Lair by James Herbert Page A

leapt at his chest, raking the skin down to the bone with its claws. It clung there and, as Alan toppled backwards, it began to snap its way into his throat. The others, those that had been more hesitant, crept out from beneath the clearing's surrounding undergrowth, still cautious, for the fear of man was inbred, but becoming bolder as the sweet blood aroma aroused them.

    Through tears of pain, Babs saw the approaching black shapes, and she too knew their meaning. She wanted to help Alan, but she was too afraid; she wanted to run, but her fear made her freeze. All she could do was bury herself beneath the coat, her knees tugged up into her chest, her hands clutching at the material, holding it tight around her. The pain in her foot was excruciating and the terror in her mind incapacitating. She prayed, the words tumbling from her lips in a garbled flow, that the creatures would leave them, would fade back into the night, would return to the hell they had come from. But Alan's screams told her they wouldn't. And the tugging at the coat, the sudden sharp, exploratory nips, told her the rats wouldn't leave until she and Alan had been devoured.

    As the bites began to puncture her flesh and the agony made her body unfold and writhe, she saw Reg and the boys sitting around the dinner table, Kevin, the youngest, saying, "Mum's late, Dad ... Mum's late ...
    Mum's late ..."

    It was past midnight and no sounds had come from the inside of the tent for at least an hour. It stood alone, like a canvas sentinel, in a corner of the wide field, the forest a dark backdrop. Liquid, almost frozen, clung to the stiffened blades of grass around the tent, but inside it was snug and warm, heat from the boys' bodies providing its own central heating. A small night-light glowed weakly in the centre of the floor space, the seven slumbering boys and their supervisor spread around it in giant cocoon shapes, dreading the cold dawn which would force them to shed their sleeping-bag skins.

    Gordon Baddeley, the supervisor, slept to one side, a one-foot gap between him and the nearest boy as though the dividing line were a wall behind which authority rested. Gordon maintained that such abstract symbolism was important.

    The boys, their ages ranging from twelve to fifteen, were all from a Barnardo's home in Woodford, and this was their outdoor 'survival'
    week. There hadn't been much to survive, for the nearest shop was under two miles away, and wild lions, tigers and crocodiles were not reputed to inhabit that part of Epping Forest. The younger boys, however, did believe bears roamed free in that particular area. The field was empty of any other form of life, for it was not one of the official forest camp-sites, but a certain benevolent Lord Something-or-Other the boys could never remember his name allowed the Woodford orphanage to use that corner of a field on his estate for camping purposes. As he did not live on the estate any longer but rented the land out to local farmers, he was only a mythical figure to the boys, vague and aloof, like God.

    Gordon Baddeley had been a Barnardo boy himself a few years before and was, so everyone said, a shining example of the goodness and honesty that could come from an orphanage background. After only three years in the outside world, working in a supermarket as a shelf-filler, winning promotion to assistant on frozen meats, he had returned to the orphanage that had reared him, turning his back on success because he wanted to help those like himself, the underprivileged. The home had been proud to accept him, although it wasn't common practice to take back those who had left, for Gordon had been an exceptional boy.
    Well-mannered, soft-spoken, hard-working, no outward emotional problems he was a boy the staff could point at and say: "You see, it works.
    Even though we can't give them the love and affection of true parents, we can turn out well-balanced young people like this."

    Not that Gordon was regarded as