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Megan's Run

CHAPTER ONE
“Oh, please let us do it, Bill!” she pleaded. “It will be quite safe; and so much fun for me!”

He looked dubiously up at her standing over him, confident and assured in her nakedness.

“Well,” he began doubtfully, but by then she was at his feet, her arms around his knees, smiling up at him with infectious mischief sparkling in her eyes. He smiled back; and was lost.

Now that she had his consent she was all briskness for a few minutes. Then, the simple preparations for her ordeal made, she sat in her usual place at his feet while they ate supper and watched television while Bill divided his attention between the flickering screen and the diminutive figure at his feet, her head propped trustingly against his thigh. He ran his hand through her mop of black curls, wondering once more what on earth this lovely little thing saw in him, with his unremarkable personality and his stocky, middle-sized body. When the programme ended, Megan bounded to her feet, flushed and excited.

“Eleven o'clock, Bill!” she reminded him.

She held out her hands and he locked the smooth little mitts around them. Then she turned her back for him to fit the arm binder she so enjoyed wearing. She sat down, and he pulled up over her legs a pair of his old jeans, struggling to get them past her wide, shapely hips, and securing them at her narrow waist with a length of rope. Sandals followed, then an anorak of his own, long and shapeless on her little body. Megan glanced at herself in the floor-length mirror. Bill had buttoned up the anorak so that the collar she was wearing was invisible. Satisfied that there was nothing about her to attract the attention of a casual passer-by, she turned to her lover with shining eyes. Bill shrugged helplessly, then he opened the door and ushered her through into the kitchen and through there into the garage where he assisted her into his van. Fastening her seat belt, he closed her door securely, walked around the van and took his seat behind the wheel.

They drove in silence through the deserted streets of the little town, the orange streetlights reflecting off the wet road surface. It took them only minutes to arrive at the designated place where he drove into the lay-by and stopped his engine. They sat for some minutes in the darkness, the windows open, scenting the mild, moist air laden with its smell of growing things. No-one came near; no car drove upon the narrow lane where Megan had chosen to start her journey. Finally Megan turned to him, her little white teeth gleaming.

“Let's do it!” she whispered, rubbing her head against his shoulder.

Reluctantly, he descended. Walking around the van, he opened her door and she swung on her seat to face him so that he could remove her sandals and her lower covering. That done, she slid smoothly down from her seat to stand before him.

“Go on!” she whispered, and he unbuttoned the bulky anorak with shaking fingers.

Standing naked in the mud of the field gateway, she smiled up at him.

“See you in an hour!” she told him cheekily. Then, before he could insist on her at least wearing her sandals, she was gone, and a momentary glimpse of the pale gleam of her buttocks was the last he saw of her before she vanished into the misty gloom of the field.

Bill drove home slowly, his mind full of foreboding about this rash enterprise. True, Megan only had to cover four miles across the fields to their house instead of the six miles by road from where she'd been left. True, too, that she was an experienced cross-country runner who jogged every single day, and that she had run over the course she intended to follow many times, scouting out the land thoroughly. If all went well, she would indeed cover the four miles in an hour, and he increased his speed in order to have plenty of time to prepare for her hoped-for arrival.

Megan trotted confidently across the field, her bare feet swishing through the wet grass, enjoying the flow of the mild, damp October air against her skin. Dark though it was, the orange glow of the town's streetlights on the misty Western horizon gave her night-accustomed eyes just enough light to see by; something she'd carefully checked beforehand. Just under thirteen minutes later, and six fields further on, she saw the lights of a moving vehicle on the road she must cross in fifty yards, and she slowed a little to enable it to pass from sight. Reaching the field gateway, she halted, panting a little, to look out upon the road.

It was not a much-travelled thoroughfare, being the road connecting the nearby town to a neighbouring village, but at this time of night it carried a little more than its normally sparse traffic as revellers returned along it from the pubs in the town. She saw the headlights of a car approaching from the other side of a bend fifty yards to her right and prudently withdrew into the field a few yards where she took shelter by the thick hedge dividing it from the road.

The car came on quite slowly, and she had time to debate whether she should have risked making the dogleg to the field on the other side; a matter of running twenty yards along the road towards the oncoming vehicle, then turning left. The car slowed even more as it came nearer, then, to her horror, it stopped right across the field's entrance. Its doors opened, and four men got out of it, their voices loud and jocular as they filed through the gateway.

