TWENTY-SEVEN

We walk fast, desperate to break into a run but scared to, in case the noise of our footsteps gives us away. We’re lucky Farah has this part worked out already. She leads us through the car park and across the motorway bridge. There’s an airy, grasping sort of non-space in the air. The night sky feels like falling. It’s worse at night, Jonah said. He was right. I glance over the side and catch a glimpse of the traffic in the ordinary world, cutting in and out of my vision like faulty wiring.

“You killed Jonah?” Chiu asks, breathless, trotting to keep up.

“No,” I say.

Chiu looks panicked. “But the bikes? He’ll come?”

“The bikes aren’t a problem now,” I say.

Chiu casts Farah a questioning look and I see the realization dawn on him. The thought of it swims sickly in my mind. I killed a man. I killed Tongue.

“Down here,” Farah says.

We follow the ramp down on to the M25. I keep my eyes fixed on the hard shoulder, knowing that if I let myself see the traffic, I might not be able to unsee it this time and I don’t have the luxury of freaking out right now.

The road gleams in the night, the weight of the traffic in the ordinary world presses against us. I keep seeing Tongue’s eyes, wide and fearful.

“This one,” Farah says. “Barnet, A1081.”

“Are you sure?” Chiu says.

“It’ll take us south, towards London.”

“What if he comes after us on foot?”

“We’ll get off the main road as soon as we can,” Farah says. “We’ll be into the housing estates before morning. He can’t search that many roads without transport.”

We drop down, leaving the M25 behind us. The four-lane junction peels away and we’re left with a single-lane road, grass verges and a thick line of gorse bushes on either side. The thought of the housing estates and hundreds of side roads to get lost in draws us on, but right now there’s only this road. This road and fields either side and an impenetrable line of spiny gorse corralling us to this one and only route. I’d hoped we’d be able to get into a field or something and be hidden by bushes until we’re into the suburbs. But there’s no way.

Keep moving.

We pound down the tarmac without speaking. We know we’re too exposed, visible for the entire stretch of road until it curves ahead of us half a mile away; visible from the motorway that stretches over our heads. If Jonah’s awake already, he has a fifty-fifty chance of picking the right direction on the M25. But our odds are worse than that because it wouldn’t take much for him to guess that we’d take the most direct route towards London. We told him we were going there after all.

He’ll sniff you out.

“We should have doubled back,” Chiu says. “Thrown him off the scent.”

“We’re going this way,” Farah answers. Resolute.

We scan the verge, looking for a break in the gorse bushes and a way off the road. We pass a caravan park. I almost suggest finding a caravan and hiding out for the night, but I know it’s better to put some distance between us and Jonah. Even I don’t fancy the idea of cowering in an abandoned caravan while he prowls around outside.

He’ll sniff you out.

“Maybe he won’t bother,” Chiu says. “Without the bikes, maybe we’re not worth it.”

“Only if we get far enough away,” I say.

“I shouldn’t have told him about the machine,” Chiu says. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Farah says. “We didn’t tell him anything. Not really.” She glances at me. “Besides, I don’t think it’s the machine he wants.”

Tiredness starts to override our adrenaline and our steps start to come more slowly. It feels as if we’re not getting anywhere, like dreams where the distance grows as quickly as you cover it. We’re spent. Chiu has started limping. We need to stop, but we know we can’t. Not on the road. We push ourselves onwards. I take Chiu’s arm and he leans his weight into me. He won’t make it much further.

All the while, the night enfolds us. It presses against us. We can’t be out here for long. It’ll drive us mad. I can feel the fear needling at me, picking me apart.

A slight thinning in the gorse off on the right catches my eye.

“Wait here,” I say.

I clamber awkwardly up the verge, slipping, nearly face-planting in the long, slick grass. I pick my way into the line of bushes. Thick spikes catch on my T-shirt and I stumble and feel something snag and tear at my calf. I spot a thinner patch I can push through and get further up the slope. For the first time I can see over the brow to where the land drops away.

“What is it?” Farah calls, noticing that I’ve fallen still.

“It’s a golf course!” I call down, a laugh bubbling up inside me. “Come on, we can get through.”

The undulating outline of the fairway falls away from us and the oval greens cluster further off. On the far side, I can just see the shifting reflections of a small lake. Farah and Chiu scramble excitedly up the verge, Farah grabbing Chiu’s hand and hauling him after her. I duck down and force my way into the hedge, twisting and manoeuvring myself to escape the clinging branches. When I finally break through, I turn and find Farah right behind me. She’s snarled up and I have to carefully unpick a barbed creeper from her hair. I pull her through the last few branches and we stand and gaze in wonder at the expanse of open green stretching away towards a dense treeline.

We’re smiling. We’re kidding ourselves, because we’re still easy pickings for Jonah, but it feels like a win to be off the road, and the neatly sculpted slopes of the golf course look so silly in this place.

We head off at a diagonal. We hike, half run, down the steep slope, crossing between thick, rough and perfectly tended green, skirting a large sand trap. The prospect of disappearing into the treeline spurs us on, but it’s still heavy going. Our breath rasps in our throats and breaks our words into ragged gasps.

“My dad plays golf,” Chiu says. “I’ll have to … tell him about this place…”

“I’ll give you a game … when we’re back,” I gasp.

“Do you play?” Chiu asks.

“I don’t know … I never tried.”

Chiu and Farah laugh. It’s not that funny, but then … somehow it is. We can’t stop ourselves. The euphoria of being off the road takes over.

By the time we reach the line of trees, my head is throbbing and my leg aches from top to bottom. Bacteria might not exist in this world but blisters do. Lactic acid, cardiovascular distress, pain. My calf is a wall of blinding agony. We drop heavily to the ground and I pull up my trouser leg and inspect the cut. It’s deep. If we were in the ordinary world I’d be thinking about infection, tetanus, sepsis… In this world, I check the jagged lip of torn skin for the tell-tale black seeds that might be the first eyes; I check that the skin isn’t growing hard, cracking, or turning white.

“Are you OK?” Farah asks.

“I think so.”

I pull my trouser leg down. The air is cooler here, the grass has given way to dried leaves and a bed of soft mulch. In the ordinary world, it would be pitch-black. Here, we can still see, but the light is flat and textureless, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It’s not light, I think. It’s the absence of darkness.

We’re silent for a long time. We shouldn’t stay here. It feels like resting in the jaws of a bear trap. But we don’t have any choice.

I lean back and lie, staring up at the treetops that stoop over us. This is how the world looks when I come back from a seizure. The weight of the ground beneath me, the crowded faces looking down at me, wondering if I’m dead. This will happen to us someday, they think. They know it; they just don’t like to think about it. For most people, death is a faraway, abstract idea. But for me it’s always been different.

I’m closer to this world than the ordinary world.

Do you want to know what death feels like? I think.