

Elysium.

Part One:

Another Chance

Elysium. Part One. Another Chance.

Kelvin James Roper

Copyright Kelvin James Roper 2012

2nd Edition 2016

ISBN: 9781301492176

Published by Red Crow at Smashwords

Table of Contents:

Prologue. South-easterly wind. Twenty-Four knots.

Chapter One. South-easterly wind. Twenty-three knots.

Chapter Two. South-easterly wind. Twenty-two knots.

Chapter Three. South-easterly wind. Twenty-one knots.

Chapter Four. South-easterly wind. Twenty knots.

Chapter Five. South-easterly wind. Nineteen knots.

Chapter Six. South-easterly wind. Eighteen knots.

Chapter Seven. South-easterly wind. Seventeen knots.

Chapter Eight. South-easterly wind. Sixteen knots.

Chapter Nine. South-easterly wind: Fifteen knots.

Chapter Ten. South-easterly wind. Fourteen knots.

Chapter Eleven. Tranter.
Part One:

Another Chance

carnivora flu ~ 1. a highly contagious form of influenza, caused by infection with a filterable virus first isolated from canis familiaris in unrecorded North African states and spreading globally via public travel in the mid 21st century. An estimated quarter of the worldwide population was killed by the end of the first year.

Origin 2039-40. See also: S18K4 Virus

Prologue.

South-easterly wind.

Twenty-Four knots.

In less than six hours Richard Kelly would be dead.

It would come as a violent surprise with fingernails digging into his throat and blows being landed to his temple. It would come as he fought for breath and received nothing but the pungent smoke of his extinguished candle. He would die with confusion quickening his pulse to a terminal climax, and a resounding fear that overwhelmed him like flourishing ice-crystals.

He never thought it would end like this. He was aware that tempers had peaked in recent months; he had known his status amongst certain people had plummeted, but at no point did he consider fearing for his life!

Six hours previously he was sitting alone at the bar of the Smugglers Rest. He finished the dregs of his ale and wiped his lips on a worn cuff before scanning the room. Tinder North raised his brow and stepped toward him, desperate to have done so all night. Richard smiled amicably, amused by Tinder's inconspicuous performance.

'Didn't see you there, Kelly! Nother' one?'

Kelly knew he would be cajoled repeatedly to have one more drink until the break of dawn.In a week he would be making a trip to Ireland, and as a result he radiated a seemingly unparalleled fame. Even his childhood enemies would declare friendship, slapping him on the back and offering him a few provisions for the journey: freshly woven rope they 'happened' to find, or crops that had evidently been saved in an attempt to bribe him. As the community runner, the month before a trip would find him the most popular man in the village, his farewells were full of smiles and embraces. His returns, however, when the villagers saw he had failed to oblige them, were barren affairs, and they would treat him as though he held an inexhaustible cure for Mans' ills and chose to feign ignorance.

He couldn't think of a single item he hadn't been asked to bring back with him. Everyone knew it was a journey to replenish essentials: tools, seeds, medical equipment, hunting apparatus, candles, fuel, and replacement solar panels. Yet still they came and offered him bribes, and every quarter moon he would return empty handed, and the villagers would ignore him for weeks.

He raised his empty tankard in acceptance. If it were winter he'd smile and hold up his hands, he'd back away to the door with a rueful grin, safe in the knowledge that at home there would be a warm fire and the undemanding companionship of books. In the summer, however, especially on evenings when twilight evolved to deepest indigo without notice, he could drink and chat until the birds chirruped the approaching dawn.

One o'clock came swiftly. Eryn was too tired to keep the bar open, so she ushered Kelly and Guliven into the street. They teased her and drew her to their chests, kissing her forehead and professing their adoration. She laughed and bid them goodnight, then locked the door behind her as they sang tunelessly in the street. They fell about like schoolboys as people flung their windows wide and called for them to shut their row.

By the time they parted they were speaking earnestly of the following day and the impending journey to Ireland. They slurred a goodbye and gripped each other's wrists in a clasp of awkward affection.

Guliven returned to his home on the shore, while Kelly listened to his friend's irregular footfall scraping along the cracked tarmac. He made his way up an overgrown road to his house, which slumped precariously behind a series of ruined and broken cottages. He had lived there for seven years, having considered in his youth that it looked like a hunched old man. He didn't see that anymore, for weeds and grasses had mingled with ivy and flora to present a tangled landslide of vines and blossom. His was the only house on the street that remained habitable, and he stumbled passed the trees and waist high beach grass until he came to his camouflaged home.

He threw the door open as he entered and hesitated when it slammed loudly against a protruding cupboard. He stepped in to the dark-as-tomb kitchen, his fingers twitching in his pocket alongside the jingle of keys until he found his matches. He struck one, the flare of sulphur imprinting green blotches on his eyes which swam in the darkness like ghosts; until he took hold of the oil-lamp and lit the wick.

In moments the small kitchen was awash with dirty creams that promoted a darkness more profound than the black he had walked in on. Shadows flickered. He took the lamp and hung it from a rusting chain suspended from a ceiling beam. It swung for a few seconds, until he corrected it with his scarred fingers.

A draught made the door creak, and he became aware of the house's voice – the groaning timber, the scraping of mice in the walls, the steady trickle of the spring running through the cellar.

'Have you had time to think about it?' A man's voice. Kelly glanced at the shadows beyond the lounge doorframe.

'Who's that?' He said, his heart leaping as he peered into the gloom. He could see only the ridge of a nose and the dull features of his guest's cheekbones. His eyes were hidden under his heavy brow, though he could see the lamplight wavering in his eyes. His guest stepped forward and the creams and yellows of the oil lamp lit his face to jaundice him.

'Oh, it's you...' Kelly rolled his eyes. 'What are you doing here? I already...'

'We need to talk.'

'We need drink!' Kelly went to a cupboard and retrieved a ceramic flagon. The stopper popped and he took a swig from it, pouting as he cuffed the bitter zest from his lips. He offered it to his guest, who refused.

'I didn't come to drink; I came to ask you to reconsider.'

'Reconsider what?'

'Hell's teeth, Kelly!' he threw up his hands in exasperation. 'You know exactly what I'm talking about, don't cock me around!'

Kelly snorted and sat at the large wooden table opposite his guest. 'Look, I already gave you my answer. We'll agree to disagree, right? And seeing as it's me who's going...'

The guest struck the flagon from the table, he had hoped it would smash to express his anger, but instead it cracked loudly on the tiled floor and rolled to the corner. A trickle of alcohol trailed in its wake. 'Do you want us all to die? Is that what you want, you selfish bastard?'

Kelly dismissed him with a casual wave before leaning over to pick up the flagon. His head spun as he righted himself.

'No-one's going to die. We've managed long enough, haven't we? We'll be fine...'

'Times have changed, Kelly! We're not kids anymore... They're repairing their economy; they're getting closer every year. They want what they had before the pathogen! They're getting impatient, for God's sake... you've seen how they send more Blackeyes' each month. It can't go on like this!

'We hide from them, they never see us.'

The man gripped the back of a chair as though speaking from a podium. 'All it'll take is one sighting and we're finished. My ma was a drunk and a sow, Kelly, but she were at her wisest when she said if a thing can happen, then eventually it will. What if the Hullenby's children were out playing and they didn't see it until it was too late? You've seen the new models; they don't make a sound anymore! It's not like when we were kids and we could joke about hearing them coming from across the Severn. There's no knowing when they're coming now... I tell you, it'll only take one sighting, just one, and everything around us is over.'

Kelly looked at the man's sunken eyes for a long while, and then turned away.'No, I'm not changing my mind. I know what you want them for and I'm not going to help either of you! So go back and tell him that it's done. I'm not reconsidering.'

The man was silent for a moment. Kelly prepared himself for a fist or grasping hands about his throat but - with a sigh - the man straightened and turned away. 'You're a bastard, you know that, don't you?'

Kelly made a noise of concurrence and took another swig from the flagon. The door slammed shut, and the man was gone.

Kelly stood and looked at his feet for a time, considering whether he had made the right choice. Times had changed, and something did indeed need to be done. But not what they proposed, not what they asked of him. He thrust a chair in exasperation, slamming it hard against the door. A growl of frustration erupted from him and he ran his fingers through his hair, cursing his dearth of options.

To save a few at the expense of thousands. There was no debate, and yet it was the greatest decision he could possibly bare responsibility of answering.

Chapter One.

South-easterly wind.

Twenty-three knots.

There was nothing to hear but the surf against the bay.

From the platform of the lighthouse Ted Corbin sat in his deck-chair and surveyed the hazy orange dusk radiating from the sand-choked clouds. The amber horizon cast a sepia glow in the calm stratosphere, and behind him the stars slowly pricked their way through the gown of night.

Customarily unperturbed, Ted found himself in a troubled state. He had spent the day attending Kelly's funeral, and had come away from it with a mind mired in morbidity.

He had spent hours listening to people deliberate the capricious nature of mortality, how it both 'makes you think', and 'doesn't bare thinking about'. He had pondered on the expression 'ashes to ashes', and scared himself with the realisation that for all the billions of years prior to birth, and the trillions of years that would follow, he was now experiencing the brief, and only, glimpse of sentience that was but a spark of static in an ocean of black.

In the morning he had considered the passing of young Kelly, no older than thirty-seven, as being nothing more than a reminder that life was the same now as it would always be, the same as it always had been. It had given him a certain comfort that they were not so very different from the rest of the world, but the sudden notion that his brief part in the limelight of life was three-quarters over, and soon to be replaced by unending unconsciousness, tugged at his nerves like an unexpected call to arms.

He countered this with a thought that he had long ago accomplished the life objective of any organism: reproduction. He could leave the world in the knowledge that he would, in a genetic sense at least, continue to live through his son, Reighn, and his granddaughters.

His daughter-in-law was due to give birth again in little under a month. Ted pondered on her for a moment, reflecting on the sex of the child and whether it would live, for both her boys had died stillborn. 'Such a shame,' he found himself saying.

He sat overlooking the sea, sitting atop his home, a stocky lighthouse with a view of Bull Point that had been redundant for over a century. He warmed is hands on a ceramic mug steaming with whiskey-spiked coffee as gulls arced and hovered about him in the swelling breeze.

Breaker, his black and tan Alsatian, clacked across the grid-iron balcony and sniffed Ted's thigh, his tail wagging frantically.

'Ah! What's the matter, boy?' Ted said, rubbing Breaker's snout as he continued stargazing. 'I fed you an hour ago, don't pretend you forgot,'

Breaker complained, then collapsed on the grid-iron, sighing.

It had been an odd day; an odd week, really. Richard Kelly had been found dead in his home. He had been a carpenter and runner to the community's contacts in Ballycotton, on the Southern Irish coast. Ted had always found him a personable fellow, if slightly aloof at times, but knew he would be sorely missed by all quarters of the village.

'Only thirty-seven,' Ted mused, shaking his head with a sigh and thinking melancholic thoughts once again.

