The Fly-By-Nights (Brian Lumley) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

Electronic Edition

ISBN

978-1-59606-660-1

Subterranean Press

PO Box 190106

Burton, MI 48519

www.subterraneanpress.com

They wore no uniforms, the people of this deceptively raggle-taggle convoy where they rode, drove, or were trundled through a rubble-strewn wasteland in the dead of night. Yet despite the lack of khaki and badges of rank: the chevrons, shoulder pips, crowns and crossed swords—military insignia in general, the like of which Garth Slattery had seen illustrated in the brown, brittle pages of a battered volume he’d returned to one of the few dusty bookshelves that had passed for a library in the now abandoned Southern Refuge—still the careworn folk of the column, where they trekked a debris and broken-brick wasteland in the light of benign-seeming constellations, were far more akin to soldiers than civilians.

That was because this mobile community, of which Garth was a junior member, was at war; as were humanity’s rags and scattered remnants world-wide so far as was known, and the very word “civilian” was almost obsolete among the clans of a handful (at best) of moribund refuges whose people—all but the youngest—answered the roll-calls as regular combatants as necessary.

Their campaign, however, could scarcely be called an offensive, and in reality not even a campaign; not in olden terms of calls-to-arms or the joining of battle on predetermined fronts. No, the stance of these folk was rather the opposite: their war was mainly defensive, in which the hideous enemy’s spontaneous, apparently opportunistic attacks usually resulted from chance encounters, rarely from organized ambushes or premeditated tactics on the part of the fiend. Which meant that until the convoy arrived at its destination—one of the last few surviving refuges: a place of sanctuary and safety according to every expectation, and always assuming it could be found—its people must continue to endure the terrifying, all too frequent yet utterly unpredictable skirmishes and frenzied confrontations with every aimlessly wandering, crazed and blood-thirsty fly-by-night pack that crossed their path.

Thus far, mercifully, such nomadic gangs had been less than populous; never once—thank God!—in such numbers as to constitute a swarm. But nevertheless they did regularly come drifting out of nowhere in small, vicious groups, arriving suddenly and silently on the scene, and at any time—

—Which is to say any night-time, of course…

For who in his right mind would want to venture out in the open air in daylight? Not the people of this convoy, and definitely not their monstrous enemy—the fly-by-nights! As for the latter by virtue of their manifest fear and hatred of the sun, if for no other reason, they must at least be granted the distinction of partial rationality. For despite the utter mindlessness they invariably displayed during their attacks, still they knew and respected the horror inherent in the sun’s rays; hence the sinister designation bestowed upon them by men. But for all that men and monsters faced disparate dangers from Sol’s radiations, still exposure was as lethal to one as to the other—to friend and foe alike—though death came more certainly and far more swiftly to the fly-by-nights.

These were some of young Garth Slattery’s thoughts where he sat beside his father in a jolting trundle somewhere central of the column. Glancing sidelong at Zach Slattery, and covertly at the drawn faces of others in the vehicle, Garth’s thoughts were old for all that he was young. He thought back on a time—how long ago? Seven weeks, eight, more? He was certain someone must be measuring the days, or more properly the nights—but in any case he thought back to a time just before the exodus from the contaminated Southern Refuge, when all two hundred and seven of the people, men, women and children alike, had been called to a meeting convened by Big Jon Lamon.

Big Jon, the Southern Refuge’s leader—a bulky, leathery, down-to-earth man in his mid-thirties, and therefore one of the oldest of men—had had plenty of cause to speak that time, and much to impart in an unaccustomedly lengthy address. Garth remembered that speech almost word for word now, because his “Old Man,” Zach, had bade him listen very carefully, explaining that these would be the most important, most momentous words that he was ever likely to hear. For the future, indeed the very existence of the folk of the Southern Refuge—or the “clan” as they often as not referred to themselves—was now threatened and so up for debate; the outcome of which would surely mean a turning point in the hundred-and-fifty-year history of the refuge and its inhabitants. And Zach Slattery had known these things for a fact, even for a certainty, because Big Jon Lamon had taken him aside, conferring with him beforehand in order to gain the wise counsel of a man he’d called a friend and colleague for most of his life…

“I am obliged to call this meeting by reason of recent catastrophic events,” Big Jon had begun, his voice deep and gruff, yet still reverberant in the echoing central cavern that served the refuge as garage, workshop, and—as was sometimes necessary on occasions such as this—the clan’s accustomed assembly point. His stage was the raised platform of a loading bay standing hard against the cavern’s impermeable rock wall, permitting everyone in the crowded semicircle below to both hear and see him face-to-face, as it were.

And slowly at first but resolutely, Big Jon had continued:

“I’ll speak first of occurrences of which only a handful of you are already, necessarily aware: desperate occurrences, that demand desperate but inevitable measures. And then…then—”

He had paused, his grey eyes sweeping the silent crowd, his faded-leather face grave as never before despite the many hard, often problematic times the clan had known in years past.

“—And then I must speak of one measure in particular,” he had carried on, “of which I am sadly aware that like myself you are certain to despair. Of arduous times ahead, of difficulties and dangers to be faced and overcome if we desire a future for our children—indeed, if we wish to avert utter extinction!”

At which there had commenced a fitful, nervous stirring in the crowd, which, as a single entity had issued a sigh—a gasp of pent breath—a despairing sound that quickly descended to a low groan: acknowledgement of the fact that Big Jon’s discourse seemed to be developing into that worst case scenario that several in his audience, the techs in particular, had good reason to anticipate, to understand and dread.

Holding up a calloused, hopefully calming but hardly reassuring hand, however, before any anxious questions could be formulated, Big Jon had quickly continued:

“At least such is my considered opinion, arrived at following the wise counsel and advice solicited from a handful of our elders. But while I am your chosen leader, and while the elders are wise as the sum of their years, still we are only a handful while you are many. Which is why any decisions as to the future must be your individual choices! And I have called this meeting on that basis: on the understanding that however you decide the decisions must be yours alone, yours and/or your families’. For limited though such choices are, each with its own problems and hardships, still their natures do not permit of any one man or group, however wise, making them for you. As for me—myself alone, because I have no family other than the clan itself—I have already made my choice: more of which anon.

“Until then, three things are certain:

“One: there can be no delay, no putting it off until a tomorrow that may not come, not in the Southern Refuge. Two: the choices, such as they are, can’t be avoided. And three: action must follow sooner rather than later: if at all possible within the next few days at most, for that’s all the time we have left and nothing to spare.”

And again, holding up a commanding hand against a possible outcry: “Now let me hurry on…

“In certain ways fortune smiles on us…which may seem a most peculiar statement in times such as these! But believe me, all is not lost, not yet, and things could be much, much worse. As for how bad things are: I shall deal with that first, making no bones about it…

“As you all know, our water is drawn from two deep borehole wells; water which has always been plentiful, clean and refreshing…until now!”

That was when it had come if not quite as Big Jon had anticipated: the gasps of dismay, groans of strong men—the stirring of a crowd pressing closer to the loading bay the better to hear every word, not daring to miss anything—the soft sighs, even the sobbing of women clutching their smallest children to them.

Yet even so, it was scarcely the eruption that Big Jon had expected. At which he’d known that at least some intimation of the clan’s uncertain future had spread abroad, if not the situation in its entirety; which could scarcely have surprised him in a community so small and close-knit.

Then as the throng had pressed closer still, once again the leader had thrust a calloused hand high, his rough strong voice demanding: “Now wait, and hear me out!”

And as the swell had settled: “Very well…and now, about the water. As you know, deep in the rock there are two borehole wells. One well serves the animals that provide our food, clothing and fertilizers; the other issues water for drinking, washing, tanning, and the hydroponic vats; water that also freshens the shallow lake from which, with an eye to conservation, we’ve always taken a limited quota of fish…well, for what that has been worth this last year and a quarter; what with all the parasitic infestations and, as a direct result, the poor quality of the catch…”

Frowning, Big Jon had paused to gather his thoughts; until, finally: “Ah yes! Nor must we forget the small measure of clean water used as a coolant by our scavenger teams in the motors of their ancient, thirsty vehicles, venturing out in moon and starlight into the shattered towns and cities, fearless in the face of the fly-by-nights.

“In short the water is—or rather has been—everything to us, without which we could not, and cannot, survive! I make that point not to further alarm you, who must surely be aware of the sickening of the animals, but to prepare you for what has obviously been suspected if not hazarded aloud—

“—Namely that our wells, both of them, are now contaminated! Finally, after all these years, nuclear radiation from the surface has found its way into the depths of the earth and into the water! Many of the animals are poisoned, dying; which means that their flesh, their milk and eggs are likewise poisoned, no longer edible! Which in turn means we must take with us as many strong and healthy creatures as we can, preserving them for the future in order to preserve ourselves…”

There! With the sudden finality of just three words—“take with us”—the unthinkable had been broached: no longer a mere idea or fanciful notion of mass exodus from the Southern Refuge but a definite statement of intention, and far more importantly of imminence! Until which moment it had been barely possible to hope that Big Jon—with his odd talk of “fortune smiling,” and then of dealing with the bad news first, which could have meant there was better news to come—might yet pull a rabbit out of his hat; such hope as was now rapidly evaporating.

And once again anticipating a surge of desperate denials or anxious questions from his people, their leader had paused; but only until he had sensed the burgeoning pressure of their passions, their barely suppressed fear gathering energy to commence shouting and perhaps even screaming! And such was the weight of their terror that Big Jon had feared runaway hysteria!

Then for the last time he had stood tall, thrusting a hand high; and his voice, as strong as ever and even a little angry, had come bouncing back from rearing cavern walls. “Now bear up, and hear me out! For I’m not yet done! Oh, I know, I understand that you may not care to hear my words—that you may even wish to deny them—for by now you surely suspect that the worst are yet to be spoken…which they are! But then again, so are the best, or at least better! In which respect I would not lead you astray, nor have I ever…”

And as an anxious, ominous silence once more descended: “So then,” Big Jon had continued, “the water in the wells is contaminated. But we have always been diligent in keeping the reservoirs full—which they are—all but two: those closest to the source, drawing water directly from the wells. Needless to say, these have now been isolated from the system.

“Now to the point of all this:

“Assisted in my figurings by the techs, I calculate we have clean water for a three-month; that’s if we are to remain here, in the refuge. Three months—the total time allowed—before we begin to go the way of the animals!”

At which, at last from the clan a hoarse cry, an angry male voice shouting: “Jon Lamon, you’re our leader, that’s true. But how are we to accept, even from a leader, the fact that both of our wells are poisoned? And that until now, somehow, a disaster such as this has gone entirely unnot—?”

“—Hear me out!” Big Jon cut the questioner short. “I fully understand your angry tone; also the question you were about to ask, despite that I find it provocative if not odious. But still I’ll answer and have done with it. Let it be clearly understood that while you are correct and the clan faces a great disaster, still I’m able to assure you that no blame attaches, not that I can discover. Yet the problem exists as stated.”

“No blame?” The inquirer, a tall, burly, red-faced man in his mid-twenties, had come forward, pushing through the crowding people. “The animals began to sicken more than a week ago, maybe even longer! So then, what of the techs and their instruments? Have they been scamping the work, sleeping on the job, somehow failing to note these desperate straits that we’re in? Radiation from the surface, you said; but can you be sure it’s not from the pile behind those huge lead doors in the refuge’s furthest reaches, which is yet again the responsibility of the techs? Oh, and did you call the situation ‘a problem?’ What, a mere problem? Hah!” Scowling, throwing wide his arms, he shook great clenched fists to illustrate his fury…and maybe something of his fear. And finally—lowering his arms if not his tone—he finished by saying: “Well, it seems to me that we’re all dead men! So how’s that for a problem?”

“Ned Singer, you’re out of order!” declared Big Jon Lamon. “Your attitude surprises me, leaving much to be desired. Oh, I know you are a brave man and serve as the leader of one of our scavenger teams: a very important position. For which reason I might expect better from you. But dead men, you say? Without a full understanding of the situation? Is it possible you’re trying to condemn, to frighten the entire clan to death, Ned? No, of course not! So now if you’ll leave all your blustering out, maybe I’ll be allowed to finish up?! And, as I’m sure I recall saying, no blame attaches! How could it when no one could have foreseen or forestalled the ‘problem’ in the first place?”

“But—” Singer had started to protest yet again. Until:

“Be quiet!” The leader had roared, furious now. “Talk when I’m done, if by then you still have something to say.”

And as Singer shrank down somewhat, growling under his breath but nevertheless shuffling back into the crush, Big Jon had addressed a pale-faced, balding, nervous little man in the front rank:

“Speak, Andrew Fielding. Ned Singer has a question, even an accusation! And it seems to me that as the head tech you’re the best one to answer it; not only to inform Ned but also the clan in general: which was, of course, my main reason for calling you from your very important work. So speak now, Andrew, and let us all know how things are come to such a pass.”

While Big Jon was speaking, Singer had returned to his previous position central in the crowd, between Garth Slattery and a girl called Layla Morgan. Layla, a seamstress in animal-hides and a teacher to the clan’s younger children, was barely a year Garth’s senior; her mother was a long time dead—of radiation induced cancer—and her father had died just six months ago in a rockfall where new habitats were being excavated. While Garth had only rarely come into contact with her, he had always found Layla disarmingly attractive…

And meanwhile Andrew Fielding had begun to speak his piece:

“I can only report what happened, telling it as it was and as it is…” But the little man had no sooner started to reply to Big Jon’s request, nervously addressing the clan in general, than he stopped short to clear his throat, from which his initial sentence had emerged as little more than a croak. At which:

“Aye, go on, choke on your words—you little weasel!” Ned Singer muttered low under his breath, so that only those in his immediate vicinity could hear him. “Bone-idle tech that you are, with your ancient instruments and sputtering radios, your pills and powders whose strength was already on the wane five or more decades ago! Your only real work lies in servicing the generators! Other than that, what earthly use is a scrawny thing such as you? You should come out with me and my scavs one night, see what real work is!” With which Singer had elbowed Garth, almost as tall as himself, in the ribs, growling: “What say you, ’prentice Slattery?”

Garth had shrugged. “It seems to me that keeping the generators working is very important,” he replied, reasonably enough. “The refuge is vast and we have need of the light; down here in the dark no one could work without it! Also, Andrew Fielding is small, not sturdy enough to be a scav. So it’s probably as well that he’s a tech, with knowledge of radios and motors, instruments and…and other such things.” Feeling that he’d finished lamely Garth shrugged again—and noticed Layla frowning at him from Singer’s far side. Now why was that, he wondered? Probably because she considered his answer weak—or maybe she believed he shouldn’t have answered at all? Garth couldn’t say, and meanwhile Ned Singer had turned him a scowling, narrow-eyed glance.

“Huh!” The man gave a snort, then muttered half to himself: “A lesson learned, Ned lad: ask a pup for his opinion, expect a hesitant, wishy-washy answer…”

“Pup?” Garth bristled, but mainly from the tense atmosphere in the huge cavern, which was getting to him. “I’m sixteen pushing seventeen—which is old enough to go out with your scavs!”

“True,” Singer nodded, elbowing Garth again but harder this time. “You’re old enough to go out with us, but only as my apprentice—so watch your lip ‘pup!’ Damn me, but every time you open your mouth, it’s like I’m listening to your gimpy father!”

Garth drew a breath that swelled his broad chest…but on the far side of Ned Singer Layla Morgan had once again moved to the fore, from where she stared at Garth and shaped her expressive mouth into a silent warning unseen by Singer: “No!”

Good and timely advice, Garth supposed. And saying nothing, relaxing as best he was able, he kept the peace.

Meanwhile Andrew Fielding had been speaking for some little while, much of which had now been lost to Garth. Still angry at Singer’s insults—more especially the reference to his father—he nevertheless succeeded in ignoring his bruised feelings in order to concentrate on the head tech’s comments. By which time Fielding was midway into a sentence:

“…background radiation has ever fluctuated; by day it increases naturally, most likely due to the influence of the sun. However, in the event of any unacceptable increase in levels in the water—an event outside every previous experience, but one governed by an ancient SOP—we are tasked with releasing anti-radiation compounds into the tanks and reservoirs, hopefully to absorb any dangerous excess. Alas, it should be noted that down the decades the potency of these infusions has suffered considerably…but of course we still treat our drinking water with what few chemicals remain—for what good they do—and in addition the water is always filtered before use…

“Many years ago, before my time—indeed in the time of my great-grandfather, also a tech—in order to conserve compounds that were even then scarce, the techs stopped treating and even monitoring water from the animal well. In those days such measures were deemed wasteful; the water, with a source deep in the earth, was always so very pure. Well, that was then. But—

“Twelve days ago the farmers notified us of a slight deterioration in the health of certain of the beasts. Without delay, we techs examined these animals, discovering that they suffered the first symptoms of radiation poisoning! We immediately separated out every affected animal and bird, seeing to it that they were destroyed, and at once isolated the tank of initial influx from the overflow system, thus preventing any further spread of the contamination. Moreover, we cut back on the already limited supply of water to the lake; as Big Jon has mentioned, the fish are barely edible and continuing to maintain their habitat only depletes our human needs…” Here Fielding had paused and drawn a rasping breath, then very quickly continued:

“Obviously affairs were now most serious. But, so as not to cause alarm, only Big Jon and the heads of the various affected crafts were initially informed. Now: from the beginning we kept a close watch on the second tank of influx from the wells, regularly monitoring the radiation level. On the fourth day we discovered a taint, but so slight it was scarcely worse than normal background radiation levels. Nevertheless we isolated this tank also; which was just as well, for in four more days the radiation levels had increased to lethal degrees!

“All of which events were reported to Big Jon Lamon even as they occurred. Which brings us up to date. We techs continue to be vigilant, of course, but as for now…there you have it.”

In the crowd Ned Singer had grunted: “There we have it, eh? None of which addresses the so-called problem!” A number of the people close by had turned to stare at him, nodded their agreement, a few of the men muttering low and even cursing.

From his elevated position on the loading bay platform, Big Jon had been aware of this disturbance in the otherwise stunned assembly, and so was quick to intervene before full-scale panic set in. “Now hold!” he called out, “Listen to me! Andrew Fielding’s techs are not the only ones who have been working on this. Since first learning of the situation, I’ve debated a course of action with the elders and brought into play a contingency plan of sorts—as I shall explain in just a moment.

“But first…I would like to remind you of something that happened eleven months ago, when we received a radio message—our first human contact in a great many years—from the people of a refuge far to the north: an event that caused much excitement in the clan at that time.

“Reception was poor; we couldn’t be certain of the precise contents of the message, which seemed to be a request—even an entreaty—for people! By which I mean human reinforcements for a refuge decimated by fly-by-night depredation! Though the message was weak and fragmented, we learned this much at least: that the folk of this distant community had been attacked, suffering enormous losses before finally destroying the local swarm; also that they now offered safe harbour to anyone who could find his way to their co-ordinates. Moreover, head tech Fielding believes these co-ordinates are known to us, from marks made by our forebears on what few pre-war maps have been preserved!”

Here pausing to let all of that sink in, Big Jon Lamon had relaxed just a little, relieved to note that the various family and craft groups had now begun to talk excitedly among themselves. For finally they had recognized at least something of how certain of his previous statements now made sense. And so for a quarter-minute Big Jon had stayed silent, letting the buzz gain momentum as it rippled through the crowd…

Garth Slattery’s thoughts, memories from a comparatively recent life which now seemed a thousand years in the past, were abruptly interrupted when the trundle swayed, lurching over an uneven mound of stony debris. Garth’s father, Zach, grasped his shoulder to hold him steady.