The reason for their stopping soon became obvious when they stood in a line just inside the field. Only twenty yards from them, Megan shrank back into the cover of the hedge. The night was so still that she could hear their voices clearly, and even the hiss of their urine as they sprayed the weeds along the side of the hedge. One of their number, a man they called Fred, was being teased by the others about the slowness of his urination, and one by one they left him and retook their seats. Fred finished at last, and Megan distinctly heard the rasp of his fly-zip as he drew it up.

About to leave the field to join his impatient friends, Fred frowned.

“That's funny!” he thought. “'Ain't like old Jessop to leave 'is gates open!” Careful countryman that he was, he shut the gate behind him and secured it by the short chain which kept it closed.

The car drove off, leaving Megan to the dank and misty darkness. Coming out from her cover when she was confident that she was alone, she squelched through the mud of the field entrance to the gateway; and there she met her first check.

She stared in dismay at the closed gate barring her progress. This was a contingency she hadn't planned for when she'd insisted on wearing her arm binders! Though a child of six could have easily undone the chain which held it closed, she saw at a glance that, for her, the task was impossible. But even in the midst of her annoyance she felt a queer and pleasurable little thrill at the thought of how easily she could be penned like a beast. At first, she tried to climb the gate, but it was well over four feet high, almost coming up to her chin, and her attempts to climb it were rendered impossible by the redistribution of her weight with her arms pinioned behind her back. She tried to climb it backwards, but the protuberance of her arms and rump prevented her keeping close enough. Finally she gave up and stood in the mud reflecting on her next move.

There was no alternative; she must retrace her footsteps to the start. Then she must find an alternative route back to the spot a few yards from where she stood. She turned and walked briskly back across the field, deep in thought.

Back where Bill had left her, she stood for a few moments confirming her decision. She glanced down at the mud around her feet, her face screwed up in distaste. Then she went down on her knees and slowly and carefully lowered herself to the ground, shuddering at the touch of the wet, slimy stuff on her skin. Rolling over in the mud despite her disgust, she took care to smear it over every inch of her body in order that her pale skin might not betray her. Then she stood up. After a further few moments resting and examining the road before her, she slipped out of the gateway and began to jog along the road.

CHAPTER TWO

Bill made sure the hot water for Megan's bath on her return was ready. He looked at the kitchen clock. Twenty to twelve already! He crossed to the wall where the large and detailed map of her route hung, liberally annotated with estimates of her prospective position minute by minute. Now she should be only a mile away, and only the last quarter mile would slow her down as she wended her way by the few houses between his and the open country she'd crossed. With a confidence he couldn't entirely bring himself to truly believe in, Bill began to make sandwiches against his lover's return.

Megan's plan was simple. It was to follow the road where she'd been dropped off for a mile to the cross-roads, then to turn left on the road the gate had prevented her crossing. Another mile would bring her to the exact spot where she'd been before. She knew every inch of her route, and every place of concealment, and she jogged along steadily, alert for pedestrians and vehicles, feeling that she'd never felt so thoroughly alive as now, a hunted animal with every sense alert for predators. Reaching the cross-roads, she hid behind a belt of shrubbery while a lone car went past. Only when its rear lights were long out of sight did she turn down the left-hand road.

The road, little wider than the one she'd come out of, was straighter and busier. The verge on its far side, to which she had to cross at some point, was broad, and many small shrubs grew on it between the road and the hedge which ran along its side. She crossed the road and continued on the soft, water-logged grass.

After a time she grew almost blas? about the traffic which passed her from either direction. She could see their headlight from quite a distance in the misty air, and she was able to calculate to a nicety the moment to take cover against observation. She reached the gate of the field she'd intended to cross before and ducked through it. Once inside, she began to run easily across the grass. Two fields further on, she was feeling pleased with her progress.

“About twenty minutes late!” she thought. “Not bad, considering. And all our neighbours should be asleep by now; that will make it easier!”

The wall-clock in the kitchen showed midnight. Bill sat and stared at the door, willing Megan's appearance. He rose and checked that the large pile of fluffy towels were ready for her after the long and luxurious hot bath he'd insist that she take the moment she came in.

