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1

Summer, 1976 Tony Johnson was off the saddle, standing on the pedals of his bike, pumping his legs hard. He was ahead of Don Carter by ten yards as they raced along the narrow Levenby village High Street. They sped past Mr Craddock, washing his yellow Ford Cortina outside his terraced house, his shirt sleeves tightly rolled up to his elbows as he sloshed suds over the car with a sponge. His transistor radio, sitting on the sun-warmed window-sill behind him was playing Thin Lizzy’s The Boys are Back in Town, Don’s favourite song of the moment. He and Tony were twelve years old, school was out and it was already a fading memory; the summer was theirs and life didn’t get better than this. They free-wheeled fast round the corner by Mandy’s Ladies’ and Gents’ Hairdresser and into the village square. Tony had to swerve deftly to avoid an old lady pushing her shopping trolley across the street and, at the last second, so did Don - but it was a close thing. ‘Oi, watch where you’re going!’ The old woman cried out shrilly. ‘Sorry Mrs Dawson!’ Don, grinning, called back over his shoulder. They rode by the Red Lion pub with its hanging baskets outside loaded with vibrantly colourful flowers and its posters advertising Guinness and Watney’s Red Barrel and Heineken lager, past the last cottages and onto the mile-long, arrow straight road which ran to the airfield, the sand banks, the salt marshes and the North Sea – next stop, Denmark. They had the road to themselves; on either side of it there were ditches and hedges and beyond them the endless flat rootcrop fields of the Lincolnshire fens that swept away to the horizon, which was broken only by the coniferous treeline of Darkenridge Forest. The sun blazed from an unbroken blue sky, and Phil Lynott’s song had been replaced by that of skylarks. Don, blowing hard and with his white t-shirt damp with sweat beneath the

rucksack on his back, drew level with Tony. Their sprint through the village was over, their energy expended. Tony, showing off as usual, let go of his handlebars and rode hands-free, cocky and confident. He was the leader, the risk-taker, and most of the time Don was happy to follow in his wake. They hadn’t known each other long - Don’s dad’s job meant the Carters relocated frequently and they had only recently moved to Levenby - but the boys’ friendship had quickly become firm. Ten minutes later they reached the airfield’s main gate. A small stone memorial had been erected at the side of the road and etched on a brass plaque fixed to it was an epitaph, which Don knew by heart: To the memory of those who gave their lives serving with 337 Squadron, Bomber Command, RAF Levenby, during the war of 1939-1945. It was followed by a list of fourteen names, and then the squadron’s badge and its motto, Furtum Ignis - Stealth and Fire. Royal Air Force base Levenby; that was its official name. But for centuries the locals had called it Druids Field. Don and Tony rode through the wide open iron gates. Don had never seen them closed. His dad knew he came out here and had said, half-jokingly, that the boys were tresing, but he hadn’t forbidden Don from coming. Nobody else cared because it wasn’t known who owned the airfield – except that it was no longer the Ministry of Defence. They crossed the open expanse of the weed-infested concrete apron to the airfield control tower, a black-painted, blocky and functional two-storey building with a flat roof and a railed walkway around the outside of the second floor. Don and Tony dropped their bikes into the blonde summer grass outside, and went into the building through a side door. A central corridor ran its length and the boys had made their den in the first room on the left. They had added their personal touches to the place over the weeks; there were posters of a Spitfire, a Vulcan bomber and an American B52 taped to the peeling, pale green walls and they had hung an old dartboard riddled with so many holes it was a miracle it was still holding together. There was a battered wooden table, a couple of deck chairs and, in a corner, a hulking relic of a Marconi radio transceiver the size of a refrigerator, which, together with the table, had been there when Don and Tony had first found the place. They had no idea whether or not this piece of kit worked; it was intact, as far as they could see, but it needed a power supply and none was available out here. Tony had been trying to persuade his dad to take it

home in his car but Mr Johnson, so far, had been cool about the idea. Don opened the window to let out the hot, stuffy air and dumped his rucksack on the table beside their small transistor radio, which he switched on. Peter Frampton was singing Show Me the Way. Don slid a well-thumbed girlie magazine aside and tipped the contents of his rucksack onto the table - there were bottles of drink, bars of chocolate and packets of crisps. ‘I’ve got cheese and onion or salt and vinegar. What do you want?’ Tony had edged the Marconi away from the wall and was poking around in the back of it. ‘Salt and vinegar,’ he said. ‘Bring any Coke?’ Don slumped into a deck chair, propped his sneakered feet up on the table and ripped open a packet of crisps. ‘There wasn’t any at home. There’s Fanta.’ He tossed a handful of crisps into his mouth as he eyed the top of Tony’s gingerhaired head, just visible above the transceiver cabinet. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’ve got something fantastic to show you,’ Tony said. ‘This’ll freak you out.’ ‘Yeah?’ said Don, feigning disinterest. ‘Yeah!’ Don twisted the cap off his bottle of Fanta and air escaped with a brief hiss. He waited. After a few moments Tony, grinning, emerged from behind the transceiver, holding something wrapped in dirty rags. ‘What is it then?’ Don asked. Tony placed it on the table. He carefully peeled away the layers of rags, revealing a clear, four-sided glass pyramid about six inches high. ‘Cool beans or what?’ Tony said. Don was intrigued, but he wasn’t about to show it. ‘It looks like a piece of junk.’ ‘Don’t be such a spaz,’ Tony said dismissively. ‘Look at the sides.’ Don could see that there were small tight spirals, circles and other geometric

patterns that looked a bit like old Egyptian symbols. What were they called? Hieroglyphs, that was it. That kind of figured, given the shape of the thing. Tony went on, ‘I reckon it’s something to do with the Druids. They probably used it in their sacrifices.’ Don glugged his drink and belched loudly. He thought Tony had got his ancient peoples mixed up. ‘What did they do? Hit people over the head with it?’ Tony lifted the pyramid from its nest of rags and held it up reverently to the window, as if he was offering up a precious relic to the gods. Sunlight flashed off its surface. ‘They used it to summon demons,’ he whispered with mock solemnity. ‘It’s too new,’ Don remarked offhandedly. ‘If it was anything to do with the Druids it’d be in a shitty state. And they didn’t have glass back then, did they?’ He didn’t know if that was true or not. He stood his bottle of drink on the table and swung his feet to the floor. ‘Let’s have a look,’ he said, leaning forward. At first, he didn’t think Tony was going to relinquish the thing, but after a moment’s hesitation he ed it across the table. ‘Don’t drop it...’ ‘I won’t drop it, you idiot.’ Don turned the pyramid in his hands, examining it from every angle; it was surprisingly heavy for its size, and despite its appearance it didn’t really feel like it was made of glass. Some sort of plastic then? No, that wasn’t it, either. ‘It’s something out of a plane,’ he announced. ‘Has to be. It’s to do with the navigation.’ This was another bluff. He just wanted to puncture Tony’s smugness. His friend sat in the other deckchair. ‘You’re joking. What kind of plane has navigation gear like that?’

Don shrugged. ‘It’s experimental. Where did you get it, anyway?’ ‘Nobby gave it to me. He found it in the dunes.’ ‘That proves it’s junk then. If it was worth anything Nobby would’ve kept it to sell, not given it to you.’ Nobby Culdrose lived in the ex-coast guard station house half a mile around the bay from Druids Field. He called himself an architectural salvager, which meant he recovered fireplaces, wood ling, bricks and whatever other saleable items he could save from old properties. He also did house clearances as a sideline, and dealt in ‘antiques,’ as he called them. Don ran his fingertip across the symbols on the pyramid. They didn’t seem to be etched into the glass as he’d first thought; it was more like they had been embedded in it somehow, just below the surface. ‘If Nobby found it on the dunes maybe it came from that JU88 that crashed in the war? I reckon it was part of a top-secret German project.’ ‘No way,’ Tony said. ‘That writing isn’t German. It’s Druidish. You know I’m right.’ Don frowned. Just for a moment, he thought he saw filaments of bluish light flicker briefly within the pyramid. It might have been something to do with the way the sunlight was shining through it. It happened again, but this time the filaments grew brighter and became more numerous, forming a web which sparkled and danced. And then, suddenly horrified, Don realised he could see the bones of his fingers through the skin, as if the pyramid was contaminating his hands with its transparency. He wanted to drop the object, but his hands were paralysed. His vision darkened at the edges and his hearing dulled; the radio’s sounds had dissolved into white noise and all he could hear was a delicate crystal tinkling, like a wind chime in a soft breeze. Tony said something, but to Don his words were uncomprehendingly muffled. He was being drawn into the maelstrom of blue light within the pyramid, mesmerised by the spinning strands, unable to look away. The swirling, random patterns gradually resolved into a moving image - an airman, wearing a heavy RAF greatcoat, on a motorcycle, the bike with its camouflage colours and a large white number 25 painted on the fuel tank, riding along what looked like the perimeter track of Druids Field. Except that it wasn’t

the airfield as it was now. In this vision, the concrete of the track was smooth and free of weeds, and in the background there was a large hanger and aircraft Avro Lancaster bombers - parked on the hardstandings. There was no sound - this was a silent movie. Don felt a couple of firm nudges on his shoulder and the spell was broken, gone as quickly as it had overwhelmed him. He looked up, blinking. Tony was leaning forward, one hand on Don’s shoulder, ready to give him another shake. There was deep concern on his freckled face. ‘Are you all right?’ Don’s mouth was too dry for him to speak at first. He swallowed. ‘Yeah. I... I’m fine.’ Whatever mysterious energy the pyramid had briefly possessed had gone, and Don’s hands were no longer transparent. They never had been, he thought feverishly, I imagined it. Tony, wide-eyed, said, ‘How did you get it to do that?’ ‘Did you see...?’ ‘The light. Yeah.’ ‘Nothing else?’ Tony stared at him. ‘No. What else?’ With careful deliberation Don placed the pyramid back on the table. His hands were trembling and his head was throbbing. ‘Doesn’t matter. It must have a battery in it that’s still working. I must have pressed a button or something.’ Tony regarded the pyramid warily. He didn’t seem to want to touch it again in a hurry. ‘The Druids didn’t have batteries,’ he offered soberly. No, really? Don thought.

The radio station re-emerged from the fog of white noise. Dolly Parton was imploring Jolene not to take her man. The nausea hit Don in an instant. He ran from the den, sure he wasn’t going to make it outside in time, but he did just. He threw up in the weeds in the shadow of the wall while Tony called his name. Through his misery, Don heard the faint rising and falling rasp of a motorcycle engine. He wiped vomit from his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up. Speeding along the distant, heat-hazed perimeter track at the seaward edge of the airfield was the same motorcyclist he’d visualised a couple of minutes earlier within the pyramid - the greatcoat, the camouflage, the white number 25 painted on the bike’s petrol tank, it was all identical. ‘Bloody hell, Don,’ Tony was beside him now. When Don looked out towards the dunes again, the motorcyclist had disappeared.

2

Don sat at his small desk in the cramped corner of his bedroom in an oasis of light shed by an angle-poise lamp. The night was hot and close, and even though his window was wide open the breeze wafting though it was lethargic. The small fan on the corner of the desk was trying gamely to cool things down but all it really succeeded in doing was to push warm air at him. He’d spent the last couple of hours, since returning from Druids Field, poring over his aircraft books. He’d gathered a dozen of them from his bookshelves and had stacked them on the carpet next to his chair. They covered just about every aviation subject imaginable: early flight navigation, aircraft archaeology, history, and an engineering reference work which went into a great deal of technical detail about the Rolls-Royce Merlin aero engine. Don had avidly read all of these books, many of them more than once. The one he was looking through now was a glossy volume about World War Two German bombers. He was searching for an image, a hint that the glass pyramid Nobby had found and given to Tony had a rational origin. In his heart of hearts, though, he knew the artefact with its strange inscriptions hadn’t come from the crashed Junkers JU88. There was a soft knock on the door, and Don’s mother poked her head round the edge of it. ‘Don’t stay up too late,’ she said. ‘Dad and I are going to bed now.’ ‘I’ll only be a few more minutes,’ Don told her. His mum smiled. ‘All right. ‘Night then.’ ‘‘Night.’ He kept his eyes on the door after his mother left, listening to her footsteps as she crossed the landing. He heard his dad say something but couldn’t make out the words. Then their bedroom door closed. They weren’t his real parents, but he didn’t care; they were the only ones he had ever known. He’d been handed in anonymously as a baby and nobody knew who his biological mum and dad were,

so even if he wanted to find out, the search would prove impossible. He turned back to his book, but couldn’t keep his attention on it. He couldn’t stop thinking about the motorcyclist, the vision of him in the pyramid, and then his appearance for real on the airfield perimeter road. He hadn’t told Tony anything about what he’d seen or experienced in the pyramid. Tony would think it was incredible, just as Don would have done if their roles had been reversed. But the way he was feeling now he wanted to get rid of the artefact, give it back to Nobby, throw it in the sea, whatever. The truth was, what had happened had scared the crap out of him. He closed his book. The phone ringing downstairs woke him from a strange dream in which he was gazing up at impossibly high and thin glass spires infused with fluid rainbows of colour and which rose into bruised clouds laced with forks of blue lightning. He turned over and looked at his clock radio. The digital display read 2.03. He expected to hear one of his parents get up, but nothing happened, except that the phone kept ringing. Surely one of them must have heard it? It was a wrong number. It had to be, at that time of night. But supposing it wasn’t? What if something had happened to one of his grandparents? He rolled onto his back - he’d taken off his pyjama top because it was so hot and stared at the shadows of his model aircraft, suspended by threads from the ceiling - the Lancaster, the B17, a Spitfire, a Messerschmitt. The bedroom curtains billowed briefly, the incoming breeze nudging the models into motion, setting them spinning lazily. The phone kept ringing. He climbed out of bed, went to the door and peered out onto the dark landing. He could hear his dad snoring, in counterpoint to the phone’s ringing. He could knock on his parent’s door to rouse them, but why disturb them? He wasn’t a child, and could answer the phone himself, find out that it was a wrong number and that would be that. He crept downstairs, the carpet soft beneath his bare feet, his hand sliding on the smooth wooden banister. He took his time, because he expected that at any

moment the phone would fall silent and the problem would be solved. He reached the foot of the stairs where he paused and stared at the phone. It was plastic and a horrible mustard colour and it sat on a little shelf by the front door, a directory and a Yellow Pages in the cubby-hole beneath it. He glanced towards the landing. There was still no sign of his parents. He crossed the small hall, tentatively picked up the phone’s handset and held it to his ear. ‘Hello?’ He thought the line was dead. Then, bubbling out of the silence came a rising wash of static and buried within it, Tony’s thin voice. ‘You gotta get here, Don!’ He sounded as if he was communicating from Mars. Gripping the handset too hard, Don whispered, ‘Tony? Where are you?’ Then he realised there wasn’t much point in keeping his voice down. If the ringing phone hadn’t woken his parents then talking wasn’t going to. ‘At the airfield. Get a move on!’ ‘What are you doing? It’s two o’clock.’ ‘It’s about that thing Nobby gave me...’ Tony said something else, but his words were eclipsed by the static. ‘Tony? Are you there?’ Tony wasn’t. There was just the white noise. Don listened for a few moments longer before slowly lowering the handset onto its cradle. Moonlight shone through the small glass s in the top of the front door, bathing the phone. He stared at it, expecting it to start ringing again. And then it occurred to him: Tony had said he was at the airfield. So where had he called from? There was no phone box anywhere near the place.

3

His head was low over his bowl, and he was concentrating on eating his cereal. Apart from a sullen ‘morning’ in response to his parents’ greetings, Don hadn’t said a word since he’d come downstairs. His dad was sitting opposite him at the kitchen table reading the Sunday Express and munching toast. His mum was fussing around at the sun-splashed counter, peeling potatoes for lunch, and humming along to the Bellamy Brothers’ Let Your Love Flow playing softly on the radio. The song ended and was followed by the weather forecast. It was shaping up to be another hot day and at some point during the summer high temperature records looked set to be broken. ‘I don’t know,’ Don’s mum said and sighed, ‘when’s this going to end?’ ‘Stand pipes in the street soon, I reckon,’ his dad pronounced, the paper rustling as he turned another page of the broadsheet. Don spooned more cereal into his mouth. He could see in his peripheral vision that his mum had turned her head and was frowning at him. She was holding a potato in one hand and the peeler in the other. ‘Are you feeling all right, love? You look pale.’ ‘I’m fine Mum.’ ‘Perhaps I should take your temperature, just in case - there are summer colds going round.’ Don couldn’t keep it in any longer. He dropped his spoon in the bowl and pushed it away. ‘Didn’t either of you hear the phone last night?’ His dad lowered his paper. ‘No,’ his mum said, her frown deepening. ‘What time was this?’

‘Two o’clock.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Did you get up? Did you answer it?’ Don hesitated, and then shook his head. He couldn’t maintain eye with his mother. His dad said, ‘You must have dreamed it. And if not, it can’t have been important or they would’ve called back.’ And then, right on cue, the phone did ring. ‘Oh goodness,’ Don’s mum said, her potato-grasping hand flying to her chest. Don’s own heart kicked into overdrive. What if... Nobody moved. ‘I’ll get it then, shall I?’ Don’s dad muttered. He briskly folded and laid his paper on the table then went out to the hall. The conversation with the caller was brief. From his father’s side there was a mix of solemn yesses, noes and I understands, while Don and his mother waited. She’d sat down and was anxiously twisting the tea-towel in her hands as she watched the door which led from the kitchen to the hall. Clive Carter’s expression was serious when he returned. ‘That was Norah Strudwick,’ he said. Norah was the Johnson’s next-door neighbour. ‘She thought we’d want to know. Tony’s gone missing.’ The Carter’s house was an Edwardian terraced property fronting onto one of Levenby’s side streets, and with its back yard accessible from an alley. By using this as a short-cut, Don could normally ride to Tony’s place, on the other side of the village, in about three minutes. This morning he did it in just over two. He turned the corner into the street and immediately braked to a hard stop. Fifty

yards ahead, the narrow thoroughfare was blocked by a police car, an Austin Metro. The front door of the house opened and Mr Johnson came out, closely followed by a policeman. They weren’t hurrying. There was another officer waiting by the car and he had one of the rear doors open for Tony’s dad. He climbed in and the car drove down the street and past Don, none of its occupants paying him any attention. He watched it as it left the square and, picking up speed, headed out of the village in the direction of the airfield. He followed, cycling hard all the way along that long and lonely stretch of road, not letting up even though his legs and lungs had no more to give, not until he stopped, panting and sweating, in front of the airfield gates. Half a mile distant on the far side of the airfield sunlight flashed off a windscreen and Don saw people moving around. Something else caught his eye. A stony, unmade track split from the road at the gates and followed the perimeter fence around the airfield to the bay, Nobby Culdrose’s house and, in the other direction, the shadowy swathe of Darkenridge Forest. Standing on the track beside a small car was a tall, slim woman in jeans wearing large sunglasses, her long dark hair tied loosely in a pony-tail. She was looking Don’s way. He didn’t recognise her. After a few moments, she climbed into the car and drove towards the dunes and the forest. As far as Don was concerned, it didn’t matter who she was or what she was doing there because he had other things to think about. He pushed on, following in the dusty wake of the woman’s car. He was pedalling more slowly now, his earlier adrenaline-fueled urgency replaced by a sick and certain dread. At the fork he turned right, the track at that point partially obscured by drifts of sand. Parked there, next to the airfield’s boundary fence, was the police Austin, a van with the Lincolnshire Constabulary badge on its side and an ambulance with its rear doors standing open. Two ambulance men were sitting on the step, talking quietly, their jackets removed. Don dropped his bike amongst clumps of marram grass, the tang of salty air strong here, and at a crouch stealthily made his way through the dunes, wanting to get as close as possible without being noticed. He heard the crackle of a police radio and followed the sound. He climbed to the crest of the dune and saw, in a valley of hot, white sand a little further on, a blue plastic tarpaulin covering

something, an insignificant-looking hump. Mr Johnson was down there, standing forlornly by the sheet, two uniformed policemen and a man in plain clothes with him. One of the policemen, overweight, grey-haired and with sergeants’ chevrons on the sleeves of his short-sleeved white shirt noticed Don and, puffing like a struggling steam engine, climbed up to him. ‘I’m sorry son,’ he said breathlessly as he dabbed sweat from his brow with a large handkerchief, ‘You can’t come this way.’ Mr Johnson looked up, straight at Don, and there was desolation in his eyes. Above, the bowl of the sky was an achingly perfect blue and in the distance, beyond the salt marshes and out across the bay, the morning sun burnished the sea. It was going to be another beautiful summer’s day.

4

Fifty years later. Druids Field dreams, and it waits... The surfaces of the shallow black pools which settle across the salt marshes shiver as winter gales blow relentlessly inland from the sea; they bluster through the dunes, harrying and bullying the marram grasses, before they blast across the flat featureless acres of runways and taxiways and concrete hardstandings. They search, probe and hoot around the corners of derelict buildings like mischievous ghouls, they rattle smashed windows and they whistle amongst the remains of shattered roofs, through which drifting sheets of rain seek ingress. They snatch at the weeds and the saplings which grow in the yawning, dark doorways, tossing them this way and that, yet unable to dislodge them. And through all the summers the insects drone as they flutter across shafts of sunlight and the deeply shadowed and haunted places which it does not reach. In the heat, Druids Field drowses. Another brick crumbles. Another small, anonymous building in a far and forgotten corner is reclaimed by nature. The runways crack as the weeds relentlessly push through the concrete, seeking light and air, like spirits rising from the ground. Their persistence is their strength. They have time. And in the silence of an ethereal misty morning in autumn when the wash of the sea is hushed by distance, the ghosts might be heard, of thundering aero engines and the bustle of this place; airmen’s banter and laughter, air raid sirens, the smell of exhausts, hot rubber and aviation fuel. And there are ghosts from antiquity, too. Of robed and hooded men in solemn

processions and from millennia before that, even, there is held the imprint of thunder and lightning which cleaved the ancient sky but which was not created by natural forces. Druids Field has been named by men, but it has never belonged to them. The seasons turn as slow, unhurried wheels and another ageless cycle begins. Druids Field dreams. And it waits...

***

Sally Desiderum, self-appointed Darkenridge Forest Ranger, lowered the whirring blade of her cordless, battery-powered chainsaw to bear on the fat length of trunk which lay on the forest floor, the saw vibrating fiercely through her thick work gloves as the chain found purchase, its buzz harsh. It made fast work of cleaving the log. She turned off the saw and laid it on the ground amid the cut wood and piles of sawdust. She flipped up her protective visor, hooked her ear defenders around her neck and tugged off her gloves. The forest silence was intense, the stands of pine and silver birch still and watchful, the naked woods unmoved by the noise Sally had brought into their heart. It was a late afternoon in February and a persistent, fine rain was falling through the veils of mist. Sally had been outside since first light, she’d satisfyingly sawn up a substantial quantity of logs and now, with dusk approaching, it was time to call it a day. In the morning, she’d return to collect the logs for storage and seasoning, and the smaller branches which she’d chip and feed into her biomass converter. She stuffed her gloves into the pocket of her sleeveless, quilted body-warmer and picked up the chainsaw. There was a sudden, sharp bird call. Cark! It was startlingly loud in the quiet of the forest. It sounded close, too. Sally glanced across the clearing to the track,

where her green Land Rover Discovery was parked. The vehicle was over twenty years old but it was a tough and reliable workhorse which sported all the bells and whistles - a rack of lights on the roof, bull bars and a winch on the front. Her black, white and tan Yorkshire terrier, Larissa, had been curled up asleep on a blanket on the enger seat. Sally had left the door open so that the dog could see what was going on, and get out if she wanted. She raised her head now and sniffed the air. There were no further bird calls. Just the sound of rain whispering through the pines and birch and onto the dead, brown bracken covering the forest floor. That wasn’t the end of the matter for Larissa, though. Whatever she’d heard, seen or smelled required further and urgent investigation as far as she was concerned. She leapt out of the Land Rover and with her tail erect and in full hunt mode, she scampered noisily through the undergrowth and deeper into the forest. Seconds later, and out of sight, she began barking furiously. Sally called her, but either she didn’t hear - which was unlikely - or was suffering from selective deafness which was likely. She took the saw over to the Land Rover and put it in the back, together with her visor and ear defenders. Then she went in search of Larissa. She found her in another, smaller clearing twenty yards away, staring at the sky. She’d stopped barking but was growling threateningly, deep in her throat. Sally sank to her haunches beside the dog, and placed a hand against her flank. ‘What is it girl? What’s wrong?’ Larissa was quivering, the whole of her attention on the sky. Sally felt the soft rain on her face but saw nothing except the blanket of low cloud. ‘Come on,’ she said, puzzled. ‘Let’s go home.’ She got to her feet, walked a few paces and looked back. Larissa hadn’t moved. ‘Come on, Larissa!’ It was as if the dog had suddenly realised where she was, her intense concentration broken by Sally’s sharp command. She zipped past her, bounded over clumps of bracken, and headed back to the Land Rover. Sally shook her head, bemused.

Her home was a nineteenth century forester’s lodge which stood alone, fairytaleesque, in the heart of the woods. Sally drove the Land Rover onto the property from the rutted forest track and the vehicle’s headlight beams flashed off the glass of her greenhouse, sweeping across the wind turbine’s wooden tower which reached the height of the surrounding trees. They illuminated her vegetable garden and the drifts of snowdrops which had recently poked their white heads above ground, as well as the small patch right at the edge of the forest that she had set aside as a cemetery for her dogs. Half a dozen small, hand-made wooden memorials marked the graves. She stopped at the back of the lodge, killed the Land Rover’s lights and engine and opened the driver’s door. Larissa leapt across her lap and darted out, heading straight for the kitchen door, where she waited expectantly. ‘In a hurry for your dinner are you?’ Sally said, pushing the door open - there wasn’t a need to lock it - and Larissa immediately ran inside. Sally glanced over her shoulder into the winter dusk which was enfolding her garden and beyond it, to the treeline. Nothing looked out of place, and yet something was continuing to spook the dog. Sally took a leisurely soak in her antique claw-footed bathtub, the water heated by her wood-fired Rayburn range in the kitchen. Candles placed on shelves and the deep windowsill lit the bathroom with their steady sinuous flames. She’d taken a book up with her, a worn paperback copy of The War of The Worlds. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d read it. The warm water and the bath salts worked their magic, easing the tension from her muscles, and she felt herself drifting off - until her sixth sense made her open her eyes. The candle flames guttered briefly, as if there was a breeze in the room, which couldn’t have been the case because the window was closed. Later, in the kitchen, by candlelight, she took a saucepan from the hot plate of the Rayburn and poured vegetable stew onto a plate. The stew smelled marvellous; the day’s exertions had given her an appetite. As she set down the saucepan she heard a rare sound these days - the sibilance of electrically generated white noise. The TV in the sitting room had come on. Sally could see it through the doorway which linked the rooms, and there was nothing on the screen but a field of black and white mush accompanying the hiss coming from the speakers.

With a hesitant Larissa at her side, she walked slowly into the sitting room and peered over the back of the set to confirm what she already knew - that it was unplugged from the mains socket in the wall. Even if it hadn’t been, there was no electricity running through that ring main at that time. The breaker beneath the stairs that connected it to the batteries, solar s, generator and wind-turbine, was off. Sally knew she wasn’t mistaken about that. The only power in the lodge was keeping the fridge and the freezer ticking over. It had been a while since she’d used the television, not because it used much power - it didn’t, the model had been at the technological leading edge when she’d bought it – but because there were no TV stations any more, and she’d watched her collection of DVD box sets many times over: Star Trek. The XFiles. Stranger Things. Was there a residual charge in the TV causing this? Sally’s scientific training cast serious doubts on that theory. As she stood back, thinking, the screen went blank again, and the speakers fell silent.

5

Don’s iPod was Bluetooth connected to the sound system and a compilation of 1980’s rock was playing good and loud as he drove his compact motor-home, a Winnebago-converted Mercedes van, past the ditches and dykes of the east Lincolnshire fenlands. The hedges on either side of the deserted road, once kept trimmed by the farmers who owned them before the apocalypse had come and culled most of the world’s population, were now untamed and beyond them, stretching away into the distance and obscured by spectral mists, were the waterways and vast flat fields which had been ploughed years before - but the turnips, beets and potatoes had never been planted, and all that grew in the ground now were acres of weeds; tall, spindly things that the winter had killed and turned brown. Lone and distant houses appeared incongruous in the colourless landscape, as though they’d popped up randomly out of the ground, like mushrooms. The spire of St. Jude’s, Levenby’s church, was the tallest thing visible. Livin’ on a Prayer began and even though Don couldn’t hold a tune in a paper bag he belted out the lyrics along with Jon Bon Jovi. He glanced at the Winnebago’s digital fuel readout again. He had less than a quarter of a tank left and as things stood he had no idea as to how, when or where he was going to find any more petrol. Not that it was going to matter much. He’d easily have enough to reach Levenby and his plans didn’t extend beyond that, travel-wise. His mood inexplicably darkened a little as he ed the village sign. He turned off the sound system and, not for the first time, wondered whether his decision to return here had been the right one. So much water had ed under the bridge in the last half-century, and he never would have thought that he’d wind up back where he’d started. The family had moved to London a few months after Tony’s murder; despite an intense police investigation and a great deal of media coverage, no-one had been charged. And so Don had made a life for himself in the capital, building a career in IT and retiring as a consultant just before the world fell apart. Across all those years he’d promised himself that one day he would return to Levenby, as if he’d be able to find the answers that hadn’t been

available to him in 1976. There were a couple of cars parked in the street, but like most of them these days they hadn’t been driven for years and were coated with rain-carried sand from the bay and splattered with seabird droppings. He ed the village’s compact, red-brick and slate-roofed Victorian junior school which he had been too old to attend by the time the Carters had moved to Levenby, and steered the Winnebago into the village square, a hub connecting three roads - one came in, one went out and the third led to Druids Field, the bay and Darkenridge Forest. The square was empty apart from a chestnut horse and gig, a tidy little twowheeled affair that Don imagined would have transported ladies of leisure about town for Sunday visits in the eighteenth century. The horse was tethered to the lych gate of St, Jude’s. There was no sign of the animal’s owner. Don parked beside the tall granite cross of the war memorial and climbed out of the motor home, wincing as he his knee gave him a spiteful twinge. It served him right for staying at the wheel too long when he should have taken a break. He stretched, pulled his shoulders back and twisted at his waist as he took in the scene around him. So much of it was still familiar; there was the store and post office, Mandy’s Ladies’ and Gents’ hairdresser, still with its original signwriting over the frontage, the old butcher’s shop which had been converted into a solicitor’s office. There was a tea shop with a faded and peeling for sale sign hanging outside, and an incongruous Chinese takeaway which hadn’t been there in the 1970s. None of these establishments were trading, all of them closed years before. On the far side of the square, opposite the church, was the pub, the Red Lion. At least there was some sign of life there, a glimmer of light in the windows, dispelling some of the gloom of the winter’s day. Don wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find. A thriving community where people lived and worked off the land in peaceful co-operation? A rural idyll, risen from the ashes of the horrors of the past few years? No. Not in Levenby. It was clear that only ghosts held sway here. The studded wooden church door opened and Don watched as a tall black guy wearing a wide-brimmed hide bush hat and a dark overcoat, its collar turned up, came out and walked along the uneven brick path between the gravestones. Incongruously, he was carrying a red plastic caddy, the sort of thing you’d keep household cleaning items in. He ed through the lych-gate and saw Don. He

unhurriedly closed the gate behind him, unfazed by Don’s presence. He was a good-looking guy, Don noticed and, unusually these days, he was clean-shaven. He was probably in his mid to late thirties and his height, together with the way he wore his hat at a slightly rakish angle, reminded Don of an old Wild West bounty hunter. ‘Good afternoon,’ Don said. The guy glanced at the Winnebago and replied, ‘Andy’s probably round the back.’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘Andy. The pub landlord. The door’ll be open. Just go inside and wait for him.’ Don frowned and shook his head. ‘I don’t...’ ‘You’re a trader, right? The Red Lion’s where the traders stay, on their way through.’ Don noticed what he thought was the hint of a Liverpudlian accent in the other man’s bass voice. He had a good view of his caddy now, and it did indeed contain janitorial supplies - yellow dusters, aerosol cans of polish and other bottles of cleaning fluid. ‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘A trader, I mean. And I’m not ing through, either.’ He stepped forward and offered his hand. ‘Don Carter.’ For a moment Don didn’t think the guy was going to shake – but he did. His hand was large, his grip strong. ‘Jayamma Adeyemi.’ His face was expressionless, his gaze steady and forthright. ‘Not a trader and not ing through. So what’s your business here?’ He paused, then added, ‘pardon me for asking.’ ‘I grew up in Levenby,’ Don explained. ‘I’ve returned to my roots, you could say.’ Jayamma Adeyemi said, ‘There are worse places to come to die. Probably better ones too.’

He placed his caddy in the back of the gig and untethered the placid horse. He hauled himself up onto the seat and gathered the reins. Looking down at Don he said, ‘Are you a Christian, Mr Carter?’ ‘No.’ ‘That’s a shame. We’re always looking to build our little congregation – and it is little. Where are you staying?’ ‘The airfield,’ Don told him. Adeyemi’s face remained imive and it was a couple of seconds before he replied. ‘Interesting choice,’ he said. ‘Welcome back to Levenby. We’ll be seeing each other around, I expect.’ ‘No doubt, yes.’ Don looked for a dog-collar at Adeyemi’s throat, but if there was one present it was hidden beneath the roll-neck sweater he wore. He encouraged the horse to move with a flick of the reins and Don watched him drive across the square, the wheels of the gig rattling over the cobblestones there.

6

Solstice Farm was set back nearly a quarter of a mile from the airfield road. There was a wind turbine close to the house and solar s on its roof. One of the fields adjacent to the farmhouse was planted with a crop which Don, although he wasn’t an expert, thought might be sugar beet. There was a small orchard too, which looked well-tended. Jayamma Adeyemi’s gig, minus the horse, was parked in the yard between the house and a stable block and a lithe woman with a Mediterranean complexion and plaited, black hair was walking across the yard. She heard the Winnebago, stopped and watched as Don drove by. Half a mile before he reached the airfield he ed into a fog bank which obscured everything beyond it; it was as if it formed a border between Druids Field and the surrounding area, although Don knew it was no more than a sea fog that often clung to the coastal areas, especially at this time of year. But nevertheless it was unsettling driving into it. He pulled up in front of the airfield gates. Even though Adeyemi hadn’t mentioned any such thing, Don had half expected to find a housing or industrial estate built here. But it wasn’t so. One of the gates had partially swung shut, and there wasn’t room to drive the Winnebago through. He got out and found he’d stopped beside the memorial to 337 Squadron. More than half-a-century of exposure to the elements had pitted and discoloured the brass plaque and the names on it were barely legible. He stood for a few moments and listened into the ghostly-grey silence. You gotta get here, Don! Tony’s words, the last Don had heard from his friend along that ethereal telephone line, echoed unbidden across the years. As did the image of his friend’s body, a hump beneath a tarpaulin. Ancient history. What did it matter anymore?

The gate was harder to move than Don thought it would be. It had dropped on its rugged hinges and was heavy on the road surface. He had to lift and push it simultaneously, the rusty iron cold and rough. It scraped and juddered across the tarmac, through the winter-dead weeds, and when he was done he stood with his hands on his knees, recovering his breath and waiting for his racing heart to settle. He blew into his hands and vigorously rubbed them together, to get some warmth back into them. He heard a muffled gunshot from out over the seaward side of the airfield, followed a few seconds later by another, and then quickly, one more. Startled birds took to the air from one of the mist-enfolded airfield buildings. He got back into the Winnebago and drove across the cracked and crumbling concrete surface of the wide apron to the control tower. Its windows had been boarded up with sheets of hardboard which were warped and water-stained and a single piece of graffiti, a gang-tag, had been spray-painted onto a wall. It was a hurried, half-hearted effort, as if the artist had been constantly looking over his shoulder whilst doing it, impatient to get away from this place. Judging by the way it had faded, it had been done long ago. A tree had grown at one side of the building, almost to the height of first floor walkway. Don parked and went to the tower’s side door, expecting it to be secured, but it wasn’t. He pushed it open and went inside. He’d brought a candle in a glass holder, which he held up like a night watchman of old. The first small room on the right was the toilet. Don nudged the door open, and rather wished he hadn’t bothered. The glass of the tiny window was broken and a branch of the tree outside had forced its way through. The water in the toilet’s bowl had dried up, the porcelain was streaked and stained and there was leaf litter all over the floor. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and it brought home to Don just how much work he was going to have to do if there was to be any hope of making the control tower habitable. There were reasons for optimism, though; the corridor’s concrete floor was dry and nature hadn’t gained a foothold here, which shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise - after all, places like this had been built to withstand highexplosive bomb blasts, so weeds were going to have a hard time of it. The door of the old den was open and what grey daylight there was leeched from the room and into the corridor. Don stood at the threshold. The hardboard shuttering had

fallen away from the window but its glass was intact - another good omen, perhaps. Amazingly, the old Marconi transceiver was still here, as was the table, although the deckchairs and the dartboard had gone. There were only a few scraps of paper stuck to the walls - the remains of the posters. From the Winnebago, Don brought in a bio-ethanol stove and fired it up, hoping its heat would drive out the chill in the den soon enough. He set up a trestle table and on it he loaded boxes of files and aviation memorabilia he’d collected over the years. For weeks he’d had to live with all this stuff in the motor home, taking up space on the floors of the living area and the bedroom. It amounted to the sum total of his life, but laid out in the den it looked like nothing more than a sad collection of meaningless junk. Finally, he brought in a folding camp bed although the thought of sleeping here didn’t have much appeal just then. He decided there was enough daylight left for him to explore further afield, so he detached his bike from its carrying frame on the back of the Winnebago and set off on a tour of the airfield, maintaining a good pace to warm himself up. He cycled around the perimeter track to where the giant hangers had once stood they had been dismantled and taken away for other uses shortly after the war and came across the hardstandings where bombers had parked between missions. He ed buildings that were crumbling and roofless and which had largely been reclaimed by nature, and he reached the far side of the airfield where the two-thousand yard main runway ended and the wire perimeter fence separated Druids Field from the dunes. He followed the fence around further until he reached a copse of trees. A wide concrete track led into them and ended, amongst the brambles, at a ramp which sloped into the ground. There was a set of large, rusted steel doors down there with a smaller, man-sized one set into them and coils of barbed wire in front. A skewed metal sign read Ministry of Defence. Keep Out. It was a nuclear bunker, a Cold War relic, which had never been commissioned as far as Don knew, and it was rumoured that it hadn’t even been completed due to a number of misfortunes, culminating in a fatal accident on one of the lower levels. Don and Tony had dared themselves to break in, perhaps through one of the airshafts, if they could have found one, but it had been all talk and it had never happened. As dusk fell, Don lit candles in the den, brewed himself a mug of steaming tea and took it up to the tower’s steel walkway. He stood at the rail, its black paint

flaking, and gazed out over the empty acres of RAF Levenby, the stratified mist haunting the runways; the Winnebago’s white bodywork was the brightest thing visible in the winter drabness. This was his self-proclaimed kingdom now. At a time when loneliness was everywhere, he’d returned to seek even more solitude, and the only indication that anyone else was alive in the world was a single point of light twinkling on the far, seaward edge of the airfield. The vista before him hadn’t substantially changed during the intervening years, and it was easy to recall that summer’s afternoon in ‘76 when, on his knees and feeling as sick as a dog, he’d looked out towards those same sand dunes and seen an airman on a motorbike ride along the perimeter track; an airman who was a fugitive from his own time. That image had refused to be diluted by the ing of the years and Don had carried it with him through every day of his absence. It was an itch that no amount of scratching would eradicate. He raised his mug to the airfield. ‘Cheers Tony,’ he said soberly ‘I finally got back here, mate.’

7

Small solar-powered lights were set into the ground at intervals on either side of the gravel path which cut through Sally’s garden. It was seven in the evening and they lit the way to her workshop, a wooden building the size of a four-car garage. She flipped a light switch on the wall inside the door, and low-powered, energyefficient lights glowed into life. The place was a clean, high-tech manufacturing facility - a biomass converter dominated it; there were stainless steel cylinders as tall as her, pipework and gauges, and a distillation tower as shiny as a mirror which rose into the high, pitched roof space where there was a large water storage tank. A three-metre tall wheeled aluminium maintenance ladder stood beside it. The plant ate woodchips and sawdust and sugar beet; it liquefied, fermented, distilled and dehydrated, and when it had done its work it bled ethanol into storage tanks. Sally used it to fuel her converted Land Rover, and she sold the surplus. She checked a wall-mounted digital display and saw the batteries were low on charge. She thumbed the starter button on her compact Honda generator and it instantly sprang into life, settling quickly into an efficient purr. The output gauge informed her that it was producing 230 volts at 13 amps, just as it should. Back outside she closed the workshop door and stood for a moment, looking up at the silhouette of a four-metre parabolic radio antenna mounted on a wooden platform beside the solar s on the roof of the lodge. It was angled at fortyfive degrees, deaf and blind right now, but waiting patiently to search the sky for its secrets. It had been a long time since she’d used it. Years, in fact, and she wondered if it would still do its job. She returned to the lodge and climbed the stairs to the attic room. It had a small dormer window and there was just enough space for a beech-wood desk and a chair. Three steps ascended to a narrow door, which in turn led to the antenna platform outside. Astronomy books filled shelves around the walls of the room and above them were framed photographs of star fields, the whorls of distant galaxies and nebula, NASA images of Jupiter, Saturn, and the surface of Mars

and one Voyager had taken of the sun as the spacecraft had journeyed out of the solar system and into the absolute zero cold of interstellar space: Earth, as the famous blue dot, caught in a shaft of sunlight. There was a montage of the sunedged Neptune horizon and three of its moons, Triton, Proteus and Larissa. One photo was larger than the others. It was the size of a coffee table top and it occupied the wall directly ahead of the desk. Sally stood in front of it, as if she hadn’t done so a hundred times before. As if she hadn’t memorised the positions of all the major points of light in that panorama. And yet still it drew her back; especially now. It showed a section of the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the band of rocky debris which had been left over after the formation of the solar system. The largest body in it was 950 kilometres in diameter, the smallest no bigger than a dust particle. There was only one pinprick of light which interested her. She gently touched it with her fingertip. She breathed into it. Although she had been searching for it for years, when she had finally discovered it the victory had felt hollow. When all was said and done it had been a pointless search. But had something changed? Had it? She flipped the power rocker switches on the black front s of her racked receiving equipment, the analogue to digital interface, the spectrometer and the radiometer, which processed the faint signals the dish outside collected. She switched on her PC and once the Windows operating system had booted she called up her sophisticated scanning program and loaded its data. The screen came alive with coloured graphs, tables, charts and flowing, pastel-shaded radio sky maps of the solar system and beyond. This was how the universe talked to her. There were some communications satellites still operating autonomously, their signature bleats and warbles beaming uselessly and unregarded down to Earth. Jovian storms spoke to her too, their electrical violence apocalyptic, and there in the dreamy background were the whisperings of far black holes and supernovae. She tapped commands on the keyboard and behind the platform door the dish antenna’s positional servos whirred as they obeyed the software’s instructions, rotating it to the required azimuth, tilting it to the correct ascension.

Forcing herself to breathe deeply and steadily, Sally remained hunched over the keyboard, watching the screen for any indication that the signal she was seeking was present. The only sound in the room was the quiet hum of small fans, cooling the electronics. After two hours, she gave up. There was nothing. There was always nothing. She tried reading more of War of the Worlds that evening in front of the woodburning stove in the sitting room, but the words on the page slid meaninglessly across her mind, because the nagging feeling that something was wrong wouldn’t go away. She gave in to it and went out. She left the Land Rover at the end of a forest track and with her way illuminated by a retro-look Coleman rechargeable battery lantern she took a narrow, overgrown path through the trees. Brambles snagged her clothing and she had to duck to avoid low, overhanging branches. Twigs cracked beneath her boots, sounding like gunshots in the heeding silence of forest night while to her right a small animal screeched, prey for a nocturnal predator. She emerged from the trees into a clearing where a small, derelict brick building stood alone. It had a pitched slate roof and boarded-up windows and choking vines clambered its walls. Side-stepping the bushes of yellow broom which were reclaiming the clearing Sally reached the solid wooden door of the building. She held the lantern close and examined the chain and padlock she’d fitted to it years ago. It was intact, with no sign that any attempt had been made to tamper with it. She took a key from a pocket in her body-warmer, enclosed it in her fist - and hesitated. She brought her ear close to the door and listened - but no sounds came from inside. She stood for a few moments, thinking. Nothing was going on here; this was all down to her imagination, fuelled by one or two odd incidents that could, individually, be explained away as coincidences. But collectively? Was she to believe they didn’t mean something?

8

It was the next morning and not to put too fine a point on it, trudging through the dunes was bloody hard work. Every strenuous step tugged at Don’s calf muscles, his boots sinking deep into the sand, the drizzle dampening his face, and forming a slick wet layer on his waterproof jacket. The wide salt marshes were on his left and the pools of standing water, black and flat, hinted at unfathomable depths, even though most of them were shallow. Further out towards the bay were the creeks and lagoons left by the retreating tide; there was sea buckthorn growing here, and samphire, and the sound-track of the place was provided by the warbling reed buntings. Don was uncertain about his bearings - the sands had shifted significantly over the past fifty years and his only point of reference was the end of the runway on his right. He knew he ought to give up this search; it was a futile pilgrimage. Even if he found the spot, the discovery would serve no practical purpose. You gotta get here, Don! Tony’s voice in his head. Always in his head. He stopped and gave himself a chance to recover his breath in the cold air. And then he saw something. A few metres ahead, at the bottom of a dip between dunes, was what looked like a small, semi-buried wreath. He clumsily descended the slope into the hollow, his boots sliding in the sand, to investigate. It was a wreath, made from roses which had shrivelled and dried, and which were bound by wire and pinned down by large, smooth pebbles. Had someone left them in Tony’s memory? After all this time? Surely not, but why else would they be here? Their location was too coincidental. Don sank to his haunches to examine them more closely. ‘The sister left them.’ Lost in his thoughts, Don was startled by the voice. A heavily bearded old man wearing a multi-coloured crocheted hat, a woollen

scarf and a ratty overcoat was standing on the cusp of the dune, looking down on him. He had a brace of rabbits slung over his shoulder and he was holding a shotgun in the crook of his other arm. It was Nobby Culdrose. No question. He’d seemed old to Don and Tony when they were twelve, although he’d probably been in his mid-thirties then. So that made him, what, in his mid-eighties now? ‘She ain’t been for a while though,’ Nobby continued. ‘Must be coming to w’it at last, and not before time if you ask me.’ Don eased himself to his feet and his knee cracked. ‘I heard gunshots yesterday and this morning and saw a light out here last night. I wondered if it was you.’ ‘Yeah, it were me,’ Nobby said, and sniffed. ‘It’s good to see a familiar face.’ Don meant it, too. He felt suddenly and unably emotional. ‘Good that you made it through.’ ‘Them soddin’ orbs weren’t going to get me. I ain’t going nowhere.’ Nobby hawked up a substantial gobbet of phlegm and spat it into the sand, as if to emphasize his defiance. ‘Saw your lights over yonder last night, too. Expected the worst, I did. That there was road bandits or some other bastards like that, moved in over there, stockpilin’ drugs or guns or whatnot and disturbin’ the peace.’ ‘Then I hope I’m not an unpleasant surprise,’ Don offered, as he smiled. Nobby squinted at the airfield. From here the runway was a wide and pale road of concrete slabs edged with weeds, fading into the mist. ‘There ain’t nothin’ for you at that place,’ he said, ‘and nuthin’ for you in the village. Most of them’s that survived buggered off to Boston or Skegness.’ Where there was still semblance of civilisation, Don thought. He’d gone against the flow. ‘There’s nothing for me anywhere. But I couldn’t stay away.’ The old man eyed him critically and grunted. ‘More fool you.’ ‘You said Gillian Johnson left the flowers. Does she still live in the village?’ ‘Aye, she does. On her own, in the same house.’