“Asleep, were you?” Zach inquired.

The trundle had steadied up and Garth shook his head. “Day-dreaming,” he answered. “Thinking back in time, to the Southern Refuge. Compared to this journey, it no longer seems such a bad place!”

His father nodded. “Then I’d advise you to think of what we might have at journey’s end. It’s no good dwelling in the past, Garth. Especially one that’s burning in a cold, invisible fire, or perhaps beginning to shine a little, back in that great dead hole in the ground!”

“As you say,” Garth had to agree. “But I know you too well, Father, and that your occasional talk of a future Eden is meant only to buoy me up. And really there’s no need; I’m only young, but as I’ve often heard you say, hope springs eternal. Well, it does in me anyway; and I want you to know I neither despair nor fear for whatever lies ahead—though I suspect that you do, if only for my sake…” He paused to offer a frustrated shrug, and then went on: “I think what I’m trying to say is that I’m hopeful, and that I do have plans for the future.”

With which he almost unconsciously glanced across the weapons rack in the trundle’s central aisle, to the row of seats on the far side where Layla Morgan sat beside Ned Singer, just out of earshot by reason of the trundle’s banging and rattling.

Garth’s father noticed, smiling as he correctly interpreted his son’s glance and something of his “plans for the future.”

“Perhaps you’d be more comfortable over on that side, eh?”

It was no good pretending; Garth had given himself away on too many occasions recently; and as he knew his father, so Zach knew him just as well, if not better. And sighing, he answered, “Layla can’t seem to decide who she likes best, me or Ned Singer. Older and more experienced—the important leader of a scav team, at least as was—Ned may be more to her taste.”

“Maybe so,” said Zach, “but I noticed it was Ned who seated himself beside Layla—not the other way around. As to who she likes best: you’ll never know unless you ask her. And remember, we mate young in the clan, for children are our future—assuming we’re to have one! As for Ned Singer: you should watch out for him. Ned’s too excitable and has a bad temper; doesn’t like to be beaten, not at anything. He had a wife, taken by disease. She was a frail thing and I didn’t know her well. There were no children, and…I don’t know, perhaps I shouldn’t mention it, but from what I saw of her she seemed to bruise too easily…”

With that said, and as he looked here and there around the swaying trundle, Zach’s thoughts and his mood turned dark once more. Garth was right: it was only for him that Zach lightened up from time to time. But inside he had felt empty—angry and frustrated, sad and despondent—ever since his wife, Garth’s mother, had died in childbirth. While no blame attached to the boy, still the father had never stopped grieving.

Now like Garth he let his memories drift back in time, but a great deal farther back…

One night all those years ago, not long after Angela died, Zach had taken his team out into the dark; not so much to scavenge as to hunt fly-by-nights! For in his embittered mind they were to blame that the refuge’s so-called “hospital,” like all of its facilities, was so poorly equipped. And oh, they’d done some cleansing, some killing, that night! Zach, like a cursing, berserk warrior out of olden times, riding the devils down and blowing them to hell one after the other—at least until he’d lost control of his machine, his powerful motorized mountain bike, crashing it and breaking his right leg sideways at the knee, resulting in the painful, awkward limp that he’d suffered ever since. It had put an end to Zach’s scavenging, but never his grieving or his anger…

And now his mind returned to the present.

Several of the men in the trundle were cleaning and oiling their personal weapons: antique rifles and shotguns from as far back as the 21st century—museum pieces scavenged from a shattered city close to the Southern Refuge—as well as many and various sidearms, and a few far heavier pieces; even a grenade-launcher, and a vicious-looking short-barreled machine gun.

Watching the men at work and nodding, if mainly to himself, Zach told Garth, “Aye, look at them. All of them hardened warriors now, though more properly survivors. Oh, we fight when we must and with all we’ve got, just to survive, to avoid extinction! For our hideous enemy rarely takes captives, and when he does…well, they don’t keep too long! Ever hungry, he fights recklessly, even insanely; puts himself in harm’s way in order to gorge; that and only that! And never a thought—if indeed he’s capable of thought—for his own survival, not that we’ve ever been able to tell. And definitely not for ours!”

As a former apprentice scavenger Garth had been very fortunate; he’d experienced only a few rare fly-by-night encounters. By contrast, here with the convoy he had already made his first kill. And he still felt strange, even a little sick about that: that he’d destroyed a creature once human, or which should have been, and that he’d shot the weird wafting thing in the eye…and seen its spongy head explode like a rotten puffball!

That had come about because the convoy had no use for scavengers in the old sense. No longer a stable, settled community, the two-hundred-odd folk of the once-clan had been allowed only a minimum of personal belongings, and then only items of absolute necessity. There was simply no room in the powered vehicles and battered trundles for materials scavenged en route, and so no need for scavs. Thus Garth Slattery was no longer a scav but a pointsman—an outrider on his father’s rebuilt machine—yet still an apprentice of sorts: the junior member of Ned Singer’s six-man team, sharing its nightly duties with two similar teams as tasked on Big Jon Lamon’s work rosters.

For when a fortnight ago Singer had lost an outrider to fly-by-nights—the rider, by pure coincidence, of Zach Slattery’s old bike: a machine Ned’s crew had recovered, but alas, without its rider—he had requested Garth as a replacement; which had left Zach feeling uneasy. It was why he now and then saw fit to warn his son against Singer: a man who had very little time for rivals. For it didn’t seem unreasonable that where Layla Morgan was concerned, Singer might see Garth as just such a rival. And out there in the velvet darkness—the badlands surrounding the near-blind, often painfully slow convoy…well, surely it were best to be cautious. For who could say what cruel fate might or might not be lying in wait for another young outrider during an encounter with fly-by-nights? Or even as the result of a simple accident, for that matter?

Garth remembered Singer’s wife. He hadn’t seen much of her, but recalled that as his father had remarked she’d never seemed too well. A small, sad, dark-eyed creature really, and not that much older than Layla when she’d died…

Death: it had come along all too frequently in the Southern Refuge. It seemed that men hadn’t evolved to live down in holes in the ground; nor yet in vast, man-made caverns.

Death: it came for men and monsters alike…

Now, as the memory of Garth’s kill flashed once more across his mind’s eye, he shivered; in fact it was more a shudder. His father felt the tremor and asked: “Cold are you? That’s strange because it’s summer and a fairly mild night, not that the seasons have ever meant much to us refuge folk.”

“Not cold,” Garth shook his head, “but I keep thinking back on my kill.”

“Again with the memories, eh? But this one far more recent. Well, that happens, but the more you kill—and you will—the less your conscience will trouble you. We’ve been lucky so far: no large groups of the awful things to contend with. Just small parties, and mindless as always. Lord, I only wish I could come out with you…but this damned leg.”

“According to Big Jon Lamon,” Garth answered, “when you and he were scavs together, you did more than your fair share. Anyway, working in the sorting bays with scav salvage, that hasn’t been easy work. I saw you come limping home after many a shift, with the pain screwing up your face. Hounding the fly-by-nights that time has cost you dear, Father.”

“Fly-by-nights!” Zach twisted in his seat, turning his head and spitting his disgust over the side of the lead-roofed, six-wheeled trailer—the so-called trundle—where it bumped and swayed across rough country. And wiping his mouth he continued: “Aye, you’re right, Garth, it cost me dear. But, by God, I’d do it all again, and gladly! But as for now—

“Well, what the hell! For what it’s worth, the Earth is all theirs now—or will be when we’re all done for…” A statement he at once regretted, following it up with a sidelong glance at Garth. And biting his lip, shuffling uncomfortably in his seat, he quickly made amends: “But that’s to look on the downside, of course.”

Forcing a grin, Garth attempted a joke, tried to divert his father’s dark mood. “Oh? So there’s an upside, is there?”

But no. Again nodding to himself, in a way that had become a habit, Zach once more turned in his seat to gaze out into the gloom, across a plain that was little more than a desert dotted with the crumbling stumps of ruins, beyond which a near-distant horizon of low hills glowed with an eerie luminosity. And glancing again at his son, and pausing to think whatever he thought—though nothing too profound, Garth felt sure—finally, with a grunt of sour amusement, Zach spoke again:

“Huh! No fool you, eh, son?”

Son. Garth smiled to himself, but genuinely this time. Son: and here he sat, sixteen going on seventeen, and a killer of fly-by-nights at that! But to the Old Man, his father, he was still a young boy, his only son.

And meanwhile Zach had continued: “No, there’s no upside—not recently, anyway—or if there was I’ve somehow missed it! But listen: just because I’m sometimes a bit down, that doesn’t mean that you—”

“It’s okay,” Garth cut in. “I know, I really do! It’s just that things never seem to get any better, right? “

Zach nodded and turned yet again, his eyes focusing, narrowing, trying to penetrate the night. “Something like that,” he said. “It’s like life doesn’t hold much meaning for me, not any longer. I sometimes feel…oh, I don’t know…but it’s like that old saw you mentioned—‘hope springs eternal’—except I know it doesn’t. I suppose I’m just a bit weary of it all. Perhaps it’s simply that I wish I was doing more—wish I could do more—like I used to.”

With which Garth knew where the conversation would be turning now…

They were seated in a rear corner of the trundle, a rusting old bus long since stripped of a worthless engine, whose wheels and chassis were still in decent order. With its sides cut away except at the corners, and a roof layered with patches of hammered lead, the wagon now “trundled” along behind a tractor. Reconverted from a scav salvage skip, and refurnished with inward-facing bucket seats, it accommodated twenty-eight persons: men, women, and children alike. Some dozen or so trundles of similar design were in tow, while an equal number of vehicles proceeded under their own power; and all of them patrolled, watched over, shielded by outriders on mountain bikes, flanking the column at all times.

More or less separate from most of their fellow passengers, Garth and Zach knew that if they talked quietly they would not be overheard; that Zach’s frequently bitter, even disheartening-seeming remarks wouldn’t offend the men or frighten the women. For Big Jon Lamon had been known to come down hard on that sort of thing; though it was unlikely that the clan’s leader, Zach’s old friend, would find much fault with him.

Anyway Garth was sure that his father had long since earned the right to speak his mind, to think and comment out loud upon whatever was concerning him; but still he hoped Zach would keep it down when finally his frustration got the better of him. And sure enough, after another short spell of uneasy silence and just as Garth had anticipated—so it began:

“I’m reminded of my Old Man,” Zach said, “meaning my father, your grandfather, telling me things he’d heard from his father, including lots of immemorial slogans—or ‘home truths,’ as he called them—words that sometimes made good sense but all too often didn’t. I got that ‘hope springs eternal’ thing from him, just as you got it from me. Huh! Him and those old hand-me-down bywords that rarely rang true and never seemed to work in practice. In fact mostly they were dead wrong! Words from moldy old books is what they were. Words like—oh, let me think a minute—ah, yes, a favourite: ‘the meek shall inherit the Earth!’

“Oh really? Indeed? Bah! Because in all my days, after some thirty-three long years of a life of which I’m growing heartily sick and tired, I have yet to see, touch, smell or even hear of a single ‘meek’ fly-by-night! What, these nightmarish creatures that we run from—scurrying like cockroaches from a dead or dying refuge to the safety, hopefully, of another—meek? No, never! Not one of ’em! Show me a scorpion without a stinger, or a dog without fleas, and I’ll show you a meek fly-by-night! But except for some kind of miracle, or an act of God, in whom I no longer believe, you can be sure they will inherit the Earth! And then, when there’s none of us left—I mean if that time should ever come, because I’m sure you understand that this is just me in one of my moods—what will they eat then, eh?”

While Garth had heard all this before, frequently, still he listened. Because his father knew things; because he remembered things he’d been told, immemorial things about the old times—the good times, allegedly—before the war. That was one reason why Garth sat still, hearing the Old Man out, but mainly it was because Zach was his Old Man: his father, and one of the oldest of men! What, all of thirty-three years? Truly amazing when the average was four or five years less!

And as so often before Garth would have gone on listening—but at that very moment he had glimpsed, or perhaps more surely sensed, a telltale flash of red on the periphery of his vision: a crimson beam that came lancing in from somewhere out there in the night, flickering up and down, back and forth along the column’s length…a beam that the left-flank-forward outrider was flashing from his vantage point in the darkness, through one of his torch’s three tinted lenses: the red lens! Red for danger!

Garth jerked his head round in that direction, towards the source of the beam; and here it came again, sweeping along the tracked raupers, trucks and trundles. By then everyone had seen it, and the column had come to a halt. Zach had stopped muttering; he’d already taken his pump-action shotgun from its sheath on the rack, his reflexes still faster than Garth’s own, which perhaps explained something of the Old Man’s longevity. And as Garth loaded his weapon, so they sat there, anxiously awaiting orders from up front, from Big Jon’s command rauper, where the convoy’s leader stood upright in the turret, scanning the darkness through ancient night-light binoculars.

They waited, Garth and Zach and all the others in the trundle—their nerves jumping and hearts pumping—waited for Big Jon’s response which, if it sounded as a long single blast on a whistle, would signal a false alarm when all would be well. But if it came as three sort blasts, then everyone would know that they were coming!

Them! Like wispy locusts floating out of the dark, sighing wraiths with their glowing eyes and ragged, fluttering shrouds: the fly-by-nights! And by then every man and woman, and most of the young ones too, they would all be assuming defensive positions—and just as fast as they could move!

Already the men in the trundle had done loading their guns, the harsh ch-ching of steel cocking mechanisms ringing loud in the sudden silence. On the far side of the trundle Ned Singer’s hands were hovering close over the quick-release straps securing his bike to the exterior of the vehicle. Shooting a glance at Garth, he saw the youth following suit; likewise four other men, two on Garth’s side, two more on Singer’s. And as for the women, many of them with side arms of their own: they were now huddling protectively over the youngest children.

Everyone was ready…

Garth looked across at Layla, who was looking right back at him. Her face wore a strange expression, which like his own was worth a hundred words, or perhaps just three? So Garth dared to hope. But sometimes—times like this—the future he desired seemed way beyond his present reach, if not entirely unattainable…

There came a shout from up front: Big Jon’s query, directed at the unseen outrider, perhaps a hundred yards or more off the port side…

A moment’s pause that seemed to last a full minute or more, until at last the lancing beam sliced the night again. But this time it flashed green! A false alarm—thank God!—followed up at once by a single long blast on the leader’s whistle; then a massed and clearly audible sigh of relief as everyone began to breathe again…

III

With the dawn came more terror, more fear; not of fly-by-nights but of the dawn itself, the fatal light that painted a crack of gold on the eastern horizon.

Hinged panels of lead shielding were lowered from the roofs of the convoy’s vehicles into positions on the right, the side facing the rising sun: that great fireball whose lethal, seething rays would soon be pouring down upon the earth and all that moved naked over it. But in the distance and not too far ahead, extensive ruins were beginning to rear their shattered skeletal shells; while winding in from nowhere apparently, a once-metalled, potholed, bramble- and weed-strewn road led directly into the derelict town or city.

“In the old days,” Garth’s father told him, peering ahead, “this place would have had a name. But the few maps I’ve seen date back to a time years before the war, and as far as I know it isn’t marked on any of them. It was probably new in its day, before the bombs rained down. Anyway, it seems likely that Big Jon discovered at least some indication of it, because he sure as hell led us right to it! And his timing couldn’t be better; in the next hour or so we’ll be needing all the shelter we can get!”

Garth looked at the dull sheen of the leaden shielding, and said: “The lead shuts out the light. I quite like the light. It…it’s different! I’m not yet used to it, after the generated light in the Southern Refuge. But I do like it.”

“So do we all,” Zach answered. “The heat, too…but there are different kinds of heat. Up there in the atmosphere—which I’m told was thicker before the war—there was something they called an ozone layer. That’s mostly gone now. Anyway, I’m sure you learned about it in school in the refuge and probably understand the science at least as well as I do: how apart from ordinary heat, radiation from the sun gets through much easier now. And if you add to that the lingering nuclear radiation from the bombs…the overall effect is deadly! Yes, the lead shuts out the light some, but at the same time its great weight shuts out the radiation, too—well, a little of it, thank goodness!”

Garth nodded. “And during the war? It was nuclear radiation made the fly-by-nights, right?”

“After the war,” Zach corrected him, and nodded. “But there are several different theories. I go for the one that says they were here from the beginning, evolving along with the first men. You see, every creature has its parasites: the dogs have fleas, even our guard dogs. The birds, what few are left—like those scabby crows we saw when we sheltered up yesterday—they have mites. Even the bees in the flowers under those trees where we camped. And since time began these creatures have been learning to hide themselves, surviving, evolving. It’s instinct, that’s all; but it makes them hard to seek out, hard to get rid of. Likewise the fly-by-nights.

“The theory has it that they too learned to stay out of the light, hiding themselves from men. In the beginning there might have been just a few of them; they’d keep their numbers down in order to stay hidden. In the times I’m talking about, all those hundreds or thousands of years ago, whenever they fed on people they would probably kill their prey, devouring all so as not to make more like themselves. And so they were always there, these parasites, living on the blood and flesh of men and beasts.

“However, for all their evil intelligence they would sometimes make mistakes; accidentally leaving clues that caused the folk of those times to suspect their existence, their presence. Why, they might even be caught red-handed! And it was like that—slowly but surely—that these monsters became part of humanity’s myths and legends…”

“When I was just a child,” Garth said, frowning at an elusive memory from the past, “back there in the refuge, I remember seeing—what was it called, a film, a ‘movie’?—that showed a very different kind of fly-by-night. They weren’t the same as our fly-by-nights and men didn’t call them by that name.”

“Vampires!” Zach nodded again. “You have a good memory, for you were only three or four years old! That was a training film in the days before our viewscreens and discs gave up the ghost. And despite that it was a fiction—a so-called ‘entertainment’ from the old world—still the folk of the clan, even the young ones and others who might never be required to venture outside, they were obliged to see it in order to instill in them at least a measure of dread: some knowledge however false, misshapen, or exaggerated, of the evil lurking out there in the dark. And you remember that, eh?”

“I remember it frightened me!” Garth replied. “I was a just a child, after all. All that blood and screaming…of course I was afraid!”

“That’s right,” said Zach. “It was supposed to frighten you. That was its purpose. But what you saw up there on that screen: all that blood…that’s not how it is.” He shook his head.

Garth stared at his father and said: “I know. That’s what I asked myself after I destroyed that thing: ‘Where’s the blood?’ I saw spongy pulp and pink froth, but—”

“—But no blood, or very little? And then dry as dust? Yes, that’s how it is.” And yet again Zach’s nod. “The fly-by-nights are mutations, Garth. And you’re right, for in the aftermath of the war the radiation did indeed change them. They couldn’t inhabit the refuges—shelters as they were called then—because men would surely discover and do away with them. And out there, under the open sky, perhaps because they were changeling creatures in the first place, the new change was a whole lot faster. The ones the sun didn’t destroy, it turned them into the monsters that have preyed on us—mainly on our scavs—ever since. You should count yourself lucky, Garth, that working as a scav on Ned Singer’s team those few nights, you haven’t come across any of them before now!”

Garth was still frowning. “So, radiation either killed them off or turned them into what they are now,” he began. “But they seem to me like mad things! What of their intellig—?”

“—Waned, and failed them.” His father pre-empted him. “For as well as altering their flesh and bones, that weird heat also ate at their minds…or at least, so we believe. On the other hand—” and now he frowned, “—well, there have been one or two cases of intelligence lingering over a while…”

“Lingering over? From what?”

