The stench of invisible smoke is suddenly overpowering. The woman’s on the floor, groaning, while the man bends over her. Sal drops the staff. It falls with a hollow thump. Rory tries to squirm out of the girl’s grip but he can’t, he’s trapped. The thump echoes, and goes on echoing, as if the room’s ten times bigger and carved of stone, until it becomes the dying beat of some massive drum.
A golden light touches the windows.
“He’s coming,” Amber whispers, in terrified surrender.
The light’s like sunrise. Around the ceiling the thin rectangles of filthy spotted glass flood with molten warmth. It leaks into the air. Gold wreaths everything.
“What the fuck,” Sal whispers.
“He’s—” Amber begins. Then her arms are flung apart and her head jerks back. Rory shies away, completely terrified, and falls to the floor. All of them are crouching now as though the light’s forcing them down, all except Amber, who kneels straighter, stretching her fingers to the ceiling.
“—here,” she says, and now the man’s voice has taken over her mouth again. It’s far too big for her, for the room. It’s huge and slow as a planet. “Here. I walk this place. I am I am I am invoked and I answer. By my light all things are seen as they are. Boy.” Rory’s cowering, bent over, head pressed to the floor, hands jammed over his ears. He’s probably screaming but there’s no way anyone could tell, not with that voice invading every atom of the room. “Answer me. Would you see God?” Someone’s got hold of him. It’s Sal. She’s crawled to his side and is tugging him towards the door. “Answer me,” the voice thunders. Amber looks like she’s choking on it. Its every syllable makes her shake. “Would. You. See. God.” Sal’s got to her feet. She’s very strong; she yanks Rory upright too and hurls him towards the door. “Answer me,” the voice peals behind them as they bolt down the corridor. The two of them barrel out into miserable twilight, the bulk of the great dish looming, its face turned up to the infinity above. They run for the gate. Sal wrenches it open and they collapse onto the weed-cracked path beyond, clutching each other, recovering breath.
“OK,” Sal says. A couple of the other Riders have spotted them and are running over. Sal gives Rory a weak smile. “That went well.”
21
He can’t sleep.
They don’t even have the foam mats they used at Dolphin House. The floor tiles feel damp and sticky. Every corner’s patched with mold. He can smell it in the dark, even over the reek of people sleeping in their clothes. The little rooms only fit one or two people but the doors must be open all along the corridor because the sweaty stench of people is stifling, and he can hear snoring. Earlier on there was a bit of muffled talking. Earlier, he thinks, but even then it was late, everyone except him and the muttering people was asleep. He feels like he’s been awake for days. He gave up on the floor a while ago and has come to the room with the swivelly chair. It swivels without squeaking so there’s no chance of waking Haze, who’s on the floor somewhere. He reaches out for the wall of machinery with his foot and pushes himself around. Spinning in the dark.
The wind’s noisy too. It surges and sighs. It’s like trying to sleep with someone standing next to your head. He’s not going to manage to drop off, he can tell.
They have to leave as soon as it’s light. The old couple are furious and Sal doesn’t dare make them any angrier. She and the others talked for a while about whether they should force the man to hand over the keys, but in the end they decided they have to go on being polite. Sal wouldn’t say very much about what happened inside Amber’s room, but Rory could tell she wasn’t keen on going back in there either. The only thing is that the staff’s still in there. Sal says she’ll make them bring it out tomorrow or she’ll refuse to leave.
Tomorrow. It feels unlikely.
Even though it’s pitch black his eyes are open. This is because the voice starts up every time he tries to close them. Not actually speaking again, it’s just that he starts remembering it, and when he does it’s like sticking his head inside a bell. It doesn’t even sound like words. It’s just exploding bombs of sound. Would. You. See. God. Round and round he spins. He’s not sure he’s on the earth anymore. When he tries to think of Home, his mother, the stub of candle beside his bed, the handles of buckets of icy water biting into his palms, it feels like he’s floated out of his own body, out of Rory, and he’s swimming around in interstellar nothing.
There’s a distant noise, more solid than the wind. A dog somewhere.