The second check was a replica of the first; another silly gate, fastened immovably by another silly chain. Megan stared at it in dismay. This gate had never been closed before on her many runs across these fields. Then she saw the ghostly bulk of cattle in the field beyond, and knew at once the reason for the gate's closure. To cap it all, a thin rain had begun to fall and the South West wind had freshened. Tired, and beginning to feel the cold now that she was motionless, she stood in the shelter of the hedge and thought through her options.

A quarter past twelve! Bill opened the back door and stood in the darkness, peering down the garden path in the direction he expected Megan to appear. It had begun to rain. He shivered and went inside to the warmth of the kitchen.

Megan shivered; she must keep moving! To her right were the bright lights of the modern farm to which the cattle belonged, to her left were more fields. The farm was out of the question. Even if she evaded its dogs, the only way out of its complex of modern building was along a well-lit concrete road leading to an even more well-lit major road which ran straight and true for three miles between stark, barbed-wire fences with open fields on either side. Their was no cover there; muddy skin or not, she would be caught like a rabbit in the headlights of any vehicle travelling it. To turn to her left was the only option, she decided; retracing her footsteps would involve travelling the whole way home by the public highway, and that she dared not risk. And, of course, there would still exist the problem she feared most, crossing the Motorway. No, she decided, she must go to her left and thread her way across the fields, trying to keep parallel to her intended course.

Ten minutes later she stood in front of yet another closed gate. Almost weeping in frustration, she turned back.

One o'clock! By now seriously worried, Bill debated inwardly whether or not to take out the van and look for her. But any number of things could have slowed Megan's passage; at any moment she could come trotting triumphantly up the garden path to the door. In the end, he decided to wait a further hour before going in search of her.

Huddling in the long wet grass by the side of a hedge, another closed gate before her, Megan began to sob. By now she was thoroughly lost; the thin rain had closed down what visibility there was. She seemed to have been wandering for hours in this maze of fields with their gates open and closed at random. She was cold and wet, and thirsty too, and she lowered her head to suck the moisture from the heads of the grass within her reach. Slowly she recovered something of her poise. Somehow she had to find out her exact location. But that would mean waiting for daylight at about six-thirty; long before then she must find shelter. First she urinated where she crouched, feeling the warm liquid splash back against her legs and thighs; then, wearily, she rose to her feet and continued her hopeless progress.

At two-thirty Bill was parked in the tiny lay-by where he'd left Megan more than three hours before. Taking a powerful torch in his hand, he stood in the entrance to field and shone it into the rain, calling her name loudly, although with no real hope. He cursed himself once more for his folly in allowing her to go through with this. His imagination, fired by numerous American horror films, dwelt on the perils she was in, naked and helpless, at the mercy of any evil-minded passer-by who came across her. Perhaps even now she was lying, raped and dead, in some muddy ditch, or cowering chained in some secret shed or cellar!

He returned to the van and drove away, trying to follow her intended route as best he could by road. The rain came down harder and harder.

Megan trudged listlessly over the muddy field, slipping and sliding with every step, blinking the rain from her eyes. Some thin and hard brushed her thigh, and a numbing shock paralysed the muscles of her left leg. She fell to the ground with a gasp of pain.

Slowly, her mind cleared. At last she knew where she was; on the pig farm about two miles out of her route, and that shock had been from an electric fence. Rising awkwardly to her knees in the thick, slimy mud, she listened hard for the sounds of the pigs that must be nearby. But the hissing of the rain defeated her hearing, and she crawled slowly and cautiously forward, at every instant expecting to feel again the numbing pain of the electric fence.

She found the fence within a few feet of her by bumping gently into one of the posts supporting its single strand of wire. Realising that the pigs were penned on its other side, she went down on her stomach and wriggled under the wire, heedless of the stinking mud. A few yards further on the low, dark bulk of a semi-cylindrical pig shelter loomed through the rain. Bent low, Megan stumbled across the mud and scrambled inside.

CHAPTER THREE

By four o'clock, Bill, tired, soaked and dispirited, had returned home. Still in his wet clothing he paced the kitchen feverishly, at a loss what to do next. He'd half-expected, half-hoped that Megan had returned during his absence, and that he would find her grinning up at him from a chair at the kitchen table, but his hopes had been dashed and his fears were uppermost once more. At best Megan still had her freedom of movement, but by now she'd be cold, wet and tired, and in imminent danger of pneumonia at best and death by exposure at worst. What should he do?

