Pearce by Adam Hamdy

Author:Adam Hamdy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Chapter 34

Yellow. Hard. Pain.

Teeth.

Orange gems with black hearts.

Eyes.

Pearce inhaled a long rasping breath and the large fox that was pulling at one of his fingers retreated into the shadows of the alleyway. It stood watching, waiting to see whether the dying man would have the strength for a fight. He looked down at the cold stone beneath him and saw his life spread in a dark pool. His arms and legs were already chill with the touch of death. He could feel erratic thumping in his chest and knew that he didn’t have long before he went into hypovolemic shock, his heart deprived of enough blood to continue pumping.

He tried to move his arms, which were still weeping blood. Either the anaesthetic had worn off, or it could not subdue the irresistible force that motivated him: survival. His arms shifted slightly. They felt numb, as though they belonged to someone else, but he could direct them, and he pushed himself onto his knees. He crawled through the pool of congealing blood, along the narrow alley towards the lights that lay beyond an archway. He was aware of movement behind him. The fox was following.

He kept his eyes fixed on a shape beyond the archway.

Green metal. Glass.

Bus stop.

Inch by agonizing inch he crawled through the darkness, bleeding, dying, until he cleared the archway and found himself on a broad pavement. Everywhere was eerily still, as though the rest of the world were dead and he was the only person left alive. A large church stood in a square across the road, and as he looked left and right, he recognized the centre of Oxford. He was on a parade near the High Street. His right arm gave way and he collapsed, his chin hitting the pavement heavily. He glanced behind him and saw the glint of the fox’s sharp eyes. It was trying to hug the shadows, biding its time until Pearce’s business with the world was done.

Noise.

Movement.

Pearce looked to his right and saw three people, a man and two women, stumble around the corner. He tried to shout, but could only muster a rasping breath. He tried to move his head, but it was stuck to the pavement. His cold arms and legs were unresponsive and he could only watch with growing despair as the trio joked and jostled their way north, taking all hope with them. They would vanish and he would die lying in his own blood.

‘No!’

Pearce was surprised to hear the word spring from his mouth. The three people turned at the sound and one of the women spotted him, lying shirtless and bloody, half consumed by the dark archway. As they ran towards him, Pearce heard movement to his rear and saw that the fox was retreating, frightened by the drunk, noisy students who’d become Pearce’s saviours.

Pearce said a silent prayer of thanks to the scavenger who had woken him from the last sleep, closed his eyes and dared to hope.

Fury and the doctors of the John Radcliffe Hospital kept Pearce alive.

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