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Heads or Games Masters around, therewere only two logical options: turn round and walk away, or run like shit. Option Two seemed the most likely to work in his favour and, as he took off up the path, back the way he’d come, he tried to work out the best way of losing the wolf pack behind him and getting home unscathed. It wasn’t going to be easy. The park was pretty much open territory, with the odd stand of trees and not much else in the way of places to hide; it looked like he was going to have to rely on speed and hope for the best.
    Then Adam remembered the garden centre.
    It was fairly near, it was always full of people and there was a back way out. All he had to do was get there. Behind him he could hear the five chasers gaining on him and he risked a glance over his shoulder, which confirmed that the nearest was only about twenty metres away, with the others fanning out on either side in case he made a move left or right. Not looking good.
    Skidding round a sharp right-hand bend, grabbing hold of a metal signpost to aid a quicker turn, Adam powered down the slip road leading to the garden centre and pelted through a narrow gap in a thick, shoulder-height hedge between the road and what the company which owned the place liked to call the Nature Zone. Too-lazy-to-mow-zone more like. Ducking down below the hedge, Adam ran in a crouch for about fifty metres, then, as he broke cover and made for the back of the garden centre building, he heard voices – far too close for comfort – shouting,
‘There he is!’
    Breathing like a steam train, sweating like he’d just got out of the shower, he zigged through the display of decorative bushes and shrubs (shouldn’t there be a Botanic Liberation Front that stopped people making plants look like dolphins?) and zagged in the ‘OUT’ door by the tills,running past the trolleys loaded with micro-forests of potted vegetation. But where next? It was hard to think straight on the run, but if he remembered the layout of the place correctly he had to get out via the café.
    Dodging past clumps of shoppers, keeping as low as he could, Adam ran up the wheelchair-friendly ramp that led to the café and straight through it. As he came out on to the patio area where all the tables were he almost ran back inside – two of the chasers had come round the outside of the building and were closing in on him. But retracing his steps was not going to work. Adam turned and ran between the tables, making for the gateway at the rear of the place and just managing to miss stepping on the tail of a large black dog whose back end was sticking out from underneath a chair.
    He was lucky. The two blokes behind him weren’t. As Adam pushed open the gate he heard the crash of a tin tray loaded with tea, coffee and cakes hitting the ground, and all hell breaking loose as the man who’d been carrying it had a go at the boy who’d run into him, grabbing hold of his shirt and shouting that he was going to have to pay for what he’d done. One down. Then the second guy, who didn’t stop to help his friend, also didn’t spot the dog’s tail. He must’ve stamped on it hard because the resulting yelp was loud, angry and agonised, and the dog, still tied to the metal chair, gave snarling chase himself. Chaos.
    Adam wished he could’ve stayed and watched, but there was the small matter of the other people still out there after him. He looked around; somewhere the other side of the maze of greenery, beyond the wall of plastic-bagged earth and gravel and eco-friendly compost, was the back entrance, the one where you came in to pick up yourChristmas trees. God, he hoped it was open, because if they caught him down there he’d have no chance.
    His mouth drier than a slice of stale bread, thinking he’d give anything for a glass of cold water, Adam sprinted through the ranks of palm trees, rows of whatever and displays of flowering