*

Semilion Tupper relaxed in his lounge on the second floor of the Smuggler's Rest. He sat with Paradise Lost open in his lap, curling the pages in his fingers and staring at the floor. Each year he would find the scratched and tormented book and promise he would progress beyond page thirty-one. He was doing well this year, having pushed three pages deeper, though he had read the last paragraph nine or ten times - and had wholly lost interest in the tale.

He put the book down. 'You won't beat me, you bastard,' he muttered, turning the oil-lamp beside him down a little as he stood.

His family was running the bar for the evening while he rested. His wife, Saran, had told him to take it easy for a few hours – organising Kelly's service and wake had taken its toll, she suggested - and he had reluctantly conceded defeat.

Stepping to the drinks cabinet, he retrieved a bottle of plum wine and twisted the bulbous cork. When it popped open he sniffed it and smiled; plum was his specialty. Pouring it into a small oak goblet, he savoured its sweet aroma and honeyed aftertaste.

Checking the oil-lamp again, he crossed the threadbare carpet to a large curtained window and peered outside. From his vantage he could see most of the high street, including the sea crashing against the bay far below. It was warm in the room, and Semilion opened the window wide, the rushing sound of the sea lulled gracefully into the room.

He inspected the silhouette of the squat lighthouse high on Bull Point. It reminded him that the shipping report would be transmitted in three days. Although it was one of the most essential facets of his position as community overseer, he hated listening to the shipping report. There was nothing he found more depressing.

He anticipated an approaching storm, so still and humid was the air, and dropped the black curtain back into place. He observed the draw and drag of the long thick fabric for a time, watching the curtain bulge and suck against the window; if it parted even fractionally he would have to close it and endure the heat. He couldn't afford the light being spotted in the dark. None of them could.

He retraced his steps to the drinks cabinet, poured himself another glass of plum wine, and returned to his chair. 'Right, Milton,' he muttered, picking up Paradise Lost despondently, 'let's try again,'

Three rooms along from his own, his daughter Eryn sat upon her bed, wiping her swollen eyes and fighting the burning in her throat. Kelly's death had shaken her greatly; not only would she miss him and the future she had fantasied about since she could remember, but he was the only person she had been close to whom had died.

She was eighteen, and her raven hair cascaded over her ashen face, hiding her bloated, bloodshot eyes. She had spent most of the ceremony crying and hadn't been shy of doing so. And why should she have been? Everyone was aware of the playful friendship between her and Kelly; they knew, though never spoke of it outside of whispers, and the necessary postures required for gossip, that she had looked up to him more than her own father.

She composed herself after the burial, and walked back to the Smuggler's Rest where she prepared food for the wake. She didn't hear the short elegy Jack Little had written, though Betty had told her about it when the villagers were talking amongst themselves over drinks and pasties. It had started her off again, and Betty had cooed: 'Don't you worry y'self, my girl. Kelly's in a better place now. He wouldn't want to think his passing caused you a grief.'

'I know... I just...' She didn't know what she just, she thought as hot tears warmed her cheeks.

Betty nodded and smoothed Eryn's hair – and then returned to her table and conversation with Reighn and Dawn Corbin.

She stood quietly for a moment and collected herself, and then turned quickly – she had heard her name being whispered sharply and had the impression that it hadn't been the first time, though in her dissociation she'd failed to notice the voice was directed at her.

The whisperer was Boen Waeshenbach, the fisherman's son. He was a year younger than Eryn, though they had both been schooled together. He was a loner and, as most would happily concur, a comprehensive waste of space.He spent his evenings at the bar trying to engage her in inane conversation. It was obvious he desired her, whether physically or to a deeper extent she didn't care to know, and though there was nothing tangibly unattractive about him – she had always thought he had nice, if somewhat plain, features; he reminded her of her father in so much as he lied when there was no reason to. It seemed as though if there was a silence, he would fill it with some cock-and-bull tale about nothing in particular.

Tonight, however, she wasn't in the mood for it.

'I'm busy, Boen.' She said with a sniff.

'You look rough, are you Ok?' He leaned on the bar.

Instead of answering she poured him a pint and passed it to him. She wrapped one thin arm around herself, and wiped her sore eyes with the other.

'I saw something the other night.' He said hoarsely. Eryn rolled her eyes.

'I don't think I can take this today, Boen.'

'What d'you mean?'

'I'm not in the mood for your lies, that's what I mean.'

He was quiet for a moment while Tinder North came to the bar, winked at him and walked away with a pint.

Boen was frowning at Eryn. 'I'm serious!' he said, sternly.

'What! What did you see then?'

'Someone running out of Kelly's place the night he died.'

Eryn thought she would scream. She flushed with rage, but instead of unleashing her fury she trembled with anger. Boen couldn't help but see.

'I mean it! Don't get pissed off.'

'You saw someone running away? Really! And you didn't think to mention it until now?'

Boen's cheeks coloured. 'It was...'

'Get out, Boen.' Eryn whispered curtly, her tone stoic.

His mouth hung open, about to resist, but her eyes were empty of compromise and he left.

*

Jasmine Sooth knelt at the hearth in her cottage. With twilight handing the day to night it was permissible to light fires, and she sighed relief to be able to finally boil some water. She began piling the logs beside the grate before placing a flame to the tinder in the cast-iron fireplace. It took a few moments, and then a rich blaze licked and took hold of the fragile kindling. Carefully placing the firewood in the grate she stood and returned to her comfy chair, a mass of throws and blankets, before stopping at the window. Lifting the heavy black curtain slightly she looked towards the rising cliffs, and stared for a moment at the summit.

It was cloudy, and the wind was churning it angrily. A gust rattled the blossoming trees in the garden and sent a whistling draft through the kitchen. The chimney groaned mournfully.

'Benjamin,' she called, her voice mellifluous. Instantly she heard her son's feet on the floorboards above, and a few moments later he was pounding down the first few steps of the staircase. He remained at the top, and ducked between the banisters. 'yeah, ma?'

'Stay in tonight,' she said, turning back to the window as a hail of pink blossom whipped passed the frame.

He stood, and was about to go - then ducked again, 'Why?'

Jasmine remained quiet for a moment, and then turned back to him. 'Something's coming... the wind's picking up.'

Benjamin bit his bottom lip, and then returned to his room.

*

The atmosphere in the Smuggler's Rest was wearying, as were the coals in the hearth. Most villagers had left Kelly's wake fearing they would be caught in a downpour, though a few remained drinking, and Tom Barnaby – hoping to lift the sentiment of the day - played his fiddle merrily whilst sitting on the long-decayed snooker table.

All the curtains were drawn tight, the solar lamps burned brightly, and the storm, nothing more than a shadow far out at sea, would give them little trouble.

Tom came to the finale of his piece, and lay the fiddle down. He picked up his pint and took a large swig, half of which disappeared in his copious moustache. He placed the tankard down with an exaggerated burp and listened in on a conversation between Betty Longshank, the resident handywoman, and John Summer.

She said: 'It weren't no cat I tell you, I know a cat as when I see one,'

'At two in the morning? Tell, me then, what was it?'

'Were a dog. A dog as big as a man!'

John said nothing, but raised his brow as he sipped his drink.

'It was!' Betty insisted, reacting to his incredulity.

'And who around here owns a big dog?'

'A dog as big as a man.' Tom Barnaby corrected.

'Ferk off, the both of yer! I ain't saying it belonged to anyone.' Betty glowered across the room, 'Could of been wild, couldn't it?'

'Not likely,' John said, finishing his pint and standing to leave. 'It was probably old Corbin stumbling home from the pub.'

Aside from Kelly's burial, there was nothing special about that particular Thursday. It was the same as the week before, when James Little stubbed his toe on the pub steps, and had to have it plastered, or the fortnight before, when Samantha Waeshenbach announced the readiness of her tomatoes. It was a quiet village, and no outside influence had affected them for near a century.

*

Ted Corbin had given up his vigil of stargazing, the clouds had choked the patch of sky he'd been watching, and the few stars that remained were being veiled by the slowly advancing storm front.

He sipped his coffee and stood - Breaker jumped and retreated, wagging his tail again. 'No, boy,' Ted warned, 'I already fed you, now get back inside an' let's not have so much of it!' Breaker blinked and whined, and then turned, tentatively stepping back towards the door and into the lighthouse.

Ted sighed, and tipped the remainder of his drink over the railings, watching the wind whip the drops away as they fell. A flash in his periphery distracted him, and he looked out to sea. Thunder lazily rolled in the air, and another flare of lightning whisked the dark clouds with blossoms of pink and yellow.

As he watched the random lightning and listened to the emphatic thunder, he caught sight of a flicker of lights – electric lights - far away, almost touching the horizon.

His heart leapt, and he backed slowly to the door.
Chapter Two.

South-easterly wind.

Twenty-two knots.

Selina woke with the cool air on her face. She was exhausted.

She felt cold and uneasy. Something was wrong, though she searched her memory and couldn't think of anything to cause it. Her insides were knotted, her lobes pounded, and her teeth felt as though they had been grinding all night. Something was definitely wrong.

Her joints groaned as she stirred, and for a moment she wondered why she had been allowed to sleep all night on deck. Why had no-one woken her?

Roused by waves and the caw of seagull in the bright sky, she rolled her eyes and opened them. Salt pricked her vision and she closed them immediately. A few minutes more sleep wouldn't hurt.

A minute or so passed, she watched the bright blood of her eyelids in the dawn. Again she slowly opened them; the light breaking into kaleidoscopic rainbows on her eyelashes.

A sudden realisation struck her, as did the comprehension as to why nothing felt right: she wasn't on a lounger on deck, the monotonous roll of the ship was missing. She was on solid land!

With a pain in her arm and ribs she rose to her elbows, cuffing sand from her face.

She watched the surf climb the beach before stopping short of her sandy toes. It paused, as though contemplating a life on land, before receding leisurely.

She was overwhelmed by the recollection of the previous night aboard the Tangaroa; the thuds from below which had woken her, the siren echoing in the narrow gangways, and the passengers being led to insufficient lifeboats. She experienced again the perception that the ship was sinking, felt the deck listing frightfully as she had stumbled and pushed passed desperate families, crying children, shaking parents, in the hope of finding salvation in one of those small boats.

The rain had lashed upon the deck; lightning had emphasized the breaking hull that burst shards of wood and fibreglass into the dark. Passengers fell and slid as they collided with one another, frantically trying to save themselves and sealing their misfortune in doing so.

Another thud from deep within the old rusting ship sounded, louder than those before, and the vessel almost tore in two, sending the ship – and the souls of three hundred and twenty-four - below the freezing waters with her. The lifeboats hung helplessly from the hull, scattering those with screams caught in their throats to a silent end.

Metal groaned like some tortured whale as the boat disappeared into the storm-whipped waters. It took passengers and crew with it, their mouths petrified in an expression of 'O!' as they sank to the depths of the sea floor. None had the strength to fight against the draw of the Tangaroa as it descended, and many were lost in the first few minutes, convulsing and praying for breath, before the whim of the tide owned them fully.