With that, he settled the rabbits more comfortably on his shoulder and set off along the dune ridge, sure-footed in the sand, back bent but full of wiry, outdoorsman vitality. Don watched him and thought about Gillian Johnson, sweet-natured little Gillian, whom he’d last seen inconsolable at Tony’s funeral. After a few yards, Nobby stopped and turned as if something had just occurred to him. ‘You still mad keen on planes? I reckon you must be, if you’re poking around over there, like.’ ‘Well yes, I am.’ Nobby said, ‘You look soddin’ frozen, boy. Fancy a cuppa? I know I do. And I got something to show you. Think you’ll be interested.’ The old coast guard station house had been built where the sand banks met the salt marshes, a lonely look-out post and guardian of the wide and empty shoreline which curved around the bay. It was a brick-walled, slate-roofed nineteenth century bungalow with a tall chimney and a square look-out tower at one end. Nobby hadn’t waited for Don, and had already disappeared into the house by the time Don reached it. He ed Nobby’s Ford Transit pick-up truck, standing hopelessly amongst the weeds in the sandy yard behind the property, its bonnet yawning open and its rusted engine exposed. Various items of Nobby’s underwear - pants, vests and long-johns - were pegged and were hanging limply on a washing line, seemingly forgotten, because they were just getting wetter out there in the drizzle. Scattered about were various antique fireplaces, some of marble and some colourfully tiled, left out to face the unforgiving east coast weather. There were haphazardly-stored ornate chimney pots, intricately forged iron gates, garden statuary, doors and casement window frames, left to rot. There were stacks of home-made bricks and roof tiles, recovered from demolished buildings and stored beneath carelessly tied tarps in a tin-roofed, open-sided shed. Nobby, ever the magpie though, had made an effort to move with the times, because strewn across the yard in no kind of order that Don could establish were also items that might be of use in the post-orbs world: car batteries, ancient rusted farm machinery, plastic water butts, discarded solar s and one or two small wind turbines. It was as if Nobby had accumulated all this stuff with a view to refurbishing it and moving it on, but had run out of steam before he’d even got properly started. He’d left the door open, Don went in and was greeted by the aroma of

woodsmoke and boiled cabbage. ‘Through here,’ the old man called from a room on the left, off the hall. He’d deposited the rabbits somewhere. He was still wearing his scarf and hat although he’d taken off his coat to reveal a camouflaged combat vest embellished with ammunition pouches. He was ing himself with a hand on his thigh as he bent to select a log from an untidy stack beside a blazing open fire. He dropped the log onto the fire, straightened, and said, ‘Park yerself and I’ll brew up.’ He nodded in the direction of a battered sofa, its PVC covering split in various places. It looked as if it had been cheap when it was new, and that must have been decades ago. There was just enough space on it to sit between stacks of country lifestyle and antiques magazines dating from the eighties and nineties. The fire wasn’t doing much to warm the room, so Don kept his coat on. He looked around. There was further evidence of Nobby’s eclectic hoarding ethos here, although the items were smaller, more fragile and possibly more valuable. There was a 78s gramophone player on a spindly-legged table surrounded by kitsch porcelain ornaments, and other tables, shelves and a wooden dresser, all overloaded with elaborately decorated plates, carriage clocks - none of which seemed to be working - a ceramic clown, a grinning, Buddhalike pig, a plastic garden gnome, a chamber pot and a stuffed bird in a dusty glass case. Nobby took a glass jar from the mantelpiece. ‘I ain’t got tea,’ he announced as he unscrewed the jar’s lid. ‘Bloody impossible to get hold of it unless you pays a fortune.’ He held up the jar. ‘I got acorn coffee, though.’ Don told him acorn coffee would be fine. As if he had a choice. ‘Heard you went away down south,’ Nobby asked, as he spooned powder into delicately painted china cups. ‘That’s right.’ ‘London?’ Don hesitated. ‘Yes.’

A blackened kettle on a grille over the fire boiled. ‘There’s stories about what happened down there,’ Nobby proclaimed sagely. ‘Them orbs rising in a column a mile high. You see that, did you?’ Don looked at the carpet. Or the bare threads of it, anyway. He didn’t want to what he’d seen in London, far less talk about it. That was one of the reasons why he’d left the city. ‘I heard about it,’ was all he was prepared to say. Nobby filled the cups from the kettle and handed one, on a saucer, to Don. There was no offer of milk or sugar. Don took a cautious sip. The coffee was scalding but otherwise okay, slightly earthy tasting. Nobby sank into the large cushioned wooden carver chair on the other side of the fireplace and regarded Don shrewdly from beneath his wild eyebrows. He said, ‘I heard it ended right there.’ He scratched his chin beneath his beard. ‘Still leaves us up shit creek without a paddle, don’t it? Like we’ve slipped back four hundred years. Not that I give’s a flying how’s-yer-father. I ain’t got long to go anyway.’ Don took another sip of coffee. He asked, ‘How were things here?’ Nobby said, ‘Them orbs left us alone, at first, and we thought we’d dodged a bullet. Nothin’ for ‘em here in the back of beyond. Then one early evenin’ I was out there, a beautiful sunset it was, like a paintin’, when I hears that weird music of theirs, like... violins bein’ played by monkeys, you know?’ Don knew all about the sounds which had heralded the arrival of the orbs and the terror they had instilled in people, because it meant madness and death was coming, if not to them, then almost certainly to someone they cared about, or at least knew. The orbs had been indiscriminate. Rich, poor, young, old, disabled, able-bodied, male or female. They had gone about their work randomly and cruelly. Nobby went on, ‘Then I sees ‘em, winking into life out over the sea. There was hundreds of them, like a swarm, it were. Pretty, I s’pose, if you didn’t know what was comin’’ ‘They came into the village?’

‘Like killer bees. Flew in right over me. Nuthin’ I could’ve done if the bastards had wanted to take me. Don’t know why they dint.’ ‘Some people just got lucky I suppose,’ Don suggested. Nobby stared into the fire. ‘Yeah, but not most of Levenby that day. I heard the screamin’ from here. Shut meself in ‘til it stopped. Then early next mornin’, at dawn three of the villagers came runnin’ across the dunes, that mad, yellow look in their eyes, murder in them. So I chambers two rounds in old faithful there,’ he indicated his shotgun which he’d propped up against the fireplace, ‘put a handful more shells in me pockets and watched them poor wretches come. Knowed each of them too. Des Kingston from the garage. His boy Sean. Sarah Noone from Sedge Farm. ‘Cept it weren’t them anymore, not since them orbs had got inside their heads. That’s what would have made it easier to pull them triggers. Kind of like puttin’ them out of their misery, you know?’ ‘I would have felt the same,’ Don agreed, thinking how close he’d come to having his life ended in that way. Nobby said, ‘Yeah, well, it dint come to that as it turned out. They ignored me, same as the orbs had done. Stumbled right on by, they did, splashin’ through the pools and they kept on going ‘til they got to the sea. And even then they dint stop. Don’t know where the bodies fetched up, but it weren’t along this stretch of the coast.’ Don felt queasy. The memories, the nightmares were coming on too strongly. ‘You said you had something to show me,’ he said, shifting on the sofa and wanting to change the subject quickly. Nobby was unfazed by the sudden switch. ‘That’s right, I did,’ he said. With a sudden burst of enthusiasm he got up and went to the door, which had been left open. From behind it, he produced a piece of aluminium about three feet square, which was badly dented and scored, its edges ragged and bent. There was a swastika painted on it, and a white identification number below that. Don ed him and the old man explained, ‘I found it out on the dunes a few years back. Worked its way to the surface I s’pose.’ He handed it to Don, who inspected it and said, ‘It’s part of the German bomber that crashed during the war.’

‘Aye. That’s what I figured.’ ‘Have you ever found any more of it?’ ‘Not a thing.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Of course I bloody well am,’ Nobby’s pale eyes flashed annoyance. ‘That Junkers hit the ground hard and this coast heals her wounds fast.’ He jerked his thumb in the direction of the rest of the room. ‘All this might look like a storehouse of random crap to you, but I knows everything I got here, where it came from and when. There weren’t nuthin’ else, I’m telling you. If you was to get yerself a JCB and dig a soddin’ great trench out there you might find an engine down deep.’ ‘I didn’t mean to doubt you,’ Don apologized. He considered his next words. ‘It’s just... Tony Johnson said you gave him something - a glass pyramid, about six inches square on the base. We thought it might be some top-secret part of an aircraft’s instrumentation.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘Or at least I did.’ ‘Whatever it was, it weren’t from that Kraut bomber.’ Don wondered how Nobby felt he could be certain about that, but he didn’t follow it up. Instead, playing devil’s advocate, he said, ‘Tony thought it was a druid’s relic.’ The old man snorted, wiped his nose on his sleeve and looked away. ‘That’s bollocks, too.’ ‘Do you have a theory about what it was, then?’ ‘Nope. I just finds stuff and sells it. Or gives it away. I don’t have no fancy theories about any of it.’ ‘Do you know what happened to it? The pyramid?’ Don asked. ‘Ain’t you full of questions? I ain’t got a clue what happened to it.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ Don said, sighing. He held out the for Nobby to take back. ‘I

shouldn’t be haranguing you.’ Nobby stood with his hands in his pockets. ‘You keep it,’ he said. ‘Take it as a welcome home present, or summat.’ Don didn’t finish his coffee. As he was leaving with the under his arm, Nobby told him that he could pop over for a cuppa at anytime, seeing as how they were neighbours now, like. And then, after hesitating, he added, ‘That’s the reason you’re back ain’t it? That boy’s murder is still inside your head. Got in there like one of them orbs, and you want to get it out.’ The old man was more perceptive than Don had given him credit for. ‘I’ll see you around Nobby,’ he said, and headed back out through the junk yard.

9

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Inside the pyramid his body twitches, once. He gasps, a desperate first intake of breath. For a few moments, it seems as though he will not breathe out again, and yet he does. As he fills his lungs for the second time he opens his eyes. Nothing is clear; he is seeing through a thousand tiny lenses which refract and distort a slowly pulsing blue light. This is all there is. He is floating on his back and he thinks this might be death - but then as his confused mind begins to clarify, he realises it isn’t. This is normal. This is supposed to be happening. It is part of the process. It is a stage of his rebirth, nothing more. He wants to move, but he cannot, not yet. His limbs will not respond to his will; they feel disconnected from his consciousness. He waits. He knows he must be patient until he becomes accustomed to the sensation, the mechanisms of the body he now has. He breathes. He breathes again. The numbness in his body recedes, leaving behind an unpleasant prickliness. After a while longer, he finds he is able to flex his fingers, and then move his arms. Strange. So strange. He can feel his heart pumping hard in his chest, even after such little exertion. Just as he begins to feel the claustrophobia of his confinement, the glass wall in front of him shimmers and dissolves. He feels the gentle pressure on his body release as the crystals which have held him fast pour out from around him. The sudden blast of chilled air which rushes into the pyramid to take their place

shocks him, and for a moment the breath locks in his lungs. He shudders. The air tastes strange. Alien. Because that is what it is. It catches in his throat and he gags. But the next breath tastes cleaner, and the third cleaner still. He slowly sits up and waits again. Everything he does requires assessment before he can consider his next move. He swings his legs out over the edge of the pyramid’s base, pauses again and then stands up and onto the drift of crystalline granules which have cascaded from it. He is naked and the granules, although smooth, feel uncomfortable against the soles of his feet, and they yield a little beneath his weight. It’s enough to unbalance him in his weakened state and he drops to one knee, and that, too, sinks into the crystals. He is sweating, and his pulse rate is far too high, surely. He stays where he is. Will it get no better than this? He cannot focus and cannot accurately judge the ing of time. But after what might have been moments or minutes he feels able to move again. He rises cautiously to his feet. He rolls his neck and flexes his arms. His heart rate drops and the sweat dries on his skin. He looks down at his body, marvelling at it, but at the same time disgusted by it, feeling, as each minute es, a gathering strength in its bones and muscles. He takes in his surroundings. The blue light has gone, and the only illumination now arrives through a gap in a boarded window. He is in a small, shabby room with bare walls. There is a second pyramid here, dark and open. What is this place? Where are the others? He tries to recall his name. It comes, it goes, it comes again. He wanders through the small and shadowy, enigmatic rooms of this place, their floors debris strewn, hard and cold. He finds nothing of interest, no clues to provide him with information. He finds only one exit from the building. There is some give when he tests the door, the gap he forces allowing a sliver of

daylight to enter. He pushes again, harder this time. A fastening rattles on the outside. Why is this? Why is he imprisoned here? He takes a few paces back. He shoulder charges the door. The wood cracks and it breaks free of its shackle. With the sole of his foot he kicks it again and again until it flies open. He steps over shards of splintered wood, the hasp and the padlock which had secured it. He is in a forest. There are tall, thin trees all around, threaded through with tendrils of mist. They are watching. They are still and silent. Rain falls gently. He looks at the sky above the clearing, wishing for night, so that he might be able to see the stars. He closes his eyes and lets the rain fall on his face. The rain of an alien world. Then he begins to shiver, as the cold air bites.

***

Working by candlelight in the creeping gloom of mid-afternoon, Don was methodically sorting through his collection of memorabilia. On the trestle table in the den and on the floor there was a bulky aero engine starter motor, there were ignition harnesses, magnetos, as well as boxes of files, aviation-related DVDs, reports and books. Resting against the wall was the section of the Junkers JU88 tailfin which Nobby had given him. As he was tying an identifying brown label to a fuel booster pump he heard someone call from outside. ‘Hello there! Anybody home?’ Don took a candle lantern along the corridor and opened the door to the outside.

He was surprised to see Jayamma Adeyemi there, tethering his horse to an iron bracket on the wall. This time, he didn’t have the gig with him. He said, ‘I think we got off on the wrong foot the other day, and it was my fault. I must have come across as an unfriendly so-and-so. It’s just that experience has taught us to be wary of strangers.’ ‘That’s understandable,’ Don said agreeably. ‘Shall we start again? Call me Jay.’ He opened the flap of his saddlebag and lifted out an old-fashioned stone cider flagon. ‘By way of a peace offering,’ he said. ‘Of course, if you’re not a drinking man I’ll have to have a rethink.’ He grinned. The transformation from the surly individual Don had encountered the day before to this was marked. Don thanked him, invited him in and showed him through to the den. ‘Excuse the mess. As you can see, I still have a lot of sorting out to do.’ Jay took it all in. ‘What are you planning to do, open a museum?’ ‘Actually yes,’ Don told him rather sheepishly, ‘that’s exactly it.’ Jay gave him a doubtful look, his smile faltering. ‘Okay...’ ‘I know what you’re thinking. What’s the point? Nobody’s going to be interested. People are more worried about putting food in their bellies, but at some point society will start rebuilding and this is my small way of preserving some heritage,’ and he added with tempered optimism, ‘that’s the plan, anyway.’ It was a well-practiced little speech which he’d given to himself plenty of times by way of self-justification for taking this new direction in his life. ‘Good for you,’ Jay said, the iration genuine in his dark eyes. ‘I like your ambition.’ Don rummaged in a plastic crate on the floor, looking for glass tumblers which he knew were in there somewhere. Jay removed his bush hat – his head was

cannon-ball bald - and set the hat and the flagon on the corner of one of the tables. He picked up an altimeter from a Handley-Page Hampden bomber and cursorily examined it. Don, watching him out of the corner of his eye, could tell he had no idea what he was looking at. He found the tumblers and set them on the table. Jay unstoppered the flagon and poured the cider. They drank, and Don observed, ‘Stone the crows, this isn’t for the faint hearted.’ Jay laughed. ‘If you get a taste for it, there’s plenty more where that came from. We make it ourselves, using apples from our orchard.’ ‘You’re at Solstice Farm. I saw your gig there and a woman in the yard as I was driving up here.’ Jay nodded. ‘My wife,’ he said. ‘Chiara. We’re fairly new in the district ourselves, and to farming. We’re still learning the ropes. I’m an electrician by trade - I used to service solar s and wind turbines.’ ‘Why the change? There still has to be a demand for that kind of thing.’ ‘Yes, but it won’t last forever. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to do without the technology altogether and I suppose wanting to grow things has always been in me. My grand-dad had a small garden in Lagos. He loved his plants, you could see it in his eyes, the way they shined.’ He smiled, ing. ‘Some of that ion must have rubbed off on me.’ ‘You’re a long way from Lagos,’ Don observed. ‘I surely am,’ and with that, Jay grinned and laid the Liverpudlian accent on thick. ‘I haven’t been back there since I was a kid. I consider myself at least fifty percent Sco.’ ‘How does the church figure in what you do?’ Don wanted to know. Jay wasn’t wearing a roll-neck sweater today, just a checked work shirt. The white dog collar of religious office Don had been expecting to see wasn’t there, but the man was wearing a small crucifix on a chain at his throat. ‘We all need faith in something to keep us going, especially during these times,’ Jay said. ‘My religion helps me make sense of what’s happened.’ Don couldn’t see how that worked, but each to their own, and he didn’t

comment. Jay continued, ‘I couldn’t stand to see St. Jude’s fall into disuse, although it will eventually, of course. When the roof starts to go, that’ll be that. There’ll be no chance of a restoration fund.’ ‘You said you had a small congregation.’ ‘Small, yeah, ain’t that the truth. Two old women and a dog, and that’s on the good days.’ He looked off towards the window, and frowned. ‘Is something wrong?’ Don asked. ‘I don’t know.’ They moved to the window. A faint, bluish light was slowly pulsing from somewhere out across the darkening airfield. ‘It’s coming from the dispersal building,’ Don said, almost to himself, already knowing this was bad news. ‘The...?’ ‘Dispersal. It’s where the aircrews would wait on mission standby, just before they were ferried out to the aircraft.’ A fact imparted automatically. Don was thinking of another blue light he’d once seen at Druids Field. They went outside and stood in front of the control tower. The light in the distance appeared to be pulsing more strongly and regularly now. ‘Is there anybody else living out here?’ Jay asked. ‘Only Nobby at the coast guard house,’ Don replied. ‘I guess you know him?’ ‘I meant on the airfield.’ Don shook his head. ‘There’s nobody else.’ ‘Perhaps we should take a look?’

Don felt deeply uneasy about going anywhere near that light, or its source, whatever that might be. But without launching into a long explanation it would seem odd to Jay if he didn’t agree. They drove across the airfield in the Winnebago. When they reached the dispersal building, Don switched off the engine and the headlights and they sat in silence, watching the blue light throbbing inside the shell of the building. ‘Any ideas?’ Jay asked. Yes, Don thought. Let’s just turn around and go back to the control tower. Let’s bolt the door behind us, put the boards back on the windows, drink that cider and wait for this to go away. He realised that Jay was looking at him and waiting for an answer, the side of the other man’s face bathed in turns by the rhythmic light. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. Don’s fingertips were tingling and he was gripping the steering wheel too hard. He felt light-headed, hallucinatory and disconnected from his body and he could hear the faint tinkling of a wind-chime. This couldn’t be happening again... ‘I’m fine,’ he said, his voice feeble. Jay continued to watch him carefully for a few more seconds. Then he ventured, ‘So maybe we should take a look at this thing? What do you think?’ Don had no choice. He nodded once and opened his door. Most of the roof of the dispersal building had collapsed, its remains on the floor choked with brambles. There was no glass in the rusted metal window frames. Don and Jay stood just inside the doorway, the door itself gone. The source of the blue light was a globe about two feet across, floating above the brambles in the centre of the space.

Pulse. Pulse. Pulse... Like a slowly beating heart. And Don’s head was throbbing dully, right along with it. Jay whistled in wonder. ‘What is it? Something to do with the orbs? Have they come back?’ Don felt nauseous and was shivering, but there was sweat on his brow too. This bloody place. He shouldn’t have come back to Druids Field. Talk about a moth drawn to a flame. ‘It isn’t an orb,’ he said with dull certainty. The sound of male voices rose around them, fading in and growing louder, as if a volume control was being turned up. The sphere of light silently exploded; Don and Jay were engulfed. The scene was transformed. The building was no longer derelict; there were electric lights, the stove at the far end was lit, and lounging on a miscellaneous collection of plain wooden and battered armchairs were a dozen or so young airmen, dressed in blue serge RAF flying kit, sou’westers, flying boots; they were smoking and playing cards. Their desultory chatter drifted towards silence as they noticed Don and Jay standing in front of them. One of the men, a blond fringe flopping across his forehead, challenged, ‘Who the hell are you?’ His accent was English public school, his tone peremptory. And then as quickly as it had formed the whole scene collapsed to a dot of light, which, after a moment, winked out. Don felt it as much as saw it. It was like something had twisted and torn away inside him. They stood for seconds, until Jay whispered, ‘Shit, did that really just happen?’ Something was at Don’s feet which hadn’t been there when they’d come in. He stooped and picked it up from amongst the brambles. It was a Second World War leather flying helmet.

10

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Don spread the documents across the trestle table in the den. They were old, and had been filled out in scratchy handwriting with a fountain pen. ‘They’re War Ministry airfield records,’ he explained, ‘call me sad.’ ‘Enthusiastic, maybe,’ Jay commented dryly. ‘How are they going to explain what we just saw?’ Don ran his finger down the entries on one of the documents. ‘July 1943. The fourteenth. A Luftwaffe attack - Heinkels. They weren’t very accurate; there was runway damage mostly.’ He silently read more of the record, having to peer closely to decipher it in the candlelight. This was information he’d already been vaguely aware of. He had just needed confirmation. ‘But there was a direct hit on the dispersal building. Seven personnel died.’ Jay blew out his cheeks and shook his head. ‘This is insane. There has to be a rational explanation. I don’t believe in ghosts.’ ‘But were they ghosts? That airman saw us too. He spoke to us. And what about this?’ Don picked up the flying helmet, which he’d brought back to the control tower with him. Jay gave it a sober look and then turned his head away. ‘There’s something we aren’t getting here,’ he said. Although Don had only just met Jay Adeyemi he felt he could trust the guy enough to be honest with him - at least up to a point. He deserved that much after the experience they had just shared. He dropped the helmet back on the table. ‘What do you know about the history of Druids Field?’ he asked. ‘Not a whole lot,’ Jay offered. ‘Just a few things I’ve heard in the district. Things

like, they carried out human sacrifices here a long time ago. I mean centuries before it became an airfield, but that’s probably bullshit.’ Don turned to the window, even though the only thing to see then was his own reflection in the black glass. He said, ‘The myth is that a thousand years ago the Druids came here because they believed the land held energies of religious significance for them, and it gave the place a bad reputation. Since the war, a few people have tried to farm the land but gave up for one reason or another. The stories are that one or two went insane.’ ‘Great. Now I find this out.’ ‘It’s only here, within the airfield boundaries,’ Don reassured him. ‘Your land will be fine.’ ‘Good to know.’ Don went on, ‘It happened to several of the air force personnel who were stationed here too.’ ‘And you want to live here?’ Jay said. He poked the flying helmet. ‘So you’re suggesting an ancient druid curse on this place materialized this and those airmen out of thin air, and that somehow we tapped into it?’ ‘It’s as good an explanation as any,’ Don suggested. ‘Then maybe I should bring some holy water out here and sprinkle it about.’ Jay sighed. ‘Look, it’s just folklore. Crazy stories that got crazier each time they were told. I can’t buy into them.’ ‘Stranger things happen,’ Don said. ‘Like orbs of light that pop out of nowhere and drive people suicidally insane, for instance? I’d say that’s pretty odd. No logic or rational explanations there. Like it or not, weird is the new normal in the world.’ Jay gave him a long look before he said, ‘All right, point taken.’ Don was thinking about why this had happened to him again, now. Before, the

appearance in 1976 of the airman on the motorbike had been linked to the pyramid artefact Nobby had given to Tony. But the pyramid had long gone. So what, then, had caused this latest materialization? Was it those supernatural energies that surrounded Druids Field, and if so why had they seemed to be waiting around for Don to turn up? Jay was still looking at him. He said, ‘Is there something else you’re not telling me? I saw you out there. You were away with the fairies. It seems to me you still are.’ Don shook his head and began refiling the War Ministry documents in their folders. ‘I was spooked, that’s all,’ he said. ‘I’m with you on that,’ Jay told him frankly.

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It was dark, it was raining, and the Land Rover’s windscreen wipers were working hard to combat the downpour. Sally was out later than she had intended; she’d been delivering logs to the neighbourhood farms, running errands for the less able of the district - and catching up on gossip. In fact, that was what had eaten up most of her time. One item of hearsay in particular had rocked her world. Chiara Adeyemi at Solstice Farm had told her that a stranger had arrived in the village, and was planning to stay up at Druids Field. His name was Don Carter. The name wasn’t that unusual so of course, he might not be the same Don Carter. And yet Sally knew he was, she’d only be kidding herself if she told herself anything else. The thought that he’d come back was an arrow straight to her heart. She was three minutes from home, bouncing along the narrow forest track, her mind on him. On what it meant. On what it would mean. She wasn’t concentrating and turned into a sharp bend, traveling faster than she should have been. Someone was standing in the middle of the track. She swore, stamped on the brake pedal and yanked the steering wheel hard to the left. The Land Rover bucked as it careered off the track and into the trees, missing a fat-trunked pine by inches and juddering to a halt. Sally’s seatbelt jolted her as it locked. The engine stalled. She sat back, shocked, still gripping the steering wheel, trying to control her panicked breathing and listening to the rain drumming on the roof of the cab. She wasn’t going to be able to get out through the driver’s door. The tree she’d just avoided slamming into was blocking it. She glanced over her shoulder, but couldn’t see anything except rain drizzling down the rear window glass. She

restarted the engine, selected reverse gear and then tentatively eased her foot down on the throttle pedal, riding the clutch at the same time. The Land Rover shuddered and then moved, its all-wheel drive providing the traction necessary to get her back up onto the track. She reversed a short distance. Ahead of her, illuminated by the headlights, the figure was still there, standing completely still. He was tall, muscular - and naked. She could only see the top of his bald head since it was bowed, his chin almost touching his chest. She left the engine running and the headlights burning, and for good measure she turned on the rack of cab-roof lights. She climbed out of the Land Rover and tugged up the hood of her jacket. She cautiously approached the man, her shadow on the road in front of her long and thin in the powerful lights. With each step her sense of dread intensified, as the realisation of this man’s identity dawned on her. She stopped two metres in front of him. He didn’t seem to be aware that she was even there, let alone of the narrow escape he’d just had. ‘Kadrobus,’ Sally said. It was a statement. She hadn’t seen him in human form before, but it was him, all right. Nobody else, nothing else possessed his aura. Slowly, he raised his head and Sally held her breath. Through the rainwater dripping from the peak of her hood she looked up into his eyes, which were black in the harsh, artificial light, but which Sally knew were really violet. He tried to say something, but he choked on the sounds. He shuddered, wrapped his arms around himself and lowered his head again, as if the effort of trying to communicate had drained him. Sally briefly closed her eyes. She should have checked. She should have checked. She should have gone into the old building in the forest and made sure. Because she’d known something strange was going on, hadn’t she? She turned her head, startled when the Land Rover’s engine suddenly revved, as if someone was pushing down hard on the accelerator pedal. She took a step towards the vehicle. What was happening? She needed to turn off the ignition and fast, or there would be serious damage done to the engine. But then, just as

suddenly, the engine revs fell back to idle speed. Sally waited for the glitch to happen again, but it didn’t. Kadrobus didn’t resist as she helped him into the Land Rover’s enger seat. She removed her jacket and draped it across his shoulders. During the drive the rest of the way to the lodge he stared ahead, as though mesmerised by the movement and steady beat of the windscreen wipers. Sally gave him an occasional sideways glance. Now she’d been able to examine him more closely, she’d noticed something had gone wrong with his transformation and had produced a disfigurement on his right shoulder, his neck and his cheek, a crystalline scab like a large, birthmark. Or perhaps it should be called a re-birth mark. He looked across at her and tried to speak, again. And he failed, again. It sounded as though something was stuck in his throat that he was unable to clear. She sensed that he was trying to delve into her mind - that old trick - but his probing was weak and she was able to block him easily enough. A minute later they arrived at the lodge. Sally got out into the rain and opened the Land Rover’s enger door, but Kadrobus made no attempt to move. He sat there, slumped like a sack of potatoes, and there was no way Sally was strong enough to get him out if he didn’t co-operate. She released his seat-belt. ‘Come on,’ she said, heaving his left leg over the door sill, ‘You’re going to have to help me.’ There was no reaction. She was soaked through. She was cold. And she was losing her temper. She grabbed his hands and heaved but it was no good, she couldn’t shift him. ‘You know what?’ she told him. ‘You can just sit there all night. See if I’m bothered.’ She snatched her jacket from his shoulders and turned away. Larissa was behind the kitchen door, barking furiously. Sally’s hand was on the knob. She glanced back. Kadrobus was on his feet, standing next to the Land Rover.

Sally said, ‘How about that, it lives!’ He was staring at the crystal wind-chime hanging outside the kitchen door, his head cocked slightly, as he listened to the tinkling sound. Sally opened the door. Larissa stopped barking but she backed further into the kitchen, growling. To Kadrobus, Sally said, ‘Are you coming in, or what?’ He may not have understood her words but he must have sensed their meaning because he followed her uncertainly into the lodge. She switched on the Coleman lantern she’d brought with her and stepped into the large closet in her bedroom. She knelt on the carpet in front of a rail of hung dresses, skirts and coats, and she set the lantern down beside her. Pushed against the back wall of the closet were a couple of cardboard boxes and a black plastic bin liner which she dragged towards her. She undid the knot in the top, upended it and shook the contents across her knees. It was all men’s clothing; crumpled and musty-smelling jeans, shirts, sweatshirts, underwear, and even a pair of trainers which were nearly new. The items had belonged to a lover who had left in a hurry long ago, following a nuclear row. The relationship had been short and none-too-sweet, and Sally had no regrets over its ending. She’d stuffed the belongings he’d left behind into this sack, intending to dump it at the soonest opportunity, but instead she’d forgotten about it – until now. She held up and inspected a hooded maroon sweatshirt. Yes. She was sure it was the right size, or close enough. Later, she was sitting on a chair outside the closed bathroom door, listening to the occasional sloshing of water from the other side. She didn’t know exactly why she was waiting out here. She supposed it was because she was trying to provide Kadrobus with some dignity and privacy, although given the near catatonic state he had been in since she’d found him out on the forest road he wouldn’t have known if she’d danced naked in front of him. She went in. He was lying low in the bath, his chin only just above the surface of the water. Sally hadn’t shown him how to bathe himself and she hadn’t been about to do it for him. The object of the exercise had been to get him warmed up and reasonably clean.

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ she said, reaching for a towel. She offered him her hand. He stared at it, then ignored it, and pushed himself out of the water of his own accord. He stood there, dripping water from his sleek skin. Sally found it difficult to keep her eyes off him. ‘You’ll need to get out of the bath so I can dry you,’ she told him. She experimented, allowing her mental guard to slip just a little but careful to only let him access the information that she wanted him to – namely, that she needed him out of the bath. Whether the telepathy had worked or he’d cottoned on of his own accord, he stepped out onto the mat on the planked floor and stood ively whilst Sally towelled him dry from his head down, being gentle around the shiny disfigurement on his face and neck. The whorls, marks and arcane symbols on his body, like faded tattoos, should have been more clearly defined than they were. That was probably down to another glitch in the transformation. She said, ‘I’m showing you how to do this just the once, okay? Next time, you’re on your own.’ She wasn’t a prude by any means and considered herself a woman of the world, but still she averted her eyes when she reached Kadrobus’s genitals. She avoided touching them with the towel. She reached his feet with the towel – and stopped. There was something wrong with the middle toe of his right foot. She looked more closely, and saw that it was shiny and transparent in the same way as the pellucid patches on his neck and face. She prodded it with her fingertip and was astonished when it cracked, clouded and dissolved into dozens of tiny glassy granules which rolled across the floor boards. What was left where it had been attached to his foot was a crystalline scab. There was no blood, and when she looked up at him she could see by his incurious expression that there was no pain either. He uttered a sound. ‘What did you say?’ she asked. He repeated it. Sally was able to decipher his second attempt - he’d said Nethardia. She stood up straight and made eye with him.

‘Don’t call me that,’ she said coolly. ‘It isn’t my name anymore.’ He frowned, the concept appearing to be beyond his understanding, and then it was as if he’d only just noticed his body. He held out his arms and stared at them, and at his hands. ‘This... is... monstrous,’ he said, straining to force out every word. He turned his head so he could see his face in the mirror. He swiped away the condensation. ‘Monstrous,’ he repeated, agonised. And the thing was, Sally knew what he meant. Hadn’t she thought the same about herself, once? She took him downstairs and sat him in front of the sitting room fire after having dressed him in the clothes she’d unearthed earlier. They weren’t the good fit she’d anticipated they would be – everything was a size too large. But what did it matter? Kadrobus obviously wasn’t bothered and it wasn’t as if they were going out on the town any time soon. Sally lifted a spoonful of soup to his mouth and it was like feeding a baby. What else was she going to have to do? Wipe his arse for him? Probably, and before that she’d need to show him how to actually take a dump. The transformer pyramid’s programming was supposed to have provided language and basic functionality, but he couldn’t even feed himself. Sally had already seen how the conversion had failed in physical ways, but perhaps that glassy patch of skin on his neck and cheek and the brittle toe wasn’t the worst of it, because it was clear there was psychological damage too. She supposed she’d be finding out the extent of that sooner or later. Soup dribbled down Kadrobus’s chin, and Sally dabbed it with a paper napkin. She glanced over her shoulder. Larissa was standing in the hall, looking at them. She made a half-hearted attempt at wagging her tail and gave a single whimper but she didn’t come into the room. Irritated by Kadrobus, her own inability or unwillingness to have seen this coming and the fact that her dog was scared stiff, Sally brusquely took Kadrobus’s hand and curled his fingers around the handle of the spoon. ‘Here,’ she said crossly. ‘You have a go.’ Like a simpleton, he stared at the spoon, clueless.

‘Like this,’ Sally guided his hand to the soup bowl. ‘You scoop the soup up and then take it to your mouth. Just like we’ve been doing for the last five minutes, ? It isn’t difficult, is it?’ She let go of his hand. He hesitated. He looked from the spoon, hovering above the bowl, to her and back again. Then he dipped the spoon into the soup. Very carefully, he brought it to his mouth and slurped it noisily. ‘Sweet Mother Mary,’ Sally muttered. ‘And you’re supposed to be one of the finest our civilisation has produced.’ Kadrobus grinned idiotically at her.

12

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Jay had gone home hours ago, thoughtful and more than a little rattled, Don suspected, by what had happened. He’d said that he’d be back the next day. After sleeping on it, he’d reasoned, they might be able to make some sense of the events – although Don doubted it. He stayed in the den, sitting on a camping chair, feeling tired and headachy. Despite being bundled up in a fleece, coat and scarf he couldn’t get warm. He thought he might be going down with a bug. The bio-ethanol stove in the corner of the den wasn’t really cutting it. He eyed the fat, cold radiator beneath the window and wondered whether he’d somehow be able to get the control tower’s boiler operating. Or perhaps he could build a chimney so he could have a proper fire. The prospect of freezing winters to come spent here wasn’t an appealing one and again he wondered at the wisdom of staying here, especially after what had happened at the dispersal building. He needed to sleep this off, whatever it was, and in the comfort of the Winnebago. But moving far was beyond him. He hauled himself out of the chair and onto the camp bed against the wall, where he pulled the duvet over himself. And so the night ed in periods of hallucinatory dozing in which the images of the tall glass spires haunted him again between stretches of deeper, dreamless sleep until the sky began to lighten. As he eased himself stiffly from the bed he was hit by a wave of nausea and he had to steady himself against the table. He looked at his hands, and something inside him shrivelled, because he could see through the skin to the fine bones. He unbuttoned one of his shirt sleeves and slid it up his arm. The blue-tinged transparency was spreading, creeping back from his hands to his wrists and further, and his hands were changing, growing narrower, his fingers melding together and becoming pincer-like. He wondered – hoped – that he was still asleep and that this was just an extension of his dream. At the window, blue light pulsed.

He stumbled out of the den and along the corridor, unable to co-ordinate his legs properly and having to steady himself against the wall. He pushed through the outside door and into the rain. He held the bile back, and after a few moments he felt a little better. He scanned the sky. The blue light pulsed in the low cloud above the sea, and glassy tinkling was in his ears - or was it only in his head? He couldn’t tell. Then he heard another sound which overrode that, one that he hadn’t heard for many years, and he doubted that he was hearing now, because surely, it could not be. The sound increased in volume, its source drawing closer, and he knew he wasn’t mistaken. He was hearing the drone of a multi piston-engined aircraft. He saw the plane, then, a silhouette against the supernaturally light-infused clouds. It He realised he hadn’t picked up his glasses on the way out – he’d had other things on his mind – so he had to squint. The aircraft was descending rapidly towards the airfield and smoke was trailing from the starboard of its two engines. It banked steeply and started an approach, one wing dipped too low, the damaged engine spluttering. Don watched with a mixture of horror and fascination, horror because the plane was surely approaching the runway too fast and at the wrong angle, and fascination because this was so surreal. At the last moment the plane’s wings levelled and with a yelp of rubber on concrete its wheels kissed the main runway two hundred yards inland from the dunes, bounced once and then settled. It rumbled past Don, the engines throttling back, and as it did so he saw the barred black Luftwaffe cross painted on the fuselage of the Second World War Junkers JU88 bomber. It rolled to a halt a fifty metres further on, the propellers slowly spinning to a stop. Smoke was still curling lazily from the damaged engine, indicating the presence of a fire that could escalate in seconds. Don knew that the entry and exit hatch of a JU88 was located beneath the nose. The hatch wasn’t far off the ground, but if the crew couldn’t get out by themselves he’d still need some means to reach it. He ed the Winnebago’s lightweight ladder, which was attached to the side of the motor home. It provided access to the roof and it was detachable so that it could be moved to different positions around the vehicle. He didn’t wait. He jogged over to it, realising at the same time that the

transparency in his hands and forearms, and their weird reshaping, had gone. He unhooked the ladder and hurried back to the aircraft with it. Out of breath, he looked up through the angled Perspex windows that made up the plane’s forward observation bubble. He could see the rudder pedals and could just make out the soles of the pilot’s flying boots. Beneath the front of the fuselage he reached up, released the hatch and let it swing down. He propped the ladder against the edge of the opening and climbed into the plane. Small blue sparks danced sporadically across surfaces, but other than that it was dark, and there was a strong, acrid smell of burned electrical insulation. He emerged into the cramped cockpit and peered forward. ‘Hello?’ he called, his voice flat in the metal confines of the aircraft. There was no reply. Half-light filtered through the rivulets of rain on the cockpit canopy and by its feeble illumination Don made out the shape of the pilot slumped forward in the seat. None of the other three crew seats were occupied. He edged past the rear gunner’s position, banged his head on the low canopy, and reached the front of the plane where, up close, he could see that the pilot was a woman. She was fiercely gripping the control yoke in front of her and she was shivering in spasms. Her eyes were open and she was staring out through the windscreen, gritting her teeth as if frozen in a moment of supreme concentration. Don laid his hand on her shoulder, choosing to ignore the faint blue haze which surrounded her like an aura. ‘Are you all right?’ It was a ridiculous thing to say, of course. She didn’t look physically injured, but it was clear she was far from all right. With a sudden, violent gasp she sat bolt upright in her seat. Don instinctively recoiled, but a spindle of blue light from her aura remained attached to the centre of his palm. He tried to shake it free. It broke and dissolved at the same time as the woman’s blue aura shrank and disappeared. The woman relaxed. She turned to look at Don and there was stark incomprehension in her blue Aryan eyes.

13

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‘Wo ist meine Tasche?’ she asked agitatedly. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand you,’ Don said. The woman shook her head in frustration and it took her a moment to find the right words in English. She tried again. ‘My bag?’ she said, her accent heavy. ‘Where is my bag?’ Don was aware he was standing with his mouth open, unable to get to grips with the situation quickly enough. Suddenly impatient, the woman unbuckled her seat harness, tugged off her helmet - to reveal short blond hair - and got to her feet. She faltered. ‘Hold on, there’s no rush,’ Don said, reaching to help her. ‘Are you sure you’re not injured?’ She ignored his outstretched hand and, having recovered her equilibrium, got down on her hands and knees amongst the electrical junction boxes, cables and fuselage struts. Don had to press his back against the canopy to stay out of her way. She quickly found what she was looking for and got to her feet again. She was holding a canvas drawcord duffle bag. She pulled it open and rummaged around inside with increasing fervour. ‘It’s fallen out,’ she said. She tossed the bag to one side in disgust. ‘What has?’ Don asked, feeling increasingly bewildered, but she didn’t answer. Muttering to herself she pushed past him and, bent low even though she wasn’t tall, went further back into the shadows of the claustrophobic fuselage. ‘I had an artefact with me. It is very important. I must find it.’

‘I really think we should get out,’ Don suggested, trying to sound calm and reasonable. ‘We can’t be sure that engine fire’s fully out.’ He thought, this is madness. The woman turned back to him and seemed to really see him for the first time. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘My name’s Don Carter.’ She looked him up and down. ‘You are not in uniform. Are you a civilian?’ ‘Yes. Come on, I’ll help you get down.’ ‘I do not need help getting down. I want to see the flugplatz major... the station commanding officer.’ She moved back towards the hatch, lowered herself feet first through it and nimbly descended the ladder. Don followed, although he did so with rather less agility. She was waiting at the bottom of the foot of the ladder, a slight figure with a dirt-smudged face in scuffed flying boots and oversize, tan-coloured flying overalls with the Luftwaffe insignia of an eagle clutching a swastika stitched to a breast pocket. Don guessed she was in her late twenties. She was staring out across the airfield into the rainy dawn. ‘What is this?’ she said, the stridency she’d had in her voice less than a minute earlier diminished now. ‘Where are all the aircraft? The personnel?’ ‘There aren’t any,’ Don told her. ‘There’s just me.’ She walked slowly away and stopped again beneath the JU88’s wing tip. Don said, ‘Look, it’s freezing out here. Why don’t we go inside?’ ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How can this be?’ ‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t get it either.’ She remained deep in thoughtful silence as they walked to the Winnebago. When they reached it, Don looked back at the JU88, a black insect crouching in the

middle of the runway. The engine fire had gone out and only a thin and insubstantial wisp of smoke rose from it now. Inside the motor home the woman sat on the bench seat at the table in the living area behind the cabin seats and watched as Don slid the door closed behind him. He didn’t know how to react or what the hell to say, and all he could come up with was, ‘How about a cup of tea?’ ‘I don’t want tea.’ She bowed her head and stared at her hands. Don slid on to the bench seat opposite her, and tried to think how to approach this. ‘All right then,’ he said, ‘before we do anything else we might as well get the basics out of the way.’ She continued to look down, and she didn’t answer him. Don pressed on. ‘I’ve told you my name. So what’s yours?’ The woman took a deep breath while she clenched and unclenched her fists. At length she said, ‘Anna Krause. That is my name. Doctor Anna Krause. I lecture at the University of Frieburg, in the faculty of archaeology...’ She paused, looked up, and Don could see she was struggling to tame images in her head. ‘The RAF fighter came from nowhere and attacked.’ ‘RAF fighter?’ Anna Krause’s eyes flashed, defying him to disbelieve her. ‘Yes! It was a Hurricane. It came very close. I could see the pilot’s face. He was just a young boy. He looked as frightened as I was.’ Don’s mind went into overdrive. He made fast connections, as ludicrous as they seemed. Connections between the German bomber that he knew had been shot down by a British fighter during the war - and this. Carefully, he said, ‘Are you sure it was a Hurricane?’ ‘You think I lie about this? That I make it up? It fired at me three times. One of the engines caught fire. You saw this, didn’t you? The smoke?’

Don nodded. He couldn’t deny that. ‘I really think tea would be a good idea,’ he repeated lamely. It was almost a plea, as if a civilised brew would restore some sanity to the situation, or at least give him some thinking time. Anna pushed herself to her feet, her fists balled pugnaciously on the table. ‘I told you, I don’t want tea! I want you to fetch your station commander.’ Her arms suddenly gave way at the elbows and she stumbled sideways. Don grabbed her, fearing she was going to faint, and helped her back onto the seat. When she looked up again there were tears in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in little more than a whisper, ‘I have had no sleep for...’ confusion clouded her face, ‘...for several days, I think.’ ‘Right,’ Don said, ‘Okay.’ He tried to focus, but didn’t make a success of it. ‘Um... then perhaps a lie down might be a good idea?’ ‘A lie down?’ ‘Yes. A rest. And then afterwards, we can talk about this.’ She nodded distractedly, the exhaustion having overtaken her now. ‘This way, then,’ Don said awkwardly, and dumbly she followed him to the bedroom at the rear of the Winnebago, where he stood aside to let her through. There wasn’t much room and she brushed against him in ing. He caught the smell of petrol, smoke and an underlying mustiness he couldn’t place. Without saying a word or looking at him, Anna sat on the double bed, then swung her feet up, boots and all, and lay back, her arms at her sides. She closed her eyes. ‘I will be fine in a while,’ she said. Don muttered, ‘I’ll, um... well, just shout if you need me.’ He hesitated, feeling hopelessly inadequate. Then he quietly slid the door closed and stood there for some moments, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. He went back outside and eyed the German bomber, still struggling to believe it was there, and the manner of its arrival with its pilot. He walked slowly over to it, approaching it as if it might wink out of existence like the airman on the

motorbike had, and the manifestation in the dispersal building... or explode. Or transmute into something else. He walked back over to it and stood in front of its bulbous Perspex nose. It looked sinister in the rain and mist, like something from another dimension and, he supposed, that was just what it was. He felt as if it was aware of him standing there, waiting for him to make the next move. He thought about the airman in 1976 and the flying helmet in the dispersal building. There had to be connections between all of these things; had to be. He held out his hands, concentrated on them and tried to recreate the feelings he had when those manifestations had occurred but all he managed to conjure up were the memories of the nausea, dizziness and the sense of expansiveness within him, as if his consciousness was too large to be contained by his body. He felt as if he was standing on unstable ground that was likely to give way beneath him at any moment. He rotated his hands until his palms were facing upwards. He willed the transparency to return. If he could imagine the fine bones of his fingers showing through his skin, if he could envision it strongly enough, then perhaps he would be able to make it so. And yet nothing happened. Of course not. How could it be that simple? He ran his fingertips along the blade of a propeller. The powerful Jumo twelvecylinder engine was still ticking as it cooled. There was no sign of the fire now, although he could smell its aftermath. He wasn’t sure at first, but he thought he saw a faint blue umbra glowing along the edge of the propeller blade. He waited, and it appeared again, lasted a second or two and then faded. It was there. It was real. This thing had happened. One thought was careering around in his mind like a lunatic bouncing off the walls of a padded cell: I did this... I did this... He climbed the ladder into the plane, where he eased himself into the pilot’s seat. It was a tight fit; it hadn’t been designed for blokes like him who were losing the fight with late middle-age spread. He scanned the array of flight instruments before him; the altimeter, the artificial horizon, the fuel and oil pressure gauges, all of them labelled in German, naturally. He tested the control yoke, moving it backwards and forwards, watching through the side windows as the ailerons pivoted at the trailing edges of the wings. It was incredible that he was sitting

here, doing such a thing. He was about to leave when he noticed something on the floor, in the shadows between the rudder pedals. Awkwardly, he stretched for it, his belly making the manoeuvre difficult. He fumbled blind and just managed to reach the object. Straightening up in the seat, he examined the find. It was a leather holder, about the size of a matchbox. Anna must have missed it during her initial, frantic search for her bag. There was an identity card, headed with Universitat Freiburg, inside the holder. The card was overstamped with the Reichsadler, the imperial eagle and swastika of the Third Reich, and fixed to it there was a small monochrome photo of Anna, an unsmiling full-face shot. In the washed-out dawn light leeching through the Perspex of the cockpit canopy, Don peered at the old-fashioned typeface on the card. The text was in German, but the date was clear enough. 1938. The Anna Krause who was now asleep in the Winnebago looked to be only a few years older than in that photograph. Not eighty years older.

14

Don returned to the Winnebago, quietly slid the door closed behind him and checked on Anna. She was still sleeping. As he watched from the bedroom doorway, she murmured something in German and a brief frown creased her forehead. He wondered about the dream she was having or, as seemed more likely, the nightmare. As gently as he could he removed her flying boots. In her sleep, she curled herself into a tight ball. He left her again, used the chemical toilet, took a shower, then made a breakfast of bacon and eggs he’d bought in Boston market on the way up to Levenby. He would fix something for Anna when she surfaced. He was washing up at the kitchenette’s tiny sink when through the window he saw Jay Adeyemi on his horse heading across the airfield. His timing was unfortunate to say the least. Don went outside to meet him, furiously thinking of ways to explain the plane. ‘We thought we heard aircraft engines in the early hours,’ Jay said, swinging down from the saddle and looking meaningfully at the JU88. ‘But we couldn’t have done. I mean, nobody’s flying anymore, are they?’ ‘That’s what I thought,’ Don agreed glumly. ‘We were all wrong then, weren’t we?’ Jay left his horse nibbling grass at the edge of the apron and walked, longlimbed and easy, towards the plane, his hands in his pockets, the collar of his coat turned up against the morning’s chill and the bush hat on his head. Don followed. He watched as Jay ran his hand along the aircraft’s fuselage. ‘So what’s the story? Where’s the crew?’ Don said, ‘Jay, there’s...’ but he was saved, at least temporarily, from having to stumble through some fiction by the sound of the Winnebago’s door opening. Anna stood uncertainly on the threshold, only thick woollen flight socks on her feet.

‘I heard voices,’ she said, hugging herself. ‘You woke me.’ Jay stared at her. Don cleared his throat. ‘Ah, this is Anna. She’s the pilot. The only crew member.’ ‘Good morning,’ Jay said neutrally. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ He flicked a quick, sideways glance at Don, who avoided the eye-. ‘Anna,’ Don said levelly, ‘why don’t you go back inside? I’ll be in shortly.’ ‘The artefact. I must search for the artefact. You don’t realise how important it is.’ Don said, ‘I do, and we’ll find it, okay? You need to rest.’ He was aware that Jay was watching them closely. For a moment, Don thought Anna was going to argue but she only nodded tiredly and went back inside the motor home, closing the door behind her. ‘Sorry about that,’ Don said. ‘Her English isn’t great. It’s difficult to figure out what she’s on about sometimes.’ As if he’d known her for years. As if there was nothing unusual about this situation at all. Jay was still scrutinizing him. ‘I’m sure,’ he said carefully, and added, ‘one other thing Chiara and I saw in the wee small hours when we went outside to check on the sound of the aircraft engines. There was a pulsing blue light in the clouds over the airfield.’ He paused. ‘Any connection between that and the one we saw in the dispersal building, do you reckon?’ ‘There obviously is,’ Don replied. It came out sounding tetchier than he had intended, and he took a deep breath to settle himself. He would gain nothing by telling Jay lies. Best just to relay what Anna had told him and let the cards fall where they may; after all, Jay was already on board with the weirdness of Druids Field. He went on, ‘Anna says she was ambushed by an RAF Hurricane. From her perspective, that was last night. A night in 1944. Whatever’s happening it’s about things being recreated somehow, not jumping from the past to the present.’

