The Long Weekend (6 page)

He swung out off the window ledge, his hands sliding down the cord, falling, slipping almost before he could get a good strong grip on it with his legs swinging free in the air. This was how it felt when he was diving into a pool, his legs cycling the air and his hands above his head in total abandon, laughing, heading for the big splash when he would hit the water, his friends on the diving board watching or larking about in the water waiting for him. Except there was no water below him, and no friends larking about.

He had to slow down, get a better grip on the cord and get his feet up against the wall before he slipped any further. He knew the theory. He had seen people abseiling down sheer cliffs and over the sides of tall buildings on TV – they had made it look so easy. But they usually had the advantage of safety harnesses and years of training and stuff, and Sam hadn't got any of those things. It was just him and the cord of some tatty old bathrobes, and if you considered that then he wasn't doing such a bad job. At least he wasn't afraid of heights because if he was he would be cowering in the corner of the bathroom listening to the man beating the door down instead of being a few minutes away from making good his escape.

He focussed his mind on climbing down the length of the cord and didn't notice the head sticking out of the window, watching him. When he glanced up, he panicked. His hand under hand technique on the cord went out of the window and he started slipping down too fast again. His feet lost their grip on the wall and scrambled madly through empty air, which must have made the cord start swinging to and fro and gather speed. Sam made his legs go still, but he couldn't control the momentum of the cord. It swung him way out and then back towards the wall and Sam couldn't stop it. He screamed as he went slamming into the wall with a sickening crunch.

The breath was knocked out of him and his whole side felt battered and bruised, but somehow he had managed to keep his grip on the cord. He looked up. The man was leering down at him; in his hands he held the cord.

'Hold tight,' he called down. 'This might hurt a bit!'

He swung Sam out again and there was nothing Sam could do about it except scream, and scream he did, as loud and for as long as he could. Surely someone would hear him. Maybe Lloyd would hear his friend in trouble and come rushing down to his rescue? No, Lloyd wasn't coming to his rescue; Lloyd wasn't feeling well. Remember? But why wasn't he feeling well? What was wrong with him? Was
he
getting
his
head smashed in? Crunch. Sam hit the wall again, but this time he'd got his leg out first, which lessened the impact a bit, but still knocked the breath out of him. He had to jump the rest of the way. He knew he did. Don't look down, he told himself, don't look down. Just do it.

But he did look down, and it was still a long way to the bottom. There were paving slabs that ran all the way round the house, which he hadn't noticed before. If he fell on them he'd crack his head open. He had to time it right.

'Ready for some more?' the man asked.

Sam knew it wasn't a question. The cord started swinging him to and fro, gaining momentum for a bigger impact against the wall. The man really didn't like him. He swung him in and out, in and out. The next one, Sam decided, the next one was the one. It would bring him out beyond the paving slabs, so that he landed in the bushes or on the grass.

Okay, Sam, get ready, he whispered to himself. This was it; this was the one. He counted one, two, three in his head and then let go of the cord.

'Aaaaagh!' he screamed, all the way down.

He plummeted, his arms flapping the air uselessly, and tumbled into a bush. He rolled as soon as he hit the bush, but ended up getting more and more entwined in its foliage, falling deeper into its heart. Clothes ripped, scratched, and bleeding, but alive and with no broken bones, he scrambled through the choking density of branches and leaves until he found a way out. But he didn't crawl out into the open, not yet. He lay very, very still and peered through the bush instead, his eyes searching for the bathroom window. He found it. The man was still holding the cord and looking down intently at the bush, scrutinising it. Sam stayed motionless, barely daring to breathe, waiting. Long moments passed until finally the man started pulling the cord up, back into the bathroom. The window closed with a bang. Sam crawled out of the bush, and ran for his life.

He had no more than a couple of minutes to reach the trees, he guessed. It would take the man that long to get downstairs and find the right keys for the front door – plus he wouldn't know which way Sam had gone. The problem was that Sam couldn't work out quite where he was in relation to the front door. He needed to get his bearings right so he didn't get lost, but he had to get away quickly, too. He hazarded a guess that he was somewhere to the west of the front door. He belted across the springy, well-tended lawn, heading east, towards the trees, and then changed his mind and went directly towards the dark safety of the woods just in case the man got out of the house faster than Sam had estimated he would and spotted him.

In his head he saw an image of the man running through the corridor, pelting down the stairs three at a time, with the keys going jingle jangle, the right key ready in his hand to unlock the door. It was enough to spur Sam on, and he put on a mad burst of speed, grimacing at the intense pain in his side, but he didn't let it slow him down. Almost there, almost there, and then he collapsed in a heap behind the first tree. He wriggled round, keeping his head down, and looked back across the lawn. Someone had switched the outside lights on and Sam could see the outline of the whole house clearly.