His attention drifts that way. It’s weird in the dark, it’s like he’s porous. The barking is pinpricks in the texture of the night. They disappear. He folds back into the dark room. Spin, spin.
More dogs. They probably run wild, he thinks. There were dogs on Home, in The Old Days, and even a few afterwards, until they had to eat them. Missus Grouse and Missus Anderson and Laurel and Pink (and Viola, in sympathy) said they’d rather starve than eat the dogs, though they all did in the end. Starvation was worse than they thought it was going to be.
Rory wonders about that dog behind the door at the crossroads. Ralph. Stupid name for a dog. Even Lino and Silvia and Per don’t feel real anymore. They’ve spun away like Home. Superheroes, gods. That stuff’s for kids, Ol says, though he’ll ask to read the comics anyway if he’s bored and Laurel’s not around.
The barking’s a bit louder. There must be a few of them out there.
There’s a shuffle in one of the other rooms. Someone else must be awake.
More barking.
“Shit,” a voice says. Lots of rustling. Louder: “Shit.”
Rory stops spinning.
“Dogs!” someone shouts.
Haze snorts herself awake. Judging by the sound of it she’s just sat up. She’s very still for a moment, listening.
“Oh Christ,” she says. She gets up, banging something. Everyone’s waking up now.
“Dogs!” the first voice shouts. “Wake up!”
“Fuck,” Haze says. She drops something. “Who was watching?” she shouts. Doors start banging. “Where are my fucking boots?”
“Get the horses!” shouts the first voice. A glimmer of light flickers in. Someone’s opened the front door, and it must be so late it’s early, a little of tomorrow’s light has appeared outside. Silhouettes bump into each other in the corridor. Outside someone—a man—yells “Wake up! Wake up!”
The barking’s quite loud now. There’re a lot of them. A big group of dogs, which, Rory thinks, would be a pack.
He starts feeling around on the floor for his coat and shoes. Haze has left the room. There’s an abrupt and overwhelming atmosphere of panic. Lots of people are shouting outside now. He can’t find his shoes; it’s still black as the bottom of the sea in his tiny room. His hands keep whacking against the spider legs of the chair. “Everyone!” That sounds like Sal shouting. “Horses! Now!” Everyone else must be outside. He tries to think. Should he go outside in his socks?
No one’s remembered him. No one’s here to help him get his shoes on. He tries to think and discovers a wall of terror in his head. His hands brush accidentally against a shoe. He starts putting it on, though it’s hard when you can’t see and your hands are shaking. Now there’s the sound of horses too, whinnying and stamping. Hoofbeats batter a rapid approach and fade: someone riding away. They’re leaving. They’re leaving already. Rory stands up, realizes he’s only got one shoe on. He lopes into the corridor.
A silhouette appears at the front door. “Rory?”
“I’m here,” he squeals, so tight with relief he can barely speak.
“Rory!” It’s Ellie. “Out here, quick.”
“I can’t find my other shoe.”
“Come on.” She turns her head and stares at something outside. “Come on!”
The barking’s continuous now, a wave of savagery. It’s really close. In the dim blue light behind Ellie someone rides past at a gallop. “Stand and fight!” someone shouts, a man. “Stay together!” Rory limps to the door. Ellie g
rabs his wrist. She’s wearing a big loose white T-shirt which makes her look like a ghost. She yanks him outside.
There’s torchlight across the heather barrens, and black shapes advancing. He hears howls which aren’t dogs. A horse clatters close. The big tattooed man called Wolf is standing outside one of the other buildings, waving a club. He tries to grab a horse as it rides by. “Fight them!” he snarls, but the rider swerves to avoid him. Ellie’s running. He tries to run too but he can’t do it in one shoe, he keeps tripping. He stumbles and drags her down. Another horse thuds up out of the dark.
“Got the kid?” It’s Soph.
“Can you take him?” Ellie says, getting to her feet.
“What about you?”
“Go.” The wave of horrible noise has changed. It’s breaking into small pieces and they’re very close, coming very fast. The dogs are off the leash. “Now! Grab him!”