“From folk who have been taken, bitten and changed, but not killed. When I was a scav along with Big Jon Lamon, we actually saw it happen. We lost one of ours—Jack Foster, he was called—who…who…” But there Zach paused.

“Go on,” said Garth. “Jack Foster, who…what?”

“Who came back! Came back as a fly-by-night. Came back with a swarm, maybe twenty or thirty of them, that tried to get into the refuge! Because Jack knew, you see? Because he remembered!”

Garth nodded. “Maybe there were some among them who knew he was important, that Jack Foster could lead them to…to their next meal, in the refuge! And so he was spared to become one of them. Something like that, anyway.”

“That’s what we figured,” said. Zach. “That until the change took him in full, and his mind, too, Jack would have remembered us—and about the refuge! In which case he should have remembered how the entrance was a gauntlet! But whether he did or not it made no difference, didn’t stop him. When they came swarming out of the darkness the watchmen wiped them out half-a-dozen at a time! It was…oh, a glorious slaughter! God, how I wish it was like that every time, but without someone being taken!”

Garth thought things through a while, considered everything the Old Man had told him, and finally said: “So actually you’re saying that perhaps there’s a spark of intelligence in the fly-by-nights after all? But we already knew that, didn’t we? That while they no longer need to hide from men—because they are the masters of the surface world now, where there simply aren’t any men—well, not until us—still they have sense enough to take cover from the sun. However mindless and deranged they may be, it appears they’re not that crazy!”

“Instinct,” Zach replied. “Not true intelligence, but instinct pure and simple.”

And, believing him to be correct: “Survival!” said Garth.

“That’s how the theory goes, yes,” said Zach. “Except maybe you shouldn’t be so quick in taking it for granted that there’s no men above ground any more. I mean, it’s possible that you’re right, but…well, in the old times during and after the war, there couldn’t have been enough room for everyone in the shelters, and people are very adaptable. I’m sure you won’t remember this Garth, but again when you were just a child the occasional outsider—sometimes a family, even a small group, but as wild as animals through generations of cowering, existing, surviving outside—would come to us in their search for sanctuary. Then, if we’d lost folk and had room to spare, we would sometimes let them in. But the last lot…well, it must have been thirteen, maybe fourteen years ago, and since then: nothing. Still I suppose there could be others out in the open even now, though how they get by I just don’t know.”

“Survival,” Garth said again. “But if so, then it’s against all the odds…”

By then the convoy was into the city’s outskirts, negotiating a rubble-strewn road with the gaunt shells of burnt-out or shattered buildings growing up on both sides.

The leader, Big Jon Lamon, grotesque in a nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare suit, stood tall in the turret of his rauper (or his “kettenrauper,” according to a hand-painted sign flaking away on its rusty iron flank, though no one could remember the designation’s origin: actually that of an armoured half-track, a museum piece in miraculously working order) where Big Jon had brought it to a temporary halt, and from which he hastened the convoy’s vehicles on as they passed him by.

“That big building up front there,” Big Jon pointed, shouting orders at the driver in the shielded cab of the tow-tractor that pulled Garth and Zach’s trundle. “Get parked up alongside, deep in its shade, until we can sort out the accommodation. Mind you: no one goes inside, not yet!” Then as the vehicle trundled by and Big Jon spied a familiar face:

“Ho there, Zach! How goes it with you?”

“Battered and bruised, and aching in my back, my belly, and my two sides!” Garth’s father replied with a shout and a little dry humour. “Other than which I reckon I’m probably okay! Sorry for the women and kids, that’s all.”

Big Jon, having begun to laugh, stopped at once and nodded. “Well, with luck,” he yelled, his voice almost lost in the thunder of the tow-tractor’s motor as the convoy rumbled on, “today they’ll get to rest up all they want—God bless ’em all!” Following which, Big Jon and his rauper both were lost in billowing clouds of dust.

“Aye, but before anyone rests up there may be more work for some of you,” Zach muttered, as he fixed his son with a worried look. “Dangerous work at that.” He might have said more but instead, shifting his gaze beyond Garth, he nodded his acknowledgement of Ned Singer who was coming round from behind the weapons rack, swaying toward them in their corner seats.

Zach’s meaning had been perfectly clear, however, and when Garth said, “Fly-by-nights?” it was more than just a question.

“I hope not,” Zach replied, under his breath, “but it’s not unlikely. Some of these buildings still have roofs and could be occupied. In respect of which—well here comes your boss right now, doubtless to issue his instructions.”

Answering Zach’s nod with one of his own, however perfunctory, Singer took hold of a dangling strap to steady himself and leaned over Garth. “’Prentice Slattery,” he growled, “I suppose you know what comes next, and what I expect of you? But are you ready for it?”

Garth accepted that he was still an apprentice of sorts, at best a novice where fly-by-nights were concerned, and answered: “I’ll be ready when you call for me, Mr. Singer. But may I ask, what’s your reckoning? Is it likely we’ll be facing danger this time?”

“Danger, for you? Not if you watch and learn,” Singer grunted. “Not if you stick close, do as you’re told and quick about it. The reason I bother myself with you: you’re my youngest, my weakest, my least experienced. If you’d gone scavenging with me sooner—if you had a bit more of that behind you, back at the Southern Refuge—I wouldn’t be so concerned. I would know you better, how you’d think and react in a crisis or difficult situation. But you’re a Slattery, and—”

“—And what Ned?” Zach’s voice was dangerously quiet where he leaned forward, coming half out of his seat.

Singer scowled but drew back a little. “Well, you know what they say,” he said. “Like father, like son…eh, Zach? I mean, there’s four other men at risk in the squad, and I can’t afford to sit still for any wild stuff. That first kill your boy made: fine; all well and good; another fly-by-night gone to whichever hell! But I was there and witnessed it. He was in a panic, your boy, and shooting wild; for which no great need since I had his back! As for that kill: it was a lucky shot, that’s all; a very fortunate shot for everyone concerned.”

“Like father, like son, eh?” Zach’s voice was quieter still, an almost inaudible growl, and yet more dangerous for that.

Garth put his hand on his father’s tense, slightly shaking, thinly-fleshed thigh and told Singer, “You needn’t be concerned about any wild stuff from me, Ned—er, Mr. Singer. I’ll stick close, do as I’m told—and I’ll be very quick about it!”

Singer nodded. “Good! And that’s all I’m asking. But listen now: I won’t be making any exceptions. Next time you let loose, start blasting away left, right, and centre, you won’t find Ned Singer ducking your stray rounds. No, for I’ll he looking after Number One, meaning me! It’s fly-by-nights we aim to kill, not each other! So then, ’prentice Slattery, is all understood?”

“Yes, I understand,” said Garth, aware of the tension building in Zach and continuing to hold him at bay, albeit gently.

Singer nodded again, and said, “Very well then. So just be listening for my call. We’ll go in on foot, obviously; weapons at the ready, and hand torches too, because it will be dark or at best gloomy in there. So make sure your batteries are fully charged…”

With which he went to squeeze clumsily by and make his way along the narrow space to where two other members of his squad occupied seats on this side. At least Singer tried to get by—until Zach rammed his damaged limb across the gap, barring his way.

“Eh, what?” said Singer, stumbling and almost toppling.

Zach smiled up at him, but a very strange smile, and said: “You and me, Ned, we may have to be having a serious discussion about certain matters. And fairly soon, I should think, perhaps when we have a little time on our hands.”

Singer knew what he meant and grinned sarcastically. “What, we’ll have a to-do? Just me, you, and that gimpy leg of yours?”

Smiling his unsmile again, Zach replied: “You might want to forget my gimpy leg, Ned, and worry about the rest of me—such as these calloused old knuckles of mine.”

Then, as Zach slowly, deliberately withdrew his leg, Singer leaned as far back from him as the cramped conditions permitted, scowled and moved quickly on. Regaining his composure, Zach turned to Garth and told him:

“Son, I couldn’t be more proud of you—no way! First a scavenger, then an outrider on my old machine, now the youngest member of one of our seek-and-destroy teams under Ned Singer. Well, he might prove something of a problem but that can’t be helped. Here, give me that rifle of yours and take my pump-action. Its shells were old a hundred years ago but they’re tried and true and loaded to overflowing. You can return it—unused, I hope!—when all’s made safe…”

There Zach paused for a moment, took a hesitant, reluctant breath in preparation, and finally changed the subject. “Garth, son, while we’ve still got time before Ned’s all set and calls for you and the others, won’t you tell me what the hell he was going on about? But listen, don’t you go thinking for a single moment that I’d give a damn or blame you if you had panicked a little, for I wouldn’t! It would be wholly understandable. But for a fact you haven’t said too much about that kill of yours. Now I can see you don’t much care to go on about it, but can’t you tell me at least something of what really happened?”

“I could,” Garth answered, and shrugged, “but there’s not a lot to tell. What Ned seems to have seen one way, I saw differently, that’s all…” And hoping that would suffice he shrugged again. Looking at his father, however—and seeing that he was waiting for him to continue—Garth sighed resignedly and said: “All right. Since I’ve nothing to hide, this is how it was:

“Billy Martin was front left, I was middle man, Ned Singer brought up the rear: all three of us about evenly spaced along the column’s length on the port side. Billy was maybe a little ahead of the column, which I’m told is normal for front pointsmen, who also scout the terrain ahead; it’s something I’ve not yet been required to do. Anyway, suddenly I saw Billy flashing red and heard his warning yell echoing back. The moon was full and high behind low hills, and I thought I caught a glimpse of movement: three, maybe four silhouettes moving quickly just on this side of the ridge—pretty close to where Billy must be.

“Well, I was concerned for him, and I could hear Ned revving his engine behind me. He must have seen Billy’s flash, was on his way to help out; but I was closer and could get there a lot faster. The way appeared fairly clear ahead, mainly scrub, so I accelerated and soon saw Billy in my dipped headlight. He was off his bike, sheltering behind some rocks.

“‘Watch yourself, Garth!’ he yelled out to me. ‘They’re in front and on both sides…I don’t know how many!’

“‘Then let’s get out of here!’ I yelled back. ‘SOPs, Billy. We’ll fall back to the convoy, red lights flashing. Singer will see us going and follow on behind, and the convoy marksmen will take out whatever follows after us.’

“‘Can’t ride!’ he called out. ‘The bike’s knackered. Engine cut out on me. I’ll have to get up behind you.’

“‘Right, but be quick about it,’ I answered, skidding to a halt beside him. And right then was when the fly-by-nights attacked…

“There were three of them—seeming to float on air, their naked feet hardly touching the ground, arms reaching, and awful eyes burning—drifting like smoke out of the dark, with their stringy hair and tattered rags of clothing wafting along behind them. Deceptive in their movements, incredibly quick! No sooner seen than they were upon us: one on the right, one on the left, the other coming centrally over a massive domed rock, but seeming to slither or flow, as if he were made of water!

“There hadn’t been time enough for Billy to climb up on the bike behind me, and I couldn’t ride away without him. There was only one thing for it: hindered by the bike, I got off, propped it against a boulder, grabbed my rifle…and no time to spare! I saw Billy fire…nothing happened…his gun had jammed! I saw the creature on the right reaching for him, its jaws chomping; but I couldn’t shoot because Billy was in the way! I swung round, snapped off a shot at the one coming over the domed rock and somehow missed. Well, not exactly; my bullet hit its shoulder, threw it off balance, so that it slid down the boulder and flopped to the ground.

“About then I was aware of the background sound of Singer’s engine revving close by, and I knew that any time now Ned would be joining the fight. By then Billy had ducked the fly-by-night on his side and was trying to run from it. He tripped, went flying, landed on his back…and the thing was almost on him! He managed to eject the dud round, cocked his weapon, fired again. And the monster sighed—just a weird sigh!—as it flew backwards and collapsed in upon itself.

“I heard another sigh—or more likely a moan: of pleasure, anticipation!—and spun to my left. The fly-by-night was reaching for me, dribbling slime, a crazed light blazing in its eyes as its clawed hand thrust the barrel of my rifle aside! I yanked on the trigger anyway, and the bang! made it snatch its hand away. I got off another shot, but much too hasty; and the sheer speed of that horror! It slipped to one side, came at me again, drew back its crumbling lips from fangs jagged as broken glass and yellow as the moonlight!

“That was when I saw Ned Singer, still in the saddle on his stationary bike and revving its engine. Now, I don’t know, perhaps I shouldn’t mention this…except Ned looked about ready to take off! But surely not? He couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting me; maybe he was waiting for me to escape from the fly-by-night, when he would either shoot it or run it down and cripple it. That had to be what he was thinking, but I simply can’t say for sure…and everything was happening so very fast!

“The thing had taken hold of my jacket and I could scarcely believe how strong it was! It had dragged me close, was licking its awful drooling lips, sniffing me out with its sunken, badly fretted nose; why, I even fancied it was laughing at me…but silently! And it was holding me so close that I couldn’t get my rifle in between in order to shoot the horrible thing!

“Meanwhile, the one that had come over the boulder had got itself together somehow and was on its feet again. Billy fired at it; his shot knocked it down, passed right through it, too, I think, because the bullet ricocheted and I heard it go whining off close to the creature that had hold of me; which caused it to back off a little, but without letting go its arm just seemed to stretch! But finally I got my rifle in between us and squeezed the trigger, putting my bullet into one of its sulphur yellow eyes! Then, as I think I’ve already said, I saw its head fly apart like some kind of pulpy puffball!

“But Father, I admit I was scared, and I put another bullet into that broken thing, and another into the one that was still mewling, spitting at the foot of the boulder. And yes, mine and Billy’s bullets were flying just a bit thick and wild, more out of shock that necessity, probably, but not nearly as bad as Ned Singer makes out…at least I don’t think so.

“As for Ned: still on his bike, he seemed to be aiming that gun of his at me and Billy! So I thought, until a fourth fly-by-night appeared from behind the same boulder and a burst of fire from Ned’s big gun passed over us and took its awful head off!

“And, well, that was that…”

Slowly Zach nodded. “All done?” he said.

“Yes. Nothing more to tell.”

“Maybe not,” Zach growled, “But plenty to wonder about. Now you listen to me: I may have said or hinted at this before, and it’s possible I’m completely wrong—it’s difficult to know for sure when it involves a man who comes over as naturally offensive and unlikeable as Ned Singer; which makes it easy to think the worst of him—but still I’m telling you to watch out for that man. Fly-by-nights, deadly weapons, and dangerous situations—yes, and a little jealousy to boot, certainly on Ned’s part whether it’s warranted or not—such things don’t sit any too well together. One thing’s for sure: I’m awfully glad that Billy Martin was out there with you, and not just you and Ned, if you follow my meaning.”

“I’m trying not to,” Garth replied. “I’d much prefer to believe that Ned’s just a bit jealous—though of what I really don’t know—as well as being an unpleasant bully. As to that last…well, he can’t be that bad. Layla Morgan doesn’t seem to think so, anyway.”

Now it was Zach’s turn to shrug. “One man’s meat,” he said. “Or in this case one girl’s, maybe? But in any case I’m telling you to be careful. Because if there is anything to worry about, then this morning’s little chat won’t have improved matters!”

By which time the convoy had come to a halt, the motors had all fallen silent, and the shade of the great squat building on their right was cool and very welcoming…if not the prospect of its exploration and (possibly) its cleansing…

Half of the column was clustered close to the big building; the other half, under Big Jon Lamon’s personal direction, had moved on to another tall but badly damaged edifice close by.

In a little while, when Garth heard Ned Singer’s bull voice calling his seek-and-destroy squad to disembark, he was at once on his feet and out through the open side of the trundle, using his bike as an aid in climbing down. Hurrying around to the far side of the vehicle, he approached Singer where he stood elevated on a pile of rubble, with his heavy multi-barreled machine-gun cradled in both brawny arms.

Singer fondled the blued-steel side of his ugly weapon like a favourite child, and when his squad was accounted for he told them: “Whatever else you do when we’re inside, don’t anyone get in front of this gun! When this beast of mine is on heat it can cut down trees, knock holes in walls, and blow anything living, dead or undead straight to hell!”

Then, looking from face to face, he addressed each man individually: first Billy Martin. “Billy, how old are you?”

“Nineteen,” that one answered.

“And how many kills?”

“Seven, most of ’em scavenging with you, when we worked out of the Southern Refuge.”

Singer nodded. “So you know a thing or two about going into places like this: the dangers that may be lurking in dark corners? All right, I won’t worry about you.”

He moved on. “And you fellows: Dan Coulter, Peder Halbstein and Eric Davis. Oh, I think I know you three pretty well: married men, all three of you, with wives and families. Too much to lose in general; nothing wild about you fellows; steady as they come, and I trust you.”

Singer turned his narrow-eyed gaze on Garth. “Then there’s the young one: the son of a fighting cock, and maybe as wild as his father was—well, in his time. Also, it’s not too unlikely that ‘cock’ is the right word for him: him being so very young, and all his sap starting to rise. Ah, but it appears that certain juicy young girls prefer grown men, eh, ’prentice Slattery? As for me, I still prefer to think of such as you as a pup!”

Before Garth could reply, if he would, Singer went on: “You can stick close to me, at least close enough that I can keep an eye on you.” And then ignoring the youth, glancing this way and that along the column where the folk of the clan were disembarking now, stretching their limbs, easing their cramps and keeping to the shade, Singer continued: “Now then, where’s gangling Garry Maxwell and his sniffers, eh? Ah, here he comes now.”

A tall thin man, with a pair of equally lean hounds on long leather leashes, came hurrying, almost running, from one of the animal trundles further along the vehicle chain. Garth, finding himself wondering who was in charge—Maxwell over his dogs or the dogs over Maxwell—had to smile. But in fact this emaciated, almost skeletal man knew exactly what he was doing, and so did his dogs. When Maxwell dug his heels in, dragging them to a strangled halt and throwing down a rag of disintegrating cloth, the hounds immediately quit snuffling at some unguessable trail and turned on the rag in a coughing, snarling fury.

Maxwell let them play tug-o’-war briefly, finally slapping their noses and retrieving his rag. “Fly-by-night clothin’,” he informed unnecessarily, “from a dead ’un. Or p’raps I should say from one with no life of any sort left in ’im! It lets the dogs know what us and them’s a-doin’ ’ere, and gets ’em all keyed up for it.” Then, turning to Singer: “Ned, if you and one o’ yours will be watchin’ my back, me and these lads o’ mine is ready.”

“All right then,” said Singer, jumping down from his rubble platform. “Let’s get it done, the place cleaned out, emptied of scum—if there’s any in there—and these folks safely inside before the sun gets up any higher and a whole lot hotter!”

There were two other such teams, and two other dog-handlers with canine charges, but all of these had moved on with Big Jon Lamon to the mainly ruined church close by; for Garth had heard people talking, and that was what they had been calling it. And now that he thought about it, he recalled seeing pictures of an ivied, very peaceful looking place—a church, of course—that had looked just like the broken hulk in its overgrown grounds a rubble-heaped block away: pictures in a crumbling old volume in the Southern Refuge’s so-called library. The sole difference being that the one in the book had been complete and had featured a tall spike at the front, something called a steeple.