‘And you think she’s telling the truth?’ Jay asked. ‘If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck...’ ‘...it probably is a duck,’ Jay finished for him. ‘All right,’ he conceded, ‘so let’s accept that for the moment. So why didn’t those airmen in dispersal stay with us, the way your Anna has?’ Don bridled at Jay’s suggestion that Anna was somehow his, but he let it . ‘It’s imperfect I suppose,’ he speculated. ‘Random. Like a bad connection that’s sometimes good, sometimes not.’ Jay exhaled, long and slow, and gave the JU88 a further measured appraisal. ‘So what are you going to do, report it?’ ‘Report it to who?’ ‘I don’t know. The Town Council in Boston?’ Don shook his head. ‘They’ve got better things to do than listen to a cock-andbull story about a Luftwaffe bomber that’s just flown in from 1944. And even if they believed me, what could they do? I’d be advised, very politely, to piss off. I’ll deal with this. It isn’t your problem, Jay.’ ‘You think? I can’t unknow about it. It’s happening on my doorstep and if other... things... start materializing out of the ether, which maybe won’t be as friendly as Anna, and they come marching down the road - then it will be my problem.’

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The seaside resort of Skegness was permanently out of season. The pleasure park, behind the beach and the long and wide promenade, was closed; the rides still and silent, abandoned and melancholy, and all that was left were the ghosts of the generations of families who had played and laughed and holidayed here. The web-like metal framework of the Rockin’ Roller rose high into the overcast sky and there was the giant wheel, The Freakout and the waltzer. The dodgems were covered with tarpaulins, protected by their absent owners in the hope that one day the world would return to normal. They were in for a long wait - that was if any of them were still alive. At the town end of the promenade, near the lifeboat station and a cluster of steelshuttered fast-food and drink outlets, Malcolm Stewart was sitting cross-legged on the concrete, making adjustments to the carburettor of his Triumph Bonneville motorcycle. He started to cough. The spasms came more frequently these days and lasted longer, the bastards. He hawked a gobbet of phlegm into his hand and examined the muck. Were there flecks of blood in it? Yes, there were. It wasn’t the world’s biggest surprise. It had been coming. He wiped the crud from his hand with a rag. Spyder, the skinny runt, prone on a nearby metal bench, was forking dog food out of a can and into his mouth and he paid no attention. Wolf, fastidiously polishing the crankcase of his Cafe Racer, didn’t falter. There was nothing new about Malcolm hawking his lungs up. Except that nobody called him Malcolm. Most of his associates didn’t even know it was his real name, and he wouldn’t have told them if they’d asked. No. He was Studz, on of the facial piercings he’d sported when he was younger. The name had stuck, although the piercings, save for the studs in his earlobes, were gone. He was fifty-four and didn’t want to look like a complete dickhead who couldn’t grow old gracefully. The tattoos that covered his arms and most of his upper body he couldn’t do much about, but he liked those

anyway. Especially the big one on his left bicep, a stylised depiction of a satanic goat’s head. It was their small troupe’s emblem and it gave them their name The Goathead. Lil’Kat, their only female member, wearing a black bandanna and a faded denim jacket decorated with dozens of enamelled pins and badges, was less than half the age of the rest of them. She was tooling up and down the prom on her flashy Harley Davidson Superlow with its raked look, chrome-plated engine, exhaust and front forks. It was too big for her petite frame, but she could handle the bike as well as anyone. She cruised alongside Studz and Wolf, gave her throttle a quick flick and the Harley’s exhaust barked and crackled. ‘Hey, fat man!’ she called to Wolf. ‘How about I race you to the pier?’ Wolf kept fastidiously rubbing at the engine’s chromework and didn’t look up. ‘What for?’ ‘What do you mean, what for? I’m bored and I need to beat you again, that’s what for.’ ‘Glad you’ve got the petrol to waste,’ Wolf muttered into his beard. Lil’Kat tweaked her throttle again. ‘You’re an old woman,’ she taunted. ‘We haven’t checked this place out yet. So many cars. No people. Plenty of gas. We just gotta take it.’ Studz gave his screwdriver a quarter turn, trying to hear, above the rumble of Lil’Kat’s engine, the subtle difference he may have made to the Triumph’s tickover. He and Wolf exchanged glances. Lil’Kat wasn’t going to let it go. Grinning broadly, she said, ‘The big man is a fucking chicken! Bok, bok, bok!’ and she flapped her bangle-festooned arms, poultry fashion. She revved her engine a third time, emphasizing the challenge. Studz shook his head. Jeez. She knew just what it took to bait Wolf. She knew he was going to bite, too. He hauled himself to his feet. Wolf was a misnomer; Bear would have been more apt. He never moved gracefully, but he possessed strength that would leave

adversaries seeing stars, or the insides of their alimentary canals, where he would have just stuffed their heads. ‘Little bitch,’ he growled, with what might have been a hint of long-suffering indulgence and gave her a one-finger salute. Lil’Kat, laughing, rode her Harley in a tight circle until she was facing the pier, the iron structure jutting out across the wet sand and into sea half-a-mile further along the promenade. Wolf heaved a meaty leg over the saddle of his bike and fired it up. It sounded as though mufflers were anathema to him. He liked his machinery loud. He wanted people to know he was coming. Lil’Kat shouted above the din, ‘Spyder! You’re the dude with the starting pistol, yeah?’ Spyder, slow and out of it, whether on booze or drugs, or just because of the way he was, Studz could never be entirely sure, tossed aside the dog food tin, swung his legs off the bench and sauntered over to Lil’Kat. His weapon of choice was a blade, a viciously curved eighteen-inch machete, which he kept in a scabbard attached to his belt. He liked to do his killing and maiming up close and personal. Lil’Kat handed him her own gun, stock first, a Browning 9mm standard army issue. Wolf rolled up beside her. He looked across at her, unsmiling, and then faced front. He knocked his bike into first gear and held it on the clutch. Spyder raised his arm straight into the air, Lil’Kat’s pistol in hand. He waited a second, then fired the gun. Wolf and Lil’Kat accelerated along the promenade, engine roar vibrating the air, rubber burning, skidmarks smearing the concrete. As the noise faded Spyder, uninterested, returned to the bench. A man of few words was Spyder, which wasn’t a surprise, since he’d had his tongue cut out in a gang feud a few years previously, at the same time as he’d lost the sight in one eye. He refused to wear a patch, and was proud to display the milky, scarred orb that had once been his eyeball. Studz wasn’t too interested in Lil’Kat’s games either and was about to return to his tinkering when movement on the pier caught his attention. He frowned. He wasn’t sure at first; it was difficult to make out much detail in the poor light and his eyesight wasn’t what it used to be - but then it became obvious. There were

people down there. They’d just come out of the café at the promenade end. Without taking his eyes off them he said, ‘Spyder,’ a quiet note of compulsion in his voice. Spyder followed Studz’s line of sight and got to his feet again, considerably more engaged with proceedings than he had been a few moments ago. Studz stood up too. He needed to get Gonzo back up there. He stuck two fingers in the corners of his mouth and whistled. Gonzo, down at the water’s edge - the tide was out – looked round. He’d been staring at the desultory breakers like he was King Canute. He was wearing a long leather coat and a baseball cap. A philosopher, that one, who kept himself to himself. Studz beckoned him and the other man jogged back up the beach, his coat-tails flapping. ‘Bring Lil’Kat’s gun,’ Studz said to Spyder, who tucked the weapon into his waistband. They mounted their bikes and sped towards the pier by which time Wolf and Lil’Kat had arrived there. They’d slowed and Lil’Kat was fist-pumping the air in triumph - she’d won again. She hadn’t yet noticed the people on the pier who were on the move, heading for the concrete steps which led down to the prom – but Wolf had. He stopped and, still astride his bike, he drew his gun, a Ruger, from inside his jacket and panned it from right to left, gripping it twofisted, trying to cover all the newcomers. Kids, that was all they were, but the bad news was that, according to Studz’s swift calculation, they outnumbered The Goathead at least three-to-one. They’d spread out from the base of the steps and were moving in close – hand-to-hand combat close. Lil’Kat dropped her Harley onto its prop stand and climbed off. She pulled the small knife she kept in a sheath strapped to her calf and was brandishing it threateningly as the youths surrounded her. Studz, Spyder and Gonzo arrived and got off their bikes, pumped up for the confrontation. As far as Studz could see, this spotty adolescent crew were armed only with a collection of short-bladed knives, and that was an encouraging observation. A long-haired boy with a stubbled chin stepped forward. He held his knife down at his side, but he was gripping it tightly, tensed for action. He picked up that Studz was in charge and said to him, ‘This is private property.’ ‘Bollocks it is,’ Lil’Kat countered. The boy ignored her and maintained eye- with Studz. This kid thought he was hard. The thing was, he didn’t know what hard meant. If he wasn’t careful

he was about to find out. ‘I don’t see no signs about private property,’ Studz said coolly. ‘No signs needed, old man,’ the youth told him. ‘You’re tresing, and there’s a fine to pay.’ ‘I’m pissing my pants,’ Lil’Kat said. The kid’s defiant gaze didn’t falter. Young he might be, but his cojones were fully developed, Studz had to give him that. ‘You’re out of luck, sonny. I forgot to bring my credit card with me.’ ‘So you pay another way,’ the kid said. ‘We’ll take the guns. Or maybe the wheels. Or both.’ Lil’Kat laughed. ‘Are you for real?’ Wolf said, ‘How are you proposing to take them, laddie? You can ask as nice as you like, but we ain’t going to hand them over.’ ‘My friend has a point,’ Studz added, and without further ado and with a practised flourish, he produced the Desert Eagle hand gun from its tooled leather shoulder holster beneath his studded jacket. ‘Sorry to rain on your parade and all that, but I think we have the advantage here, as far as fire power goes.’ ‘That so?’ the kid said, and in that moment Studz realised he might have misjudged the situation. The kid raised his arm and swiftly brought it down - it was a signal, and half a second later an arrow flew into Wolf’s thigh. The big man roared and dropped his gun. There were three archers on the pier, their weapons poised. Studz swore. How hadn’t he seen them? ‘Fuck this,’ Lil’Kat said, spinning balletically and plunging her knife into the belly of the youth close behind her. Almost in the same movement, she scooped up Wolf’s Ruger and started firing. Blam. Blam. Blam. She was fast, but she was also cool and accurate, picking off her targets at point-blank range with shooting-gallery ease. The rest of The Goathead wasted no time following her lead. Studz ducked behind his bike and fired rapid rounds into other gang as they charged. He took out four of them in three seconds, all of them headshots. One of them was a girl, barely in her teens, her small face crudely painted like a savage, and Studz’s kill-shot didn’t arrest her momentum. She fell

forward across the saddle of the Triumph, her green eyes already dead and staring sightless into his, less than a foot away. He pushed her off and she slid to the ground. Spyder tossed Lil’Kat’s gun to Wolf, then pulled out his machete and swung it in wide arcs as he moved relentlessly forward. The youths in front of him didn’t stand a chance as the blade scythed through limbs, and in the case of a boy of about eighteen, it decapitated him. The blood splashed back onto Spyder’s face, arms and ancient Slipknot t-shirt, but he grinned as he dispensed mutilation and death with verve and efficiency. Two more arrows flashed out of the sky; one bounced harmlessly on the promenade but the other speared Gonzo’s neck and he went down, clutching at it, first to one knee, before he keeled over, his lifeblood haemorrhaging from the wound. Studz took careful aim with the Desert Eagle, fired, and took out one of the archers. The other two fled. The rest of the gang, the ones who were still standing, had the same idea and ran off through the shopping arcade behind the pier. The echoes of gunshots faded away and left only the moans of the dying. Studz caught Wolf’s eye as the big man lowered Lil’Kat’s Browning, and he saw a look he hadn’t witnessed before, and it was disgust; disgust at the carnage they had unleashed in less than a minute. Lil’Kat had her eyes on the leader, the gobby kid with all the bravado. She took a solid stance, aimed, fired and took him down with a hit to his leg. The kid tried to get to his feet, but it wasn’t going to happen. He collapsed again and began to crawl. Lil’Kat took her time going after him, selecting her blade once again on the way. When she reached him she unhesitatingly yanked his head back by his hair and with cold deliberation she slit his throat. As he gurgled his last she let him fall back to the ground. He jerked and lay still, a pool of blood spreading from his throat and across the road. Lil’Kat wasted no time in going through the boy’s pockets for cash. Studz turned his attention to Gonzo. Spyder was kneeling beside him and his expression told Studz all he needed to know. Spyder shook his head. Wolf was sweating, grimacing and grasping his thigh. His jeans around the arrow’s entry point were soaked in blood. ‘We’ll get that out, pal,’ Studz told him, looking around at the bodies. He

scooped up Gonzo’s sawn-off shotgun from where it had fallen. ‘Just not here.’

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Anna was sitting at the table in the Winnebago. She looked up when Don came back. ‘You cannot hold me prisoner here,’ she said. ‘I demand to see the airfield commander this minute.’ She may have said it was a demand, but her tone didn’t reflect that. She sounded scared. ‘We need to talk,’ Don said, and sat opposite her. Her hands were clasped on the table and she was working her fingers agitatedly. ‘I need to talk, yes. To the station commander.’ ‘There isn’t a station commander. How many more times do I have to say it?’ Anna shook her head and gave a small, ironic laugh. ‘Please, I am not stupid. Why do you play this game with me? This is an RAF airfield, yes? RAF Levenby. I navigate my way here.’ ‘You’re right. It is RAF Levenby. Or rather, it used to be, a long time ago. You asked where the planes and the personnel are. Well, there aren’t any. This place hasn’t been an active airfield for decades. It’s derelict. You must have worked that out for yourself.’ ‘No. That’s crazy.’ ‘Is it? You told me you’re not stupid and I can tell you’re not, and this place isn’t what you expected. I don’t know what’s happened, how you’ve come to be here. I can only imagine how confused you are, because I sure as hell am.’ Anna looked out of the window. ‘This year is 1944,’ she said, her tone flat and uncompromising, ‘the night before last I stole a Luftwaffe Junkers JU88 and took off from Achmer-Wallenbrock airfield. My intention was to escape to

England. As I neared the coast I was attacked by a lone British fighter and my aircraft was badly damaged. But I managed to land. Where is the confusion? What is there to understand? These are the facts.’ Don said, ‘It’s documented that a German bomber was attacked off the coast in October 1944. It didn’t make it. It crashed on the dunes. The pilot didn’t survive.’ He watched carefully for her reaction but she said nothing and continued to look out of the window. She was still distractedly massaging her palms. ‘Will you take a look at this?’ Don asked. He waited, and after a moment, Anna faced him again. To remove any doubts that he wasn’t one hundred percent right about the original JU88, he’d dug out another War Ministry document. He’d left it on the table, and slid it across to Anna now. She gave it a cursory glance. ‘Then you talk about a different incident,’ she said stonily. ‘Do I? How many times would something like that have happened?’ ‘Then what am I?’ Anna asked. ‘A ghost?’ Before Don knew what was happening, she’d grabbed his hand, forced it flat against her chest where she held it. He felt the heat rise in his face, even as he felt the warmth of her body through the fabric of her overalls. ‘Obviously not,’ he said, averting his gaze. She thrust his hand away. ‘No, obviously not. And my aircraft. Does that look as if it has crashed?’ Don shook his head. ‘No. It doesn’t.’ Anna sighed with heavy frustration, got up and moved around the Winnebago’s living space, picking up the long-redundant TV remote control, dropping it again, gesturing towards the kettle, the microwave, the DAB radio. ‘These things,’ she said. ‘This vehicle. The way you dress...’ She shook her head, the magnitude of her situation suddenly seeming to crush her. ‘Decades. Derelict for decades...’

Don waited, and then she said, ‘So tell me. What year is this if not 1944?’ ‘2026. It’s 2026.’ She stared at him for several seconds. ‘Then the war is over? The Nazis have been defeated?’ ‘A long time ago. surrendered in 1945.’ ‘Then I have travelled in time.’ ‘In a manner of speaking, yes, you have. But I think it’s more complicated than that...’ A fresh determination stirred behind Anna’s eyes. She slid open the door and went outside. Don followed her. ‘Anna, wait.’ She stopped and turned round, her expression set and angry. ‘There’s something I want you to see,’ Don said. ‘I do not have the time. I must find the artefact.’ ‘Please. This won’t take long.’ She hesitated. ‘What is it?’ ‘It’ll be easier if I show you.’ He wondered if she would actually follow him, but she did. He led her to the control tower, and into the den. He stood aside as she looked around, giving her a little time. Then he picked up the section of tail-fin Nobby had given him and placed it on the table. ‘It was found in the sand banks,’ he told her. Cautiously, as if she was afraid it might burn or shock her, Anna touched it. Then withdrew her hand. She moved to the window and looked out at the JU88.

She said, ‘The identification number is the same.’ ‘Now do you believe what I’ve been telling you?’ She didn’t reply, and without looking at Don she went back outside. Don followed. Again. She climbed into the plane while Don waited at the bottom of the ladder, listening to her crash about inside. After a minute or so of this she appeared in the hatchway, looking flustered. ‘No luck then?’ Don asked. She climbed down and when she reached the ground she said, ‘The other man, the one who was here earlier? He might have taken the artefact.’ ‘Jay? How could he have done? He was only here for a few minutes and he didn’t even go inside the plane.’ Anna considered this, and seemed to come to the conclusion that, of course, he was right. She gazed into the tissues of mist, towards the blanched apparitions of the control tower and the Winnebago. She said, ‘Show me this world of 2026. I want to see it. I want to see what changes there have been.’ ‘Some things have happened that aren’t good.’ ‘More wars?’ she asked. ‘Huh! I would not be surprised. They are in Man’s nature. He does not learn lessons.’ ‘Not wars exactly,’ Don replied evasively.

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They propped Gonzo’s body against his fallen bike, drained the petrol from the tank and set fire to the machine, and him - a makeshift funeral pyre. It was the best send-off they could give him, considering the circumstances. Studz hoped Gonzo appreciated it, wherever he was. Studz took the lead with Wolf next and Lil’Kat and Spyder bringing up the rear. Despite the arrow in his thigh, Wolf was able to ride. Studz kept an eye on him in is rear-view mirrors, watching the way his friend made stiff gear changes and wobbled a couple of times. The big man was fighting it hard. They rode inland through the older areas of the town and into the modern developments on the western edge, estates that had been built in the early 2000’s on flat greenfield sites. There was space here, the treeless streets deserted and wide, leading only to more thoroughfares lined with identical, mass-produced houses and two-storey blocks of flats. Every so often there were bodies in the road and on the pavements, scavenged by dogs, foxes or carrion birds and whatever they hadn’t taken left to rot. The street ahead forked and at the junction there was a bungalow, a path running up the side of it, hidden by overgrown bushes. It would do. They hid their bikes there and broke into the house via the door at the rear. Studz and Spyder between them helped Wolf hobble through the kitchen and into the living room, where they got him onto a sofa. The place was damp, probably due to a leaking roof, proof of which was a large brown water mark on the ceiling. Wolf wanted to sit up. Studz told him to lie down. There were no medical supplies worthy of the name in the house; a box of sticking plasters, a tube of antihistamine cream and a half-empty bottle of Night Nurse. Studz told Spyder and Lil’Kat to go out, find a hospital or a pharmacy

and get hold of some more useful items. And he told them to be careful. Avoid trouble. Stay hidden whenever possible. After they’d gone, Studz sterilised his knife in a candle flame, wiped the blade clean and knelt on the mouldy carpet beside the sofa. With a pair of scissors he’d found in a kitchen drawer he cut away a section of Wolf’s jeans from around the wound. He peeled away the blood-sticky denim and regarded the broken shaft of the arrow. It had gone in at an angle and its head was barbed; this wasn’t one of those recreational-type arrows for shooting at straw targets - those little shits down at the pier had wanted these things to do real damage. Studz went to work, experimentally wiggling the shaft a little this way, a little that, seeing if he could tease it out. Wolf hissed with the pain and screwed his eyes shut. ‘It’s in there good,’ Studz concluded, looking up into his friend’s heavily bearded face. ‘Just get on with it,’ Wolf told him through clenched teeth. As Studz dug in with the tip of the knife, fresh blood sprang from the messy incision. Wolf roared. Studz drew the blood-slicked arrow out and held it up for Wolf to inspect. ‘A souvenir? Put it on a chain around your neck?’ ‘Fuck you.’ His face was flushed and beads of sweat had popped up on his forehead. Studz thought stitches might be needed, but that wasn’t going to happen. He’d come across a quarter bottle of Johnnie Walker in a cupboard in the kitchen, and he used it as a makeshift disinfectant, splashing the alcohol over the wound. Wolf must have been feeling the agony of that too, but he kept it in. Studz dressed the wound as best he could with torn strips of clothing he’d found in one of the bedrooms. Wolf fell asleep and Studz found his attention wandering to the whisky bottle on the carpet by the sofa. There was half an inch or so left in it. He coughed, and there was more blood for his filthy rag, which was already stiff with dried clots of it. He tore off a fresh strip from the shirt he’d used to bandage Wolf’s thigh. And the bottle of Johnnie Walker was still there, taunting him.

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Anna gazed out of the Winnebago’s side window as they ed Solstice Farm. She said, ‘I imagined that in the future there would be vast sweeping autobahns curving up into the sky, and tall buildings everywhere. Automobiles that can fly without wings. This is all so... ordinary. The countryside is not so different to the way it is... the way it was in my time.’ ‘Some cities have the buildings, and the sweeping highways,’ Don told her. ‘Not the wingless flying cars though. That idea never got off the ground.’ He shot her a sideways glance to check whether she’d got his feeble joke. Her face was still turned to the window. He decided he’d have to file that one under Lost in Translation. They reached Levenby and Don edged the Winnebago around the war memorial in the village square. Andy, the obese landlord of the Red Lion, emptied a bucket into the street and scowled at them as they rolled past. ‘You were talking about change,’ Don said. ‘But this place hasn’t changed all that much. It’s where I grew up.’ He turned onto the road leading out west and inland through the fens. Anna said, ‘I grew up in a village too. On the edge of the Black Forest.’ ‘Perhaps you’ll get back there one day.’ Anna gave him a sad smile. ‘I don’t think I will, do you? And if I did, what would be there for me? There will be no family, no friends. They will have been dead for many years.’ They ed the burial grounds in fields, large areas of churned earth that looked

like the preparatory groundworks of building sites. They were a familiar sight in the countryside outside all towns and cities; they had provided the only efficient means of disposing of thousands of bodies throughout the years the orbs had terrorised and scoured the planet with their insanity and death. They were a modern reincarnation of seventeenth century Great Plague pits, but if Anna was curious about them she didn’t show it. Within thirty minutes they reached the outskirts of Boston. There had been no roadblocks and although the road surface had broken up and was pot-holed in places, the Winnebago’s all-terrain tyres coped. The traffic here was converging on the magnet of the town; there were horse-drawn wagons, the occasional car or truck, people on foot pushing carts of all descriptions or with bulging packs on their backs. Don and Anna ed parades of shops ransacked and burned out and a group of thin, ragged children half-heartedly kicking a ball around in the street while skinny dogs fought over scraps. They drove into the town over a bridge which crossed the River Witham, its waters muddy, sluggish and freighted with trash. Abandoned cars had been pushed haphazardly to the side of the road, leaving the route relatively clear. Don parked in a side-street choked with piles of stinking refuse and spoke to a burly man wearing an ex-military camouflage jacket and polished combat boots. He gave him some money. ‘Who is he?’ Anna asked, when Don returned to the Winnebago. She was covering her nose with her cupped hand. ‘Market security,’ he told her. ‘The traders pay them to keep the peace. There’s food, fuel and guns for sale here, and people will kill for any of those, given the chance. I’ve paid him to keep an eye on the motor home.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because otherwise, the chances are we’ll get back to find what fuel I have left has been syphoned out.’ ‘What about the police?’ And Don answered, ‘What police?’ The wide, cobbled market square was overlooked by the imposing edifice of St Botolph’s church. People were milling everywhere, most of them unkempt, their hair long and unwashed, the men unshaven. There were rows of market stalls set

up with canvas and plastic awnings and there were the aromas of roasting meat, woodsmoke, bread, incense and underlying all those, the faint stink of sewage from the river. There were chickens confined in small wire cages, pigs snuffling in straw and muck and goats in pens, all for sale. There were traders warming themselves on braziers, hawking quack remedies alongside those offering conventional medical supplies. There were stalls selling candles, home-made soaps, meat, vegetables and canned goods - if you could afford them - most of them years old but still viable. There were milk churns, logs and kindling, ironbanded wooden barrels and plastic containers labelled bio-ethanol, sacks of flour, animal feed, bread, eggs, farm tools and woollen blankets. And then there were the beggars, huddled in doorways; the disabled, underfed, elderly and young. ‘How can this be the future?’ Anna commented, taking it all in, wide-eyed. ‘It is medieval.’ Yeah, Don thought, welcome to the brave new world. There were raised voices behind them. Two traders, both young men, were arguing, in each other’s faces, pushing and shoving. A punch was thrown. A knife was drawn. A crowd quickly gathered; there were shouts of encouragement and jeering. Two of the market’s security men stepped in and it was over as quickly as it had properly begun. Don guided Anna away, and as they stood in a quiet spot behind one of the stalls he gave her some bank notes from his wallet. ‘What is this for?’ she asked. ‘I take it you don’t have any money?’ ‘A few Reichsmarks, that is all...’ ‘As far as I know,’ Don said, ‘currency exchange has gone out the window.’ She gave him a puzzled look. ‘Never mind,’ he sighed and said. ‘The point is, you can’t live in those overalls forever. Buy yourself some clothes.’

He followed her as she wandered amongst the avenues of stalls, standing by patiently as she bought jeans, tops, and a coat, most of which had probably been plundered from a store or warehouse somewhere. Nobody asked about provenance anymore. If you needed it and it was available at the right price, you bought it. Don was prepared to haggle for her, but she’d picked up the technique quickly and did perfectly well for herself. She put the coat on and bundled the rest of her purchases beneath her arm. As they left the market she saw, in the doorway of a boarded-up travel agent, a girl of about ten, and a younger boy who she was holding close to keep him warm. Both kids were dirty and undernourished, street urchins, their eyes wide and watchful with a mixture of pleading and suspicion. Anna went over to them, got down on her haunches and said a few words to them which Don couldn’t hear and then she gave them the money she had left. When she reed him she said, ‘It is so sad. They are only children.’ She wanted to see more of the town and so they went into the narrow side streets leading from the square. Anna gazed into the dusty shop windows, some of which had been smashed, their displays looted. The further they moved from the town centre, the quieter it became. Don felt uncomfortable and stayed alert, nervous that the fewer people there were around the higher the chances were of getting mugged. Anna stopped and picked up a grubby trainer from the pavement, turning it over in her hand as if it was something highly significant. Then she saw the body, a moment after Don noticed it too. It was lying half in and half out of the doorway of a small terraced cottage. The clothes had been ripped apart by teeth and claws and the flesh stripped, leaving bones exposed. ‘Come on,’ Don urged. He’d seen it all before, and worse, especially in London. Anna continued to stare at the body with sick fascination for a few moments, but then she allowed Don to lead her away. They walked on in silence for a while, finding a modern arched footbridge over the river. They stopped halfway across it and leaned on the parapet, watching the Witham roll beneath them. Here, upstream, the water was cleaner and the stench of raw sewage was far less pronounced and there were trees growing on the wide, grassy banks.

‘If there wasn’t a war,’ Anna said at length, ‘what did kill all the people?’ Don gave it a few moments. ‘About five years ago,’ he said, without taking his eyes from the water, ‘these... things... started to appear. They were orbs of light, some as small as golf balls, others as big as melons. They would pop into the air out of nowhere.’ He paused. ‘They messed with people’s minds and drove them to violence and suicide, if the security forces didn’t deal with them first. There was a drug that protected people up to a point, but supplies of it ran low and nobody knew how to make it anymore. After that, it was pot luck whether the orbs got you or not. Nobody knows how many died, but it was... a lot. Most, actually.’ ‘What happened to the bodies?’ Anna asked. ‘It went on for many years. It was almost as if we became accustomed to it. The bodies were cremated, or buried in mass graves. We ed a couple of them coming in. In some places bodies were just left, or never found.’ ‘And these orbs - they still come?’ ‘No. It’s over.’ Anna stared at him. ‘That is truly awful. These horrible things... what were they? Where did they come from?’ ‘Nobody really knows, or if they do they aren’t saying. But the rumours are that they were a supernatural manifestation.’ ‘A supernatural manifestation,’ Anna repeated slowly, considering the words. ‘Like devils. Like ghosts. Like me, perhaps?’ ‘The orbs and you are a world apart,’ Don told her firmly. But did she have a point? How else was it possible to explain her being there, unless it was anything but supernatural? She said, ‘And you. Did you lose anyone you were close to?’ ‘A few friends.’ ‘I am sorry. A wife?’

‘I never married.’ Anna nodded and looked away. She said, ‘Then that, at least, was a mercy.’ They watched the river for another minute, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Then Anna said, ‘I have decided I believe you when you say the Junkers crashed in 1944.’ ‘Okay.’ At last. ‘So the question I have is this: did they find the body?’ Don had known she’d get round to that sooner or later, and there was no point in sugar-coating his reply. ‘Yes, they did,’ he said. ‘And what did they do with it?’ She faced him and held his gaze expectantly. ‘It was buried,’ he told her, ‘in Levenby churchyard.’ And she said, ‘I want to see the grave.’

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The roll-up cigarette had burned down to a stub between his fingers and the empty bottle lay fallen over on the carpet beside him. Studz was sitting in the chair across from Wolf, staring into space, when the back door opened. The cold afternoon followed Spyder and Lil’Kat inside. Studz hauled himself to his feet and went out to meet them in the kitchen. Lil’Kat was flushed and looking pleased with herself as she dumped her black leather motorcycle saddlebag on the table. ‘We broke into a chemist,’ she said, flipping open the saddlebag’s studded flap, her wrist bangles jingling. She took out a roll of fabric bandages, a box of safety pins, bottles of antiseptic spray and packets of antibiotics. ‘A lot of stuff had already gone. We can use this though, yeah?’ Studz picked up the packet of antibiotics and inspected it. The drugs were out of date by almost two years. He said, ‘Yeah, good work. Did you get any grief?’ ‘Nah,’ Lil’Kat said cockily. ‘We only saw a few locals - older people. Scuttled off like cockroaches when they saw us.’ Back in the living room Studz removed the makeshift dressing from Wolf’s leg, re-cleaned the wound with the antiseptic spray, rebandaged it and made the big man take a couple of antibiotics. He slept. Lil’Kat fell asleep too, in the chair. Studz sat cross-legged on the floor next to the sofa and Spyder went outside to keep watch. Wolf’s snoring caught in his throat and he woke himself up. He levered himself up onto his elbows. ‘Got some water?’ he asked, his voice raw. Studz handed him a plastic bottle and Wolf drank from it. Studz exchanged it for his fresh cigarette. Wolf sucked on it and exhaled slowly, the smoke drifting sinuously in the cold air.

‘Better,’ he said, nodding his appreciation. ‘And the leg?’ Wolf swung it off the sofa and sat up. Studz said, ‘I didn’t ask you to move the fuckin’ thing, you twat. Just tell me how it is.’ Wolf ignored that and, wincing, hefted his leg onto the coffee table. ‘We need to get out of here mate,’ he said. ‘Skegness ain’t a good place to be any longer.’ ‘Where is?’ ‘Somewhere. We just ain’t found it yet. Don’t mean to say we should stop looking.’ He took another draw on the cigarette. ‘Maybe we ought to jack it in. There’s times I don’t think I can handle the killing and the violence anymore. What happened at the pier... it sickened me, mate. And I don’t just mean this.’ He indicated his bandaged leg. ‘We’re old men now. We might as well face it.’ Studz got up on the sofa beside him. ‘It’s our way of life,’ he said, ‘we don’t get to choose. What else do we do? Stand in line for our pensions? Hope somebody is going to look after us when we’re shitting in our pants like babies? Nobody is.’ ‘Maybe we do get to choose.’ ‘You want out? You want to find some land and play at farmers?’ Wolf sighed. He shifted position, giving himself thinking time before he replied. ‘Maybe,’ he said, and then more forcefully, ‘no. I’m just saying, we don’t have to go looking for trouble, like we need it.’ ‘We don’t need it. It’s just the way of the shitstorm that’s blowin’ right now.’ Wolf said, ‘Some of us need it, mate.’ ‘Yeah? Who?’ Wolf nodded towards Lil-Kat. ‘Her.’

‘Lil Kat? Piss off.’ ‘She does. You know it. She’s got fire in her blood, and she’s likely to get us all killed.’

***

Don and Anna stood beneath the spreading boughs of an ancient yew tree, its trunk thick and gnarled, as if it was something that had been transported from a fantasy forest. The gravestone was simple and just a couple of feet high. The inscription on it read Unknown German pilot. Died October 1944. Anna stepped forward and placed a small posy of flowers on the grass in front of it. Just a handful of snowdrops and early crocuses she’d plucked from the verge beside the churchyard wall. She stepped back. ‘It is a strange feeling, laying flowers on your own grave.’ ‘I can imagine,’ Don agreed. ‘It isn’t something everyone gets to do.’ They stood in silence for a few moments. Then Anna said, ‘So this is how my life ended. As an unknown German. I wonder if it is too late to add my name to the stone?’ ‘Would you want to?’ Don asked. ‘After all, you’re actually alive.’ She gave him that sad smile of hers again. ‘Am I really, though?’ She paused. ‘You have been very patient with me, Don, but now it is time I told you why I hijacked a plane and came to England and why I am laying flowers on my own grave.’ They sat on a bench, the varnish on its wooden slats flaking. A small and tarnished brass plaque screwed to the back of it informed that the bench had been placed there in memory of a local worthy and life-long churchgoer. ‘My father was an archaeologist who worked in this country before the war,’

Anna began. ‘He was fascinated by the myths surrounding Druids Field. It was said that the Druids possessed an artefact that had the power to bring people back from the dead, and recreate objects that had been destroyed. He obtained permission to dig on the farmland in the area, and in a druid’s burial ground not far from the airfield he found the artefact. He took it back to to study, but his work was interrupted by the outbreak of war. His sympathies were not with the Nazis and early one morning the Gestapo came for him. I did not see him again. I was able to hide the artefact and his papers from them or they would have taken those too.’ Don said, ‘Why did you risk so much to bring this artefact back to England in the middle of hostilities?’ ‘It was not exactly the middle of hostilities. The war was as good as over, and it was clear was going to be on the losing side. And anyway, I was taking a greater risk by staying - the daughter of a non-party member was someone to be monitored - and I was.’ ‘Then why not just wait?’ Anna shook her head. ‘You don’t realise how things were towards the end. There was a great deal of panic and suspicion. The Nazis were covering their tracks. The Russians were coming too.’ She held the thought. ‘If the artefact really did have the power to recreate things that have been destroyed, and people who have died, you might imagine how the Nazis would be interested in such a thing. I did not know what the future held. I had to take the chance and leave. I was lucky, to make ends meet I had a part-time job ferrying aircraft from the factories to the operational airfields, so although it was a big risk it was possible for me to steal the JU88.’ Don looked out over the churchyard wall to the darkening field beyond and the mass grave of the villagers taken by the orbs. There were no memorial stones for them, only simple wooden markers and a small digger, abandoned after its grisly work had been done. ‘The artefact,’ Don said, his mouth dry, ‘what does it look like?’ Finally, the burning question. ‘It is essentially a glass pyramid, fifteen centimetres along each side.’

Don stared at his feet. He said, ‘And hieroglyphs are etched into it.’ Anna faced him. ‘You know something of this?’ There was quickening hope in her voice. ‘I’ve seen it. When I was a boy. It was found in the sand banks.’ ‘And you know where it is now?’ ‘No. It went missing again.’ Anna thought about this. ‘If I ed through some sort of curtain of energy as I approached the airfield, which activated the pyramid, and brought me here to your time... then I do not understand why it did not manifest with the aircraft.’ ‘Perhaps because things have to be destroyed before they can be recreated,’ Don ventured. ‘The artefact wasn’t destroyed. It survived the crash.’ Anna let out a long, shuddering breath and looked away. ‘I am frightened, Don. I have been dead for eighty years, and yet I do not heaven. So where have I been? Wherever it was, I do not want to go back there... to that nothingness. And yet... this is not my world. How can I find a place in it?’ Don didn’t know what to tell her.

***

Sally had left Kadrobus at the lodge, locking him in in case he’d decided to wander off, while she’d run her errands around the district and bought some essentials from local farmers. When she came home Larissa, who was normally impatient to jump out of the Land Rover, was reluctant to move. ‘Come on, you can’t stay in there for the rest of the day,’ she told the dog as she held the enger door open. But it looked as if staying there was just what Larissa wanted to do. From the footwell Sally picked up a large canvas bag which contained her purchased items, and still the dog showed no signs of

shifting. ‘Larissa, OUT!’ This time, the dog got the message. She jumped out but instead of running to the kitchen door and waiting as usual she dashed into the woods. Sally sighed and shook her head. Kadrobus was sitting at the kitchen table. There were empty cans and food wrappers scattered in front of him and he was cramming a large chunk of cheese into his mouth as though his life depended on it, his cheeks bulging in a comically hamsterish way. He regarded Sally balefully as she closed the door behind her. ‘I’m glad you’re making yourself at home,’ she commented. He pushed the last of the cheese into his mouth. Sally put her bag on a counter top, unpacked and stowed her purchases in the cupboards and the fridge while he watched her. ‘How... long?’ he asked, through the mouthful of cheese. Sally glanced over her shoulder. ‘How long what?’ He didn’t answer, and then she realized what he was getting at. ‘Years,’ she told him, tight-lipped. ‘It’s been many years. It doesn’t matter how long.’ Kadrobus nodded once, very slowly. ‘You... change.’ Sally closed the fridge door. ‘I didn’t have a choice. I had to change to survive. That was always what we were meant to do, wasn’t it? Adapt. Fit in. Bide our time. You’re going to have to change too, and there won’t be any going back. What you are - what we are - doesn’t count for anything any longer.’ His flat expression as he chewed told her that his language comprehension skills still had a lot of developing to do.

20

The back door opened and seconds later Spyder came into the living room, out of breath and g frantically. Lil’Kat was awake and on her feet. ‘What’s he saying?’ Studz asked her. ‘There’s about twenty of them,’ she replied. ‘At the top of the road. Coming our way.’ She looked at Studz. ‘How did they know we were here?’ Studz said, ‘Does it matter?’ He turned to Wolf. ‘Can you ride?’ ‘What sort of dumb-arsed question is that?’ The big man heaved himself to his feet, tested his weight on his wounded leg and nodded. ‘I’ll do,’ he said. Lil’Kat scooped up her things. ‘Where are we going, babe?’ She was brighteyed, fired up for the adventure. ‘South,’ Studz said. He’d been mulling over an idea and it had just firmed up. He led the way out through the back and to their waiting bikes. As they rode off, a pack of young men armed with staves, knives and crossbows turned into the street, saw The Goathead and charged after them, even though there was no chance they’d be able to catch them. They arrived in Levenby village square, the headlights of their bikes burning through the fog, the blattering of their engines echoing against the buildings. Studz circled the war memorial and stopped. He switched off his engine and the others followed suit. Lil’Kat pulled down the scarf covering her mouth and nose and mouth and the fog was cold and damp on her newly-exposed face. ‘So this is... where?’ Studz said, ‘When I was with the Water Board I worked here once. We dug up the road and fixed a sewer.’ Lil’Kat was unimpressed. ‘Happy days, babe. Bet you couldn’t wait to get back here. Where’s this sewer then? I’m dying to see it.’

Studz climbed off his bike, kicked down the stand and took off his gloves. ‘Just saying. It was quiet back then. It’ll be a good place to lie low for a while.’ ‘It’s even quieter now,’ Lil’Kat suggested, still astride her Harley, as she surveyed the empty houses, closed shops and a pub. Studz walked towards the church. ‘Where are you going?’ Lil’Kat called after him. He didn’t look back. ‘To say a proper goodbye to Gonzo. We all are.’ Lil’Kat shot a glance at Wolf. What’s he talking about? Wolf ignored her, dropped his Cafe Racer onto its stand and limped after Studz. Spyder went with them. Lil’Kat shook her head and rolled her eyes. The church door was unlocked and they went inside. Lil’Kat had expected the place to be trashed, but it wasn’t. The four of them stood by the font. Lil’Kat gazed up into the shadows of the high-vaulted roof with its sturdy, arched beams. At the end of the aisle, in front of a large stained-glass window was the altar, covered with a red velvet cloth and on it were lit candles in tall, ornate holders. She spotted a wood collection box on a small table by the door and on the table was a selection of faded religious books and pamphlets. There was no dust on them, nor on the surface of the table. She went over to it and rattled the padlock and hasp which secured the lid of the box. ‘Reckon there’s anything in this?’ she said. ‘I could break it open, easy.’ ‘We ain’t taking nothin’,’ Studz said. He was standing at the head of the aisle, looking towards the altar. ‘Only joking,’ Lil’Kat told him, even though she wasn’t. What had got into him? Normally, cash was king and he’d never up an opportunity to get his hands on some. He walked along the aisle towards the altar. Wolf and Spyder stayed where they were, watching him. When he reached the altar he knelt in front of it, on a cushion that was there. He bowed his head.

Lil’Kat stepped up beside Wolf. ‘I never thought I’d see the day,’ she whispered, the atmosphere of the place touching her, despite herself, ‘he’s found God.’ ‘His old man was a Church of England vicar,’ Wolf said. ‘God’s never left him.’ Lil’Kat stared at him. ‘You’re shitting me,’ she said, still whispering. ‘I didn’t know that. Why didn’t I know that?’ ‘Perhaps because he don’t think you’re important enough.’ ‘Yeah, funny,’ Lil’Kat said, and gave him an ain’t you the smart-arse face. Nevertheless, she was amazed by this piece of information and right then she didn’t know how to process it. It just went to show, you thought you knew someone when actually, you didn’t. ‘He brought us here to pay our respects to Gonzo,’ Wolf continued, ‘so that’s what we’re gonna do.’ He limped along the aisle and Spyder trailed behind him. Lil’Kat stayed where she was. ‘This is bullshit,’ she muttered. She was angry, but she couldn’t pinpoint why. Was it because Studz hadn’t shared with her that his dad had been a vicar? It couldn’t be. Why would she care a toss about that? Wolf and Spyder settled themselves on a pew at the front of the church, just behind Studz, while Lil’Kat walked back to the pamphlet table and the collection box. This place... What did it mean to anyone anymore? If there was a god, where was He when the orbs had come? Or maybe those things had been God, or His messengers, His angels of death, sent to punish Man for his sins. Or something like that. Either way, they’d all been left high and dry by the Lord; that was the way Lil’Kat saw it. She didn’t owe Him a thing. She took out her Browning, stood back a couple of paces, turned her head to one side and fired at the collection box padlock. The noise was like an echoing thunderbolt within the vaulted space of the church, an Old Testament thunderbolt she thought with amusement.

The padlock and its hasp had been demolished. Bits of it had been blasted against the pillars and the wooden backs of the rearmost pews. Lil’Kat’s ears were ringing. She flipped open the collection box lid, with its narrow slit in the top, and looked inside where there was a handful of coins, and that was all. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. The other three of The Goathead were on their feet, reacting to the gunshot. Studz and Wolf had their own weapons out and were pointing them in Lil’Kat’s direction. ‘It’s cool guys,’ she called to them, grinning, ‘it was only me.’ The door opened and instinctively Lil’Kat spun round, crouched, and aimed her gun, holding it two-handed. A tall, black bald bloke entered the church. His gaze went from the muzzle of Lil’Kat’s gun to the wrecked collection box to the rest of The Goathead. He was alone and he wasn’t armed so Lil’Kat relaxed, just a little. But her finger stayed on the trigger. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. He said, ‘My name is Jayamma Adeyemi. Why are you using firearms here? This is God’s house.’ He looked pissed off, there was no doubt about that, but a preacher though? He was no threat. Lil’Kat rose to her full five feet and a bit and lowered her gun to her side. She said, ‘I don’t hear him complaining.’ Studz, Wolf and Spyder were coming back up the aisle and were almost with them. The preacher-man raised his voice and addressed all of them. ‘Get out. You and your guns aren’t welcome here.’ ‘We ain’t ready to leave just yet,’ Studz told him quietly. He had lowered his gun too. ‘I think you are,’ the preacher-man said, and before Lil’Kat knew what hit her he’d twisted her arm high behind her back. Shit, he was quick... quick and

strong. There was more to this guy than prayers and peace and love; he’d done martial arts or something. She tried to keep hold of the gun but couldn’t, and he had it. ‘Do him!’ she yelled at Studz, Wolf and Spyder, but only Spyder made a move, stepping forward with his blade raised. Studz laid a hand on his arm, and Spyder went no further. Wolf was trying not to smile, the bastard. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Lil’Kat didn’t just aim that at Wolf, it was meant for all of them. The preacher-man released her, stepped in front of her and held out her gun for her, stock first. ‘I asked you to leave,’ he said calmly, ‘now will you please do so.’ Lil’Kat looked at the gun and then into his dark brown eyes. She thought about taking the gun and shooting him right between them. ‘All right mate,’ Wolf said, unruffled. ‘We’re going. No worries.’ Studz glanced across at him, but said nothing, as if he’d been surprised by what the big man had said but had decided he didn’t disagree with him. Wolf re-holstered his gun and seconds later Studz did the same and Spyder, more reluctantly, slid his blade back into its scabbard. The preacher-man was still presenting Lil’Kat’s gun to her. She took it, snatched it petulantly, really. Despite her fury she knew she wasn’t going to shoot him, not then, not with Studz and the other two backing down. The preacher-man stood aside as Wolf and Spyder filed past him and out through the door. Lil’Kat glared at them for a few seconds and then followed. As she ed the preacher-man she pressed the muzzle of her gun against the side of his neck. She had to reach up to do it. He stared ahead, but she enjoyed the way he flinched, but tried to hide it. ‘I ain’t gonna forget you,’ she told him. They were waiting for her on the graveyard path when she came out of the church. The adrenaline was still pumping through her and she needed to vent her frustration before she exploded. The preacher was standing at the partially open door in the shadowed porch, watching her. Impulsively, she flipped him the bird, for all the good it did her. Without reacting, he unhurriedly closed the door on her.

She swore under her breath and turned to face the rest of The Goathead, her fists on her hips, looking at them one by one. ‘Well, that went well didn’t it boys? Are you proud of what happened in there, letting a preacher get the better of us?’ and to Studz she added, ‘hey, babe, is it because your old man used to be one of them?’ He just stared at her. Wolf said wearily, ‘Give it a rest, why don’t you?’ Lil’Kat strode up to him, got right in his personal space and looked up into his big hairy face. ‘Don’t tell me to give-it-a-rest...’ she jabbed him in the chest with her forefinger, emphasizing each of those words. ‘You know something? You can’t hack it anymore. You’re over the hill, Wolfie.’ She saw in his eyes that he was about to react, which she knew wouldn’t be good news for her, but at that moment she didn’t care. Bring it on, Wolfie, my man, prove me wrong... Studz said, ‘Lil’Kat, you’re out of line, way out of line. We came here to regroup, not fight everyone. ‘Specially not ourselves.’ With her eyes still locked with Wolf’s, and refusing to be the first to back down, Lil’Kat said, ‘We have to fight for it. For everything. Nobody’s going to hand anything to us on a plate. We’ve gotta be the strongest. The survivors.’ Wolf shook his head slowly, as if he thought she was talking out of her arse. After another brief flare the band of tension inside Lil’Kat snapped. It went, just like that, its energy short-circuited. She gave a short, ironic laugh. ‘Look, I’m sorry big man,’ she said to Wolf, and took a step back, ‘of course I know what you’re about, even if you are an old fart.’ She grinned at him, just to show that hey, there were no hard feelings, right? ‘I saw it back at Skegness Pier. You’re a hero.’ She gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. ‘Yeah,’ was his terse reply. He was still staring down at her, stony-faced. Well, she’d tried. If he didn’t want to accept her apology and call it quits it wasn’t her problem.

‘Thank fuck,’ Studz muttered, and started off along the path towards the gate. ‘Where are we going now?’ Lil’Kat called after him. Without looking back he said, ‘We need somewhere to stay. A bit of luxury. A change from the usual mouldy dumps we break into. Sound good?’ Wolf glared at Lil’Kat a final time and then he followed Studz. She had to step smartly out of his way or he would have barged right through her. Talk about bearing a grudge. Spyder signed something to her, a quick and complicated twist and turn of hands and fingers. You were right. They’ve lost it. Both of them. ‘Don’t worry dude,’ Lil’Kat said. ‘We’ll be back on it soon enough.’

