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far from obvious. Whatever had happened to her, her face bore an inexplicable expression of absolute fear and gut-wrenching agony.

    Harry's options were limited. Did he stop with the bodies and wait for another motorist to pass (which would likely be some time) or should he try and get back to the village as quickly as he could to alert the authorities? Although harder, the second option was clearly the most sensible. The poor buggers in he car were beyond help and there was nothing to be gained from stopping with them. Harry quickly scrambled back up to the road, brushed himself down and then began to run again, continuing with his clockwise circuit of the lake.

    What started as a gentle training run had suddenly become a painful struggle. As well as having to contend with the shock of what he had just discovered, Harry also now needed to get his body moving again. He may only have stopped running for a couple of minutes, but that had been more than long enough for his muscles to begin to seize and tighten. He was just over halfway along his circuit so it made sense for him to continue on in the same direction. Perhaps he'd come across some of the school traffic that he'd originally hoped to avoid, heading back home after dropping off children.

    Harry forced himself to try and maintain a steady pace. He was tired and he knew that he didn't have enough energy to run faster � with more than three miles left to cover he knew that if he tried he'd probably end up walking most of the way back. At the same time, however, the furious, adrenaline-fuelled chemical reactions racing through his body were intent on making him pick up his speed. All he could see were the bodies he'd just found and all he could hear was the thump, thump, thump of his feet hitting the ground and his heavy, rasping breathing which seemed to be becoming harder, deeper and more desperate with each passing metre.

    Finally another sound disturbed the uncomfortable silence and distracted him. He could hear a plane in the distance. He rounded another gentle corner at the bottom of the lake and began to run the relatively straight two and a half mile stretch of road that would lead him back into the village. The relentless sunlight flickered through the trees, blinding him intermittently with its brilliance and causing him to involuntarily screw his eyes shut. The run was getting harder. He was suddenly beginning to feel cold and the ends of his fingers and toes had begun to tingle. Had the temperature dropped or was it shock? He'd run this route many times before and he knew he was more than capable of completing the distance, but now he was beginning to doubt himself. And all the time the plane's engines were getting louder.

    At the side of the road a twisting mountain stream tumbled down the hillside, disappeared under the road and trickled into the lake. That was Harry's two mile mark. If he pushed hard he knew that he could be home in less than fifteen minutes now, but it would take just about every last scrap of energy he had to do it. His legs were hurting. Christ, that plane was getting low and close...

    When the noise from the plane became deafening and was so loud that he could feel it through the ground beneath his feet like an earthquake, Harry stopped running again. This plane sounded different. Apart from the sheer volume of the noise it was making, this didn't sound like one of the military jets that often flew down the valley or even one of the smaller civilian aircraft that frequently passed over. The aircraft was moving in the same direction as he was, coming from behind him and flying along the length of the lake towards the village. He could see it above the trees now and it was flying lower than any plane he'd seen around here before. The slope of the bank down to the lake was relatively gentle here. Breathing heavily he jogged down to the water's edge to watch.

    The plane passed alongside him. It could have been no more than fifty