by Helen Harper
The thought of feeding Lucy slugs turned my stomach. ‘I’m not sure experimenting on animals is the way to go.’
‘We’re coping now,’ Timmons said quietly. ‘But things won’t continue this way for long.’
I knew that; we all knew that. I tugged at my hair, wrapping a blue curl tightly round my little finger. Even blue-hair dye was going to become scarce and I was pretty certain I was the only one in the city who used it. Talk about first-apocalyptic-world problems.
‘There’s a simple solution to all this, you know, darlings,’ Julie drawled. She bared her teeth in a fangy smile. ‘We all have plenty of blood. It’s tastier than you might think.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah.’ We needed some out-of-the-box thinking but I reckoned that was a step too far.
Jodie glared at Julie, opening her mouth to begin another round of bickering, but just then Lizzy sprang up. Her eyes were wide and, disturbingly, her two coiled bunyip horns were beginning to spring from her head. Uh oh.
‘What is it?’ I asked, alarmed.
She swung her head towards the main door. ‘Can’t you hear that?’
I couldn’t hear a damn thing. I tilted my head and listened. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Timmons, however, was also on his feet. ‘Unbelievable,’ he murmured. He started running towards the door, moving faster than I’d ever seen him. Lizzy followed, despite her body continuing to contort and shift as it did during times of stress. She didn’t yet have a full grip on her bunyip self.
I raced after them, yelling to the others to stay put. The glass door leading to the Travotel car park crashed open as Timmons grabbed it. As soon as it was open, I could hear what they were talking about. Music, actual honest-to-goodness music. And this wasn’t some lairy werewolf singing his way home, it was a proper tune with drums, keyboards and a catchy beat. It wasn’t a song I’d heard before but that voice was familiar. My steps faltered. Beyoncé, I thought. That’s Beyoncé.
Unsurprisingly, Queen Bey wasn’t holding an impromptu concert in the deserted Travotel car park. The song was coming from the rusty car into which I’d tossed Lucy. The windows were fogged up but I thought I caught a glimpse of the little shadow beast jumping around inside.
Timmons’ mouth dropped open. Lizzy was on all fours, ripped shreds of her clothes scattered behind her and her golden fur bristling. She also had a look of comical astonishment on her face. I shook off my shock and walked towards the car. Just as the song ended, a voice could be heard. ‘Well,’ burbled a young-sounding man, ‘there you have it, folks. That’s Beyoncé’s latest release and it’s fair to say that she has smashed it.’
That was the radio. That was the goddamned, fucking radio. The car was picking up a signal from who knows where. I’d not heard anything like it since last year, since the first apocalyptic attack. I gaped. Then I gaped some more. Un-freaking-believable.
Lucy seemed to have stopped bouncing around. As far as I could tell, she was unimpressed at the loss of the music. Tiny milk cartons began hitting the car windows, splattering blobs of UHT all over the interior. I found my feet and moved towards the vehicle.
‘It’s not only Beyoncé that we have to discuss today, of course. There’s bigger news in the pipeline and you’re going to hear it first. Hang on to your hats, Britain. Tech tycoon Fabian Barrett has announced that he is making plans to contact the Manchester survivors, if there are any, and enter the city. He’s said that he has several initiatives underway. If they work, it will be the first time anyone has tried to get inside Manchester since it was evacuated all those months ago. We don’t know if anyone is still alive in there but if you are and you are listening, all your worries are coming to an end. Fabian Barrett is on his way.’
Oh. My. God. I reached the driver door on one side just as Timmons reached the passenger door on the other. Simultaneously, we flung the doors open. Lucy squeaked with joy and threw herself at me. There was a crackle from the car’s radio and the DJ’s voice went dead. Silence descended once again.
Timmons stared at me in in shock. Lucy started nuzzling at my neck, her strange black fur somehow dripping with splatters of UHT milk. All I could do was stare at Timmons. Now what?
Chapter Seven
We tried several times to re-create what had just occurred. I put Lucy in the car with more UHT cartons and kept my fingers crossed; nothing happened except more milk droplets soaked into the already grubby upholstery. We tried it with the milk, without the milk, with Lucy, without Lucy. We tried every car nearby. Not one of them worked. We’d had that one brief burst of contact with the outside world and now we were back to radio silence. Literally.