Garth and his curiosity, his almost unquenchable thirst for knowledge; he had read or at least skimmed through almost every volume the Southern Refuge had to offer…perhaps thirty? And what he’d read had always left him feeling trapped in the world of the refuge. However vast, that subterranean labyrinth, with its two and a half miles of workplaces and galleries, halls and “homes” (little more than one- or two-room caves in fact), still as a child Garth had been familiar with every inch of the veritable warren, roaming free after school hours at least until his Old Man finished his shift in the sorting bays, where the scavs dumped the often precious salvage retrieved from dead towns and hamlets “outside.”

But…that was then and this was now, and right now Garth must concentrate his mind on the present: on this (to him) incredibly huge concrete building they were about to enter.

First Garry Maxwell and his dogs, followed close behind by Ned Singer on one side and Garth on the other, with the remaining members of the squad bringing up the rear. Once inside this place—after the dogs had signaled the all clear, or perhaps not?—they would split up into three two-man teams, when Garth would remain paired with Singer. So perhaps it was as well that Maxwell would stay with them, under Singer’s direction.

The building, for all its size, had just two entrances—or rather, one entrance and one exit: both vastly gaping apertures with weed- and bramble-grown concrete ramps some ten feet wide. The nearest such opening still bore a metal sign swinging overhead on a thread of rusted iron which once was a screw. Most of the white paint had long since flaked from the sign’s centuried legend, whose embossed letters could still be seen to read:

MUNICIPAL CAR PARK

Mainly uneducated and dull-minded even by refuge standards, Ned Singer was muttering darkly to himself as he and Garth followed Maxwell and his dogs in under the sign:

“They used to leave their cars here?” Ned was puzzled. “Why so regimental, when they had a whole world of space? Why didn’t they leave them at home, at their houses? And look: there isn’t a single car in sight! Given facilities like these, didn’t they have sense enough to use them?”

Garth knew he shouldn’t say anything, but did anyway. “This place must have been for the use of people who drove into town. They would park their cars here before going to their places of work…or to carry out whatever tasks they were here for.”

“Really?” Singer sneered. “You know that for a fact then?”

“No, but it seems logical.”

“Then why are there no cars here? Or is that a part of your logic too, ’prentice?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact it is,” Garth answered. “It’s because the bombs fell at night, when the people were at home…”

Singer thought about that for a moment, then muttered, “You and your fucking ‘education!’ A schoolboy, eh? Well I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I attended classes!” He actually seemed proud of that fact.

“Ho lads!” Garry Maxwell yelled out loud to his dogs. “’Ere we goes! And you people back there—guns at the ready, if you please, but for fuck’s sake watch where you’re aimin’ ’em!”

Scowling across at Garth, Singer patted his ugly weapon and said, “The only education a man needed back at the refuge—or at any refuge for that matter—was how to load and fire one of these big fellows. That, and perhaps how to scav for good stuff among all the rubble. Those few things, and how to destroy fly-by-nights and blow them to fucking pieces, is all that was ever needed: the wisdom of my Old Man, who was a scav before me! And he was right. The only thing he got wrong: he thought he was invincible; he ignored his radiation badge’s warnings, went where invisible fires were burning still, till in the end they burned him, too…” Though he talked hard, Singer’s voice was somewhat hushed, growing quieter still as he finished up:

“On the day they buried him—buried my father’s body, and oh so deep—it was still making their radiation counters tick like a roomful of crazy clocks! The hard, heavy-handed old bastard…!”

They were a quarter of the way down the long hall, where on both sides the floor was divided into empty bays whose markings were here and there barely visible under layers of light debris and blown dust. The four members of the other teams paired off, climbing ramps to the higher levels. The place was ominously quiet now, a silence where even the softest footfall was clearly audible, while the snuffling of the dogs straining on their leashes came echoing back from the looming walls like the slobbering of primal beasts…

Behind them the pale dawn light from the entrance was gradually diminishing…ahead, their forward-leaning shadows were dimming with each step that took them deeper into the darkness. “Careful now,” said Ned Singer quietly. “Softly softly catchee monkey!”

“Monkey?” Garth whispered.

“Some old saying I got from my Old Man,” the other replied, yet more quietly. “Said he got it from his father.”

Now, almost halfway down the vast windowless gallery, with the narrow, yellow beams of their torches probing the deepening gloom, the grey, concrete bulk of another up ramp abruptly appeared and blocked the view ahead. In the same moment the hounds commenced to whine and skitter a little, no longer straining on their leashes; and as the team skirted the foot of the ramp and moved toward the utter darkness beyond it, so Maxwell’s charges halted and backed off stiff-legged. Then:

“Whoah, now!” Maxwell’s throaty, quavering warning sounded. “Take a look at my not-so-brave lads here, will you? Tails down, they don’t want to proceed; they’ve sniffed out somethin’ nasty just around this ramp on the dark side. See how they hang back? Oh, they enjoys to track the fly-by-nights, but they also knows when to quit and back off. Well, you may call ’em cowards if you like, but to my way o’ thinkin’ their behaviour says we are the ones that should be scared…and I bloody well am! So now you gents, if you’d care to take over from me and the dogs…” With which he quickly slipped back between Singer and Garth, letting the dogs whimper and whine where they huddled to his long legs.

“Fingers on triggers, but gently!” Singer growled, clipping his torch to the stock of his big weapon. Easing forward, Garth followed suit…but only a moment later somehow found himself in the lead position and first around the corner! Nerves jumping and scarcely breathing—if at all—he jerked his torch’s beam here, there, and everywhere, slicing criss-crossing light paths through the sentient darkness, paths far too fleeting in their passing for Garth to identify anything. But still his eyes were starting out, as he vainly attempted to penetrate the cobwebbed gloom of that awful corner, and his spine tingling as he sensed the almost physical weight of Ned Singer’s presence just a pace or two behind him.

But at last—in only a matter of seconds despite that each second felt like a minute—he began to make out certain shapes and outlines on the floor. A jumble of rubbish: old bedding and other stuff piled in a tangled white heap…and sudden motion! A rat went scurrying…and another! But Garth had squeezed his trigger one split second after seeing or sensing movement—or at least he’d tried to—only to find his action blocked! Like a frightened novice, and unaccustomed with his father’s weapon, he had neglected to release the safety catch! And now, silently cursing himself for an utter fool, he withdrew a trembling finger from the trigger guard, freed the safety catch, and finally…finally began to breathe again, albeit shakily.

While from behind, almost in Garth’s ear: “Well, it appears I should grant you this much at least, ’prentice Slattery,” Ned Singer begrudgingly panted, his breath coming in short, shivery gasps. “For a mere pup you’ve learned fast!…Learned to save your shells and stay cool in a queer situation! If I’d been in front…why, it’s not at all unlikely there’d be rodent blood and…and bodies all over the floor! That’s a pat on the back for you ’prentice, but don’t you go bragging about it!”

Surprised, startled for a moment—until the truth sank in —Garth thought, So: more concerned for himself Ned failed to notice my error. Good, else for sure I’d be in for another dressing down! As for all his “pat on the back” waffle: that’s just so much empty flattery—a cover to hide or disguise his own fear—because he’s no less shaken than me! (Or perhaps not, but it salved Garth’s conscience to consider it so…)

Now that both Garth and Singer were directing their torch beams into the unquiet corner, the mess on the floor was more clearly revealed. Coughing his disgust, Singer called for Garry Maxwell to come forward with his dogs:

“Gangling Garry,” he growled, regaining complete control of himself so quickly it was almost as if he’d never lost it. “You can bring those mangy sniffers of yours up front again now, for there’s nothing much here to worry them. Upon a time maybe, but not any longer. Just a small pile of fly-by-night shit and leftovers, is all!”

However reluctantly, and almost dragging his dogs with him, Maxwell came cautiously around the rim of the ramp. Then, sensing nothing to fear, the animals gradually relaxed; their tails stayed down but they nevertheless advanced, sniffing and snuffling at the remains in the corner.

And “remains” was the right word for at least some of those leavings. That small, gleaming white mound, for instance:

“Bones!” Garry Maxwell gasped. “Dog bones, for God’s sake!”

His own hounds had arrived at the same conclusion; hot-eyed and whining, and showing their teeth, however uncertainly, they skittered off from the dog debris and huddled to their master’s legs. Going down on one knee, Maxwell hugged them and muttered, “Eh, what? Those bastard things eat dogs?” He looked up, frowning his disgust and dismay at his companions.

“Anything with meat and red blood,” Ned Singer nodded. “But with preference for the blood, of course! Is it any wonder that in my time I’ve seen entire packs of wild dogs running from the damn things? And look at that skull there: two sets of jaws! He was a mutant, that one, but all the teeth in the world couldn’t save him from these fucking monsters!”

“What of the mattresses?” Garth haltingly queried. “I mean, do they sleep, the fly-by-nights?”

“Can’t say,” said Singer with a shake of his head. “I suppose they might, but no one knows for sure. During daylight they hide in places such as this—hide from the sun, of course—so I’d reckon it likely they take their ease here, too. Why settle for a concrete floor when you can lie on a mattress, eh? Even a fly-by-night would surely have that much sense!” Which for once made perfect sense to Garth…

There sounded a whistle, causing all three and the dogs too to jump. Two long blasts, in fact, echoing down the ramp from regions up above. It was an “all clear,” and something a little more than that: a summons.

“They want us to see something,” Singer grunted, “something they’ve spotted from on high.” He turned to Maxwell. “Gangling Garry, there are people outside waiting to hear from us. Go let them know that it’s safe to come in now, will you? While me and the ’prentice boy here go up top and see what’s happening.”

While Maxwell went back the way they’d come, Garth and Singer used the up ramps to climb to the car park’s higher levels. In doing so, they followed in the dusty footprints of team number two, and on the open top floor all six men came together.

Dan Coulter and Peder Halbstein were at the walled rim, and team two closing with them. It seemed safe enough under thickening cloud cover, so Singer and Garth hurried to join the others. As they did so there sounded gunfire.

“Aha!” said Singer as he reached the wall, leaned on it, and gazed down across a heap of rubble—once a block of buildings—at the half-ruined church beyond. “And what have we here?”

More gunfire sounded, and out from the gaping wounds of the church three bundles of fluttering rags came leaping, drifting, skinny arms reaching; while yawning mouths issued hissing, near-silent shrieks! Fly-by-nights, pursued by men with blazing weapons! But their guns were scarcely necessary, for the clouds had parted where sunlight came slanting from the east.

Even so, it seemed to take too many long moments before the sun’s rays took effect. Time enough for the leading creature to go wafting toward a trundle, reach it and float part way up the open side…only to be fired upon by someone inside, and sent sprawling back into the sunlight. And there, mewling thinly, it coiled itself up like a crippled insect and visibly shrank, its ragged clothing smoking, while the thing itself began disintegrating in the rays of the risen sun. The others lasted a moment or two longer but fared no better; having taken multiple hits from the raging gunfire, they staggered and fell, seething into smoke in the uncaring sunlight.

Finally a fourth and last fly-by-night came bursting out of the church. Clambering after it and armed with a roaring flamethrower, a man of the clan caught the thing in a withering gout of liquid fire. Wreathed in flames, the monster threw up its oh-so-long arms and crumbled to ashes in the dust and debris.

And at last it was over.

Whistles sounded…weary people started to disembark from trundles and other vehicles…a rauper with a bulldozer blade rumbled into view, began thrusting aside the rubble in front of the church; soon it would knock holes in the walls of that holy place large enough to grant access to many of the half-convoy’s vehicles.

By which time the car park was shuddering to the weight and the sound of the other half-convoy, as its vehicles escaped the lethal light and found refuge within. At which Ned Singer said: “Time to get out of the sunlight, lads, before it starts eating into our bones, too…”

On their way down the ramps and within Garth’s hearing, Singer spoke to Dan Coulter and Peder Halbstein: “What do you reckon, you fellows? On the way in through the ruins I saw a sign said: ‘Supermarket.’ We sometimes did pretty well out of such places down South. The place I saw: it was pretty much blown apart and open to the skies, but who knows what we’ll find under all that rubble? It’s only a block or two away, but if we’re going to do it at all it’ll have to be now, before Big Jon finds other work for us. Me, I reckon we’ve done enough for one day. And anyway, I’ve something of a thirst on.” He winked knowingly.

“Wines, do you mean?” Peder Halbstein answered him.

“Hell no!” said Singer. “In ten years they’re vinegar, most of ’em. And in a century and a half? I’m talking about the hard stuff, stuff that keeps its sting forever. Back in the Southern Refuge I rescued three whole cases of the stuff—brandy! With a quarter bottle of that in you you’ll truly enjoy a good day’s sleep, believe me!”

“Very well then, we’re in,” said Coulter, licking his lips, and Halbstein nodded an eager affirmation.

“Good!” said Singer. “Okay, grab whatever you need from the trundle, get into your radiation suits quick like, and I’ll see you at the entrance ramp in ten minutes.”

Down on the second level, Garth spotted the familiar figure of his Old Man among a stream of people from the trundles. Zach Slattery was struggling under a burden of blankets, weapons and a few personal belongings, his and some of his son’s, all of it in a bulging carpetbag. Garth turned toward him, made to go and offer assistance; but as Coulter and Halbstein hurried off, Ned Singer caught his elbow and drew him closer.

“’Prentice,” he growled, “a word in your ear.”

“Yes, what is it?” said Garth.

“It’s that Layla Morgan girl,” said Singer.

“Layla? What of her?”

Unemotionally, and entirely unabashed, the other answered, “Well, I’ve set my heart on her—I want her—you understand?”

Scarcely knowing how to reply to that, Garth offered a non-committal shrug and attempted an indifferent “so what?” expression.

It didn’t fool Singer one little bit. “Now you listen to me, ’prentice,” he said, “and take heed of a fair warning. Don’t go stepping on any toes, that’s all—especially mine! So you can quit making the sheep’s eyes and what all. What, did you think I hadn’t seen you? Oh, but I’ve seen you! So I’ll say it just one more time: I want that Layla girl. And what Ned Singer wants he usually gets.”

“And does she want you?” The words spilled out before Garth could stop then. After all, it was something he very much needed to know.

Scowling, Singer replied: “’Prentice Slattery, that’s something for me to know, not for you to question! So mind your own business! As for feelings between me and Layla, they’re between Layla and me—and no one else! Got it?”

Garth nodded. “Got it,” he said. “But if Layla wants you as badly as you want her, then I don’t know what’s worrying you! I mean, in that ease I’m sure all will be well. She’s a very…a very nice—” (he meant lovely) “—person, and would surely make a good companion and excellent wife for…well, for any man!”

“For this man!” said Singer. “As for a ‘companion’: I don’t know about that, but she’ll be something warm and juicy in bed, for sure—at least when she’s broken in!” And then he laughed.

Turning away, Garth grimaced at a sudden bitterness, a sour taste more in his mind than his mouth, and thought: Ned Singer I like you not at all—not a bit—and I’m damned if I can see why Layla Morgan would like you any better!

Then again, knowledge of women—their likes and dislikes—was scarcely Garth’s forte. How could it be when, in the innocence of a youth spent in the subterranean maze of the Southern Refuge, he’d never really known any? Never before felt the way he now felt about a girl? About Layla Morgan…

Oh, his were mixed emotions, definitely—several of which he wasn’t even sure of and didn’t much care for…more especially now, following Ned Singer’s “word in his ear”—but where Singer was concerned one thing at least was certain: Garth knew well enough now how he felt about him—

—And that was a feeling of cold yet burning anger, a sickening sensation conjured by the brutality of the bully’s words, and a hatred that was little short of loathing…

Garth helped his father find a spot well away from the old fly-by-night nest at the far end of the lower level, a spot where a little harmless daylight came slanting in from the entrance.

Zach unrolled a thin foam mattress and laid it down against the wall with a heavy blanket on top, took a small, fire-blackened iron tripod, a bottle of precious water (half of his daily allowance), a jar of ancient coffee granules—the latter long since reduced to so much brown powder while yet managing to retain at least a spark of the original flavour—a kettle and a tiny kero burner from the carpetbag, and grumbling disgustedly to himself threw down the bag itself for a pillow.

Kneeling beside his father, Garth made his own preparations for a day’s rest. But watching Zach from the corner of his eye, and knowing him the way he did, he was puzzled by what appeared to him the other’s somewhat unaccustomed nervous activity.

Down on his good knee, Zach made a vain attempt at fluffing up his stiff, lumpy “pillow,” then turned to Garth abruptly and inquired: “Tired, are you?”

At first shaking his head, Garth finally answered, “Well, a little, maybe. But I did my share of nodding off in the trundle last night. How about you?” And again he noticed how his father appeared unusually preoccupied and restless.

“Not really,” his young Old Man answered. “The leg’s giving me a bit more stick than usual. The best thing for that is exercise, or so I’ve discovered. So if you’re going to stay here—staking our claim to this bit of concrete, as it were—I think perhaps I’ll take a walk and have a look around. Truth to tell, there’s this handsome young widow woman I’ve noticed looking my way once or twice. Maybe I should try to find her, pay her some attention before someone beats me to it, eh?”

No more explanation was needed! And again shaking his head, then turning away to avoid embarrassing his father, Garth could barely keep from grinning!

Chuckling, Zach took up four pieces of aluminum tubing from his effects, fitting them together to form a lightweight crutch. Then standing up: “Right, I’m off,” he said. “But I don’t think I’ll be too long. No, I’ll be back to snatch a few hours’ sleep before Big Jon reckons it’s time we moved on again…which he won’t, at least not until the sun’s down. So then, I’ll see you later.”

Garth simply nodded and watched Zach move off toward an up ramp. Then, undressing and bundling up his vest and underpants until the next time the clan’s washerwomen got their cauldrons going—which, considering the scarcity of untainted water was a rare event indeed—he put on a clean, soft leather breechclout and stretched himself out, finally drawing his blanket up under his chin.

It was only then that he realized how weary he was, but for the moment sleep refused to come. Instead his mind went back to that time in the Southern Refuge, prior to the exodus, when Big Jon Lamon had called the meeting at which the lives of everyone in the sprawling underground shelter had been changed forever.

Big Jon had talked about his contingency plan: a plan based upon the ideas—the written records, strategies and proposals—of other, long-forgotten clan elders: men who had envisioned a future when, for various unspecified reasons, it might become necessary if not convenient to abandon the Southern Refuge and venture out into the poisoned land.

And now Garth recalled certain of Big Jon’s list of preparatory requirements: the work to be done, provisions to be made, and items to be acquired as he deemed essential:

From the scav teams he had requested lead from the roofs of ruined churches, to be beaten into panels in the workshops. (In fact, for at least a fortnight prior to the leader’s actual disclosure of the looming disaster—and a further ten days to the exodus itself—on those several nights when Garth had gone out scavenging with Singer’s team, he had time and time again heard the bully complaining about the seemingly endless loads of lead they were trundling back to the refuge.)

“Oh, it keeps out a lot of the radiation,” Singer had grumbled, “but in that great burrow under the hills, why do we need so much of the damned stuff? I appreciate the feel of it around me when I’m out and about in a salvage skip, for sure—but in the refuge—under four hundred or more feet of solid rock…? It makes no sense, not to Ned Singer it don’t! And then there’s the boss, our so-called ‘leader,’ Big Jon Lamon, sending us out on these stupid so-called ‘initiatives.’ It beats me why we put up with his nonsense! And tell me this: why the hell do we need a dozen or more new scav teams? I can’t figure it out! Or is it that I just don’t want to?”

Those last of his questions because much of the heavy metal they had been salvaging was soon to be seen hinged to the roofs and sides of an apparently endless production line of vehicles, including a great water bowser, that were obviously being prepared for outside work; which to Ned Singer’s unimaginative mind could mean only one thing: that Big Jon intended to establish a veritable army of scavengers!