21

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The Rayburn had warmed the kitchen. Normally, Larissa would have been curled up in her bed beside it, but as Kadrobus was in the room, she had made herself scarce. Sally was chopping carrots for the evening meal, the snick-snick of the knife’s blade interspersed every thirty seconds or so by the quick rustle of a page turning. Kadrobus was sitting at the table, speed reading Dickens’ David Copperfield by buttery candlelight. He’d found the volume in Sally’s large book collection in the living room. Suddenly he spoke, quoting a age from the book, his diction clear and precise, ‘New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing...’ This startled Sally, the knife slipped, and it sliced her finger. She hissed. Sucking it, she reached for the jug by the draining board and splashed water over the wound, the diluted blood flowing down the sink’s plug hole. ‘You have hurt yourself,’ Kadrobus stated. Sally glanced at him. His forearms were resting on the table either side of the book and his face was expressionless. ‘It’s just a small cut. I’ll live.’ In fact the wound was disconcertingly deep, and its sting was making itself known. She set down the jug and slid open a drawer, taking out a small box of assorted sticking plasters she’d had for years. She shook the contents onto the counter top. ‘What are you doing?’ Kadrobus asked, sounding only mildly curious.

Sally selected a suitably sized plaster and fiddled with it for a few moments, freeing it from its wrapper. ‘I’m stopping the bleeding.’ ‘How long will it take?’ ‘Not long.’ She peeled the backing from the plaster and awkwardly placed it over the cut while blood continued to dribble. Chair legs scraped on the floor and Kadrobus got to his feet. ‘Why do you not heal yourself?’ ‘I am. I will. It’ll happen, but it just takes longer in these bodies.’ ‘I will have a look,’ he said. ‘There’s no point. You can’t do anything.’ Sally turned away, irritated that she’d cut herself and with him for making a big deal about it. He caught her hand before she realised what he was doing, and he ripped the plaster off. ‘Hey!’ He curled his fist around her finger and gently squeezed it. She felt warmth, and something else - a tingling sensation, barely there at all. Kadrobus was looking into her eyes, his cold violet gaze disconcerting. He released her finger and she held it up in front of his face. The wound was still oozing blood. She hoped her expression said, I told you so. ‘I don’t understand,’ Kadrobus said, frowning. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re human now. There are things we can’t do anymore, and healing is one of them.’ ‘I will try again.’ As he reached for her hand once more she pulled it away. ‘No.’

She selected another plaster from the little pile on the counter top. Kadrobus said, ‘I did not think it would be this way. So much weakness.’ He stared at his hands, as if they had let him down. Sally supposed that from his point of view, they had. ‘Don’t feel bad,’ she told him, unsympathetically. ‘If it’s any consolation what you did wasn’t a complete failure. You must still have a residue of the old energies, at least for now.’ She waggled her freshly-plastered finger. ‘You took the pain away. It’s completely numb.’

22

6.30 am. Fog like trapped spirits pooled about the airfield and it seemed in no hurry to disperse. Don wondered if the sun would ever shine again; those summer days spent here half a century ago seemed to him to be part dream, part imagination. He stepped into the Winnebago. On the table was a cereal bowl, a few flakes of oats still in it, a spoon and an empty glass. The bedroom door was open and he saw the bed was unoccupied, the duvet a scrambled mound. Anna wasn’t in the shower-toilet either. Back out on the apron, he scanned the airfield. He saw nothing unusual at first but then he noticed movement in the ethereal distance. The figure was indistinct, but Don could tell it was Anna, walking purposefully towards one of the ruined outbuildings on the western edge of the airfield. He retrieved his bike from where he’d left it, leaning against the side of the control tower, and cycled across the apron to the perimeter track. The cold of the morning seeped through his shirt and the mist condensed on the lenses of his glasses, necessitating a couple of stops to wipe them. By the time he reached the building, Anna had gone inside. He found her poking about in a gloomy corner where ferns had grown in the cracks of the wall and the floor was boggy with moss. ‘It isn’t going to be in here,’ he told her. Anna kept to her task and didn’t look up. ‘Why not? It as good a place as any.’ ‘Look, you’re going to drive yourself mad doing this. The airfield covers hundreds of acres, and that’s before you even get started on the sand banks, the salt marshes, the village and the farms. And if it isn’t actually hidden – if somebody took it – it might not even be in the area.’ ‘It must be. If it is not, then how could it have done what it has?’ Don couldn’t immediately think of an argument to counter that. Anna picked up a large plastic animal feed bucket which had been left there years ago. She glared at Don, her eyes bright and determined. ‘So I will drive

myself mad. But unless I find the artefact I will go mad anyway. This is not me. This is not my life. I must find a way for the artefact to take me back.’ ‘It isn’t a time machine,’ Don said. ‘The only thing it’ll do, at best, is to take you back to being dead.’ The line of Anna’s mouth was set firm. Seeing that the bucket was empty, she tossed it aside. ‘I’m sorry,’ Don told her, ‘that was harsh and I shouldn’t have said it.’ He sighed. ‘Look, what’s happened isn’t ideal. Of course it isn’t. But we need to be realistic, because we’re stuck with it. But it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. You can make a life for yourself in this world. I can help you.’ ‘Then help me find the pyramid, and then help me use it.’ She held his gaze steadfastly. ‘You owe me this.’ She’d left him after that, to resume her search elsewhere on Druids Field. He hadn’t followed her, and he saw nothing of her for the rest of the day - but she sought him out in the evening. He was in the den reading, by candlelight in front of the stove, a book entitled Living the Green, Clean Dream; handy tips on selfsufficiency he was going to need. Most of his lifetime savings had only existed electronically within the computers of financial institutions. He had only been able to liquidate a certain amount of cash before digital banking had collapsed, and although he had every intention of living frugally he was still likely to run out of money before he died. ‘May I sit with you?’ Anna asked, standing just inside the door. Don fetched her a camping chair and set it up next to his own. ‘You do not mind this intrusion?’ she said. There was a contriteness about her that hadn’t been there before. She still looked tired, which didn’t surprise Don; she rarely slept more than a few hours at a time. ‘No, it’s fine,’ he told her. She sat, and stared into the slow and sinuous flames of the stove while Don waited. After a few moments she said quietly, ‘I am sorry for what I said to you earlier. I was rude.’ ‘You were entitled to say it,’ Don replied. ‘It was the truth. I do owe you. You’re

my responsibility. ‘Like a child born of an unwanted pregnancy?’ ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ She allowed herself a half smile. ‘You seem to say things you don’t mean quite often.’ There was a beat and she looked away again, the smile fading. ‘And how will my arrival change your plans, now that you have this responsibility?’ Don said, ‘I don’t know. What’s really changed? We survive, in whatever ways we can.’ ‘But here, in this haunted place?’ ‘For now, yes.’ ‘But I think survival will be difficult.’ ‘I just want a quiet life, where I can grow my vegetables and run my little museum.’ ‘I do not think you will discover your quiet life here. Not until we find the pyramid and learn what it is doing. There will be trouble to come.’ ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Don said. ‘There’s someone we could go and see. It’s possible she might know where the pyramid is. But it might come to nothing.’ The fire of hope rekindled in her eyes. ‘But it may come to something, yes?’

23

Bare-chested and bare-foot, he runs, fast, through the forest, and the winter-dead bracken. He hurdles fallen trees with the agility of a wild animal, dodges between the pines and the silver birch by instinct and without breaking his stride. A pine has blown over in a storm. He leaps onto its trunk. He clenches his fists by his side, flexing his biceps and triceps. He breathes deeply, almost savagely, in through his nose and out through his mouth, relishing the sensations he has in his new body. The damp, cool air expands his lungs, the solid, powerful engine of his heart pumps, his leg muscles burn with the exertion. A small bird breaks cover and flies close to him. In an instinctive, lightning-quick movement he snatches it out of the air as it es him. He brings it close to his face and peers into its beady eyes. And then he squeezes the life out of it. He tilts his head back and yells at the sky, a long and fierce warrior cry of defiance, pride and aggression.

***

Sally shut off the bioethanol drain tap on the tank in the workshop, and listened for the cry to come again. It may have been an animal out there in the forest, although it hadn’t sounded like any she knew of. Had it been human, then? It was possible. The orbs had left their residual insanity and there were a handful of poor souls who wandered the countryside shouting at entities only they could see. The district around Levenby had its fair share. Whoever or whatever had cried out though, didn’t do so again. After ten minutes spent tidying up she returned to the lodge, feeling distracted. She’d heard rumours that an aircraft had landed at Druids Field and that, combined with the news of Don Carter’s return, bothered her deeply. She needed to think, to decide what she was going to do about it, and she always found that

the best place to do it was in the loft room. The door was ajar and that alerted her to the fact that something was amiss; she was sure she’d left it closed. She always did, out of habit. She approached it cautiously, anticipating what she would find when she pushed it fully open, and discovered that she was right. Kadrobus was there, standing in front of the bookshelves, taking a close interest in a framed star-chart hanging on the wall above it. He was naked from the waist up and Sally could see tiny beads of sweat on his forehead and the sheen of it on his naked torso. He had lit candles. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. He remained facing away from her. ‘I want to talk to you.’ ‘There are rules,’ Sally told him, ‘and one of them is you don’t just walk into my private spaces uninvited.’ ‘I want to talk to you,’ Kadrobus repeated tonelessly. Sally closed the door behind her and went over to the desk. She perched on the edge of it and crossed her arms. ‘All right. So talk to me.’ Kadrobus turned around. ‘We have to make a plan to accomplish what we came here to do.’ Sally said, ‘Right, well here’s the news. There isn’t going to be a plan.’ ‘We have a duty.’ ‘We do not. Whatever we once swore to do means nothing now because there’s no-one left to do it for. It’s just you and me.’ He was quiet for a time as he stared at a candle flame. Then he said, ‘Have you been there? To the crash site?’ ‘It doesn’t matter whether I’ve been there or not. Didn’t you hear what I said?’ He appeared to consider this, but what Sally sensed he was trying to do was probe her mind again. He didn’t have the mental strength to do it, though, and

she was able to block him without too much effort. ‘Why are you resisting me?’ he said. ‘What are you hiding?’ She held his gaze and when she didn’t answer he went on, ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t need you. I have found the place, on your maps. The people here call it Druids Field. I don’t think it is a coincidence that you have chosen to live so close to it.’ ‘That doesn’t mean I want anything to do with what happened there three thousand years ago.’ Kadrobus frowned, as if he simply could not comprehend her attitude. ‘You are a warrior,’ he said. ‘You cannot change that. It is your essence. Has it been crushed by your humanity? I don’t think so. You are a female who can kill as well as any male - and better than most. I think it’s still inside you, Nethardia.’ And the thing was, Sally had spent decades suppressing that very trait and it scared her to think that it wasn’t entirely dead and buried - that Kadrobus might be right. Later, carrying a bag of food waste for recycling on the composter in the garden, she ed the open door of the sitting room. Kadrobus was sitting on the sofa in front of the TV, staring at the blank screen, his hands resting on his thighs. As Sally watched, he shivered, once, and the screen flickered into life. There was no picture, just black and white mush. After a few seconds, the set turned off. And then on again. The cycle repeated. Sally quietly set the bag on the floor, went in to the room and stood in front of Kadrobus as behind her the TV kept turning on and off. Kadrobus’s eyes were rolled back in their sockets, with only their whites visible. She lay on her back in the dark staring at her bedroom ceiling, any kind of worthwhile sleep having eluded her. The floor boards outside her door creaked, and Larissa, in her bed on the floor beside Sally’s, whimpered. Sally hushed the dog, got up, put on her robe and cracked opened the door. There was no sign of Kadrobus on the landing, although his bedroom door was ajar. She lit a candle, crept downstairs to the dark hall and felt a breeze. When she went through to the kitchen she saw why - the door was wide open. She stood at the threshold, looking out. Kadrobus was halfway down the garden path, near the workshop. His movements had activated the solar-powered lights bordering it and he was a

silhouetted, standing perfectly still in the night fog, staring into the sky. If he was aware that Sally was watching him, he didn’t show it. She stepped back into the shadows of the kitchen, thinking that she’d leave him to whatever he was doing out there, and to whatever plans he was hatching. But as she turned, her gaze fell to the counter top, and to the wooden knife block on it. She stared at it. Why had it caught her attention? Had it been a subconscious impulse? And if it had, then for what reason? But she knew. She knew why. She walked over to it and set the candle on the counter. After a moment’s hesitation, she slid her chef’s knife from the block. It was of good quality and it felt solid and weighty in her hand. She turned it, a little this way, a little the other, letting the candlelight dance off the honed edge. It was hypnotic. Kadrobus’s hand clamped around her wrist. She gasped at the shock of it. She’d had no sense of him coming up behind her, so immersed had she been in her thoughts. ‘You doubt whether you have it within you to kill me,’ he said, his mouth intimately close to her ear, his voice low and dark. Carelessly, she’d let her metal guard down, allowing him to gain a sense of her thoughts, if not the thoughts themselves. Sally remained completely still; she had little choice, pinioned by his weight against the counter as she was. She was finding it difficult to breathe. ‘You don’t have the right to manipulate these people,’ she said, between strained breaths. ‘The right? Power gives me the right. Desperation gives me the right. To survive, the weakest succumb. Don’t you the way of it? You wanted this for our civilisation as much as anyone.’ ‘It’s changed,’ Sally told him. ‘It’s changed so much that you want to murder me now?’ Was he right? It was certainly a course of action she’d considered as she’d stood

there, captivated by the candlelight glinting on the knife’s blade. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t killed before during her life here on the Earth. ‘I want to stop you,’ she said. ‘That’s what I want.’ ‘The only way you’ll do that is by plunging this knife into my heart, right now.’ He forced her wrist higher, until the knife was level with her eyes and she could read the manufacturer’s name engraved on it, near the wooden handle. ‘But you can’t, and for the same reason you did not give up on me and destroy the transformer pyramids. Because you how it was between us, and you hoped for that again.’ The way he murmured was just as a lover would, just as the lover he had once been. ‘I don’t hope for that again,’ she said. He released her wrist and caressed her cheek with his fingertips. ‘No? These bodies we have are strange... ugly to our eyes... but there’s still the power, and grace, and beauty within. Isn’t there?’ He stepped away from her. She turned to face him, and lowered the knife to her side. ‘Tomorrow, I go to Druids Field,’ he told her, his tone hard again. ‘I’ll find the Pyramid of Life, and I’ll bring back our elder warriors. There will be a resurrection, we shall rise again and we shall conquer. You are irrelevant to me.’ He left the kitchen. Sally remained motionless until she heard his footfall on the landing. Early the next morning she stood at her bedroom window and watched him walk along the forest track and away from the lodge. He was wearing her exboyfriend’s hoodie and there was a rucksack strapped to his back. Before long, he ed out of sight behind the trees. She turned away from the window.

24

Don considered it unlikely the doorbell would work, so he rapped on the door with his knuckles. Anna stood behind him in the street, her arms folded, her breath condensing in the cold air. On the face of it, the indications weren’t good that the Johnson’s place was still occupied. It didn’t look any better kept than most of the other houses in the street; there were grubby net curtains at the windows and the paintwork of their frames was peeling. But the one hopeful sign was that thin grey smoke was rising from the chimney. After waiting a suitable interval, Don knocked on the door again, and just for good measure he thumbed the bell button as well. As he’d predicted, it produced no sound inside the house that he heard. ‘He might have got it wrong,’ he said, looking back at Anna. ‘Who?’ ‘Nobby. The guy who told me Gillian Johnson still lives here. He’s a bit eccentric. Gets things muddled.’ ‘Try again,’ Anna suggested. ‘If she is old perhaps she is deaf.’ ‘She’s younger than me,’ Don muttered. He raised his hand to knock again, but a voice stopped him. ‘Don Carter. So it’s true. You’re back.’ The woman who had spoken stood in the middle of the street; she was a strangelooking creature who possessed the air of a faded and ageing hippie. Her hair, thin and greying, almost reached her waist and although one side was pushed behind her ear the other was held off her face by colourful plastic clip. She was wearing old-fashioned black-framed glasses and a dirty floral patterned dress that almost reached the tops of her once white trainers and a man’s suit jacket over the top of it. There were two large and shaggy German shepherd dogs at her side. Anna unfolded her arms, took a step back, and regarded the dogs warily.

‘It’s all right,’ the woman told her crossly, ‘they weren’t hurt you unless they think you’re going to hurt me.’ Don could see beneath her stern and prematurely-aged features the spirit of Tony’s little sister lurking, although he was struggling to reconcile the woman in front of him with the fresh-faced happy and outgoing eight-year-old girl who always wanted to show him her drawings whenever he’d called round for Tony. He said, ‘Gillian, it’s...’ She held up her hand. ‘Please. Don’t say it’s nice to see me again.’ ‘I was going to say, it’s been a long time.’ Gillian shrugged. ‘That’s just as trite. But at least it’s the truth. Is this a social call, or do you want something?’ Her dogs were taking a new interest in Anna, and one of them whined briefly. Don wondered whether they could sense an off-ness about her; that she wasn’t quite of this world. He realised it would be a waste of time shooting the breeze with Gillian, so he got straight to the point. ‘It’s about Tony.’ ‘Now tell me something I’ll be surprised about.’ Tight-lipped, she walked briskly up to her front door and inserted a key into the lock. The dogs stayed obediently at her heels. As she swung the door open Don said, ‘I was wondering...’ he glanced at Anna and corrected himself, ‘... we were wondering, whether after what happened, the police gave you anything that was found with him.’ The dogs went inside the house but for now, Gillian stay where she was. She said, ‘You are allowed to call it what it actually was. Murder.’ ‘I’m sorry, I...’ ‘Who’s she?’ Gillian suddenly demanded, as if she’d noticed Anna for the first time, and Don was momentarily thrown by her abrupt change of conversational direction.

‘She’s a friend.’ Gillian scoffed, as if she’d formed an opinion of what friend meant, and it wasn’t a charitable one. She stepped through the door. Don hastily refocused. ‘Gillian, please, was there anything?’ For a moment he thought he’d lost her, but she turned to face him. Her expression was unforgiving. ‘Just what was it you expected the police to give back to us? We got his clothes and his bike. That was it.’ Anna came forward. She said, ‘Are you sure there was nothing else? We are looking for a glass pyramid, this big.’ She indicated the size with her hands. Gillian glared at her. ‘Do you not understand English very well? What did I just say? There-was-nothing-else,’ she emphasised each of the words as if she thought she was addressing an imbecile, ‘certainly no bloody ornaments.’ The colour rose in Anna’s cheeks and she retorted angrily, ‘Why are you so rude?’ And Don thought, oh shit. This was heading south at an alarming rate of knots and he wished he hadn’t suggested coming here. Gillian blinked, lizard-like, behind the lenses of her glasses. ‘Rude, young lady?’ Her tone was icy. ‘Is that what you think I am? Well, maybe you’re right about that. And if I am, it’s because bastard life has made me that way. I have a right to be rude.’ Anna rapidly calmed down, possibly because of Don’s warning look. She said, ‘I am sorry about what happened to your brother...’ ‘Huh! You don’t know the half of it,’ Gillian retorted bitterly. Anna pressed on, undeterred, ‘...I am sorry about what happened to your brother, but he died because of the pyramid. There will be more heartbreaks unless we find it.’ ‘Then you’ll just have to look elsewhere, won’t you? Now go away, both of you,

and don’t come back.’ And with that she closed the door on them. Anna was about to knock on it, but Don caught her arm. ‘No, leave it. We should go.’ ‘I think she does know something about the pyramid,’ she insisted. ‘No she doesn’t. Come on.’ And reluctantly, as her gaze lingered on the door, she let him lead her away.

25

Don had made good progress; he’d been outside for over an hour, digging in the patch of ground behind the control tower. The soil beneath the grass was soft, and easily turned. Even though the air was cool and damp he’d worked up a sweat and had removed his pullover and tied it by its sleeves around his waist. He needed to do this work. He needed the simple repetitiveness of physical labour to block the thoughts that were haunting him. He needed to focus on the carrots, potatoes and swede he was hoping to grow here, not on the monster that lurked inside him and brought back people and things into the world that had no right to be here any longer. A noise. Don stopped digging. One of the JU88’s engines had been started up, and seconds later the other chugged into life and quickly found a fast rhythm. He went round to the front of the control tower. The plane’s propellers were a blur of movement, the engines roaring at full power. He could see Anna at the controls and waved his arms, trying to attract her attention, and when he was sure he had it he drew his hand in a karate-chop motion across his throat - cut the engines. She looked at him blankly for a few seconds, as if she’d been lost in her own world and it had taken time for her to re-align her mental com in order to figure out what he was getting at. The engine’s roar subsided as she throttled them back, and the propellers spun to a halt; silence, then, in the late morning. Don waited by the ladder for her to emerge. Once she’d stepped onto the runway, he said, ‘What are you playing at?’ She replied, pleased with herself, ‘The pyramid has repaired the damaged engine well, do you not think?’ ‘You can’t just start up the engines whenever you feel like it.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because it could be dangerous.’

‘How is it dangerous? I know what I’m doing. I flew this aircraft from , do you not ?’ ‘But why bother?’ he asked, exasperated. ‘It isn’t as if you’re going to fly it out of here again.’ She gave him a pursed-lip look as if to say, you know just what I mean. Don cottoned on fast. ‘Oh, come on Anna. How much fuel do you have left?’ ‘Enough,’ she replied, and Don knew she meant that wasn’t true. He said, ‘I hate to tell you but aviation kerosene of the type this beauty uses is rarer than hen’s teeth. Where were you planning to fly to? Because you won’t make it back to .’ Anna touched the underside of the wing with her fingertips, the action proprietorially tender. ‘There you are, talking to me as if I am a child. I know there is not the fuel to get back to , but if I can fly this aircraft out across the English Channel again, with the pyramid, perhaps there will be a reversal of what has happened and I can return to my own time.’ ‘Anna, I thought we agreed the pyramid can’t take you back through time.’ ‘I did not agree. How do we know what it can or can’t do? What it is or what it isn’t? It could have powers we are not aware of.’ She fixed him with a hard look, as if she’d picked up on his scepticism, and then challenged him, ‘Do you have a better idea?’ ‘I’m working on it,’ Don replied uncomfortably. Anna snorted derisorily and shook her head. ‘You do not have a better idea. I know this.’ She picked up her duffle bag, which Don hadn’t noticed on the ground next to one of the plane’s wheels. She said, ‘I have decided to move into the pub in the village.’ Don was taken aback.‘Any particular reason?’ he asked, trying to mask his surprise. ‘It is not fair that I should live in your motor home while you are forced to sleep

in there.’ She nodded towards the control tower. ‘I hadn’t planned to live in the van forever in any case,’ Don told her. Anna shouldered the bag. ‘It is not just that. I must do something for myself. I cannot continue to rely on you. I wish to be independent and earn money. The landlord at the Red Lion has offered me work, in return for a room and a little cash.’ ‘You have a university degree and you’re going to clear out slops in a pub?’ ‘How many people in the world as it is now are doing what they are trained to do? You said I can find my place. Well, I am doing what you said. Does that not make you happy?’ Don considered this. She’d been into the village by herself, and he hadn’t realized it. That shouldn’t have bothered him, because she was right. She had to find her own way. And yet it did bother him. ‘I’ll run you down there,’ he offered. She shook her head. ‘Thank you. But I will walk.’ Later in the afternoon he went up to the control tower walkway, leaned on the rail and surveyed the airfield. Daylight was failing and the twinkling light from Nobby’s house in the distance over to his right was a comforting sight. To his left, Darkenridge Forest was a primeval silhouette. And there was something else. Don squinted, unsure. He removed his glasses, cleaned them with the sleeve of his shirt and put them back on. Yes... someone was standing at the head of the main runway where it met the concrete apron. A man with a rucksack strapped to his back. He faced one way before turning a few degrees in the opposite direction, as if he was lost and was trying to get his bearings, or was attempting to sense something about the airfield. Was it Jay? Don didn’t think so. The man was tall, like Adeyemi, but his body shape, and the way he held himself, were different.

Don considered ignoring him. Why not let him do whatever had brought him here, and then let him go on his way? In the post-orbs world, confrontations could be fraught with risks. There were mad people and there were bad people, and there were mad, bad people, and without the constraints and sanctions of law-enforcement some felt compelled to push the boundaries as far as they dare. Self-interest was their only motivator. Besides, Don had no legal claim to Druids Field. This man, whoever he was and whatever he was doing, had as much right to be there as he, Don, had, and his actions didn’t appear to be threatening – just odd. Curiosity trumped caution, though. He went back down and as he walked past the Winnebago, the JU88 and across the apron he expected the man to notice him, and yet he didn’t, or wasn’t interested in him if he had. Don approached him. He was in his mid to late thirties, at a guess, with hair which looked as if it had been shorn recently and was now little more than stubble. There was a scar of sorts on the side of his neck and face which had an odd shininess about it, as if the flesh had been glazed by heat. He was still now, his eyes closed and his head slightly tipped back, as if he was sampling the air. ‘Hello? Can I help you?’ Don prompted, keeping a little distance. There was no response. ‘Excuse me?’ The man opened his eyes and, with a lizard-like slowness, turned to face Don. ‘I feel them,’ he said. ‘They are close.’ Strange eyes. They had pin-prick pupils and they seemed to glow with a light of their own. ‘I’m sorry?’ Don asked, his initial misgivings about this guy deepening by the moment. ‘Who are close?’ The man sank to his haunches. His muscular thighs were as well-developed as a rugby player’s. He lightly touched the ground with the fingertips of both hands as if to balance himself. ‘They are here.’ ‘You’re still not making any sense,’ Don said. The man rose to his feet. ‘Do you know this place?’

‘I live here.’ ‘Then you know of the elder warriors that came here?’ ‘I don’t know anything about any warriors.’ ‘Then at least you must know of the Pyramid of Life.’ And that caught Don’s attention. ‘No,’ he said, his mind slipping into a higher gear. Had the man said pyramid? He realized he’d hesitated too long. ‘Look, I can’t help you, okay? There’s nothing here for you.’ The stranger assessed him with those disconcerting eyes. He frowned and Don had the uncomfortable feeling that the man had seen right through him, that somehow he was touching his mind. He smiled charmingly though, his frown cleared and he said, ‘Well, perhaps we can talk again. My name is Kadrobus.’ And with that, he walked away.

26

So, the rumours she’d heard in the district about an aircraft landing at the airfield were true. Sally drove around the sinister black bomber in a slow, wide arc, taking in the Luftwaffe crosses and the swastika on the tail fin, before she parked the Land Rover, got out and knocked on the door of the motor home next to the control tower. Shivering in the freezing evening fog, she waited. The door opened and a man in late middle age wearing wire-framed glasses and with thinning salt-and-pepper hair peered around the edge. She’d prepared herself for the moment, when she’d meet him again for the first time after all these years, wondering what he looked like now, and whether or not she would even recognize him. But she did. How could she not? How could a mother not know her own child? She saw now in the grown man before her the echoes of his father’s looks, much more so than her own. All day she had wrestled with her conscience, battling to decide what she was going to do about Kadrobus, and Don. And so here she was. There was no backing down now. ‘Yes?’ He was cautious. Suspicious. For a few moments Sally was in another place and time in her mind, where she held her newborn baby in her arms and had never felt such love, in either of her existences. She stood straighter, forced herself to focus and cleared her throat. ‘Mr Carter, my name is Sally Desiderum. I need to talk to you.’ He blinked at her from behind the lenses of his glasses. ‘Talk to me? What about?’ ‘A stranger you may have seen around the airfield. Well-built, with a distinctive birthmark on his neck and face.’ She unconsciously touched her own neck to indicate the place. Don hesitated and then said, ‘And if I have, what is it to you?’

‘I’ve come to warn you not to have anything to do with him.’ ‘Look, Miss...?’ ‘Desiderum.’ ‘...Desiderum. I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t know who you are, I don’t know who that fellow was, either.’ ‘So he was here. Did you speak to him?’ ‘Yes, briefly.’ ‘What did he say?’ Don opened the door a little wider, allowing a wash of pale light to fall across the concrete. He said, ‘I don’t know... he mentioned something about them being close, whoever they are. He was talking nonsense as far as I was concerned.’ He paused, and then added, ‘he said his name was Kadrobus.’ ‘Where did he go after you spoke to him?’ ‘I have no idea. Look, you obviously know him. Would you mind telling me who he is and why I should be worried about him?’ ‘I will,’ Sally said. ‘But there’s something I need to show you first. It’ll make explanations easier. Will you come with me?’ Don coughed out a laugh. ‘Where, for God’s sake?’ ‘Darkenridge Forest. I’m the ranger there.’ ‘What?’ ‘The forest ranger.’ ‘I didn’t know there still was one.’ Sally tapped the stitched logo on the breast of her body warmer. ‘Well there is, and I’m it.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Don said, and Sally realised she was in danger of losing him so she pressed home before he closed the door on her, knowing that if she was going to get his co-operation she was going to have to feed him some more scraps. ‘There are links between that man - Kadrobus – you, me and Tony,’ she said hurriedly. Don blinked again, rapidly. ‘What’s Tony got to do with this?’ he asked. ‘How do you even know about him?’ ‘I know everything about him. And you. How you were best friends and would come to Druids Field and hang out in the control tower, and how Nobby Culdrose gave Tony a crystal pyramid, and I know how it made you feel when you held it.’ Don stared at her. She went on, ‘And I’m guessing the same things happened to you when that plane over there materialised. Because it did materialise, didn’t it?’ Don stood quite still as he studied her. ‘Who are you? I mean, really?’ Sally wondered if a part of him suspected anything, had an inkling of who he was. She said, ‘You thought you recognised me when you opened the door to me just now... I saw it in your eyes. And you do recognise me, but perhaps you can’t from where. So I’ll jog your memory. In the summer of 1976, when you came back to Druids Field to search for Tony after he went missing, you saw a woman standing by her car, out there on the perimeter road.’ She let him recall, and draw his own conclusions. It took him a few moments, and she feared he might not even have ed her presence back then. He shook his head. ‘Not a chance. Not a chance. You can’t be that woman. You’d be...’ ‘A crumbling ninety-year-old?’ Sally suggested, smiling a little. She nodded towards the German aircraft on the runway fifty yards away. ‘Is it possible that an aircraft that crashed more than seventy years ago can suddenly reappear, intact and functioning? Tell me, did the pilot arrive with it? A woman, if I .’ Don didn’t answer, and Sally knew she was right. ‘And if there was that kind of strangeness going on then why is it such a stretch to believe I am the same

woman you saw here fifty years ago?’ Don opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind and closed it again. Sally gave him a time to process what she’d told him. He tried again. ‘Then what is your connection to Tony?’ he finally asked. ‘Unusual things are happening in your life,’ Sally said by way of an answer. ‘If you’ll let me, I can explain why that’s so, and what I know about Tony. But you really need to come with me.’ Don looked away. Sally waited for his answer, although she knew now that she’d hooked him.

27

Don asked, ‘So, are you going to explain why you haven’t aged in the last fifty years?’ Sally Desiderum was driving them in her Land Rover around the perimeter road towards the forest. She glanced across at him. ‘Oh, I have aged, just very slowly,’ She replied enigmatically, and left it at that. What was she talking about? She might be the woman whom he’d caught a glimpse of in ’76, although he couldn’t be certain. How could he be? He’d seen her then for a few seconds and he hadn’t exactly been in the right frame of mind to pay much attention. She was right height and slim build and her hair colour was the same – dark, almost black – although there were streaks of grey in it was shorter now, shoulder length. And if she wasn’t that person then he had just agreed to take a ride into the woods with a mad woman. Perhaps that guy Kadrobus wasn’t the one he should be worried about. But then again women who didn’t look their age seemed to be finding him at the moment. Don had so many more questions which he didn’t have the wherewithal to formulate just then. Deep in the forest Sally stopped the Land Rover at the end of a track, the headlight beams illuminating the pole-like trunks of the pines. She said they had to go the rest of the way on foot. They took a narrow path through the trees, walking in single file, Sally in the lead with a rechargeable battery lantern until they came across a small building that looked as if it was being slowly absorbed by the forest. ‘There was a sanatorium not far from here,’ Sally explained as she stood in front of the door. ‘It was demolished in 1920.’ Don nodded. ‘I’d heard about that,’ he said. ‘This was one of its outbuildings. It had a defence use for a time after that, then it was a forester’s store and shelter. It’s been abandoned for years now.’

‘But you come here?’ he said, struggling to imagine where this was heading. ‘Yes. I come here.’ The door had been forced open, its wooden frame splintered. Sally led the way inside. They walked along a short age, and in the dancing shadows Don noticed a rusted electrical junction box mounted high on a wall, the remains of wiring dangling from it, and a round, brass old-fashioned light switch. They entered a room at the end of the age. What the bright white lantern light revealed made Don catch his breath. There were two four-sided pyramids, in the same proportions as the artefact, but each at least two metres along their base edges. They were raised from the floor on wooden packing cases. Around them was a carpet of what looked like thousands of tiny glass spheres glinting in the light. ‘Go ahead,’ Sally said. ‘They won’t bite.’ Don moved closer, treading on the granules with extreme caution, and touched the surface one of the pyramids with his fingertips. It was cold, hard and smooth. ‘What are these things?’ he whispered. ‘They’re transformers. Biological transformer pods. They alter molecular structures, converting one form into another, adapting it to survive in an alien environment. They change entities that aren’t humanoid into ones that are.’ Don looked back at her. ‘Did you just say aren’t humanoid?’ After a couple of beats Sally replied, ‘In 1890, anybody watching the night sky over Darkenridge Forest would have seen what they would have assumed was a shooting star. But it wasn’t. It was a capsule, sent down under remote guidance from a mothership in earth orbit. It smashed a path through the trees and after it came to rest it burrowed into the ground like a mole, the idea being that it would stay concealed until the crew could be revived from their long hibernation, assess the immediate environment and were ready to emerge. A signal from the mothership was supposed to activate the pods. One didn’t activate at all. Another didn’t complete its transformation process and the crew member died, half human, half non-terrestrial. The third pod, the one that activated successfully, or ninety-eight percent successfully anyway, was this one.’ She touched the

pyramid closest to her, and it seemed to Don as if she did it with something close to affection. ‘It’s mine. You asked me why I haven’t aged, or at least by so much that you’d notice. Well, it’s because you could say my humanity is only skin deep. At my core I’m something else. Something with a much slower metabolism.’ Don became aware that he was holding his breath. He couldn’t deliver a coherent response. Sally went on, ‘The name I gave myself, Desiderum, is Latin. It means from the stars.’ There was the hint of a smile. ‘It was my way of having a bit of fun when fun was in short supply. But it stuck, and over time I made it official.’ Don stared at her and asked, unable to inject any volume into his voice. He couldn’t believe he was having this surreal conversation. ‘And what were you? Before?’ ‘Different, let’s say.’ He stepped across the tide of granules to another pyramid, and saw that one side of this one was open too. ‘I thought you said only yours was activated successfully?’ ‘At first, yes. Then, two weeks ago, out of the blue, another signal from the mothership arrived and this pod was activated.’ She paused. ‘You’ve met its occupant.’ ‘The guy who came to the airfield?’ ‘Kadrobus, yes.’ Don shook his head. ‘Aliens. No way.’ Sally said, ‘Will you hold this?’ She handed him the lantern and dumbly, he took it, holding it by its carrying handle. She unzipped her bodywarmer, lifted up her sweatshirt and pulled out her undershirt from her jeans. She revealed a patch, a hand-span wide, of glistening, glassy skin on her torso, the same as on Kadrobus’s neck and face.

‘It’s a fault,’ she explained. ‘A mistranslation, if you like. I told you the transformation was only ninety-eight percent successful. There were corruptions during the process, and this is the visible one.’ For the first time, as the soft white light of the lantern shone on her and reflected onto her face, Don noticed something about her eyes, how that although they were predominantly grey, there was a hint of violet in them. ‘You have my attention,’ he said. ‘So what about this mothership you mentioned? Are there more of you up there?’ Sally tucked her shirt back in. ‘There’s nobody on the mothership. There were only three of us who made the journey from home.’ She didn’t take the lantern back from Don. Instead, she slid her hands into the pockets of her bodywarmer and gazed wistfully at the pyramid pod she’d said had been hers. ‘I crawled out of the ground into this alien world, which I was supposed to have more knowledge about than I could recall. The forest was wild, the population of the area sparse and nobody came to investigate, and for a while I lived a nocturnal life. I ventured out at night; I foraged, trapped and killed forest animals for food and came back to the lander at daybreak to sleep, and when I wasn’t sleeping I worked on trying to reboot the lander’s systems and reestablish with the mothership. And I tried to get Kadrobus’s pod to activate manually, too, but that didn’t work either. I couldn’t even get his pod open.’ ‘If you had, could you have transferred him to yours?’ Don suggested. ‘Yes, but each pod was programmed for its own occupant. And without access to the mothership’s core processors I couldn’t re-program it. The fact was, nothing worked. It had all gone Pete Tong.’ She paused, and Don let her collect her thoughts while he took the opportunity to do the same himself. There was a lot of collecting to do. Sally resumed her story. ‘I found Levenby village, which wasn’t much more than a bleak handful of farm worker’s cottages scattered around a crossroads back then. I’m not proud that I stole from those people. My moral com was

aligning to the human psyche, but it wasn’t going to stop me taking what I needed to survive. ‘I grew more confident and I picked up casual work on the farms of the district; it was easy enough in those days, nobody asked too many questions, and with money in my pocket I found accommodation in Boston, drifted from job to job and adapted to being human. I liked what I was discovering, and I wanted to experience more of it. So when the opportunities came I grabbed them with both hands; as far as I was concerned, any experience was good experience and I went back to the lander less frequently. Sitting in that cold, damp hole in the ground hoping for a miracle became pointless, and in the meantime this place had been built.’ She looked around the room. ‘And it was in use, so I had to be careful. It was only a quarter of a mile from the landing site. ‘I moved on. I got myself an education. I was a nurse on the front line during the First World War and I travelled the world throughout the twenties and thirties; I stayed at an Indian ashram during the days of the independence struggle. I trekked across the Himalayas. I worked as a cook on an Argentinian cargo steamer, and I lived in Paris with an alcoholic artist for a time.’ She smiled fondly at that memory. ‘I helped design and build tanks during World War Two and then in the post-war decades I made a lot of money. ‘I came back to Darkenridge Forest in autumn 1975, but it took me some time to find the site. New trees had grown to replace the ones that had fallen during the landing, and the churned earth had been masked by bracken and brambles. There were no clues that anything was buried there. ‘The lander’s hull had been breached. Roots had broken through, ferns, moss and fungi were growing in the wet inside. I cleared a patch of algae from Kadrobus’s pod so I could see him and when I did I knew I wasn’t going to leave him buried there beneath the forest floor. I hadn’t realised it until then, but during all those years I’d been away I’d still been connected to him by a psychic umbilical cord which I’d stretched taut but hadn’t snapped and eventually it had pulled me back. I wasn’t interested in our reasons for coming to Earth but when all was said and done he was my own kind, perhaps the only one left. And I needed someone who understood, who could help me make sense of the journey I was on, because despite of everything I’d done, the places I’d been and all the people I’d met – I was still lonely and alone.

‘By that time this little building had been abandoned, and so over several days and with a lot of hard work and some creative block and tackle arrangements I managed to haul two pods out of that hole in the ground, Kadrobus’s and mine, and install them here. Then I bought Darkenridge Forest and the rest, as they say, is history.’

28

She drove them back to her home, the forest lodge, where her terrier greeted Don enthusiastically and followed them upstairs to a room in the loft space of the house. Sally had left the Coleman lantern in the Land Rover and now a candle in a holder lit their way. ‘I suppose you could call this my shrine,’ she said, holding the candle up in front of an enlarged astronomical photograph fixed to a wall. She pointed out a cluster of stars. ‘This is the constellation Cetus, and in it there’s a star called Tau Ceti. It’s twelve light years distant, and it has a planet orbiting it which is similar to Earth in a lot of ways, although it’s bigger.’ She paused. ‘Our civilisation was highly technically advanced but all our technology and biological advancements were developed through war and conflict. We were a warrior race, and when we reached out to the stars it wasn’t to share our knowledge or to bring peace and goodwill. We explored with one aim in mind, and that was to conquer. Three thousand years ago, one of our ships found Earth and crashed at Druids Field.’ ‘And they brought the pyramid with them,’ Don said. Sally nodded. ‘It made them invincible. If any of them were killed, they could be regenerated. It was the same for anything else or anybody they decided they could bring back and use. The trouble was, of course, they all died in that crash so there was no-one left to invoke the power of the pyramid.’ ‘But why did it take your people three thousand years to follow in their footsteps?’ Don asked. ‘No matter how technologically advanced a society is, if aggression is at its heart it will inevitably consume itself from within. And that was what happened on our planet. But like the phoenix, we rose again and rebuilt – but we didn’t learn the lessons and self-destruction happened all over again. The legend of the Pyramid of Life was powerful, seductive and persistent though, and we were sure that if we could only recover it, use it to rematerialize our elder warriors, then we could make a new home on Earth.’

‘If your people had the technology to make the journey here in less than a lifetime,’ Don said, ‘why didn’t others come after you? Why just the three of you?’ Sally shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I can only speculate. You have to understand that things were in a bad way on our planet. The mothership made the whole journey from our home planet on autopilot; we, the crew had no input and we weren’t aware we had arrived at Earth. The ship was programmed to move to an orbit around the moon, so that it couldn’t be detected until we were ready. But something went wrong. The same something that failed to activate the pods properly. The mothership kept going, and it’s still orbiting in the asteroid belt.’ ‘And you haven’t been able to it?’ Sally shook her head. ‘Not a peep. I’d given up trying. And then... that rogue signal woke up Kadrobus.’ ‘A rogue signal. After all this time.’ ‘When the orbs came, they caused a rip in the fabric of reality. The border between dimensions was breached and all kinds of energies were released. That’s the only explanation I can come up with.’ ‘So what can he do, this Kadrobus?’ Don wanted to know. ‘Apart from make a nuisance of himself. He can’t conquer the planet on his own.’ ‘No, but if he finds the pyramid he can activate it. If he can do that, he can regenerate the elder warriors - and they will be able to conquer the planet.’ ‘There can’t be that many of them.’ ‘About a hundred. But it isn’t the number that’s important, it’s what they can do. Those guys didn’t use physical might or ray guns to subdue their enemies.’ She tapped her temple. ‘They use the power of their minds.’ Don thought about the feeling he’d had that Kadrobus had been trying to read his thoughts. He said, ‘Where does this leave you? I mean, you’re one of this warrior race. How do I know your agenda isn’t the same as Kadrobus’s?’

‘I was never considered able to do what Kadrobus could. I wasn’t much more than the mission technician, if you like, with a few fighting skills thrown in, and because a hundred and twenty years of being human has changed me. This is who I am now.’ ‘I still don’t see how this involves me... why this involves me,’ Don said, running his hand through his hair. ‘Don’t you? It isn’t a coincidence that people and things regenerate when you’re around. It’s the pyramid. It’s Druids Field. It’s you. All those elements first came together in 1976 to whip up the perfect storm. Take any one of those out of the equation and it can’t happen.’ ‘But how can I possibly be part of that equation?’ ‘Because you’re a facilitator, and a powerful one. Let’s just say it’s something in your genetic make-up. In fact you’re so powerful you don’t even need to be in possession of the pyramid for it to work; it just has to be somewhere in the vicinity.’ Don struggled to assimilate what she’d told him. He was a facilitator in some ancient alien myth? The whole thing was right off the reservation. ‘So Anna and your man Kadrobus are right,’ he said, ‘the pyramid is at Druids Field.’ ‘Not at Druids Field, although it isn’t far away, and I think I know where. At least I hope I do. But Don, listen, even Kadrobus doesn’t have the gift of regeneration that you do. He won’t succeed without the pyramid in his hands, and that’s why he’s desperate to find it.’ Don held her gaze. ‘Is he going to find it before you get to it?’ She shook her head, but Don detected a hint of doubt there. ‘Probably not.’ ‘Only probably?’ ‘So far he’s hunting blind. I won’t be.’ ‘Okay. Then what?’

‘I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago, and destroy it. Once I’ve done that, Kadrobus will be powerless.’ She paused. ‘Until I do you need to leave Druids Field.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because if Kadrobus finds out you’re capable of regenerating, even if it isn’t consciously, he’ll use you, and he won’t care if he destroys you in the process. You have a tiger by its tail. Did you deliberately manifest the airman in 1976, or that German bomber?’ ‘No, of course not.’ ‘Exactly. You have no control over what happens. You’re at the apex of this triangle of energy formed by you, this place, and the Pyramid of Life. Without you, there can be no focus for these energies. What I’m saying is, you need to be out of the picture until I can destroy the pyramid, because we don’t want you doing Kadrobus’s work for him and accidently regenerating the elder warriors.’ Don looked down, pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and said, ‘Shit...’ Sally drove him back to the airfield. Before he got out of the Land Rover, Sally said to him, ‘Take what I've told you seriously. Please. Leave Druids Field. And Levenby. It won’t be for long.’ ‘I don’t know. I need to sleep on this.’ ‘Information overload, yes, I get it. But I promise, I'm not being melodramatic.’ He stood beside the Winnebago and watched her drive away, the red tail-lights of her Land Rover diminishing before fading completely in the night fog. He thought about what she had shown him, and told him. About aliens that had come to Earth three millennia ago and had crashed their ship on this land. He tried to imagine how it might have been. Had it broken up? Or had it ploughed into the waterlogged fenlands that had existed here, and been swallowed up by the black, silty mud? And what of the Bronze Age people who had witnessed it? Their houses built on stilts on the sodden ground, their clothing rough and only spears, swords and daggers to defend themselves with – what had they made of it? It was easy to imagine how folk tales had been ed down from generation

to generation, along with the pyramid and its powers, real or construed, until the Druids had got their hands on it. Don stepped into the Winnebago and sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, thinking things over while he listened to a compilation of seventies hits on the MP3 player. Those songs by Slade, Sweet and T-Rex were echoes of a past that was dimming so fast it would surely wink out completely soon.

***

Andy was in a good mood, the reason being that the Red Lion’s rooms were almost all taken. In addition to the four road bandits there were three traders staying overnight, on their way to conduct unknown business in the north. They had arrived in a truck which they had left in the village square outside the pub. Rough individuals, they were playing cards hunched over a table by the fire with their drinks and their smokes. The big hairy road bandit was with them, and he seemed to be winning quite often. Andy was in the game too, telling crude jokes and laughing loudly while he knocked back whisky – drinking his profits away, Anna thought. She got the impression that his fellow gamblers had little time for him, mostly ignoring him and his jokes, yet he seemed oblivious to their indifference. Andy had told her that the traders were regulars, and that they kept themselves to themselves for the most part, and that she wasn’t to ask them any questions. Her job was to serve drinks and food to them when they wanted it, and serving drinks was what she was doing now. There wasn’t much variety on offer; the draught beers had mostly gone and the ones remaining were turning bad. There were some bottled spirits, which Andy said he managed to get hold of from time to time and seemed to favour keeping back for himself when he could, but on the whole the supply of alcohol came from the farms and backroom stills in the district - cider, and near-lethal moonshine distilled from potatoes and whatever else came to hand. One of those rocket-fuel concoctions was what they were drinking now. Anna took fresh drinks from her tray and set them on the table at their elbows. They said nothing. They didn’t even her presence. They were focused

only on the cards in their hands and the bank notes and coins pooled in the middle of the table. Andy, though, slapped her hard on the bottom. ‘What do you think of my new serving wench?’ he asked the others, a drunken leer on his face. None of them answered him. ‘Sexy little thing, isn’t she?’ ‘Kotzbrocken,’ Anna called him under her breath as she walked away, with plenty of venom behind the insult. The only other road bandit in the bar was the half-blind skinny one who never said anything, and he was playing pool. It was all he ever seemed to do. Anna assumed that the leader, Studz, was upstairs with his junge geliebte. She took the tray behind the bar where she loaded it with the dirty plates, cutlery and glasses and took it through to the small kitchen at the back. There was a stove here, powered by canister gas, something else Andy had sourced by greasing the palms of his trader s. With a match, she ignited the ring on the stove to heat water in a large kettle and scraped the remains of the meals from the plates into a waste bin. She could hear Andy’s raucous laughter coming from the bar. Ten minutes later, as she was finishing the washing-up, he came into the kitchen. She glanced at him, and that was all, not wanting to give him any encouragement to stay. He moved in close, so close that she could smell his sour sweat and the drink on his breath. ‘How’re you doing, sweetheart?’ he said. ‘Or should that be Liebling? Settling in all right?’ ‘Yes, thank you,’ Anna told him tartly, and she stepped sideways to put plates on a shelf. She was relieved when he remained where he was, but she could feel his gaze on her and she didn’t doubt that he was mentally undressing her. ‘Glad to hear it. You’re a long way from home. You must get lonely.’ If he was expecting her confirmation of that he didn’t get it. She draped the teatowel she had been using to dry the dishes over the stove’s oven handle. Andy went on, ‘Any time you get too lonely, you just come and find me. I’ll see what I can do to take your mind off it. Okay?’

