Page 96 of Runner 13
‘I hate her for being there when I wasn’t. I hate her for trying to get justice – even if she failed – while I stayed quiet. But, Pete, there’s someone out there with a gun. My dad is almost dead because of him. If we don’t do everything in our power to try and stop him, we’re going to regret it.’
He nods. ‘Stella, you said it. Your father is almost dead. But he’s not yet. He’s in there, recovering. He needs youright now. There’s nothing we can do until morning. Go and be with him. Maybe he will wake up again and give you a clue about where they are.’
I search his face. His eyes. I know it’s breaking his heart to be still, to not be out there searching. But he’s also making sense. We have to wait.
And in the morning the chase will be on.
42
Adrienne
The first rays of sun catch me by surprise. I sense the warmth first, like steam off a hot bath. Gradually, more shapes emerge on the horizon, into the lavender-hued morning. Soon I’m able to turn my head torch off. We’ve steadily climbed through the night, and I can see that not too far to our left is a steep drop down to a valley floor. It makes my stomach turn to think we’ve been running next to that in the dark without realizing. If one of us had drifted from our bearing, we could have had a nasty fall.
Never mind worrying about a man coming after me. I have to worry about not hurting myself.
We will be running down into the valley soon, and I only hope that the path is not too difficult. Mariam runs to the edge of the cliff, stopping for a moment to survey the scene.
‘Look,’ she says, her voice as hoarse as mine feels.
Once again, the desert has some surprises for us. We can see two runners up ahead, down on the valley floor. The distance is likely miles, but from up here they look close. Catchable.
We’re well over halfway now. I suppose soon the remaining elite runners will begin to converge.
‘We can get there,’ says Mariam, echoing my thoughts.‘And what’s that?’ She squints, trying to compare the topography in front of us to the map in her hand. Buildings – or the ruins of them anyway, stone structures with roofs crumbling and cracked. An abandoned village? ‘We pass quite close to these,’ Mariam says, tracing her finger on the map.
I nod. ‘Ready?’
She hesitates, looking out into the distance. There’s something else there. Far on the horizon. Just a smudge. A place where the line between earth and sky seems slightly blurry, like the artist has rubbed a thumb against the canvas, smearing it. It seems to vibrate, but that could be my vision.
Eventually, she continues jogging. What else can we do? We can only keep moving.
A little further and we find the path down into the valley. It starts with switchbacks, easing our way down the steep cliff. But as the path turns to smooth sand, I try something different. I take a direct line, straight down, almost bouncing off it like a trampoline. My feet slip and slide – but before I fall, I take a leap on to the next patch, gravity working in my favour. The faster I go, the less likely I am to fall – but the harder a potential fall would be. Still, I trust in my feet, throwing my arms out for balance.
I don’t dare glance back, but I sense Mariam has followed me. Good, because if she hadn’t, I would have put a lot of distance between us. This is much quicker than the more cautious way down. My legs move faster than my conscious mind can process. So I don’t try to process. I just let it happen.
I reach the bottom of the valley floor unscathed andI double-check the bearing – we’ve come out at the right place. If it was a different sort of race – and we hadn’t already run almost a hundred miles – I’d have turned round and high-fived Mariam. But we’re already too broken for that. All our energy is channelled towards staying on our feet.
At least it was.
I hear a sound that resonates through me, stinging me as if I’ve been whipped. A thud, followed by a strangled cry and a sickening crack. At first, selfishly, unbelievably, I feel a spike of gratitude so sharp it almost makes me throw up: that it isn’t me, that my limbs are all intact, that I’m still on my feet. Are they? I force myself to do a physical check to be sure. Once, in the middle of the South Downs 100 in the pouring rain, I’d fallen on my face, sliding in the mud, but in my mind I was still running. It took a few seconds for my brain to catch up with the reality. The mud had cushioned the fall, so I hadn’t injured anything too badly – only broken my finger it turned out – and I had continued the race. According to the spectators, I’d run into the next checkpoint looking like the creature from the Black Lagoon.
I snap back to the present, spinning round. Mariam is on the ground, her hands wrapped round her ankle, her face screwed up in pain.
‘Oh my God.’ I kneel next to her. ‘What happened?’ I lift her backpack where it’s twisted round her, and I prop her against it like a cushion. She’s trembling. ‘Let me take a look.’
I gently prise her fingers from round her ankle, all the while muttering soothing nonsense phrases. ‘It’s goingto be OK, don’t worry, I’ve got you.’ Banality is better than panic.
Her foot is wrenched at an awkward angle, and her ankle is beginning to swell. Based on the loudness of the crack, I suspect a break. This is bad. ‘OK, Mariam, it looks like you’ve hurt your ankle.’
She mutters something back, which I imagine is the Arabic version of ‘No shit, Sherlock’. She glances over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the offending slope. She must catch the look of guilt on my face, because she shakes her head. ‘I chose that way.’ She winces in pain, hissing through her teeth.
‘I’m activating your emergency beacon, OK?’ I depress the two buttons on her shoulder. A red light starts flashing and I hope it won’t take too long for help to find us.
It strikes me that our race is now over. Just like that. The prize money. The promised answers. Proving anything to Ethan. Proving anything to myself. It’s done.
I wonder if Mariam sees that realization in my expression. ‘You go,’ she says, swiping me away.
‘Enough of that,’ I say, sharply. ‘I’m not leaving you, no matter what you say, so don’t waste energy trying. Now drink this and let me look in your pack. You need painkillers and something to stabilize this ankle.’