His room hadn't been on the west side of the house, it was more like at the back. Now he had his bearings, he had to decide what to do next: head round to the front of the house and from there make his way down the drive towards the gate, or head deeper into the woods and find a house or a main road from there. He lay sprawled flat against the wet, muddy ground trying to decide. He knew he was wasting time, but his heart was pounding so loud it wouldn't let his brain work. He had to wait for the pounding to slow down and for his brain to start working or he might end up doing the wrong thing – which might get him caught.

Think,
idiot brain,
think.
What should he do? Where should he go? There were pros and cons to both directions. If he went round the front there was a chance he might get spotted, and also that was probably what the man expected him to do. But if he got to the gate then he was almost at the road and all he had to do was follow it until he could flag down a passing car, or the road might lead to a bigger road, or a village, or something, anything.

The other option of heading into the woods was bound to be safer. No way the man would spot him in this much darkness and he would definitely get away. But he might get lost, lose his bearings, go round and round in circles alone in the dark. But he wouldn't get caught.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. He slithered right up to the edge of the line of trees to get a better look. The man had rounded the side of the house and was heading directly for the patch of ground below the bathroom window. Sam held his breath. Somewhere behind him an owl hooted and Sam ducked down as the man's gaze travelled towards the woods. The owl hooted twice more, went silent and hooted again. It could have been saying,
he's here, he's here,
and although Sam knew that it wasn't, he just wished the owl would shut up because the man kept looking into the trees every time it hooted. It must have got Sam's message because six hoots later the bird fell silent and didn't speak again. The man continued along the back of the house and Sam breathed more easily.

He didn't seem to be in much of a hurry to get there because he walked slowly, which was a bit odd until Sam realised that he probably thought the fall had killed Sam, and dead kids didn't get up and run away. Well, he was in for a surprise then, because this kid
had
run away.

But what about Lloyd? What about Lloyd, Sam thought angrily. He had abandoned Sam first, and anyway, Sam wasn't abandoning him. He was going to get help.

At the bushes the man halted and with a sudden movement, which Sam hadn't been expecting at all, he swung the stick he had been carrying at his side into the bushes. Sam winced involuntarily and covered his face with his hands as the man lifted the hefty stick over his head and brought it crashing down on the bushes again, and again. He gave them a good thrashing, beating and tearing them aside, searching. He threw the stick aside and got down on his hands and knees to look under the canopy of branches and leaves.

Sam didn't need to watch any more. He had to get away. He wriggled backwards ever so slowly, flat on his stomach, and didn't stand up until he was deep inside the enveloping darkness of the woodland.

Inside the heart of silent darkness nothing stirred. Sam crouched in the hollow of a tree, waiting, thinking. He had expected the man to come into the woods after him, but he hadn't yet, and Sam wondered why. Maybe he was waiting at the edge of the woods for him to come out because he knew it was only a matter of time before Sam came out screaming when the dark woods got to him. Most kids were scared of being by themselves in dark, lonely woods, and Sam was no different. Or maybe the man was creeping through the woods looking for him and Sam just couldn't hear him because he was an expert at creeping. There were people, real people who could do that, and not just characters in books like
Lord of the Rings
where Aragorn could travel through woods and forests and never make a sound, never leave a footprint. Aragorn could track people, hobbits, orcs, basically anything that moved, but somehow Sam didn't think that this man could do any of those things because if he could, he'd have been here by now.

Sam tried hard not to look at the marks he had left on the ground. His backwards belly wriggle had made a little furrow that extended from the edge of the woods almost to where Sam was hunkered down. You didn't need to be an expert tracker to follow those tracks. He might as well have got up and yelled, 'Here I am! Come and get me.'

Maybe the man was afraid of the dark woods and that's why he hadn't followed Sam in, but that seemed an unlikely explanation even to Sam. Grown-ups weren't afraid of the dark, and neither was Sam, usually. This was different. This was a different kind of darkness.

He should get going before it got too late. He checked his watch; it was just after one, which meant it was highly unlikely he'd be able to flag down a passing car, or bump into someone walking their dog. Who'd walk their dog at one o'clock in the morning? Only a nutter, and Sam had had enough of nutters. The thing was he still had to get out of the woods.

