Page 49 of Runner 13

Adrienne

The first rays of sun catch me by surprise.

I sense the warmth first, like steam off a hot bath.

Gradually, more shapes emerge on the horizon, into the lavender-hued morning.

Soon I’m able to turn my head torch off.

We’ve steadily climbed through the night, and I can see that not too far to our left is a steep drop down to a valley floor.

It makes my stomach turn to think we’ve been running next to that in the dark without realizing.

If one of us had drifted from our bearing, we could have had a nasty fall.

Never mind worrying about a man coming after me. I have to worry about not hurting myself.

We will be running down into the valley soon, and I only hope that the path is not too difficult. Mariam runs to the edge of the cliff, stopping for a moment to survey the scene.

‘Look,’ she says, her voice as hoarse as mine feels.

Once again, the desert has some surprises for us. We can see two runners up ahead, down on the valley floor. The distance is likely miles, but from up here they look close. Catchable.

We’re well over halfway now. I suppose soon the remaining elite runners will begin to converge.

‘We can get there,’ says Mariam, echoing my thoughts.

‘And what’s that?’ She squints, trying to compare the topography in front of us to the map in her hand.

Buildings – or the ruins of them anyway, stone structures with roofs crumbling and cracked.

An abandoned village? ‘We pass quite close to these,’ Mariam says, tracing her finger on the map.

I nod. ‘Ready?’

She hesitates, looking out into the distance. There’s something else there. Far on the horizon. Just a smudge. A place where the line between earth and sky seems slightly blurry, like the artist has rubbed a thumb against the canvas, smearing it. It seems to vibrate, but that could be my vision.

Eventually, she continues jogging. What else can we do? We can only keep moving.

A little further and we find the path down into the valley.

It starts with switchbacks, easing our way down the steep cliff.

But as the path turns to smooth sand, I try something different.

I take a direct line, straight down, almost bouncing off it like a trampoline.

My feet slip and slide – but before I fall, I take a leap on to the next patch, gravity working in my favour.

The faster I go, the less likely I am to fall – but the harder a potential fall would be.

Still, I trust in my feet, throwing my arms out for balance.

I don’t dare glance back, but I sense Mariam has followed me. Good, because if she hadn’t, I would have put a lot of distance between us. This is much quicker than the more cautious way down. My legs move faster than my conscious mind can process. So I don’t try to process. I just let it happen.

I reach the bottom of the valley floor unscathed and I double-check the bearing – we’ve come out at the right place.

If it was a different sort of race – and we hadn’t already run almost a hundred miles – I’d have turned round and high-fived Mariam.

But we’re already too broken for that. All our energy is channelled towards staying on our feet.

At least it was.

I hear a sound that resonates through me, stinging me as if I’ve been whipped.

A thud, followed by a strangled cry and a sickening crack.

At first, selfishly, unbelievably, I feel a spike of gratitude so sharp it almost makes me throw up: that it isn’t me, that my limbs are all intact, that I’m still on my feet.

Are they? I force myself to do a physical check to be sure.

Once, in the middle of the South Downs 100 in the pouring rain, I’d fallen on my face, sliding in the mud, but in my mind I was still running.

It took a few seconds for my brain to catch up with the reality.

The mud had cushioned the fall, so I hadn’t injured anything too badly – only broken my finger it turned out – and I had continued the race.

According to the spectators, I’d run into the next checkpoint looking like the creature from the Black Lagoon.

I snap back to the present, spinning round. Mariam is on the ground, her hands wrapped round her ankle, her face screwed up in pain.

‘Oh my God.’ I kneel next to her. ‘What happened?’ I lift her backpack where it’s twisted round her, and I prop her against it like a cushion. She’s trembling. ‘Let me take a look.’

I gently prise her fingers from round her ankle, all the while muttering soothing nonsense phrases. ‘It’s going to be OK, don’t worry, I’ve got you.’ Banality is better than panic.

Her foot is wrenched at an awkward angle, and her ankle is beginning to swell. Based on the loudness of the crack, I suspect a break. This is bad. ‘OK, Mariam, it looks like you’ve hurt your ankle.’

She mutters something back, which I imagine is the Arabic version of ‘No shit, Sherlock’.

She glances over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the offending slope.

She must catch the look of guilt on my face, because she shakes her head.

‘I chose that way.’ She winces in pain, hissing through her teeth.

‘I’m activating your emergency beacon, OK?’ I depress the two buttons on her shoulder. A red light starts flashing and I hope it won’t take too long for help to find us.

It strikes me that our race is now over. Just like that. The prize money. The promised answers. Proving anything to Ethan. Proving anything to myself. It’s done.

I wonder if Mariam sees that realization in my expression. ‘You go,’ she says, swiping me away.

‘Enough of that,’ I say, sharply. ‘I’m not leaving you, no matter what you say, so don’t waste energy trying. Now drink this and let me look in your pack. You need painkillers and something to stabilize this ankle.’

My tone convinces her of how serious I am.

Or maybe it’s what she wants to hear. At any rate she stops protesting, braces herself, and lifts slightly so I can swap her backpack for mine.

She takes the bottle of water I hand to her and sips slowly.

In addition to the pain, her body will be in shock right now.

I quickly find her first-aid kit, which is shockingly light. Like me, she’s only brought the essentials. I find paracetamol and ibuprofen, so I give those to her first. Something to take the edge off.

