How I Live Now Page 9

  Then he gave her one last squeeze and shoved a heavy package into my hands and before I had a chance to see what it was he was running back in the direction we came.

  Come on Piper, I said, let's keep going while it's still dark and we can find someplace to hide and then we'll rest when it gets light.

  And as we walked along and the noises of guns got to sound like little pops I told her about knowing where Isaac and Edmond were staying and having a map and talking to Baz about my plan and pumping every soldier in the barn for clues on how to survive in the wild. Piper seemed pretty substantially cheered up by all this surprising information and I said Once the sun starts to come up we'll look for a place to bivouac and we both burst out laughing at my use of technical Boy Scout terminology and I said Honestly! That's what it's called.

  Now here's a good time to explain that footpaths are god's gift to people trying to travel long distances without using roads. I guess in America we'd have to crash a path through the woods but here it was all nice and civilized and half the time they were even marked with little arrows leading to gates to climb over and even when we left the farm and moved much more into open ground without fences you could still see indications of paths.

  We felt like we were about a thousand miles from any other human being and even though it had been a cold night, by about 8:30 a.m. when I thought it was time to find someplace to hide we'd been walking for hours and the sun was up and we were starting to feel warmed through.

  The path we followed was fenced in on one side by stone walls covered in blackberries and other thorny bushes and there were smallish trees just beyond and though most of the undergrowth wasn't higher than a few feet, it got pretty dense pretty quickly which kept us from straying off into it.

  We were completely clueless about how safe we'd be walking around out here. One of the soldiers I'd talked to said there were hundreds of people heading into the countryside away from the action in order to try to disappear and wait out the trouble which suggested it would be like walking around in a shopping mall. On the other hand I got the feeling that there were more than enough footpaths in England and the average refugee wouldn't be interested in socializing. The soldier's theory was that most of the people we were likely to meet would be English people but he also said That doesn't mean they won't shoot you on sight.

  I couldn't really believe that a whole bunch of enemy soldiers were going to spend their spare time crashing around in the undergrowth looking for stray people to shoot but it still seemed like a good idea to keep a low profile for as long as possible or at least while you were pretty sure the world had lost its mind.

  As the sun got hotter we decided to stop and rest and we found a nice dry piece of ground about fifty feet off the path that was pretty much out of sight if you were sitting or lying down which is what we felt like doing anyway.

  The package that Baz gave me started out heavy and was getting heavier by the minute and I was glad to put it down and figure out how to untie the covering and find out whether it was worth lugging around. Inside were all the things we probably should have thought of taking along with us and hadn't, like a plastic bottle full of water and some flat bread and a pretty big piece of hard cheese, some salami, matches, a big folded-up lightweight plastic sheet, a nylon rope, a little metal bowl. And a gun. I wrapped the matches and the gun back up in the bag for emergencies and added the rest of the food and other things to our blankets and supplies, namely the olives and strawberry jam, which was about the extent of it. To cheer us up on our first day on the road I made jam sandwiches for breakfast and they tasted hopeful.

  We drank some of the water and with the sun getting hot we lay down in the grass for a rest and if we hadn't been on the run going god knows where we would have been pretty happy. After sleeping for a while, we collected blackberries and ate them and then because it was so incredibly silent all around us except for the birds and bugs we decided to set off again in the light of day because although it's a great theory to travel by night, it's a lot easier said than done if you have no idea where you're going and there's no moon. Trying to follow the path and watch the compass all at the same time was proving difficult enough in broad daylight since the path headed slightly southeast and we wanted to go NNE but I figured we'd just have to try to swing up to the north when we got a chance.

  One thing there was no shortage of was blackberries, and for lack of anything else we ate handfuls of them, which made your stomach feel pretty bad but they tasted good so we didn't care.

  We walked for four or five hours and as the sun got lower we started looking for a place to spend the night and once we thought we saw a house but it was almost burned to the ground with only one wall standing so we gave it a wide berth. The temperature dropped fairly quickly now that it was September and although it wasn't exactly cold, we weren't exactly SAS troops either and I didn't think we should be stuck out without shelter so we stopped while there was still a little light and managed to tie the rope from a tree to a stick we jammed as deep as possible into the ground like a peg, and hung the plastic over it and weighed the edges down with stones. It collapsed about a hundred and fifty times before we managed to get it strong enough to hold when we crawled in with our blankets, and it was uncomfortable, but we were used to lying on the ground and also pretty exhausted and managed to go to sleep.

  It rained a little during the night but we stayed mostly dry and some of the rain ran down into a curled-up corner of our tent, and we slurped it straight out of the plastic in the morning to save the water in the bottle and because we were so thirsty. We'd both been bitten by something or other in the night and it didn't improve my mood to have a face covered in itching welts and wild hair and no toothbrush and also to feel so grubby from not having a bath in ages. I was glad I was too thin to get my period because that would have pushed me over the edge.

  We packed up all our stuff and this time I made it into two bundles. I carried the big one and Piper took the small one and with the bundles slung crossways on our backs it wasn't as bad as you might think and anyway we weren't exactly pressed for time.