Was it safe to move now, or should he wait a bit longer? The man could be hiding behind one of the trees waiting for Sam to make a move, and then Sam would really be stuffed, but on the other hand if he lay there for much longer he'd lose his advantage. The trouble was Sam couldn't get up, even though the ground beneath him was cold and damp and his toes had gone numb, even though it was pitch black all around, even though the man was nowhere in sight. He just couldn't get up.

He knew he couldn't stay there; he had to get moving. But he was scared, even more scared than he had been in the house, which didn't make any sense to him. He wasn't trapped in a locked room any more. He was free. He had escaped. Yes, him, Sam Parker, not exactly famous for his daring deeds or physical prowess, had escaped! So why was he stuck now? Woods were just trees, a collection of trees, and it was dark because the sun was round the other side of the world. In fact he should feel grateful for the dark because it meant it would be a lot harder for the man to find him.

Logic wasn't working for Sam; he was still afraid. He knew what he had to do. He had to pretend he wasn't Sam any more. He had to be somebody else. Someone who wasn't afraid of anything. He wasn't very good at acting and he'd never had a leading part in a school play yet, but this wasn't like acting, and it wasn't a school play. He had to think of a character he'd like to be and then pretend he was him. Someone clever, and fearless. He chose someone.

Sam looked back towards the direction in which the house lay one last time. Time to get the hell out of there. Okay, so if the house was that way, then it stood to reason that out of the woods had to be the other way. The next tree along wasn't too far off: four or five long strides at the most. Sam took a deep breath and turned and ran for it. Halfway there he thought he heard something behind him, something which sounded like heavy footsteps following, and he began to turn his head, a scream rising in his throat, the blood pounding in his ears. No one there, Sam thought, relieved, and he was almost at the safety of the next tree. Then his foot caught on a protruding tree root and he went down heavily. Tears sprang to his eyes. Idiot, idiot, idiot, he sobbed as he lay sprawled, his face in the wet, muddy ground. This had never happened to Alex Rider, the most fearless teenage secret agent the world had ever known.

Sam got up carefully, wincing at the shooting pain, and wondered whether he'd broken his ankle. He put his weight on it gingerly, testing it out before he attempted to walk on it. There was pain, but it wasn't unbearable, therefore it couldn't be broken. He hobbled towards the tree and pressed his back up against it, its solid weight reassuringly comforting, and waited. There was nothing, not a sound. He glanced back just to make sure, but the coast was clear. He limped across to the next tree and hid behind it. Tree by tree he made his way through the woods, knowing that he was losing time by doing it that way, but he couldn't do it any other way. Each tree-stop added a minute while he got his breath back and could hear again and check that he was still alone. It should have got easier the further away he went from the house, but it didn't, and maybe that was because the trees weren't spaced that far apart and so Sam knew he wasn't actually getting very far very quickly. There had been no sign of the man, though. Sam thought he must have given up on him and gone back to the house. Or that's what he was hoping anyway.

Then the trees stopped suddenly. He had reached the edge of the woods. Sam stood still and looked out. The moon peeped through the thick clouds teasing him with a glimpse of the countryside beyond. He could make out fields and more trees, but no road, no houses, and no people. He would have run across those open fields without stopping, without looking back, but he couldn't. He was trapped. A really high fence stood in the way. How the on earth was he going to get over a fence that high?

He curled his fingers round the cold metal bars, his knuckles glowing ghostly white as he pushed and pulled, hoping they would budge, but they didn't, not one millimetre. Tears of rage at the madman who had designed this fence pricked his eyes and spilled on to his hands still clutching futilely at the metal bars. The bars were wrought iron, rock solid, built to last, built to keep intruders out. He blinked the tears away and looked up. He was pretty good at climbing trees, but he knew he wouldn't be able to climb this fence.

It must have been about twenty feet high with a roll of barbed wire running along the top, so even if he managed to shin up the bars, which was impossible, he'd be cut to shreds trying to get over the top, or end up skewered on the spikes each iron railing was topped with.

He couldn't squeeze out of his nightmare through the bars either. If he were three years old he might have had a chance of getting through, but they were set too close together for an eleven-year-old. He could squeeze his leg through up to his thigh, but that was about it and no use at all.

He couldn't go over the top of the fence. And he couldn't go through it. He turned his attention to the bottom of the fence. Every tenth railing looked to be anchored on a post set deep in the ground with a horizontal bar running about half a foot off the ground linking the whole maddening, terrifyingly solid structure. He'd never be able to squirm through the gap between the bar and the ground – it couldn't have been more than three or four inches wide. He got down on his belly and tested it just in case. No way. Not a chance. He stood up and moved further along to a different section of fencing. It was exactly the same. Whoever had paid for it had got their moneys' worth.