Selina sat upright; the thought of those faces made her put a hand to her salty lips. Tears flowed freely as she thought of them. She wept for the dead, for her own survival, and for the irrepressible confusion that rang in her head.

Beside her, glinting in the pastel sunlight was her grandfather's hip flask. She took hold of it – suddenly exasperated that of all her belongings to survive that it should be this– she ran her thumb over the sand-filled engraving upon the stainless steel.

'Carter B. Ravens

A. C. C. S.

Holloway Refinery

2067'

Idly she rubbed at the grit, using her nail to dig grains from the engraving. When the task was complete she reached forwards and rinsed the scratched bottle in the surf.

She wiped her raw eyes and took an exaggerated breath. Getting to her feet she turned to the high cliffs of the bay, she had been dumped in a small rocky alcove on a long expanse of sand.

As she rose, the coolness of the beach seemed to dissipate and the milky sun almost overwhelmed her. She sighed; the cheering heat seemed to push her gruesome memories to a more manageable place, the terrified faces and the freezing waves didn't fit with warmth and sunlight. They would return, she considered, thinking of spending the night alone with the memory of bodies tugged at by waves.

She squeezed the worst of the wetness from her clothes, basking for a while in the comforting heat. Turning, she sighed: 'Where in hell am I?' and took a step closer to the grassy cliffs that swayed in the breeze.

The piercing shout of gull was giving her a headache, and she found herself squinting into the bright, misty sky to see if there was any particular cause for their clamour.

They were gathered at the summit of a rock that erupted from the sand and divided the beach. Watching them hop to and fro, thrashing their wings, and dive for one another, she presumed they fought over some scrap of food. The thought occurred to her then that she might find herself without sustenance for quite a time, and that if there was anything to eat she wasn't going to let seagulls, of all things, beat her to it.

She made her way toward the finger of rock, her eyes on the grassy cliffs that stretched the length of the seemingly endless beach. There was nothing to pinpoint her location, no signpost or milestone to indicate the language, no landmark that told her anything of her locality. The last time she had cared to know the Tangaroa's location they had been sixty miles off the west coast of Ireland. She had fallen ill that night, and had spent the next week in her cabin, throwing the contents of her stomach into the pungent chemical toilet. She didn't think this coast was one of Ireland's, for although she had never been to the country, the climate seemed too airless for her assumptions. She hoped that she hadn't been washed ashore a coast of England, for the pathogen had, by all accounts, and in the west especially, been persistently virulent in recent decades.

This coast, she convinced herself for the presence of seagull, was unlikely to be the west of England, though it may have been the North, or Scotland, or even France. It was impossible to tell.

'Parlez-vous pas le français?' Selina called as she neared the rocky peak where, at the summit, the gulls regarded her with bobbing heads.

Hooking her dark and tousled hair behind her ears, she found her footing before losing it quickly on thick green weeds. She grew weary as she drew near the crest, and the gulls contested her company. Only the hardiest of them remained, though the majority made a lacklustre protestation before diving from the rock. She waved the remaining birds from the summit, and clawed herself atop the wet grey stone before catching sight of the bird's grotesque feast.

A bloated corpse, white and staring, was wedged in a crevice at the foot of the stone rise. She shuddered, and then looked up at the long beach to witness scores of lifeless bodies – blanched, ragged and bent into positions only death could afford. Selina closed her eyes to the sight though the image, she knew, would remain with her for the rest of her days.

For his burgundy trousers she guessed the man in the crevice to have been a crewman aboard the Tangaroa. She didn't recognize him; his head had been repeatedly drawn against the rocky shore, and most of his features had been turned to bare bone and muscle. An eye socket was empty, and the remaining eye stared nonchalantly at the bright, vaporous sky. The tide lapped into the crevice and pooled around his torso and legs, and she turned from him – only to catch a glimpse of a slender limb concealed behind a rock some yards away. She wondered, in a peak of morbid imagination, whether there was a body attached to it.

Looking again at the abundance of beached figures she shook her head and decided she had endured enough. Some way along the beach she saw a wooden walkway leading up the cliff-face and resolved to make for it; it meant passing between the limp bodies but – for the sheer rock face - there was no other route available.

Descending was harder than the ascent, and the sharp boulders punctured her wrinkled toes. Grimacing, she stepped quickly over the corpse, who stared through her as she passed. She winced as her sole grated on a fragment of shell, and then cursed with alarm as she finally hopped on to the sand.

She couldn't help but now see that the seemingly disembodied leg was indeed attached to a body. It was a woman whom she recognised, though had never spoken to during the long voyage.

Selina cautiously arced around the woman, fearing the face would also be a display of battered flesh, but found her face down amongst seaweed. She wore a tight cream dress cut at the knee; though the waves and the draw of the tide had exposed her thighs as though violated and abandoned. Selina quickly moved forward with a reflexive compulsion to help. She dropped to her knees, the faintest reminder of perfume broke the hot scent of sweat. Resting her ear against the woman's back she listened for a pulse. She couldn't hear one, though with the waves on the rocks and the returned gulls picking at the crewman she was hardly surprised.

She placed her fingers gently on the woman's bronzed wrist and closed her eyes. Her own heart quickened for the briefest of seconds when she felt the faint rhythm of the woman's pulse.

'Thank God,' she whispered, relieved she wasn't cast-away in solitude.

Taking her by the shoulder, she turned the woman slightly. Apart from a bruise on her temple and a stain of blood about her nose she seemed to have escaped the malice of the rocks. She had soft symmetrical features and a halo of curled golden hair that shone like a web of fairy-lights. Selina had been captivated by it aboard the Tangaroa and had often thought her, for all her glowing beauty, to be a lonely woman; always by herself on deck, eating alone in the cafeteria, and escorted only by her shadow.

She squeezed the woman's shoulder, pinched it and tapped her gently in an attempt to rouse her. For a long while there was no response. Then, just as Selina was growing impatient, the woman stirred, and moaned at the light of day.

Selina blinked, and stopped rubbing. She said, 'Hello? Wake up, Miss.,'

The woman blinked, and peeped into the brightness. Her watery eyes were glazed, and then quickly became focused on Selina's pale, freckled face. She was silent and hardly seemed to breathe, then she sighed, and closed her eyes again. She cleared her throat, seemingly comprehending the situation with every passing second 'Where's the haul?'

'The Tangaroa sank. We've been washed ashore,' Selina attempted to reply calmly.

The woman's eyes opened as though she had been wounded and Selina flinched.

'Where? Where are we?' The woman coughed.

Selina shrugged, and spoke of her thoughts of Ireland, of France, of Britain. The woman listened to her quietly, her topaz-blue eyes intent and patient. After Selina's threadbare intelligence had been mined, the woman said that the ship had docked at Dublin before dusk the previous evening, and was bound for Wexford at the rise of the storm. 'This isn't Ireland, though,' she said with a finality that was absolute.

The woman sat up and saw the corpse only yards from her feet. She shook her head in pity, then turned back to Selina, who said, 'Well, where are we then?'

'I don't know, though if the virus is here, then we may as well have drowned. I think I would have preferred it that way,'

Selina didn't reply, she only stood, and offered the woman her hand. She noticed her nails were cut to the quick, though were strong and shining.

They exchanged names; the woman's was Priya Cray.

Selina helped Priya to her feet, and she pulled down her dress with an air of embarrassment. She saw the beached bodies and swore under her breath, staring at them with astonishment. Selina rest her hand on Priya's shoulder, and felt the vibrations of repressed tears. There was a long silence between them, then Priya sniffed and quickly wiped her eyes before stepping toward the beach – Selina's hand lingered in the air behind her.

Throughout the morning they examined the scattered bodies in the hope of finding more survivors, though to their despair they found none. The only life they came across was that of a crippled pig which lay beside a smashed fibreglass crate containing its drowned mate. It allowed them to approach and comfort it, though died soon after the misty sky had cleared.

It was a sobering morning, a macabre search for life amongst the dead. It brought to Selina's mind the image of medieval battles; scavengers foraging the deceased for possessions.

Untouched for generations, the sweeping grass of the cliffs was tall and unkempt, and the thick underlying weeds tripped them frequently in their ascent. Wearing only shirt and shorts, Selina grazed her knees, staining them green and she muttered the Lords name so many times that Priya wondered if she were pious.

It took them fifteen minutes to claw their way through the wiry grass and thorns to the summit, and when they did an empty road greeted them. Flanked by stone slate walls and draped with flourishing wildflowers, it was a curious pleasantry to confront after the horrors on the beach. Blue-dog violets wafted their scent and bobbed in the warm breeze, navelwort shimmered lazily, their large circular leaves shining in the bright day. Long, clustered spikes of white pennywort thrust above the walls, as though guarding the land from interlopers.

The panoply of vivid colour spread further down the abandoned road, and although the scene was beautiful to observe, it also strengthened Selina's fear that this was uninhabited land, and that meant only one thing: the pathogen here was rife.
Chapter Three.

South-easterly wind.

Twenty-one knots.

While Selina and Priya were still comatose on the shore, flotsam at the will of the receding tide, the sun was lighting the wet rooftops of Mortehoe.

Betty woke for the third time; she looked behind furtively, frightened Semilion would be there to admonish her for falling asleep on guard. He wasn't, and she sat back in her comfy chair atop the roof of the Smuggler's Rest, peering out over the village with bleary eyes.

Around her she wore a patched duvet and, resting between her legs, was an old air gun. Yawning, she leant forward, laying her arm on the barrier that encompassed the roof. She looked down at the empty street. It was bathed in a lattice of golden rays and dark shadow, and she watched as a curling breeze snatched up some debris and scattered it along the road.

She leaned back in her chair and sniffed her old duvet; it smelt of dog. She spent the next moments wondering how that could be - she didn't own a dog; she never would.

'... that little villain, Breaker!' she muttered to the chilly morning.

She thought dark thoughts and reminded herself to scowl at Corbin next time she saw him. That would do the trick!

She had been up on the roof all night and was angry that Semilion still made her do it. Her, in her sixties! While the younger folk slept in warm beds!

Semilion repeatedly told her it was policy, and her duty, regardless of her age. 'Corbin sits out on the lighthouse, and he's no younger,' he would say. 'Jenny gets as sick as a dog on the water but she takes in the nets without complaint.' Betty had no choice but to agree, even though her wrists swelled and moved her to tears when the temperature plummeted.

Semilion had rudely interrupted her the previous evening and told that Ted Corbin had seen some electric lights in the storm. At first she had thrust herself into action, along with Tinder and Tom Barnaby, though the three of them could see nothing in the darkness, and after a while she was left on her own before Semilion retired to bed and the others made their excuses. After that she had watched the quiet sea and listened to the thunder beyond the horizon before falling asleep. When she woke she realised two hours had passed, and she peered out into the moonless night, growing ever confident that Ted had been wholly mistaken. The night had continued much the same after that, except at three in the morning, when the rain woke her with a start.

