Free The Long Weekend by Savita Kalhan Page A

wasn't afraid of anything. He wasn't very good at acting and he'd never had a leading part in a school play yet, but this wasn't like acting, and it wasn't a school play. He had to think of a character he'd like to be and then pretend he was him. Someone clever, and fearless. He chose someone.
    Sam looked back towards the direction in which the house lay one last time. Time to get the hell out of there. Okay, so if the house was that way, then it stood to reason that out of the woods had to be the other way. The next tree along wasn't too far off: four or five long strides at the most. Sam took a deep breath and turned and ran for it. Halfway there he thought he heard something behind him, something which sounded like heavy footsteps following, and he began to turn his head, a scream rising in his throat, the blood pounding in his ears. No one there, Sam thought, relieved, and he was almost at the safety of the next tree. Then his foot caught on a protruding tree root and he went down heavily. Tears sprang to his eyes. Idiot, idiot, idiot, he sobbed as he lay sprawled, his face in the wet, muddy ground. This had never happened to Alex Rider, the most fearless teenage secret agent the world had ever known.
    Sam got up carefully, wincing at the shooting pain, and wondered whether he'd broken his ankle. He put his weight on it gingerly, testing it out before he attempted to walk on it. There was pain, but it wasn't unbearable, therefore it couldn't be broken. He hobbled towards the tree and pressed his back up against it, its solid weight reassuringly comforting, and waited. There was nothing, not a sound. He glanced back just to make sure, but the coast was clear. He limped across to the next tree and hid behind it. Tree by tree he made his way through the woods, knowing that he was losing time by doing it that way, but he couldn't do it any other way. Each tree-stop added a minute while he got his breath back and could hear again and check that he was still alone. It should have got easier the further away he went from the house, but it didn't, and maybe that was because the trees weren't spaced that far apart and so Sam knew he wasn't actually getting very far very quickly. There had been no sign of the man, though. Sam thought he must have given up on him and gone back to the house. Or that's what he was hoping anyway.
    Then the trees stopped suddenly. He had reached the edge of the woods. Sam stood still and looked out. The moon peeped through the thick clouds teasing him with a glimpse of the countryside beyond. He could make out fields and more trees, but no road, no houses, and no people. He would have run across those open fields without stopping, without looking back, but he couldn't. He was trapped. A really high fence stood in the way. How the on earth was he going to get over a fence that high?
    He curled his fingers round the cold metal bars, his knuckles glowing ghostly white as he pushed and pulled, hoping they would budge, but they didn't, not one millimetre. Tears of rage at the madman who had designed this fence pricked his eyes and spilled on to his hands still clutching futilely at the metal bars. The bars were wrought iron, rock solid, built to last, built to keep intruders out. He blinked the tears away and looked up. He was pretty good at climbing trees, but he knew he wouldn't be able to climb this fence.
    It must have been about twenty feet high with a roll of barbed wire running along the top, so even if he managed to shin up the bars, which was impossible, he'd be cut to shreds trying to get over the top, or end up skewered on the spikes each iron railing was topped with.
    He couldn't squeeze out of his nightmare through the bars either. If he were three years old he might have had a chance of getting through, but they were set too close together for an eleven-year-old. He could squeeze his leg through up to his thigh, but that was about it and no use at all.
    He couldn't go over the top of the fence.