In the shelter, with the rain drumming on its corrugated iron roof, Megan crawled slowly on her aching knees over the damp, stinking straw towards the snoring hulks at its closed end. Gingerly she inserted herself between the huge, bristly bodies and revelled in their warmth. Her eyes closed despite themselves; seconds later she was in a deep and exhausted sleep.

Bill woke at six o'clock, still in his once soaked clothes, now damp and wrinkled. He sneezed, sniffed, and ran a hot bath. After breakfast he would renew his hopeless search.

At first light the pigs stirred and rose, jolting Megan violently as they did so. Shocked and confused, she opened her eyes and watched their bulks outlined against the grey dawn as they left the shelter. One of them paused to defecate copiously in the entrance, then her memory returned.

She took stock of her position as dispassionately as she could. There could be no question of her moving from here before darkness; about twelve hours away as she reckoned it. Even then she would have to wait several hours more for the traffic to clear; not until ten o'clock that night dare she take up her progress again. But now that she knew her exact whereabouts the rest of her journey should be without mishap. She had shelter, but she needed water badly, and food was a priority too. She giggled at the thought; there was plenty of water available to her, and food too, of a sort, if she dared leave her hiding place and get it.

She found that she could stand, bent over, in the low shelter, and she went to its entrance and peered out carefully. It would be another misty, grey morning. The rain had slackened, and was now a thin drizzle, aiding the mist to confine visibility to less than a hundred yards. Confident that she wouldn't be discovered, she went back to where she spent the night and lay down on the still-warm patch of straw left by the departed pigs. There she fell asleep once more.

Eight o'clock that morning saw Bill cursing the mud as he stumbled across the field where Megan had started her journey. With her map folded in his pocket, he meant to retrace the route she intended to see if he could find her, or at least find any sign of her. The wind sent a flurry of rain into his face, and he cursed once more.

Megan was woken by the harsh sound of a tractor engine idling close by. Fearfully, she rose to her knees and shuffled to the entrance where she crouched, ready to rise to her feet and run. She peered cautiously outside. There, a hundred feet to her left, a tractor and trailer were parked. Three men stood on the trailer, dumping the contents of several large, plastic bins into one of the long, low troughs which dotted the field. Megan ducked back inside hastily. At least there were no dogs, she thought, then giggled light-headedly at the thought that even a dog would find little enough difference between her present pungent scent and that of the pigs.

She heard the tractor drive away, then stop further off to repeat the feeding process. Finally, it drove away for good. Megan went back to the entrance and peeped forth. The rain had thickened again and visibility had worsened even more. Now, if ever, was her opportunity to drink from one of the short watering troughs. Quickly she darted out into the rain. Bent almost double, she scuttled the fifty feet to a water trough and dropped to her knees in the deep, thick mud around it.

To her relief, it was at a height which allowed her to drink from it by merely bending forward at the hips and extending her trunk over it. By propping her shoulders on its metal rim, she could lower her face into the murky water and drink. A few minutes later, gasping and spluttering, she rose to her knees and shook her head to clear her face of the water. She looked around at the enclosing mist. Confidently, she rose to a crouch and ran over to investigate the contents of the nearest feeding trough.

Contrary to what she may have believed, there was ample room amongst the feeding pigs. Kneeling in the mud, she looked into the long trough. She was dismayed at first to find only soil-crusted vegetables like swedes, turnips and carrots, overlarge and woody, and impossible for her to eat with her small mouth and weak jaws. But then she spotted things of more interest; tomatoes, small potatoes, cabbages and lettuce, and she knew that this was food from a supermarket, fed to pigs as it passed its sell-by date. There was other food; sandwiches, bread, cakes, soft fruit, all detached from any packaging. These she could eat, and she lost no time in lowering her head into the trough in the company of the pigs.

She ate and ate until she could eat no more, surprised at how hungry she was until she remembered that she hadn't eaten for nearly twenty-four hours (being far too excited to eat last night) and that she'd used up a great deal of energy in the past nine hours or so. And she needed food to keep her internal temperature up. With her belly painfully almost full, she crept over into the nearest shelter and huddled down on the dirty straw at its far end.

A little later she was joined by a single pig, driven inside by the increasingly heavy rain. Megan snuggled up to its damp, warm belly and fell asleep again.

Bill sat dully in his van with the heater running at full power, a faint steam rising from his wet garments in the hot air. At a loss what to do, he switched on his engine and drove listlessly home.