Now she was shivering and miserably cold, and she could hear her bones moaning when she moved. 'Damn Semilion,' she whispered, 'damn his black old heart... and rot to his god-damned policies!'

The Smuggler's Rest had seen better days. It had been a hotel over a century and a half before, though even in those days its bland façade hadn't endorsed the most regal of lodgings.

It's once lively bar-room was now dank and cheerless; the heavy curtains on every window, even when drawn wide, seemed to suck the light from the room like ornamental black holes.

The large oval bar sat on the entrance wall; its once varnished surface was warped and splintered, and a yellow tinge accompanied the bitter aroma of home-brewed ales that had seeped under its skin across the ages.

At the end of the room, pushed haphazardly into the corner, was a torn and fractured pool table, the glass panel scuffed and cracked, and the balls - save the cue – had long ago been dispersed by time and drunken appropriation. The wood had become weathered and misshapen after long years in the salty air of the garden. Semilion had once decided to restore the table to its former grace, and had dragged it back into the bar with an air of determination, only to give up after a quarter hour of staring at it with hands on hips.

Numerous pictures lined the walls, all of them paintings of ancient vessels, or the hotel itself during the Georgian and Elizabethan eras. Opposite the bar was a large painting that had remained since the hotel's first days; a view of a local bay by moonlight, a small row-boat and a host of smugglers making their way to the tavern.

An hour after the end of her vigil, Betty was lethargically removing tankards from window-sills and tables, and trying to ignore the impossibly stained bar.

Tinder North and Dawn Corbin sat by the largest window, bathed in morning light, a pint before them and a long pipe resting in Tinder's hand. He saw Betty entering the room in the corner of his eye, and brushed his short grey fringe with his fingers. 'Morning Betty, how are you?' He asked.

Betty grunted, and began wiping the bar with a dirty cloth, and Tinder wondered whether she wasn't actually making it dirtier. He took matches from his linen shirt pocket and lit his pipe, his lips smacking the tip as smoke began to glow in the sunlight. He patted the stool beside him, 'Will you join us for a pint? You will, go on.'

'I don't have time,' Betty answered, her back to them both, 'Maybe if he didn't make me sit up on that bleedin' roof every time someone thinks they see something... Maybe then I'd have the energy to get this done and sit down and talk, but as it is he does, so I won't. Thank you!'

Tinder smiled at Dawn, who rolled her eyes.

'So it were nothin' then?' Tinder said.

She looked at him with a raised brow. His question, it seemed, deserved no more a response. She turned and was just about to leave when she glanced at Dawn and said: 'Your old man better watch himself. Got eyes with ships stuck to 'em, I reckon! Sees all sorts of fancy in the lightning, he does. We'll be chasing after his dreams next!

Tinder laughed and patted Dawn's bulging stomach gently. 'Don't listen to her, dear.'

She was ballooning with child, and had about her a persistently troubled air, for she had birthed two stillborn children in as many years – and was obsessively fretful of a third.

The front door opened with a piercing squeak and the two of them waited to see who would enter the bar-room from the foyer. Boen Waeshenbach stepped in, looking meeker than normal.

'I should be getting back,' Dawn said, smiling at Boen and kissing Tinder on the cheek.

'You take care of yourself, love,' he said, turning to the bar.'Morning, Boen.'

'Morning, Tinder... Have you seen Eryn?'

'Eryn? No, I don't think as I have, my boy. You in for a drink?'

'Yeah, just the one, mind... I came here to see Eryn really... I shouldn't stay long.'

'Work to be done, eh?'

'You know it.' Boen took hold of a stool and sat at the bar, expecting Betty to serve him, though she didn't look up from her continuous scouring.

'Get much weather last night your way?'

'Like you wouldn't believe, heard the rafters creaking like the roof was about to come off. It took the windows clean out in Arabella's bedroom!'

'Strange, it was quiet my way.' Tinder said, aware that Boen was most likely lying. 'Dawn reckons Woolacombe took a right batterin', though. Must have been right on the edge of it.'

'Pa mentioned that Reighn and Dawn's place took a beating,' he replied unenthusiastically, hoping his story might have attracted more interest.

'So she said. Knocked a wall over and took their barn clean down.' White-blue smoke billowed from his nostrils and he sighed. 'Don't know what they'll do without that barn, I suppose Semilion'll have to move them somewhere more suitable. Speaking of Semilion, I think I'll go and speak to Ted about last night... he really does get too jumpy. Poor old Betty spent the night on the roof 'cause of what he thought he saw.'

Boen nodded that he'd heard about the supposed ship, though his mind was elsewhere.

They said their farewells, and after Tinder's heavy footsteps had left the bar, the front door squeaked again and thumped shut.

He sat for a while in silence, Betty's complaining the only sound breaking the peace. After a short time footfall and creaking stairs sounded from the space behind the bar. Boen thought it must be Eryn, though was disappointed when her brother, Baron, emerged. He was three years older than Boen and wore tight sleeveless tops that vainly boasted a muscular physique. He puffed himself up when he saw Boen, changing his gait to a bouncing swagger as he entered the room.

'Morning.' Boen said, hoping to keep their exchange polite for once.

'What you doing here so early?' Baron demanded, knocking his shoulder into Boen as he passed.

'Just came in for a drink, I was speaking with Tinder.'

'Tinder's not even here you lying little whelk.'

'He was here a minute ago. He just went to speak to...'

'I saw you pesterin' Eryn last night. Keep away from her, right?'

Boen said nothing and Baron looked at him derisively before leaving, muttering 'Cock' all too audibly.

He stood. There was no reason to stay if Eryn wasn't there. He'd come back later.

The sound of chairs scraping on wood sounded from another room, and as he reached the door he turned and saw Baron look up at him. They stared at each other for a brief moment, and then Boen reached for the door and departed the pub, almost knocking Eryn over on the doorstep.

'What are you doing here?' She said.

'I need to speak with you.' He said quietly, hoping Baron hadn't heard.

She looked at him vacuously. 'This better not be about what you said last night. I can't...'

'Yes it bloody well is about what I said last night! I need to speak to someone... and I'm sorry it's you but... Look, I know you don't like me much, but it's more than anyone else... Please, just listen to me, Eryn.'

Betty appeared beside them holding a grimy mop; she yawned when she saw the two and cuffed her bleary eyes.

'Well?' Eryn said, and Boen's attention snapped back to her.

'I... Nothing, I'll speak to you later. I've got to go.'

'What?' Eryn snapped, but he'd already pushed his way passed her and had rounded the corner of the building. She followed him and grasped his shoulder. 'What is it? You're trying to tell me someone murdered Kelly? Is that it?' She ordered as he turned and almost stumbled. The words seemed alien in her mouth, as though she were grasping to pronounce some unrehearsed foreign phrase.

He was anxious. He'd thought of telling Eryn for days but now his words seemed foolish and implausible. 'I don't know!' he replied, making sure there was no-one observing them. 'He was from outside, he wasn't from Mortehoe or Woolacombe. I didn't know what was going on, but I just thought it was some kind of joke and forgot about it...'

He saw the look of scepticism and irritation swirl in her face. 'You don't have to listen if you think I'm lying... But he was an outsider. He ran straight down the street to the shore like the devil were on his heels... and then the next morning Kelly was found dead.'

'He had a heart attack!' Eryn said defensively.

Boen shrugged as though he had reported all he knew. They shared fixed glances for a moment, and then he cast his eyes down and left her.

'Didn't you think it strange,' he called back to her, 'that no-one was allowed to see the body? Roger Hullenby had an open casket, didn't he... and James Sooth? He had his head broke open by that rafter that killed him, and they didn't shy away from displaying him!'

Eryn stood for a long while gazing after him. She wondered if there could be any truth in it, and reluctantly conceded that it had indeed been strange that Kelly's body had been placed in a casket and buried without anyone saying goodbye. Her father had told the community that he left behind no family and so the decision had been made to seal the coffin. It had seemed perfectly reasonable when he said it, and no-body paid it a second thought.

It was a bizarre lie for Boen to invent, and a tasteless story to save for her alone. But if it weren't an invention and he had indeed seen a stranger exit Kelly's house on the night of his death then it begged the question of how his passing had been misdiagnosed and, most pressingly, why he had been murdered.

*

Selina stood at the summit of the cliff, peering across an empty beach and out to the quiet sea. A mass of wind turbines stood desolately in the distance, grey and motionless; several leaned askew, their blades missing or jutting from the waters below.Priya stood by her, pointing out where the sun caught the uppermost wire of an impossibly high barrier that encircled the entire coastline.

'There, see?' she said, pointing out the small black dots that had once been red quarantine lights. 'And there.'

'Then there's no doubt about it...'

Priya ran her long fingers through her hair.

They had walked aimlessly across fields for the entire day, stopping for the evening in a house on the outskirts of an abandoned village. Their stomach's growled, for except the few blackberries they had found growing some miles before the village, they had eaten nothing and were deeply weary for it.

As the night drew in they comforted each other with recollections of their childhoods; Selina spoke of New Zealand and the struggle her family had endured to afford an apartment of their own, while Priya explained the complicated relationship between her parents, and how she had been deported to India, then Australia, by the Red Cross when they had been imprisoned in Bahrain during the civil war.

'When the Causeway was demolished my parents were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

'They were insurgents?' Selina asked, enthralled by the childhood that was as turbulent as any she had heard of before.

'God no... They were loud and the government made an example of them.' She pursed her lips and stared into the darkness. 'Once I was out of the country there was no hope of ever returning, what with both my parents in prison. I couldn't do anything for them.'

'You've not seen them since? How old were you?'

'About thirteen, so a good seventeen years...' the thought sobered her. 'I suppose it's too late now.' She appeared to be lost in thought for a moment, then said, 'Can I ask you something?'

'Sure,'

'I'm a refugee, and it seems like there's not a government on the planet that wants to grant me citizenship. That's why I boarded a ship of illegal immigrants and risked everything for a new life in Norway, just in the hope of finding somewhere to anchor myself. You seem like a pleasant girl who's had a hard but relatively normal life, I can't for the life of me imagine why you would risk it.'

Selina thought about it for a moment and decided there was nothing she could say to justify what she had done. It had taken her three years to afford the ticket to board the Tangaroa, and she knew there was every possibility that the ship would be destroyed by the United Nations vessels that patrolled the Southern oceans; but at the time it hadn't seemed to matter. 'There was nothing to stay for,' she said.

'You left because you were bored?'

'I don't mean that. There was no future in New Zealand. They'd squeezed every cent out of us and still they wanted more, you know what it's like, it's the same everywhere. We lived without electricity for months on end, we rarely saw oil, and still they demanded higher rents, and higher utility bills. Debt was soaring everywhere, and jobs!' She snorted in disgust, 'You were lucky if you had a job for longer than a fortnight. Dad was convicted for outstanding payments to the council... the power had been down since Easter, but come August they expected us to pay for electricity! $2,500 for unused light bulbs! It was unbelievable. Well, he was locked up in the debtor's reformatory and I knew I was going to shrivel and die if I stayed there. I had to get out.'