An arm comes down and heaves Rory up. He thumps against the flank of Soph’s horse. It skitters and rears but she hangs on. Rory scrabbles for anything to cling on to and gets a fistful of mane. The horse whines and twists, and then suddenly the ground’s alive with snapping black bodies. “Ellie!” Soph yells. The horse bucks and kicks, flipping Rory into the air. He comes down across the saddle, the pommel smashing into his ribs. “Hang on!” Soph shouts, and everything starts bouncing wildly. They’re riding. Trying to pull his head straight, Rory sees Wolf go down, a black shape knocking into the man’s chest and laying him out flat. A dog yelps right under him; he hears the crack of a hoof against its body. Soph’s clinging on to him and swearing nonstop under her breath, fuckingbastardsfuckingbastards. They’re riding hard out onto the dark heath. He’s being pummeled. He’s clinging on, sick with terror and crazy motion. There’s a terrible lurch. Soph’s litany stops in a single sharp gasp, the world inverts itself, and he’s flung down into bristles and mud. The horse screams, staggers, falls beside him, rolling. Soph screams too. The force of his fall has stunned and winded him and he can’t move or breathe. “Fuck!” Soph shouts, and makes an agonized yelping noise. The turmoil of barking is behind them, mixed with men’s shouts. The sky’s an indigo blanket. “Rory?” He sucks in a breath. It hurts all over. “Rory! Can you get up?” Can he? He’s got to try. He drags his arms and legs into motion. The horse tries to heave itself up on its forelegs but collapses, making a sound like it’s being strangled. “Run!” Soph tells him. “Get the fuck away!” He can see her sitting nearby. Her mailed tunic is glimmering softly in the shadow of dawn. “Listen to me,” she says. Her voice is crackly. “Stand up straight. Can you do that? Good on you.” Her face is glimmering softly too: it must be wet. “Now go. Fast as you can. Always downhill, understand me? Get to the sea. That’s all you have to do.” She twists to look over her shoulder. Leaping torchlight scars the horizon above. “Off you go. They’ll send the dogs soon.” He stares stupidly. “Now, Rory. Now.”
“What about you?”
“Shut up,” she says. “Go.”
“Are you—”
“I can’t move.” He looks at her feet. One of them’s turned at a funny-looking angle. “Don’t just fucking stand there, kid. Run!” She sounds so desperate that he takes a few steps away. It’s like wading through a dry and thorny pond. The horse makes another helpless effort to right itself. He sees Soph dragging herself closer to it, whispering to it, flinching away as it throws its head in a frenzy of pain. Up on the crest of the slope above a man’s shape appears against the torchlight. The outline of his head is horribly deformed. “Don’t stop!” Soph hisses at him. Tears fill his eyes and then his heart. He blunders away alone.
* * *
Dawn finds him crammed in a muddy hole under an elder bush. He tried to keep going downhill but he got stuck and can’t go any farther, it’s impossible without his other shoe, and anyway he’s exhausted and heartsick. He came to a road at the edge of the heath but it ran out and left him in a morass of green. He squirmed in as far as he could and hid. From time to time he can still hear distant barking. There’s no one to tell him what’s happening. His face and hands are filthy but there’s no one to show him where the water is. He doesn’t know which way is north or south or east or west or which way he’s going to go next.
The people with the dogs are like villains in the comics. He imagines cruel men with mad-eyed leering grimaces who shout boasts and order destruction. Kill them all! If they find him he’s dead. Ellie and Wolf are probably already dead, and Soph too. He’s used to people dying but this is different. When They take people it’s quiet, they just disappear, like Ol, walking down the hill with a vaguely puzzled look, never to be seen again. Slipping into the water with a white hand guiding them down. Not torchlight and teeth and howling. He can’t stop thinking about Soph sitting on the heather, angry, afraid, all by herself. He should have got her away. In the comics the hero would have helped her up—Lean on me—and they’d have limped off to hide together, battered but defiant.
In the comics Ellie would have gotten away too. She had her boots on. She’d have kicked her way through the dogs to her horse, Drum, and ridden off into the night, leaving the villains cursing and waving their fists. The princess, she rides like the wind!
