"Oh, no, no!" Alan cried, for he knew damage to that artery could be fatal. He clutched at the leg to try and stem the flow, but the blood spurted through his fingers and splattered his face. The rat, squirming between his legs and expelling Alan's blood from its throat, turned and leapt at his chest, raking the skin down to the bone with its claws. It clung there and, as Alan toppled backwards, it began to snap its way into his throat. The others, those that had been more hesitant, crept out from beneath the clearing's surrounding undergrowth, still cautious, for the fear of man was inbred, but becoming bolder as the sweet blood aroma aroused them.
Through tears of pain, Babs saw the approaching black shapes, and she too knew their meaning. She wanted to help Alan, but she was too afraid; she wanted to run, but her fear made her freeze. All she could do was bury herself beneath the coat, her knees tugged up into her chest, her hands clutching at the material, holding it tight around her. The pain in her foot was excruciating and the terror in her mind incapacitating. She prayed, the words tumbling from her lips in a garbled flow, that the creatures would leave them, would fade back into the night, would return to the hell they had come from. But Alan's screams told her they wouldn't. And the tugging at the coat, the sudden sharp, exploratory nips, told her the rats wouldn't leave until she and Alan had been devoured.
As the bites began to puncture her flesh and the agony made her body unfold and writhe, she saw Reg and the boys sitting around the dinner table, Kevin, the youngest, saying, "Mum's late, Dad ... Mum's late ...
Mum's late ..."
It was past midnight and no sounds had come from the inside of the tent for at least an hour. It stood alone, like a canvas sentinel, in a corner of the wide field, the forest a dark backdrop. Liquid, almost frozen, clung to the stiffened blades of grass around the tent, but inside it was snug and warm, heat from the boys' bodies providing its own central heating. A small night-light glowed weakly in the centre of the floor space, the seven slumbering boys and their supervisor spread around it in giant cocoon shapes, dreading the cold dawn which would force them to shed their sleeping-bag skins.
Gordon Baddeley, the supervisor, slept to one side, a one-foot gap between him and the nearest boy as though the dividing line were a wall behind which authority rested. Gordon maintained that such abstract symbolism was important.
The boys, their ages ranging from twelve to fifteen, were all from a Barnardo's home in Woodford, and this was their outdoor 'survival'
week. There hadn't been much to survive, for the nearest shop was under two miles away, and wild lions, tigers and crocodiles were not reputed to inhabit that part of Epping Forest. The younger boys, however, did believe bears roamed free in that particular area. The field was empty of any other form of life, for it was not one of the official forest camp-sites, but a certain benevolent Lord Something-or-Other the boys could never remember his name allowed the Woodford orphanage to use that corner of a field on his estate for camping purposes. As he did not live on the estate any longer but rented the land out to local farmers, he was only a mythical figure to the boys, vague and aloof, like God.
Gordon Baddeley had been a Barnardo boy himself a few years before and was, so everyone said, a shining example of the goodness and honesty that could come from an orphanage background. After only three years in the outside world, working in a supermarket as a shelf-filler, winning promotion to assistant on frozen meats, he had returned to the orphanage that had reared him, turning his back on success because he wanted to help those like himself, the underprivileged. The home had been proud to accept him, although it wasn't common practice to take back those who had left, for Gordon had been an exceptional boy.
Well-mannered, soft-spoken, hard-working, no outward emotional problems he was a boy the staff could point at and say: "You see, it works.
Even though we can't give them the love and affection of true parents, we can turn out well-balanced young people like this."
Not that Gordon was regarded as soft by the other boys; on the contrary, he was looked upon as 'a tough nut'. He was friendly but firm, could be rough but not unkind, funny when he wanted to be and serious when others wanted him to be. No chip on his shoulder, no nurtured grievances; he seemed to like most people and most people seemed to like him. All in all, they said, he was the perfect Dr.
Barnardo boy. And after three years on the outside, he had come to realize that was all he ever wanted to be.
The world frightened him. It was too aggressive and too big. There were too many strangers. When out on the streets, he ran everywhere; it was as though he were naked and that by moving swiftly he could shorten the period of exposure. It was a common enough syndrome among fledgling orphans, that awkward reaction to the world in general, but most managed to overcome their uneasiness in time. But not so Gordon; he missed the home and its security to a distressing degree. The orphanage had found him a bed sitter in the house of a friendly and tight-knit family, and their very closeness towards each other had made him feel even more the intruder. They tried to make him feel welcome and he accepted their hospitality with due gratitude, but the more time he spent with them the more he was aware of what he had missed in his own upbringing; he felt no resentment, but he did feel different.
Girls were a problem, too. He was attracted to them and several in the supermarket where he worked were kind towards him, yet again he felt there was a barrier between him and them, that he could only watch their world through an invisible glass screen. Given time he would have joined the people inside, but the loneliness of the interlude between became too hard to bear. Inside the home he had been someone; outside he was nothing. He returned and they turned his defeat into triumph. The home was his home, and it was there he wished to stay.
Gordon turned in his sleep and his eyelids twitched, then opened wide.
He stared at the tent's sloping ceiling for a few moments, his dream-thoughts tumbling over themselves to disperse. The night-light gave the slumbering shapes in the tent an eerie, green tinge as he looked around to see if anyone was awake. He listened for the tell-tale and not uncommon sob in the night, the sudden spasmodic jerk from a curled-up form beneath a tightly clutched covering, but the snores and sighs of the sleeping boys assured him all was well. Then what had caused him to awaken?
He lay in the gloom and listened.
The soft scratching noise made him turn his head towards the canvas wall of the tent and the sound stopped. He held his breath.
Something pushed against the coarse material, something low, near the ground. The bulge was at a point near his hips and it suddenly began to move towards his head. Gordon carefully slid his sleeping-bag encompassed frame away from the protuberance and the movement outside came to a halt.
It was as though whatever was out there had sensed his presence, had been aware of the movement inside.
Gordon had to restrain himself from crying out and leaping away from that side of the tent. It would frighten the younger boys, he told himself. Besides, it was probably only a fox or some other curious night animal and it would never penetrate the tough canvas. He slowly unzipped the sleeping-bag and eased out his arms.
The bulge began to move again, upwards, towards his face, and he saw it was at least a couple of feet long. It had to be a fox! Maybe, but not likely, a badger? Whatever the creature was, it wasn't very tall.