He winked at her in an attempt at seductiveness, but in his inebriated state it came across like some sort of facial muscular affliction. Anna decided she had better massage his male ego a little for her own sake, so she offered him a weak smile. He nodded, as if he’d felt he’d made his intentions clear enough. And as far as she was concerned, he had. ‘Right then, that’s me done,’ he said, exaggeratedly stretching back his shoulders. ‘Lock up will you?’ He tipped his head in the direction of the bar area. ‘They’ll be away early tomorrow, so you’ll need to be having their breakfasts ready at six. Full English.’ ‘All right.’ Yesterday, she’d had no idea what a full English breakfast was. Andy had shown her how to fry the eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms and black pudding. She’d had the clear sense that he wasn’t inclined to show her twice and that when she did it herself for the first time she was expected to do it right. The next morning she was going to find out if she could. The traders and the road bandit were still playing cards and drinking when she finished in the kitchen. She locked the pub’s door as instructed and extinguished most of the candles in the bar. The fire was burning low but she didn’t replenish it with logs and the traders didn’t seem to be bothered, engrossed in their game as they were. Anna knew Andy would expect her to stay there with them until they decided to go up to their rooms, just in case they wanted anything else, so she sat on his barstool and picked up the paperback he’d been reading. On its front cover there was a picture of an heroic-looking British soldier and a tank. If the war had been over as long as Don had said, and she had no reason to doubt him, then it amazed her that anybody would still be interested in it enough to read stories about it. She’d had enough of the war. From her perspective, it had filled her life only a few days ago. She put the book back on the shelf beneath the bar. She looked at the broad backs of the traders, feeling resentful that they were keeping her from her bed. She was exhausted. She crossed her arms on the bar, rested her head on them and closed her eyes. She dozed off and when she woke they had gone. Only one candle remained burning in the bar and there were just a few glowing embers in the fire.

29

Andy had given her an alarm clock, one with a key in the back to wind it up with. He’d said it was old-fashioned, but the newer digital ones didn’t work without electricity or batteries. Anna hadn’t known what he’d meant about digital and she hadn’t asked, because then he might have taken her ignorance as an excuse to pry into her background, which he had taken an indifferent approach to thus far. Anyway, she didn’t think the alarm clock was oldfashioned; to her eyes it was modern. She set it for 5 a.m. When it rang she silenced it, got up, went to the window and drew back the curtains. It was still dark outside. She washed quickly in cold water from a jug and bowl, went to the toilet in a bucket, then dressed; she took the slops downstairs and out the back into the beer garden where she emptied them into a shallow trench and shovelled dirt over them. In the cold bar, still reeking of stale cigarette and pipe smoke, she cleared the fireplace grate of ashes, rebuilt the fire and lit it. She wasn’t used to doing that task and it took her several attempts to get the flames going. After that she went back to the kitchen and began preparing the breakfasts for the traders, whom she’d heard moving about upstairs. She figured that neither Andy nor the road bandits would be up and about early if previous days were anything to go by and that meant she would have a few hours to herself. She knew exactly what she was going to do with them.

***

Sally tried three times to start the Land Rover. She swore and sat for a moment, staring through the windscreen at the garden, which the unseen sun was beginning to brighten. She knew what the problem was. A fault with the engine control unit, the ECU. The warning light on the dash confirmed it. She ed the engine revving out of control when she’d found Kadrobus on the forest track and wondered whether, consciously or not, he had affected it.

She thought it likely. Reg herself to having to deal with it because she needed motorised transport to go and get the pyramid, she disconnected and removed the ECU, an aluminium box the size of her hand, from its location behind the glove box and took it into the workshop. She sat on a high stool at her bench. A bright fluorescent strip light illuminated its uncluttered surface; at the back, mounted on a against the wall, were rows of coloured plastic trays containing small items of hardware, electrical plugs, sockets and connectors, wiring, solder, electronic components and an assortment of other bits and pieces she had accumulated over the years. In the background, the Honda generator thrummed. She powered up a laptop, plugged the ECU into it and let the diagnostic software do its work. It quickly told her that the module’s chip had been corrupted. That wasn’t necessarily a huge problem, as she had hoarded all sorts of spare parts for the Land Rover in anticipation of this kind of thing, because walking into the parts department of a dealership wasn’t an option any more. But the tray labelled Spare ECU was empty, except for dust and a dead spider. Which left her with one other course of action - to reprogram the chip.

***

Anna knew she should be conducting her search methodically. Wasn’t she a scientist? Wasn’t that what she had been trained to do? And yet her mind was stuffed with cotton wool, as grey and undefined as anything just visible in the clinging fog that never left this place. There were times when the size of the task threatened to overwhelm her. She roamed the dunes, focused fiercely on the sand in front of her, not wanting to miss a thing, not a single small clue that might lead her to the pyramid. She stooped to work free an object, half buried in the cloying sand. It was nothing. A small, rusted part of a greater machine. It could once have belonged to her JU88. She didn’t know, and didn’t really care. It wasn’t what she sought. She tossed it aside, and gazed across the salt marshes to the creeks further out,

those clefts left in the damp sand by the retreating tide. The sea hissed softly behind the fog bank as its waves sucked at the shore, barely visible. She carried on, climbing the next slope, her boots sliding and sinking into the sand between the clumps of coarse marram grass. It was strenuous going. As she neared the top of the ridge she smelled woodsmoke, and then almost immediately saw, hunkered in a hollow, a coastal defence bunker. It looked so very old, and the sight of it caused something to twist inside her as she realised it had been built in her own era. It was a low, reinforced concrete structure with slits in its angled walls for guns which faced the bay. It had a dark, door-less entrance and in front of it a man sat cross-legged before a mean fire of sticks and pieces of driftwood. A spindle of smoke rose into the misty canopy. Anna stood still, waiting for her breathing to steady, and assessed him. He looked like a vagrant, although she couldn’t see much of his face as his head was covered by his sweatshirt’s hood. Over the desultory flames he was holding a stick, on which was skewered a cut of meat. He hadn’t noticed Anna, looking down on him as she was. She should sneak away while she had the chance, and was about to retreat from the ridge when the man raised his head, unhurriedly, and looked straight at her. As if he’d really known she was there all along. His eyes... they were unlike any she had seen before; they were violet, and they glowed with a strange light which turned her to stone for the tick of a clock, and there was a dark but somehow shiny birthmark on his cheek. ‘I saw you out there,’ he said, ‘tramping across the sand.’ Anna swallowed and struggled, for a moment to find her voice. ‘You have been spying on me?’ The meat sizzled on the end of the stick, its aroma charred and fatty. ‘I haven’t been spying on you,’ the man said. ‘I’ve been in plain sight, but you didn’t notice me. I’d say you were preoccupied.’ He seemed in no hurry to add anything. He remained so still. So composed. The fire spat. ‘Do you live here?’ Anna asked, feeling uncomfortable beneath his scrutiny.

‘For now,’ he said. There was another pause while he rotated the stick, so that the uncooked portion of the meat could benefit from the heat. ‘And you. What do you search for out here?’ ‘It is just an old artefact.’ She shrugged. ‘Something I lost that is important to me... yes, an artefact.’ He continued to regard her, and she experienced the disconcerting and ridiculous sense that somehow he knew what she was thinking. He said, ‘Would it surprise you to learn that I’m looking for it too?’ It did surprise her, and her sense grew that she was drifting into dangerous waters. Walk away, her inner voice urged. And yet she stayed where she was, watching as the man eased the chunk of meat from the stick with his fingers. ‘We can help each other,’ he said, ‘by searching together.’ ‘I know nothing about you,’ she told him baldly. ‘What is your connection with the artefact? How do I know it is the same one I am looking for?’ He chewed the meat. ‘We both have stories to tell,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we can share them?’ She watched him eat for a few moments. He took a drink from an old, partiallycrushed plastic bottle, the sort of thing that Anna had seen from time to time washed up and semi-buried in the sands. He seemed to have lost interest in her. She said, ‘And what if we find the artefact? What happens then?’ The man shrugged. ‘Then perhaps you shall have your wish, and I shall have mine.’ Yes, she should walk away. But her whispering inner voice had fallen quiet now. She knew nothing about this man or his motives, but she found herself drawn to him and needing to find out. So she stayed, and she ed the stranger by his fire, and she listened to what he had to say. Later that morning, she returned to the Red Lion and resumed her chores. She

was sweeping the carpet in the bar, her mind on what the stranger who lived in the dunes had told her about himself and the pyramid and the excitement he had kindled within her; how it all made sense to her now, even though it sounded bizarre at first. Andy was still sleeping off his hangover, and the only other person with her was the road bandit leader Studz, who was sitting at a table in the corner staring at a drink in front of him. Occasionally he would cough - a wet, unhealthy sound. He was unwell, that was clear to Anna. The street door opened and Kadrobus, the man from the dunes walked in, the cold outside air trailing in his wake. The door closed slowly behind him. Anna stood with the broom in her hand. His presence was mesmerising. ‘So you came,’ was all she could think of to say, her heart beating a little faster. He pushed back his sweatshirt hood and said, ‘You were right. I can’t live in that concrete box.’ Anna nodded and looked away. ‘Well, I told you, there are rooms here,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll move right in.’ His face remained imive. At that moment Andy sauntered through the door from the back. ‘Payment is in advance,’ he said, his voice thick with his continuing hangover. ‘I have no money,’ Kadrobus told him blandly, without any hint of apology. Andy took down a bottle of moonshine from a shelf behind the bar and unscrewed the cap. ‘Is that so? And I’m not a charity. So I suggest you turn right around and head back out into the street.’ Kadrobus didn’t move. Anna hastily told Andy, ‘It’s all right, I know him. I can...’ she searched for the word, ‘...vouch for him.’ Andy sloshed a generous measure of moonshine into a glass. ‘You can vouch for him all you want, but he doesn’t get a room here unless he pays. Up front.’

‘Then I will pay for him,’ Anna said impulsively. Andy tipped his head back and with one swallow swiftly disposed of the moonshine. He eyed Kadrobus narrowly. ‘What are you?’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘A trader? You don’t look like one.’ Kadrobus stood a little straighter and said, ‘I am a warrior.’ Andy glanced at Anna, as if he wasn’t sure what he’d just heard. She said, thinking fast and ing the stories Don had told her, ‘He was affected by the orbs. It means he has delusions.’ ‘I don’t want any loony troublemakers in my pub.’ The landlord poured another drink. ‘Off you go, mate.’ He turned back towards the kitchen door, glass in hand. Anna called after him. ‘Andy, wait!’ And when he did, and when he turned to face her again, she said, ‘I will pay double the rate.’ Andy snorted. ‘And you think you can afford that? It’ll take all of your wages.’ ‘I have nothing else to spend them on.’ Andy thought about that. ‘A warrior. Christ.’ He sighed. ‘All right. Normal rate. But I’m doing it as a favour. And that means I might want a favour in return. Do you understand that?’ He held her gaze, until he was quite sure she had understood. She lowered her eyes and nodded. ‘Okay,’ Andy said, ‘show him to number three.’

30

Don was standing in the doorway of the Winnebago’s bedroom. The duvet was rucked up into an untidy heap in the middle of the bed and the indentation in the pillow made by Anna’s head was still there. The faint scent of her, like a ghost, still lingered, a mustiness that had never left her, as though there was a deep corruption about her that soap and water could not eradicate. That perhaps the regeneration had not returned all of her, that some tiny part had been omitted. Don’s watch, which he’d taken off days previously, was lying on the night stand and beside it was something else. He stepped into the room and picked it up. It was the leather holder containing Anna’s identity card. He flipped it open and stared at the photograph of her. He couldn’t accurately define how he felt about her; after all, where was the rule book for a situation such as theirs? In those few moments, a clear intention came into focus. He closed the holder and put it into his jacket pocket. He walked down the road to Solstice Farm, opened the five-bar gate, stepped through and closed it behind him. There were chickens pecking around in the gravel of the yard. In the seventies the place had not been a working farm, just somebody’s upmarket residence. He had an idea that the people who had lived here then were called Evans and they’d owned a Bentley which you could see parked there from the road, but the place had frayed around the edges now and the Bentley had long gone. There was nobody about. He walked across the yard towards the house, the gravel crunching beneath his boots, the chickens squawking agitatedly as they fluttered to get out of his way. He heard his name called, and looked up; to the left of the yard there was a stone barn, built on two levels. An iron stairway led to a door in the gable end of the building with a rail at the front of a small landing where Jay was standing. He told Don to come on up.

He showed Don into the barn, which had been converted into a workshop. There was a long bench facing a row of windows, and shelves on the opposite wall. The innards of a wind turbine generator were scattered across the bench. Jay explained that he was trying to fix the generator, but he wasn’t sure that he could. The parts were the problem. He’d scrounged bits and pieces when he’d left his old job, but nothing really fitted and he was having to adapt and modify the best he could. Don told him Anna had gone to stay at the Red Lion, and that she was working for her board and lodgings. That she seemed to have accepted her situation. ‘Right,’ Jay said, ‘but what about your situation? This ability you seem to have to materialize shit out of thin air? Sorry. No disrespect to Anna.’ ‘I’m going to get on with trying to survive, the same as everyone else.’ Jay looked dubious, but if he had another point of view he kept it to himself. Don told him he needed to buy some provisions, and added that he would rather put money in Jay’s pocket than in some market trader’s in Boston. Jay said it was okay, it was no problem, and he asked Don what he needed. He took Don down to the house where he met Chiara. She was Italian but her English was fluent and her smile was generous. Jay took Don back to Druids Field in the gig, together with his purchases: eggs, cider, bread baked by Chiara, potatoes, swedes, onions. Jay told him Chiara was taking the horse and gig and going to visit her sister in one of the villages to the south, taking some provisions to her. He’d said he didn’t think it was the greatest of ideas for her to make that trip on her own, but she’d retorted that someone had to stay to look after the farm, and she wasn’t a wimp. Jay had had to agree with that. Don said nothing about Kadrobus, or what Sally had shown and told him, nor her advice to him to leave, which he wasn’t going to take. She said it would be temporary. Well, maybe. But for him it went against the grain; it was running for cover, whichever way he looked at it, and Don didn’t think of himself as a coward. He wasn’t going anywhere. There was no-one about when he cycled into the village square, and it was as silent as the fields except for a short burst of female laughter which came from inside the Red Lion. Four motorbikes were parked outside. Don propped his own bike against the wall and hesitated outside the door, steeling himself for a

possible conflict. He pushed through. It was warm inside; the fire was burning well and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Andy the landlord was sitting behind the bar reading a paperback novel. There were five others – four of them were road bandits, Don could immediately tell. One of them was behind the bar with Andy, creating a bizarre cocktail from the contents of the bottles on the counter-top in front of him. The man had thinning, swept back hair and was wearing a stud in one ear. He looked as if he’d been around the block a few times and had the air of a leader about him. There was another middle-aged man, stockily built, with curly hair and a stupendous beard, sitting at a table by the window with a pixie-ish looking girl. The last of them, a skinny youth whose t-shirt was a couple of sizes too big was playing pool. The other person in the bar was the stranger Don had met on the airfield, the man he now knew was Kadrobus, the alien. He was sitting alone at a corner table with his hands resting on his thighs and his eyes closed. The thin boy, leaning over the pool table, paused before taking his next shot. Don saw then that his left eye was a ruin, a mess of cauterized milky tissue. Andy looked up from his book. The man with him behind the bar coolly took a drink from a shot glass as he regarded Don. At the table, the girl covered her gun with her hand, ready to use it. ‘Help you?’ Andy enquired. ‘Yes,’ Don replied. His throat clicked as he swallowed. He was still standing just inside the door. ‘I’m looking for Anna.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Anna Krause. I believe she’s staying here,’ and he added, ‘she’s working for you.’ ‘She’s busy right now. I can give her as message.’ ‘I’d rather see her.’ ‘I told you, she’s busy, and she’s on my time.’

‘All right,’ Don conceded. ‘When does she have her break?’ ‘When I say she does.’ ‘I only want a quick word with her. If it bothers you, I’ll pay you for her time.’ The pixie-girl said, ‘Pushy bastard, ain’t he?’ Don felt the growing threat in the room. The youth had straightened up and was standing by the pool table, cue in one hand, resting its end on the carpet. His other hand was open, fingers curled, armed slightly crooked. He would be able to reach for the long knife in the leather scabbard at his waist in a second. The guy who Don had assumed was the bandit’s leader stepped out from behind the bar and strolled up to him and stopped a couple of intimidating feet away, right in his personal space. His teeth were bad and his breath stank of cigarette smoke and something deeper; a hint of inner decay. ‘I don’t know who you are, pal,’ he said, his voice coarse from what sounded like a lifetime of heavy smoking and drinking, ‘but you don’t have no business here.’ Don glanced at Andy. The landlord’s expression was unreadable, as if he was quite happy for this road bandit to do his talking for him. Kadrobus hadn’t moved, hadn’t opened his eyes. At that moment, Anna came through the door behind the bar. She was wearing an apron, the sleeves of her shirt were rolled up, and a strand of hair had fallen across her face. Don saw nothing of the fight that she’d had in her only days before; now her eyes were haunted. ‘I need to talk to you,’ Don said to her over the bandit leader’s shoulder. She opened her mouth to speak but Andy got in before her. ‘Nothing out here for you, lass,’ he said to her. The words were innocuous enough, but Don detected menace in the way they were spoken. ‘I came to say I shouldn’t have let you come here,’ Don said. ‘This isn’t the place for you.’

Anna blinked rapidly and lowered her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘I can’t go back with you.’ She shot a glance in Kadrobus’s direction before she turned and left the bar. ‘That was all very touching,’ the bandit leader resumed right into Don’s face, ‘but you got your answer so now it’s best you leave, yeah?’ Don considered his options. He thought about that last, despairing expression on Anna’s face and the way she looked at Kadrobus and knew that he had been right to be concerned for her. But what could he do? Push past this grizzled, hasbeen thug in front of him, grab Anna by her arm and haul her out of there, her hero? Had that been his only plan? Then, as if it was a promise of what would most likely happen if he did choose the latter course of action, he saw out of the corner of his eye that the girl had risen to her feet and had levelled her gun at his head. ‘He ain’t listening, babe,’ she said to the head thug, although she didn’t take her eyes from Don. He eased his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and decided that, for now, it was better to be a live coward than a dead hero. ‘All right, I’m going,’ he said, and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. He stepped back and away from the bandit leader. He turned and opened the door, the girl keeping him in her sights every inch of the way. It was only when he was outside and the door had closed behind him that he felt able to release a deep, shuddering breath and he realised just how hard his heart was beating.

31

He sits at his table in the corner of the bar. He is very still. On the table in front of him is an empty plate; he has finished his meal, but he is still hungry. He is always hungry. His new body demands fuel constantly. He watches the others. The skinny road bandit at the pool table. The leader, Studz, and his big friend, playing cards in front of the fire. And there is the girl. She perches on a stool at the bar, a bottle of clear spirits in front of her. She drinks, and is having a conversation of sorts with the landlord who leans on the bar across from her, his thick arms folded. He seems to think he has made some sort of connection with the girl, but he hasn’t. She keeps glancing at Kadrobus, and she isn’t being subtle about it. Anna comes out of the kitchen and takes away his plate. She gives him a brief, tired smile which he doesn’t return. The skinny road bandit goes up to the bar and the landlord serves him. The girl, finding herself free, slips from her stool and, carrying her bottle by its neck, comes over to Kadrobus’s table. She sets the bottle down, pulls out a chair, turns it round and sits astride it. ‘So where are you from then?’ she asks. ‘The constellation Cetus,’ he tells her. It is clearly not the answer she is expecting, and she probably thinks he is teasing her. The puzzled expression that crosses her face amuses him. ‘No, I mean straight up,’ she says. ‘It is the truth.’ ‘Yeah, of course. So you're an ET.’ ‘I don’t know what you mean by ET.’ ‘Now you are taking the piss.’ He remains perfectly still. He is finding it frustrating trying to access the

thoughts of these humans, and it is a short-coming as a result of the fault in the transformation that angers him. But if he waits, she will explain. And she does. ‘ET. It means extra-terrestrial? You know, ET phone home?’ She holds up her hands and makes an odd wiggly gesture with two of the fingers on each. She seems to think this will help make it quite clear what she is talking about. He says, ‘Extra-terrestrial. I see. If you like to put it that way, then yes, I am an ET.’ She picks up the bottle, brings it to her mouth, tips it back and drinks. She doesn't take her merry eyes from Kadrobus. When she's finished she lowers the bottle and says, ‘Well, you look weird enough. But prove it.’ ‘Prove it?’ ‘Yeah. Take me to your flying saucer.’ There's a challenging tilt to her chin, and Kadrobus takes a moment to decide whether or not he is going to play this girl’s game. He rises to his feet. ‘Come with me,’ he says. The girl giggles, like a child, and calls to her friends, ‘Hey boys, let's go! We’re off to see a flying saucer!’ She snatches her bottle from the table and follows him outside and into the village square. It is dark, and the only light spills from the pub’s windows, and it faintly shines on the chromework of the four motorcycles parked in front of the memorial to the dead of some long ago human conflict. Kadrobus stands quite still, facing the machines. The girl is beside him. The other three road bandits have ed them. ‘What are we waiting for?’ The girl says. ‘I do not have this flying saucer you talk about,’ Kadrobus tells her, ‘but I can give you this.’

He inhales deeply and raises his arms at his sides. He tilts his head and rolls back his eyes and focuses his mind to a point of white hot power. He projects a shaft of it towards the machines in front of him, and after a few moments he hears their engines start, one by one. This is a particular talent the transformation has not stolen from him. He allows his eyes to adjust to their normal positions and lowers his arms. The village square is filled with light now, from each of the motorcycles headlamps. He does not look at the road bandits, but he is gratified to sense their stunned astonishment. Only the girl speaks. ‘What the fuck?’ she says.

***

Studz stared into the dying embers of the fire, his eyes half-closed as he drew on the cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke. He was alone in the Red Lion’s bar. The landlord had gone to bed. So had Wolf and Spyder, and the German hired help was in the kitchen. Lil’Kat had told him not to be long himself, and that had been twenty minutes ago. But Studz was no hurry to go upstairs. He had some thinking to do. He took a final drag on the cigarette, flicked the butt into the fire and started coughing as the smoke snaked its way through his diseased lungs further inflaming the damage that was already present. He leaned forward, letting the convulsions run their course. When they had exhausted themselves, he pulled a rag from his pocket and hawked up some of his gooey innards. He inspected the result: mucus and blood. Same as ever. Piece by piece, the disease was devouring him. He wondered how the end was going to come. Would he slip away in his sleep, or would his heart give out under the strain of one of those uncontrollable coughing bouts? There was another scenario, one he had rehearsed in his mind many times, where he rode his Bonneville to the coast where the cliffs were high. Dover, maybe. He’d accelerate to the max and sail right over the edge and, for a few seconds, he’d be flying.

Now that was the way to go. He sat back in the chair, his breathing rasping and difficult. When he opened his eyes, the stranger, Kadrobus, was standing there. ‘May I you?’ he asked. So bloody polite. His face was expressionless and those weird, violet eyes were still and watchful. The bloke gave Studz the serious creeps. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. Kadrobus pulled up a chair and sat, facing the fire, next to Studz. ‘That was a neat trick you played out there, with the bikes,’ Studz told him. ‘I did it to prove my... credentials, I think I shall say. Your young friend wanted to know if I was an ET, as she put it.’ He paused. ‘Did I succeed? Do you believe I am from another world?’ ‘Huh,’ Studz grunted, ‘why should I care whether you is or whether you ain’t?’ Kadrobus smiled briefly, tight-lipped, accepting the point. He asked, ‘How long will you and your friends be staying here?’ Studz shrugged. ‘We don’t do a lot of planning.’ He sucked in enough air for him to speak his next sentence. ‘We’re taking it a day at a time. What is it to you?’ ‘I might have some work for you.’ Studz stared at him. ‘Did you say work?’ ‘I need a thorough search made of the village and the farms and outbuildings nearby. It goes without saying, it’s a big task and not one I can easily complete on my own, within the timescale I want. I need associates who, let’s say, aren’t afraid to get the job done, even if it does mean ruffling a few feathers.’ Studz already craved another cigarette, but he needed to pace himself. Not because he feared doing himself more damage than he already had, but because his supply of rolling tobacco was running low. He tried to pick the bones out of what Kadrobus had just said. ‘Associates?’ he echoed.

‘I’m seeking a particular object that is very important to me. I know it’s in this area somewhere, but concealed. What do you say? Will you assist me?’ He turned to Studz and held his gaze. ‘That depends,’ Studz said, calculating his response. ‘What’s in it for us?’ ‘Do you mean, what’s in it for you?’ Studz supposed that when you got down to brass tacks, that was exactly it. ‘So what is this object? Some alien thing?’ ‘As you say. Some alien thing.’ Studz waited for him to say more. He didn’t. ‘You need to open up to me here, pal, if you want my help. Being cagey ain’t gonna cut the mustard. What exactly is this thing? Is it dangerous – radioactive or something?’ Kadrobus contemplated the dying fire. ‘It is not radioactive. And yet, in its own way, it possesses greater power than your atomic weapons.’ Studz snorted. ‘If you say so, pal.’ ‘I do say so,’ he replied emotionlessly, and he proceeded to tell Studz about a spaceship which had crashed at Druids Field three thousand years ago, and about a pyramid aboard it that could recreate anyone who had died or anything that had been destroyed, about how he and two others had come to Earth to find the pyramid, and how only he, Kadrobus, and a woman who now lived alone in the forest, had survived. At any other time, Studz would have laughed off the story as fantasy, but in the presence of this... man? Could he even be called that? And the way he’d started the bikes earlier, he felt the truth of it. ‘This pyramid... how can it do what you said?’ he wanted to know. Kadrobus kept his eyes on the fire and said, ‘That is a question I do not know the answer to. The pyramid originates from distant antiquity. All I can tell you is that it accesses energies and dimensions we are not aware of.’ ‘Very clever. So let’s say you find this thing, and you access these dimensions or whatever. What’s the big plan after that?’

‘Our world is dead. We start again here. The elder warriors I shall regenerate using the pyramid will create a new world order, a civilisation built on our . There will be resistance from your people, but it will be overcome, and once we have prevailed there will be slaves and there will be masters. We will look favourably on those who have helped us.’ He faced Studz and the light in his eyes was almost something physically projected. ‘What would you be, Malcolm? A slave or a master?’ Studz swallowed hard. The guy knew his real name. He tried to think how that was possible. Had he let it slip at some point? No way. Had one of The Goathead told him? Why would they? The alien waited for his answer, as still and patient as a predator watching prey. ‘I’ll be dead by the time that happens.’ ‘Indeed. But what if I can offer you an intervention that will delay your demise?’ Studz listened to the rattling of his failing lungs and felt the sharp pain of every laboured inhalation. He looked away, on the pretext of fishing in his jacket pocket for his tobacco tin and rolling papers. So much for pacing himself. The urge to spark up again was too strong. ‘Don’t play games with me,’ he said, as he levered the lid from the tobacco tin. ‘What’s the deal, doctor ET? You’re gonna cure me with your oh-so-advanced medicine? Get me fired up again, like you did with the bikes?’ Kadrobus was unsmiling. ‘I may not be able to cure you. But I can still help you.’ Studz said, ‘Yeah, of course you can. You got something in a little black bag?’ ‘I understand your scepticism. But, what’s the expression? The proof of the pudding is in the eating?’ Studz rolled tobacco into a cigarette paper, doing it without thinking. He said, ‘All right. So give me some of the pudding.’ ‘Then allow me,’ Kadrobus placed his palm flat against the centre of Studz’s chest. Studz stared at it. Stopped rolling the cigarette. When he raised his head the alien’s eyes had rolled back so that only the whites were showing, the same as he had appeared when he’d got the bikes to start without touching them, and

Studz wondered what he was letting himself in for. And then he felt it; a jolt through his upper body which made him catch his breath. For a second he didn’t think he was going to be able to exhale. His lungs were locked, and the pain was as bad as it had ever been. He dropped the halfmade cigarette. Was he having the heart attack he’d feared? He’d fallen for a line, and what this bastard is actually doing was killing him. But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t stop it. Then just when he thought he was going to out his lungs unlocked and he exhaled explosively... he took another gulp of air, as if he’d just resurfaced from underwater. Kadrobus withdrew his hand and he sat back, his eyes back where they should have been, his face a mask, a few beads of sweat on his forehead. Studz felt the need to cough again but that time it was a solitary spasm and when he looked into his cupped hands he expected to see more blood and phlegm - and there was some, but not much. He noticed that the pains in his chest were less severe. In fact, they were definitely less severe. ‘What did you do?’ he croaked.

32

Her neck was stiff, a headache was building and it was approaching midnight by the time Sally finished trying, for the sixth or seventh time, to reprogram the Land Rover’s ECU chip. She was reasonably sure she had been successful at this attempt, but the only way to find out for certain was to try it. She reinserted the chip into the ECU, closed up the case, took it out to the Land Rover and by the light of her Coleman lantern she reinstalled it behind the glovebox. After making a silent wish she turned the ignition key. The engine started. Well hallelujah. It was too late to set off now but first thing in the morning she would drop off some logs she’d promised Andy at the Red Lion, and then be on her way.

***

‘You think that dude is really an ET?’ Lil’Kat asked the question as she and Studz lay in bed. ‘Do you?’ he replied, staring at the ceiling. ‘I dunno. There’s that thing he did with the bikes. And I mean he looks creepy. Like Spock, without the pointy ears, you know?’ She paused, mulling that over until a new and exciting idea occurred to her. She turned her head on the pillow to face him. ‘Hey, imagine if things were normal, like, before the orbs, and there was still papers and TV and the internet and stuff. We’d be able to make a fortune out of this. First ! Ain’t that what they call it?’ ‘So what?’ Studz said. ‘Things ain’t normal, are they?’ ‘I know. I’m just saying.’ He could hear the little girl pout in her voice.

He continued to stare at the ceiling and said, ‘Do you want him?’ ‘What?’ ‘Do you want to shag him? I saw the way you was looking at him, eyes up and down like you was sizing him up.’ ‘Jesus Christ. I was looking at him because he’s, like, weird. Not because I fancy him.’ She reached beneath the duvet and started massaging him. She whispered into his ear, smiling, ‘Hey, you’re number one with me, babe, always will be.’ It wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t going to be able to get it up, no matter what she did. That was something the alien hadn’t fixed. He rolled onto his side, away from her. Deep in the night, he awoke, suddenly. He didn’t think he’d really been asleep, at least not for any substantial periods, and not deeply. He sat up and peered into the shadows at the end of the bed. A figure was standing there, indiscernible, a silhouette, although Studz could tell by its height, its shape and the way it stood that it was Kadrobus. ‘What are you doing in my room?’ The door behind the alien was closed. How the hell had he got in without Studz hearing him? Kadrobus didn’t answer. Studz reached for his lighter on the nightstand. He flicked up a flame. Most of the darkness was chased away - and so was Kadrobus’s shadowy apparition. It hadn’t been there at all, of course. Messing with his head... ‘What is it babe?’ Lil’Kat mumbled. ‘Nuthin’. Go back to sleep.’ Studz extinguished the lighter flame and settled back against his pillows. But he

didn’t close his eyes again for a long time. He slept late, and had been only vaguely aware of Lil’Kat getting up. When he did awake fully he was in no hurry to go downstairs. He had a shave, something he hadn’t done for many days, using cold water from a jug and a soapy lather, and once he’d finished he spent a few moments looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Was it his imagination, or did he look a hell of a lot better? It wasn’t just his clean-shaven face; there was a renewed brightness in his eyes and the tension at their corners had melted away. The truth was, he felt good too. He never thought it would be that way again. He ran his hand across his freshly-smooth jaw and allowed himself a half smile. Back in the bedroom he sat on the unmade bed, rolled a cigarette and smoked it, savouring the taste of it, drawing the smoke into his lungs and exhaling it luxuriously without it instigating a wracking cough. It had to be too good to be true that this had happened. When he’d finished the cigarette he stubbed out the butt in a makeshift tinfoil ashtray and went down to the bar. Lil’Kat and Spyder were playing pool. Wolf was sitting at a table by the fire, dealing cards in a game of solitaire, his injured leg ed on another chair. Andy was perched in his usual place behind the bar reading his paperback, resting it on his ample belly. The alien wasn’t there. ‘All right, babe?’ Lil’Kat enquired. She was standing, one end of her cue on the carpet, while Spyder, leaning over the table, the strands of his long wispy beard touching the baize, cracked the cue ball against a nine-ball and sent it spinning into a corner pocket. There was a half-smile, half-frown on Lil’Kat’s face. She must have noticed that Studz had shaved, and maybe that there was something on his mind but she couldn’t decide whether it was going to result in good news or bad. ‘Listen up,’ he said. Wolf showed brief interest while he laid another card. Spyder straightened. Andy turned a page of his book and Studz went on, giving him a pointed look while he did so. ‘And I need a bit of privacy. If you don’t mind.’

Andy belated realised the remark was intended for him. He looked up from his book. Studz waited. The landlord sighed exaggeratedly, folded over the corner of the page he was reading and slid off the barstool. Without a word he left through the door behind the bar and closed it. Studz went behind the bar, took the last bottle of Jack Daniels from a shelf and poured himself a generous measure into a tumbler while the others waited. He took it to a table and sat down. ‘We have work to do,’ he said. Spyder watched. Wolf continued to lay his cards, but Studz knew he was listening. ‘We need to find something. An object... an artefact. It’s supposed to be somewhere in the village, or close by.’ ‘Why?’ Lil’Kat said, wearing her what-the-fuck face. ‘I made a deal with the alien.’ Lil’Kat propped her cue against the side of the pool table and sat in the chair opposite Studz. He met her steady gaze. ‘What sort of deal?’ she asked, and when he didn’t immediately answer she added, as the thought occurred to her, ‘this is something to do with what happened last night, ain’t it?’ Studz said, ‘We help him find this thing he’s after and when he gets his hands on it there’ll be... changes. Big ones. For the better. For us.’ He was well aware of Lil’Kat’s and Spyder’s expectant eyes on him. ‘He’s promised... he’s told me this artefact is going to bring in a new world order. He’ll be using it to bring back more like him, an invasion. We thought the orbs turned the world upside down but we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, he says. When it’s over there’ll be slaves and there’ll be masters. We can be up there with the masters.’ He could have heard a pin drop in the bar. He was well aware of how bonkers he came across, but he didn’t know how to make it sound more convincing, something other than a steaming pile of horseshit. All he knew was that Kadrobus was the real deal, a proper comic-book alien with superpowers. Then Lil’kat spluttered out a laugh, as if she’d suddenly got the punch-line of a joke. ‘Absolutely freakin’ priceless! Slaves and masters? Listen to yourself. What’re we in here, one of them old Play Station games? Tell you what, I’ll have some of whatever you’re on.’

‘She’s right,’ Wolf contributed stolidly, selecting another card from the pack. ‘You’ve fallen for a line, mate. Don’t know what’s going on in your head.’ Lil’Kat’s outburst of mirth quickly faded. She leaned in towards Studz, resting her forearms on the table, her eyes searching his. ‘Where’s your cough today, babe?’ she asked quietly. ‘Where are the shakes? You ain’t out of breath either.’ She cocked her head slightly to one side, giving him the opportunity to answer. He said nothing. ‘Did the ET fix you? Is that what this is about, some sort of payback?’ Studz said, ‘We can all come out of this with something. Better than the gypsy life we’re leading.’ ‘Some of us like the gypsy life,’ Lil’Kat told him. ‘I thought you did.’ ‘Not anymore.’ She studied him and then without taking her eyes from him she called back to the others, ‘What do we think, boys? Are we going to deal ourselves into this game?’ Wolf stayed quiet. Spyder looked from Lil’Kat to Studz and back again. After a beat she said, ‘All right. I reckon we play along, for now. It can’t do no harm.’ She leaned forward again, intimately close to Studz, and lowered her voice. ‘But only because whatever he did, it means you ain’t hurting anymore. Otherwise, why should we believe anything he says? That’s it.’ She got to her feet, went back to the pool table and picked up her cue. ‘Slaves and masters. Jesus,’ she said, shaking her head. Across the bar, Wolf had finished his game and was collecting up the cards. At the same time he was watching Studz. Studz knew what his old mate was thinking - that this meant trouble.

***

Don parked the Winnebago in Nobby’s yard, got out, leaned against the side of the motor home and took a deep breath, willing himself to calm down. He

listened for the sound of motorcycle engines, but there was only the trilling song of a reed bunting, the wind and faintly, the soft wash of the North Sea’s gentle breakers kissing the beach, far out. He climbed the sandy stone steps to the door of the coast guard station, which was open. He knocked. Nobby didn’t answer, probably hadn’t heard the knock, but Don heard him whistling. He went in and found the old man in the kitchen. There were three rabbits on the big pine table in front of him and he was skinning one of them, working swiftly and skilfully. Don didn’t want to look too closely. He still hadn’t got fully used to a world where dinner didn’t come sanitised and pre-packaged. ‘Are you going to spit it out?’ Nobby said, ‘cos there’s summat on your mind. This ain’t a social call is it?’ Don stayed by the window. ‘Nobby, I need to borrow your shotgun,’ he said. ‘If you want rabbits you don’t have to go get ‘em yerself. Just come to me. I got them to spare.’ ‘I’m not going to be shooting rabbits.’ ‘I never would’ve guessed,’ Nobby said good-naturedly. ‘There’s some trouble in the village I have to deal with,’ Don told him. ‘I need the gun just in case. For self-defence.’ ‘Course you do,’ Nobby said, and dropped the rabbit skin into a wicker basket on the floor beside him, no doubt to find a use for it. He slid another carcase into the centre of the table and wagged the tip of his knife at Don. ‘My advice to you, boy, is to avoid trouble in this world in any which way you can. You don’t want to go looking for it, ‘cos it’s always just around the corner waiting for you, whatever you do. And it seems to me you’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest just by bloody comin’ back to Druids Field.’ ‘But sometimes we have to do what’s right,’ Don said, ‘even if we put ourselves at risk.’ Nobby scrutinized him hard for so long Don had to look away, embarrassed. Kadrobus might have been telepathic, but Don couldn’t be sure this old man wasn’t as well. Finally, Nobby laid the knife on the table next to the rabbit and

said, ‘Ever fired one?’ Don blinked, wrong-footed. ‘What?’ ‘A shotgun?’ Nobby said, as if he had to spell it out for a simpleton. ‘We was just talkin’ about it, ?’ Don switched back on. ‘No...’ ‘It ain’t difficult.’ Nobby ambled out of the kitchen and Don followed him into the living room. From its place beside the fire, the old man collected the gun, broke the twin barrels open and fished in the pockets of his combat vest for cartridges, which he slid into the breach. He snapped the barrels closed. ‘It’s as simple as that. Then you pull the triggers. One for each barrel. Be ready for the recoil. She’ll kick like a mule, this one. Carry it broken if you’ve got cartridges in the breech. You don’t want to accidentally shoot your foot off.’ He handed the gun to Don, then opened a drawer in a table. He rummaged amongst the junk in there until he found a box of additional cartridges. ‘That ought to do you. If you need any more than that you’ll already have World War Three on your hands. Now let’s see if you’re any good with it.’ He took Don outside, round to the yard at the back of the house. They stood a short distance from the Transit pick-up and Nobby got him to use it for target practice. The old man was right, the gun did have a kick to it. Don wondered if it came down to it, whether he’d be able to fire it at another person, and how it was that a retired professional computer geek and an on-going ionate aviation nerd like him had turned into this knight in shining armour.

33

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The German girl wiped tables and watched The Goathead and Kadrobus leave the pub. It looked to Studz as if she wanted to go with them, and he wondered what connection she had with the alien; there was something going on, that was for sure. Outside, they split up. Lil’Kat and Spyder went off to search houses at the north end of the village while Wolf set out on his own. Studz and Kadrobus checked out the store opposite the pub first; there was no need to break in, that had been done by looters long ago. The shelves were bare and dusty. They searched the hairdressers and the other cottages in the square. There was nobody living in them and there was no sign of the alien pyramid. Next came the church. Inside, they stood beside the collection box Lil’Kat had blasted open. The place was stone-cold and gloomy, with no candles alight now. Studz said, ‘You can do all this shit – the healing, starting the bikes without touching them, maybe you can read minds. So you must have an idea of where this pyramid thing is, so we can make it less like looking for a needle in a haystack.’ Kadrobus stepped forward a few paces, stopped, as if he was absorbing the atmosphere of the place. He said, ‘If I did, I wouldn’t need you and your friends to help me. I have limitations in this human form.’ He sounded hugely disappointed about that. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I have a strong sense that it still exists. I hear it as a whisper in a dark cave.’ ‘Is that so?’ Studz replied, not understanding what the hell the alien was talking about. He surveyed the church. Where did they begin? He spotted the bell tower

door at the end of the nave and thought perhaps he’d check through there first. This was going to take forever. There was a sound outside. He went back to the door and looked out. Kadrobus ed him. ‘Nethardia,’ the alien said, at his shoulder. A tall, dark-haired and rather fanciable woman driving a big, chunky Land Rover had pulled up outside the Red Lion. She’d opened the rear door of the vehicle and was offloading hessian sacks of logs onto the ground. Andy and the waitress came out of the pub and after a brief conversation with the woman they started to carry the sacks inside. The German girl was struggling with the weight of the one she’d selected, having to drag it. ‘The other alien,’ Studz said, catching on. ‘The one you told me about. Have to say, pal, she’s an improvement on you.’ Kadrobus didn’t reply and continued to watch the woman. Suddenly, as if she had become aware of his scrutiny, she stopped what she was doing, looked in the direction of the church and frowned. Studz instinctively stepped back into the shadows but Kadrobus stayed where he was, as if he wanted her to see him. After a few moments during which something Studz couldn’t fathom ed between them, the woman turned away, finished unloading the Land Rover and then helped the girl carry her sack. ‘Well, this is all very interesting,’ Studz remarked, ‘but it ain’t finding your pyramid. Perhaps your ET buddy would like to give us a hand.’ ‘I think she already is.’ The woman came back out of the pub, climbed into the Land Rover and drove off, turning into the street which led out of the village. ‘Follow her,’ Kadrobus said. ‘Do what?’ ‘Get on your motorbike and follow her. But be discreet.’

Studz gave him a long, steady look. ‘What’s this, one of your whispers in a freakin’ cave?’ ‘I will continue to search here,’ Kadrobus said, stepping away from the door and back into the church. It was good to leave the ever-present coastal fog behind, and break out into the clear but cold sunlight. The straight, two-lane A-road was pot-holed from several winters of frosts and lack of repairs, but that wouldn’t have been a problem for the all-wheel-drive Land Rover. But still, the alien woman was taking it easy and Studz soon caught up with her and had to ease off, keeping her in his sights, a quarter of a mile ahead. They had never met, so she wouldn’t recognise him, especially at that distance, although his Bonneville might ring a bell if she’d clocked it parked outside the Red Lion. But even that shouldn’t be a problem; he had every right to be on the road, and for all she knew he was just another traveller ing through. She wouldn’t know about his connection to Kadrobus. Unless she was better at mind-reading than he was. But still. Be discreet, that was what the alien had told him. They ed through deserted villages, bungalows strung along the road with flat, grassy fields all around, and dead power cables draped in loops from tilted poles which would likely topple following a few more harsh storms. There was nobody about. This part of Lincolnshire had been abandoned to the searching winds and the wide sky. The Land Rover’s brake lights flared red and a moment later it turned left off the road. Studz slowed. The alien woman had pulled into a small car park in front of a single-storey modern brick building. The sign facing the road, with white lettering painted on a blue background, announced the place as Fieldview. Quality Nursing Care for the Elderly. So what was this? Had Studz followed her out here just to dick around while she visited some senile relative? And if she really was an alien, then what relative? Whispers in a cave, my arse, he thought, as he rumbled past.

34

There were a couple of cars in the parking spaces, and they looked like they’d been driven recently - they didn’t have that dusty, bird-shit-splattered look that most did. The flower beds in front of the building had been tended too, which was another promising sign. Sally had expected the trip to be a waste of time and that all she’d find when she arrived was an abandoned building, the institution defunct, or taken over by a commune. She sat in the Land Rover for a minute, thinking about what she’d seen in Levenby; Kadrobus in the church. Watching her. What was he up to? He was trying to locate the pyramid, obviously, but so far, he was looking in the wrong place. Sally couldn’t afford to worry about him. She had an agenda of her own. She went into the building’s clean and tidy reception where there was an unattended desk with a crucifix mounted on the wall behind it. From deeper within the building she heard an elderly person’s sudden and short wail of anguish, and then a young nun dressed in a starched white wimple came through a door behind the reception desk. ‘Good morning,’ she said brightly, her smile wide and genuine, ‘how can I help you?’ ‘I didn’t know if this was still a care home,’ Sally told her, smiling back. ‘Oh yes. Although it’s no longer a commercial enterprise. We stepped in after the... troubles of recent times. I’m Sister Dawn, of the order of St. Cecilia.’ ‘Is Erik Sommer still a resident here?’ Sally asked. The nun nodded, fondness in her eyes. ‘Ah, dear Erik. Yes, he is. Are you a friend or relative?’ ‘A friend. An old friend.’ Sally’s pulse quickened with anticipation and something else – the stirrings of

bright memories and affections. ‘Well, you’re the first visitor Erik has had since we’ve been here.’ Did Sally detect a hint of onition in the young nun’s tone? Maybe. Or it could just have been her guilty conscience playing tricks on her. She should have come to see Erik before now. Of course she should. But once what they’d shared together had ended, she hadn’t been able to find it within herself to reopen old wounds. ‘Would I be able to see him?’ ‘Of course!’ Sister Dawn said, beaming again. She came out from behind the desk. It’s lovely you’ve come. I’ll show you to his room.’ She led the way along a carpeted corridor; they ed an open set of double doors and in the large, bright room beyond them Sally saw a group of five or six young children playing with colourful plastic toys while a bosomy older nun sat in a straight-backed chair keeping a benevolent eye on them. ‘Fieldview isn’t just for the elderly anymore,’ Sister Dawn explained, catching Sally’s interest. ‘The orbs left plenty of orphans who need looking after.’ They turned a dog-leg in the corridor. ‘So his son hasn’t been to see him?’ Sally asked. ‘No, he hasn’t. We only found out he had one because of the old paper records that were kept. We don’t have a generator or solar s or any of that, so the files that were on the computer are lost to us, and as you can imagine we don’t have the resources to try to him.’ Sister Dawn stopped outside room number fourteen. ‘I expect you’ll find he’s deteriorated since the last time you saw him. He gets very confused these days.’ She knocked softly on the door, opened it and went into the room. ‘Hello Erik!’ she said breezily. ‘Look, someone has come to see you.’ The old man was sitting in a chair by the window, a blanket over his lap. The room was clean, bright and modern and was warmed by a bioethanol heater in a corner. Erik showed no sign that he’d noticed Sally and Sister Dawn enter, and

he was staring vacantly at the skirting board. ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ the nun said earnestly, keeping her voice unnecessarily low. ‘If you need anything, just shout.’ Sally waited by the door until she’d gone. ‘Erik?’ He still did not respond. She took off her bodywarmer, laid it on the bed and pulled up a chair. She sat and took one of Erik’s gnarled hands in hers, smiled and tried to make eye with him. ‘Erik, it’s me. Sally.’ Finally it ed with the old man that there was someone in the room with him, and he floated up from the place he’d been in his mind. With reptilian slowness, he turned his head towards her and when his washed-out eyes did find hers she thought there may have been a flicker of recognition in them, but no more than that. He mouthed something. He might have said Sally’s name, but it could just as easily have been wishful thinking on her part. Erik Sommer’s link to the real world was tenuous, and it broke completely again. Sally looked across at an array of framed photographs on the sunny windowsill, of people she didn’t recognise. Why would she? Erik hadn’t been part of her life for decades. But there were two that caught her attention. One was of a young man, probably in his twenties, with long hair and a moustache, wearing a knitted tank top and jeans that were ridiculously bell-bottomed - a very 1970s look who was leaning against a Mini with his arms folded. Sally had only met him once but she recognised him as Glen, Erik’s son. Erik’s other son. She picked up another photo, which she had to hold beneath Erik’s chin for him to see, since his head had dropped. The image showed a much younger Erik in an open-neck shirt and Sally wearing sunglasses, her dark hair shorter then, her arm through his. They were both laughing. A er-by had taken it for them with her Instamatic camera. ‘Do you this? The dirty weekend we had in Skegness?’ She chuckled,

trying to lighten it up, but confusion clouded Erik’s face. He raised a bony hand and took the photo, his vague gaze slid from the photo to Sally and back again. In a wavering voice he said, ‘Would you like another ice-cream?’ ‘It isn’t really the weather for ice-cream today, is it?’ ‘It’s nice and sunny though. And just listen to those seagulls! Ooh, one’s pooped on me.’ He laughed. It was just a brief cackle, really. Badly-fitting dentures were exposed and the photo frame fell from his feeble grasp. With trembling fingers he brushed away the imaginary seagull crap from his shoulder. Sally smiled fondly. ‘Never mind. It’ll clean.’ She removed the photo from Erik’s lap and set it back on the windowsill. For him, the thought and the moment had been and gone, an insubstantial thing. He started to hum some unidentifiable tune and he’d gone away again, transported back to that long-ago summer day at the seaside. He didn’t look at Sally as he said, ‘You’re very pretty in that dress. Will you wear it again?’ She clasped his hands in hers once more. He stopped humming. She said, ‘Erik, a long time ago, soon after that day at the seaside, I gave you something, an object, for your collection. Do you ?’ ‘Will you wear it again, just for me?’ His voice was as wheedling as a child’s. ‘The dress? Yes I will. I’ll wear it for you.’ He resumed his humming. Sally tenderly touched his white-stubbled cheek. ‘Erik, look at me. The object was a glass pyramid. You were fascinated by it, and said you’d love it for your collection. The thing is, it’s very important that I have it back.’ She paused, not wanting to push too hard. ‘Can you tell me what happened to your collection?’ But it was no good. She’d lost him. She suspected that sooner rather than later it wouldn’t be possible to reach him at all.