  We walked and walked and walked and the path swung up to head more north than south which was a big relief, and when it started to rain again we stopped to rest and tried to get all our stuff and us under the plastic sheet and collect a little rainwater in the bowl at the same time.

  Piper and I had been together for so long now that we barely talked any more than we had to. We were tired and hungry and lost and our feet hurt and there didn't seem a whole lot to say and I was very glad she wasn't the type of kid to ask stuff like Are we there yet? because There Yet wasn't a notion I felt up to addressing at the moment.

  So we rested. Then we walked some more. Past another burned house. Past a child's shoe abandoned on the path. We kept walking. Then we rested. And walked. We didn't see anybody but there were signs they'd been there. Discarded clothing. Paper. A dead cat. We ate some of the food and drank some of the water and only occasionally wondered what the hell we thought we were going to find at the end of the road.

  We could have kept going for another hour or two but around midafternoon we saw something that looked like a falling-down hut and it was a little way off the path and hadn't been burned so we climbed over the wall and crashed our way through the tangled thorns and grass until we got to it and it was big enough to lie down in and fairly dry inside though it smelled like rotten wood. We felt as relieved as if we'd suddenly come across a five-star hotel and before the rain started up again we collected armfuls of long grass to make a nest that was nearly soft enough to rest on comfortably and then I opened up our two backpacks and laid the blankets out and it was amazingly cozy and actually pretty civilized if you didn't count the spiders.

  Piper was out picking flowers to put in our new home like we were going to stay there for years and suddenly she shouted Daisy! and my heart stopped and I shot over to where her voice was coming from and she said Look! And when I looked I didn
't see anything but a shrubby tree and papery acorns underneath it and she said Hazelnuts!

  It was lucky Piper was my faithful companion just then because I wouldn't have recognized a hazelnut if it tapped me on the shoulder and asked me how to get to Carnegie Hall but we collected a shirtful of them and then smashed them open on a rock and ate as many as we could without throwing up and I found myself wondering why hazelnuts weren't everyone's idea of five-star cuisine.

  When we'd eaten about a thousand of them we collected as many more as we could and cracked them open and put them in with the rest of our provisions and had a few olives and some bread and then blackberries for dessert.

  Then with nothing else to do except notice how hungry and thirsty we were and how much our blisters hurt we went to sleep and only woke up when the world started crashing with thunder that sounded about six inches above our heads but amazingly our little hut turned out to be watertight enough so that if you stayed away from the left side and stuffed the plastic in a certain way through a hole in the roof you didn't get soaked and could go back to sleep. Also the rain seemed to discourage the bugs which was an unexpected plus.

  In the middle of the rainstorm I remembered our bowl and reached out to get it, filtered off the stuff that was swimming on the top and drank the water down. Then I put it out again and in only about ten minutes it was full and I woke Piper and told her to drink it while we had it. After about four bowlfuls of water each we both felt a lot better except for stomach cramps I guess from the cold water or maybe the nuts and I filled the water bottle and went back to sleep.

  When we woke up again it was still raining and there didn't seem any point in moving from our happy home until we had to. It seemed like an incredibly bad idea to get our few clothes and blankets wet given that we didn't have any others.

  Piper was looking dreamy and seemed happy enough lying under the blankets singing to herself and I decided I was desperate to get clean so I used the bowlful of cold water and the rain to try to have some kind of bath which wasn't very effective especially with no soap. Then I came back in and got dressed and huddled up to Piper to get warm again and for a while we played an incredibly convoluted word game called Mental Jotto that involved trying to remember how many letters of all different words were in the word the other person was thinking of and it was exactly complicated enough to pass the time.

  She had just guessed Skate which was right and now it was my turn to guess but after a minute or two of trying Bacon, Cable, Deary there was no answer so I said Piper? but she was sound asleep. I lay there for a while listening to Edmond's voice in my head and it was calm and familiar and a little bit wistful and I started to relax and forget about everything but him and that was another day gone.

  24

  Now here's a really amazing fact: My eighth-grade math teacher actually turned out to be right about one thing, namely that someday I was going to need to know the answer to the question where X = Piper and Daisy and Y = three miles an hour and Z = carrying a twelve-pound load and N = a north-northeasterly direction and 4D = four days.

  So now go figure how much closer to Kingly did X(Y + Z) + N 3 4D make us?

  Our footpath crossed over four single-track paved roads but except for a cow grazing by one of the roads we hadn't seen another creature bigger than a hedgehog. There was the occasional barn and once a row of little houses but they looked deserted and we didn't want to risk finding out for sure.

  The path seemed to switch directions constantly but overall we were now headed more or less in the right direction. Though for some reason I kept remembering a show I saw on TV about navigation in whaling ships and how the tiniest error could mean you missed the island you were aiming at by five hundred miles.

  At one crossing we could actually see a road sign that said Strup1/4 mile and East Strup1/2 mile. I was so excited at getting a bearing that my hands were shaking almost too much to open the map, but when I did look more or less where I thought we should be there was no sign of anything like Strup and Piper said There might just be a couple of houses so it's not worth putting on the map.

