Dr. Franklin's Island by Ann Halam Page B

endure.”
    We stared at him blankly. We didn’t have a clue about these “games.” We were worried about being killed or changed into monsters.
    “Here, take these. Food and water. Come on.”
    He shoved a backpack at each of us. We struggled to put them on as we followed him, walking fast and silently again through the dark hall, through a room with gleams of metal and smells of food that must have been the kitchen, and out into the night.
    We crossed a pitch dark yard that smelled of rubbish bins and petrol, and came to a door in a wall, where Dr. Skinner stopped and tapped buttons on another keypad. Through that door, and we were in Dr. Franklin’s zoo. I could smell the caged animals, I could hear rustlings and faint chittering sounds. As we passed the aviary, a parrot gave a sleepy squawk, and then the jungle cat started crying. Beside me, Dr. Skinner started and drew his breath sharply.
    “It does that,” he muttered. “It does that all the time. We don’t know why. We gave the pair of cats an infusion that did something to their brains. We don’t know what we did, and it can’t tell us. Its mate died, it howls. Sometimes it goes on all night and all day. I wish I could kill it, but he’d find out, and he never wants them killed. Never, he always wants to keep his pets alive. It’s unbearable. It would drive a sane man mad. Can’t hurt me, though. I hate the racket, that’s all.”
    He wasn’t talking to us. He was talking to himself.
    We crossed the zoo, and left by another door. Then we were outside all the buildings. I could see the stars overhead, each of them given a glowing halo by my miserable eyesight. I was glad to see them again. Dr. Skinner pressed on. Every few seconds he’d switch on his penlight, and flash the white beam around us.
    Nothing stirred.
    “Quickly,” he muttered. “I have to get you through the perimeter fence, and then I have to get back to the buildings and switch the fence back on. He makes his rounds at night. My boss doesn’t need sleep. At midnight he takes a break from work, comes out and walks around the compound, checking every building, every door, it’s a habit with him.”
    His pace had speeded up, we were half running to keep close to him. I could feel dry stony earth and stalks of rough grass under my hard, bare feet.
    “There’s a gate in the fence, and a footpath leading through the mountainside. It’s a shortcut to the launch mooring; the kitchen staff use it. When you get to the boat,
hide
. Don’t try to speak to the man who’ll be taking it to the mainland, don’t show yourselves. Our technicians know more than the orderlies, about what goes on, but don’t push it. He’ll help you but he doesn’t want any trouble with the boss.”
    I was thinking about movies I’d seen of people escaping from prisoner-of-war camps. I was praying the floodlights wouldn’t come on, praying there’d be no sirens, no voices yelling at us to stop. Now we’d reached the fence. There was a small gate set in it. There was an ordinary padlock, no buttons to tap. We waited as he fumbled with the key. He was still muttering under his breath, almost sobbing.
    It howls,
I heard, and then,
Oh God, howls, and it’s
only an animal—
    Miranda and I looked at each other. “I think he’s drunk,” whispered Miranda. “I smelled his breath. Whisky. Dr. Skinner,” she said aloud, “you’d better come with us. Think about it. He’s bound to know that you helped us escape. You have to take this chance.”
    I knew she wasn’t thinking of Skinner’s well-being. He
had
to come with us. If he stayed behind, hysterical and jabbering like this, he’d be telling Dr. Franklin all about our escape, ten minutes after we’d gone. Now he’d dropped the key. He got down and crawled on his hands and knees, scrabbling for it in the grass.
    “You’d howl,” he was mumbling. “I know you would. You’d howl too, you girls, and I have no conscience, but I can’t stand that