'Where were you going?'

'Russia. I have a cousin living there. She's close with her employers and they said they would take me on. She's been working for them for years... I couldn't expect anything like that at home.'

'Russia!' Priya frowned. 'Nasty.'

'Free of flu for fifteen years,' she said positively, before she pulled a face and looked to the ceiling, 'well, apart from what you hear about the Georgian border,' Selina shrugged, falling silent. She was overwhelmed by the thought that she would most likely never reach Russia, or her cousin. 'There's not much chance for us is there,' they looked at each other for a moment, both knowing that, if caught, they would be arrested and detained indefinitely for boarding an unregistered haul.

The conversation was sparse after that. They fell asleep on a dusty mattress as the wind outside provoked ghostly lamentations to sigh through the rafters. Selina had feared nightmares of the shipwrecked corpses and the limp bodies drawn down with the Tangaroa, but instead her sleep was long, soporific and dreamless.

In the morning Priya constructed a rudimentary plan, intending them to return the way they had come the previous day and keep to the coast.

They stayed on a road heading North and this time passed numerous signposts, shrouded by a century of growth, but printed unmistakably in English. Then, after returning to the coastline, they caught sight of the distant barrier and there was no refuting it, they were cast-away in the west of England.

Selina watched the array of decaying wind turbines, her eyes glazed with tears. Her hopes were finally dashed, the last vestige of her optimism left hanging in the wind on that distant wire.

'We'll head up there, tonight,' Priya said, hoping her voice was suitably comforting. She pointed to a ramshackle of houses on the horizon. 'With any luck we'll find a bite to eat as well. In the morning we'll try to work out which way the nearest border is and head toward it.'

'And we want to reach the border because?' Selina asked, confused.

'Look, what's the alternative? Stop here for the rest of our lives? It's been over twenty-four hours and all we've found to eat so far are a few blackberries. It's going to be nigh impossible but we're going to have to start from square one and find our way on to another ship somehow.'

Selina looked at her with a smirk until she realised Priya was being serious. 'Wait a moment, you're suggesting we can make our way across the border without being seen? Not only that, you think we can evade the authorities, and anyone who might ask us any questions... somehow strike up a relationship with someone willing to get us on a ship...' she ran her fingers through her hair in distress, 'let's not even mention the money involved!'

'What else are we going to do?'

Selina watched her sincerely. 'Have you seen a border before? I don't mean on TV or at the cine-house, I mean have you actually seen one with your own eyes? They're like mountains. They're like mountains with a thousand eyes! There was one a few miles away from our town and it was just enormous!'

'I understand that,' Priya replied tenaciously, her hands on her thighs. 'I know Australia spends more money operating their walls than they do on healthcare and education combined; and if it's anything like that here we're going to have all kinds of difficulties getting anywhere near it, but the fact still remains that we simply can't survive here!'

'Are you sure this isn't Wales?' Selina argued desperately, still grasping to the hope they had merely missed the local populace and been wandering in circles. The population of Wales was still struggling to recover, she reasoned, the same as it was the world over. It wasn't unheard of to travel days without meeting a soul. There might be a town just beyond the horizon, a refuge where they could shelter, where the residents might take pity on them. 'Perhaps we're not looking out of the wire,' she said in anguish, 'maybe we're looking in!'

She wiped her wrist across her eyes, knowing she was arguing a foolish point. Priya put her arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight. 'Come on, we'll see ourselves right. There must have been a reason for surviving the storm.'

'So we can suffer an even shittier death!' Selina replied sullenly, annoyed by Priya's misplaced confidence.

Priya smirked and ruffled Selina's hair. 'You're full of...' she began to say, before dragging her roughly to the ground. 'Be quiet,' she hissed, nodding toward a region somewhere out at sea. 'Look!'

It took a moment for Selina to focus, but after searching the horizon – expecting to see the coastguard scouring the area – she noticed a black sphere gliding a few hundred yards from the shoreline. It soared noiselessly through the sky like nothing Selina had seen before.

'What the hell is it?' she said, unable to take her eyes off its shining surface.

'They're called Dark Lens'. I've never seen one before, but I've heard about them. They're full of cameras and instrumentation that scan for mutations of the virus. You wait, it'll stop in a moment, see?' They watched wordlessly as the sphere changed course and scoured the beach below, making small zigzagging movements before hovering over a seemingly innocuous patch of sand and remaining stationary for several minutes. Now Selina could see that it wasn't a perfectly smooth globe, but instead covered in protuberances and blackened domes hiding a range of cameras, probes and apparatus. It continued to scour the beach, stopping momentarily until it disappeared beyond the cliff face.

'Jesus,' Selina exhaled, lying down in the long grass. 'I thought we weren't going to have to worry about being seen until we got near the border. I've never seen anything like that before.'

'Didn't you ever hear about iCDO employees refusing to work in the field?'

'Well yeah, but I didn't know those things were the result of it.'

'They've had thirty years to build those things...' she stopped. The sphere rose into the sky and moved eastwards, picking up speed as it skimmed the coast on its return for analysis.

Priya watched until it had evaporated in the haze of the afternoon. She stood and helped Selina to her feet, then began to walk in the direction of the dilapidated buildings further up the road.

'I wonder how often they come,' Selina said, brushing down her bare knees that were, after only a day, dark and grazed.

'Come on,' Priya said, gesturing to the houses on the rise of the cliff, 'we can find out once we're safely hidden up there.'
Chapter Four.

South-easterly wind.

Twenty knots.

Eryn reclined on the leafy cliffs overlooking Rockham Bay. The low sun shattered the sea into a shimmering copper miasma, and the cool breeze carried a bouquet of salty pollen that blew her hair across her eyes.

For the first time since her days at school she was waiting for Boen. She'd had time to think about what he'd said and finally concluded that he'd been mistaken. Maybe he wasn't lying or simply trying to gain her attention, but she couldn't accept his allegations. It wasn't that she thought the politics of their modest population were perfect - when her grandfather had overseen the safety of the community people had often lost their lives to 'safeguard the population', but that was a different era.

She couldn't ignore though, that whether it be a lie, recreation or mistake, Boen seemed nervous and had been reluctant to share his thoughts outright. This in itself was strange. He normally didn't care who heard his fictions and had, over the years, established the reputation of a fabulist wastrel. Yet he had shied away from Betty's eavesdropping the previous morning and refused to talk to her around Baron later in the evening; there was something about his demeanour that spoke of an unshakable belief in what he said.

At midday she had seen him eating on the wall of the churchyard with his father, and had pulled him across the road so they could speak alone. He still wasn't going to tell her in ear-shot of others though, and she insisted that they meet at sunset on the cliffs of Rockham Bay.

But where was he? Had it been anyone else, she could have waited in the sunshine without sparing it a thought, but Boen annoyed her with his sullen skulking and needless deceits, and she was hardly prepared to waste her evening for him. It was only her curiosity of his explanation and her feelings for Kelly that kept her waiting.

'Sorry I'm late...' Came a call from behind her. 'Pa wouldn't let me go until I'd finished taking in the...'

'Well?' She barked as he sat brusquely beside her. A dandelion burst and the seeds danced between them. She composed herself and said, more genially, 'Sorry... Well?'

'I couldn't talk earlier. Your brother was looking at me like he was deciding which side of my face to cave in first.'

'Ok, well, spit it out.' Eryn said, finding it difficult to contain her impatience.

'Right, well, on the morning Kelly died, pa and me were setting out earlier than usual. Pa had been up all night drinking with Kelly, and woke me up as soon as he got back. He was in a relatively good mood for once, until he noticed I'd forgotten one of the keys for the buoys. You know what he's like, he clouted me and sent me back to Bull Point to fetch it before we set out. It was going to take a couple of hours so he was raging. Anyway, it must have been two-thirty when I left so it couldn't have been later than half-three when I was passing Channel View. I heard a shout coming from his house and I guessed it must be Kelly, but I thought he was drunk and messing around with someone, you know how he was - he sort of said 'oh, you bastard!' in a way that made me laugh, like he'd been tricked or something. And then there was some banging around and it all went quiet.

'I suppose I should have mentioned it before, but I just didn't think. I mean, who gets murdered around here?

'Anyway, I collected the key and then made my way back home, and when I was coming back by Channel View again someone comes steaming around the corner, fast as the wind – wearing a hooded coat and galoshes. I remember that because they made an odd smacking sound as he ran.'

'Did you get a look at him?'

'That's the thing. The moon was behind him, so whoever it was, he got a bloody good look at me!'

'He saw you?'

'I was at the junction as he came round the bend and I stopped in surprise. From the moment he rounded the corner he clapped eyes on me.'

Eryn wasn't sure how much of his account was dramatized, though she resolved to give him the benefit of the doubt.

She picked at some grass and looked at him. 'You definitely think he was from outside?'

'I don't know anyone who owns a coat like that. And get this: I remember pa once said that they favour galoshes on Lundy rather than the boots we get here.'

Eryn looked across the glittering sea to the dark smudge of Lundy Island on the horizon. 'So you think they were from Lundy?'

'Could be, though I don't know why they'd want to kill him, he was a good old boy, was Kelly.'

Eryn sighed in agreement and thought about the man she had loved with so much childish passion. In her early teens she deluded herself that he was in love with her also, that's why he had remained a bachelor when he had so many admirers. As she grew older, however, she learnt of the informal nature of his relationships and decided that he was incapable of loving anyone other than himself, and certainly couldn't bear the thought of marriage.

'I don't believe anyone around here would have killed him, everyone liked Kelly.' She found herself whispering.

'Some more than others, eh?' He said.

She took it as an insult. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Come off it... It didn't take Max Carrodos to figure you were in love with him. Remember when we stole that barrel of ale? We must have been, what, thirteen?'

Eryn couldn't help but smile. 'I've never been so sick in my life...'

'You were wrecked! We all were... But I'll never forget it. You kept on saying you were drowning your sorrows like some heartbroken cowboy...' He considered that the reason was the same then as it was now and cleared his throat, 'I think you'd had another argument with your pa, you were pretty beaten about in those days. You never talked about it though, you just poured more ale and talked about Kelly. You were furious with him because he was sleeping with Lucia.' He smirked at the memory.

Eryn thought about denying it for a moment, and then turned to the sun. She continued smirking, her head tilted so the warmth was on her cheek. '...Bitch.' She said idly, and snuffed a dry laugh.

*

They returned to the Smuggler's close to nine o'clock. The bar was as busy as usual, though people were beginning to filter home early; they had spent the whole day fixing whatever the storm had thrown at their property, and had only ventured to the pub to out-awe their fellows with reports of their battered estates.

Boen and Eryn served themselves and sat alone, away from the exaggerated storytelling.

Mrs. Sayer, the 'buck-toothed widow of the Combe', as Eryn called her, looked over to the two of them. She beamed a rabbity smile at Boen, scowled at Eryn, and then turned back to her writhing children who, to the consternation of everyone, were as boisterous as rutting fox. Eryn rolled her eyes and turned to her pint.