Now what was he supposed to do?

He could have sat down and cried, the old Sam would have, but that's not what the new Sam did. He felt strangely calm, strangely focussed. He didn't feel like him any more, maybe that was why.

The only thing left to do was to follow the fence around the property and hope for a loose bar, or a bigger gap to squeeze through or under. There had to be one. He became aware of his ankle throbbing dully. He hunted around for a decent-sized stick, something he could use as a weapon as well as to help support his dodgy ankle. When he found one he began his limp-walk along the wrought-iron fence, and ended up running the stick across the bars as he went. The fence seemed to go on for miles without a break, without one single loose bar. On the other side of it were open fields, woods, or overgrown hedges and bushes that you couldn't see a thing through.

Sam had got so used to the quiet that when the owl started hooting again he almost jumped out of his skin. Sam didn't know much about owls, or why they hooted when they did, but now he wished he did. Was it a warning? Did they hoot when they felt threatened, or were they calling to warn other owls of danger?

He used the cover of a tree to scan the area, but it was hard to see anything deep in the woods where all the moonlight did was cast menacing shadows. He had to carry on. Reluctantly, he left the safety of the tree and went back to following the fence. The trees thinned out and when they eventually came to an end Sam knew he was near the gate. He hunched over, making himself small, and crept out towards it. It was closed, as he knew it would be, but he thought he might be able to climb it. As he approached it he knew he had thought wrong. Somehow he hadn't remembered it being as high as that. He gave it a shake, but like the rest of the fence it didn't give an inch. He ran across to the other side of it and squatted in the undergrowth.

There were a couple of options open to him now. He could wait there until someone came, or left, and try and sneak through while the gate was open. The only problem with that was that it was now one thirty and there was no one likely to arrive, or leave for that matter. There was probably a whole army of gardeners and cleaners for a place like this, but they wouldn't be arriving in the dead of night, and tomorrow was Saturday. No one worked on a Saturday.

He looked back across the driveway to where he had just come from, trying to figure out what to do next. He knew he couldn't hide out until Monday morning, and if the rest of the fence was anything like the other side, then there was no way out. There was no grand escape. There was no way he could get help for Lloyd. There was no hope.

And then it got worse.

'Sam!'

It came from the other side of the driveway, still quite far away, but too close. Sam turned and fled into the woods. He stumbled along blindly, trying to put as much distance between him and the voice as possible. Then he stopped. Think, Sam, think of a plan. He had to do something. Something clever. He ripped off the cuff of his shirtsleeve and headed back, only slowing down as he approached the gate. He caught a brief glimpse of the light of a torch as it swept a wide arc through the woods on the other side. He still had a little time left. He flung the cuff through the bars of the gate and ran for the trees. This time he didn't head deep into the woods. He followed the line of trees up the driveway, running as fast as he could. His ankle screamed with pain, but he ignored it. He didn't have much time.

The trees rounded with the bend in the driveway and then petered out within sight of the house. The outside lights were still on and lit up the vast expanse of lawn between Sam and the house. I can do it, Sam said to himself, I can do it. It wasn't that vast; he'd be across it in a flash. The man wouldn't see him because he was still down by the gate. Still Sam hesitated, unsure, glancing back down the drive and up towards the house. Was this being clever? Or was this the most stupidest thing he had done? The thing was he had run out of ideas. He could have gone round and round in circles, but the man knew the land better than him, and Lloyd was trapped inside the house. Sam couldn't get him any help. He was Lloyd's only help. This was his only chance to get Lloyd out. He had to go back for him – plus the man would never guess that Sam would go back to the house.

Then Sam thought of something that hadn't occurred to him at all. What if Lloyd was already dead? Don't be stupid, you moron, he hissed at himself. Lloyd wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead. He was – he was ill, or something, but not dead. Definitely not dead. Sam started shivering. He had to get in the house and get Lloyd out before it was too late. Sam just wished he could stop shaking. He would go as soon as he did. It wasn't cold, or if it was it wasn't the cold that Sam felt. Breathing in deeply wasn't helping either. His hands had gone clammy and cold under their coating of mud. He clutched the stick hard with both hands to steady himself. He was running out of time. It had to be now.

He glanced back down the driveway towards the gate one last time and began the count.

One, two, three, GO!

He ran faster than he had ever run before, but the grass seemed to extend on further and further as he ran, and then he was past it. Within seconds he was across the gravel drive and at the front door. It stood wide open. The shiny, white flash car was still parked outside, but Sam barely glanced at it. The front door beckoned, and, for the second time that night, Sam entered the house.