And in support of Singer’s reasoning, however flawed:

In the workshops, the entire mech workforce had been set to servicing motors salvaged at least eighty years ago, before anyone alive in the refuge now was even conceived—indeed in the time of their forebears, their great-grandparents! All of these motors, from ancient buses whose carcasses had long since turned to rust—vehicles used all those decades ago to convey certain privileged people and a few surviving remnants of the local populace to the refuge in the earliest hours of the war—had been stored and preserved as best possible and were now being installed and geared into as many metal frames and chassis—however ugly or ungainly—as could readily be made serviceable.

Just as Ned Singer had observed and just as obviously, this could only be the creation of a small army—or rather a fleet—of transports. But contrary to the bully’s conclusion, it was in no way a fleet of scavenger skips and trundles. Trundles, by all means, but people carriers as opposed to salvage; and by no means an army but a soon-to-be convoy and veritable Ark!

Similarly, scav boss Bert Jordan and his team had been required to concentrate their efforts on fuels; for out there in the ruins, the locations of several small lakes of gasoline had been known for more than seventy years. Having somehow survived the holocaust’s missiles and fires, these were the subterranean reservoirs of black gold that had fed the pre-war service stations and fuelled the populace’s motor vehicles; and for decades now they had served the refuge in a similar capacity.

A third team under boss Don Myers had been required to raid the shattered remains of what was once a local military arsenal. While many weapons were beyond salvaging, a small percentage of recovered ammunition—some cartridges, bullets and grenades in their protective crates and packaging—were (amazingly!) still viable. And Myers’ team had searched out and gathered up every last shell of this treasure trove that scavengers had been collecting since time immemorial for use against the fly-by-nights.

But the scavs had not been alone in their industry. Within the Southern Refuge itself, once the worst was known, there had been plenty of frantic work…the careful filling of hundreds of jerricans, with many gallons of gasoline or diesel allocated to each trundle; while three of the larger, more powerful vehicles had been loaded exclusively with fuel: gasoline, diesel and kero…the filling of the great water bowser from the refuge’s precious reserves…the preparation of preserves, and salting of meats…the continuing culling and destruction of contaminated animals and birds, as their sicknesses gradually surfaced…the gathering of what fodder was available from hydroponics…the building of secure pens and cages in farm trundles, for what healthy livestock remained, without which a dubious future would seem yet more uncertain.

These things had been done and many more; and then, finally, there had been the closing down of the refuge’s own small reactor which, ironically, had remained “clean” as a result of many decades of specialized tech dedication and industry. The generators had been silenced, the always dim lights had flickered low and gone out, and behind the departing convoy all had been still in the great labyrinth which had been the Southern Refuge…

All of this and more passed through Garth’s weary mind, and doubtless through the minds of a good many more of the convoy’s folk where the majority rested or settled to uneasy sleep; even as Garth himself now settled down…

But having closed his eyes for what seemed barely a moment, suddenly Garth sensed a silent figure standing there, silhouetted against the dull glimmer of near-distant daylight: a young woman’s figure and quite motionless. And through half-shuttered eyelids, finally he recognized its owner.

“Oh!” said Layla Morgan as Garth’s eyes snapped fully open and he jerked upright in his bed. “Garth, I’m so very sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you, but I saw your father going off on his own and…well, I didn’t think you’d have your head down yet, and if you didn’t maybe we could… I mean, we never seem to get a chance to…so what do you think? Perhaps now is as good a time as any to…to…?”

Equally or even more tongue-tied, and not yet fully awake—though his weariness was rapidly falling off him—Garth groped for something, anything to say, just as long as it didn’t sound too stupid! And at last: “Yes?” he nodded. “Please go on: now’s a good time to…to what?”

Layla shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know! Talk, maybe? Oh, dear! This is no good! It’s supposed to be you doing the talking, the…well, persuading!”

Layla wanted to talk, wanted to be persuaded? Garth’s heart sang! She wanted to talk to him, to Garth Slattery! Previously: a shy smile in passing (most of the modesty being his); or occasionally, in reply to a bout of wistfulness he couldn’t conceal, Layla’s querying, soft-eyed glance (which might mean anything or nothing at all), and that had been all…almost. Ah! But what of that yearning, that anxious, even sad and frustrated expression that she’d worn in the trundle last night, when their eyes met during those few fraught seconds when it seemed likely they were under attack by fly-by-nights?

And now…now she wanted to talk to him!

That was what Layla had said, wasn’t it? Yes, yes of course it was! But she’d also said it was supposed to be him doing the talking!

“You wanted to talk?” Garth blurted, edging awkwardly aside under his blanket, and almost unconsciously, on impulse issuing a silent invitation to sit by patting the barely adequate space that he’d vacated. Which was when he saw that Layla had brought her necessaries with her, a small bundle of items to ensure she got her day’s rest: a rather thin, worn blanket, a pillow (actually a cushion,) and a pair of soft, warm leather leggings.

Then (amazingly!) Layla threw the cushion down in the space he’d allowed her, got down and sat beside him (somehow managing not to crush too close; a consideration which, to him, mattered not at all, or perhaps a great deal), and shook out her blanket over her knees and feet.

And now Garth found his voice, the words, and something of his courage. “You’re right: we’ve never had a chance, an opportunity to talk about…well, anything! And I’ve really wanted to…to talk, I mean! Then there’s Ned Singer. It seems whenever you are there, he’s there too, and you haven’t appeared to mind his company. At least not that I’ve noticed. Well, I understand something of that: he’s an older man and experienced, and runs his own scavenger team. Or at least he used to, before the trek. So you see—”

“—So I see you’ve got it all wrong, Garth!” Layla stopped him short. “Yes, Ned’s always there—because he cuts everyone else out! Other young clansmen have showed interest in me, too. And more especially since I’ve been on my own. But I’m sure Ned has warned them all off. Anyone who looks at me more than once: they soon lose interest after Ned has talked to them. Why, he’s nothing but a bully!”

Garth nodded. “Ned’s spoken to me, too. And he made himself very clear. A threat, really, but I don’t much care for threats—and I very much care for you. Ned says he wants you; well so do I, and I’m not about to lose interest!” There, he’d said it! Or had he said too much? “But…as yet I’m a nobody, and he’s got years on me. Also, he’s my boss, and—”

“Do you really want me, Garth?” Again, in mid-sentence, she cut him off. “I mean really? I know you’re young—younger than me, even—but you’re a lot more than just a boy. Oh, I’ve seen the man in you, Garth Slattery! You’ve been a scav, too; you go out protecting the convoy; and anyway, what’s a year or so when I’m little more than a girl myself? Time is passing, Garth, and who knows how much we have left? You say you want me, but maybe you think you aren’t ready? Well, I think you are—or rather, we are. So what if I tell Ned I’m not interested in him?”

Then, before Garth could answer, she laughed however uncertainly. And pressing closer, shivering (but not from any chill, he fancied), she repositioned her cushion and finally, stretching out, said: “There. So after all is said and done, here’s me doing the persuading, the arranging!”

Garth’s throat was dry, his voice husky, when he said, “You know, I think I’ve probably dreamed about this; well, something like this, and can’t help thinking I may be dreaming still! And Layla, I do think—in fact I know—that I’m quite ready. As for Ned Singer: you don’t have to tell him anything. I’ll speak to him myself, for myself.”

Lying back, he moved over more yet on his mattress; Layla’s lithe body followed his, pressing even closer. He turned on his side in order to face her, and she turned her back to him, snuggling closer yet! Clothed and in every respect decent, seemly—except possibly in their thoughts and desires—they nevertheless fitted together like lovers, which Garth was now sure they would be. And his arm went around her almost of its own accord.

“Let’s say no more,” he said then. And with a shrug: “If we talk any longer I’m sure to get my words all tangled!”

“No, not you,” Layla replied, shaking her head and sighing. “Actually, I think we’ve chosen our words rather well!”

Following which the pair very quickly fell asleep. And all around them in the cool gloom and the shadows of the car park’s lower level, some fifty others of the refugees settled to their much needed rest. Among those sprawling nearby, several couples had witnessed Layla’s arrival, seen how she remained and nodded their understanding and approval; especially the women, smiling and making small, whispered comments to their partners.

But keeping well back, unseen in the deepest shadows, there lurked a certain cold, calculating figure—a physically unattractive, scar-faced man called Arthur Robeson—who had like-wise kept a discreet distance while following Layla Morgan from the moment she’d climbed down from the trundle. And Robeson was one of Ned Singer’s small coterie of cronies.

Now, seeing Garth and Layla lying there together, still and warm in the faint, filtered light of day, Robeson smiled sardonically. Then, his mission completed, he moved silently away…

Garth Slattery dreamed, and for the first time in as long as he could remember his dreams were sweet. He dreamed of a land that was green and pure, with knee-deep grasses in meadows that went on forever, and a clear water river running through where glittering fishes leaped and sported. He dreamed that he lay there, with Layla of course, mostly hidden in the deep grasses of the meadow. All warm, bathed and glowing, Layla slept in his arms.

And he dreamed that his father, Zach, stood atop a hillock in the near-distance, smiling, waving, and leaning easily on a gleaming metal crutch that reflected flashes of clean, healthy sunlight. There was no rubble or blackened earth anywhere visible: only the roofs of little houses, half-hidden in the trees on gently sloping hillsides, with blue smoke rising from their brick chimney stacks. And on the far side of the river, penned behind fences in pastures of their own, several livestock species grazed contentedly.

In other words Garth dreamed of paradise. But in the waking world of the convoy’s folk, as time passed, things were rapidly becoming far less than peaceful…

And almost two hours later, suddenly Garth’s dreams were shattered! He started awake to sounds of guttural shouting—cries of anger, outrage, and pain! It was Layla who was hurting; Layla’s fingers grasping his arm, only to be wrenched away; Layla Morgan, dragged bodily from him!

At first Garth knew only confusion. Torn from sleep in the dusky gloom, and shivering from the shock of his abrupt awakening, he lurched to his feet near-naked. But as the fog lifted from his mind, suddenly everything was as clear as crystal. Ned Singer stood there: legs apart, a half-empty bottle in one hand and Layla in the other. Holding the girl by the upper left arm, he shook her so hard, so viciously that she skittered and skipped to avoid falling…which finally she did, twirling to her knees on the rough concrete floor!

“Oh, you slut! You little slut!” Singer yelled at her, his speech slurred with drink. “Didn’t I warn you about this horny pup of a Slattery? Seduced you, has he? You stupid young slut! Or maybe it was you seduced him, eh!?” With which he drew back a booted foot to kick her. By which time Garth was fully awake—and raging!

Drunk, staggering, thrown off balance as Layla avoided his kick—and surprised by Garth’s attack: its speed and ferocity, and the raw fury written in the youth’s expression—Singer saw him coming almost too late. And it was no mere “pup’s” paw that struck him but a fist as hard as rock, hurled with Garth’s entire body weight behind it! If Singer hadn’t turned his shoulder into that blow—if it had smashed into his throat and crushed his windpipe, it might well have killed him outright; or, if it had landed on his astonished, fallen jaw, it would certainly have broken it in pieces—but Singer’s shoulder was unfeeling muscle and bone and he was simply driven back, his bottle shattering where he was brought to a halt with his back flat against the wall. Then:

“What? What?” he roared, recovering his balance. “Why, you dirty hound! You take my chosen woman and…and what?—rape her, did you? Oh, I can see it all now! And still not satisfied with your filthy actions, now you offer violence to me, Layla’s intended? Well understand this, you horny Slattery dog: we clan folk know exactly how to deal with such as you!”

Singer’s great gun hung from its sling around his neck and under his arm. Releasing Layla, who until then had been dragged bodily along with him, he groped for the stock and pistol grip. And with his face a livid, twisted mask of murderous hatred, he swung the weapon up and forward—

—At which a trio of figures arrived on the scene, emerging as by magic out of the shadows. The last of them, Zach Slattery, came cursing, hobbling on his crutch; but the first of them, Big Jon Lamon, suffered no such physical disadvantage. Putting himself between Garth and the bully, the clan’s leader thrust Singer’s gun aside and, with a speed and efficiency that belied his bulk, sliced through its leather sling with a razor sharp machete! At which the full weight of the weapon, falling unexpectedly on Singer’s grimy, sweating hands, caused it to slip through his fingers and crash to the floor.

Disarmed and staggering, Singer glowered and snarled at the four men facing him: Big Jon, Zach, and head tech Andrew Fielding; but mainly at Garth who, restrained by the efforts of both his father and the tech, nevertheless continued to rage. And:

“Bastards, each man-jack of you!” Singer cursed them. “Bastards one and all! Are there no more honourable men in the clan? Have I no more friends, no allies?”

“Do you deserve any?” Big Jon answered him, as calmly as he was able. “And why would you need allies?” But it was as if the bully hadn’t heard him, and:

“What? Is there no more justice in this entire, ruined, god-forsaken world?” Singer inquired of no one in particular—and at once answered himself: “No, there isn’t! And so I’ll have to take care of it myself!”

Rapidly sobering, fully aware now and sly as he was brutal, he dropped suddenly to one knee in an effort to regain his gun…which could not be allowed.

As he fumbled for his weapon Singer glanced up—in time to see the tough rubber ferrule of Zach’s crutch driving in toward his creased, sweating brow! In the same split second his blood-shot eyes opened wide, his expression changing from one of menace and hatred to one of shock—and with an audible thud! the crutch slammed home.

Standing on his good leg, Zach had leaned heavily into the blow. Singer’s square head on his red bull neck snapped back as he was straightened up forcefully from his crouch, knocked from his feet and sent sprawling. An instant later saw Big Jon Lamon stooping to recover the bully’s weapon, picking it up as easily as if it were a wooden toy.

“Tsk, tsk!” the clan’s leader said then, examining the gun, his expression artless, innocent as he pursed rough lips. “Why, just look here, will you, Ned? You’ve left the safety off! Now, that is how accidents happen, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. So I shall expect better of you in future.”

Seated on the floor, leaning back on his hands, and shaking his head dazedly, the other said, “I’ll not be forgetting this. You’re all working against me, all of you! You, Big Jon, our so called ‘leader.’ And you, Zach Slattery—you gimpy old sod—you and your bloody upstart son! And—”

“—And that’s enough!” Zach hobbled closer, scowling. “If I ever hear you call me gimpy again—or my son a pup, dog, or a horny bastard—then the next time I hit you it’ll be to knock your teeth out through the back of your scabby neck!” But:

“No, Father,” Garth growled low in his throat, as he pulled his trousers on over his breech-clout, then helped Layla to her feet. “Not on my behalf you won’t! I can look after myself. And now that Ned Singer has shown what he’s made of, that won’t any longer be a problem.”

But as far as Singer was concerned, it was as if no one had issued a single word of warning; he simply picked up where he’d left off:

“As for you—” glowering at Layla as he got to his feet, he took a step toward her. “Yes, you—you little whore! I’ll—”

“You’ll do nothing whatsoever, Ned!” Big Jon Lamon now thundered, no longer playing the artless innocent but the leader he had always been. “And you’ll say no more—” He got between Singer and his would-be victims. “—Not another word, or I guarantee you’ll regret it!”

And at last Singer’s senses—something of them—seemed to return to him. “But I’ve been…I’ve been courting this girl!” he said. Which now caused Layla herself to speak up:

“Don’t you mean ‘this little whore,’ Mr. Singer? And ‘courting’ me?’ Is that what you were doing? Chasing the young men off and stripping me naked with your eyes whenever you caught sight of me? Leering at me, and asking me back to your quarters on at least a dozen occasions; despite that I refused you every time? Well, let me tell you this, Mr. Singer —that the mere sight of you is enough to make me sick! Why, I would have any man of the clan before you! But Garth Slattery here is the one I’ve chosen, if he’ll have me—”

“—Which I will, gladly!” said Garth, with his arm around her waist. “I’ll keep and protect you, too. And listen, ‘Ned’—” he glared at Singer: “—don’t you ever again so much as look at Layla! Don’t try to speak to her, or speak badly of her. You’re a bullying, piggish liar, ‘Ned.’ But not around me or mine, not any more.”

The scav boss clenched his fists and puffed himself up, but before he could do anything or make any further comment Big Jon nodded curtly and said. “Then that’s settled. And you two: I’ll marry you within the hour, if that’s what you wish, in that gutted church across the way…which should leave little else in dispute.” Then, stripping the magazine from Singer’s weapon, he tossed it over to the crimson-faced bully who only just managed to catch and hold on to it. But in another moment, red-eyed and scowling, he turned the gun’s gaping snout on Garth and Layla!

It seemed a mere gesture, an empty threat however ugly, for Big Jon Lamon had the magazine. Or maybe not so empty; the look in Singer’s eyes was a threat in its own right. And for several long seconds he held that pose—

—Until with a sneer and a grunted, “Huh!” he made to turn away; only to have the clan leader step into his path. And:

“I never would have thought I’d see the day, Ned,” Big Jon spoke quietly now. “But it seems something needs saying, and a warning is very much in order. You’re an intimidating man—a bully, as Garth Slattery here has named you—but in the clan there’s things allowed and things we can’t allow. I smell hard liquor on your breath, Ned Singer, and I’ve seen death in your eyes, heard murder in your words. None of which sits well with me, for it’s a mix that bodes ill for all of us.”

“Huh!” said the other again, moving to step round the clan leader, who once more blocked his path. And:

“Hear me out!” Big Jon’s eyes had narrowed now, his brows creasing in a deep frown. “I know Garth Slattery’s a member of your team; but there are other teams, other duties, and things can be moved around—”

“—Not on my account!” Garth spoke up. “We know now where we stand, but that must be the end of it. Ned Singer’s good at what he does and there’s things I’m learning from him. We don’t have to like each other, but protecting the convoy is all that really matters and in that respect I’ll do whatever I’m called upon to do, and no ill feelings. This other thing…it should have been a private matter, but in any case it’s over now.”

At which the leader slowly nodded. “Sounds good to me. Very well, so let it be.” But he turned back to Singer nevertheless, saying: “Let me remind you, Ned: the clan has had enough—more than enough—of death, both natural and as a result of fly-by-night depredation. Why, we’ve even had a murder, though that was many years ago, when even I was a young man. As to how we dealt with that: well, if memory serves the killer was taken out into the badlands and left there to fend for himself…”

His pause was deliberate; it allowed the other to ask: “Oh, and what has that to do with me?”

But Big Jon shook his head. “Why, nothing at all!” he said. “No, I should hope not! It was only a reminder…that between here and our destination—if we ever get there—there’s bound to be badlands aplenty.” And then, stepping aside, he said, “Now you can go.”

But as Singer made to slink away, again the leader stopped him. Big Jon’s voice was suddenly lighter now as he reverted to his artless, innocent mode once more, and said: “Oh, and by the way, that was a decent bit of scavenging, Ned, and I know everyone in the clan will think well of you. We’ll never have enough of medicinal supplies, which are always welcome.”

“What’s that?” Frowning, Singer glanced back. “Medi—” But there he broke off and his jaw dropped, for he knew well enough Big Jon’s meaning…

Outside the ancient car park the sky had clouded over. “Are you two quite sure you’re right for each other?” Big Jon Lamon inquired of Garth and Layla as they reached the exit ramp. “If not, now would be a good time to speak up. Emotions were more than a bit heated back there, and when people are under pressure mistakes are easily made—not so easily corrected.”