'Why does she hate you so much?' Boen said, indicating at Mrs. Sayer.

'Oh, I said something to her a while back that she didn't agree with.'

'What?' He leaned closer.

Eryn shook her head. 'Nothing. It doesn't matter.'

He let it go. An awkward silence lingered between them; he wanted to say something though nothing in his mind seemed important enough to interest her – apart, of course, from the murderer.

'The man that ran from Kelly's? I didn't say before but he mentioned my name.' He said, staring into his pint.

'No he didn't, Boen.' She sighed, and looked around the pub as though to find somebody else to talk to.

'Ok, he didn't, but... Look, it's not as easy for me to talk to people as it is for you!'

'What do you mean by that? Why's it any easier for me?'

He leaned forward, keeping his voice to little more than a whisper. 'What I mean is... well, you're Eryn, beautiful, perfect Eryn!' He paused, and almost began to lose his nerve. He hadn't thought the words could sound so insulting, but he was far beyond the point of no return and so leaned a little closer. 'People talk to you because they're thinking of plumbing you. You just have to sit back and be talked at. You don't have to bother trying! Me, on the other hand, I'm the greasy little turdlinger everyone avoids like the pathogen...'

'That's not...' Eryn was burning with embarrassment.

'Yes it is! You don't need to lie. I have to spend an hour beforehand thinking of things to say to you, and you're never interested...'

Eryn glowed. Leaning on her elbow she tried to shield her face from the rest of the room.

'And another thing, I hate it when you ignore me when other people are about; people who you know are attracted to you. It's so... hollow. I'm sorry I'm not as captivating as George, but maybe if you could take your eyes off his arse for a minute you might find something I have to say interesting!' He slumped back in his seat, purged. He reached forward and held onto his tankard, though didn't drink from it for some time. 'Sorry...' He said quietly.

Eryn didn't look at him; she shook her head and gazed at the bubbles in the bottom of her pint. Boen stole a glance, her eyes were watering. 'Oh...' Was all he could say, feeling guilty that he had brought her to the brink of tears. A small part of him, however, was satisfied that he had liberated his opinions and, to be honest, he was even more satisfied to have said something heartfelt that had caused such emotion.

She wiped her eyes with her thumb and looked up at him. She was shocked by his frankness; it felt as though her father was talking down to her for being too merry with those he didn't approve of.

She cleared her throat. 'I'm sorry!' she said weakly, and cleared it a second time before saying in a stronger voice, 'you're right... I shouldn't ignore you when the others are about. I promise I'll include you in the things we...'

'I don't want to be included in the things you lot get up to.' He retorted.

'Well... what is it that you want?

He was quiet for a moment, Baron was moving around the room, silently collecting empty tankards. When he reached them, he flicked his chin at Eryn and frowned at Boen. 'You troubling her again?' he sneered, looming over the table. Boen said nothing.

'He's OK, Baron.' Eryn said, and placed a hand softly on her brother's arm. 'We're just talking about Kelly and Boen's pa. They were best friends.'

Baron kept his eyes on Boen, but withdrew. 'I haven't forgotten...' he said, pointing a handful of tankards at Boen before moving on.

'Forgotten what?' Eryn asked when her brother had gone.

'Nothing,' Boen replied, screwing his face.

'Come on, you owe me after calling me a cow-bag.'

'I never said...'

'You did in so many words. Now, what did you do?'

'Nothing, well, I put some laxatives in his drink a few months back.'

'You never did!'

'Ask him where he disappeared to on Mayday.'

'He said he spent the day at the cliffs.'

'That's as maybe. Did he tell you what he was unloading at the cliffs?'

Eryn smiled, and just as her lips were about to part and bare her teeth, the whole tavern seemed to simultaneously gasp. Eryn looked towards the bar: Semilion, her father, was staring at the foyer. She followed his gaze; her heart faltered and as dread overwhelmed her the smile melted away.
Chapter Five.

South-easterly wind.

Nineteen knots.

Mrs. Sayer screamed and pulled her raucous children close, shouting, 'They've come! They've come!' She disappeared with them out into the courtyard, stirring the current of anxiety in her wake.

Her exit disturbed the other patrons, and the few who weren't already standing did so, fearful she was indeed right: that they had been found unawares, that the authorities had finally discovered them whilst they enjoyed an evening in the pub, that their years of rehearsing for this moment was for nothing.

Like a crucifix-wielding priest, Semilion snatched a shotgun from behind the bar and levelled it at the two women who had appeared from the foyer. Baron retrieved an old cricket bat and prepared himself for a seemingly inevitable invasion.

Breaker, who lay between Ted's legs, growled. Selina and Priya looked disbelievingly at the agape mouths of those in the pub.

'I don't think we're much welcome here, we'd best move on...' Priya said, though Selina hardly heard the words, her gaze was on the dark mouth of the shotgun barrel directed squarely at her face. It was several metres away though would easily tear both their faces to pieces no matter which it were aimed at.

Ted Corbin remained frozen, his face joining the colour of his grey hair. Since childhood he, and everyone in the room, had been taught to fear strangers. Strangers bring death and disease, they were told. Strangers kill everyone you love.

Selina noticed he was trembling, that others were pale and trembling also. A flare of enlightenment struck her, an instinctive realisation they were suffering the initial shivers of carnivora flu. But if that was so, then why were there so many people here a century after the outbreak? And why on earth, Selina thought as her eyes fell on Breaker, were they sheltering a dog?

The sight struck her immobile. Old-fashioned newsreels flashed in her memory, dogs tearing through the city streets of all nations, their eyes streaming puss and their snarling muzzles creased with ferocity. Caged hounds in white laboratories, roaring and thrashing relentlessly. The yellow powder employed to combat them filling the thoroughfares with pallid smog, the vicious cries unyielding until their last breath.

She had never seen a dog in the flesh before, the culling of the last century meant they were only to be found in research facilities, though she had been conditioned from childhood to fear them.

She had spent the day coming to terms with the notion they were in a contaminated region. Now she battled with the concept that it couldn't be; there wouldn't be people here if it were so!There couldn't be a pub full of healthy individuals drinking and laughing, there just couldn't be, not in a county under quarantine. There must have been some mistake, she must have been right when she had considered their being in Wales, she must have been right to think they had been looking in on the quarantine wire instead of looking out; they must have simply come to a particularly rough neighbourhood, and the locals' obviously didn't take kindly to tourists. She put her hands up, slowly, and said, 'Sorry, we didn't mean to intrude, we'll keep going...'

Semilion blinked, his heart racing. 'No you don't.' He shouted. 'Don't you go anywhere!'

Jasmine Sooth had been watching them intently. She stood and pulled Benjamin's head into her waist. 'Don't talk to them like that,' she said, her voice light yet no less stern than his.

He spat, 'Shut up, Jasmine!'

'They don't know of the life here,' she continued, 'there's been a mistake.'

'I said shut up!' For a moment it looked as though the barrel of the gun would be turned on her and she sat down quietly, smoothing Benjamin's hair.

Suddenly the door burst open and young Angela Corbin pushed passed Priya and Selina. An explosion split the room as the gun fired, though Semilion wrenched the barrel away in time and rent an ugly chasm in the uppermost frame of the door without harming anyone. Selina and Priya ducked and threw curses at Semilion, who was visibly anxious, directing the remaining cartridge between both of them. He barked at them to keep quiet, and Angela, crouched on the floor with her hands over her head, peeped up and shouted over all of them.

'It's ma!' She screamed, her eyes wide with fear. 'Quick! Someone's got to help! She's in labour!'

Semilion blinked. 'Was there anyone else outside, Angela?'

'Wh.. No! There's no-one.

'You didn't see anything?'

'There's no-one! Why?' she turned and gasped when she saw Selina and Priya, and backed from them to the bar.

Confused, he bore the gun on Evelyn Rolinger and Amber Summer, who turned their faces away before he abruptly lowered the barrel. 'Go and help Dawn. Stay away from here for the rest of the night.'

They stood nervously and cautiously made to leave; as they passed the bar Semilion gave them a decanter of brandy.

Evelyn and Amber ushered Angela from the pub, everyone listened to hear whether they would be accosted by others, but nothing came.

Jasmine Sooth looked at Semilion and took Benjamin by the hand before stepping through the speechless patrons. She put her hand on Ted's shoulder and eased him aside. She smiled warmly at the strangers, and then stepped out into the street.

Silenced by shock and the presence of the smoking shotgun, all watched the women with clenched stomachs and thumping hearts. Were there more lying in wait? They had heard stories of the outside world since childhood, had been told how it was imperative that none should know of their existence, but now they were confronted with the scenario of being discovered they didn't understand what could possibly happen next. What could the outside world do to them? Re-home them? Arrest them? Now the unthinkable had happened there didn't seem to be anything that could realistically follow.

Semilion saw the nervous look in the eyes of his patrons and lay the gun slowly to the bar. He composed himself and told the two women to stand aside and then turned to the villagers before asking them to leave. They refused, demanding to know what was happening, who the women were and if there were more. Did they come with the lights the previous night? What if they brought the flu with them? When had they been discovered? None wanted to leave, and it took several attempts and a promise that a council would be held in the morning before Semilion managed to get them to leave, reminding them that they must secure their homes from a possible raid. When the last patron left, eyeing Selina suspiciously, Baron shut the front door and locked it with a heavy rod.

The sound of the deadbolt made Selina's heart plummet. Baron saw the look of dread on her face and smirked. He returned with the cricket bat and sat at the bar, watching Priya with carnivorous eyes. 'Let me take them to the cells,' he said, taking a paper cigarette and striking a match. 'We can find out who they are down there.'

Semilion raised his hand to indicate he was thinking. He closed the foyer door and looked at his guests earnestly. 'Who are you?' He said, trying to level his turbulent speech.

They answered him as though being admonished by a schoolmaster.

'Who sent you?'

'Who sent us? What are you talking about?' Selina answered, frowning at Priya.

'You're certainly not from Lundy. You're obviously from across the border. Who sent you?'

'We were on a ship that sank the night before last,' Priya answered.

Semilion looked at them both for a long time, searching their eyes for a flicker of deceit. He only saw disbelief and apprehension. His heart still pounded and he could feel sweat itching the back of his neck. He had been convinced that they were some kind of reconnaissance and his long prepared plans, the plans written down by his grandfathers, had slid through his mind like oil through an engine. But castaways? There had never been any contingency for castaways, no-one in a hundred years had considered it.

'How many? He said, fearing an influx of passengers whom would bring search parties, helicopters, rescue ships, and hundreds of prying eyes to decimate the community.

'As far as we know we're the only survivors,'

He wiped his clammy neck. 'As far as we know' wasn't as absolute as he would like.

'Did you swim here?'

'We were both unconscious, there was an explosion on board... we don't know what happened. We woke up on the beach, not far from here... maybe two miles...'

