Wild Boy by Rob Lloyd Jones Page B

up,” he said.
    “What? No, we don’t need to run. You can get us out of this, can’t you? You can find clues, prove that we’re innocent.”
    They locked tearful, desperate eyes. Wild Boy wondered if it was possible. He
wished
it was. But he shook the thought away. No one would listen to what he had to say — he was just a freak.
    “They’re coming now,” he said. “You gotta run.”
    She didn’t move — she was too scared.
    Wild Boy didn’t look at her again, in case he lost the courage to go on alone. Instead, he turned and ran in the other direction down another alley, shaking all over from pain and panic. He tried to scramble up a wall, but a bolt of agony shot from his wounded arm. He tumbled down and splashed into a stream of filth that trickled down the alley.
    “Sewage . . .” he muttered.
    In an instant he knew what to do. He ran on through the alley, his eyes raking the cobbles until he spotted a brown stream gushing into an open drain. The drain fed into the sewers, and the dogs wouldn’t smell him if he was covered in sewage.
    Tendrils of rotten-smelling gas rose from the depths. But now was no time to be squeamish. Now was the time to survive. He held his breath, and dived into the hole.
    Brown muck sprayed at his face as he slid through the slurry. His cry was cut short by a sudden drop and a splash-landing in sludgy water. He came up spitting, swearing, wiping the hairs on his face. He couldn’t hear the dogs anymore.
    Too tired to go on, he leaned his injured shoulder against the sewer wall. His coat was torn and his wound was smeared with filth. He looked away from the infected mess, struggling to stop himself from crying.
    Don’t you cry. Don’t you bloody cry. . . .
    But he couldn’t hold back the tears. He clamped a hand over his mouth as they escaped in gulping, gasping sobs.
    His head swam. Terrifying visions loomed from the dark — the hooded man’s sinister beaked mask, Professor Wollstonecraft curled up in the mud, and the golden-eyed man warning him,
“You are in danger! Great danger!”
    Wild Boy forced another step but his legs buckled and he sank to his knees in the sewage. He reached for the wall, making another effort to walk. But it was too much.
    He slumped forward into the waters, his long coat splayed across the curdled surface.



A trickle of slime stole down a wall, glistening in a slant of moonlight that fell between the nodding shedlike houses. It slipped between the cobbles, gathering as it went the particles of waste spattered across the street — gobbets of phlegm, flecks of vomit, the reeking overspill from domestic cesspits.
    The filth of the street percolated down. It nudged at the ceiling of an ancient sewer, crept through a crack in the crumbling mortar. It hung from the bricks in a single fat drop. Then it fell and landed —
pat
— on the head of a small boy covered in hair.
    Wild Boy opened his eyes.
    Everything was black. Not a crack of light anywhere. He was lying on his back on what felt like wet cloth. He heard dripping water, although his mouth was dry and tasted like mold. He extended a foot cautiously into the darkness, felt cold slime on broken brick. He tried to stay calm, but panic overwhelmed him.
    “I didn’t do it,” he gasped. “It wasn’t me. . . .”
    He scrunched his eyes shut and prayed that when he opened them he’d be back at the fair and everything would be normal.
    He opened his eyes and gazed heartbroken around the sewer. He was lying on a narrow ledge that ran along the tunnel wall. Someone had taken his coat, and the hairs on his body were stiff with dried sewage. His injured shoulder, though, had been cleaned and wrapped in bandages. Had he been captured or rescued?
    Slish slosh
. . .
    Something moved in the sewage.
    Wild Boy sat up and stared into the arched darkness. He heard liquid dripping from above. He heard his own shallow breaths getting deeper and faster with fear. And then, there it was again — a slow