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back was scratched a thousand times over by the sharp walls, and felt sticky with blood.
    He had to pause several times to work out how to traverse some difficult sections, and he wished he had have spent a little more time on the gym rope, or the rock-climbing wall at school. It didn’t matter; he was going to get out, even if it meant his back was shredded.
    What felt like hours later, he pulled himself up and out into the light. He rolled onto his back and sucked in a deep breath, wincing from the pain and waiting for his breathing to calm. He sniffed and frowned. The air smelled different, strange.
    He opened his eyes and just as quickly had to shut them. They streamed with tears from the glare. After hours in the gloom, it would take a while for him to adjust to bright light again.
    Sitting up, he cupped his hands around his eyes and squinted between his fingers, breathing slowly and allowing his vision to come back into focus.
    What . . .?

Chapter 5
     

The Wasteland
     
     
    What happened? Where am I? Arn had assumed there’d been some sort of explosion and the Fermilab facility had collapsed, burying him inside. But now . . .
    He blinked another few times and got slowly to his feet, still cupping his hands over his eyes against the glare. For as far as he could see, there was nothing – no modern facility with its strange, sagging sandwich building, no roads, no metal sculpture, nothing at all.
    He turned in a circle. In fact, there were no trees, no grass, not even any hills. It was like a desert, but not quite as hot and dry. He looked at the sun, just up over the horizon – was it morning? A warm breeze blew past him; that was what he had found strange – it smelled like . . . nothing. The word  sterile  came to his mind.
    There must have been a nuclear explosion, he thought . But when he knelt down and sifted through the sandy dirt, it ran freely through his fingers – no melted or fused glass or rock, no building debris, nothing but grains of bleached rock.
     ‘But . . . what was that thing, then? A dog, a deformed dog . . . or maybe a giant rat.’
    But it giggled – it was watching you, following you. It looked like a . . . He shook his head to clear the argument that was washing back and forth in his mind.
    He licked his lips; he’d need something to drink soon.
    Maybe he should wait here, otherwise when Dr. Harper or Mr. Beescomb came to look for him, they’d never find him. Arn looked back at the hole he had just climbed out of. It was just an open wound in the flat surface, like a dry sinkhole. He turned again, looking at the ground, and then the landscape – it had a wiped-clean look – like someone had dragged a giant beach towel across the sand, flattening all the features.
    There was no one . . . There will be no one . That scornful voice in his head again, filling him with dread and pessimism:
    Stay here and die.
    The warm breeze wafted again, and he turned his face into it. He remembered a science class on weather, and the droning teacher telling them that wind usually blew from the coast – if that was true, then that’d be a pretty good place to head towards.
    Arn looked back at the hole for a second. There was water down there; maybe he should . . .
    Forget it. The thought of climbing back down into that labyrinth was both frightening and repellant. Instead, he used his foot to make an arrow in the sand.
    ‘I went this way,’ he said, to no one but the sterile breeze.
    I’ll head towards the coast , he thought – see what sort of land this is. And if there are any rivers, that’ll be where they’ll empty. Besides, if this was still home, then the coast was to the east – twenty-five miles; sure, a long way, but he was young and fit. He turned into the breeze and started to walk.
    ‘Winds always blow from the coast, and the coast is east,’ he repeated automatically.
    Unless its winter, then breezes blow towards the coast, not from it – you’re going the