CHERUB: Knight

13: Sand

The sheets they had used for shade during the day were hopeless, and once they'd started walking George began to feel the effects of sunburn. His face and neck hurt like he'd pressed them against a hot plate, and his arms were far worse. Letty seemed to be just as bad, and after an hour of walking it became painful even to smear suncream onto the exposed areas.

"Let me do your arms," George offered when Letty dropped the suncream and sniffed back a sob. "It'll hurt, but we need the protection."

She just nodded and bit her lip as George rubbed the cream on as gently as he could, noticing the intense redness on her arms.

"Let's get moving. The sooner we get in the cooler air the better we'll feel," Letty said, putting on a brave face.

Travelling at night was far more pleasant, and halfway down the route they found a structure made of breeze blocks which hid a bowser full of water. They rehydrated and doused their burnt areas before carrying on, watching the sun rise behind some mountains and finally reaching their next checkpoint just as it started to get really hot.

"Day ninety-seven done," George said as they stepped into the cool air of the underground bunker. "Three to go!"

"We're not there yet. Make sure you don't get sand on any tender areas." Letty warned, picking up the briefings before the two of them went for the water tank.

"It says that we have to assemble a... something vehicle?" Letty said, pointing to the word.

George checked it against his own. "No idea, but there's some stuff about travelling to another checkpoint a hundred miles away."

"Fifty miles, yeah... by sun up."

"Eh? Sun up?" George asked, double-checking. "We need to move, if we lie low for five or six hours to avoid the sun we'll only have eighteen hours to travel a hundred miles.

"Okay, let's find this vehicle," Letty said, spotting a cardboard box in the gloom at the back. The two of them dragged it into the light and discovered that it was a lightweight dune buggy.

"Awesome! This'll speed things right up, plus we can fashion hats out of the cardboard," George said, pulling open the box. Letty checked the maps to work out a route while he rooted around, trying not to rub his sore arms on the box's edges.

"Uh, problem," George said.

"Hmm?"

"It's in about a million bits."

"Well, we've got six hours. We'll just follow the instructions."

They made a good team. With the sun up they had plenty of light, but in the shady bunker they were a comfortable temperature with plenty of water. Letty read out instructions and handed George tools or parts while he assembled it. After a while they had something that looked like a buggy, although it took up most of the space in the bunker.

"I won't fit the bodywork until we're ready to go, because it'll be too bulky to get out of the bunker," George said, "But the more I can assemble now the less bolting together it'll take in the hot sun."

The buggy said it had a speed of ten miles per hour on desert terrain, so they decided to wait until the sun was well on its way to the horizon before making a move. It would only take ten hours, maybe eleven if they got lost, so when the shadows in the bunker reached a certain mark George woke Letty, they refilled their water, carried the buggy outside and attached the last few bits.

"Right, it's full of petrol," George said. "Have we got everything?"

"Yeah. You drive, I'll navigate, because the route is a bit fiddly," Letty said.