Lumpy

The group under the trees huddled together. Alain and Hugo had tried to pull together some branches to form a makeshift shelter but it was less than effective. The four of them were getting unpleasantly wet.

‘Could you try to communicate with Xavier?’ Jean-Claude was shivering from a mixture of delayed shock and the cold unrelenting downpour.

‘It may not be a good time - we might alert others to his whereabouts. If he needs us, he will signal to us.’ 

‘How long should we wait?’ Jean-Claude did not have the clones’ stoic ability to endure, and his French temperament made him excitable in the most ordinary of situations. Which clearly, this was not. 

There was no answer from the other five. Their logic told them there was nothing to be done without further information and they had set their systems to energy saving while they waited.

Jean-Claude pulled his tracksuit top more tightly round himself and ran the zip up to his chin. Things in his pockets felt lumpy and he reached in to investigate. He remembered he had grabbed blindly at various items in the dark cupboard, thinking anything might be useful for a weapon if and when his captors opened the door again. He pulled out a roll of some sort of thin plastic, wound tightly in a fat cylinder and a small spray canister full of liquid. He couldn’t tell what it was, the label had Chinese characters in red on a yellow background - might be anything. He thrust that back in his pocket and inspected the spool of plastic. 

‘Hey - look what I ‘ave!’ He waved the black bin bags over his head. ‘We can make raincoats with zese.’

‘Pity you didn’t remember you had these a little earlier,’ said Hugo, tearing head and arm holes in his bag.

‘Better late zan not at all,’ was the dusty answer.