The pair looked at each other, Garth with his heart in his mouth; but Layla only smiled and nodded. “We’re sure.” And with an audible sigh Garth said:

“Oh, yes. We’re sure. I think we have been for quite a long time, but…things got in the way.”

“Things like Ned Singer?”

“Yes, sir. Singer, and—well, just events.”

Big Jon nodded. “Yes, it’s been a very rough time, and probably a lot more to come. Which you’ll face together, right?”

“Yes, sir.” But Garth couldn’t hide a frown, and the leader had noticed.

“Is there something, anything?”

“No, not really,” Garth answered as they set out across the rubble toward the battered church. “Just the way Ned Singer was acting. His mood is always unpleasant, but this time—”

“Ned was thwarted,” said Zach. “He was bested, made to look foolish and didn’t much like it. But we brought him down a peg, so maybe he’ll be more reasonable from now on.”

“I expect he will,” said the leader. “Anyway, he was drunk. That’s why he was worse than usual—worse for drink, that is, and worse for wear.” He grinned a wolfish grin. “Ned’ll wake up later with a badly bruised ego, likewise a bruised forehead, and a sore head in general—which serves him right. And as for his scavenged booze—”

“He had five bottles!” said head tech Andrew Fielding. “Big Jon and me, we were out by the well in what used to be a garden in front of that old church, when we saw one of Ned’s team—”

“Dan Coulter, it was,” said Big Jon, nodding.

“—And he was reeling about in his radiation suit as if he was smitten!” Fielding went on. “For a minute we were concerned for him, until we saw he had a bottle in his hand.”

Again the leader’s nod, and his wolf’s grin. “Aye, so after we had words with Dan, we not only, er, ‘rescued’ his stash but Peder Halbstein’s and Ned Singer’s, too! Twelve bottles in all. Would have been thirteen if that one back there hadn’t smashed. Unlucky for some, so it’s said—namely those three damn fools! That booze might well be hot, tainted with something other than alcohol and much, much harder!” But:

“No, I think that’s unlikely,” said the head tech, sounding excited, suddenly energized, as if he had just remembered something important. Which indeed he had.

“Oh?” Big Jon frowned at him.

“Well, that’s what I was about to tell you at the old well! I was carrying out a radiation test on the water when we bumped into each other and saw Dan Coulter staggering about like that. Following which you were in such a hurry to, er, ‘rescue’ their liquor—which should have been handed over in the first place, for the good of the clan—that I became distracted; since when we’ve been busy. Anyway, that’s a very deep well, and its water seems fairly clean and…and even potable!”

That pulled the others up short, and together Zach Slattery and Big Jon said: “Clean?” And they stared at Fielding as if he had two heads.

Then, grabbing the head tech and drawing him close, Big Jon said: “Clean—and potable? Surely your instruments are on the fritz, Andrew?”

“Not a bit of it,” said Fielding, blinking rapidly and trying to free himself from the leader’s grasp. “My instruments are just fine, and so is the water…almost.”

“Almost?” said Big Jon, his eyes narrowing. “How, almost?”

“Well,” the other shrugged, “the background radiation is a tad high, but that’s about all…except it’s not all, not by a long shot! See, this entire area, at least in the half-dozen or so spots that I’ve tested, shows only a fraction of the residual radiation that I’d expect. Which makes this the cleanest place we’ve visited since leaving the Southern Refuge!” The leader’s mouth had fallen open; the others’ mouths, too.

“You’re saying we can actually drink that well water?” said Zach.

“And that we can maybe refill the bowser?” said Big Jon. “I mean, God only knows we need to! Last time I checked, the gauge was two thirds of the way down to the dregs!”

“Can we wash?” Layla sighed. “And cook, and perhaps launder some clothing, too?”

The head tech laughed excitedly and did a little jig as Big Jon released him. “What’s that?” he asked Layla. “You only want to wash? Why girl, there’s thirty-five feet or more of water in that well, so you can bathe in it if that’s your desire!”

The leader laughed, roared out loud, almost joined the head tech in his dance…then stopped abruptly and said, “But how? Explain, Andrew, for I just don’t understand.”

And as they set off again toward the church, but with so much more energy in their steps now, Fielding said: “Well, it’s possible that I do understand. Just look around and tell me: do you see any signs of terrific heat, calcined glass or metal and drifts of dust? No, nothing of the sort. A few burned-out buildings perhaps, but nothing special. Evidence of bombs, of blast, definitely: shell-shocked masonry, and a good many craters scattered here and there. But no real evidence of a nuclear attack. This place was bombed, that’s obvious, but I don’t think it was nuked. And—oh, I don’t know—perhaps it was simply fortunate to lie outside any major fallout zone; or then again, maybe down all the decades nature and the weather have worked in combination to clean the place up. That can sometimes happen quite quickly. In the world as was the very first nuclear weapon destroyed a city—whose survivors almost at once rebuilt it!”

“I’ve read something about that,” said Garth, “in a book in the library in the Southern Refuge. But there was only one bomb that first time—or maybe two?”

“Garth’s right,” said the leader. “And this time there were dozens, maybe hundreds! Enough to bring about a so-called ‘nuclear winter,’ anyway, and who knows what else?”

“A half-dead planet, that’s what else!” said Zach, spitting into the dirt. “Not to mention the rise of the fly-by-nights!”

As they approached the broken church’s walled garden, where the shattered steeple lay in crumpled sections, Andrew Fielding paused. Frowning, he narrowed his eyes to squint up at the slowly drifting cloud cover, and muttering quietly to himself said:

“And then…then there’s the sunlight…and that’s also hard to figure.” He gave his head a small, bewildered shake. But the leader had overheard his quiet, introspective remarks.

“Eh?” Big Jon caught Fielding’s arm. “What’s that about the sunlight? Something else to puzzle over, Andrew? And perhaps to worry about, too?”

The nervous little man blinked, shook himself and came back to earth. “Hmm? Something to puzzle over?” He repeated Big Jon. “Well, yes: to me it’s a puzzle, certainly. But worry about it? No, not at all! On the contrary!”

“Well then?” The leader’s impatience was surfacing.

And as the five made their way across the overgrown, rubble strewn area toward the open-sided well, whose slumping pantiled roof was missing most of its tiles, the head tech explained his new enigma. “Even when the sun’s out—blazing in a clear blue sky, as it was earlier—it barely affects the radiation level. Which might mean that…that…” But as they reached the well he paused, and once again shook his head undecidedly.

“Oh, do go on!” Big Jon exploded. “Get it told, can’t you?”

Fielding nodded, shrugged apologetically and said, “Yes, of course; and I’m sorry if once again my explanation should prove inadequate. But as you know we’ve been trekking north for some two months now, frequently covering as little as four or maybe five miles a night, often as not in the wrong direction when dreadful conditions—acidic lakes, ravines, defiles and other obstacles; such as suspect or impassable rubble-heaped villages—have caused us to make endless diversions.”

“That’s right,” Big Jon nodded grimly. “And this last week we’ve been running low not only on water but also fuel. I haven’t wanted to start searching for tainted stuff in all the dubious towns we’ve skirted, but I may have to. Without it we’ll be in serious trouble, stuck for good wherever we end up.”

Fielding nodded. “But if we can find more here, it may well be as clean as everything else seems to be! And on that subject just look here.” He took a tin mug from a satchel hanging under his arm, filled it with water from a rusty bucket on the well’s crumbling stone wall and said, “This is where I was testing the water.” Without more ado he drank the mug dry, smacked his lips loudly, then patted his satchel with its precious contents, the various tools of his trade. “So then, now you’ve seen for yourselves how much I trust my instruments!”

“You’re absolutely sure it’s okay?” The leader reached for Fielding’s mug.

“Absolutely, and oh so very sweet!”

A handful of clan folk had been watching from the shady interior of the shattered church. Now, cautiously at first, they came out into the open. But as Big Jon and those with him took turns to drink, the people began to call to others behind them and quickened their pace, coming almost at a run.

Moving away from the well toward the church with his group, Big Jon called out: “Everyone can drink! The water is good! You can fill your personal containers, too. Then I’ll need a driver for the bowser, and volunteers for a work party. Oh, and if you washerwomen can hear me: those cauldrons of yours have been dry for much too long, so it’s time you got some fires going! Also, I shall need a scav team—preferably sober! People, now’s our chance to seek out and top up on fuel; and as a bonus, I’m told there’s no need to fear the sunlight! How’s that for good news? So let’s waste no more time but get busy, eh?”

And as the place began to show increasing activity, finally the leader turned his attention to the head tech. “Ah yes, Andrew. And with regard to that last, I believe you were about to tell me something?”

The exasperated other sputtered like a boiling kettle, more animated than any of Big Jon’s group could ever remember seeing him. “I was trying to tell you something, yes! And I would—if only you’d stand still for a moment and listen!”

“Well, go on then!” said Big Jon, and stepped into the cool gloom of the church. The others followed after him, then paused inside to listen to Fielding’s explanation:

“I think—” he began hesitantly, “—think it might have to do with the ozone layer. Some seven or so miles high but extending much higher than that, there’s a layer of gasses so constituted as to reduce dangerous ultraviolet radiation. Upon a time, before the war, the layer was much thicker…that’s according to tech forebears in the Southern Refuge, who left something of a record as to how in the aftermath things in the outside world deteriorated. It was all part and parcel of the nuclear winter, which not only damaged the inner atmosphere—the air itself—but also the outer atmosphere, especially the ozone layer which for countless decades had already been suffering the contamination of Man’s far-flung and seriously toxic labours.

“Ah, but since then—with just a handful of men reduced to burrowing in the ground, and no surface industries to mention—the Earth’s atmosphere may have begun righting itself. For note what would seem to be happening: the deeper we venture into the northern latitudes, the less we suffer from solar radiation!”

Now Zach spoke up. “I believe you’re right,” he said. “Why, it would explain how the fly-by-nights took so long to die once our lads flushed ’em out! I was watching you see, and while the sunlight certainly burned ’em I thought it took almost twice as long to do so!” And turning to the leader. “Wouldn’t you agree, Jon? For in our time down South, we surely chased enough of the damned things into the sunlight!”

“Aye,” Big Jon nodded. “And by God, didn’t they go up quick as a flash? They most certainly did!” Breathing deep, he seemed to swell up large. And throwing his arms wide he cried: “I feel reprieved, restored, renewed! What with the water, and now this news about the ozone—the fact that we can go out unprotected in the sunlight, and perhaps even travel during daylight hours, though that will take some getting used to—why, maybe things are finally turning in our favour! Indeed I feel sure they are. A good thing, too, because there’s so very much to do…!”

But as he turned away and made to stride out again into the daylight, Garth quickly caught his arm and said: “Sir, Big Jon! Please don’t go off and forget about us!”

“Eh?” said the other, then grinned as he clasped both Garth and Layla to his barrel chest. And: “No, of course I won’t!” he said, releasing them. “And what better time to get married, eh? When for a moment—if only for a moment—the future begins to look so much more promising?” And once again he turned away, as if making to leave the place.

“Sir!” said Garth, anxious now. But:

Laughing out loud, Big Jon turned back. “Oh, very well!” he cried: “I declare you man and wife—there! So give the girl a kiss, lad. For after all she’s yours now, and it’s perfectly in order!”

At which Garth did as he was told, and that was that…

For three more days the clan stayed in the shattered town. Then on the fourth night the fly-by-nights found them, and they came in some strength. Where they came from—who could say?—some far quarter of the ruins, most likely. But for a fact the faithless night breezes had borne up and dispersed abroad the scents of humanity, such scents as were irresistible to fly-by-nights.

Meanwhile the water bowser had been filled and the well had refreshed itself. Moreover Ned Singer’s scav team, which included Garth Slattery, had found subterranean gasoline tanks, miraculous survivors of the bombing and all the years of aftermath. While the fuel was badly degraded and sludgy, and the radiation count fell barely within Andrew Fielding’s safety levels, still it was better than nothing; the clan filtered it carefully into their containers and the thirsty tanks of their vehicles. While the engines might sputter and fume, balking at impurities, they would nevertheless work however falteringly.

As for the fly-by-nights:

Big Jon had ordered teams of armed night-watchmen posted on the perimeters of the accommodations. An hour or so before dawn on the fourth night, Garth was a member of Ned Singer’s team of nine men stationed in the approaches to the car park at vantage points where external views were mainly unimpeded, with arcs of fire that overlapped where possible. Chosen by Singer, however, perhaps as chance would have it, Garth’s location just happened to be the loneliest…

The leader had designated the best, most trustworthy of the clan’s old scavenger teams to this task, and only the very best to the protection of the car park, which held by far the majority of sleeping clan folk. Ned Singer himself had no station as such but constantly prowled his team’s positions to ensure that they were keeping their wits about them…in other words that they were staying awake and watchful.

That was how things stood when for the third or fourth time Singer came silently upon Garth where he sat uncomfortably on a knee-high stack of bricks behind a low, broad barrier built of rubble, his keen eyes probing the debris-littered expanse that lay beyond, with the barrel of his rifle pointing through a gap in the barrier’s rim.

During previous visits Singer had not been so quiet; he had whistled a few low notes, so alerting Garth to his presence. On this occasion, however, the first the youth knew of it was when the man’s heavy hand fell on his shoulder as Singer got down on one knee beside him. And:

“Aha!” the bully grunted. “You might well start, ’prentice! But if you think I’m quiet, what of the fly-by-nights, eh? Why, they can come upon you out of the night like so many ghosts! So you need to be aware of what’s behind you as well as in front.”

And despite that oaths and cursing were not in Garth’s nature, “God damn!” he said, as he shrugged Singer’s hand from his shoulder. “Too true, I started! But I might just as easily have jerked off a shot! And at this hour—”

“—You’d look a right fool, waking everyone up in the dead of night, eh?” Singer chuckled unpleasantly…but was serious again in a moment. “Except for a fact I didn’t think I was that quiet! What, you didn’t hear my whistle?”

“I heard no whistle,” said Garth, knowing there had been no such warning. “I heard nothing, not this time.”

“Oh really?” said the other, as he got to his feet. “Now, I know you’re not deaf. So…a bit tired maybe? Not getting too much sleep just recently? Other things occupying your mind, eh? Too much to think about, er, down there under the covers, as it were? Too much to do? Need someone to give you a hand, maybe?”

Singer’s meaning was perfectly obvious and Garth’s reaction to it was exactly as the bully had suspected and hoped it might be. Resting his rifle in its niche on top of the makeshift wall and rising awkwardly from his uncomfortable position as fluidly as his cramped limbs would allow, Garth turned on the older man with his fists swinging. But of course Singer was ready for him. Swaying easily aside from Garth’s attack, he drove the hardwood butt of his heavy weapon into the youth’s stomach, and as Garth doubled over brought it up under his chin.

That last was a glancing blow that only scraped the side of Garth’s cheek in front of his left ear and sent him off-balance; but as he tripped, toppling sideways among scattered rubble and debris, Singer advanced to stand over him, the butt of his ugly gun poised to fall upon his face—which didn’t happen!

For in that precise moment as Garth came down on the broken bricks, so there sounded near-distant cries that carried on the still night air…and a split-second later shrill whistles…and finally gunshots, a great many of them!

Torn three ways—between revenge, duty, and personal survival—Singer stood like that, with his gun poised like a great hammer, before muttering: “Damn it to every hell!” And as Garth gathered his wits the bully turned away, a black blot of a silhouette that glanced back just once before disappearing into the greater darkness.

Dazed and furious, stumbling awkwardly to his feet, Garth’s initial thought was to go after his tormentor and pay him back. But the stutter of automatic gunfire was almost continuous, and in addition to the sharp crackle of single shots and the shrill whistle blasts that issued an increasingly frantic alarm, there now came the nerve-rending sound of human voices, some of which screamed!

Garth’s hair stood on end! Layla was back there, in the car park, not fifty yards away! She would be awake by now, huddling in their scant bedclothes, desperately afraid—for herself but also for Garth—and here he stood gazing out at nothing, listening to the gunfire, hoarse battle-cries and screams of men in dire straits!

What to do?

Like Ned Singer—but also unlike him, for Garth’s thoughts were least of all for his own safety—he was tempted to hurry off, run back to Layla. But no, for the attack could be on several fronts. It certainly sounded that way: a battle whose like Garth had never before experienced; an uproar of terror and confusion! And of course there was only one thing he could do: his duty to the clan. Why, just beyond his arc of vision, the night could even now be seething! And so, having turned from his position for just two or three seconds, he now turned back—

—Barely in time!

For as in Singer’s prophesy however inadvertent, they were coming, like so many gaunt ghosts floating out of the darkness. Four of them in fact, a quartet of fly-by-nights, their eyes as luminous as burning sulphur. And they were coming fast, surging through—or over, as it seemed to Garth—an ankle-deep ground mist which like themselves had sprung up as if from nowhere!

This time the safety catch on Garth’s weapon was in the off position, and despite that he was still a little dazed he aimed at the closest of the monsters and squeezed off a hurried shot. He was lucky; one flaring eye was snuffed as half of the creature’s head flew away like so much vile froth. The undead horror at once stumbled to a halt, threw up its arms and crumpled down into the mist and rubble.

The others were much closer now, far too close, and Garth’s mouth was dry as dust as he saw them separating, making targeting more difficult. Again he took aim, this time at the central apparition for that was how they appeared—like insubstantial revenants, wisp-like—despite that they were real and at least partially solid! But for all Garth’s terror he concentrated and stilled the trembling of his hand and trigger finger to squeeze off a second, far more measured shot.

Ah, but the fly-by-nights knew that he was here now and had begun to weave from side to side, shifting like blown smoke and rapidly closing the distance between themselves and their intended victim! Garth’s shot had struck its target in the shoulder, by no means a fatal injury. The creature’s shoulder slumped and its arm fell to its side, dangling there; but its other arm and incredibly long hand remained stretched out in front as before, with talon fingers crooked and grasping. And its face…!

But Garth mustn’t so much as look at its face…except to frame it in his rifle’s sights before pulling the trigger. This time he was dead on target, and the fly-by-night uttered a thin mewling sigh or cry—as if it knew that this was the end—in the instant before its face flew apart.

Garth’s yell, of triumph and horror combined, was a sandpapered rasp as he tried to lift his weapon from its niche in the brick barrier. But to his amazement, his disbelief, he no longer had the strength! Fear had not unmanned him, but it had drained him!

And the two remaining fly-by-nights were upon him, rags of clothing and long hair fluttering, eyes blazing, and salivating jaws chomping vacuously where the monsters flowed over his makeshift barrier almost as if they sailed upon the writhing ground mist! The closest of the things was directly in front of Garth, its breath foul in his face, its hands clutching broken masonry to find a measure of purchase and launch itself at him. He need only unfreeze, wake up from this hypnotic-seeming nightmare and squeeze his trigger…which he did, with scarcely a second to spare. And shooting the fly-by-night in its skinny neck he blew its head off!

But out the corner of his eye Garth saw the final member of the quartet in midair, shrilling in maniacal rage as it flew at him like the vengeful—or simply crazed?—wraith that it was. And the barrel of his rifle was trapped beneath the cadaver of the one he had just this second destroyed!

Garth gasped his dismay and jerked back his head as taloned fingers stabbed at his face—only to be snatched away from him as a deafening blast sounded nearby and his attacker was thrown back onto the tottering barrier like a bundle of rags. Then, as the fly-by-night hissed and screeched, trying to drag itself up onto its scrawny knees, there came a second blast that silenced it, hurling it back over the barrier and down out of sight.