‘Stupid, so stupid,’ she says, as I start to wrap her leg in the sparse remnants of some bandage that I found.

‘Don’t do that to yourself. It’s so easy to lose your footing.

’ Seeing her in pain, I wish I had chosen the less risky path down.

But I take solace in the fact that I know Mariam is just like me.

She would have gone for it even if she’d been alone.

She’s racing too. And she almost made it.

It wasn’t a lack of skill. Just bad luck.

I look around to see if there’s anything I can use to keep Mariam’s leg elevated. I stand to move one of the rocks and a gust of wind almost knocks me off my feet. Mariam cries out as I jolt her leg attempting to stabilize myself. ‘Sorry!’ I exclaim, but it’s stolen away by the wind.

It’s as strong as the first night of the bivouac.

Another sandstorm.

We exchange a look of panic. I have no idea how long it will take to hit us, but right now we’re the most exposed we could be, surrounded by loose sand, rocks and other debris.

I think of Jason, being whacked in the head with a rogue tent peg.

Anything could happen to us out here. Especially with Mariam injured.

I dig out my buff, pulling it over my mouth and nose, then putting my wraparound sunglasses on top, trying to cover as much as possible.

I do the same for Mariam, helping her make it comfortable.

I stand up and see what’s coming towards us.

My stomach drops. It’s a wall of dust and wind, approaching like a tsunami.

Multitudes bigger than the first night. Tornados of sand – several of them – rise like fingers out of the ground to scrape the sky, heralds of the coming storm.

Once the wall hits us, we’re going to be completely blind – at the mercy of the wind.

Even the once bright sun has now darkened. The official advice is to stay put and wait for it to pass over. But what if it’s like that first night all over again? What if it doesn’t last ten minutes but hours?

‘It’s going to be OK,’ I repeat to Mariam, unsure if I’m trying to reassure her or me.

She pulls her bandana down to her chin. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it? Dammit, leave me Adrienne.’

I’m not listening to her. I’ve had a thought. Those abandoned buildings we saw from the top of the cliff can’t be too far away – maybe half a mile.

I lean in close. ‘I think we need shelter. If the storm is anything like before, we can’t stay exposed. Not with your leg …’ I drift off.

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t think I can move.’

‘Can you balance on your poles? I will support you.’

She pauses, teetering as the wind buffets our bodies. ‘Maybe.’ She takes out her telescopic poles, stretching them out to size.

I quickly take a heading for the buildings on my compass, before tucking it in the waistband of my shorts. Accessible in case we need it. In the meantime, Mariam plants one pole firmly into the ground, then wraps her other arm round my neck.

I brace myself so she can use me to push to her feet.

She lets out a scream from the base of her belly, a roar to overcome the immense pain.

I grip her hand, trying to lend her some of my strength.

The first step is more of a hop, her other foot dragging.

She grinds her teeth so hard, I can hear it.

But we move. I pray that I’ve made the right decision.

It’s a painful shuffle. The storm comes upon us faster than I ever could have imagined, and I feel vindicated in my decision. But it makes moving even harder. Once we stumble, and Mariam cries out in such agony that it brings tears to my eyes. We take extra care, but it means we slow even more.

Mariam grips my hand hard, her nails digging into my skin.

I’m struggling to see more than a few feet in front of us through my sunglasses.

I focus on following the bearing, and eventually the walls of the building come into view.

Weather-beaten and crumbling, broken roof, no door – the desert slowly subsuming the house back into itself – no wonder it was abandoned. Yet any shelter is better than nothing.

I hurry us inside, easing Mariam down so her back is supported by the stone.

She leans forward, scrabbling with one hand for a bottle of water.

I find it for her, twisting open the cap, tipping some of the liquid into her mouth.

‘Thank you,’ she says, her voice a croak.

The red light on her emergency beacon still pulses.

Someone must be coming. Hopefully we’ll be easier to find in here than out there.

She looks pale. Clammy. Beads of sweat are forming above her eyebrows.

She’s warm to touch but shivering, and I fear the shock must really be setting in now that the adrenaline of the move is dying down.

I need to find something to cover her, to try to make her more comfortable.

I dig my down jacket out of my bag and wrap her up to her neck.

And we’re getting uncomfortably close to running out of water.

‘I’m going to look around,’ I say.

‘Be careful.’

‘I won’t be long.’

She lets out a grunt of frustration as I leave her side. I try to keep my promise to be quick. The storm rages, battering the walls and racing through the empty windows.

There’s nothing in this building, but we’re close to another. I remember watching a documentary about a man who got lost in the desert and how he had to drink the blood of bats to survive; I seriously hope it doesn’t come to that.

I don’t stray too far, just in case I can’t find my way back. There’s nothing. What had I hoped to find, some kind of hidden cache of Coca-Cola? Ridiculous. I stick my head out of the door, trying to see if it’s worth running to the next building.

That’s when I spot something that gives me pause. A footprint in the sand outside the door. It’s clearly defined – a modern running shoe print. It doesn’t match mine, a pattern I know intimately. And for it to not be blown away, it has to be fresh.

There’s someone else here.

My heart pounds in my ears as I rush back to Mariam.

But someone has beaten me to it.

Runner 501 is kneeling over her slumped form. And in his hands he holds a knife.