Sister Dawn was watering the plants in reception when Sally returned. ‘How was he?’ the nun asked. The default power setting on her smile seemed to max ten. ‘Confused, as you said,’ Sally replied. ‘I’d like to get in touch with his son. Do you know where he lives?’ The wattage of Sister Dawn’s smile dropped a little, as she stood there with the copper watering can in her hand. ‘It’ll be difficult to find that out. As I mentioned, the old records were on computer. And besides,’ she added apologetically, ‘I don’t think it would be right to give out information without the permission of the other party. I hope you understand.’ ‘I do,’ Sally said. ‘But it’s very important I Glen. You mentioned you found out about him through some paper records. Isn’t there an address for him in them? Even if it’s an old one, it’ll be somewhere to start.’ Sister Dawn looked even more uncertain. ‘There’s still the privacy issue. The Devil may have walked this land in recent years, but we try to maintain standards here.’ Sally was careful not to let her frustration show. She needed Sister Dawn to make this decision, and not the responsibility for it on to her superiors. ‘You said yourself you don’t have the resources to look for him. Well, I’m offering to do that. Erik doesn’t have long left, so it would be nice if I can persuade Glen to see him once more, before the end.’ Sally’s opinion of herself wasn’t great just then. She needed to see Glen Sommer more than he was likely to want to see his father, and she hated manipulating Sister Dawn’s obliging nature. She expectantly held the young nun’s gaze until she saw any resolve she’d had melt. She had been persuaded. ‘Very well,’ she said. She left the watering can on the desk and went into the back room. Sally let out a silent sigh of relief. Next to a large rubber plant there was a clear plastic box containing a few handfuls of coins and a few notes. A notice on the wall above it requested donations to help with the running of Fieldview. Sally took her wallet from the inside pocket of her body-warmer, extracted all the notes she had and fed them

through the slot in the donations box. It went some way to assuaging her duplicity, and Sally promised herself that when all this was over she would do a lot more to help this place. Shortly afterwards, Sister Dawn returned with a lever-arch file, which she opened on the desk. She flipped through a few pages, running down the entries with her fingertip. ‘Here we are,’ she said, and scribbled the address on a notepad. She tore off the sheet and gave it to Sally. ‘Thank you,’ Sally said as she took it. ‘I hope I can persuade him to come.’ ‘I’m sure he would have visited if he was still alive. So many poor souls have been lost.’ And wasn’t that the truth. Sally just hoped that Glen Sommer hadn’t been one of them.

35

Sommer still lived in the district, on a small park homes site on the rural outskirts of the village of Coningsby. She found his place on the far side of the site, next to a high and overgrown hedge. She knocked on the trailer’s door and it was opened by a stooping, shabby man who Sally knew to be in his midfifties, although he looked twenty years older. ‘Glen Sommer?’ It was pointless asking, really. She knew it was him. ‘Who wants to know?’ ‘My name’s Veronica Desiderum,’ Sally lied. ‘My mother was a friend of your father’s.’ ‘Yeah, and?’ Pouchy, suspicious eyes in a slack, unshaven face, framed by long, unwashed hair. ‘Could you spare me a few minutes? It’s about your father.’ ‘Is he dead?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then why are you here?’ She said, ‘I don’t know how long ago it was since you saw him, but mentally he isn’t in a good way. He was looking after something for my mother, but he can’t even it, let alone where it is. I’d like it back. It has sentimental value, you know?’ It was a direct-to-the-point request, but Sally didn’t have the time for social niceties and her quick assessment of Glen Sommer told her that he wouldn’t respond positively to them anyway. ‘And what makes you think I might know where it is?’ ‘He had a substantial collection of historic and arcane artefacts which I know he put into storage. I’m sure it’ll be with those. Does that ring any bells?’

Sommer looked her up and down, then he stepped back inside the trailer, leaving the door open. Sally thought perhaps he’d gone to fetch something or someone, but after a few seconds of nothing happening she realised it was his way of inviting her in. The inside of the park home was as neglected as its occupant and it was cold; there was a small paraffin heater in a corner of the living room, but it wasn’t working. Sommer sat on a couch, Sally on an identical one opposite. ‘You look a lot like your mother, judging by that photo Dad keeps on his shelf.’ It was a wonder he ed it, considering he hadn’t been near Fieldview for so long. ‘It’s been said before.’ ‘He never did tell me what went on between him and her. Must have been something steamy. Do you know?’ ‘I think... I think there was an affair, yes.’ Sommer shrugged. ‘He thought more of her than he did of my mum, that’s all I know. Is she still alive, your mum?’ ‘No, she isn’t. Mr Sommer - Glen - do you know what happened to your father’s collection?’ ‘Maybe,’ he said, in that same, off-hand way. ‘What a crock of shite that was. No use to anybody.’ ‘So you got rid of it all?’ ‘Thought about it. Thought very seriously about it, but never got round to it in the end. Then the orbs came and it didn’t seem important anymore.’ Sally said carefully, ‘This one particular object... that’s the only thing I’d like.’ ‘How much?’ ‘I’m sorry?’

‘How much are you going to pay me for it?’ ‘It was a gift from my mother to your father. I think I mentioned that. And wouldn’t giving it back to me be what he’d want, given how close they were?’ ‘Yeah, but my old man’s in no position to make decisions about what he does or doesn’t want. I have power of attorney in his affairs, for what that’s friggin’ worth. I have to look after his financial interests. That care home he’s in isn’t a charity, believe it or not, the dosh to pay for that has to come from somewhere.’ ‘It is a charity now, Mr Sommer,’ Sally corrected him coolly. ‘It’s run by an order of nuns.’ She felt like adding, if you had been to see him you’d know that. His eyes narrowed. Then he laughed unpleasantly, realising he’d been caught out. ‘Whatever. But I’m not a charity. In case you hadn’t noticed, there aren’t any jobs anymore and I’ve got to live on something. Everyone’s having to duck and dive these days, make a few quid where they can. Do you blame me?’ Sally didn’t, not really. She lifted her bag onto her lap, opened it and pulled out a thin sheaf of papers. She held them out to him. He hesitated, took them, and peered short-sightedly at them. ‘What are they?’ ‘Invoices,’ Sally said. ‘From Fieldview. For your father’s care.’ Sommer flipped over the pages, although he wasn’t giving himself time to read anything on them. Sally went on, ‘As you so rightly pointed out, before the orbs came the money for his care had to come from somewhere. It wasn’t out of your pocket was it? There was an anonymous benefactor who took over the payments when it looked as though your dad was going to be turfed out of Fieldview. I expect you’ve been wondering who that was.’ Sommer tossed the invoices onto the table and stared at her. ‘Your mother, I suppose. Am I meant to be grateful?’ Well yes, actually, Sally thought, although she kept quiet. Up until the orbs had come and the so-called civilised world had come crashing down she had been

paying for Erik’s care ever since she’d heard he’d needed it - otherwise he would have ended up in a state institution, with the minimal level of care that would have gone with it. Sommer said, ‘If your old mum could afford to pay for that place all those years, you can afford to pay me for this thing you want.’ Sally could not have known before she’d met him what sort of man Sommer was, but she’d run through all the scenarios, and this had been one of them. She’d come prepared. She delved into her bag again for a roll of twenty pound notes secured by a rubber band. She slipped it off and placed the notes on the table. ‘Five hundred,’ she said, and sat back. ‘How about...’ ‘How about nothing. It’s my only offer. Refuse it, and I’ll walk.’ ‘Then you won’t get this artefact you’re after.’ Sally shrugged, prepared to call his bluff. ‘I won’t be blackmailed.’ Glen Sommer dropped his greedy gaze to the banknotes and ran his tongue across his top lip.

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Sommer sat in the enger seat of the Land Rover as Sally drove along the wide streets of the deserted village. He directed her to a gap between two singlestorey whitewashed stone buildings and to a small cobbled yard behind them where there were three dilapidated lock-up garages that looked as if they’d been modified multiple times over the centuries and were now far removed from their original use. ‘It’s the one at the end,’ Sommer said. Sally parked in front of the garage. Sommer got out, unlocked the ill-fitting double wooden doors and pulled them open. The garage was rammed full; there was floor to ceiling Dexion shelving along either side, leaving a narrow ageway in the centre, and every shelf was loaded with boxes and loose items of every shape and size. There are also boxes and objects on the floor, covered in dust and dirt and dead leaves which had blown in at some point. ‘Do you have an inventory?’ Sally asked. ‘A what?’ ‘A list of what’s here. And where it is.’ ‘I wasn’t interested enough to do that.’ ‘All right. But the artefact I’m after is here?’ ‘I don’t see why not,’ Sommer said, unconcerned. ‘Everything else is.’ Sally stepped into the garage. After the bright sunlight outside it took her eyes a few moments to adjust to the gloom. There was a fluorescent light fitting in the roof which she knew wouldn’t work, so she went back to the Land Rover to

fetch her Coleman battery lantern. Sommer leaned against the wing of the vehicle with his arms folded - an echo of the old photo in which he had similarly posed against a Mini. ‘You could give me a hand,’ Sally suggested, without trying to hide her sarcasm. ‘Yeah, maybe. In a minute.’ She glared at him. ‘Just as long as you realise if I can’t find the artefact, you don’t get your money.’ She switched on the lantern, held it up and surveyed the interior of the lock-up and wondered where she was going to start. In the end, it took her an hour to shift the boxes on the floor outside and to work her way methodically from the front to the rear of the garage. The charge in her lantern was failing and Sommer hadn’t lifted a finger to help; he was now sitting in the enger seat of the Land Rover with his head tilted back and his eyes closed. There was just one cardboard box left to check and when Sally opened it sure enough there was the pyramid, on its own in a nest of newspaper. She lifted it out and held it up to eye-level, gazing into its clear centre. ‘So, what is it, exactly?’ Sommer said. Now it was over he was finally showing some interest. He’d left the Land Rover and was standing in the garage doorway, silhouetted against the daylight. Sally decided it was about time she played him along. He deserved some payback. ‘It came from another planet thousands of years ago,’ she said, deadpan. ‘It can raise the dead and it can recreate things that have been destroyed.’ Sommer sniffed and looked unimpressed. ‘Yeah? I my old man telling me about another one of these pieces of crap. It’s a statuette of a Buddha or something. If you chant these special words while you’re holding it, it’s supposed to cure cancer. It’s all bollocks, isn’t it? Just fairy stories.’ Of course it is, Sally thought. Just fairy stories. She laid the pyramid back in the box and said, ‘You did ask.’

***

Studz had parked his Bonneville out of sight behind a yellow rubbish skip in front of a low brick industrial building a hundred metres from the entrance to the lock-up garages. He’d followed the alien woman from the care home to the trailer park and then, with her enger, to this place. He was onto something here, he knew it. So far, he’d been lucky and he was pretty sure the woman hadn’t suspected anything. He just needed to be patient for a while longer. He heard the sound of the Land Rover’s engine and took a final drag on his cigarette, made with the last of his tobacco, still unused to the fact that doing so didn’t start him hacking his lungs up. But, and he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it or not, he thought he felt the slightest frisson of his old discomfort, no more than that. He wasn’t going to let it bother him though. It was just his body adjusting to this gift of health he’d been given, that was all. He flicked the butt into the skip and, keeping himself hidden, watched the Land Rover pull out into the road and head back the way it had come. He climbed onto his bike and started the engine. As he’d suspected, the woman took her enger back to his trailer home and she stayed only a couple of minutes this time. When she drove past Studz, concealed behind the unattended park home site reception building, he didn’t follow. He had no need to. There was every chance she was going back to Levenby. But before he returned himself he needed to confirm the reason for her visit here. The man opened the trailer door to him when he knocked on it. ‘Now what?’ As if he was expecting the alien woman. That perhaps she’d forgotten something. ‘Just a quick question pal,’ Studz said, keeping it amiable, although he’d made sure the grip of his Desert Eagle was fully visible beneath his unzipped jacket. ‘The woman who was just here. What did she want?’ The man had a brief internal debate as his gaze settled on the gun.

‘She bought something,’ he said. ‘Something like what?’ ‘That’s between me and her. I don’t know you.’ It was bravado but it was half-hearted, and Studz knew he was going to get the information he needed without too much more trouble. If this man did have any neighbours there was no sign of them and if they were there, watching from behind their curtains, they weren’t going to get involved. Since the man was showing such interest in his gun, Studz decided to let him have a closer look. Barrel first. The man took a step back and held up his hands defensively. ‘Woah!’ he said, ‘There’s no need for that.’ ‘You’re right,’ Studz replied, ‘there wouldn’t be, if you’d just answer the fucking question.’ So the man did.

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Studz rode along the centre of RAF Levenby’s main runway, imagining he could hear the roar of war time heavy bombers thundering along there before they lifted into the sky in echelon formation on their way to bomb the industrial heartlands of the Ruhr valley. He would have liked to have lived during those times, and been part of the action. Everything was simpler then. Right and wrong were white and black; us and them. You knew where you stood. He made a right turn onto the perimeter track and followed it until he reached the copse which obscured the nuclear bunker. Kadrobus was standing at the top of the concrete ramp. Studz stopped beside him, killed the bike’s engine and dismounted. He felt a sharp pain in his chest and he immediately began to cough. He couldn’t get it to stop, and he had to lean over the Bonneville’s saddle until it subsided. What was going on? This shouldn’t have been happening. He was as good as cured, wasn’t he? He had gone back to the Red Lion after his surveillance mission, looking for Kadrobus, and the landlord had told him the alien had come out to the airfield. And here he was now, unmoving, facing the bunker’s wide rusty steel door, as if he was trying to see through it. Studz walked over to him. He didn’t feel at all good, as if his mind was disconnected from his body and he was about to float away from it. ‘It’ll take some breaking into,’ he wheezed, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Kadrobus still didn’t look at him. ‘What do you know of this place?’ he asked. ‘Not much,’ Studz said. ‘They built it during the Cold War. You know, when it looked like us and the Ruskies were going to nuke each other to kingdom come at any moment.’ This scant information was what he’d gleaned while he’d been working on Levenby’s sewers. He started coughing again, and he needed to sit

down. Suddenly, his legs no longer had any strength in them. It felt as if he’d been unplugged from a power source and his body was running down. ‘They’re down there, ain’t they?’ he said, fighting the sudden and alarming return of his symptoms, and nodding in the direction of the bunker. ‘That’s why you’re out here.’ ‘I believe this to be the site of the crash,’ Kadrobus said. ‘But there will be little in the way of remains, if there are any at all.’ ‘And this pyramid thing you’re looking for - it’s going to bring them back out of nothing?’ ‘Not from nothing. From parallel energy fields.’ ‘Same thing in my book, pal.’ He paused, breathless, trying to get some air into his weakening lungs. He persevered. ‘Look, I got some news you’ll want to hear. I followed your lady friend, like you said, and it turns out those whispers you were on about were right. She brought your pyramid back with her.’ That got a reaction out of the bastard, even if it was only a rapid blinking of his eyelids and an almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw. There was no emotion, but then what had Studz expected - a warm handshake and a big grin? Nah. ‘Want me to go and take it off her? It won’t be a problem.’ The alien turned and walked away. ‘Hey! Wait up!’ Studz called after him, although raising his voice only started him coughing. Kadrobus stopped and turned. Studz sucked in air. ‘I need you to do that healing thing again. I feel like shit.’ ‘I told you, I can’t heal.’ ‘You can do the next best thing though. You can keep it under control.’ The side of Kadrobus’s mouth twitched. ‘You’re beyond my help now. And besides, I have other matters to attend to. Thank you for your assistance.’ Studz shuffled towards him, but just those three steps left him feeling faint and

for a moment his vision narrowed and darkened at the edges. Christ, this was as bad as it had ever been. ‘You promised you’d see me right. We got a deal.’ ‘Another time.’ ‘Not... fuckin’... good... enough!’ Studz snarled. He should have listened to Wolf and Lil’Kat. Trust this guy? He wasn’t even human. What had he been thinking? He took out his Desert Eagle. ‘You fuckin’ come back here and you heal me!’ But Kadrobus was moving again. Within a few strides he broke into a jog. And then into an effortless, long-strided run. Studz saw two of him as his vision slipped and blurred, and he dropped to his knees and could only summon the strength to raise the gun partially. He pulled the trigger but the shot was hopelessly wide of the mark, and its echo bounced around the inside of his skull. Whatever Kadrobus had done for him, it had amounted to building a dam, which had now been breached. Everything that was behind it, that had been held back, had now been released.

***

Sally, wearing industrial neoprene gauntlets, a face shield, an apron and a filter mask, was standing over a polyethylene bath in the workshop. She placed the pyramid inside it, unscrewed the cap of a five-litre bottle, labelled with a skull and crossbones and containing hydrofluoric acid - the only chemical she knew of that could dissolve glass. Not that the pyramid was made of any kind of glass that existed on Earth. She was lucky to have the acid; she’d used it once, many years ago, as a catalyst in an experiment and then had put it away in her store at the rear of the workshop. She carefully poured the liquid into the bath and over the pyramid. There was none of the sudden dramatic fuming that might be seen in a black and white horror film laboratory; this was going to take time, and it wouldn’t be dramatic to watch; that was if it worked at all. If it didn’t, Sally had no other ideas, short

of building a nuclear furnace. She screwed the cap back on the bottle, replaced it on a high shelf, then stripped off the gauntlets and apron and left the workshop. She closed the door behind her, slipped the mask down around her throat and took off the face shield. She tipped back her head and deeply breathed in the cool, damp air.

***

Don took Nobby’s shotgun and the box of cartridges from the Winnebago’s enger seat and got out. He listened for a few moments, trying to discern any sounds from within the foggy, clamped-down silence of the fields then he closed the gun’s barrels, and walked past the first cottages of the village and turned a corner into the square. There was no sign of anybody, but three of the road bandits’ motorbikes were still outside the Red Lion. He stood slightly to one side of the pub’s door and eased it open, pressing against it with his palm, until there was a six-inch gap. He listened for voices, but there was nothing; all he could hear was the blood pumping in his ears. He put his shoulder against the door while he held the shotgun in both hands, the fingers of his right hand covering the triggers, his left hand ing the barrel. He opened the door further, until he could see into the bar. There was the edge of the pool table, and other tables, none of them occupied. He went inside and let the door swing shut behind him. He realized he was gripping the barrel of the shotgun too tightly and he made a conscious effort to relax. Okay. So where was everybody? He lifted the bar flap and stepped through to the short, dim age which led to the rear of the pub. On his right were the narrow stairs. In front of him, at the end of the age, was the kitchen. The door was open; he checked and nobody was in there either. He walked back to the stairs and looked up. The first flight was short, reaching a tiny landing before dog-legging to the left. After pausing to listen again he climbed. A couple of treads creaked as he stepped on them and in his mind’s eye he saw the road bandits waiting for him at

the top of the stairs, their weapons pointed at him, ready to blow him away as soon as he turned the corner. He reached the first landing, pressed himself against the wall and peered around the edge. Guns pointed at him... None was. The top landing was empty. He climbed the second flight, allowing his guard to drop a little. It was when he reached the first floor corridor that he did hear something - the sound of breathing, slow and rhythmic. It caught, and then became a snore. It was coming from the first room on the right. The door was open, and when Don looked he saw Andy sprawled on his back on the bed. The landlord had been holding a glass, but in his sleep he’d let go of it and it was now on its side on top of the duvet, its remaining contents spilled. There was a bottle on the night-stand which had an inch of moonshine left in it. Don moved on. He checked two more rooms which were empty, although the duvets on the beds were rumpled. In the fourth room, he found Anna. She was sitting on the floor in a corner, her knees raised, her arms wrapped around her legs. Her hair was mussed and when she looked up at Don he saw that her lip was split and her right eye was clo, a bruise coming out around it. ‘What happened?’ She shook her head. ‘It does not matter.’ ‘What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? Who did this?’ She didn’t answer, and lowered her head. Don sat on the edge of the bed, facing her, pointing the shotgun at the ceiling ‘Was it Andy?’ he prompted. Anna didn’t look up. Her silence was answer enough. Don got off the bed, leaving the shotgun there yet still within reach. He squatted in front of her. ‘Let me take a look.’

As he reached out his hand, she drew her head back. ‘Please, I am fine. Do not make a fuss.’ Don sighed. ‘Where are the others? The road bandits?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They left hours ago. The older one, Studz, he followed the woman who lives in the woods. When he came back he stayed for a while, then went to find Kadrobus. Don, I think that woman has the pyramid.’ She was having trouble concentrating, and her gaze drifted sideways. She made an effort to refocus and straightened herself up a little. She said, ‘You must not worry about me, or the road bandits, or Andy. They are not the danger. Kadrobus is. I was an idiot to think he would help me. He only cares for himself. Concern yourself with him.’

38

When Sally returned to the lodge she found the kitchen door was open, and Larissa wasn’t in her bed next to the Rayburn. She stopped and listened, her internal alarm bells ringing. ‘Kadrobus?’ she called into the house. She moved further into the kitchen, leaving the door open behind her. She went into the hall. And then, as she looked into the sitting room, she saw him. He had his back to her and was staring into the heart of the wood-burner. Without looking round he said, ‘You lied to me about the pyramid. You knew where it was all along.’ ‘The pyramid is irrelevant,’ Sally replied, her pulse-rate rising fast. ‘I told you that.’ Kadrobus turned to face her. ‘If you don’t believe the pyramid has the power, then why not let me have it? Unless you know it still does have the power.’ Sudden anger sparked in Sally, the injustice of all this getting to her, this disruption to the life she had carefully constructed for herself coming apart at the seams, and regret for things she didn’t do which she should have done, engulfing her. ‘Give it up, it’s over!’ she said. ‘The pyramid is...’ ‘The pyramid is what?’ Whatever Kadrobus saw in Sally’s eyes, it betrayed her. A flicker of a glance towards the window was perhaps all it had taken, or the slightest psychic connection. Sally caught sight of Larissa out there, sniffing around the workshop. ‘Is that where it is?’ Kadrobus asked. Sally imagined the cogs in his mind interlocking as he came to conclusions. He said nothing further, and pushed past her. She followed him out to the workshop. Larissa saw him coming, and made herself scarce. Kadrobus yanked open the door, went inside and stood in front of

the acid bath, impotent, his fists clenching and unclenching. ‘What have you done?’ he said, and when he turned to Sally his violet eyes were hard and venomous, the core of his nature shown at last. ‘Something I should have done a long time ago,’ she told him calmly, although she felt anything but calm inside. ‘You moronic bitch!’ He moved too quickly for her to avoid his vicious backhander. The power of it sent her sprawling across the floor and for a few seconds she lost consciousness and when she came round she couldn’t recall where she was or why her face was pressed against a dusty wooden floor. Then she saw Kadrobus through the open workshop door. He’d put on her gauntlets and was tipping the contents of the acid bath onto the ground outside. When it was empty he threw the bath aside, crouched and picked up the pyramid. Holding it in both his gloved hands he brought it back into the workshop. He went to the sink, spun the tap and with the water that gushed from it he rinsed the acid residue from the artefact. Sally knew she was concussed. Her head was pounding, her ears were ringing and she couldn’t seem to focus her eyes. Blood dripped from her damaged nose. She laboriously pushed herself up onto one forearm as she tried to dispel the muzziness in her head. Kadrobus turned away from the sink and held the pyramid out towards her, as if he was offering her a prize. ‘Undamaged,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Your acid has left not one mark on it.’ The reverence with which he regarded it was clear; this artefact was legendary within their civilisation, and now he had it in his possession. All Sally could do was lay there and try to work out why she was having such trouble getting her limbs to work, as Kadrobus set the pyramid down next to the sink. He pulled off the gauntlets and came over to her. He bent down, roughly gripped her wrists and dragged her with powerful ease across the workshop floor towards the door. She stumbled to her feet and hauled back against him, but he was too strong, he was moving relentlessly and keeping her off-balance as he

walked backwards with her in tow. He dragged her past the patch of grass, already dissolved by the acid he had discarded there, past the log store and towards a yellow mesh security cage at the rear of the workshop, which she stored gas cylinders for welding. There was only one half-full cylinder of carbon dioxide-argon mix in it now, as new ones and refills were unobtainable. The cage door was unsecured, the padlock lost. There had been no incentive to replace it because after all there was no longer a Health and Safety Executive to check up on her, and no-one to steal the cylinder either. Still uncoordinated and with her thoughts sluggish, Sally couldn’t summon the wherewithal to resist as Kadrobus bundled her into the cage and shut the door. She fell against the upright cylinder, rocking it. Kadrobus jammed a short length of wood into the padlock hasp. Sally regained her balance and, with her fingers locked around the mesh of the cage, she glared out at him. Larissa had reappeared and was running around him, keeping her distance, and barking furiously at him. He ignored her. To Sally, he said, ‘You might yet acknowledge who you are, and what you came here to do. Think on that. But if you persist in opposing me and our warrior elders then the personal history you and I share will count for nothing, and I shall eliminate you. Think on that, too.’

39

Lil’Kat, Wolf and Spyder had found the village school. It looked like someone had been living there, though not recently. There were ashes in the fireplace in one of the backrooms off the main hall. Spyder opened cupboards and drawers, but without much enthusiasm. Leaving him to it, Lil’Kat explored the classrooms, of which there were four. In the first, the desks were still in place and there was a lesson on the whiteboard at the front. She walked further into the room, her Doc Martens crunching broken glass. Written on the whiteboard was something about the impact of global warming. LOL. Like that was going to happen now, seeing as there were no cars, planes or factories left to belch greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. BOLLOX had been scrawled across the whiteboard, smeared actually, in what looked suspiciously like shit. Lil’Kat smiled. That had been her reaction to school too. ‘This is a waste of time,’ Wolf said from behind her. She looked round. He was standing in the doorway. ‘Right,’ she said, distracted. Something outside had caught her attention. She moved closer to the window. Heading up the street towards the church was the bloke who’d come into the pub looking for Kadrobus. The bloke - what was his name? Don Carter, that was it - was carrying a shotgun. So, what was he playing at? ‘Hey,’ Lil’Kat called. Wolf was on his way out of the door. ‘Go on without me.’ ‘Whatever,’ Wolf responded. Lil’Kat grinned as she looked out of the window again. So Carter had come back for more, had he?

***

Don felt something hard press against the back of his head, and he froze. ‘What we’re going to do,’ the girl said, her tone reasonable and calm, ‘is play a little game of hide and seek. You know the rules. You hide. I seek. Just to give you a chance. Otherwise, I’ll have to kill you here and now. I can’t be fairer than that, can I?’ The barrel of the gun was removed from his head and the girl stepped in front of him. She was pointing the gun at him with serious intent. ‘What have I done to you?’ Don wanted to know. ‘You’ve been making trouble for us,’ the girl said. Don avoided looking at the small round hole of the gun barrel, which was two feet in front of his face. ‘How is that?’ he said, genuinely perplexed. ‘I’ve only met you once, and I had no argument with you. I was looking for Anna and Kadrobus.’ ‘If I say you’ve been making trouble, then you’ve been making trouble, okay? So first thing, I’ll have that shotgun off you.’ She extended her finger-less gloved hand in a gimme gesture. Don hesitated but really, there was no choice but to do what she demanded. ‘Lovely,’ she said as she took the shotgun, ‘that’s a good start.’ She held the weapon one-handed, holstered her own gun and snapped closed the barrels of the shotgun. She pointed it at Don’s chest. ‘Cartridges.’ He pulled the box from his jacket pocket and gave it to her. She smiled, and despite the situation it wasn’t lost on Don how pretty she was. ‘I reckon we’re all set then, yeah?’ Her smile dropped and she stepped away from

Don. ‘Get moving. You’ve got a three-minute head start.’ He broke into something resembling a jog and headed away from the church and back towards the village’s narrow side streets. There weren’t many places to hide in Levenby, but his chances were better there than in the other direction where there was only open countryside. It didn’t take long for him to start struggling and he had to slow to walking pace. This wasn’t going to be much of a contest. Behind him, the girl called out, ‘Don’t have a heart attack before I hunt you down, old man!’ Fifty yards further on and out of sight, Don stopped, out of breath, and leaned against a wall. He looked back along the empty street. In the distance, he heard the girl call again, ‘Two minutes!’ He pushed himself away from the wall, trying to the layout of the village and where there might be somewhere he could hide. As he reached a narrow side street, there was a shotgun blast. Slivers of brickwork showered him, one of them cutting his cheek. He dodged around the corner. It hadn’t been two minutes. Not even close. So much for playing fair. He could see, at the end of the street, the old village garage. At one time, petrol was sold there but now the solitary pump was a relic and the concreted forecourt had been overrun by weeds. The building’s main doors were shut and padlocked. Don hobbled on, expecting another shotgun blast and the pain at any moment but it didn’t come. He reached the garage and hid behind the rust-pitted pump. The girl had entered the street, carrying the shotgun at waist height. She wasn’t in any hurry and was whistling as if she was out on a Sunday afternoon stroll. She stopped when she saw the garage, and Don ducked behind the pump again, his stinging cheek touching its metal casing. With a trembling hand, he wiped sweat from his forehead, afraid that even that slightest of movements might give him away. The side of the garage was three metres away across the open forecourt. The girl

couldn’t fail to see him if he made a run for it. But then again, if he stayed where he was she was going to find him anyway.

***

Studz was on his knees at the top of the bunker ramp; his legs had given up on him. He was coughing violently, and what was coming up was blood and mucus, more than there had ever been before. Shivering, he crawled a few feet but it was hopeless. This was where he was going to die. He fell forward onto his face, his cheek grazing the cold, hard concrete of the bunker’s access road. And that was when he thought he heard the sound of a motorbike engine in the distance and getting closer. With an effort he raised his head, brought his vision into some kind of focus and saw the bike stop in front of him, and all that ed was the tread of the front tyre. The next thing he knew, Wolf had his hands under his arms and he was being effortlessly lifted. He tried to say something but his throat was clogged. He tried to cough up the blockage but he couldn’t even find the strength to do that. He was on his feet again, although he was staying that way only because Wolf was ing him. ‘I’ve got you mate,’ the big man said, and helped him onto the pillion seat of his Café Racer. He climbed on the bike himself. ‘You’re going to have to hold onto me, okay?’ he said over his shoulder. Studz understood, but he was having trouble getting his arms to do what he wanted them to. ‘Studz,’ Wolf persisted, ‘focus, mate. Let’s do this.’ Studz leaned into Wolf’s broad back and slid his arms around his waist. ‘All right then. Here we go.’

And he opened up the throttle.

40

After Don left, Anna didn’t move for ten minutes. A part of her didn’t ever want to move again... but it was time to resolve this. She got up, went to the porcelain bowl on the dressing table and splashed water onto her face. She found her flying overalls, folded in a drawer, and changed into them. She went downstairs where Andy was sitting at a table alone in the cold bar, hunched over a pint glass containing what looked like water. It didn’t seem likely that he was intending to drink so much more moonshine, but what did Anna know. He raised his head, his eyes bloodshot, his complexion grey. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked thickly. ‘I quit,’ she told him. She felt nothing for him. He had just been a sad footnote in this even sadder interlude she’d endured in the twenty-first century. She left the Red Lion and set out for Druids Field. Halfway along the road one of the road bandits, the big hairy one, ed her on his bike, heading back towards the village. His enger was the leader, the one Anna had heard called Studz. She stopped walking, but Wolf only glanced at her with ing interest, and he didn’t slow. Studz looked semi-conscious and was barely holding on. As she walked towards it, it seemed to Anna that the JU88 was a fragile piece of machinery, incapable of flying at all. She climbed inside the aircraft, pushed the ladder clear of the hatch, closed it and clambered forward. She settled herself into the pilot’s seat; it all felt so familiar. From habit, she moved to fasten her seat harness, but stopped herself. What was the point? She flipped switches on the instrument and gauges flickered into life. She made a few quick checks and everything was as it should have been. She thumbed a starter button and the starboard propeller spun falteringly. The engine spluttered, turned over once, twice more and then stalled. She made an adjustment to the fuel mix, tried again and this time, the engine burst into life.

The port engine started first time. She eased the throttle levers forward, nursing the engines to full power, as the airframe shook. She released the brakes, the aircraft rolled forward and she taxied it to the end of the runway. She pushed the throttles fully forward again, the engines roared and the JU88 accelerated, juddering along the uneven surface. She kept her hand on the throttles and her eye on the airspeed indicator, willing the needle to creep upwards. When she finally reached rotation speed she pushed the control column forward and the JU88’s tail lifted from the runway, the nose settling on the horizon, the perimeter fence and the low dune line beyond it. Moments later the rough ride ended as the wheels left the concrete. The aircraft cleared the perimeter fence, the dunes, and the wide, empty salt marshes slid away beneath it. She climbed to a thousand metres and levelled off. She looked out of the side window, and behind her, where she could see the triangular configuration of the airfield’s runways, taxiways and hardstandings and beyond them, Levenby village, a small cluster of houses in the middle of empty fields. She experienced a touch of doubt but she did not let it grow in her mind. She looked to the front again, at the horizon where only the grey sea met the grey sky. She glanced at the fuel gauges. Don had been right, of course. She wouldn’t reach home on what was left. She wouldn’t even get across the channel. But that didn’t matter anymore.

***

‘Nowhere to go, old man!’ the girl called. ‘You made the wrong choice!’ There was no escape, even though he was desperately trying to come up with a plan, any plan. One thing was for sure, he didn’t intend to die cowering behind the petrol pump like a whipped dog. In the absence of any other ideas, he was going to stand up. Confront her. Look her in the eye when she shot him. He started to rise when he heard the noise.

It was insubstantial at first, but it quickly built in volume. Aircraft engines. The JU88’s Jumos. He scanned the sky above the roofline of the garage until he saw it, a small black shape emerging from the fog bank enclosing the airfield, flying out over the bay. The girl was standing in the middle of the street, looking up at the sky too. It was an opportunity, and the only one Don was likely to get. But if he was going to act at all he was going to have to do it fast – the girl wouldn’t be distracted for long. Crouching to make himself a smaller target he broke from the cover of the pump and reached the side of the garage, just as the girl realised what was happening and got off a shot, which harmlessly peppered the roller shutter door, making a sound like grit being hurled against a tin bath. Don kept going, stumbling amongst the haphazardly discarded carcasses of dismembered vehicles behind the garage, until he reached the fence at the back where there was a gap in the wooden s, still there after all this time, an illicit shortcut he and Tony had often used. He squeezed through... and found himself in an alley running behind a short terrace of Edwardian houses. One of them was his old home. He bent over, rested his hands on his knees, and gave himself a moment to recover his breath and ease the stitch in his side. He heard the girl call him, and he judged that she was crossing the garage yard. It wouldn’t take her long to find the gap in the fence. He moved on, to the fourth gate in the weathered brick wall. He slipped through and closed the gate quietly behind him. He tried the back door, but it was locked. He cupped his hands against the window and saw the key in the lock inside – for all the good that was going to do him. There was no hope of breaking in, either. For one thing, the door and the window had been upgraded to tough double-glazed UPVC since the Carters had lived here, and for another, any noise he made would almost certainly alert the girl to his whereabouts. She had reached the alley now, and Don could hear her trying the first gate. He could move on, try another house, but if he messed up his timing she would be on to him. There was a flat-roofed kitchen extension built on the back of the house, and it was just below the window of Don’s old bedroom – and that window was open a

crack. When he was a boy he’d been able to climb out of the window, onto the roof, drop down to the coal bunker at the side and then onto the ground. He’d made the reverse trip on a few occasions too, not because he’d committed some misdemeanour and had been forbidden to leave the house, but simply because doing it had been an adventure, a challenge. The agility of his youth had long gone, of course, and the chances were good that if he tried that form of entry now he’d get himself stuck halfway, or do himself an injury. The girl opened another gate. ‘You can run but you can’t hide!’ she called cheerily. He was trapped in the yard. Leave, and he would either bump into her or she would hear him. Do nothing and she’d find him there anyway, within the next minute or two. So what was there to lose? He clambered onto the coal bunker and then onto the roof of the extension, one knee on the edge of the roof, his other foot still planted on the bunker, unable to find the impetus to boost himself the rest of the way. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the top of the girl’s head and her black bandanna. She had just opened the gate next door. He had thirty seconds, if he was lucky, and that thought provided him with the extra strength and focus he needed to push himself the rest of the way onto the roof. He crossed to the bedroom window. Another check behind him – the girl was opening the gate. She’d be through in a moment and then all she’d have to do was look up and she would see him. He eased the window fully open; there was no time to be graceful – he scrambled head first through the opening, trying to balance speed with stealth. He dropped to an untidy heap on the carpet and heard the girl rattle the kitchen door handle. He reached up, slowly pulled the window closed, and then sat with his back against the wall below it and waited, hardly daring to breathe. A few seconds later, he heard the yard gate bang against its frame as the girl left.

41

Lil’Kat was not in a good mood, and she let everyone know it by slamming open the door of the Red Lion. Don Carter had given her the slip. It should have been so easy to finish him off; she’d had him right there, almost in her sights, when that plane had distracted her. She’d carried on searching for a while, but the trail had gone cold. How could that old bastard have eluded her in a place as small as Levenby? But she’d get him eventually. There was going to be only one winner in her game. In the meantime, she needed a drink. Wolf had settled himself at his usual table in front of the unlit fire and had taken up his cards. Spyder, for once, wasn’t at the pool table. He was sitting at one of the bench seats beneath a window, sharpening the blade of his machete, almost lovingly, with a small carborundum stone. Wolf laid his cards. ‘Did you get him?’ Lil’Kat laid the shotgun on the pool table and stalked huffily across to the bar. She scooped up an open and almost empty bottle of moonshine that was there. ‘No, I didn’t get him,’ she snapped. She tipped back her head and with one hand on her hip she took a long drink. It was powerful stuff, and it began to work its soothing magic almost immediately. Wolf said, ‘Ain’t you gonna ask where Studz is?’ ‘Still out with the alien?’ ‘Try again.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘He ain’t out with the alien, he’s upstairs, dying.’ ‘Stop pissing about, Wolfie.’ ‘You want to explain it to her, Spyder?’

Spyder laid his machete across his knees and put the sharpening stone on the seat beside him. He signed to Lil’Kat, He’s right. Studz is dying. That cancer shit came back, big time. Lil’Kat kept her eyes on him for a moment, and then looked back at Wolf. ‘This ain’t happening,’ she said. She took another drink and stared into space while more alcohol seeped into her brain. Taking the bottle with her, she went behind the bar, through the door to the back and climbed the stairs. When she reached Studz and her room she paused at the threshold for a few seconds and then went in, leaving the bottle on top of the chest of drawers just inside the door. She sat cross-legged by the side of the bed, her face level with Studz’s, and just watched him. His eyes were closed, his complexion papery, his breathing shallow and uncertain. Dying, Wolf had said. Was that true? How had that come about so quickly? Lil’Kat had known Studz was sick, of course she had, but he was tough. The disease wasn’t going to finish him, no way. She said softly, ‘Are you awake babe?’ There was no answer. No reaction. She continued to gaze at him for another minute or two and then got to her feet. She collected the bottle on the way out of the room. When she got back downstairs she announced, ‘We have to get him a doctor.’ Neither Wolf nor Spyder had moved. ‘Good luck with that,’ Wolf responded. ‘Even if we could find one there ain’t nothing a doctor can do for him.’ Lil’Kat walked over to him, downing the last of the moonshine on the way. ‘I thought you were his best mate.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Then why are you giving up on him?’ She stood over him, intimidatingly close, but he didn’t look concerned. He cut the pack and dealt cards.

‘Before you mouth off,’ he said, ‘you’d best who brought him back here, while other people were out playing stupid games. No names mentioned.’ Lil’Kat squinted accusingly at him. ‘You’ve never liked me, have you Wolfie? You’ve always thought I’m some hysterical kid, right?’ His only reply to those questions was to shrug. Then he said, ‘So what do you want me to do, exactly?’ He was infuriating, but he was right. What could he do? What could she do? The anger and frustration erupted from her. She yelled ‘Fuck!’ and hurled the booze bottle at the fire. She missed, and the bottle smashed against the stone surround. Wolf ignored her outburst. Spyder had finished sharpening his machete and was studiously testing the quality of his work against the pad of his thumb. The blade drew blood. Lil’Kat ed herself against the back of a chair, her hands gripping it hard, her arms locked straight, and her head down. ‘The alien lied,’ she said quietly. ‘He was supposed to cure Studzy.’ ‘I don’t that being the case,’ Wolf countered. ‘He can shove this bloody pyramid thing where the sun don’t shine. We’re through with that.’ ‘Studz found it for him anyway.’ ‘Then he owes, doesn’t he? Big time.’ She went back upstairs, took off her boots and lay on the bed on top of the duvet next to Studz. After a minute or so of staring at the ceiling and listening to his brittle breathing she rolled onto her side and awkwardly crooked her arm across him.

***

He sits at the table in the kitchen as the afternoon grows dark. He heard Nethardia rattling the cage door a few times after he had locked her in but she had stopped now, sensibly realising that she cannot escape. The Pyramid of Life rests on the table in front of him. His hands are palms down, flat on the surface either side of it, and a candle stands in a dish behind it, its flame wavering sinuously in the faintest waft of air. He is mesmerised by the flame’s dull yellow light as it plays within the pyramid, refracted, distorted and amplified, creating flickering images, and he cannot tell whether they are real, imaginary, or something of both. But whatever they are, they draw him in. He lightly touches the side of the pyramid with a fingertip and runs it down the surface. Will his touch activate it? Will that yellow candlelight within begin to pulse blue? It must. He is a facilitator. That is why he is here. This is his mission. And yet, he has forgotten so much. They did their tests, and they chose him. He was one amongst thousands who possessed the power, the gift; but it could not be proven. So what if they were wrong? But then he begins to feel the stirrings of the power pulse within the scar tissue on his face. It does not last for long, and yet it is enough for him to know that he is as ready as he ever will be. He shivers. It grows cold in the kitchen. He goes out to the workshop and finds the tool he thinks he will need to break into the bunker; a pair of sturdy bolt-croppers. He must give Nethardia her due, she has her life on Earth well organised. With the cutters and the pyramid stowed safely in his rucksack, he leaves once more for Druids Field.

42

After Don heard the bandit girl leave the yard he waited, needing to make absolutely sure she wasn't going to return. He took the opportunity to look around the room - it had changed, of course, since it had been his. Who knew how many others had slept in here since he had? It was clear that the last occupant had been a young girl; there were small, stuffed animals on the shelves and on the bed there was a pink duvet cover which was mouldy in places. Where was she now? Had she been a victim of the orbs, or had she survived, perhaps alone, a wretched orphan begging in the streets, like the children Don and Anna had seen in Boston? He lay on the bed, the adrenaline subsiding, his physical exertions taking their toll. He stared at the ceiling, ing the model aircraft he'd suspended from it, and he drifted into sleep. He dreamed of a telephone ringing; the oldfashioned kind, with a real bell, and in the dream it kept on ringing, relentlessly. He opened his eyes, blinked and expected the dream to recede - and yet the phone was still ringing. He lay there listening to it, focusing on the sound. It was coming from downstairs. Half-light was coming through the window, and it had the feel of the dawn about it. Was it possible he had spent all night here? He climbed off the bed, and it wasn't lost on him that these events were mirroring those that had happened half a century ago. As he had then, he opened the bedroom door and stepped out onto the landing. He descended the stairs and at the bottom expected to see the phone in its alcove by the front door, but the hall was different; the door had been changed and the little telephone table had gone. He could hear now that the phone’s ringing was coming from the living room. He pushed the door open and although the sound grew louder, it was curiously muffled. There was a low oak storage unit with sliding doors set against a wall. He lowered himself to one knee, slid the doors open and there it was - the Carter's old mustard-coloured telephone, put away for some unknown reason with unused crockery and fat photo albums. It was inconceivable that the phone could be ringing, because its cord had been cut and coiled around its body. Don told himself he shouldn't invest in this hallucination, and yet he couldn't stop himself reaching for the handset.

He held it to his ear. ‘Tony?’ And Tony answered, from within the white noise far, far away, in his twelveyear-old voice. ‘See? I was right,’ he said. ‘It was something to do with the Druids. So much for you and your navigation idea, you berk!’ Don pressed his fist against his forehead and closed eyes. Tony went on, ‘I know Don, I know, but don't beat yourself up any more than you already have. The only place I’m still alive is in your head. I'm haunting you, and you don't need it. I'm not coming back again, not even through the pyramid. It's time to let me go.’ A tear trickled down Don's cheek. He said, his voice trembling, ‘If I'd come out to the field when you asked me to...’ ‘It would have been too late. I was already dead by then.’ Nothing else followed and Don thought Tony had gone, but then, after a moment and even more faintly, he said, ‘I'll see you sometime... you and me again. The boys’ll be back in town.’ The sentiment an echo from that old Thin Lizzy song. The static faded to silence and a few blue sparks jumped across the bare wire ends of the phone cord, before they, too, disappeared. Don unlocked the kitchen door and went out into the yard. He flipped open the lid of a wheeled plastic refuse bin there and dropped the phone into it.

***

When she awoke, she found that her arm was still stretched across him. He hadn’t moved during the night either, and was still lying flat on his back, his

arms straight along his sides on top of the duvet. Lil’Kat remained still for a few moments, blinking the sleep from her eyes and studying the side of Studz’s pale face. Beneath her arm, his chest rose and fell erratically and almost imperceptibly and she could hear his breath rattling feebly in his lungs as he exhaled. She got up, feeling grimy from having slept in her clothes, but that wasn’t the main concern that was circling in her mind like a beady-eyed, malevolent crow. She opened the curtains. Early grey daylight. The bikes down by the war memorial. No-one about. She heard the creak of a floorboard out on the landing and a deep, murmuring voice. She glanced back at Studz and then left the room. Wolf and Spyder were standing at the head of the stairs. It was clear they had been discussing something, or more accurately, it would have been Wolf doing the talking and Spyder the listening. ‘No change,’ she said in reply to the unvoiced question on their faces. Wolf said, ‘When he goes, we’re moving on.’ Lil’Kat looked at Spyder, to gauge whether he’d agreed to this. He cast his oneeyed gaze downwards. ‘Well, he ain’t dead yet,’ she stoutly pointed out. ‘Just so you know,’ Wolf said. ‘Do I get a say in this?’ ‘Yeah. You can come with us, or stay here, or do whatever you want.’ Lil’Kat looked away, her eyes settling on a framed print on the wall, of some old-fashioned hunting scene. Blokes in red coats, a pack of beagles milling around the feet of the horses. She felt the muscles around her mouth tighten. She pulled her Browning 9mm from its holster, ejected the spent thirteen-round magazine from it onto the carpet, took a fresh one from the breast pocket of her denim jacket and snapped it home with the heel of her hand. Still regarding the picture of the snobby, fox-killing twats she said, ‘What I want

now is to show them ETs that us humans ain’t gonna be pissed about. Slaves and masters? I don’t think so. I’m finding that Kadrobus first, then I’m going after that other one, the woman in the woods.’ She turned away from the painting, feeling the energy of vengeful resolve. ‘You coming Spyder?’ They rode out to the old nuclear bunker on the airfield, which as far as Lil’Kat was concerned was as good a place as any to start looking for the alien, since it was where Studz had last seen him. They stopped at the top of the wide concrete ramp, their engines running. Studz’s Bonneville was there where he’d left it, and Lil’Kat felt sad at the sight of it, knowing he would never ride it again. She turned off her engine and dismounted. Spyder followed suit and they made their way down to the big, riveted steel doors at the bottom of the ramp, Spyder bringing the shotgun Lil’Kat had liberated from Don Carter. A path had been trampled through the brambles to the smaller access door set into the right-hand larger one. It was open, the chains that had secured it severed, and a pair of bolt cutters had been left on the ground beside it. Lil’Kat peered into the darkness, the weak daylight only reaching a short distance inside. ‘Hey!’ she called. Her voice echoed, and it suggested deep and unexplored labyrinthine chambers. Her imagination conjured up images from fairy tales of subterranean trolls and other mythical demons, and the ed nightmares from her childhood of the monster she’d been convinced lurked beneath her bed, just waiting there to reach up with its scaly claws to grab her and drag her down into its hellish lair. Unfeasibly warm air billowed out at them but despite its temperature, Lil-Kat shivered. She’d placed a hand flat against the dew-coated face of the door and now felt a vibration through it, powerful enough to cause her to instinctively pull her hand away. Spyder looked at her questioningly. Tentatively she placed three fingertips back on the steel. The vibration was still there; artificial in its steadiness, like the hum on an old phone landline when a call had been disconnected. ‘Can you feel it?’ she asked Spyder. He touched the door.