But that sound, those blasts: Garth recognized them of old. The ear-splitting roar of his father’s pump-action shotgun! And there stood Zach Slattery, his weapon smoking and mouth framing silent curse-words. And never a sight more welcome!

Before Garth could speak his father had hobbled around the barrier to its far side, and once again—just once this time there sounded his weapon’s booming voice, and there was no more mewling, no more screeching…

Zach came back and father and son clasped each other. Then: “Listen!” said Zach, drawing apart. But sounding from the near distance there was only a sporadic spatter of gunshots now, and the shouting of men was urgent but less fearful, and no one was screaming. “It’s over,” said Zach then. “For now at least, it’s over.”

“If you hadn’t come—” said Garth.

“—But I did,” Zach quietened him. “I couldn’t sleep; I was up and about and headed this way when the first alarm sounded. I knew where Ned Singer had positioned you and came as quick as I could; didn’t much care for the notion of your new wife becoming a widow so soon! And from the way the warning whistles were sounding, I figured the fly-by-nights must be coming at us from all quarters—including yours. Appears I was right.”

“I killed three of them,” said Garth, suddenly shuddering. “But that fourth one…he almost killed me!” Turning away, he grasped his rifle, pulling it free of the fly-by-night’s corpse. It came away quite easily now, for Garth’s strength was flowing back into his limbs, his body. And shaking his head, he said:

“I…I’ve never felt so afraid, so weak!”

But Zach only said: “And I’ve never seen you so strong! Now look, it’ll soon be dawn. The sky is starting to lighten up. By now any fly-by-night survivors will need to be drifting on back to their roosts. I think it’s safe now to get back inside, find Layla and reassure her. Then…maybe we can find out what the damage is. But damn it, I believe we’ve lost some good men this night…”

VII

They had lost some men, most of whom were very good men indeed; and they had also lost Ned Singer.

As the sun came up, Big Jon called a get-together of family heads and craft leaders in the church. He deemed it unnecessary to assemble the clan in toto, many of whose members were carrying out important tasks…which now must include the building of funeral pyres. Also present, however, were witnesses: twelve survivors of the sixteen men who had guarded the perimeters. It was one of them who told how Ned Singer had been taken.

“But…taken?” Big Jon repeated him. “Are you saying Ned was taken alive?”

Still badly shaken, Peder Halbstein answered with a nod and a shudder. “That’s right, or so I believe. At least, that’s how it appeared; but it all happened so fast that everything is now a blur. I think I saw them dragging him away, and Ned was alive and screaming! It must have been so because…well, there’s no sign of him now, is there? Anyway, let me tell it my way…

“Along with Dan Coulter, I was on watch halfway between the church and the car park on the eastern flank. Now, I say ‘with’ Dan but in fact we were separated, though by no more than forty or so paces; which meant that we could clearly see each other’s flashlight signals…”

At which, as Halbstein paused, Zach Slattery said: “You had flashlights, both of you? And whistles, too? Yet Garth here had no such aids to the performance of his duty, which I only found out after going to him when the alarms sounded. Moreover he was on his own, stuck out there on the southern approaches like…like a sore thumb! If anyone deserved a companion and the right gear, surely it was him!”

And Garth said: “Ned Singer said it was pointless me having a flashlight because there were obstructions between me and the men flanking me. I could flash all I liked and no one would see me.”

“And a whistle?” Big Jon queried.

Feeling foolish, gullible, Garth replied: “Ned told me he’d handed them all out, retaining just one for himself. So because of the bad blood between us, and rather than risk a flare-up, I let it go. Anyway I had my rifle; I could always fire off warning shots if that should become necessary.”

“That bastard!” Zach muttered under his breath. “Why it’s a wonder he let you keep your rifle! And it wasn’t only your life he was risking!”

Big Jon had heard him and was quick to say: “Easy Zach, old friend. For while you’ve had problems with Ned Singer—you and the lad both—nothing good comes of speaking ill of the dead.”

At which Zach’s eyes narrowed and it seemed for a moment he might reply; but instead he kept his peace, saying nothing. And Big Jon turned again to Peder Halbstein.

“So then, you and Dan Coulter were stationed close together, in sight of each other even in the dark of night?”

“Yes, and later…later we got to be closer still!” Then, as if in a hurry to vindicate that statement, Halbstein held up a hand. “But let me explain:

“About 3:30 my batteries failed—by which time Dan had got used to answering my green flash, for we’d been signaling each other every few minutes. Well, seeing no more flashes, he reckoned maybe I’d fallen asleep and came to give me a shake before Ned’s next patrol. But after Dan found me awake we got to talking—very quietly, you understand—finding something of comfort in each other’s company, which is surely only natural?”

“Coulter had deserted his position!” Big Jon growled.

“Not so!” the other was quick to deny it. “We only meant to stay together for a minute or two—and meanwhile Dan had taken the opportunity to give me his spare battery. I would have done the same for him, gone to him if I’d thought he was in trouble! He was only looking out for me!” Still in shock, Halbstein was now gabbling.

At which the leader gave a grunt of disapproval but at once relented. “Very well—we understand—but do get on with it!”

“Yes, yes,” said Halbstein, gulping a little. “Well, Dan was about to return to his station when the first whistles sounded, and a moment later gunfire. It rooted us both in place, staring out into the night over the lapping ground mist. We were in the lee of a broken wall but the external view was only poor: there was too much heaped rubble, a great many shadows out there. Dan took the right-hand arc, which in large part covered his former station; I took the left-hand arc, which was mine anyway.

“At first there was nothing, just more near-distant sounds of fighting—whistles, gunshots, shouts—the sound of a grenade exploding, even the hissing roar of a flamethrower! But on our perimeter, nothing. Not immediately.

“Dan said maybe we should go help—I told him we couldn’t leave our posts, that from the sound of it this was a swarm and the fly-by-nights could be coming on our front, too—and that was the very moment when they came: eight or nine of them, appearing like columns of mist out of the darkness on the far edge of vision!

“At first they came to a halt there—standing stock still—just looking at us! Which was also when Ned Singer came! Ned came at a run, shouting instructions:

“‘Get out from behind that wall!’ he ordered us. ‘They have no weapons, the fly-by-nights, so we don’t need cover that only gets in the way of our targeting. Anyway, by now they can smell you! And spread out—Dan to the right, me in the middle, Peder on my left. And don’t let them get behind us! Aim with care and make each shot count!’ These were good, sensible orders, and we scrambled to obey.

“But the trouble came not only from the front but also from the right, Dan’s original position. There were three of them on that flank, closing with us fast, their approach half-hidden by all the heaped rubble. Dan got the first shots off; I saw a fly-by-night crumple to the ground. By then the roar of Ned’s machine gun was deafening, unnerving as I tried to pick out a target of my own in the swirling, thickening ground mist in front.

“I got one and saw it go down, almost seeming to fold up on itself! Then I heard Dan yelling, ‘Oh shit! Oh shit! Bad ammunition!’ He had stopped firing…but damn it, hadn’t we always known how a lot of that old ammo couldn’t be trusted?

“And then…oh God!…and then…Dan’s yelling turned to screaming! He’d started to run, stumbling toward me, but…

“Out the corner of my eye I saw them hit him, knocking him down. Just two of them, and Dan a big lad and strong. But despite that they look thin and wispy as smoke, these creatures have this amazing, terrible strength! They held him down, their jaws extended, going at him where he kicked and jerked in the deepening mist. I wanted desperately to divert my fire from the front, to strike at these things that were sucking on Dan; but Ned and me, we already had all we could handle. And anyway, I knew that Dan was done for. Between howling bursts of fire from Ned’s big gun and the crack of single shots from my rifle, I even fancied I could hear the sound of siphoning as they sucked him dry!

“And so I kept on firing—kept missing, too, the way those monsters wove and warped—but it seemed Ned was doing okay: I saw two, maybe three fly-by-nights shredded, blown apart in his sleeting fire! And Ned was stamping his feet, shouting at them, mouthing senseless rubbish and cursing them to every hell where they were weaving, closing in on us!

“Then I saw that my original count had been wrong, or maybe more of the things had been following on close behind the first batch. Despite that we’d taken a few of them out there were now at least nine or ten, plus the two that were feeding on Dan—

“—Except they’d finished with Dan and were now coming for me!

“I prayed God my ammo stayed good, reloaded, turned my fire on Dan’s murderers. I was protecting myself, yes, but these two were the closest, the most dangerous, and surely Ned’s machine gun would take care of the rest. All he need do was stand there and let rip as they got even closer.

“Fuelled by Dan’s blood, but full of lust, too, the eyes of my two flared like lamps as they came on; and it was their eyes I aimed at. These creatures are crazed, maniacal at the best of times, and maybe their bloodlust—their success with poor Dan—had made them even more so. It seemed they just didn’t give a damn, the way they flew at me! Which was all to my benefit.

“No more than ten feet away, the head of the first fly-by-night flew apart, and the other simply shouldered the crumpling corpse aside as it came on. Its jaws gaped wide, dripping Dan’s blood, and its claw hands reached for me as I triggered off one last shot to take its head off. My last shot, yes, because that was when my rifle jammed! That bloody ammo! Dan Coulter and me, we’d both loaded up with ammo from the same batch!

“There was nothing more I could do—but I didn’t just run. Anyway, I don’t think my legs would have let me run! So instead I looked to Ned Singer to see how he was doing. And he had been doing just fine: there were a lot of heaped shapes sprawled out in the ground mist that hadn’t been there before. But even as I watched him Ned’s weapon stopped its deafening howling, and for all that he shook it this way and that—clawing at the working parts which weren’t working, cursing and yanking desperately on the trigger—still that treacherous gun stayed silent!

“Bad ammunition again? Maybe, though his was of a different caliber to mine. Or perhaps Ned’s gun had overheated, or simply jammed? Any and all such failures weren’t at all unlikely—but in his situation each of them was deadly!

“Four fly-by-nights remained, for a moment coming to a halt and as before standing stock still. But then, as Ned turned to run, they seemed to merge, flowing over him like so much vile, evil filth! Except…they weren’t going at him as the others had gone at Dan; they didn’t appear to be sucking on him, siphoning off his blood. No, they were lifting him up, one creature to each of his limbs. And big man that Ned is—that he was—they carried him away, drifting off with him into the darkness. But you know, he didn’t go easily, not Ned Singer.

“Minutes later—when my legs came back to life and I could finally stumble out of there—I could still hear him screaming however faintly, distantly. By then too most of the gunfire and other sounds of battle had ceased, and armed wild-eyed men were beginning to arrive on the scene with breathless questions that I didn’t have the strength to answer, not just then…”

As Halbstein came to the end of his report, so another man stepped forward: the sly, unpopular, scar-faced Arthur Robeson, attending the meeting only by reason of the weapon he was bearing: Ned Singer’s machine gun. “I was one of the men who went to help on the perimeter when things had quietened down a bit,” he said.

“When it was all over, you mean!” Peder Halbstein spat the words out. “I remember that, all right: that you were among the last—that in fact you were the last—of the men who showed up! You didn’t seem concerned about poor Dan Coulter, or me for that matter; you only asked after your old friend Ned. And when a handful of the men ventured forward to see if they could find any sign of him you followed them—at least far enough to pick up his fallen weapon!”

“Are you accusing me of something?” Robeson snapped, driven back a pace.

“Nothing!” said Halbstein. “Which is all I’ve ever seen you do—nothing—except maybe grease around Ned Singer, and run his errands!”

“Huh!” the other exclaimed, and: “Man, you’re babbling! And anyway, I didn’t come here to be insulted. Only to explain what killed Ned. A bullet was stuck in the loading mechanism, and it appears he never had a chance to clear it. Perhaps if he’d had some decent back-up…”

“Why you—!” Halbstein moved to face him at close quarters, but Big Jon got in his way.

“Now hold!” the leader roared. “Enough of that! Everybody’s nerves are frazzled, including mine, shot to pieces by the worst fly-by-night attack we’ve yet experienced—but not necessarily the last. We lost seven men last night, and Ned Singer was just one of them. Well, from all I’ve heard he accounted well for himself and for the clan. He wasn’t everyone’s favourite personality, but by God he knew how to fight fly-by-nights! And in that respect we’ll surely miss him. Let nothing detract from that.”

“Ned was one of the strongest, one of the best!” said Robeson. At which Garth’s father rounded on him as quick as Peder Halbstein had done only moments earlier:

“Oh really, one of the best was he? And just how would you know that, Arthur Robeson? Did you ever scav with him—or with anybody else for that matter? Have you ever ventured out in the night with a gun in your hand and a lump in your throat to face and perhaps kill a fly-by-night or two? No? Huh! I didn’t think so!”

“No, I never scavenged!” the other protested. “But I had a job, back in the Southern Refuge. I…I sorted precious salvage, and I…I helped out in the farms!”

“Aye,” Big Jon nodded wisely. “And always found good reason to stay close to home, as I recall. Well, no shame in that, not when there was work to be done down in the guts of the old labyrinth. Ah, but that was then and this is now; and there’s nothing of salvage now, and no farms along the way of the trek! But we are going to be in need of seven new outriders and watchmen; which means I’ll be looking for volunteers. So maybe you’d best hang on to Ned’s big weapon, Arthur, and get it in good working order. And I’ll thank you now for being the first to offer your services!”

“What?” Robeson barely whispered the word, but he knew well enough Big Jon’s meaning, and his scar stood out like a gash on his suddenly pale face. The leader had already turned away from him, however, and was addressing the rest of the group:

“So then, is there any more business? No? But there is work to be done and plenty of it, for we must be out of here well in advance of nightfall. One night like the last was one too many, and if we stay on here those monsters are sure to be back…”

Heading back toward the car park as the morning air brightened, Garth spoke to his father:

“Weren’t you and Big Jon Lamon being a bit hard on Robeson? It’s not as if everyone has what it takes to be a scav. I mean, it’s hardly the right kind of work for someone with bad nerves, any man who is easily frightened, or a man who—”

“—Who isn’t a man at all?” Zach cut him short. “Peder Halbstein was right, and Big Jon too. As long as I’ve known Robeson he’s only been good at one thing, or maybe two: sneaking around and doing as little as he can get away with! Until this morning I had wondered if I was of that opinion simply because I didn’t much care for the man’s looks, but now it seems Big Jon is of a like mind. And you know, Jon Lamon is a damn good judge of character. Anyway, the hell with all that! Any friend of Singer’s—dead or alive—is no friend of ours!”

Inclined to agree, Garth nodded, and after a moment’s pause said: “You and Big Jon have always been good friends, right?”

“We grew up and were scavs together,” Zach replied. “Why do you ask about something that should seem obvious to you?”

“Because back there at the meeting in the church, there was that moment when I thought you were about to argue with him, or at least talk back to him.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, it was when he said that nothing good comes of speaking ill of the dead. I somehow had the feeling you didn’t much go along with that, and I wondered why.”

Zach looked taken aback. “You thought I didn’t respect the dead?” he answered. “Well then, you were wrong. I’ve got nothing against the dead; I was speaking of Ned Singer’s character when he was alive! The way he was treating you.”

Which sounded a little like sophistry to Garth, who frowned and began to comment: “But—”

“No buts about it!” his father growled. “Listen: the fly-by-nights took him away alive, it’s true; probably to drain him of his blood at their leisure, then to eat his flesh. We must hope it’s so! Ah, but I see a certain look on your face! What, shock is it? Well, don’t you worry, for I didn’t hate him that much—I could never hate any man that much! But son, between life and death as we understand such conditions, there’s another kind of existence known only to the fly-by-nights, by which they ‘live’ and ‘reproduce,’ if such words make any sense at all when speaking of them! And frankly that’s why I prefer Ned Singer dead. By which I mean truly dead, very definitely dead, and gone forever!”

And finally, as understanding dawned, Garth said no more…

During the following handful of days life was scarcely idyllic; not even for recently wedded Garth and Layla Slattery, for whom true happiness remained far distant in a longed-for Eden beyond the northern horizon. However, their new-found joy in each other never faltered, and the few rare occasions when they could sleep in each other’s arms they sometimes dreamed of that northern Eden.

Less agreeably but more often, they also nightmared, as did the majority of the clanfolk: both the younger and less experienced members and the older, more hardened travellers alike; in particular the outriders and the men of the night-watch. And as the disparate makeshift vehicles and trailers had gone creaking and groaning along—not only during night hours but almost as frequently in daylight too, now that the blazing sun posed less of a threat—there had rarely been a lack of things to nightmare and worry about.

For one thing the trek had no sooner got underway again—heading due north as before, on a route determined by Big Jon’s tattered handful of ancient maps and faded notes, the legacy of long-dead forebears—when on the fourth evening, as the convoy made camp in woods shaded by sheer cliffs, unassuming head tech Andrew Fielding regretfully informed the leader of an inexplicable increase in background radiation.

“That town back there,” he had said, giving his head a bewildered shake, “I don’t know: maybe it was the exception that proves the rule? Surrounded by low hills like that, it’s possible that after those mercifully brief hours of insane nuclear warfare so long ago those hills were effective in deflecting or containing a lot of the fallout. As for the well in the churchyard: it was probably sourced by an aquifer so deep underground that surface radiation never found its way down there to poison the water.”

“But that was then and this is now,” Big Jon had answered, his broad shoulders sagging a little. “Are you telling me that after barely four days we’re back to square one with the radiation and what all?”

“Well, perhaps it’s not quite that bad,” Fielding had answered, making as light as he could of the situation. “But it’s definitely not as good as we were hoping.”

“And the ozone layer?” queried the leader, obviously sorely disappointed. “What of that? Or was it just wishful thinking?”

“No, not really. There has been something of an upsurge in solar or ultraviolet radiation, but even when the sky is cloudless from horizon to horizon, still the levels constantly fluctuate. Even at their worst, however, they’re still weaker than any readings I ever recorded outside the Southern Refuge. Thus it would seem that in this latitude the ozone layer is forever shifting, waxing and waning. Or perhaps the changes are due to sunspots? I’m sorry but I just don’t know! Maybe if I had made a greater effort to study surface conditions down south in the old times…if I had spent more time above ground? But no, I had my work cut out for me in the refuge…” With which he had offered his customary, apologetic shrug.

“Hmm! Well, to my mind you’ve already done far too much of that!” Big Jon had told him. “Going out to take your readings, I mean; out there in the sunlight, without a decent radiation suit. Oh, I’ve seen you often enough! Just make sure you don’t do it once too often, my friend, for we certainly can’t afford to lose such as you.”

“Thank you for that,” the head tech had gratefully replied, “but it’s my job—it’s what I do—and if I don’t keep an eye on it, then who will? Anyway, I find I always sleep much better knowing exactly how strong our enemy is!”

“Huh!” said Big Jon. “‘Our enemy’—even the golden sun—our enemy!” And then as an afterthought, with a sharp glance at the sky, which was beginning to lose some of its brightness, he had continued: “Aye, but by no means our only enemy…”

Having been called to attend Big Jon, Garth and his father had been present during this conversation, and since nightfall had been only an hour or two away they not only understood Big Jon’s comment but something else, possibly, of why he’d wanted to see them. And as the soft-spoken head tech had wandered off, still shaking his head, finally the leader had turned to father and son.

“Speaking of enemies,” he had said, “the shadows are already lengthening. Dusk in little over an hour, and an hour later the dark of night. Well, I’ve recruited or ‘volunteered’ some men to replace the ones we lost, but not yet enough. Fortunately these almost sheer cliffs, in some places overhanging, make easy work of guarding our western flank; why, they’ll do the job for us—for even fly-by-nights are subject to gravity! So then there’ll be plenty of men to guard the front and the rear of the convoy—‘the thin ends,’ as it were—but the most important flank by far is to the east, which is to say the sprawling length of the entire column.