Megan was wakened by the pressure in her bladder. Reluctantly, she dragged herself away from the warmth of the pig's great body and shuffled on her knees to the doorway. She peered out into the rain, not at all keen in going into its cold wetness. Then she laughed. She was in a pig-shelter, for God's sake; why should she go outside to eliminate her wastes? Squatting awkwardly, she emptied her bladder into the damp straw and returned to her companion.

The hands of the kitchen clock moved inexorably onwards. Eleven o'clock passed, then noon. Bill, once again in dry clothing, stood in his doorway and looked up at the sky. A patch of blue had appeared in the far West, and the rain was gradually lessening. The wind had got up, and the afternoon and evening promised to be dry and fine. The night too; and that, at this time of the year, meant frost. Bill shivered, imagining Megan out there in the wet fields somewhere unable to move, perhaps unconscious through a fall, or immobilised with a broken leg or ankle. He MUST find her!

Megan woke once more. The pig had gone, but she was still comfortably warm. A little too warm, in fact, and she realised that outside the sun was shining on the metal roof of the shelter.

This clearing of the weather, she thought, could be bad news for her if it continued. But, at least, it would give her to opportunity to find out something she would need to know; whether the gate in the unused part of the field on the other side of the fence was still open without actually having to cross the field to examine it. A little later, towards dusk, she would go outside and look; in the clear air she should see it easily. She refused even to consider the possibility that the gate had been closed; that would mean that she was trapped, unable to leave the field at all, fenced with barbed wire on all sides as it was. The North side was bordered by a narrow track across which were the farm buildings; the West, the direction she ultimately needed to take, was bordered by the high embankment of the Motorway, and impassible on foot.

Lying on the deep straw, she reflected on the journey she must make. Now that she knew her exact location, it was easy in principle. She must cross under the electric fence into the other half of the field, then leave it by the gate through which she'd inadvertently entered it the night before. Then she must follow the track Eastward, away from the farm, to its junction with a minor road which, when she turned right, would take her to the pedestrian underpass she needed to use to get past the barrier of the Motorway.

The underpass itself had always been the most dangerous section of her journey. A stark concrete tube a hundred and fifty feet long, well-lit and with no hiding place en route, she would have to trust to the late hour that no-one entered it from its other end before she'd come out and found cover. After that it would be a mere matter of avoiding the houses of their few neighbours while she crossed their gardens en route to home. A short walk up their garden path, and she would be safe. And how relieved poor Bill would be! Drowsily, she wondered what he'd been doing. She hoped that he'd kept his nerve and not reported her absence to the Authorities.

CHAPTER FOUR

At two o'clock the sun was shining out of a cloudless sky. Bill began his search once more, this time from his own garden. He checked it, and what he could see of the gardens of his neighbours carefully, lest Megan had got this far and then become incapacitated for some reason. But she wasn't there, and he walked along the footpath at the side of the road, the traffic humming past him, until he reached the broad path which led to the Motorway underpass. He had no hope of finding Megan on the path, or in the Underpass; too many people used it in the hours of daylight and the early evening.

The exit from the underpass turned into a track which led to a small wood, a favourite resort of picnickers, but not part of Megan's route. He checked it anyway, peering carefully into the undergrowth lest she lay hidden there, afflicted by some illness or accident. Returning to the track at the mouth of the underpass, he stared Northwards along the narrow, long-disused footpath paralleling the Motorway down which she'd intended to come from the fields on its right hand side.

He walked along it, examining the ground before him carefully on principle, though what he expected to find and how he'd recognise it he had no real notion. The first gate he reached was closed, as was the second, but the one to the third field was open and he leaned on it for some time, staring over the featureless field for any sign of her. Then he trudged over the field and into the next.

Megan woke once more. Again she emptied her bladder in the straw, then she shuffled over to the doorway. It was late afternoon, and the sun was about to set behind the embankment of the Motorway a hundred yards away. Emerging from the shelter, she risked half-rising and looked over at the farm. There were no signs of any activity; emboldened, she rose to her full height and stared across the field at the gateway she hoped to leave by later that night. It was still open; with a glad heart she ducked back into the shelter. It was only then that she realised that she'd been exposed in plain view to the hundreds of travellers on the Motorway, and she giggled nervously at the thought.