  For some stupid reason I started to cry then and I felt completely choked with despair and worthlessness and I couldn't believe I was trying to lead Piper miles across England to find something the size of a microbe on a map when in my real life I couldn't even find a clean pair of underpants in a chest of drawers. But unfortunately no one else jumped up and volunteered to take over and the way Piper just stood there holding my hand and waiting for me to stop crying made me buck up and start walking again.

  After the hazelnuts we found an apple tree and more blackberries but the chances of coming across a nice steak sandwich seemed remote and our food resources, which had started out running low, were now within a stone's throw of the bottom of the bucket. At least it was raining on and off so we didn't run out of water but it made walking slippery, and wet sneakers rubbing on blisters isn't my favorite feeling so that was about the extent of our good luck.

  We stopped for lunch that day around eleven in the morning and couldn't even spread out a blanket to make an event of it due to the ground being wet so we had to perch on rocks, when either of us would have given anything to stretch out someplace warm and dry, and I was unwrapping our last piece of cheese to eat with a few olives and the end of our nuts when Piper said Daisy? And when I looked at her she said What's that noise?

  And I listened and listened but didn't hear anything at all. But she had that look on her face that I knew from Isaac and Edmond and I knew she was hearing something and I just hoped to god it wasn't something horrible when her face suddenly burst into a thousand-watt smile and she said It's the river! I'm sure it's the river!

  And we left all our stuff and ran down the path and sure enough about a hundred yards farther down it came to the river and when we looked at the map we were pretty sure it was OUR river and if we could just manage to follow it without getting too waylaid it would take us more or less exactly where we wanted to be.

  Then we did a little dance and whooped and laughed and hugged each other and ran back to our supplies and packed them all up again and set off feeling light-footed instead of just light-headed for the first time in days and we walked till sundown and then camped near the river.

  It wasn't particularly warm but we got undressed and dipped ourselves in the water to wash anyway and for the first time I noticed how skinny Piper was which once upon a time I would have thought was a good thing and now I thought was just what happens when you're nine years old and don't have enough food to grow properly.

  As the freezing water flowed around us we rubbed the dirt off our bodies and without dirt both of us looked white as ghosts with farmer's tans on our face and neck and arms. Against the whiteness you could see every mark standing out in bright red hieroglyphics telling the story of our journey. Both of us had feet covered in raw and half-healed blisters and raised scratches on our arms and legs from being too tired to hold back thornbushes that got in our way and insect bites we'd scratched till they bled and nettle rash pretty much all over and I had a wide scrape on one knee that was weeping pus and made me limp because it hurt so much to bend it. Aside from that we were both covered in bruises from sleeping on stones and being too exhausted to get up and rearrange things once we were lying down.

  We got out of the water shivering like crazy but more or less clean and tried not to look at each other because it was too depressing to acknowledge what we looked like and we stood for a little while in the cold evening wind to dry off because it had become kind of a fanatic compulsion to keep our blankets dry.

  So much for the healthy country life.

  The next day we set off again and the path followed the river and after half a day of walking, the river forked off and checking the map we knew EXACTLY WHERE WE WERE for the first time since leaving Reston Bridge.

  And that was the second time I cried and Piper laughed and told me to stop wasting water, but I couldn't because it was for relief
and disbelief in equal amounts and although knowing where we were told us fairly clearly that we hadn't made nearly as good progress as I thought we had, at least we were going in the right direction and knew where we had to go next.

  The map showed we had twenty miles to go, and once when I went on a Five Boroughs Sponsored March against poverty or something, I walked twenty-two miles in one day and I wasn't eating a lot more that day than this one.

  That night I slipped into the place in my head where I could talk to Edmond and for once I had good news.

  25

  Following the river changed our lives instantly for the better. We knew roughly where we were headed and I didn't have to spend hours juggling the compass and the map and living in a panicky limbo wondering if somehow we'd gotten turned around and were heading to Scotland or Spain by mistake.

  Also knowing how far we had left to go helped with figuring out how much food we could eat and though we were no better off than before, at least we didn't have to worry about making half a jar of strawberry jam and a couple of inches of sausage last another month.

  Piper kept finding field mushrooms and saying they were perfectly safe to eat and up until now I thought it was a bad idea in case she was wrong and we got poisoned but she seemed so sure and there were so many and I was starting to think if we didn't have something different to eat we might die of despair even before we died of hunger so we decided to cook our first meal of mushrooms and salami and here's how we did it.

  First we set up our so-called tent and waited until sundown so no one would see the smoke, then we collected some dried dead weeds and made a pile of them and next to it a pile of twigs and little bits of branches that were completely dead and dry, then we got some stones from the riverbank and made a circle and saved a few stones that we could balance our little metal bowl on, then we lit the dry weeds with one of our matches and waited till they caught and then added twigs slowly, and although it took two tries and four matches and the twigs weren't as dry as they should have been, we had a pretty nice fire going after about twenty minutes.