What is it? he signed. ‘Haven’t a clue,’ she said. And then the ground shook; it was the mildest of tremors, and it only lasted for a few seconds. We need a light, Spyder signed. ‘Yeah, maybe,’ Lil-Kat replied without much enthusiasm, the idea of going down into that dark place having rapidly lost its appeal. Bring the bikes down. Get one of these big doors open. Ride right in, Spyder suggested. ‘That could be a mission and a half, dude,’ Lil-Kat said, looking up at the massive corroded hinges and the edges where they closed on each other, welded permanently together by rust. Spyder continued to regard her, waiting for her to take the lead, to get this thing done. ‘Look, I’m scared of the dark, okay?’ she snapped. She prided herself on being hard. She’d faced down brutal men, including her own drunken, physically abusive father, and she’d fought her way out of situations that would have left others whimpering and helpless and begging for mercy. But somewhere deep inside her, the frightened little girl she had once been still cowered trembling beneath the blankets willing for the monster to take her away. For all her street-wise cunning and honed survival instincts, she couldn’t overcome her fear of the dark. She couldn’t shoot it or stab it or smash it in the face. It was indestructible. Spyder stared at her. ‘Lights, yeah,’ she said, and took a deep, steadying breath, getting a grip, ‘we’ll come back with lights.’ They returned to their bikes and started their engines. Spyder sounded his horn, attracting Lil’Kat’s attention. Smoke, he signed, and nodded in the direction of the bay. He was right, there

was smoke, smudging the grey sky, a tall chimney just visible above the dunes in the distance. Lil-Kat had overheard Andy telling Studz that an old man lived out there alone. We could get lights there, signed Spyder. ‘All right,’ Lil-Kat said. ‘Let’s take a look.’ Anything to delay having to go down into that lightless bunker, alien or not. They turned off the airfield perimeter road and into some sort of junk yard behind the house. Lil’Kat drew her Browning from its shoulder holster, marched up to the door and hammered on it three times with the butt of the pistol. ‘Anybody home?’ she called. Nobody answered. She shouted, ‘Come on, open the door! We ain’t gonna bite. We’re doing our bit, checking up on the elderly of the district.’ She beckoned for Spyder to give her Nobby’s shotgun. He’d brought it with him from the Red Lion and had stowed it, sticking out awkwardly from one of his bike’s panniers. He handed it over. Lil’Kat moved to a window and smashed it with the shotgun’s stock. There was no double glazing in this old place to thwart her. She knocked out the remaining shards of glass, which fell to the floor inside, then stepped back and said to Spyder, ‘In you go dude.’ He clambered over the window sill and less than a minute later he opened the door. ‘Any sign of life?’ Lil’Kat asked him. He shook his head and stood aside to let her enter. As she ed him she gave the shotgun back to him. In the hall, she called out, ‘Hi Honey, I’m home!’ and she kept moving cautiously, her gun at the ready. She looked in the kitchen. Nobody there. The blood stains on the table interested her for a few moments though. She moved on to the sitting room and took it all in. ‘What is this place? A museum or a pigsty? Spyder, check the rest of it.’

She went further into the room after he’d gone, picking up objects, cursorily examining them, carelessly discarding them. She picked up an antique brass telescope, its case tarnished. She held it to her eye and looked through it, out of the window and towards the sea, although there was nothing out there except a wall of fog. She heard a muffled noise from somewhere towards the back of the house, Spyder moving about. She put down the telescope. The old man was standing in the doorway. Wearing a combat vest, unbelievably. He had levelled the shotgun at her. The one Spyder was meant to be taking care of. ‘Git out of my house,’ he said. Lil’Kat was careful to remain absolutely still. ‘I don’t have any quarrel with you,’ she said. She’d left her Browning on the sideboard when she’d picked up the telescope. Three steps and she could reach it. But she’d be dead after the second of those. Looking into his eyes, she didn’t doubt that the old geezer would do it. He said, ‘The front door’s that way, little girl,’ and he tipped his head in its direction. ‘Stone me,’ she said, ‘there are some feisty old bastards round here. It must be the sea air. Is Spyder dead?’ ‘You mean the blind skinny piece of shit who came with you? Probably. Last time I saw him his skull had been caved in with a Louis XIV candlestick, and he dint look none too lively.’ Now that just wasn’t playing fair, Lil’Kat decided. She’d taken a couple of steps closer to the old sod now, on the pretence that she was going to do just what he wanted, which was to leave. In a street-fighter move she’d made plenty of times before, she swung her arm back and in one fluid movement pulled her small knife from its sheath strapped to her calf and thrust it into the geezer’s stomach. He didn’t see it coming and he was too slow to avoid it. He fired the shotgun blindly and hit nothing, but the blast and the flash disorientated Lil’Kat in the confined space of the hall. Some of the shot had hit her too, stinging her

forearms. The old man stumbled through the kitchen door, clutching his stomach. He’d dropped the shotgun. Lil’Kat thought she might have been blinded. She swore, hard and long. With her eyesight recovering but her ears still ringing she got her gun and followed the old man out through the kitchen. He’d unlocked the door, escaped through it and was staggering across the dunes towards the salt marshes. ‘Murderer!’ Lil’Kat yelled at him. He turned to face her, acceptance, defiance, in his eyes. He sank to his knees in a shallow pool of water. Fury rose in Lil’Kat, but she held it down, made it work for her. She took her time. She took aim. The old man closed his eyes.

43

Lil’Kat stood a little way back from the pyre she’d built for Spyder; the man and his machine. The heat of the flames was hot on her face as she watched the curling black smoke from the burning bike tyres tumble skyward to mingle with the fog, and she inhaled its bitter stench. She lowered her head for a few seconds, a final gesture of respect for Spyder before she turned away from the pyre. As far as she was concerned, the ET could stay down in that bunker, doing whatever weird alien stuff he was doing. She wasn’t going back there. The truth was, she had no clear plan for what she was going to do next, beyond letting Studz and Wolfie know about Spyder. And that was her vague focus, right up until she ed the farm along the road back to the village, when she saw the distant figure of a man working in the far fields, driving what looked like fence posts into the ground with a sledgehammer. It was the preacher, she was sure of it. She slowed, stopped and watched for a while, making sure. Then she turned in the road and headed back to the farm track, crossing the ditch on a crude bridge made from old railway sleepers. She trundled along at not much more than walking pace, keeping the engine revs low so that she didn’t alert the preacher to her presence. She rolled into the farmyard, scattering chickens, and stopped in front of the house, ready for anyone who might come out to investigate. No one did. She parked her Harley out of sight behind one of the brick outbuildings and went back to the farmhouse. The front door was unlocked and she went inside. It was quiet, and the place felt empty of anyone else. She was impressed. This was the sort of place she’d seen in old country lifestyle glossy magazines; all oak-beamed ceilings and wooden floors with rugs and a solemnly-ticking grandfather clock at the end of the hall. There was a crucifix on the wall. She went through to the kitchen which was just as grand. It was bigger than the whole floor area of the poky housing association flat she’d grown up in. A lot of money had been spent in here, on the hand-crafted pine cabinetry, the polished

granite-topped counters and the top of the range appliances and kitchen gadgets – most of them useless now. Propped up in a corner by the microwave was a small, white, heart-shaped cushion, embroidered with the names Jay and Chiara. Now wasn’t that sweet. There was fire in the range and it warmed the kitchen. Lil’Kat took off her denim jacket and checked the cupboards and a fridge that must have got its power from solar s or something, and found home-baked bread, sliced meat, pickles and cider, stored in old-fashioned stone flagons. She made herself a thick sandwich of the meat and pickles, not realising until she started how hungry she was. She washed it down with the cider and waited for the preacher.

***

The Winnebago was where Don had left it, parked just outside the village. He drove along the airfield road. His intention was to find Sally to find out if she really did have the pyramid as Anna had told him, and whether she had managed to destroy it. And where was Kadrobus? That was the other vital question. But as he approached the junction on the perimeter road where it branched into the forest in one direction and out along the bay in the other, he saw thick black smoke drifting across the sky from somewhere near the coast guard station – and it wasn’t coming from Nobby’s chimney. For one irrational moment he thought that perhaps Anna had turned back and had crashed – again. But when that possibility seemed unlikely he was forced to think of other scenarios, probably involving Sally and Kadrobus. He turned onto the bay road, and that was when the Winnebago finally ran out of petrol. So he walked the rest of the way to the coast guard station. What the hell was burning here? Rubber, that was part of it. The acrid stench of the smoke told him that much, but there was something else underlying it. It was a smell Don recognised immediately, because he’d come across it many times before in the towns and cities he’d travelled through – the fumes of burning flesh. The bonfire was dying, more smoke than flame now. Don could make out the blackened shape of a motorcycle frame within it and a body propped against it.

The skull was unrecognisably charred and grinning at him as if it was hugely enjoying itself. He moved on and as he approached the house his sense of unease grew even stronger. The back door was wide open. He stopped by the yard wall and hesitated. Not too far away, on the edge of the salt marshes, there was something lying in one of the shallow pools of black standing water. He removed his glasses, wiped the condensation from them with the sleeve of his shirt, and put them on again. Now it was clear that what he was looking at was a body. He made his way over to it. It was Nobby, and he was lying face down in the pool, the back of his head a bloodied mess of bone and brain matter - an exit wound. Exhaling a long, miserable breath, Don got down on his knees, with difficulty, and rolled the old man over. The bullet hole’s entry point was round and black in the centre of his forehead and his eyes were open, milky in death. Don looked out to sea, and listened to gentle waves rolling onto the shore, and the song of the reed buntings across the desolate salt marshes. He had no intention of leaving the old man out there to be picked over by the seabirds until he was nothing more than a skeleton and a few scraps of windblown rags, but even though he wasn’t particularly heavy, moving him was an awkward and undignified manoeuvre, and harder work than Don would have imagined. His back bent, his feet sinking into the soft, sandy mud, he dragged Nobby out of the pool and through the gap in the wall into the sand-drifted yard area of the coast guard station. There was a small annexe built onto the side of it, its wooden door rotten and its single, tiny window grimy and almost opaque. There was an upturned rowing boat outside, its blue paintwork faded and flaking. Don stepped inside. Even with the door open the interior of annexe was gloomy and it was full of junk: fishing nets with cork floats draped on the walls, rusted implements unidentifiable in the shadows, oil lamps on cobweb-draped shelves. Don scanned the space and saw what he was after - a battered and rusty garden spade, left forgotten in a corner. By the time he’d made a start on digging Nobby’s grave, rain had begun to fall, the water running cold down the back of his neck. In end, Nobby’s final resting place wasn’t the traditional six feet under, or anywhere near it. Don simply did not have the stamina to dig deep. He hadn’t been able to find any gloves and blisters had come up on his hands. He stood in the rain at the head of the mound.

He had no idea whether or not Nobby had been a religious man, and even if he had been Don wasn’t, and he didn’t know any words to say over the grave. So he settled for simply rest in peace, Nobby. The inside of the house had been trashed. The old man’s things had been thrown everywhere, delicate ornaments, antique carriage clocks swept onto the floor, pictures torn from the walls, tables overturned. The fire was still alight, just. Don added a couple of logs to it and sat staring into it until the flames took hold, and, after a while, he felt some warmth seep through his damp clothes. Wearily, he tidied up the mess, even though it was a pointless thing to do. Nobby was beyond caring about it, and the whole effort was half-hearted. After an hour or so, he felt as if he’d done as much as he could. He brewed tea and stood looking out of the window. The rain had stopped and fog, even denser than before, had rolled inland from the sea. He tried to imagine how it had been for Anna, as her fuel had finally run out, the JU88’s engines spluttering and dying, the plane gliding down to the cold North Sea. He’d failed her, that was the long and the short of it. He’d brought her back from the dead and he hadn’t worked out how to deal with that. His morbid thoughts were broken when he noticed a pulsing light reflecting off the fog bank so faintly that at first he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t imagining it. He wiped condensation from the window and looked more closely. Its source seemed to be inland, behind the house. He went outside and, standing on the track, he looked back towards the airfield. That was where the light was coming from, and as he watched its pulsing it synchronised with a growing throbbing in his head. Numbness crept along his fingers, beginning at their tips, then spreading rapidly into his hands, his wrists and his forearms. He clenched and unclenched his fists, attempting to drive the numbness away, but it made no difference. He didn’t want to look at his hands for fear of what he might see. The nausea came too. Not again. Not now... Then the intensity of the light in the distance lessened and within three pulses it had faded completely; with it went the numbness in Don’s arms, and the nausea.

He stood in the cold, enclosing fog. Nothing else happened. But what if something else, someone else, had regenerated and they were out there now, lost and bewildered, just as Anna had been? He waited, expecting to see someone walk out of the fog mantle - but no one did. He went back inside.

***

Around mid-morning the preacher returned from the fields, his boots crunching on the gravel in the yard. Lil’Kat waited behind the kitchen door and when he came in she smashed him on the back of his head with a rolling pin. It was a pantomime comedy moment really, but it did the trick. He went down and stayed down. She tied him to a chair with nylon rope she found in an outhouse. Wound it round him tight, several times, and pinned his arms behind him. With her feet up on the rugged pine table in the centre of the room she drank cider until he woke up. It was a sluggish business. He groaned a lot to start with, before he finally opened his eyes. ‘How’s the head, preacher-man?’ Not that she cared at all about how his head was; it was just something to say, to get his attention focused on her. Once he was fully back in the land of the living he glared at her, but didn’t reply. Lil’Kat went on, ‘You had it coming after you pulled that fancy Kung Fu shit on me in the church. I wasn’t going to give you the chance to do that again. Where’d you learn that anyway? A man of God like you?’ He said, rather groggily, ‘If you’re going to kill me, you might as well do it now.’

Lil’Kat grinned. ‘Good heroic Hollywood line, dude. I like your style. Sort of.’ She looked around the kitchen. There was definitely a woman’s touch in here. She couldn’t see this guy baking bread, making jam and cross-stitching cutesy stuffed heart pillows. But then again, you never knew. ‘So where’s the missus then, Jay? Chiara, is that her?’ ‘None of your business.’ ‘We could wait for her.’ ‘It’ll be a long wait. She’s with her sister down south,’ he relented. ‘All week.’ Lil’Kat took another drink from the cider flagon, keeping her eye on him, weighing up her options, deciding where she wanted to jump with this situation. She said, ‘My man is dying. Hasn’t got long. He’s got the religion, like you, so I thought, when he’s gone you could say the right words for him. Send him on his way to his maker.’ ‘Go to Hell,’ the preacher-man said, as he continued to glare at her. ‘Now that ain’t very Christian is it?’ Had she expected any other response? Not really. But it had been worth trying her luck. She swung her feet off the table, any nice feelings that might have been stirring for this guy evaporating. Back to business. ‘Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,’ she told him. ‘You and I are going to pay a visit to that other ET, the woman who lives in the woods. And then we’ll revisit the relationship between me and you.’

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Sally sat in the corner of the cage, her knees drawn up to her chest, her hands tucked into her armpits for warmth. All night. She had spent all night out here. She’d thought she wouldn’t last until dawn, but although it was cold, very cold, the overcast skies had at least kept the temperature above freezing. Larissa, bless her soul, had stayed with her. She was lying a few feet from the cage, her head resting between her paws. She hadn’t taken her eyes from Sally. ‘Larissa, go inside,’ she said, not for the first time, hearing the defeat in her voice and not liking the sound of it. During the night she had heard the lodge’s kitchen door open and then slam shut, and seconds later the sound of the workshop door opening. Another minute had ed and then she’d heard footsteps on the gravel path, going away from the workshop. Many times during the long dark hours she’d wondered what her chances of being rescued were. Not high, she decided. None of the villagers or farmers she knew would come. The locals respected her privacy and they rarely called. Don, then. But she’d asked him to leave, and even if he hadn’t done so yet, why would he come back to check up on her? Larissa lifted her head, briefly wagged her tail and whimpered expectantly. She wouldn’t go anywhere, of course, even if she had understood, and that brought a sad but grateful smile to Sally’s lips. Growing increasingly uncomfortable, she decided she had to keep moving. It was the only defence she could offer against the insidious chill. She pushed herself to her feet, clutching the mesh sides of the cage to steady herself, surprised at how much her leg muscles had stiffened. She vigorously rubbed her hands together and blew into them, and rolled her head to the right and then to the left to loosen her neck muscles - then stopped. Her head was level with the top of the gas cylinder, and its regulator with the two pressure gauges, looking like Mickey Mouse’s ears, she’d always thought. But what had caught her

attention was the spanner, a bullnose key that fitted the square spigot on the regulator and allowed the cylinder’s contents to flow. She’d lost a few of those keys in her time, so she had formed the habit of leaving them in situ. She’d forgotten this one, and she hadn’t noticed it when Kadrobus had shoved her into the cage because it was attached to the rear of the regulator. She wiggled the spanner free of the spigot, and, holding one end of it, she ed it through the mesh of the cage. It reached the end of the piece of wood securing the door, but it was difficult to get much leverage. Jiggling the door at the same time, she used the spanner to push against the length of wood, and she was getting somewhere; the wood was sliding out, millimetre by millimetre. But then she lost her grip on the spanner and it slipped out of her cold, numb fingers and dropped onto the ground outside the cage. Swearing, she crouched and reached through the mesh, but her fingertips only grazed the tool. Larissa came over and sniffed it, giving Sally a moment’s hope. ‘Pick it up Larissa,’ she whispered urgently. She held her hand palm open, hoping the gesture would convey her meaning, but all Larissa did was lick it. ‘This. Give me this,’ she poked the spanner with her fingertip, but it only served to nudge it a little further away. Larissa, her short tail wagging ten to the dozen and thinking it was time for a game, picked up the spanner and ran off a short distance with it. She stopped with it in her mouth and looked back at Sally. Oh no, Sally thought, her heart beating hard. ‘Larissa, bring it back to me!’ she said in a harsh whisper. The dog was undecided. She could have done anything. But after a moment she trotted back to Sally and dropped the spanner into her hand. Sally could have cried. ‘Good girl!’ Making sure she had a firm grip on the tool this time, she knocked the piece of wood the rest of the way out of the hasp and escaped from the cage. She gave Larissa a big hug before going back to the lodge. She peered through the kitchen window and saw a burned-out candle on the table. As she’d suspected, Kadrobus

had gone. She drove through the forest and out along the airfield perimeter track and was about to turn right at the junction when she saw Don’s Winnebago not far from the coast guard house, parked beside the sand banks. She pulled up behind the vehicle. She left the Land Rover’s engine running and cautiously approached the open door of the motor home. ‘Don?’ She stepped inside, and it took her seconds to discover that it was empty. She drove on to the coast guard house and found Don sitting on the yard wall, staring out across the salt marshes with a shotgun lying across his thighs. She sat beside him. ‘What happened?’ she asked, taking in the smouldering fire. ‘One of their own I guess,’ Don said. ‘Nobby must have taken him out before they murdered him.’ ‘Murdered him? Oh God...’ she looked over her shoulder at the freshly-turned mound of sandy earth in the enclosed area behind them. ‘And that’s..?’ ‘Yes,’ Don said, ‘that’s him.’ Sally faced front again, digesting that information. Then she asked, ‘And the German woman?’ ‘Anna.’ Don looked skywards. ‘She decided she wanted to go home after all.’ ‘But...’ ‘She wouldn’t have reached the coast of mainland Europe. She knew that.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ Sally studied her feet, her boot heels resting against the wall. ‘I’m sorry for it all.’ ‘What happened to you?’ Don asked, regarding her battered and no doubt bruised face.

‘I got the pyramid back,’ she told him. ‘That’s the good news. The bad news is, I couldn’t destroy it. And the even worse news is, Kadrobus now has it. He took it using some force.’ She gingerly touched her nose, which had stopped bleeding some time ago but was still sore. Don said, ‘Where’s he taken it?’ ‘I don’t know. Back to the airfield I expect. I was on my way there. To do what, I don’t know... probably to bear witness is all.’ ‘Is that it, then? How long before he regenerates the warriors?’ She looked up into the low, grey sky. A flock of birds flew out to sea. A shortlived breeze bent the marram grasses on the dunes. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she could hear a low-frequency hum, as if she was standing beneath high-voltage electricity cables. She couldn’t pin-point where it was coming from, though; it seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere. ‘I think he might have already started,’ she said. ‘Then we have to do what we should have done in the first place.’ Don picked up the shotgun from his lap. ‘No,’ Sally said, placing a hand on his arm. ‘If he’s already activated the pyramid it’ll be too late to stop the momentum, even if we could kill him.’ ‘So we just wait for it to happen. We’re powerless.’ ‘Maybe not.’ She sighed. ‘Since you decided not to listen to me and leave, we have a possible solution. The only solution that can stop this. You’ve been regenerating things, but you haven’t been doing it consciously. I think there might be a way you can control this power, this gift. To undo, as well as do. I think there’s a way we can stop the regeneration of the warriors in its tracks.’ She pushed herself off the wall and picked up a piece of driftwood. ‘What are you doing?’ Don asked. ‘This is what’s going to free you, and rid us of the threat of the elder warriors,’ she told him, and with the point of the piece of driftwood, she began etching

patterns in the sand; intricate swirls and intersecting geometric shapes. ‘What are you talking about?’ Sally continued to draw, adding to the patterns, changing them here and there. ‘These symbols have been ed down through countless generations. Nobody knows how or why they’re supposed to focus the power.’ ‘Supposed to?’ ‘There’s no guarantee.’ Don leaned forward, his forearms on his knees, and looked more closely at the patterns. He said, ‘They’re the same sort of thing as on the pyramid. And I’ve seen them somewhere else, too... a school trip to a museum... paintings on ancient stones...’ ‘The Druids,’ Sally said. ‘They copied these patterns from the pyramid. They must have sensed the power in them and perhaps they thought that if they came up with the right sort of ritual they might be able to tap into that magic to some extent. Whether they ever did or not, who knows.’ She sat back on her heels and studied her efforts. The patterns were incomplete and sketchy at best, but she knew she would be able to recreate them more fully and accurately with pen and paper. Don slid off the wall and ed her, as she got to her feet. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Supposing I play along with this. How are these symbols going to help me - how did you put it - focus my power?’ She said, ‘I’m going to make you... I suppose you could call it a suit of armour that includes them.’ ‘Of course you are.’ ‘I know how that sounds - crazy, in other words - but you’re going to have to trust me on this.’ She stabbed the stick into the sand, right in the middle of the symbols, and looked up at the sky again where more birds were flying out to sea. Had they felt

the need to escape from something? And the humming sound, was that ever so slightly louder? Sally thought it was. She said, ‘We need to get started right away.’

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He has no sense of where these shadowy workings and tunnels lead and is guided only by his instincts, and the subtle magnetic tug of the pyramid. He cups it in both hands, like a chalice, and holds it close to his chest. It pulses with a slow and steady blue light and although it is not strong it provides enough illumination for him to find his way. The tunnel he is in is wide and appears to be solidly constructed, but it comes to an abrupt end. At this point there are no more concrete walls and ceilings, only mining s holding back the earth. There are the remains of excavations here; tumbled rocks and mounds of soil amongst abandoned digging machines. He clambers through and across this detritus until there is no further to go. The tunnel workings have ended in a landslide, a cave-in where no s have been erected. This is not what Kadrobus expected, and he is unsure for the moment how he should proceed. His gaze traverses this landscape until he spots something; the hard edge of an object protruding from the earth. He steps up and holds the pyramid close to it so that its blue light can reveal more. The object seems to be cylindrical, only slightly lighter than the earth it is buried in, and the exposed portion is as long as his forearm. He scoops earth from around the object. It quickly becomes clear that it is part of a much larger structure, and that to uncover it, he must set down the pyramid. Dare he do this, because if he does, will the connection he has cultivated be broken, and the light extinguished? He decided he must take the chance. He carefully places the pyramid on the ground and removes his hands from it, although he holds them close for a few seconds. The swirling, sparking blue light in the pyramid does not diminish. He finds a spade left by workmen a short distance back in the tunnel and sets about the task of digging out his find. He

works quickly, a fevered driving of the spade into the earth time and time again. He sweats and his breathing becomes laboured, but he does not stop until he has shovelled all the soil aside and has uncovered the object. It is a bulky seat, as large as a throne, but there is nothing ceremonial about it. It is functional, designed for command and control. It is made of a dark material that is pitted through great age, and scarred by extreme trauma. Networks of pipes connected to complex junction boxes and s run from it but go nowhere; they have been severed. Multi-faceted crystal formations adorn it, on the armrests and around the headrest. With the blade of the spade, Kadrobus scrapes away a small area of the patina from the seat. It reveals glass, and so it is confirmed. He has reached the heart of the crash site. How much more of the spacecraft survives, crushed and fragmented amongst the rocks and earth down here? It doesn't matter. He is less concerned by what has been, than what will be. He discards the spade, picks up the pyramid and sits on the chair. It was not made for the human form and is not a good fit for his body, but any discomfort is inconsequential. He holds the pyramid in his lap and gazes into its centre where gradually images form from within the maelstrom of blue lightning. They like things seen through filmy nets of mist that reveal and hide, reveal and hide until they are more there than not there; parts of arcane machinery, the hinted-at corners of huge internal spaces - and of tall, thin beings that look out at him, and called to him wordlessly, we are ready, bring us back. His hands are transparent and as one with the pyramid, and, as he watches, the transparency creeps along his arms. Blue light from the pyramid jumps across to the crystal formations on the arms of the chair and infuses them. They glow and spark, and Kadrobus detects the enormous power of regeneration building through and around him, the power of resurrection. He cannot help himself. He begins to laugh, as the faint patterns on his body become energised too, blue light surging through them, glassy veins pulsing with energy. He has given over his body to the power of the ancients and he is prepared to let it consume him completely, if that is what it wishes.

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Sally was sitting at the kitchen table and on it were piles of what looked like many hundreds of small glass beads. Beside her, drawn on large pieces of paper with a marker pen, were copies of the patterns she had begun to draw in the sand out at Nobby’s place. ‘Make coffee, if you want,’ she said to Don, picking out a bead from the handful she held, and placing it on the pattern. ‘Not acorn coffee, is it?’ ‘No. Why?’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. He asked her if she wanted one. She said she didn’t. He made his coffee in silence, brought it to the table, sat opposite her and watched her at work. The patterns she had created were astoundingly intricate – a network of overlapping triangles, circles, crescents and curlicued, triple-armed symbols; there were spirals formed at the ends of flowing elliptical strands interwoven with mazes of precise, repeating geometric shapes like elaborately rendered spokes within wheels. All of it formed a coherent whole, like an electrical circuit diagram. He sipped his coffee and said, ‘You’ve got everything you need? I mean, the patterns are complete?’ She was concentrating hard on her task and didn’t seem a hurry to tell Don what she was up to. He couldn’t hold back the What are you doing? question any longer. ‘Making sure I have enough,’ she told him, and added another bead to the pattern.

‘I’ve seen these before,’ he said, ‘in that shack in the forest.’ Briefly, she raised her eyes to meet his. ‘You’ve got it.’ He continued to drink his coffee and watch her as she selected the beads she needed, picking each one up, inspecting it with utmost care, and then either choosing it or discarding it in favour of another, like a jeweller choosing pearls for a neckless. After a while, she sat back, scrutinized her handiwork, and said, ‘Okay. I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be. Take your shirt off.’ Don blinked at her. ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘It’s time to decorate you.’ She got to her feet. Bemused, Don stood up too. He unbuttoned and took off his shirt and hung it on the back of the chair. As he stood there feeling selfconscious Sally turned it round so that it was facing outwards and she had room to work. Don sat back down. Sally stood in front of him, sizing him up, as if she was a sculptress and he was a lump of stone and she was wondering what wonderful statue she could carve from him. ‘Hmm,’ she said, turning her head slightly to one side. ‘Now what?’ ‘You’re going to need a shave.’ Don fingered his fledgling beard, which he had allowed to grow over the past week or so. ‘Your body hair! I can’t apply adhesive to that undergrowth.’ ‘I know what you meant,’ Don said, suitably chastised. ‘I don’t suppose you have a razor with you?’ ‘No, it wasn’t top of my list of priorities when I packed for the weekend.’ ‘Just as well I thought of this scenario then.’ From the pocket of her smock she produced a rechargeable electric shaver. When

Don stared at it then at her, she explained, ‘It’s mine.’ She switched it on and it buzzed like an angry insect. ‘This’ll be a tougher job than it’s used to on my legs, but let’s see.’ As she brought it close to his chest Don said grimly, ‘I’m rooting for it. I don’t want you to have to resort to waxing.’ After she had completed the task and clippings of his body hair lay in Don’s lap, she set to work, humming a tune Don didn’t recognise. It used a strange scale of notes and he wondered if it originated from her planet, and thought to ask, but didn’t want to break her concentration. She copied the symbols and patterns, drawing them on his torso, chest, back and arms, using a felt-tip marker. Then, with the paintbrush, she applied adhesive to the lines, a few inches at a time, before carefully positioning the beads. ‘How strong is the glue?’ Don asked, holding himself rigid. ‘It’s home-made,’ Sally told him. ‘And yes, it’s strong. I’ve picked up a lot of skills over the years.’ ‘That’s one weird skill. Do I need to know what’s in it?’ Sally smiled but didn’t meet his eyes. ‘No.’ Don was happy with that. Just the smell of the stuff was off-putting enough. She worked in silence for a few minutes. Don asked, ‘Why don’t you stick these on your own body? You’re the alien. It shouldn’t have any trouble working for you, should it?’ Sally placed a bead in the centre of his chest. She was close enough for him to smell her warm, minty breath. She said, ‘I told you. I wasn’t much more than the mission techie. The other two had the talent... the magic quirk in their genetic make-up that meant they could tap into whatever it is the pyramid needs to do its thing. At least that’s the theory, as best as we could ever test it.’ ‘Like me.’

‘Yes. Like you.’ Minutes ed, the only sounds in the kitchen were the ticking of the wall clock and Sally’s ethereal humming. Larissa was curled up asleep in her bed in front of the Rayburn, unconcerned by what her mistress was doing. Don said, ‘You never got round to telling me about Tony.’ Sally didn’t reply, totally absorbed in her work, and Don wondered whether what he’d said had even ed with her. But then she spoke. ‘I wasn’t in the district when the JU88 was shot down during the war, and I had no idea the pyramid was on board. I thought it had disappeared for good. So then you and your family moved to Levenby, and in 1976 Nobby Culdrose told me he had found it, and had given it to Tony. I knew it was only a matter of time before the three elements came together – you. The pyramid. Druids Field – and something happened. It was just afterwards that the airman on the motorbike materialised. He was... mentally disturbed. He would have been even the first time he existed.’ She paused while she gently pressed a bead into place at the centre of a spiral she’d drawn on Don’s shoulder. ‘During the night I went out to the control tower, thinking I'd be able to retrieve the pyramid, but Tony had already come back for it – and the airman had found him. Tony tried to get away, across the dunes, but the airman caught up with him. That guy was manic. Out of control. I was too late to save Tony, but let’s just say justice was done.’ It quickly dawned on Don what she was staying. ‘Hold on, you’re saying you killed that guy?’ ‘There wasn’t an alternative.’ Don saw Sally in another light now. She was full of surprises. ‘Jesus. Why didn’t you go to the police?’ ‘Imagine how complicated it would have been. And airman from the Second World War who shouldn’t have existed, and I would have had some explaining to do - how I managed to overpower and kill him with my bare hands, for instance.’ ‘And just how did you manage that?’ Don asked warily.

The side of Sally’s mouth twitched. It was the beginning of smile but it didn’t develop. ‘I might only have been the mission technician, but I picked up a few tips in alien warrior school.’ Don thought about all the questions the police had asked him following Tony’s murder. When was the last time he’d seen Tony? What had been said? Did Don know why Tony had been out on the sand banks at night? ‘So what did you do with the body and the motorbike?’ Sally said matter-of-factly, ‘I buried them in the forest. Quite close to the lander, actually.’ Don’s mouth was dry. ‘When did this happen?’ he asked. ‘I mean, at what time of night?’ ‘I don’t ,’ Sally said, ‘sometime during the early hours. Why does that matter?’ Don hesitated, deciding whether or not to share his thinking. But since secrets were being revealed here he felt compelled to. He said, ‘That night the phone rang, but it didn’t wake my parents. I don’t think it was supposed to; it was meant for me alone. It was Tony. He said he was calling from the airfield but that was impossible...’ ‘...because there isn’t a phone box there,’ Sally finished for him. ‘Right.’ ‘And it was during the early hours you got that call.’ ‘Right again.’ He told Sally about how he’d hidden from the bandit girl in his old house, had heard the phone ringing again and about the conversation he’d had with Tony then. ‘So not only can I pluck people and planes and motorbikes out of thin air, I can also talk to ghosts. I could get a job as a circus freak.’

Sally raised her eyes briefly from her task to meet his. ‘If this works, that career path will be closed to you. You’ll be Joe Normal again.’ ‘If I knew what Joe Normal was,’ Don said.

***

Studz had little recollection of how he came to be back in his room at the Red Lion. He vaguely ed clinging to Wolf on the back of his bike, and then the big man carrying him upstairs. And now, as he regained consciousness, he saw Wolf sitting on the chair opposite the bed, watching him. ‘Welcome back to the land of the living, mate,’ he said. Studz didn’t believe he was going to remain in the land of the living for very much longer. He didn’t seem to be able to draw any air into his lungs without them feeling as if they were catching fire and spreading the agony through every molecule of his body. Wolf eased himself out of the chair, which was barely wide enough to contain his bulk. He winced at the discomfort of his injured thigh. He took a bottle of water from the night stand, removed the cap and offered it to Studz, who found there wasn’t the strength in his fingers to grasp the bottle. ‘No worries,’ Wolf said. He placed his hand behind Studz’s head to it, then brought the rim of the bottle to Studz’s lips. He had a raging thirst, but he couldn’t swallow properly, he couldn’t swallow enough. The action initiated a weak coughing fit. When it subsided, he lay back on the makeshift pillow and closed his eyes. Wolf waited. When he felt he was able to speak, Studz said, ‘Look after the girl,’ and it was a major effort just saying those four words.

Wolf knew who he meant. Of course he did. ‘You think she needs looking after?’ Studz swallowed hard. The pain was brutal. ‘Get her away from here.’ Swallow.‘This place is poisonous. It’ll kill her.’ Studz looked up into his friend’s face, and his expression was saying, like I give a shit. He inhaled deeply, and said, ‘I ain’t leaving you. Not ‘til it’s over.’ ‘Go now, mate. Please.’ Wolf looked away, towards the window, as if seeking guidance from out there. Then, simply, he held out his hand. Studz clasped it clumsily with both his hands as best he could, and their eyes held fast. He loved this man.

***

Don shifted his uncomfortable buttocks. There weren’t many more beads left on the pattern on the table. ‘You need to keep still for a little while longer,’ Sally told him, ‘I’m almost done.’ ‘Now I know how the Mona Lisa felt,’ Don said, ‘and she still managed to raise a smile.’ Sally positioned the last of the beads on Don’s back. She stood back and studied her work with a critical eye. Don said, ‘Will I muster?’

‘It looks good, but the proof of the pudding...’ ‘How will we know?’ ‘Whether it works or not? We test it.’ ‘All right. But how?’ ‘We need to go outside.’ ‘If you say so. But can I at least put my shirt back on?’ ‘No. The patterns need to be exposed to conduct the energy.’ Conduct the energy... She didn’t give Don the opportunity to ponder on that any further. She headed out through the door and he followed. After the close warmth of the kitchen the outside air was a slap of cold, and goosebumps popped up on his skin within seconds. Sally led him past the workshop and towards her dog cemetery and a sick realization dawned on him. ‘Hold on... you’re not going to get me to resurrect one of your dogs?’ Sally glanced over her shoulder. ‘They’ve earned their places in heaven. I’m not going to bring them back.’ ‘Then what are you going to get me to do?’ They’d reached the treeline. Sally stopped and said, ‘Countless creatures have lived and died in these woods. I want you to deliberately regenerate one.’ ‘I don’t...’ ‘You’re already doing it unconsciously. If what I’ve done works you’ll be able to do it consciously. That’s the point of the symbols.’ Don shook his head. ‘How am I actually supposed to do it, though?’ He swept a hand across his body. ‘These aren’t making me feel any different - just uncomfortable.’

He felt the constrictiveness of the adhesive across his skin, tugging at it when he moved, like scabs that pulled when stretched. ‘I’m going to prime the pump for you,’ Sally said, ‘in a manner of speaking. Although it’s been a while since I’ve tried anything like this, and like my attempted s with the mothership it didn’t work then. I told you, I was the mission knob-twiddler. I don’t have any of the important talent.’ ‘But we’re on a roll.’ She looked at him steadily. ‘Yes, we’re on a roll. Close your eyes.’ Don hesitated. ‘Go on,’ Sally prompted. He did as he was told, trying not to think about how cold he was and how he couldn’t help but shiver. He felt Sally place two fingertips against the centre of his forehead. He heard a breeze ruffle the trees, which may or not have been the result of what was happening, and despite himself, he reopened his eyes. Delicate sparks of blue light were dancing amongst the branches. He watched them, fascinated, and then one of them, as if it had a mind of its own and had suddenly noticed him, leapt from the trees and landed in the centre of his chest like a stray ember from a crackling log fire and instantly it lit up every glass bead that was arranged there as if they had been plugged into a power source. He felt nausea building, and the numbness which began in his fingertips and spread across his hands and along his forearms. Giddily, he sank to his knees. Sally lowered herself with him, without removing her fingers from his forehead. ‘Keep your eyes closed, Don,’ she said, ‘think of a creature from the woods... it doesn’t matter what.’ After a moment she prompted, ‘What are you seeing?’ ‘It... it’s...’ ‘Concentrate on just one,’ Sally encouraged. He couldn’t focus on anything though. He was feeling too unwell and cold. But then, warmth flowed from Sally’s fingertips through his forehead and into his mind. He stopped shivering and a jumble of images crowded in, of creatures from the woods; birds of all kinds, a fox, a badger and a hedgehog, all parading in front of his mind’s eye. One by one they faded away, except the hedgehog. It became clearer until he could see every detail of its spiny back, its tiny nails, its

black eyes, looking at him. Sally removed her fingertips and Don felt a warm weight in his hands. He opened his eyes and looked down. The hedgehog was sitting in his palms. ‘This is unbelievable,’ he said, awestruck. ‘I saw this. I felt it in my head.’ Sally gave him a knowing smile. ‘It’s only half of what you have to be able to do. Now you have to send it back to where it came from.’ ‘Kill it?’ ‘It’s already dead, ?’ The hedgehog seemed quite content to sit there in Don’s hands, looking around, its nose twitching. It made no attempt to escape - and it was far from dead. ‘This feels wrong,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I can. I don’t think I want to. Can’t I just let it go?’ ‘If you can’t send a hedgehog back to where it belongs, how are you going to manage it when you’re faced with a hundred alien elder warriors?’ She had a point. ‘But what do I do?’ ‘Imagine him dissolving into light, returning to that other dimension.’ ‘All right,’ he said, feeling hugely uncertain. ‘Can you do that thing with your fingers again?’ ‘Not this time,’ Sally said. ‘The training wheels are off. Show me what you can do.’ She waited, watching him closely. He held the hedgehog up to the level of his face. ‘Sorry little fella,’ he said to the creature, ‘it was short but sweet.’ He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and felt again the crackle of unknown energies as their subtle powers washed through him. The experience lasted for just a few seconds before stillness and silence fell. Don felt the hedgehog disappear from his hands. He opened his eyes to find his palms empty.

Sally said quietly, her expression serious, ‘There you go. Easy, isn’t it?’ And Don thought that if this was some sort of miracle, if he really was now able to control what he did and did not materialize, then where did it leave him? What happened now if he imagined bringing his parents, or Tony, or any random person who had died - would it make their regeneration happen?

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The hedgehog’s manifestation had taken its toll on Don, as Sally had known it would. She didn’t know how much time they had left before Kadrobus was able to start regenerating the elder warriors, but she had to allow Don this short period of recuperation. He was going to need all the energy he could muster. He was asleep in the chair by the fire, a blanket draped over his shoulders. It had slipped a little, so Sally gently tugged it back up into position, aware of the patterns of crystal beads that were stuck to his body. If just one of them were to dislodge it would destroy the integrity of the whole and stop them functioning. He stirred, but he didn’t wake, and a tide of emotion washed through her. It was as unexpected as it was powerful, and she had to dab away the tears that welled up. Resting on her haunches she watched him for a few moments, while Larissa watched her from her place by the fire. Then suddenly the dog snapped her head round, as if she’d heard something, and looking towards the window she growled. Sally went through to the kitchen and looked out across the garden, eerie will-o’-the-wisps gathering around the outbuildings and the wind-turbine tower. Larissa had come out too and stood at the door, expecting to be let out to investigate this new threat. Sally opened the door and the dog ran out. And now Sally could hear it. The sound of a deep-throated motorcycle engine somewhere in the distance. It may not have meant anything, but to her in her highly sensitive state, it felt like a threat. She went back inside and hurried up the stairs to the loft room and out through the small door to the antenna platform on the roof. She stood at the rail beneath the big angled parabola antenna and looked out across the treetops as she listened again for the sound. And there it was, louder, closer. Through the high branches of the pines and the leafless silver birch she could see short stretches of

the road which ran along the coast from Druids Field. She could see where it ended at the junction, half-a-mile away, where the rough track cut through the forest. And there was one of the road bandits, the girl, distinctive in her black bandanna and blue denim jacket. Sally couldn’t make out much detail from that distance but what she could see made her pulse race. Jay Adeyemi, his hands bound behind him, was being jerked along by a rope tied to the girl’s motorbike. They were traveling at little more than walking pace, but Jay was struggling to keep up and maintain his balance. He stumbled and almost fell. They moved out of sight behind the trees. Back in the living room Sally roughly shook Don awake. There was no time to be gentle. ‘We have to leave,’ she said urgently. It took him a few seconds to get his bearings. ‘Why? What’s happened?’ ‘One of Kadrobus’s thugs is on her way, and I don’t think she’s planning to visit for a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake.’ She wasn’t going to tell him the bandit girl had Jay. It was information that for now he didn’t need to know. She just wanted to get him moving. Less than two minutes later they were in the Land Rover. Sally offered a silent imprecation for the ECU not to fail again, and it didn’t let her down. The engine started. She engaged gear and moved off, conscious that the girl and Jay could arrive at any time. ‘She’s looking for me,’ Don said. ‘She thinks she has a score to settle.’ That might have been some of it, Sally thought, but she kept quiet and pulled out onto the forest track. Don said, ‘If she’s coming this way we’re going to run straight into her.’ ‘No we won’t. There are advantages to knowing this forest inside-out.’ Sally swung the Land Rover through a gap in the trees. It was the start of an overgrown trail she hadn’t used for years, not since a bad storm had damaged the forest and she’d come out there on a logging operation.

‘Hold on,’ she said, ‘this is going to get rough.’ The Land Rover rolled with the canted ground, long grass slapping its underside, the all-wheel drive working hard, the trees crowding in on both sides. Sally drove on for a couple of minutes before stopping. ‘You’ll be able to find your way from here,’ she said. ‘Keep following the trail. It’s a quarter of a mile at most before you come out on the coast road.’ She unclipped her seatbelt. ‘Where are you going?’ Don said, sounding alarmed. ‘Back.’ ‘Why?’ She took a moment before she looked across at him. ‘Because the girl has Jay,’ she said. Don stared at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that back at the lodge?’ ‘Isn’t it obvious? If I had, I wouldn’t have persuaded you to leave, would I?’ ‘You’ve still got to persuade me not to go back with you right now.’ She said, ‘It’s tough, but Jay isn’t your responsibility. I’m going to handle it. You have a bigger job to do. It’s what you’ve been preparing for this past few hours, and that bandit girl and Jay are a distraction we can’t afford.’ ‘A distraction?’ Don said, his voice rising with incredulity, and Sally saw behind his eyes the war he was waging with himself. She swivelled in her seat so that she was facing him. ‘Yes!’ she insisted. ‘You have to go. Now. I’ve brought you this far, now you have to go the rest of the way on your own and finish it. You know this, don’t you?’ She knew she was talking to him like he was a child; her maternal instincts were still there. He looked ahead, out through the windscreen, and he didn’t answer. Sally

repeated herself, more forcefully. ‘Don, don’t you?’ Suddenly decisive, he released his seatbelt, got out of the Land Rover and walked round the front of the vehicle to her door. He opened it. ‘Don’t take any prisoners,’ he said, and his face was a mask Sally couldn’t interpret.

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Despite her fears, and what she’d told Don, Sally couldn’t be certain that the bandit girl had stopped at the lodge. She had to proceed on the basis that she had, though, principally because the track led nowhere else except deeper into the woods where it eventually dead-ended. What lent weight to her suspicion was that she could hear Larissa barking inside the house, a sure-fire early warning. She stayed within the cover of the trees, such as it was, wishing for the comprehensive concealment of summer foliage. She made her way around the side of the lodge to the garden at the rear, moving from tree to tree, stepping carefully through the dead bracken. She reached the back of the workshop and, peering round a corner, she assessed the scene. Jay was on the ground by the greenhouse, on all fours. He looked exhausted, all the fight knocked out of him. The road bandit girl had tied the rope binding him to the concrete sun-dial and she’d found the wheeled aluminium step ladder in the workshop and brought it outside. She took a long drink from a stone cider flagon, swayed a little and called, ‘Hey! ET lady! Are you out there?’ Her voice echoed in the forest and she scanned the treeline and Sally pulled back behind the workshop. She wondered whether she’d made any sound, or whether the girl was simply trying her luck. ‘I’ve got some entertainment for you,’ the girl continued, her voice slurred. ‘Come on out. You get a front row seat. What I have for you today is a good oldfashioned lynching. How about that?’ There’s only her, Sally thought, and she’s half-cut. Although she did have the advantage of a gun. She needed to think about how she was going to handle this without endangering Jay any further. But she didn’t have the luxury of time. There was a rear entrance to the workshop and she slipped stealthily inside the

building, moving quickly past the store and the storage tanks to the front of the building, knowing exactly what she needed to do. She checked the meters on the wall, seeing with relief that the batteries had enough charge, because if she’d had to run the generator it would have attracted immediate attention. She started the bioethanol still pumps which were quiet, almost noiseless, in fact - and she disabled the pressure release valve. After spending a few moments satisfying herself that the needle was beginning to climb, she left the workshop. The girl had pushed the step ladder up against the wind turbine tower and was standing back. She tipped the flagon to her mouth, found there was no more drink left and flung the jar aside. It bounced heavily and rolled a short distance across the grass. ‘Anyway, it’s your loss,’ she called to the trees. Sally distanced herself from the workshop, drew level with the greenhouse - and then she trod on a dry twig. Its snap was an unforgiving, amplified report. She froze. Jay looked up and the girl turned round. Her hand was on her gun, she looked confused and time seemed to slow. A motorbike turned in off the forest track. The rider, a heavily-built bearded guy, stopped and got off his machine. Larissa was barking frantically inside the lodge. ‘I knew she was around here,’ the girl said. She had her gun out now and, grinning, she pointed it at Sally. ‘Wolf, you bastard, what are you doing here?’ He limped across the garden towards them. ‘Somebody’s got to keep you under control you daft cow. You told me you were coming out here, ? Where’s Spyder?’ ‘Dead. That hobo who lives in the house on the beach got him. And I got him.’ Her eyes narrowed as her mind switched to a different track and she said, ‘What about Studz?’ ‘He’s hanging on while you’ve been out and about playing silly buggers.’ ‘Yeah, well, since you’re here I’m going to need a hand. Keep her covered while I do this.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah, really, Wolfie.’

Shaking his head with resigned indulgence he trained his gun on Sally. The girl quickly untied Jay from the sun dial and aimed her gun at his head. ‘On your feet.’ Jay looked up at her. He said, ‘You might as well shoot me right here.’ His voice was roughened but calm. ‘You’re climbing that ladder,’ the girl told him, and tipped her head in Sally’s direction, ‘or she dies in a bad way. Perhaps we’ll follow the lynching with a witch burning. Want that on your conscience?’ After a few beats Jay struggled to his feet and made the effort to stand straight; he was more than a foot taller than the girl. ‘Are you going to let her do this?’ Sally said to Wolf. ‘It don’t make no difference to me,’ he replied, and spat on the ground. He was ten feet away. Sally calculated how long it would take her to reach him, and she thought about what she was going to do when she did - if she did. The girl roughly shoved Jay towards the ladder. He stepped on the first rung and, unsteadily, began to climb, the aluminium frame shaking beneath his weight. His tied hands meant he couldn’t hold onto the side rails and he couldn’t maintain his balance. He slipped, and fell against the rail. The girl was right behind him and thrust the barrel of her gun between his shoulder blades - a little encouragement to keep going. Sally cast a glance in the direction of the workshop, willing the pressure to build in the still. If it didn’t blow within the next minute then Jay was going to be twitching at the end of the rope. He’d reached the small platform at the top of the ladder where he stood with his head bowed and his eyes closed. Sally could see his chest rise and fall. The girl ed him. She stood behind him, cut a length of the rope with her knife, looped and tied one end of it around his neck and the other over one of the tower’s iron stanchions. She cinched it tight. ‘It’s show-time,’ she called, in a parody of an old-fashioned carnival barker, and descended the ladder.