At twilight the men and their tractor returned, and the feeding process of the morning was repeated. This time Megan was far more confident; no sooner had the tractor regained the farm than she was out at the water trough, a shadowy figure in the gloom of nightfall. She went from there to the food trough, where she ate as heartily as before. Halfway through her feeding, she felt an uncomfortable fullness in her lower bowels. Giving a mental shrug of indifference, she merely spread her legs a little further apart and, still bent chewing over the trough, emptied her bowels into the mud between her knees. Then she carried on eating until her belly was full and round.

Bill ate a solitary meal in the kitchen. The clock stood at six-thirty, and it was dark already. Perversely, he felt much more cheerful; it had dawned on him that Megan's absence might have been due to some unforeseen hold up delaying her until it was too late to continue her journey before daylight. In that case, she would have found somewhere to hide until dark, and she probably wouldn't move from there until about ten o'clock at the earliest. Anyway, he would expect her at any time after eleven; only if she didn't turn up by full daylight would he finally report her missing.

Megan was impatient to be gone. Every so often she would go outside and look across at the farm, waiting for the lights in the farmhouse to go out when its residents went to bed. The field was totally dark, and she whiled away some time restlessly walking about in the mud, unconcerned at being seen. But then the full moon began to rise and she grew cold in the crisp air. She went into a shelter and lay down with its indifferent occupants.

Ten o'clock, thought Bill. This was the earliest time he could expect her to resume her interrupted journey. All the same he put the big pile of fluffy towels into the heated airing cupboard again, just in case.

Megan had been lulled into sleep by the warmth and the steady breathing of her companions, and she woke in panic before relaxing when she realised that the pale light at the entrance was that of the fully-risen moon and not another dawn as she'd feared at first. Once more she shuffled outside; this time the farmhouse was in darkness. Rising to her feet, Megan walked over the mud to the fence. There she lay down without a qualm in the clinging mud and wriggled beneath it. Rising once more, she stepped confidently towards the gate, clearly wide open in the bright moonlight.

In fact, so bright was the moonlight that she felt a twinge of unease. Her shadow stretched ahead of her over the silvery ground. Glancing down at her body, she was dismayed to see patches of dirty white skin clearly visible. Wincing in anticipation, she knelt and clumsily rolled in the icy mud. Only when she was satisfied that every inch of her pale, betraying skin was covered by the stinking mixture of mud and pig manure did she rise, shivering.

She reached the track beyond the blessedly open gate and walked silently along the concrete of its surface away from the pig farm. Her feet hurt from the coarse, cold, hard stuff beneath them, but there was no escape; a tall thorn hedge was on her left, and the barbed wire of the field where the pigs were kept was on her right, and they marched beside her to where the track debouched at last upon the minor road she sought. There she paused to rest her sore and aching feet, crouching under the cover of a bush. Nothing stirred on the narrow lane; only the ever-present hum of the Motorway could be heard in the frosty silence. She felt a sudden spasm wrack her bowels; sobbing, she emptied them where she was before venturing out upon the moonlit tarmac of the lane. There at last she could run.

Throwing caution to the winds, she sprinted along the lane on its narrow verge. The orange lights of the underpass came into her view; she slowed and stopped to control her noisy breathing, and to slow the frantic beating of her heart. The opening of the tunnel was inviting, but the rays of the moon and the underpass lights combined to make the scene as bright as day. She hesitated, shivering in the icy air. She'd always known that this passage would present the greatest danger of being trapped in her helpless nakedness. Straight as a die it ran, brightly lit and with a sharp left-hand bend just beyond its far end, but it wasn't discovery by human beings she particularly feared, but by their dogs being taken for a late-night walk. Even in her present state she was confident of outrunning any middle-aged man or woman fresh from the warmth and light of their houses, but a dog, intrigued by her powerful body-odour, clearly apparent even to herself, would not be so easily evaded. Worse, the slight draught which always blew down the tunnel no matter how still the air would be behind her, signalling her presence to the keen nose of any dog.

She stared for long moments down the bright orange tunnel, straining every sense to detect footsteps at its far end. Her ears were of little use owing to the steady hiss and rumble of tyres over the concrete of the Motorway above her. She wished fervently to know the time; if it was after midnight, their neighbours would be in bed, their dogs safely chained up, or, more likely, asleep on their comfortable 'doggy beds' in some warm corner indoors. But around eleven o'clock some people took their dogs for a late-night walk and a breath of fresh air, such as a clear and frosty night like this seemed designed for.