'Does anyone know you're here?'

'No-one knows,' Priya said, 'though I can't speak for the crew of the ship. They may have sent a distress call, though I doubt it, ultimately it was an immigrant haul.'

Semilion pondered this for a moment. If they had been shipwrecked in the storm, now almost two days previous, then the coastguard would have been sent to find the ship by now, yet nothing had been reported. 'Have you got radios? Did you speak to anyone of where you are?'

'No,' Priya said, Selina shook her head.

Baron took a long drag on his cigarette and pointed at Priya. 'Where've you been since yesterday morning?' Semilion looked at him and Baron shrugged, 'If they woke up two miles away where've they been all this time?'

Semilion turned back to them with a raised brow. 'It's a fair question.'

Priya stepped away and took a seat. 'We didn't know where the hell we were. If we'd have known this place was here we might have avoided it altogether!'

'We walked South all yesterday,' Selina added, trying to avoid confrontation.

'Then just happened to turn back and come straight here?'

'That's enough, Baron.' Semilion said, pointing at his son. 'I don't want to hear any more from you.'

'This is bullshit,' Baron sneered, pointing the cricket bat in their direction. 'They should be in the cells. What if something happens now and we don't have them locked up?'

'What's he talking about?' Priya said, turning to Semilion.

'Baron, get out!' Semilion opened the door and glowered at him.

Baron sat scowling at Priya for a few moments before spitting on the floor in her direction and skulking from the room.

'Wait outside!' Semilion ordered, cuffing his son about the head before locking the door and taking a seat. 'As much as I don't agree with his relish in saying it, we do have procedures for times like this...' he fell into silence again, looking at them both as though he had crested a summit of bewilderment. 'I don't know what your intentions are, or whether you even have any... you might be telling the truth but I'm not in a position to simply let you leave here...'

'You're not in a position to stop us!' Priya began, but a severe look overshadowed his guise of concern and she hesitated.

'You've been here all this time and no-one's found you?' Selina said, realisation catching up with her. She turned to Priya, who shrugged as though she had understood the moment they walked into the barrel of the shotgun. 'But it's on the news all the time, miles of countryside gets taken back every year the world over... how do you escape them? We saw one of those spheres earlier, how do you avoid them?'

'Procedure and policy.' He said, as though it explained it all.

There was a library filled with strategy composed in the beginning by the community's great-grandfather's generation. They compiled practices to keep the community secluded and out of harm's way, and offered material that would secure the survival of countless generations.

'Practices to keep us alive, to farm out of the observation of satellites, to keep us hidden and to give us the advantage should all these things fail; and it's keeping the advantage that my son was alluding to. We have a solid policy of detaining anyone who comes here and to use them as leverage should the worst case scenario present itself.'

'The worst case scenario being?' Priya asked.

'The authorities following in your footsteps, of course.'

'And by 'the authorities' I suppose you mean the British military?

'Or constabulary.'

'Why would they come after us? I'm from Australia, Selina's a citizen of New Zealand. We were travelling illegally on an unauthorized vessel. If we'd been detected the military would have sunk us without a second thought! What on earth makes you think they would be interested in us now?'

Semilion took an old tin from his pocket and began rolling a cigarette. 'The people in this community have survived unnoticed for three generations because they've followed our procedures. They've had it taught to them since childhood; I'm not going to break away from it just because it doesn't suit you. I've got the bigger picture to think about. I can't have the community thinking it's acceptable to simply pick and choose which policies to adhere to, we'd be uncovered in no time.' He watched them both for a short while through the haze of smoke. They understood that he was deliberating the severity of what was to follow.

He dropped the cigarette on the floorboards and crushed it under the heel of his boot. 'There's nothing else to say. I have to put you in the cells. Overnight, at least.'

'I don't think so!' Priya barked. She thrust him a rigid finger. 'If you come anywhere near me I'm going to break your teeth.'

Selina sat on the corner of a table, hoping she might be forgotten if she refrained from the altercation.

'It won't be for long,' Semilion hissed, not wishing the entire village to hear. 'Just for the night, so people can see I've not strayed from policy.'

'What kind of policy is it to shut us in a cell?'

Selina answered, 'He already said. As leverage.'

Priya thought about it for a moment, and then laughed. 'Are you serious? God! Do you know how much the world has changed in the last decades? Have you seen them fight to try and piece back a semblance of normality?'

'Of course, we know what's happening out...'

'I don't think you do, not if you think holding two criminals' hostage would give you any kind of control. They wouldn't think twice about killing every last person here, including us, if they thought you had something they wanted, which, if you're even living here, they obviously do. They don't negotiate. They don't waste time weighing up pros and cons, they simply take the shortest road to getting what they want!'

Semilion had coloured, though with embarrassment or consternation it wasn't entirely clear. He liked to think he was educated in the current affairs of the outside world, had thought John Camberwell's monthly shipping report afforded him sufficient knowledge. When John and his wife returned every six months they supplied him with detailed commentaries, newspapers, magazines and audio files of worldwide events, and yet he now felt he knew nothing.

His grandfather had made him listen to the reports regarding the outbreak of carnivora flu, and had taught him the importance of understanding the past when preparing for the future. He had watched the initial footage of Libyan hospitals strewn with the sick, the violent riots of Algeria, Chad and Egypt as the virus spilled across the compass, and the resulting bone-fields the world over. He had grown accustomed to the images of bloated pustules and buboes from an early age, and had thought the world outside his own community was a decaying wasteland of hollow sockets and grinning skulls. It wasn't until his grandfather died that he learnt that the world had continued beyond the Great Pathogen; formally he had assumed that Mortehoe and Woolacombe were the last habitable places on earth, but his father had shown him the world as it was, the unrest that had gripped humanity in an attempt to seek answers and mete retribution on an unaccountable, non-existent enemy.

He opened the door and said a few words to Baron, then waited in the doorway until his return.

'What's the rope for, then?' Priya asked, folding her arms.

'I know it seems drastic, but for all I know you haven't told a single truth. We'll decide in the morning whether you're simply castaways or something else.'

Priya was about to step forward; Selina could hear her breath hard close to her. She began to say, 'No, wait just a...'

Selina reached out and touched her back. 'Priya, don't make it worse. We should do what he says and get through this as quickly as possible. Like he says, in the morning he'll find out what we're saying is true and he'll let us go,' she turned to Semilion. 'Right?'

He nodded, and looked expectantly at Selina, as though she might hold her hands out to be tied by way of example. Her heart sank, but she stepped forward as Priya stared at her incredulously. 'I thought we were trying to avoid being thrown in jail,' she sighed, offering her wrists also.

Chapter Six.

South-easterly wind.

Eighteen knots.

Eryn called on Boen early in the morning. Her mother had sent her across the village to fetch empty bottles, and on the way she called in on the Waeshenbach household. The house was close to the shore as the family was one of two responsible for catching seafood for the community. She stepped through a decaying gate and passed two small boats stored beneath a camouflaged shelter, over which grew vines and trailing moss. The boats bobbed quietly, touching one another with a rhythmic grind as the tide lapped at them placidly.

Boen's mother answered the door and smiled anxiously at Eryn. She welcomed her in, eager for news. Though their families had their differences, Eryn had always secretly admired Samantha, who, for a woman who primarily spent her day to her elbows gutting fish, always smelt of fresh lavender.

'So who are those women?' Samantha said, dragging Eryn into the kitchen and thrusting her into a seat. 'Have you spoken to them?'

'No, I... Pa wouldn't talk about them when they returned from the cells, and this morning he and Baron went back at first light to question them. Ma and me have been sent around the village to tell everyone not to worry though, and that we should get on with things as normal. There's a council at midday. I think everyone's going to that.'

Samantha stared into the middle-distance for a moment, as though she were actively pushing back the fears that had kept her awake all night. 'That's something, at least.' She said, distantly, before brightening.

Did you hear Dawn gave birth to a boy?'

'Yes, that was the other thing. I've been sent to pass the news around the village, but it seems everybody knows already.'

'Oh! It's such good news! Especially after what she's been through. She deserves a little boy.'

'They've named him William.'

'After Reighn's grandfather? How sweet!' She poured a tankard of water and leant forward surreptitiously. 'Who'd you think they are then, these women?'

'I don't know...' Eryn said slowly, and it was true, though she couldn't help but think that with Kelly being killed by an outsider, the women's appearance couldn't be a good omen.

Samantha heard the uncertainty in her tone. 'Do you fancy a tea, love? It's not very warm, mind.'

'Thank you, but no, I really came to see...'

'You will, won't you? I boiled some water before dawn. I couldn't sleep, what with...' She stood and fetched a thermos. 'Doesn't hold the heat like it used to,' she explained, 'Kelly was supposed to bring a new one back from Ireland before he... well...' Eryn followed and looked up the staircase in the hope of seeing Boen. She didn't, and turned back to Samantha, tilting her head with a façade of sympathy. Only a week had passed and the community were mourning the loss of promised goods more than Kelly.

'I was speaking to Guliven last night.' Samantha continued, 'We supposed they might be travellers who've gotten lost. What do you think?'

Eryn shrugged. 'I don't know... I wouldn't have thought so. They'd never have got passed the border.'

Samantha sighed, but nodded as she unscrewed the silver cap. 'Guliven said he'd fetch me some sugar when he goes to Ballycotton.' she said, as though sharing a confidence.

Eryn looked up, impressed. They hadn't seen sugar for some months. She supposed the Waeshenbach household would soon become a storehouse of luxury now her husband had been assigned the post of runner.

'So, your pa didn't say anything about them?' Samantha probed.

'Sorry.'

'You know, it's got everyone unnatural worried. Ted asked Guliven if he could bring a rifle back with him.'

'You know what I think is sad?' Eryn said as she watched tea being poured into her squat mug. 'How suddenly Kelly's death doesn't matter anymore. He was alive a week ago, being pestered by everyone to bring particulars back for them, and now people have moved on to Guliven without a second thought.

Samantha was a little affronted by the mildly veiled insinuation, but shook her head and placed the thermos between them. 'People haven't forgotten about Kelly, darling... it's just... Last week we hadn't been discovered. I'm not surprised that everyone's more concerned about these women than they are about a corpse.' She hesitated, knowing before the words had left her mouth that she had chosen them poorly.

'He's not a corpse!' Eryn said hotly. 'He's Richard Kelly, and no matter how long he's dead he'll always be Richard Kelly to me. Corpse, indeed!'

The two of them were silent for a moment, and then Samantha sipped her tea and spoke. 'I know, I didn't mean...'

Eryn snorted and turned to the window, her eyes glazed. She breathed deeply and lay her hand on Samantha's wrist. 'I'm sorry... I just miss him. Every time the door squeaks in the pub I think it's him. I don't think my brain realises he's gone for good.'

The floorboards above creaked, drawing Eryn from her thoughts. She said, 'Is that Boen?'

'Most likely, I think Arabella's already out.'

'Do you mind if I go and see him?'

Samantha looked a little confused. 'You want to see Boen? What are you two up to?'

