headed back through the woods towards the garden. The trees were thick and clustered. Twigs snapped on our every footstep and our outstretched arms fumbled at the branches in our faces. We kept low and as we got within seeing distance of the house, we started crawling along the forest floor. We reached the fence that separated the woods from the garden, and we lay down and watched.

We waited for about half an hour. No movement came from any of the windows. The masses of stars shone brightly in the jet-black sky, and the house waited silently under