The Human Condition

footsteps were crucial. He'd had more than his fair share of avoidable injuries over the last couple of years and he knew now that it suited his body to start slowly and gradually build up to something resembling a decent speed. In any event, this was a simple training run and he didn't intend overdoing it.

    He jogged out through the village, acknowledging a couple of bemused folk as he passed them, ran across the dam and then began his usual clockwise circuit of the lake. He'd run this route many times before and had adapted it over time. He knew that it was more sensible to run clockwise because the majority of the children who attended the school lived on farms and in other villages to the east. The timing of his run today had been carefully considered so that he wouldn't reach the busiest stretch of road until the school traffic had been and gone. He expected the rest of the route to be quiet. Although very busy at the height of summer, with the ending of the holiday season the lake and the village had become noticeably quieter. Harry didn't expect to see more than a handful of people while he was out.

    That was how he liked it.

    Three miles in and the village had long been lost in the distance behind him. A heavy canopy of trees bowed over the road, giving Harry shade from the strangely cool but still brilliant and relentless sunlight. The cover muffled and changed the sounds around him, blocking out the very distant rumble of village noise and traffic, making every birdsong and animal noise seem random and directionless, and seeming to amplify the constant thud, thud, thud of his trainers pounding the ground. His breathing also seemed inordinately loud although he knew it didn't matter if it was because there was no-one else nearby to hear him.

    The peace and tranquillity was disturbed momentarily. A car engine (which could have been ahead or behind him and anywhere between half a mile and a mile and a half away) was abruptly and unexpectedly silenced. Harry then thought he heard the crackle and spit of splitting wood. It could have been anything, he quickly decided, but it was probably nothing. One of the local farmers working their land on the steep banks of the lake perhaps? He ran on regardless.

    The lake was roughly quadrilateral in shape. He had already run along its longest side and had just followed a sharp bend in the road round to the right. He was now running along the second side which was less than half as long as the first. The dense forest of trees to his left, the grey tarmac ahead and the glare of the sun bouncing off the water's calm surface to his right were all that he could see. His foot scuffed against something unexpectedly and he looked down at his trainers to mind his footing over a particularly uneven stretch of road. For some reason the ground here was covered with debris. Slowing down but not stopping, he tripped and kicked his way through the tangled branches of a sapling that had been felled, its narrow trunk having been snapped near to its base. Something � a car or truck perhaps � looked to have collided with the young tree. There were huge, arc-shaped scars in the mud just past the trunk. The vehicle, it appeared, had been knocked off course and had gone off the road close to where he was now running. The dirt, leaves and stones which had been disturbed by the collision had been dragged across the track in a rough curve which stretched ominously all the way across the tarmac. To Harry's right was a steep bank which dropped down towards the water. The tyre marks ended suddenly. He knew what had happened before he had even seen the car.

    Slowing down to walking pace, he cautiously approached the edge of the bank and peered over. Some five meters or so ahead and below him, wedged tightly between two sturdy trees, was the wreck of a small red car. No doubt the car which had made the noise he'd heard minutes earlier, it had been forced over onto one side by a moss-covered tree stump and had come to rest ungraciously with two wheels up in the air, still spinning slowly but about to stop. Panting with the effort of his run but still in full control, Harry carefully clambered down the bank towards the car, knowing that he had to help. He hadn't seen anyone else in the last half hour and chances were it would probably be at least as long again before anyone else passed here. It was down to him alone to try and help whoever it was who had been trapped in the crash. As he made