My heart, which had been hammering against my ribcage with the thrill of it all, had slowed down long before we gave up and re-grouped inside the hotel lobby. This time Lucy came with us and Timmons didn’t even think to object. He simply snapped his fingers and shut off the magical alarm before it started to scream and then he sank down on the floor.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It has to be something to do with her. It just has to be.’
Lucy skittered across the shiny floor towards him and jumped onto his lap. He stroked her absently, tangling his fingers in her strange, soft fur.
‘That car’s battery must have been dead for months,’ Anna marvelled. ‘Where did the electrical juice come from to turn on the radio? Let alone for it to pick up a signal. It’s barely credible.’
Lizzy tightened the belt of her Travotel-issue bathrobe. ‘It definitely happened, right?’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t imagine it?’
‘Oh, it definitely happened,’ I told her. Identical group hallucinations, even powered by magic, simply weren’t possible. That car radio had worked, if only momentarily. The outside world was still there – and the outside world was coming to get us. In a manner of speaking.
‘Fabian Barrett,’ Cath breathed. ‘He’s super swole.’
I might not have understood the word but I got her meaning from the dreamy expression on her face. ‘He’s got to be three times your age,’ I said.
‘Oh, he’s not quite that old, darling,’ Julie said. ‘I met him once, you know. At a party in London. He’s very…’ An odd expression crossed her face. ‘He has very white teeth,’ she amended.
My eyes narrowed slightly and I wondered what she’d been about to say but I didn’t get the chance to ask.
‘He must have been the one who sent the pigeons,’ Jodie said. ‘No-one is about to blow us up. Fabian Barrett is going to visit us instead, and solve all our problems. There’s no other explanation for the birds.’
Actually, there were plenty of other explanations but it seemed likely that Barrett was responsible for them. Perhaps carrier pigeons were just his first attempt. I wondered what was likely to come next. The billionaire was famously eccentric – but allegedly also some sort of genius. Expect the unexpected, I decided.
‘What if that was it?’ Lizzy asked. ‘What if responding to the pigeons was our one and only shot at getting Fabian Barrett in here and we’ve already failed? What if he now thinks we’re all dead and there’s no point in entering Manchester?’
‘Do we want Fabian Barrett in here?’ Julie enquired.
I tapped my mouth. ‘It’s not about him, it’s about what he might bring to our situation.’ I stood up. ‘As in food, medical supplies, letters from loved ones. He’s going to want the kudos of being the first person to enter Manchester since the apocalypse, but I think we need him more than he needs us. In fact, I know that’s the case.’
Cath’s looked downcast. ‘It doesn’t matter though, does it? The pigeons have gone. The radio’s not working. Unless we can fashion a paper aeroplane and send it over the walls, we can’t get any messages out.’
‘They shoot them down in flames,’ I said absently, remembering something Monroe had told me. ‘Anything we chuck over the wall is zapped into oblivion by the army. They’re too scared about magical contamination in their world. I can’
t imagine they’d allow Fabian Barrett to waltz in here.’
‘If he wanted to come,’ Cath said, ‘he’d find a way.’
Jodie let out a humourless laugh. ‘If only the rest of the world knew how wonderful the magic really is. It doesn’t kill you. It makes you stronger.’
In Timmons’ arms, Lucy began to purr. I winced slightly. ‘There are some side effects to that magic too. She’s cute and harmless now but…’ My voice trailed off.
‘Yeah,’ Lizzy said. She shook her hand, revealing a golden downy fur, then shook it again and her skin reappeared. ‘There are definite side effects.’ Her shoulders sagged. ‘If we could get hold of one of those pigeons, we could send a message back and ask Fabian Barrett to send us in some Vegemite,’ she said mournfully.
Just yesterday the thought of communication with the outside world wouldn’t have crossed anyone’s mind; today, however, it had been dangled in front of our faces and now we were left with the prospect of it being cruelly yanked away again. Hope could be a vicious mistress but we were all still enslaved to her.
