Sam crawled out of the cupboard below the stairs. He was hungry but still had water. Surprisingly, his diet of dry dog food was supplying him with enough calories and vitamins to keep him alert. It was merely the awful taste and consistency that was causing his hunger.
And, by now, the body of his mother had putrefied and the stench was appalling. He decided that it was time to move on. First he went upstairs and found his scout rucksack. Into this he put a wooly jumper, spare socks and underwear, an extra shirt and a pair of shorts and a sleeping bag. Then he thought for a while. He rummaged through his father’s bedside table and found a Swiss army knife with about a million blades on it. Also a plastic cigarette lighter. After that he went to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He knew that people needed medicine but he had no idea what medicine was for what. He spent a while reading labels and thinking, his face serious. Eventually he settled on a box of something called Ibuprofen and a large container of a drug that the doctor had recently prescribed to his mother. Amoxillin broad-spectrum antibiotics. He followed these with a box of various size bandages and a bottle of Dettol antiseptic. On the way out he picked up the rest of the dog biscuits and two bottles of lemonade that were hidden in his cupboard.
He left via the front door, which he left open, and walked out, staggering slightly under the weight of the full rucksack. He had no idea where he was going; he simply felt that he needed to be somewhere else. After a while he left the road and walked close to the hedges and shrubs. He wasn’t sure why but he thought that he had better be as inconspicuous as possible.
He walked until the sun went down, eventually stopping because he could no longer see. He burrowed into a thick hedge, unrolled his sleeping bag, crawled in and fell into an exhausted sleep.
Above him the sky glowed with all the colors of the rainbow as the sun continued to pulse and flare.
Chapter 16