“And now to the point. Garth, I would like a word with you, if I may. And your father should hear it, too, so that he knows my mind and what I’m asking of you.”

“Of course, sir,” Garth had answered, and nodded. And Zach had added:

“Go on then, Jon…what is it?”

“Lad—” Big Jon had begun, grasping Garth’s upper arm in a huge hand “—or perhaps ‘lad’ is more than a little demeaning, for I’ve had my eye on you and you’ve certainly proved yourself as worthy a man as any of the best of the clan’s men—but anyway: you’re just recently wed; what, all of three or four days? And you and Layla have scarcely been having the best time of it together. What with outriding when we move by night and patrols and night-watches when we’re camped up—as right now—well, it hasn’t been an ideal beginning for a young couple just starting out. I know there’s been one hell of a weight of responsibility on your young shoulders, and a whole world of worry, too; especially on Layla, when you’re out there in the dark guarding the convoy. And now here I go, proposing to add yet more weight and responsibility!”

Again Garth’s nod as Big Jon had paused, and: “Tell me what you want,” he said, “and whatever it is I’ll do the best I can as long as I’m able, just as long as it helps to keep Layla and the convoy safe.”

“Which is exactly how it should be!” The leader had at once replied. “But I’m about to ask a great deal of you, and you being so young and all—and if Zach Slattery’s good blood wasn’t running in your veins—then I wouldn’t dream of asking so much. Anyway, let me tell you what I’m talking about:

“You see, I’m far from happy with the way things stand, and there are changes I must make. For example, now that Ned Singer is gone we’re short of one scav boss…no, hold—let me try that again; for scavs as such are now things of the past. We’re short of one team boss, a man to patrol and control the outriders on the move, and the night-watch when we’re at a standstill. Singer had the biggest team; his crew worked very well together before your bust-up and I believe they should stay together. So it’s Ned’s old team that will be guarding the eastern flank tonight, and which will be performing most of the tougher jobs in future. So as a member of that team, what do you say to that?”

In answer to which Garth had offered a puzzled shrug, answering, “Well, it’s only what I expected, what I’ve been getting used to, and what’s best for the convoy and clan, I’m sure. And even after suffering that attack back in the ruined town, still I think the team has held together—but how best to put it?—as well as can be expected, maybe; and at the very least reasonably well, under Peder Halbstein.”

“Hmmm!” Big Jon had nodded thoughtfully. “Reasonably well, eh? Loyal to the last! But as for Peder Halbstein, well that’s something else. Are you saying you’ve seen no change in Peder? Ah, but no—you don’t need to answer that, Garth—for I sense that in this case the truth wouldn’t sit well with you. And the truth is that Peder Halbstein’s no longer the man for that kind of pressure. To be honest, he simply can’t handle it; he hasn’t fully recovered from the doings of that terrible night. And the few hours of sleep he gets, Peder nightmares, wakes up shouting, crying out to his old pal Dan Coulter. His hair is going white, and he’s rapidly losing weight; his face is grey and gaunt, and he gets the shakes, trembles and stutters. No, he’s been a scav, an outrider and night-watchman for too long; he’s done his fair share. So let me ask you once again—not only for the good of the clan, you understand, but also for Peder’s—are you really saying you’ve seen no change in him?”

To which Garth had answered: “I…I didn’t realize it was quite that bad. So what will you do?”

“No Garth,” the other had replied, giving his head a shake. “It’s not what I’ll do but what you must do! I want you to take over as boss of the team—that’s as of now—and you’ll be the youngest clansman who ever held such a responsible position. As for poor Peder: I’ll find something a little less demanding for him. So then, now what do you say?”

For a moment Garth was lost for words; he had looked at his father, who stood silent, expressionless.

“Well?” said Big Jon.

“But it’s like you said,” Garth had finally answered. “I’ll not only be the youngest ever boss, but the youngest man in my own team! And there are others in the team who—”

“—Who’ll probably be glad that the weight doesn’t rest on their shoulders!” The leader had anticipated him. “As for being young: haven’t you noticed, Garth, how there’s no such thing as a truly ‘old man’ in the entire clan? Me, your father, and head tech Andrew Fielding—oh, and a very small handful of others—we’re just about the oldest you’ll find! Quite a few old ladies, it’s true, but damn few old men! Then again, there’s never been any female scavs. Which probably says it all…”

At which Zach had spoken up. “And of course, that’s what’s wrong with Peder Halbstein. He knows it’s only a matter of time. He’s seen friends die, far too many of them, but this last time Peder himself came much too close…”

And still uncertain, Garth had said, “It sounds like you’re warning me off!”

“No!” Zach shook his head. “Never! If you take this on I’ll be able to advise you, even come out now and then if things are looking especially rough, but the decision has to be yours.”

“I have no desire to be ‘volunteered.’” Garth had faced Big Jon squarely, determinedly.

“I would never do that to you—if only because I know your father would never forgive me!”

“But it won’t come to that—” Garth had made his decision, “—because I’ve already said I’ll do it. And so I accept. Well, with one condition.”

“Oh? A condition?” Big Jon had raised an eyebrow.

And Garth had nodded. “Yes, but just the one. Which is that you’ll be the one who tells Layla Morgan—er, Layla Slattery! —exactly what you’ve asked of me. Or better still, what you’ve ‘ordered’ me to do…?” And after a moment’s silence:

“Damn!” The leader had said, then chuckled along with Zach. But in another moment and far more seriously: “Which just might be the most difficult thing I’ve done in quite a long time. But there again I married you, so how can I refuse?”

VIII

Peder Halbstein was scarcely alone in his nightmares. As told, many of the travellers suffered in this way; and both Garth and Layla, during snatches of sleep, they also knew bad dreams. But mainly, having finally come together, their dreams were plagued by a single, recurrent theme: the fear of losing each other…Garth’s of being snatched away from Layla into a hellish, mindless half-world, unable to return to her, and Layla’s of losing him to the fly-by-nights—amounting to much the same thing.

But in fact since leaving the Southern Refuge contacts with the mutated vampires had on average been limited to just two or three per week: many sightings of individuals and small groups, half-a-dozen skirmishes and kills by the outriders, four savage attacks in which five men had lost their lives…all of which culminating in the massed onslaught by the swarm in the ruined town: the clan’s worst ever losses, which once again had woken up every traveller anew to the never-ending threat of the fly-by-nights.

Garth had learned several valuable lessons that night, not least from Singer’s malicious, vengeful behaviour: the way the bully had left him short of equipment, out of contact with his colleagues, utterly alone and vulnerable in the dark of night. Well, things would he different now; Ned Singer’s ways weren’t Garth’s. Each member of his team would receive the same treatment: there would be no favourites, and no one taken advantage of or victimized in any way.

And so, determined to perform as best possible on his first time out as the boss of his team, in the remaining hours before darkness on that third night, Garth had carefully reconnoitered the thinly wooded border east of the column, choosing the best vantage points in which to station his six watchmen; positions from which the eastern landscape would be mainly unobstructed, where the men would be able to signal each other without fail, and where their arcs of fire might even overlap. His own location when he was not patrolling would be central, of course.

Moreover, he had sought out the other bosses, Donald Myers and Bert Jordan—both of them Garth’s seniors by at least five or six years, (senior too by virtue of the extensive experience such years represented)—ensuring not only that the positioning of their smaller teams would be conterminous with his, but also suggesting that where defensive lines met, such “corner” stations would perhaps best be manned by one man from his own team, plus one from Jordan’s to the north, and one from Myers’ to the south, doubling the strength of these important junctions. This was an excellent notion; both bosses had congratulated Garth on his thinking, likewise on his “promotion.” Wishing him the best of luck, they had said he should go far—to which the somewhat saturnine Myers had added the proviso: “That’s always assuming, of course, that on this damned, seemingly interminable trek we ever go anywhere at all! Er, but best not to let Big Jon Lamon know I said that…!”

The night had gone well; Garth patrolled constantly and the hours seemed to pass remarkably quickly; Zach had visited once, in the wee small hours—ostensibly “because he couldn’t sleep”—offering to stand in for Garth for an hour or two to let him get a little shut-eye right there on the job. But despite feeling bone-weary Garth had turned him down; also, with the memory of what had happened in the car park fresh in his mind, he also turned down Zach’s renewed offer to trade weapons. No, he would stick with his rifle which, as a self-loader, didn’t need pumping: a not only plausible but genuine explanation that had gone far to satisfying his father’s concerns.

An hour before dawn, however, Garth had found himself wishing that he had accepted Zach’s offer and got his head down. He had barely been able to keep his eyes from closing, and following his final patrol had plumped down on the bole of a fallen tree, resting his upper frame in a crotch of branches…

It was never Garth’s intention to sleep. On the contrary; the smoky predawn light, much like dusk, did little to improve visibility but played tired, straining eyes false where distances were difficult to judge and the outlines of harmless shrubbery took on hunched, menacing shapes. All of which, compounded by an inches-deep, lapping ground mist, was distracting to say the least; so that Garth’s nerves were at full stretch, paradoxically increasing his weariness.

Yet apart from the distant hooting of a night bird—and, on occasion the muffled, ambiguous, but at least human-seeming sounds of movement from the encampment some thirty or so paces to Garth’s rear and that much deeper in the woods—the night was still and quiet, with no breath of wind to stir the leaves. And in fact the rising and falling ground mist, its slow swirling round the humped roots of trees and in the underbrush, had had something of an hypnotic effect. So that despite his every effort Garth had found himself nodding off…

And almost at once had started awake!

What the hell was that? What had happened just then? Had he been dreaming? Was he asleep long enough to have even commenced dreaming? But he had seen—or thought he had seen—something! In those confused, dislocated moments between sleeping and waking—in that transitory place between the subconscious and conscious levels of being—had he dreamed? Only imagined that he had seen someone or thing on the rim of his awareness? Or had there been an actual presence: a figure with feral eyes, lurking out there in the misty distance at the very edge of visibility?

If it had been a dream or nightmare, then like the majority of dreams its contents on waking might have been at once forgotten. But if it was reality?…Garth had found himself shuddering, shaking like a leaf. For real or unreal he knew who he had seen—or imagined he saw—out there in the mist. And the more certain he became of it, the more stark and vivid the recollection had become.

But now—as he got himself under control, shooting darting, narrow-eyed glances this way and that—now there was nothing; just the gradually brightening light and melting ground mist, a dawn chorus from a surprising number of birds, and the rustling of small unseen creatures as they awakened in the underbrush.

A nightmare, then: it must have been a nightmare, but by no means unwarranted. And as he slowly relaxed and his heart stopped its pounding, Garth had considered it best left unmentioned. He would not speak of it to his father, and most definitely not to Layla!

Unable as yet to put it entirely from his mind, however, he had made one final patrol, inquiring of each man of his team as he came upon them with regard to any incidents that might possibly have disturbed their watch. But no, thankfully, not one of them had had anything to report; all had gone well. And in addition—when the sun’s welcome light had come filtering through the trees, and Garth’s long, single whistle blast had signalled his team to stand down—then, on returning to the encampment, he had sought out “gangling” Garry Maxwell.

Maxwell, too, had been carrying out his intermittent patrol of an inner perimeter closer to the stationary vehicles. In the event of an alert—if fly-by-nights had found a way in through the watchkeepers—it would have been his dogs’ job to let him know about it, and Garry’s to wake the armed standby squads and the camp as a whole. But:

The long-limbed dog-handler, on the point of settling down to sleep for a few hours after his night’s work, had been only too pleased to report nothing of any consequence. “My sniffers were maybe a bit jumpy, uneasy from time to time,” he had said stifling a yawn, “most likely because they could hear or sense you and yours out there on the perimeter. But I kept ’em quiet on behalf of them who were sleeping. It only takes a couple of dogs to start in barking and the next thing you know the whole place is in an uproar!”

Still more than a little uneasy himself, Garth felt he had to be satisfied with that and made his report to Big Jon Lamon based on that decision and not on the contents of a nightmare. In any case he could hardly admit that he had fallen asleep!

“Well done, Garth!” the leader had been glad to accept his report, “And a very good night’s work—your first in your new job! But then again, any quiet night is a good one, right? Bert Jordan and Don Myers were just here; they seem to find you acceptable, likening you to your father! Only thing is, Zach could be a hothead on occasion, a bit impetuous; though rarely without good cause. Anyway, from what I’ve seen of you you’re much more evenly balanced, and I’m well pleased with you. So let me say again, well done—and now you can go and get some rest.”

Which was easier said than done; Layla had not been at all inclined to let Garth rest! At least, not for an hour or so…

This time, however, when at his young wife’s insistent shaking and calling his name he had cried out and started awake, Garth had known for sure that it was only a dream. Layla’s warm, comforting arms around him had guaranteed that much. But no amount of comfort could dispel the disquieting nature of this…but this what? This recurrence? For it had been in fact a repeat of what Garth had thought he’d dreamed—or seen?—out there in the mist on the rim of the woods. In short, he still wasn’t one hundred percent convinced one way or the other.

And it had been in great clarity that his subconscious mind had conjured once again that vision of Ned Singer. But a Singer very different from the man Garth had known. For the expression on this Singer’s face had been dazed and oddly vacant, as if he stood in some weird dream of his own; and his eyes like a cat’s had burned silvery-yellow in a gaunt, almost corpse-like face.

“What was it?” Layla had wanted to know. “You were gurgling and trying to speak. And while your body had gone cold, yet you were sweating!”

And when Garth had been able to speak: “It was…it was a dream, a nightmare,” he had told her. And then lied, saying: “I can’t…can’t remember the details.”

Drawing him closer Layla had herself shivered, telling him: “It’s your work, of course. Out there in the darkness, watching and waiting for those terrible creatures, why, that’s enough to give anyone bad dreams—including me, and I’m safe back here!”

The time had been only a little after two in the afternoon, but Garth had had more than enough of troubled sleep. Dressing, he had gone out from under the discreet tent-like awning he and Layla had erected beneath the extended lead panels of a trundle. And he was no sooner up than a runner, a boy only half his age, passed by with the news that Big Jon Lamon had called a meeting at his command rauper.

Garth had cried out after the runner: “Hey, you should stay well out of the sunlight!” This despite that the trees offered reasonably good cover. But the boy had called back:

“No need, Garth! Not today!” And then he was gone into the leaf-dappled light. Other folk were already on the move toward the head of the column; encouraged by their obvious excitement, and with Layla waving him on, Garth had joined them…

The people of the clan had ample reason to be excited; rumours had always spread quickly among their comparatively small community, and some word of what was in the offing—wonderful news apparently, whether accurate, somewhat enlarged upon, or exaggerated beyond all reason—seemed to have reached them even in advance of the runner! But as they had gathered at the leader’s armoured rauper—everyone hoping against hope that the rumours were true but not daring to speak their thoughts aloud for fear all might be snatched away—they desired only to hear it from Big Jon himself.

He had not kept them waiting. Seated on the vehicle’s rusting flank along with head tech Andrew Fielding, the leader had worn a smile as broad as his face as he commenced his address:

“People, today is going to be remembered as a very special day, for we’re in receipt of two items of marvellous news! Give me just a moment and I shall tell you about the least of these. But first—” Pausing he had turned to Fielding, only then continuing: “—first I must mention our most remarkable head tech here,” with which he had clapped the other on the back, setting the much smaller man rocking where he was perched, coughing until he seemed close to choking, “who has been busy since first light taking radiation readings. Now, we’re talking about ultraviolet radiation, of course—the sun’s harmful rays—about which all previous knowledge was restricted to the locality of the Southern Refuge and thus limited in scope; radiation which to our understanding has been at lethal levels for over a century and a half, ever since atomic warfare poisoned the atmosphere. However, according to head tech Fielding’s readings, taken just an hour ago…but no, it’s only fair that I let him tell you of this himself. Andrew?”

Fielding’s coughing fit had occasioned some nervous, sympathetic laughter from the crowd, which had quickly tailed off as finally he controlled the spasms and his thin, reedy voice took over from Big Jon’s deeper, booming tones:

“Honoured by our leader’s comments,” he began somewhat hesitantly, “still I find myself in an unenviable, at best awkward position; perhaps because I feel unduly honoured. The last time I voiced opinions and made statements such as I’m about to make now, they rebounded and came back to haunt me! That happened in the town with the car park, the church, and the well. It was my belief then that we had driven into more benevolent latitudes—the result of wishful thinking as opposed to scientific observation—which raised high hopes that were all too soon dashed: an error of judgement on my part, and one that I’m reluctant to repeat. But…I can only report things the way I find them!

“Since leaving that ill-omened town I’ve been taking solar radiation readings on the hour, each and every day, and yesterday I was obliged to give our leader some bad—though not too bad—news. In short I reported that the sun’s ultraviolet radiation appeared to be fluctuating, in my opinion as a result of a layer of particles high in the atmosphere which is constantly on the move, sometimes blocking the lethal rays while at others parting to let them through. Which was true yesterday, and also for a few hours this morning when the levels were a little high…since when these atmospheric changes seem to be working very much in our favour! Let me explain:

“As Big Jon Lamon has told you, I have been out since first light, and hour on hour my readings have steadily improved. Indeed, in less than a day they’ve improved to such a degree that they are now better than those I took in the town of the fly-by-nights—much better than at any time since we left that place—and better than I have ever imagined or dreamed possible! Alas that there’s no way I dare estimate the future duration of this change—at least, not the immediate future—for I certainly have no wish to repeat the errors of only a few days ago! But—”

At which point the leader had held up his huge hand and cut in: “—But, let me remind everyone how wonderful it was during those few days: to be able to travel by daylight and rest up by night! Yesterday after I heard Andrew’s disappointing report, I admit to having felt despondent—but no longer! The gloom has been dispersed! I now feel buoyed up and eager to get on! Which we will, and very shortly, just as soon as we’ve heard the head tech out…” And having turned again to the slight technician—who had winced as he shied away from Big Jon’s heavy hand:

“My friend, you must excuse me,” the leader had apologized. “It’s true that in the past I’ve interrupted you far too often, but this time forgive me my excitement and continue. Tell us if you will the rest of your news…the best and by far the most important part of your news!”

“Yes, yes!” the other had responded. “I’m coming to it! But first let me take a chance and risk my reputation one last time—though this time I have reason to believe that such a risk is minimal. For as I was about to say: it seems the farther north we trek the more these atmospheric anomalies appear to be working in our favour! In spite of their vacillations and however gradually, the levels of both ultraviolet and background radiations are finally—dare I say ‘definitely?’—becoming more acceptable! Oh, they swing this way and that, but each high is never as high as the last, and the lows are always lower!”

At which the almost breathless silence of the crowd had at last been broken by the sound of pent sighs, gasps, other small but audible exclamations…then some shouted, barely articulate queries…and finally a gathering storm of raised voices! Until:

“Now hold!” Big Jon’s cry as he rose to his feet had risen above all else. “Hold on, I say! For the man’s by no means done and the best is still to come!”

Falling silent, still the people had pressed closer, and in the forefront Garth had felt their excitement almost as a tangible force at his back.

“The very best, yes!” Fielding had nodded his head vigorously. “For while I’m the so-called ‘head’ technician, my colleagues are no less worthy and all have worked at least as hard, if not harder, than I myself. And now I’m talking about Earl Jones and Glenn Garrison—my radio men!”