‘We’ve not exhausted all possibilities,’ I said. ‘There’s still the bogles. They’re canny bastards who pay close attention to what’s going on around them. If the pigeons passed near their community, there’s a good chance they’ll have caught one.’
Jodie jumped up to her feet. ‘Then let’s go there straight away.’
‘No.’ I was adamant. ‘They’re still skittish, even though we’re all now aware of who they are and where they live.’ The bogles had wanted to live anonymously but events earlier in the year had made that impossible. We tried to respect their wishes and leave them in peace when we could but this wasn’t one of those times. ‘I’ll go on my own. They’ll be more likely to talk to me.’
Anna stood up. ‘They know me too. I’ll come with you.’ At my look of exasperation, she raised her eyebrows. ‘Monroe would turn furry and rip my head off if anything happened to you while you were out there alone. Remember that the beasties are out and about in force.’
‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ Timmons said, concern immediately darkening his brow.
Anna leaned down and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. She scooped up Lucy from his arms. ‘We’ll bring this wee girl with us. She’ll frighten away any other monsters simply by being so cute.’
Lucy puffed herself up and let out the loudest squeak I’d heard her produce yet. Then she bared her teeth and opened her mouth wide, emitting a small – and yet most definite – roar. We all stared at her in astonishment.
Timmons blinked. ‘I think she understood you.’
I smiled. ‘Smart as well as beautiful.’ I winked. ‘Just like all of us.’
***
Walking to the bogles’ neighbourhood would have taken most of the rest of the day, so Anna and I borrowed two of the hotel bicycles. Until the previous month, a few people had hung onto their cars but fuel was incredibly scarce. Also, the only vehicles that worked in these magical times were the old ones that relied less on computer technology and more on old-fashioned mechanics. It had been several weeks since I’d seen anyone drive. That wasn’t a bad thing; we were all considerably leaner and fitter. Living in this post-apocalyptic world meant engaging in a full-on diet and exercise programme that achieved outstanding results. Joe Wicks, eat your heart out.
‘I knew this would happen sooner or later,’ Anna said as we cycled. ‘There’s no accounting for curiosity. It’s why we open that cellar door in the middle of the night to investigate the noise when we know we shouldn’t. It’s why youngsters try drugs. It’s why there’s such a fascination with criminals, especially when their crimes are horrendously gruesome.’
I adjusted the gears on my bike to accommodate the slight incline. ‘You mean someone was always going to enter Manchester from the outside to see what was going on?’
She nodded. ‘Yep. I kind of thought it would be the army, but a daft billionaire with more money and ego than sense could fit the bill just as well.’
‘This isn’t a theory I’ve heard you share before,’ I told her.
Anna was silent for a moment. ‘I didn’t want to ruin the fun,’ she said finally. Her stomach grumbled and she laughed slightly. ‘Such as it is.’
‘Well,’ I said, grinning, ‘it’s certainly a lot better now we’re all getting along and no one’s trying to kill anyone else.’
She shrugged. ‘That’s the nature of this beast called life. We’ll get to psycho murders again before too long. Things run in cycles. We have peace now but in another couple of months everything will kick off again. Then it’ll calm down. So on and so forth.’
Interested, I glanced at her. ‘Did this happen when you were with the police? Before, I mean?’
‘Sure. But on a larger scale. You’d settle down the local drug gangs and then there’d be a spate of burglaries. The drug gangs would pick up again while knife crime would rise. It was like a whack-a-mole.’
‘Do you miss it?’
She laughed. ‘Not a chance.’
We turned the corner and approached the bogles’ cul-de-sac. I knew from past experience that there were hidden eyes on us, though I couldn’t have said where those eyes were hiding. As an acknowledgement to the bogles’ security, I slowed down and Anna followed suit.
‘Wait for it,’ she said. The road was still and empty, with only the barest whisper of a breeze rustling the leaves in the trees nearby. ‘Wait for it.’ She drew in a breath. ‘They’re bound to show themselves at any moment. In fact, I think that…’
She didn’t get the chance to finish. From out of nowhere, three bogles leapt out in front of us. Two had clearly been hiding in the trees; the third clicked into existence once Anna and I passed some sort of invisible marker.
