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

“I know. We were too rushed. How much we got left?”

“Eighty quid.”

“That should be enough for a couple decent ones.”

“Yeah, probably. But there won’t be much left after that for food. We could do with a stove as well, it’s gonna be a struggle to cook in weather like this.”

“I know.”

A cold shiver ran through me. “So, who’s going?” I said. “You, or me, or both of us? It was Eight-twenty each for those single tickets.”

“I’ll go. It’ll save the extra fare. If you want to wait here I’ll come back properly prepared this time. I’m sorry. I fucked up.”

“Don’t be stupid. I’m here too. You didn’t force me to come.”

“I know, but I should have known better. All my rough living’s been done in south England, and in nothing like this. I’ve never been in a cold like this before.”

“We’ll be fine, as soon as we get the few extra things we need.”

Just then a shooting star trailed across the sky. I made a little wish. Then I pulled my head under the sleeping bag and blew in my warm breath.

I rolled over. While Harry shuffled around, I tried stuffing my sleeping bag with my hoody and jacket. It didn’t work either. We were on our own separate wars against the cold. Before long, everything was glistening like diamonds- the stone walls, the floor, even the sleeping bag. Frost.

“It must be at least minus five.” Harry said.

I thrashed about, it was piercing from all angles. I gave up and got out the sleeping bag and braved the air that tried to seize me.

“Hey, where you goin?”

“For a run.”

I pushed my feet into my shoes and fumbled my way down the stairs and out the door. As soon as I was out of the building, I took off. I raced up the road and back, then up the road and back again. I bounced on my toes, trying not to slip on the tarmac.

Harry joined me. We stood on the hard grass and did star jumps, clapping our hands together as we brought them back in. We laughed at how ridiculous we were.

My heart was thumping with the exercise. Eventually, I felt my toes again. I put my hands on my hips and watched as Harry took a turn at running. He hopped from one foot to the other, like he was about to do the long jump. He pulled a daft face and I burst out laughing.

Everything was sparkling under the open moonlight- the grass, the road, and the trees. My breath floated in the air and I half expected it to freeze into crystalline like the grass had done.

When I regained my breath I went for a last run, then burst back in through the open door and up the stairs, into my sleeping bag.

The warmth hardly lasted twenty minutes.

“It’s not funny anymore, how can it be so cold?” Harry said half an hour later, “Come on, morning!”

I rubbed my numb nose. I beat my chest and felt the soft padding off two shirts, a hoody and a jacket beneath my fist. “How did they do it?” I said.

“Who?”

“The ancestors, how did they survive temperatures as brutal as these? This is a stone shack with just a fireplace for warmth, probably nineteenth century or something, but before then they wouldn’t have even had that. How did they keep warm? I can’t comprehend it. You cast the average western adult out here and they wouldn’t last three nights, and we’re struggling to last even one. But they did it. For thousands of years, they did it.”

“Yeah, they were better prepared though. And made of stronger stuff. Animal skins too, we’d be extinct if it wasn’t for animal skins. The cattle shared the houses as well,” he said. “Cow farts and hot breath, that was their central heating.”

“Yeah, I know, but surely that would only have given them so much heat. I just don’t know how they managed it. How far we’ve fallen.”

I again rolled under my sleeping bag. Then I changed tactics. I tried to ignore the cold, to tell my brain that I was warm. I had read about Buddhist monks in the Himalayas doing that and surviving minus twenty without a drop in their temperature.

It worked, for five minutes.

Chapter 40

I t was a long time coming but morning eventually arrived. The birds chirped their happiness. There was a distant sound of drilling and every so often a car roared by.

We rolled up the sleeping bags and packed the rucksacks and tried to appease our rumbling tummies with two jam sandwiches each. We bumbled down the stairs and out the door and doubled back on the road to the village, it had been gritted sometime overnight, and our boots crunched the salt with every step.

The frost still glistened but the sun was out low in the blue sky above the tree-covered hills. I guessed it was about half-eight. When we got back to Cannich we read the bus times on the board. Then we went into the shop and spent three fifty on bread, milk and cheese.

We sat on a garden wall next to the bus stop. The food was so good. I was really hungry.

Harry was sticking some cheddar between two slices of bread, when he stopped and looked at me, “Will you be okay here, for a few hours?”

“Yeah. Just make sure you come back.” I said.

He smirked, his thin lips now almost fully healed and blending into the paleness of his face. Only a few small scabs on his cheek remained of our escape. “Of course I will. Be here at two, at the very latest.” He finished his sandwich, then went into his bag and took out a cheap-looking, blue plastic watch. “Two. Okay?”