By now Megan was shivering so violently that she knew she had only two courses of action open to her; either risk the passage before her, or run back to the warmth of the pigs and try again the next night. That was not to be borne; screwing up her courage, she ran into the mouth of the tunnel.

CHAPTER FIVE

She sped through the tunnel, the noise of her soles slapping down on the littered concrete ringing in her ears like continuous gun shots. Too late for thinking about the possibility of broken glass, or some other rubbish which might incapacitate her, her only thought was to reach the end of the tunnel as quickly as possible.

The interminable tunnel ended at last; Megan, her chest heaving, her breathing seemingly thunderous in the frosty silence, peered with infinite caution around the sharp left hand bend in the track. The broad path, well-lit, though not as garishly bright as the tunnel behind her, stretched before her. Shaking with cold and tension, she began to trot along it, homeward bound at last. Minutes later Megan crouched amongst the sparse shrubbery of the wide verge bordering the road which led to the cul-de-sac where she lived. How she wished that she knew the time! The problem of possible late-night dog walkers loomed ever larger in her mind. She examined the scattered houses of their neighbours closely. Most were in darkness, though lights still burnt in the ground floor windows of a few, including the one nearest to her. At the very moment, the side door of the house spilled a yellow rectangle of light on to the lawn beside it, and she heard the fruity voice of Mister Atkins, the Bank Manager.

“Go on, Bingo!” she heard him tell the dog. “Off you go!”

Thirty yards away Megan knelt on the icy grass, frozen in terror, watching the dark shape of the dog slip out of the pool of light while its owner stood in the doorway, placidly smoking his pipe and waiting for its return from this regular nightly excursion.

The elderly black Labrador trotted purposefully towards the shrubs, intent on relieving himself and getting back to the warmth of the house. But first, as she'd feared he would, he nosed around checking on the possible scents left by any other canine visitors. Inevitably, he scented Megan. Intrigued by her pungent mixture of smells, but blessedly staying silent, he crashed through the low bushes to her side.

Megan greeted him in unmoving passivity, kneeling with her haunches resting on her heels, her eyes lowered. Bingo sniffed her vigorously, lowering his head to probe the cleft between her buttocks. He poked his cold, damp nose into her armpits, and would have sniffed her vagina had she not clamped her thighs tightly together.

He sat in front of her and stared at her in puzzlement. He and Megan were old friends, and he was so obviously wondering what she was doing crouched here, and why she smelt so richly as opposed to her normal, bland human scent, that Megan, despite her predicament, was hard put not to utter a hysterical giggle. She heard the shuffle of slippers on concrete. Mister Atkins, tiring of waiting for his dog, walked to the end of his path and called to his dog.

“Bingo? Come here, you silly old bugger!”

The dog's head turned at his master's voice. Recalling the purpose of his visit to the shrubbery, he cocked his leg and urinated against the trunk of the tallest plant, licked Megan on her shoulder, then ran through the bushes to where his master waited for him.

The sound of their footsteps receded. Megan heard the back door shut, then saw the kitchen windows go dark at Mister Atkins went to bed.

Her bowels suddenly went into spasms and opened, gushing a thin stream of filth down the insides of her thighs and over her lower legs. Shocked and disgusted, she still managed to find some measure of humour in the event.

"Some dog will be blamed for that!" she giggled silently, on the point of hysteria.

She continued to kneel where she was for long minutes despite her shivering. That near encounter had come close to unnerving her completely. Before she could recover her poise a car glided to a halt at the kerb not twenty feet from where she hid.

The car, with its engine switched off and only its sidelights lit, stayed where it was while Megan silently screamed for its driver to go away. Cautiously raising her head, she caught a glimpse of the car's occupants in its lit interior. They were a man and a woman, the latter being the lady who lived across the road, popularly known as 'the Merry Widow'. The man she was even at that moment kissing passionately would be the latest in her succession of boyfriends.

Megan ducked back under cover. By now she was shaking with cold, and she longed to move on and get the blood circulating in her frozen limbs. She had fallen into a strangely peaceful state, the harbinger of hypothermia, when she heard the car door open. A faint snatch of conversation was followed by the sound of the car starting, then, after a short interval, it drove away at last.

