The Hunted Read Free Page A

dragged me away. Up the corridor. He did things to me. He hurt me. He bit me. And two more grown-ups came out with Maeve. She was already dead. I couldn’t watch what they did to her. I went all unconscious. I don’t know how long for, but he did worse things to me when I was asleep.
    ‘And then the other grown-up arrived. The one whose face is all scarred. There was a fight and he easily beat the one who hurt me. He killed him. I saw him. He was ferocious. With knives and everything. He cut him to pieces and then he picked me up, and he was carrying me away when you came running down the corridor with more grown-ups behind you. Scarface tried to help you, but you fainted and you banged your head. And then he had to fight the new grown-ups. He didn’t waste any time. No way. He killed them quicker than you can imagine, and he brought us here. ‘I don’t know what he’s going to do. He comes and goes.’
    ‘Where is he now?’
    ‘He went back inside the hotel, I think. For more killing.’
    ‘And where are we?’
    ‘Just on the grass, near some trees, by the river. You can see the hotel over there.’
    Ella looked over and saw the big square black shape of the building against the stars. Her eyes were getting used to the light and she was seeing more and more. All the time wishing she was still asleep where she was safe. Eyes closed. In the dark.
    ‘What will he do when he comes back?’ she said.
    ‘I don’t know. He just sits there. Like he’s keeping watch.’
    ‘He’s going to do something bad to us,’ said Ella. ‘We have to get away from here. We have to run away.’
    ‘I can’t,’ said Monkey-Boy and now Ella could see that his face was all shiny and wet. He was crying.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
    ‘I can’t move,’ said Monkey-Boy. ‘It hurts too much.’
    ‘Where does it hurt?’
    ‘All over. I’m bleeding a lot.’
    ‘Badly?’
    ‘I don’t know. It feels bad. I feel bad. All hot and cold and shivery. I’ve got pins and needles in my fingers and my feet.’
    Well, that doesn’t sound too bad
, thought Ella, and she shuffled closer to him. It was cold out here. That was why he was shivering. She was shivering too, her teeth clacking together. Her body shaking. Or maybe she was just scared.
    ‘Let me see,’ she said, squinting in the dark, kneeling over him, her shoulders hunched, as if she was expecting something to swoop down out of the sky and attack her.
    ‘I can’t hardly see,’ she said and touched Monkey-Boy’s jumper. It was soaking wet. Sticky. She held her hand to her face. It looked like it was covered in black ink. Ella knew, though, that if there was more light it would look red, not black.
    And then she remembered the torch she kept in her backpack. She quickly felt her shoulders. The straps were there. Robbie had told them all to sleep with their packs on in case they needed to make a quick getaway. She slipped the pack off her back and rummaged around inside it until she felt the familiar hard plastic. It was a wind-up torch and she always kept it wound. She pressed the button and the light shone right into Monkey-Boy’s face. He winced and shrank away from it, blinking.
    He was breathing very fast. Panting like a dog. His face very white and splashed with blood. She moved the beam down his body. He was absolutely soaked and there was more blood puddling in the grass around him. How much blood was there in a human being? Her teacher had once told her it was eight pints. She wasn’t quite sure how much a pint was, let alone eight, and surely children would have less blood than adults? How much of his blood had he spilt, though? It looked like a lot.
    He was holding his hands over his stomach. His forearms were all scraped and scratched, the skin raggedy and torn, and there was more blood oozing up between his hands and fingers. It was steaming in the chilly night air.
    There was a smell coming off him, like the smell of a grown-up. Like bad toilets and