It’s not like that. He’s dirty and empty and hiding in a ditch.
No one’s going to come and rescue him.
He cries for a while, feeling horribly small.
When he starts getting shivery and stiff he makes himself wriggle out from under the elder bush and back through the mess of branches onto the road. It’s barely a road at all, just a crumbling lane which vanishes under a turbulent lake of bramble. He’s supposed to keep going downhill but it’s all blocked that way.
He can’t be on his own. It’s not possible.
It’s a drier morning, the clouds higher and thinner, streaked with blue holes like torn clothes. The curve of the high heath above hides all but the tops of the satellite dishes. It’s very quiet where he is, his little patch of solitary ground. No one knows where he is.
He stands for a while, waiting, but there’s nothing to wait for. No one’s coming.
He knows what he’d do next if this was the comics.
It’s completely stupid. It’s the stupidest idea ever. He’s not in the comics. He’s Rory, aged ten.
Nevertheless, oddly, every other idea sort of fades away beside it. He can imagine standing there for a very long time waiting to discover something else to do, and nothing changing in all that time, just small birds occasionally darting in and out of the bushes. It’s the stupid idea or nothing, then.
Perhaps he is in the comics after all, he thinks as he starts limping painfully back up towards the heath. Where else would someone ask him if he wanted to see God?
22
He can’t go the wrong way. The big dishes dominate the horizon above. There must still be people there too, because he can see smoke rising. The smoke’s thick and very dark. They must have made a big fire. Every so often there’s a snatch of noise which might be a shout or an argument or the dogs again. It’s not even that far away. He didn’t make much of an escape in his one shoe.
The only things growing here are gorse and heather. It’s too exposed for anything to survive that isn’t scrubby and prickly. The gorse gathers in squat clumps, tilted by the prevailing winds. There are places where he can use it as cover.
Narrow trails wriggle through the heather. Animal tracks, probably. He’s little enough to tuck himself down in them if he has to. He finds one that zigzags up the slope, towards the dishes and the smoke and the noises.
He’s incredibly frightened. It’s a crisp, buzzing, excited sort of fear. He whispers to himself as he sneaks up the slope, trying to make random words turn into a Plan. See what’s going on. Do that first. Do some recon. See what we can do after that. Even if he could just find a left shoe that would help.
When he first sees people it gives him such a squeeze of fear he nearly pees. He’s crouching by a thicket of gorse, pretty wel
l hidden, and he’s smeared in mud and bits of leaves and twigs by now, and it’s just two people—men—walking around the corner of one building in the distance, not even looking his way, but still, it’s enough to make him think about what he’s doing. Going closer instead of getting away. The men look shaggy and bulky, like they’re wearing furs instead of clothes. Wild men. Barbarians.
He can hear Soph pleading with him. Go. Get to the sea. Now.
It’s the fact that he can hear her voice so clearly that’s the problem.
He waits crouched by that gorse bush for a long time. No one else appears. He hears the dogs a lot now. Often someone shouts angrily when they start up, telling them to be quiet. He thinks about turning back down the hill. He contemplates the idea with frantic eagerness.
He stays where he is, though.
He’s on the broad flat top of the heath. There are nut-brown pools dotted around, and bits of fencing wire, and a couple of concrete huts too tiny to house anything but equipment, though they’re not connected to anything, they’re just plonked down in the waste. One of them’s between him and the camp under the satellite dishes. He can see how he could hide behind it if he could get that far.
He ducks low and scurries across the heath. Every step he takes with his left foot is an unpleasant adventure. That sock’s a murky brown mess now, saturated with squelchy water. He goes as fast as he can and gets himself tucked tight behind the concrete hut without seeing anyone else. He leans against it, gasping.
There’s a soft rattle and a blur of brown movement. He flinches.
A bird’s landed on the roof of the hut. It fluffs itself and peers over the edge at Rory with huge round black-ringed eyes. It’s an owl, a stocky mottled owl with a nasty hooked beak and an expression of concentrated ferocity. It’s not much bigger than Rory’s head but it looks like it’s thinking about eating him. It’s entirely unafraid of him.
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