Devastation Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

junction he turned right, following the lane through a tunnel of trees. His anger with the boy was starting to dissipate. He was even beginning to feel strangely
indebted to him. The boy had fed him, after all. He had watched over Owen while he slept. Again, Owen stopped and turned. The boy was teetering on the cusp of the hillock beneath the dark overhang
of trees, the sunlight shining through from behind. This time Owen stood and waited. Oh, let him come if he wanted to, he thought. The boy would slope off to wherever he was going soon enough.
    For over an hour they walked in silence. Owen felt as if he’d been taken hostage, and without a shared language he was completely disarmed. His fingers fumbled in his
pockets as he walked for the telltale shape of the button.
    ‘Where are you going anyway?’ he asked, but the boy did not reply.
    As the morning progressed the air became bracing as they kept climbing to higher ground. The boy lingered behind him but with increasing frequency he walked parallel on the opposite side of the
lane and threw Owen cursory glances. Whenever Owen stopped to consider the map, trying to match a point on it with something he’d seen – the pinnacles of a remote chateau or the tops of
cone-like mountains blurred by distant rain – the boy would stop too, and empty a stone from his battered shoe, or swipe at something with a stick while he waited. And then Owen would pocket
the map and carry on, and the boy would fall into line.
    They followed the edge of a field that had recently been set ablaze, patches of the volcanic earth still black and burning. Behind it the trees seemed to melt, and with every
change of wind the burning ash blew across their path so that they had to turn their backs to it and cover their eyes, some of the flecks still orange, pricking their cheeks and the backs of their
hands.
    They joined a lane that swerved down into a valley, a loosely woven fence separating the road from the farmland. At the bottom of the slope there was an entrance and a grey stone house in a yard
with open-fronted wooden outbuildings housing a plough and a wagon. Parked behind the house a couple of small trucks could be seen. Three soldiers in olive drab uniforms were loitering in the
yard.
    The boy grabbed Owen’s arm and pulled them both into a crouch. He then pelted, head stooped, across the grass and ducked behind the fence. He glanced over the top and slumped back
down.
    ‘
Honem!
’ he hissed, signalling to Owen, who ran over and then squatted down beside the boy, both of them breathless with their knees up and backs to the fence.
    ‘What is it?’ Owen said. He turned to take a look.
    Through the latticework of branches he could see the house and the uniformed men, bulky rifles in their hands, each held by a strap over a shoulder. One of them sat on an upturned pail, digging
around in the dirt with the toe of his boot. The other two stood by the trucks, lounging against the bonnets, and talking the same Slavic language as the boy.
    The boy squinted through the thin gap in the fence, glanced over the top and then through the gap again, trying to get a clearer look. Owen held the pistol against his chest. He could hear the
boy’s agitation in the heaviness of his breath.
    Then, from inside the house, there came a commotion. A stout uniformed man with severely cropped silver hair and a square reddened face appeared in the doorway. He was dragging out a woman who
was struggling and shouting in his arms.
    The boy clenched Owen’s arm, his fingertips digging in. The woman clung on to the doorframe and yelled desperately to someone inside –
Aleši! Ond ř eji!
–
before the soldier shouted something and wrenched her away.
    The boy stood but Owen yanked him back down.
    ‘Don’t!’
    The men at the trucks were opening the doors, one of them flicking a catch on his gun. Another soldier appeared from within the house hauling out two young boys. He gripped each by the upper