Sally couldn’t wait for the still to blow. She had to act, and right now. With a yell that felt as if it had torn the lining of her throat she dropped her shoulders and charged at Wolf and two things happened simultaneously; the still exploded with shattering percussive force, and Wolf fired his gun. Sally expected a bullet to slam into her body, but it didn’t come. She rammed into Wolf. Maybe he’d been thrown off balance by the explosion and his wayward shot, but he stumbled backwards and tripped and fell against the sun dial with Sally on top of him. Her face was inches above his and she was looking into his open, surprised eyes as his consciousness faded away. He’d smashed his head on the sun dial and his blood was leaking into the grass as bits of wood from the dismembered workshop rained around them. With her ears ringing, Sally rolled off Wolf and in the same movement scooped up his gun which he’d dropped and which was laying by his open hand. Up on one knee she aimed at the girl who was cowering at the base of the ladder, her arms covering her head, still clutching her gun. The two women locked eyes. Sally’s fierce thought was, if she brings that gun to bear, I’ll shoot her. And the girl was considering doing just that, weighing up the odds, Sally could see it. Sally rose slowly to her feet and didn’t take her eyes from the girl, nor did she allow the gun to waver. ‘Drop your weapon on the ground and go,’ Sally said, and there was a world of anger contained in those words. There was smouldering defiance in the girl’s eyes but she did as Sally told her. With the gun, Sally continued to track her as she walked to her motorcycle. She swung her leg over the saddle, thumbed the starter button and blipped the throttle. ‘I’m coming back for you, that’s a promise,’ she said, and with a prolonged wheel spin she rode away, out past the lodge and into the forest. Sally dropped Wolf’s gun and ran towards the ladder. Jay’s situation was precarious. He was teetering on tip-toes on the platform and the whole thing wobbled with his every movement and was likely to topple at any moment. Sally hauled the ladder back into a stable position, climbed up to Jay and used

the retractable knife she always carried in a pocket of her body warmer to hack through the rope securing him. She helped him down the steps to the ground. She asked him if he was okay and, rubbing his wrists, he told her he was. The shock was still in his eyes and Sally felt guilty about leaving him but she had no choice. She’d left Don to his own devices for too long as it was. She paused as she ed what was left of her workshop. The roof had mostly gone, as had the front wall, and inside were the twisted and smoking remains of the still. It would have been easy to slide into regret and self-pity about what she’d done, but she forced those feelings away. She simply didn’t have time for them now. She let Larissa out and with the dog at her side she jogged along the track and out of the forest. The ground shuddered and the barely audible background hum that she’d been picking up rose in intensity until she could feel it vibrating in her bones.

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A path had been cleared through to the bunker’s steel door, the brambles slashed back, the coils of barbed wire cut, the Danger – Keep Out sign thrown to one side. A set of bolt cutters lay on the ground, and the smaller door set into the main one was open. Don paused at the threshold, holding up Sally’s Coleman battery lantern and allowing its light to push back the darkness, which seemed to possess a consciousness: cold, emotionless, and waiting. He stepped inside and paused again, listening, but there was only the silence of dead decades. He moved on, descending the ramp which levelled out to a wide tunnel, its floor, walls and roof constructed from reinforced concrete, the dusty, damp smell of it permeating the stale air. He heard a faint rumble from far ahead, like distant thunder, and a second later the floor trembled for just a few seconds. It was the mildest of quakes but it was strong enough to shake cement dust free from the roof, the particles settling on and around him like snow on a winter’s night. He waited, his breathing unnaturally loud in the returned quiet. Then came another noise from somewhere deep within the subterranean complex. It sounded like a cry of anguish, but it could just as easily have been one of ecstasy. He moved further along the tunnel and found evidence of construction. Corridors branched from the main thoroughfare where there would have been control rooms, monitoring stations, stores and dormitories where dozens, possibly hundreds, of personnel would have lived and worked in their self-sufficient world for months on end, insulated from the nuclear hell which would have been unleashed at ground level. Those deeper levels had never been completed. There was scaffolding here, and steel joists; a small bulldozer, its paintwork pitted with rust. A dumpster. There was a portable works cabin, and there were the human details: a donkey jacket draped on the handle of a spade; a row of steel lockers with the workmen’s names printed on small, mildewed cards inserted on the doors.

D. Hughes. Nick Cuthbertson. M. Jackson. Everything abandoned, and in a hurry. Another tremor began to build, increasing in strength until it shook the floor so violently that Don lost his footing and fell hard against the wall. There was a crack like a gunshot amplified ten-fold, and the roof above the works cabin split open and a whole section of reinforced concrete dropped six inches, followed by a rain of loose earth. Don flattened himself against the wall, and didn’t take his eyes from the rift, anticipating the collapse of the roof. With his back against it he edged along the wall, away from the rift, but the floor bucked, he lost his balance and dropped to one knee, banging it painfully. Two metres behind him, the floor cracked and opened up, as if something beneath it was punching its way free with tremendous force. The tunnel split apart. The roof fell in with a roar of tumbling masonry and an avalanche of concrete, reinforcing steel mesh, ing girders and earth, crushing the works cabin like a bug beneath a heel. The tremor faded away. Don coughed in an effort to clear his lungs of the dust which filled the air all around him. It was in his hair and it covered his jacket and coated the lenses of his glasses. He removed them, blew away as much dust as he could and replaced them. He had dropped the lantern when he’d fallen. It had bounced away and was lying on its side perilously close to the edge of the fissure - but it was still working. On his hands and knees, he crawled towards it. If there was any weakness in the floor, a void beneath it, then it could collapse under his weight. But going any further without the lantern would be impossible. Closer now... touching distance... a few more inches... and he grabbed its carrying handle and pulled it away from the edge of the fissure. He could see now that the gap extended across the whole width of the tunnel and was at least three metres wide. Even if he could somehow traverse it, there was now no way back to the surface. The tunnel was completely blocked. He backed away from the precipice and when he thought he was at a safe distance, if there even was such a thing, he inelegantly pushed himself to his

feet, most of his muscles protesting at the indignities they were being forced to endure. He held up the lantern, its light filtering through the rapidly settling dust. Further along the tunnel where the earthworks fell away into darkness there was a faint halo of blue light which was pulsing slowly, like the measured breathing of a slumbering monster. He took off his jacket and shirt and discarded them. He looked down at himself, at the patterns of crystal beads that Sally had so precisely attached to him. As far as he could tell they were all still in place, but niggling doubt worried at him. What had happened when he’d materialized and dematerialized the hedgehog seemed fanciful and whatever power he’d been able to tap into then seemed to be no longer accessible to him. But what choice did he have other than to go forward and face Kadrobus? His options had narrowed to a single point, as if he had been destined for his life to come to this. Whatever scenarios lay ahead for him, escape was unlikely to be one of them. ‘All right old son,’ he whispered with grim fatalism, ‘into the valley of death.’

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He switched off the lantern and set it on the ground. There was no longer the need for its light. As he slid down the scree slope at the end of the tunnel workings the blue light grew stronger, so strong that he had to shield his eyes from its intensity. It dominated the way ahead. Its source was a sphere many metres across that was slowly rotating, and it was as if it was sentient and waiting for him. He had time to draw a single, sharp breath before the sphere expanded with the velocity of an explosion, filling the tunnel and engulfing him. He involuntarily cried out as he anticipated instantaneous death but if he did die there was no pain. When he opened his eyes, the earthworks had gone, and he was standing in a tube-like corridor, its sides perfectly smooth, unmarked and shining with blue, translucent light which pulsed along the walls to the rhythm of a slow heartbeat. The spacecraft was coming to life all around him, and from somewhere deep within it came the bass hum of alien machinery powering up. He cautiously followed the featureless corridor as it curved to his right, until it ended in an opening. He stood at the threshold and stared. What was before him was so vast he could scarcely process its dimensions. It was a spherical chamber, a cathedral that fell away from him, soared above him and stretched out on either side. It was reforming, becoming whole, even as he watched. It was rising from the crushed and broken pieces which had plummeted at supersonic speed into the marshy ground that had been here three thousand years ago. Around its walls there were platforms and upon them dozens of pyramids, identical to those in the derelict building in Darkenridge Forest and at the centre a raised, circular dais fifty metres in diameter, on which was seated Kadrobus on a megalithic throne that looked as if it had been crafted from a single block of glass. He was holding the pyramid in his lap. He was still in human form but the pyramid’s rapidly pulsing blue light had suffused him and the chair he was sitting on, and it had blurred outlines. At the centre of the

pyramid was a sun-like core of brilliance; forks of blue lightning sparked from it, one after another after another, flashing indiscriminately in every direction like some crazed lawn sprinkler that instead of distributing water was spraying out energy. Kadrobus slowly rose to his feet; he staggered, recovered his balance and stood in front of the chair. He raised the pyramid aloft and tilted back his head, which was enveloped in sparkling light. He swayed, and Don saw that his breathing was laboured, just as his own was. The alien air was poisoning them both. As the bolts of blue lightning emanating from the pyramid repeatedly struck the walls of the chamber and the transformers lined against them they shimmered blue, absorbing the energy, and their front faces began to dissolve. Tides of crystal granules cascaded from them and the first of their occupants began to emerge. They unfolded themselves and stood imively on the platforms in front of their pyramids. Don could only see them as thin humanoid outlines, silhouetted against haloes of blue light. It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe, and Don dropped to his knees. He closed his eyes and tried to summon the feeling he’d conjured up in Sally’s garden, the sense that he could control this thing, that for some arcane reason he had been given the gift to be able to influence it. He attempted to visualize the scene before him gone, as he had with the hedgehog, but it was like being tied to a railway track with an express train bearing down on him, and willing it not to be there. It couldn’t happen. It was all too big, too immediate, too real for any kind of belief to secure a foothold, and no number of glass beads stuck to his body were going to make any difference. He gasped in another shallow breath of the toxic atmosphere and his vision contracted at the edges. Kadrobus was on his knees now too. The air might kill him within minutes, but would that stop what was happening? Don didn’t think so. This process had a momentum of its own now. The elder warriors that had regenerated and transformed slowly turned their obscured heads towards Don, as if suddenly sensing his presence, and his intentions. He felt vulnerable and insignificant, like a small insect trapped in a jar. With a sudden and intense ferocity that made him cry out he felt the sheer, unrestrained aggression of their combined willpower lasering into his brain, a blast of psychic energy which was attempting to fry his mind and leave him

imbecilic and useless. There rose in his mind the chorus of a hundred alien voices, an ululation of hatred and pure sonic violence whose resonance vibrated with such destructive frequency that it threatened to split his head apart. He clamped his hands to his ears, an instinctive reaction that had no effect. But even as the spacecraft continued to regenerate around him, its walls and its structures and its systems reforming from energies summoned from other dimensions, the air began to become more breathable as more of the elder warriors transformed from alien to human and needed an oxygen-nitrogen atmospheric mix. The surging, hot mental onslaught didn’t abate, but although it was melting his physical resilience the killer blow did not arrive; it seemed the alien warriors had directed their full arsenal of telepathic fury at Don but had found it wanting. They had encountered a barrier they could not breach. Whether through the genes that had given him the power to manifest, or because of Sally’s glued-on beads, or through sheer blind luck, or a combination of any of those, Don was holding the alien warriors at bay. For now, his mental castle walls were steadfast. He took his hands from his ears and crawled towards the base of the steps which led up to the dais. Kadrobus knelt upon it in a state of ecstasy as the blue energies continued to pulse from the pyramid, his head tilted back, his body trembling and dissolving into the light. The strength draining from Don with every small, heavy movement, the elder warriors pushing, pushing, pushing to overcome him, he reached the top of the short flight of steps. The pyramid, in Kadrobus’s outstretched arms, was within touching distance and it was all Don could see at the end of his narrowing field of vision that was being crushed and constricted by the psychic force of the elder warriors. He lunged and seized the pyramid. His and Kadrobus’s hands were now locked around it, in unison, as if it was a prize that had finally been won. The alien’s eyes snapped open and he stared into Don’s, first with shock, then incomprehension and finally with fury, and all of this within three seconds. The pyramid’s light energy gleefully infused Don’s hands and ran along his arms, flooding his body and sparking life into the patterns of glass beads arranged there. He shuddered as the power surged into and through him. His arms shook violently, as did Kadrobus’s, as they tried to hold onto the jumping pyramid, its power out of control, untameable, threatening to break free of its shackles and unleash unthinkable destruction. They yelled in synchrony, the cry of a plunging

roller-coaster ride, long and primevally fearful, and Don resigned himself – surely now the moment of his death had arrived. But the elder warriors were withdrawing from their siege of his consciousness, their combined onslaught faltering, becoming disted and falling away in confusion. Don saw a window of opportunity. Maybe this wasn’t over, and he did have the wherewithal to fight back. The door had opened a crack. The door to his imagination, to its power; that was his weapon. So he used that imagination. He visualised the flow of the pyramid’s energy reversing. He willed it so. It was now his to control. He felt it happen. The pyramid exploded in a burst of thermo-nuclear brilliance that blasted through his eyelids, and yet there was no accompanying sound. In fact there was no sound at all anymore; just a numb, dead silence that was blanketing and complete. The elder warriors’ clamour had gone. Don opened his eyes. There was still blue light but it was the colour of a summer sky, serene and untroubled. He found that he was floating, completely immersed in it and weightless. It was all around him, wherever he looked, just as featureless in all directions, and there was no distance that he could gauge; the blue was infinite and yet, if he switched his perception it seemed to be inside him too, as if he was made of it. And there was no single light source – the blue shone with an even luminescence of its own. There was peace, and if this was death then Don could handle it. He was drifting in a timeless fugue, barely aware of his easy breathing and mildly curious about what might happen next, although not concerned – until the absolute silence was broken by a sound like pond ice cracking as it thawed. It was faint, and Don had to concentrate to hear it at all. After a short while it came again, and louder this time. He looked around his cocoon of blue light in search of its source and found it, below him and to his left. A fine spider-web of cracks had developed in the smooth blue as if the globe he was floating in was a brittle shell which had been tapped by a hammer. The web spread rapidly, the blue broke apart and its fragments spun away, leaving darkness... and with it came the cold, until there was no longer enough of the blue to him and gravity claimed him and he plummeted into lightless

emptiness. Panic gripped him, and he flailed his arms and legs, desperately seeking something solid with which to arrest his descent. There was nothing, though, and within seconds the last shards of the calming blue had disappeared and there was only the black, and he was falling, falling, falling... With an impact so sudden and violent it expelled all the air from his lungs, he landed on his back. For a few seconds he thought he might lose consciousness, but he didn’t fade entirely. He couldn’t see anything; there was no light at all. There was a deep and tortured groaning of huge structures shifting high above him and loose earth pattered onto his face. His glasses had gone and some dirt fell into his eyes and the next thing he realised was that something heavy had fallen across his thighs. Panicked, he tried to move his legs but they were held fast. He raised his hand and almost immediately touched cold, smooth concrete. He explored its surface with his fingertips, up, down and across, until he located its straight edges at the top and bottom. It was some sort of structural , perhaps part of the bunker’s roof. He pushed against it, but there was no way it was going to move. He reached directly above him and immediately found a surface of a different texture, it was glassy smooth and it was less than two feet above his face.

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Thunder, or something that sounded like it, accompanied the shuddering of the ground and startled birds flapped noisily out of the trees. Larissa was barking. Sally stopped on the track and followed her dog’s line of sight. She saw above the tops of the pines in the direction of the airfield an immense structure rising slowly skyward, great accumulations of earth dropping away from it, the power of its reconstruction agitating the very fabric of the planet. She’d heard the legends about the elder warriors’ spacecraft, of course she had, the stories and the myths were ingrained in her civilisation’s culture. Intellectually, she’d known how big the ship would be, but seeing it now brought home to her just how advanced her ancestors had been. But for many seconds all she could do was stand and stare, mesmerised by it as it rose, pushing the fog aside as if it was surrounded by an invisible force-field. Even the dog stopped barking, as if the sight of the spectacle had stunned her into silence. ‘Come on Larissa,’ Sally said, her mood dark. She reached the junction of the forest track and the perimeter road and with Larissa beside her she jogged across the scrubland behind the sand banks, through the fence and across the airfield towards the leviathan which had come to rest now and was pitched at a drunken thirty-degree angle in the ragged strands of mist, forced from the earth like an obscene birth. It was immense, at least a quarter of a mile across its base, which was still partially buried. On its sides were traces of its functionality, half-formed parts of propulsion and guidance systems, deep networks of channels and engineered blister clusters concealing arcane systems and mechanisms, webs of pipework which were broken and malformed and which hung impotently from its black surfaces. It looked like a sinister, cybernetic version of its Egyptian cousins. It had punched through the ground around the control tower and the building’s walls had cracked and toppled as if it had been subjected to a major earthquake. The runway’s concrete sections had been lifted during the upheaval too, leaving high

earthen embankments abutting the hull. The trees which had surrounded the bunker entrance had been uprooted and those that were still standing were leaning precariously, their root systems rudely exposed. Sally’s Land Rover was parked just beyond the carnage and for a hopeful moment she thought that Don had arrived too late and that this had happened before he’d had the chance to leave the vehicle. But as she drew closer, it became clear that it was empty. As she gazed up at the cliff-like surface of the ship’s hull a short crack, a few metres wide, appeared at its apex and then, after a pause, as if it was deciding what further damage it could inflict, it travelled further, cleaving open a dark, ragged fracture with decisive speed down the whole height of the spaceship. Half a second later the sound reached Sally, an air-rending volley of hard materials being wrenched asunder. Fearlessly, Larissa ran to the top of the rampart and began barking at something on the other side. Then, with a glance back at Sally, she scampered over the edge and out of sight. ‘Larissa! Hey, come back here!’ She mouthed a curse. She hadn’t been thinking. She should have kept Larissa under closer control until she’d established what was going on here. Or not brought her out here at all. She opened the Land Rover’s tailgate; the battery lantern was missing. Of course, Don would have taken it with him. She rummaged in the glove compartment and found a small torch. It used nonrechargeable batteries, and it had been over a year since Sally had replaced them. The light was dim, but at least it worked. Warily eying the vertiginous hull of the ship and the split which had riven it, she climbed to the top of the embankment and heard Larissa barking from down in the dark, narrow trench on the far side, a void formed between the ship and the crater it had formed. With earth dislodging treacherously beneath her boots, Sally descended between the uprooted trees to the trench. There was just enough space to crawl through, if she lay flat on her stomach. She used her elbows to help with traction, while she awkwardly held the torch in one hand. Clods of earth became dislodged around her, and a couple of times she banged her head on the hull. She was frighteningly aware of the vast mass of the ship above her, pressing down on this narrow

space. Larissa had stopped barking. Sally called Don’s name. He answered from somewhere not too far ahead and after another few metres, she emerged into a larger space, framed by collapsed and fractured concrete bunker sections. Larissa licked her face in greeting. All she could see at first in the feeble torch light was the top of Don’s head. She manoeuvred herself further into the cramped area until she was within his line of sight. His face was a dusty mask, his glasses were gone, and from what Sally could see of his naked torso many of the crystal beads had come off. ‘Are you hurt?’ ‘No,’ he said, and then thinking better of it, he changed his mind. ‘Actually, my left leg doesn’t feel too clever.’ At the same time, they saw the remains revealed at the edge of the torch-light halo, crumpled against a fall of debris. ‘Partial transformation,’ Sally said. The body was mostly human. She made out a naked leg, truncated just below the knee. Thin arms that ended in glassy blades; a body with a chest cavity that was hollowed out and which overflowed with the same type of crystal granules that filled the transformer pods. The head was missing. An elder warrior. Sally couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe. She directed the torchlight at the concrete beam which had trapped Don. It was about three metres long and where it had sheared away from a larger section, the reinforcing steel mesh which ran through it had been exposed. It was just as well its full weight wasn’t resting on Don’s leg; a few inches lower and it would have been crushed. He’d been lucky, but it was still going to take dynamite or a rock drill to shift it. ‘I guess amateur amputation is the only way,’ Don suggested. ‘I don’t suppose that’s a skill you’ve picked up during your time on Earth?’ ‘It won’t come to that,’ Sally told him, although, she thought grimly, it might.

There was the deep, ominous groaning of huge masses settling. The hull dropped an inch, pushing the beam down with it and Don hissed a sharp intake of breath. ‘This isn’t looking good,’ he said, his voice strained, his breathing ragged. There was another rumble far above. Sally was thinking furiously, desperately. ‘Have you still got the Rover keys?’ she asked. ‘Please tell me you have.’ ‘I left them in the ignition,’ he said. She hadn’t noticed them when she’d taken the torch from the glove compartment. She hoped he was right. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ she told him, attempting a smile at that irony. ‘I’ll be right back.’ ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘I’m not sure. I’m making this up as I go along. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to leave you in the dark again.’ She turned awkwardly and crawled back out the way she’d come, allowing Larissa to run ahead. The same sinking of the hull that had almost crushed Don had also compressed the way out even further, and even though she had flattened herself as much as she could the ship’s hull was hard against her back. It was even difficult to breathe – there simply wasn’t the room for her lungs to expand enough. She could see no daylight ahead of her, yet surely she should have been able to by now? She carried on wriggling forward and then saw why there was no daylight. The way out had been blocked by a fall of earth, and it was the realization in that moment that she and Don had been buried alive when the panic of claustrophobia threatened to overwhelm her. Larissa was digging in the dirt, her small paws energetically spraying it back between her legs. She was showing Sally the way. She crawled up beside her dog, put the torch down and started clawing at the earth, hoping, with every

handful, that her fingernails didn’t locate concrete because if she had that would have been it, game over. Larissa’s efforts weren’t helping much, but the little dog’s energy and enthusiasm spurred Sally on and after a minute or so she broke through and almost sobbed with relief as cold, clean air wafted against her face, and she could see the earth rampart of the crater a metre or so away. She scrambled out of the hole, hauled herself to the top of the slope by grabbing hold of tumbled and exposed roots and branches and jogged to the Land Rover. She threw the driver’s door open and saw the keys were in the ignition, just as Don had said. She climbed in, started the engine and drove as close to the embankment as she could. She jumped out, shut Larissa inside, and hurriedly unhooked the winch cable from its mounting at the front of the vehicle. She slung the cable over her shoulder and, grabbing the winch wireless remote controller she climbed the embankment and slid back down to the crawlspace entrance. Driven by the thought that one more substantial settling of the spaceship would mean the end she pushed forward, the small torch between her teeth, ignoring the pain of her chaffed elbows and the friction of the hull against her back until she reached Don again. ‘What took you so long?’ he said, attempting a grin, which was sickly at best. He began coughing as he swallowed dust. ‘A minor holdup,’ Sally told him. ‘Not a big problem.’ Operating by the failing light of the torch she clipped the karabiner on the end of the winch cable through the reinforcing mesh protruding from the shattered end of the beam. ‘Leg still hurting?’ she asked Don. ‘It’s numb.’ ‘That might be a good thing.’ She wriggled away from the beam and thumbed the green button on the winch controller. Its power light was glowing but at first nothing happened and Sally’s heart sank when it occurred to her that its signal might not be powerful enough to reach the surface. After a lag of a few seconds, though, the slack in the cable

was taken up and it snapped taut, a straining, vibrating thing. She stayed fully focused on the karabiner. Where it was taking the strain, the steel mesh was pulling out of shape. There were hundreds of pounds of force being exerted at this point and if the connection broke the cable would whiplash and would very likely decapitate her; there was no room to dodge out of the way, even if she had time. She realized she was pressing the winch control button too hard. The beam jerked an inch. Then another. Then two more. Sally’s attention switched between the straining karabiner and the hull; if the beam was helping to it then moving it would mean disaster. Don cried out as the beam shifted further, and Sally saw a gap spring open between it and Don’s leg. It was only an inch or two wide, but it was enough. ‘Now!’ Sally yelled. He rolled clear and less than a second later the beam fell and thudded into the space where his legs had been. There wasn’t time to check him for injuries, and it wouldn’t have made any difference if she had. If Don was hurt badly, she wouldn’t have been able to do much about it down here. Getting him out was the priority. It would take too long for him to make it under his own steam and there wasn’t the room for her to help him, so she unclipped the winch cable from the beam and told him to hold onto it tightly, and to let the winch do the work. It wouldn’t be a comfortable trip, but it was the best she could come up with. She followed him, torch in one hand, winch controller in the other. The torch beam faded out completely, and when Sally knocked it on its base it revived briefly, but it was a lost cause. She abandoned it. And so metre by gruelling metre they crawled in the dark back along the precious escape route. As the cable dragged Don through the hole at the end he let go. Sally stopped the winch and crawled out behind him. She knelt beside him. He’d pushed himself into a sitting position and was massaging his left leg. ‘Let me take a look,’ she said, but he held up his hand. ‘It’s okay. I don’t think it’s broken.’ And with that, he laboriously attempted to push himself to his feet.

‘Hey, are you sure?’ Sally said, alarmed, even as she ed him with her arm around his waist. He tested his weight on his leg and it bore up, even though his expression told her it was painful. ‘We can use the winch again,’ she said, ‘to help you get to the top.’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can do this.’ They climbed the earthen rampart and at the top they saw the Land Rover below them, its engine idling, the winch cable laying slack across the ground, and standing by the vehicle’s open door was Kadrobus. He was holding Larissa out before him, one-handed, by her neck.

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Don felt Sally tense against him. He slid his arm from around her shoulders and she took hers away from his waist. Looking up at them Kadrobus said, his voice scarred, ‘You’ve overseen the ending of three thousand years of civilisation, Nethardia. Well done.’ He did not look in a good way. He was as dusty and begrimed as Don was, and also bare-chested like him, and he’d sustained a head wound too, which was leaking blood, a rivulet of it running down his cheek and over the hard, crystalline scar there. The pyramid’s power had gone now and had left him solid flesh and bone again, all signs of supernatural transparency gone, but its age had clearly left its mark on him. ‘It was over anyway,’ Sally said, and added flatly, ‘let my dog go.’ Larissa was squirming in Kadrobus’s grip, twisting back and forth, her paws scrabbling for purchase but finding only empty air. She was choking. ‘We had a chance to start again,’ he said, disappointment rather than anger in his voice. Sally slowly shook her head. ‘We never had the right to colonize this planet, and bend its people to our will,’ and she repeated, her tone becoming cold and hard, ‘let my dog go.’ But Larissa’s struggles were becoming feeble, and Kadrobus didn’t loosen his grip on her throat. He said, ‘Do you not anything of our lives? How you and I fought together? And loved together? We were not cowards then, and I will not die a coward now. I will not die without taking revenge. It is a warrior’s way. And I

am a warrior.’ But then his expression changed. He frowned, turned his head slightly, listening and seconds later Don picked up what had caught the alien’s attention - the sound of a motorcycle engine in the distance. A phantom in the gauzy mist, the machine sped towards them across the airfield. ‘Jay?’ Sally said, a mixture of incredulity and uncertainty in her voice. Jay Adeyemi? Don had to take Sally’s word for that, since without his glasses he couldn’t see anything at distance. Kadrobus dropped Larissa, who fell limply to the ground and didn’t move. The alien took a step back, while Jay, Don could now see it was him now, kept coming at full tilt, the bike’s tyres churning the grass. His expression was determined. Kadrobus just stood there while Jay motored straight for him. Impact seemed inevitable but at the last moment, and with breath-taking speed and agility, Kadrobus spun out of the way. Jay attempted a fast readjustment but he got it catastrophically wrong, the bike slid from under him and he went tumbling across the grass where he lay still, on his back. Ignoring the pain in his leg, Don stumbled and slid down the slope. Kadrobus got to his feet. He looked different. Wrong, in some way Don couldn’t immediately determine. He wasn’t going to stop to figure it out, just then his only concern was Jay. But Kadrobus came for him before he could reach Jay and clamped his arm around Don’s neck, lifted him inches off the ground. He felt his windpipe being swiftly and relentlessly compressed. Sally yelled something but Don couldn’t make out what it was – consciousness was slipping away from him fast. But what he did hear was the crystal windchime sound. Seconds later, the extreme pressure on his windpipe was suddenly relieved and he fell to his knees, gasping. When he looked up he saw two entities grappling with each other. Sally and Kadrobus’s bodies had morphed; their clothes had fallen from them and they had become creatures of glass, mosaics of hundreds of multi-faceted crystals filled with fluid light: yellow, green and pastel shades, and blue... predominantly blue... pulsing like blood in veins. They had stretched and had become as long and thin as laboratory test tubes. They had developed legs that did not have feet, but points of glass. They had

hands that did not possess fingers, but complex arrangements of glass blades and transparent, articulated ts that rotated and swivelled. Their long, narrow heads were comprised of angled planes that slid against each other in constant motion, rearrangements of features, tilting, opening and closing. And eyes... eyes that were points of violet light, shining from within crystal orbs. They were locked together like rutting stags. The noise they made was shrill. Ear-piercing. Terrifying. No longer the gentle tinkling of crystal fragments. Don gaped at the spectacle. What the hell was he supposed to do? What possible weapon was there to hand to help Sally? Then an idea popped into his mind. Chainsaw. He knew Sally kept it in the back of the Land Rover. He closed his eyes briefly, summoning his remaining strength, then he propelled himself to his feet and towards the vehicle. He fell against it and swung the tailgate open. There was the saw, its hard plastic casing bright yellow. He lifted it out. Tried to start it. The electric motor whirred, but it didn’t catch. Kadrobus was gaining the upper hand over Sally; as he had been in human form, he was bigger and stronger than her. He’d forced her back against the front wing of the Land Rover and while his colours were a strong, vibrant red, hers had become pale violet. Kadrobus thrust one of his arm appendages towards her face. She moved aside at the last moment and Kadrobus’s ‘hand’ punched a hole through the strengthened glass of the Land Rover’s side window. Sally ducked out from under him and hoisted herself onto the bonnet where she crouched, ready for him. She had a height advantage then, and she lashed out at him with one of her thin glass legs, a movement so fast Don barely saw it happen. Kadrobus avoided the attack. He moved to the front of the Land Rover, prowling, weighing up his options. Sally jumped onto the roof and tracked him. Don tried to start the chainsaw again, but it still wasn’t having it. Desperately, and with a certain comic edge, he wondered if he’d be able to club Kadrobus with it. After all, he was made of glass, wasn’t he?

Yes. But it wasn’t any kind of glass known to man. This was the kind of glass that even acid couldn’t dissolve. Or had the pyramid been made of a similarlooking substance, yet different to the organic matter of the aliens’ bodies? It was a debate there wasn’t time to have. Kadrobus caught hold of Sally’s leg as she kicked out at him again and he pulled her off the Land Rover’s roof. She fell clumsily to the ground where she lay still. Kadrobus straddled her, holding her down with one appendage while he flexed the vicious-looking cutters of the other. Both of them seemed to be weakening, their colours becoming dull and static. At Don’s third attempt, the chainsaw fired up. He revved it, and it responded satisfyingly. Gritting his teeth he forced his damaged leg to respond and pushed through the pain. Kadrobus either didn’t notice him coming or didn’t care, so intently murderous was he. But Sally turned what ed for her head and Don saw something, just a trace, of her humanity in those strange eyes. She seemed to be telling him, I’m sorry, I did my best. As if she’d realised that whatever Don did now, it would be too late. He lunged forward the last metre, swinging the chainsaw high and wide. Glass that acid won’t touch... He brought the saw down hard and the fast-revolving chain sliced Kadrobus’s head clean off. The alien’s body stiffened, as if surprised by what had happened to it. Then it collapsed, imploding into thousands of shards which rained on Sally and one by one, the lights within each of them winked out.

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Don switched off the chainsaw, lowered it to the ground and using it as a he knelt beside Sally and carefully brushed away the glassy granules and shards of Kadrobus’s remains from around her face. There was still faint violet light in the crystal orbs of her eyes. ‘Oh Lord,’ Jay said, and crossed himself. He’d recovered from his tumble, had come to stand at Don’s side, and was looking down at Sally. ‘What about you?’ Don asked. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘I’ve got a bitch of a headache and there isn’t much of me that isn’t sore. But I’ll survive. What in heaven’s name have you got stuck all over you?’ ‘It’s a long story,’ Don told him. Jay said, ‘Isn’t everything a long story with you?’ And after a moment he added, ‘Is she alive?’ ‘I don’t know. I think so, but only just, and probably not for much longer. The air’s killing her, even if her injuries aren’t. She must have known it would be suicide to revert, for that reason alone.’ ‘Then why did she do it?’ ‘To save me,’ Don said simply. Jay nodded, considering this, and then he said, ‘What can we do?’ There was only one idea that came to Don’s mind. Jay lifted Sally into the back of the Land Rover and as an afterthought Don

brought Larissa’s limp body, her dead eyes glazed, her tongue lolling. Jay looked at the dog, and then at Don. He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. ‘I know,’ Don said. ‘I’m clutching at straws.’ And wasn’t that the understatement of the century. Sally had left her quilted ranger’s bodywarmer in the Land Rover, and Don put it on, now aware of how cold he’d become. He wound in the winch cable and ed Jay in the Rover. The other man drove since because of his leg Don was unable to. He sat in the back with Sally, her strange, crystalline head in his lap and Larissa’s body on the seat beside him. Sally’s lights were very dim now, the violet in her eyes almost non-existent. There seemed to be no substance to her, an almost weightless creature of thin panes and sharp angles. Don was finding it hard to reconcile what was in his lap with the strong, vibrant woman he had come to know, albeit in such a short time. It was as if her essence had been interpreted by a modernist artist. By the time they reached the derelict building in the heart of Darkenridge Forest it was dusk, and the fog-bound shadows between the trees were deepening. Jay carried Sally along the path and inside, Don leading the way. They entered the building through its shattered door and went into the pyramid room. Jay stood and stared. ‘What the hell are these things?’ Transformers, Don told him, and went on to relay, briefly, what Sally had told him about them, about how they made the aliens human. ‘But are they somehow going to miraculously repair her?’ Jay wanted to know, the doubt clear in his voice. ‘They’re all we’ve got.’ Jay laid Sally inside the pyramid she’d told him was hers, and asked, ‘Now what?’ ‘Do me a favour,’ Don said. ‘Fetch the dog from the Land Rover, will you?’ Jay gave him a sideways look. ‘Right. The dog. I was forgetting.’

Three minutes later he returned with Larissa’s body and Don asked him to lay it on the floor of the pyramid next to Sally. ‘This is insane,’ Jay said, and Don couldn’t have agreed with him more. He placed his hand on the side of the pyramid, his fingers splayed across the symbols there. He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen, if anything, and in fact nothing did. He felt foolish and impotent, playing make-believe and investing too heavily in wishful thinking. At his shoulder, Jay asked ‘Are you sure you’re doing it right?’ ‘Did I say I was sure? I’m not sure.’ But he kept his hand where it was anyway, his palm flat on the surface, because he had no other ideas. This contraption was supposed to be operated by seethrough aliens who didn’t even have hands. And yet he’d been granted the power to regenerate, hadn’t he? So why not? Why not? Even though any power he’d possessed had depended on the pyramid, and now that artefact had been destroyed. He had destroyed it. He felt something; it was unsubstantial and elusive and although he mentally reached for it, it remained beyond his grasp. ‘Don,’ Jay said, bringing him back to the moment, ‘look.’ The glass beneath his palm was glowing in fluid shades of blue which pulsed in time with his heartbeat. The light spread to the body of the pyramid, suffusing it as it became stronger and more vibrant, so bright that it engulfed Sally and Larissa so they could no longer be seen. And with the expansion of the light the sound of tinkling glass filled the room. The open side of the pyramid closed up, a of light which spread in from its sides like a wound healing over in a time-lapse video. Slowly, Don lifted his hand away from the glass and for a few moments a spindle of light lingered, connecting the centre of his palm to the pyramid, just as had happened when Anna had regenerated. The light had a life of its own now. It no longer needed his input, if that was, in fact, what had energised it. He and Jay looked at each other, both of them astounded.

‘What do we do now?’ Jay asked, his voice hushed. And Don said, ‘I guess we wait.’ Twenty minutes later, they were sitting on an off-cut of old mouldy carpet, their backs against the wall, facing the pyramids in the middle of the room. Sally’s pyramid was still bathed in pulsing, flowing, iridescent blue light, the ethereal crystalline sounds accompanying it. Don shifted, a movement which caused him to take a sharp, involuntary breath as pain shot up his leg. Jay said, ‘You need to get that seen to sooner rather than later.’ ‘I know. It could be later.’ Despite his discomfort and the cold that Sally’s bodywarmer couldn’t entirely keep at bay, he fell into a fitful doze, during which his subconscious mind revisited the dreams of impossibly high, shard-like glass spires reaching into angry red skies and streets around crowded with crystal creatures who ignored him as he walked among them. When he awoke, the room was in near darkness, with only a pale hue showing through the gaps in the window shuttering. The pyramid’s light had died. Jay was curled up on the carpet asleep, his head resting on a pile of hessian sacks. By painful degrees, Don got to his feet. He was numb with cold and his injured leg had stiffened to the point of being useless. He tried to massage some life back into it, but he met with only limited success. He hobbled across to the transformer pyramid. He breathed into the moment and blinked, because at first he couldn’t trust what he saw. He couldn’t believe it was so. Sally was human again. Naked, and human. Mostly human; the crystalline scar on her midriff bearing testament to her origins. Don whispered her name, and his mouth felt too dry, his throat constricted and sore from where Kadrobus had tried to choke him. Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t respond to the sound of his voice. The side of the pyramid was open; Don reached in and lifted her hand. It was cold; the chill of death.

He leaned in close, his ear to her mouth. He heard, and he felt, no breath. So she’d transformed, but she hadn’t survived. And as for the dog, what kind of blind optimism had been at work there? Larissa was just as dead beside her as when this ridiculous process had begun. Besides, this contraption, this transformer, was meant for crystal aliens, not Earth mammals. And yet... the dog’s eyes were closed, but Don thought that when she’d been placed in the pyramid they had been open. He might have been wrong about that, and most likely was. It was a small thing, and what difference did it make anyway? Dead was dead. He took off the ranger’s bodywarmer – it was Sally’s after all – and laid it across her, affording her some dignity. Sick at heart and needing air he went outside, into the breaking dawn. It seemed impossible that they had been in there all night. He leaned with his back against the wall between the dead creepers, closed his eyes and exhaled a long, deep breath, and after a while Jay arrived and stood in the doorway. ‘Don,’ was all he said. It was just one word. But Don caught the hope in it, and an edge of disbelief too. ‘What? What is it?’ ‘Better come and see.’ He followed Jay back inside the building. Sally was sitting on the edge of the pyramid’s base, her bodywarmer across her shoulders, shivering, her arms folded across her breasts. Larissa was sniffing around the corners of the room, her little tail wagging at top speed. Dead? It didn’t look like it. Sally raised her head and offered Don a dazed and uncertain smile. And Jay said, ‘What was I doing, ever doubting you my man?’

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Lil’Kat, sitting cross-legged on the bed beside Studz, held a cup to his lips and he took a few sips of water before lowering his head to the pillow again. ‘Cold,’ he croaked feebly. Lil’Kat pulled the duvet up to his chin, but she knew she was only going through the motions, because nothing she did was going to get him warm enough; the pervasive malodour of death was on him. ‘That alien bitch,’ she said, ‘I’m going to kill her for what she did to us.’ She made fists, needing to feel her anger. But as she gazed at her man, her tenderness for him tempered it. She leaned in close, until her mouth was inches from his ear. ‘I’m sorry babe,’ she whispered. ‘I tried.’ Studz took a shuddering breath in - and didn’t breathe out again. Lil’Kat closed her eyes and touched her forehead to his, her last goodbye. Outside, she only gave that... thing... a ing glance. It was huge, a bloody Egyptian pyramid rising into the sky above the village rooftops. She’d stayed with Studz, huddled with him in that room while the ground had shaken, windows had broken and slates had slid from roofs and smashed in the streets. But she was done with it, and aliens, and this bloody village. Outside in the square Andy and a couple of villagers, an older woman wearing a long floral dress with a man’s suit jacket, and a couple of ancient geezers were staring at the thing. Black birds were slowly circling its apex. Andy turned to look at her. They exchanged no words. Lil’Kat tied her bandanna around her forehead, pulled on her fingerless gloves

and climbed aboard her Harley. She didn’t know how far she’d get - twenty miles or so if she was lucky, before her fuel ran out. She didn’t know what she’d do then; find more from somewhere. Or maybe not. Right then she didn’t care. She just wanted to ride. Studz, Wolf, Spyder, Gonzo and all the others she’d ridden with over the years, so many dead now, taken by the orbs or gang conflicts or the harsh lifestyle they’d led. Those boys had been her tribe, her family. She hadn’t been by herself for as long as she could and the realisation that she was now scared her a little, but it excited her too. She thought she might change her name; or rather, go back to using the one she’d been given when she was born, because she felt a rebirth was in order. Catherine; that was her real name. Catherine Mullins. She’d hated it, it had been too ordinary, and it signified everything she’d wanted to escape from. But now... well, she was beginning to like the sound of it. It had a ring of maturity about it, and that was good. She’d always thought she’d be a rebel all her life and be like Studz and Wolf when she got old. She wasn’t so sure now. There had to be another way. Perhaps it hadn’t been bullshit they’d been spouting. It was amazing how things changed. As she rode past the pines close to the road on either side she arrived at a junction, slowed and stopped. It was quiet, apart from the burbling of the bikes exhaust. There was a brown tourist information sign at the side of the road: Darkenridge Forest. Trails and Picnic Area. To reinforce that information, there was a small white silhouette of a stylised pine tree and a picnic table. Lil’Kat had sworn revenge on Sally Desiderum, but now the anger had gone out of her, as if Studz had taken it with him when he’d died. It had been replaced by something else. Lil’Kat supposed it was grief, and that was an emotion she’d thought she was incapable of feeling. She released the clutch lever and roared off, past the junction and away down the open road.

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Don flexed his leg at the knee, which was no longer painful, but it became stiff if he’d been immobile for any length of time, and he was conscious that some of Sally’s glass beads were still stubbornly stuck to his body although she had been able to remove most of them using solvents. He was sitting alone on the ridge of a sand dune, looking back across the airfield to the looming bulk of the spaceship. It was like seeing a huge ocean liner which had been left high and dry after some biblical flood had come and gone. A week had ed, and Jay and Chiara were putting him up at Solstice Farm until he decided what he was going to do and where he was going to go. Jay had said he could stay indefinitely and help out on the farm, and that was an offer he was seriously considering. He had also been thinking about Anna. He hadn’t been able to save her, or do anything for her once he’d brought her back from whichever dimension the dead go to, but there was one thing he could do for her now - and that was to have her name carved on the headstone of the unknown German pilot in St Jude’s churchyard. He just needed to find a stonemason, which was easier said than done, but even if it meant he had to do it himself, he would. He’d been back to the airfield several times, just to sit there and gaze at the spaceship; it drew him to it like a moth to a flame. It had been only partially regenerated before he had stopped the process and as he watched a piece of it, from high on the hull, broke away and tumbled, bouncing lazily off the side on its way down, before thudding into the ground and spraying up dirt. The breach that cleaved it from top to bottom was a dark chasm, like a fissure in a rock face, and from this distance nothing inside was visible. A large, black bird flew out from within it, its wings beating languidly. Sally, with Larissa at her heels, was walking towards him along the perimeter

road and a few minutes later she ed him on the dune. Larissa went off somewhere, looking for rabbits, no doubt. Sally looked none the worse for wear considering what she’d been through but Don could see the weariness in her eyes. Sometimes he caught other glimpses of her alien-ness, the reminders that she wasn’t entirely human, that in essence she was something else. It was in her gait, her expressions, the way she said things. Were those traits more pronounced since she had reverted to her true form? They might always have been there, Don couldn’t be certain. She sat next to him and a minute ed in silence until she said, ‘I’ve dismantled the transformer pyramids.’ Don looked at her, surprised by this revelation. ‘Was that a good idea? What happens if you revert again? I mean, by accident. There’ll be no way to reverse it.’ ‘I’ll survive for a few hours, max,’ she said. ‘You know how it’ll be.’ ‘But why? That pyramid was your lifeline.’ Sally looked away. She said, ‘Do you know that story by Franz Kafka, about the guy who wakes up one morning and finds out he’s turned into a giant bug?’ Don said he did, and Sally continued, ‘That was the nightmare I thought might happen to me.’ She half-smiled. ‘I don’t mean that I was going to morph into a cockroach or anything, and reverting to who I am shouldn’t have been a scary thought. But I did fear it. I didn’t want it. I’m human, and I want to stay that way. But then the other day, when I took the decision to revert... and I didn’t even know if I’d be able to do it, until I did it... it was like slipping into old, comfortable clothes. The point is, I’m only human up to a point. I’m not human enough to grow old at the same rate as everyone else. It’s a lonely life when everyone you come to know and love ages and dies before you. So perhaps reverting and spending my last few hours as who I am wouldn’t be a bad thing. Otherwise life is endless to all intents and purposes, and who, really, wants that?’ ‘Then perhaps we shouldn’t have taken you back to the pyramid,’ Don suggested. ‘We should have let it end for you.’ Sally touched his knee. ‘No,’ she corrected him quickly. ‘No. I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. I am grateful you did what you did, because

despite everything, I’m not ready to give up on life just yet.’ She smiled again. ‘But if it happens... I’ll accept that fate.’ They lapsed into another silence. Two boys Don didn’t recognise cycled across what remained of the airfield towards the spaceship. Where had they come from? One of the outlying communities possibly, or perhaps as far away as Boston. Over the past few days people had drifted by to gawp and no doubt many more would follow, once word spread further afield about what had happened here. Maybe one day scientists, if there were any left who were interested, would come to study the thing. ‘Don,’ Sally said, ‘there’s something else I need to tell you. Something important.’ He waited while she focused her attention on the ground between her boots. ‘I’m listening,’ he said carefully. She drew in a long, deep breath. ‘Many years ago I had an affair with a married man. There was nothing sordid about it. We loved each other, and his relationship with his wife was as good as dead. But that’s beside the point. The fact is, I became pregnant. Circumstances meant I couldn’t keep the baby. It wouldn’t have been fair. So I put him up for adoption.’ She looked up at him, her gaze anxious, the violet tint of her eyes more noticeable than ever, as she waited for him to connect the dots. But he’d already done that. He’d done it long before this conversation. ‘It was me,’ he stated. ‘Wasn’t it?’ Sally frowned and said, ‘When did you guess?’ ‘I’ve always felt a misfit. I never felt as if I particularly belonged anywhere. And there are the dreams, especially when I was young and before the materialisations. But what clinched it was when I got your transformer pod to work, even after the Pyramid of Life had gone and most of those beads you stuck on me had come off.’ Sally nodded, as if it made perfect sense. ‘I thought it was for the best,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t have given you the life a proper family could. I mean, look at us, when you’re an old, old man I’ll still be young enough to be your child.’ She

gazed at her boots again, and added quietly, seriously, ‘As I said. It’s tough watching everyone you love grow old when you don’t.’ ‘But even though you gave me up for adoption, you still looked out for me?’ ‘From a distance, yes. I suppose my maternal instinct was just too strong to let go of you completely. I saw it as fate, something that was meant to be when I found out the family who’d adopted you lived in Levenby. I can imagine what you’re thinking, but you don’t have to worry. You’re human. Probably ninetynine percent human. I was human when I conceived and gave birth to you, and your father certainly is. It’s just that... a few important strands of your DNA enable you to do what you did, and it’s just a fluke you have them.’ ‘Aren’t I the lucky one,’ Don said, and gave her a half-hearted, ironic smile. ‘Is my father – I mean my biological father - still alive?’ ‘He’s old and frail,’ Sally told him. ‘And his mind’s gone, I’m afraid. He’s being well cared for, though.’ ‘I’d like to see him.’ ‘I understand, and you will.’ Sally got to her feet and looked down at him. ‘You were my salvation, Don. Giving birth to you made me feel truly human, at a time when I was having... well, let’s say, an identity crisis.’ She paused. ‘Don’t think too badly of me.’ She kissed him gently on top of his head. As she walked away, Don called after her. ‘Sally...’ She stopped and turned. ‘I appreciate it. That you told me. And I don’t think badly of you, of course I don’t.’ She smiled fleetingly and descended the dune to the road. She called Larissa and the dog ran out of the dunes. The two boys, who had reached the spaceship, had abandoned their bikes and were climbing the embankment. Don ought to warn

them that it wasn’t safe. He’d go down there in a while, but he’d give them a few more minutes. After all, this was the kind of adventure Tony and he would have killed for when they were that age. They would have been itching to get inside the spacecraft and explore. Don looked up into the darkening sky above its towering apex, to the stars which were just beginning to appear. He thought about the magic the Druids had practiced at this place for centuries, but he knew that the real magic had been brought across light years from a distant star system... from the home of his ancestors.

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About the Author

Robin Ive is the author of Thrillers Beyond Boundaries ‘Shadows of Forever’, ‘The Gifted, The Damned’ and ‘Songbird.’ Online, he can be found at https://idoc-pub.descargarjuegos.org/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="11637e7351637e73787f7867743f727e7c">[email protected].

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Wendy Morgan and Jean Mortimer for editing and proof-reading the manuscript and for their invaluable suggestions for improving the story, and to Stephan Proudfoot at Spiffing Covers for the cover design.

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Copyright © 2021 by Robin Ive All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission. www.robinive.com Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.