I slammed on the brakes, coming to such an abrupt halt that I almost shot over the handle bars. ‘A little warning next time would be good,’ I muttered. At my back, Lucy moaned in brief protest at the violent stop.
‘Where would be the fun in that?’ Alora, the chief bogle smiled at me. Her expression was considerably warmer than it had been the first few times we’d met. I hoped that Anna’s comment about how things went in cycles didn’t mean that the same would happen to our relations with the bogles. I liked being able to drop in on another community from time to time. Somehow it made everything feel a bit more normal.
‘Hi, Alora,’ I said.
Anna, who’d come to a far more graceful halt than I had, swung her leg over the bike and lowered it to the ground. She strode up to Alora and shook her hand. ‘Good to see you again.’
‘And you, DI Jones.’ Alora’s eyes crinkled. ‘I hope this isn’t an official police visit. What is the crime rate these days on the mean streets of Manchester?’
Anna smiled and doffed an imaginary cap. ‘Low to non-existent, ma’am,’ she drawled in a deep voice. ‘Nothing to worry about.’ She paused and returned her voice to normal. ‘But we are here for an official reason. Me and Charley both,’ she said, indicating me with a wave of a hand.
I dipped into a bow because it didn’t hurt to remind Alora that I was keen to remain on the bogles’ good side.. ‘We’re here to discuss some potential, uh, issues that may be on the horizon.’ I hesitated to call them problems just yet. They weren’t problems. Yet. ‘And to ask you a question or two.’
Alora’s brow furrowed. ‘Go on.’
Clearly we weren’t about to be invited in for tea to discuss these issues. Relations might be relatively good but we still weren’t considered fully trustworthy. That was okay; I could understand why Alora felt that way. ‘We’ve been noticing some unusual activity from the … local wildlife.’
The little bogle woman nodded. The two males by her side didn’t even blink. ‘The monsters are roaming further into the city in search of food.’
‘Uh, yeah.’
She gazed at me. ‘This is not news.’
No, I supposed it wasn’t. ‘We’re tr
ying to come up with a solution,’ I told her, because I was sure that we would. ‘We don’t want anyone to get hurt because the beasties are ravenous.’
Alora’s expression didn’t change. ‘You mean like the beastie you’re carrying around in your backpack?’
I opened my mouth to try and explain Lucy’s presence but Alora broke in, her face softening. ‘You don’t know much about bogles, do you, enchantress?’
It had been a while since anyone had called me that. These days we were all enchanters and enchantresses. That was how much the magic that permeated the Mancunian atmosphere had affected us all.
I scratched my head. ‘No, I guess not.’
‘We were here long before you were. We have also served many purposes.’ She pointed at the bogle next to her, whose hair was a brighter shade of red than Monroe’s, especially when contrasted with his green skin. ‘James here, for example. His ancestors were tattie bogles.’
I frowned. ‘Uh…’
‘Scarecrows, to all intents and purposes. In generations gone by, his family kept creatures out of potato fields.’ Alora smiled benignly. ‘We have no fear of the other magical creatures in Manchester, not the ones you are referring to. They will not encroach on our lands.’
‘Is this something you could teach the rest of us?’ Anna asked.
She pursed her lips. ‘It’s in our blood so I’m not sure it’s teachable. But I’m sure we can send a few of our people to your community to offer some tips.’
I was genuinely surprised. ‘Really?’
Alora nodded. ‘Really.’ She folded her arms across her chest. ‘But this isn’t why you’re here right now. Tell me what else is going on.’
There was no prevaricating where the bogles were concerned. I pushed back my hair and met her eyes. ‘A flock of carrier pigeons passed over the city this morning. We can’t be completely certain, but we think they were holding messages for us – for any survivors in Manchester. We didn’t manage to catch any of them to actually read the messages but something strange happened when we were at the Travotel. It might have been to do with Lucy. She was in an old car and somehow the radio started working. The DJ was talking about Fabian Barrett, the billionaire. Apparently he’s making plans to enter the city. I realise it sounds strange but I’m pretty certain we didn’t hallucinate it…’