Peeping over the fringe of vegetation between them, Megan saw 'the Merry Window' standing on the pavement staring after the departing vehicle. The lady then walked along the pavement for a few yards before crossing the road to her house. Megan relaxed at last. Now there was but one more hurdle to cross, and then; home at last!

Ghostlike, she slipped down the concrete path at the side of the Bank Manager's house and on to his back garden. Crossing the lawn in the moonlight, she stepped over the low wall which divided his property from the one next door. Another and another low wall, and she stood with only two properties between her and sanctuary. The final crossing presented no difficulty; it was unoccupied. It was the dividing house which was her immediate problem. Crouching by the wall, she considered what to do.

Before her, over the wall, lay a broad area of paved ground. That was in comparative darkness; it was the still broader expanse of paving beyond which was the cause of her concern. The house, to her right, was lit behind its drawn curtains, but the low building on her left, which covered the whole of the remaining ground, spilled out upon the paving a flood of brilliant light through the enormous single window which ran the whole length of the structure. Through it Megan could plainly see the head and upper body of Mister Schmidt, facing her position and gazing furiously at some complicated electronic apparatus which he held in his hands.

Megan calculated the distance she would have to cover. Thirty feet; it was too much to hope that Mister Schmidt wouldn't notice her crossing it, not six feet from his eyes. Hearing the faint rattle of a chain on concrete, she looked to her right where Tess, Mister Schmidt's amiable and well-behaved Spaniel, had come out of her commodious kennel in the shadows to welcome her.

Tess was another old friend, and Megan shuffled cautiously along to where the dog could put her front paws on the wall and rise to lick her face affectionately.

Megan looked in despair at Mister Schmidt. With her knowledge of his eccentric hours, she could well imagine him staying in his workshop all night, continuing to bar her only access. But she couldn't stay here, and she daren't retrace her steps back to the road. To reach her goal that way would involve travelling two hundred yards down a broad and brightly-lit thoroughfare, without cover of any kind, exposed to the vision of any casual observer. She shivered violently, then, in a single fluid movement, she crossed the wall and crouched before the entrance to Tess's kennel. A moment later, she was kneeling on the warm patch of straw where Tess had been lying.

Bill looked at the clock for what must have been the hundredth time. Half past midnight!

“No cause for alarm,” he thought fatalistically. “Twenty-four hours ago I was expecting Megan's return at about this time. She's been held up somewhere and had to hide during daylight. She'll be here soon!”

Megan snuggled up to Tess's warm body as closely as she could with her arms bound behind her. Compared to the freezing night outside, the kennel was a haven of warmth. How tired she was, despite her long enforced rest in the pig shelter. There was enough of the harsh light from the workshop reflected from the outside to dimly illuminate the interior of the kennel; confident that its extinguishing would rouse her, Megan closed her eyes.

She dozed fitfully for what seemed an age, every time waking to find the light still glaring down on the concrete paving. The window of time in which she could get home before daylight was fast diminishing; when the sun came up she would be trapped here just as she'd been with the pigs. How long would Bill wait until he felt he must notify the Police?

Then, just as she was becoming resigned to a lengthy stay as Tess's 'guest', the light went off at last. In its place a much weaker light came on from a lamp mounted high on the wall of the house, switched on by the workshop's occupant as he left.

Megan crouched beside the sleeping dog, fearful lest Mister Schmidt took it into his head to stoop and peer into the kennel. But he didn't, and she heard the scraping of his shoes as he crossed the concrete, then the rattle of keys in a lock as he opened the back door of his house.

She lay beside the dog and counted slowly to a thousand. Then she did so again, and again a third time. Finally, she moved cautiously to the doorway on her knees and peered forth. The house, except for a faint glow from a curtained upstairs window, was dark and silent. By contrast, the moonlight flooding the concrete seemed fearfully bright. Before she should lose her nerve, she scrambled noiselessly from the kennel, stood up, and ran to the low wall opposite. Two minutes later she was sauntering up her own back garden path towards the welcoming light of the kitchen windows.

“That was exciting!” she thought. “But next time there'll be some improvements!”

The kitchen door was ajar the tiniest amount. She pushed on it with her hip and entered the bright warmth. Her first sight, even before her eyes adjusted to the glare, was of Bill rushing towards her, his face an odd mixture of delight and concern.

“Well, I'm back!”