Defensively, Eryn frowned. 'Nothing, we...' the words remained as though they were the best explanation on offer. She coloured slightly and, raising her brow, Samantha shrugged and said, 'It's fine with me.'

'Thanks,' Eryn replied, and took her mug with her.

She lifted her skirts whilst climbing the steep staircase and knocked three times before waiting for a reply.

'Yeah?'

'It's me.'

'Wha... Oh! What are you doing here? What do you wa...'

Before he could finish his sentence, she was in the room. An intake of breath followed, and she turned sharply, covering her eyes. 'Put some clothes on, will you?'

He was way ahead of her, fumbling around with a pair of corduroy trousers and scrabbling with the string at his waist. 'Well what d'you bleedin' expect – bursting into peoples bedrooms like that, you rotten pervert!'

'I didn't know you were in the nip!' She snapped, her fingers still pressing against her eyes. 'Is it safe yet?'

'Yeah...'

Eryn turned and saw that he was straightening his jumper, his face flushed with embarrassment. She caught sight of several scars on his back, and a long bruise across his hip. She'd received a similar bruise from her father some years previously, but never had he left her body scarred.

'Well what do you want?' He said moodily. 'Do you know who those women are?'

She was distracted by the sight of his wounds. For the first time she considered Boen was the way he was as a result of them.

'Well?'

'No... No I don't, I wish people would stop asking me. I did try, but pa shouted at me to get to bed.'

'Well why are you here?'

'I just wondered what you thought about it... I mean, it's a bit of a coincidence, isn't it? Three strangers coming to the village in the space of a week? I've hardly had a wink of sleep all night.'

'You think it's connected?'

'I don't know,'

'Well...' He sat on his bed and gathered some dirty socks from the floor. 'Why would one stranger murder and run away, and the other two come directly to the Smuggler's?'

'I think we should go to Lundy.' She said directly.

'How would we do that?'

Eryn picked at the grain of the doorframe innocently, 'One of your pa's boats?'

Boen left one sock dangling from his foot and stared up at her. 'You've got to be joking! If pa caught me stealing one of his boats he'd gut me!'

'Yeah? What d'you think my pa would do? Congratulate me? We've got to go; you said yourself that they wear galoshes on Lundy. If what you've told me so far is true then someone on that Island had a reason to murder Kelly and I want to know what that reason was.'

He stared at her for a moment, and noticed her grey eyes catching the light. They sparkled like the morning surf and he supposed she was making them do it on purpose to dazzle him. How was it possible for grey eyes to sparkle with flecks of yellow and pink?

He looked away darkly, and let out a deep sigh.

'Is that a 'yes'?' She said apprehensively.

'Not yet it isn't.'

'Oh come on, Boen... You want to get to the bottom of this don't you? Just think of the esteem you'll be held in.'

'I don't know that I care as much about esteem as I do about not being gutted!'

'If the murderer knows what you look like...'

'That's the main reason I don't want to go. If I take the boat I'll run the risk of being murdered there and here!'

She rolled her eyes and waited in silence for a while before tilting her head seductively. 'So what do you say?'

'Can you just go away... Please?'

She felt his earnestness, and wasn't quite certain how to react. She knew Guliven wouldn't literally gut him, of course he wouldn't, but the thought of his wounded back made her realise she shouldn't pursue the matter any further. She nodded without saying a word, and turned to go.

'You working tonight?' He said, his back hunched as he looked at the floor between his legs.

'I don't know, what with these women... If the pubs open then yeah.'

'Then if the pubs open tonight I'll come and give you my answer.'

She turned to leave again.

'Eryn?'

'Hmm?'

'Why are you even asking me?'

She didn't say anything.

'I mean I've never seen you back away from doing something just because someone said 'no' to you. If you wanted one of the boats you'd get George to steal one and go with you.'

Eryn was taken aback by the question. She hadn't realised that her persuading others to do her bidding was so blatant. She'd always considered herself to be rather subtle. She ran her fingers through her hair and twisted her mouth. 'I just thought we could do this... you know, together.'

He didn't say anything to this, and after a few seconds of silence, she turned and made her way from the house.

*

Selina woke slowly, the darkness in her dreamless mind matching that of the quiet black room. It was the monotonous sound of the ticking clock that began to draw her to consciousness.

She groaned inwardly.

Opening her eyes she looked about in the darkness. She couldn't find the clock but could see through the thick black curtains that a deep red dawn had broken.

The binds about her arms and the additional ties around her ankles were hurting now, it felt as though they were bleeding - but when she looked down she could make out nothing but pale flesh.

Again she scoured the room for the clock. The metronomic ticking seemed to protract the silence. She craned her neck and saw its bottom-most rim, and could make out the time as being a quarter to six.

What seemed like an age passed in stillness. She listened to Priya's prolonged breath and watched her dreaming eyelid's twitch.

The light from outside grew stronger and lit the bars of the cell like electric filaments.

Selina could now clearly see Priya's face, and she spent a long while looking at it. She was beautiful; not in a glamorous way: her lips were thin and her eyebrows sharp, but her face was soft and symmetrical. Her most enchanting quality was her naturally coiled hair that had remained vibrant and shimmering even after a shipwreck and two days of hiking. Even in the gloom it shone like a thousand golden halos.

Again Selina craned her neck, though this time to see her companion's arms and hands in the cell of the opposite wall. She wondered why Priya didn't wear a single piece of jewellery, not even a watch. She tried to recall seeing her on board the Tangaroa, had she seen her wearing anything then? She didn't think so, but couldn't be certain. She had only seen her a few times, and had usually been pre-occupied with gazing at her hair, or wondering why she was always alone.

Priya's nose twitched and Selina became aware she had been staring for quite some time. She turned her head to the silhouettes of leaves trembling behind the curtains. She sighed a yawning moan, wondering what time Semilion would return and untie their binds.

Grinding her teeth she turned back and jumped. Priya's eyes were wide open and staring at her. Selina laughed uncertainly. 'Oh, I thought you were sleeping,' she said, hoping she hadn't been caught staring.

'Is that why you were watching me?'

Selina blushed, and thanked the gloom for hiding her colour.

Priya smiled and looked around the room, 'What time do you think it is?'

'Ten to seven,' she said, straining her neck. 'When do you think he'll come back?'

'I don't know. He either wants us to sweat it out or he's been up all night discussing what to do with us.'

Both their ears pricked at the sound of footfall on the road outside. They looked at one another hesitantly, though the sound came and went without consequence. They lay back on their uncomfortable pallets, wincing for their chaffed wrists.

Priya noticed Selina's unease, and reassured her that everything would be fine. 'If he was going to do anything to us he'd have probably done it on the spur of the moment last night. He's had time to think about it now.'

'What if they're having their council?' Selina replied, imagining a host of angry villagers baying for their death. 'What if they decide by popular opinion to execute us?'

Swishing grass sounded, then footfall on the stairs outside; they trudged loudly until stopping at the door, as though expressly to inform of their approach. There was a jangle of keys, and the door eased open. Silhouetted in the slither of pastel light that crept through the doorway was a short dumpy woman.

Selina couldn't see as her back was to her, but Priya recognized her - she wasn't aware of her name, but she had seen her lurking in the pub the night before.

'It's all right, we won't hurt you,' Priya said, and Selina looked at her with wide eye's that said, Well? Who is it?

'Don't you give me none of that cheek, girl, or I'll box your ears into next week!' Betty said, pushing the door open cautiously. 'I ain't meant to be talking to yer, so don't go compellin' me to do so,'

Priya smiled at that. She looked slyly at Selina and winked before turning back to Betty. 'What's you're name, love?'

'Mind yer own!'

'Is the gentleman we spoke to last night, Mr. Semilion... is he your boyfriend... Your lover?'

Betty rounded on Priya, her brow darkened. She pointed a stubby finger at her, saying, 'Mr. Tupper is my employer! Lover, indeed, I've never heard the like. How dare you come here and make such claims! Oh, the shame of yer words, they make me quite ill!'

She turned and walked to the far end of the corridor between the cells, opening a gate that lead to a third cell and tugging on the curtain within. The gloom lifted a little more and turned the grey stone the colour of ivory. She told them to keep still before unlocking Priya's cell, making her way cautiously behind her and opening another set of curtains. A plume of radiant light set Priya's hair ablaze, and even Betty couldn't help but admire the shimmering ringlets in a flicker of jealousy before the familiar rubbery scowl returned. She locked the door behind her and entered Selina's cell, pulled away the third and final curtain, which brightened the cell-block to an almost dazzling white.

'This is an old public toilet,' Priya said, rolling over and looking behind her. 'Look, you can see where the u-bend's used to connect to the tiles.'

Selina turned to inspect the floor, noticing similar holes in her cell. 'This is a toilet?' she said to Betty.

'Used to be that it did. Long time ago now...' she looked around as though finding her bearings. She pointed at Selina. 'That were the ladies,' she turned to Priya and shrugged. 'Looks like you drew the short straw.'

Selina laughed at Betty's evident glee, baring her teeth. Priya watched the dimples on Selina's cheeks with a nonchalant joy; it was refreshing to see her smile so brightly after all the angst and worry. She looked beyond Selina's shoulder towards the barred window and waited until Betty had stepped outside before whispering, 'Do you think if we got out of these ropes then we could make a run for it?'

Selina shook her head, 'No, she's locked the doors. Besides, you tried last night and...'

Priya slipped her hands from her binds, flexing her fingers dramatically and grinning. Selina watched, startled, as Priya rose from the crate and pulled herself up to the window. She released two brass fastenings and heaved it open a few centimetres, though the heavy bars on the exterior prevented its opening any further. A draught ruffled her hair and blew sparkling motes of dust into a frenzy.

'Priya!' Selina whispered sharply. 'Priya, close it and sit down!'

Priya remained at the window, her eyes closed and her lips curled into a smile as she felt the warm sun on her luminous face.

Selina pleaded again, 'Even if we got out they'd hunt us down,' there was a moments silence. 'You go, Priya, I'm staying here. I just want them to believe we mean them no harm and that we're no threat. That Semilion guy seemed fine once he got that gun out of our faces. He seemed quite reasonable. He'll understand, and he'll let us go.'

'You hope... What if this council of his doesn't agree? What if they tell him we're too much of a threat to their cosy little community? What if they say we have to be done away with?'

Selina blinked, uncomfortable that Priya had voiced her own fears.

Priya looked disappointed, and was about to say something as footsteps, with a brisker pace than that of Betty's sounded on the steps outside. Selina panicked, and silently implored Priya to sit back down. The footsteps stopped and muffled conversation could be heard. The person outside was retreating and having a conversation with Betty.

'Please, Priya,' she whispered as the scuffing footfall advanced again and started up the steps.

Priya quickly moved back to her crate, and pulled the binds around her wrists. She tugged at them with her teeth, though they didn't look as taut as they had done the night before.

Keys sounded in the lock once more and Semilion entered the corridor of the cell-block.

'Morning, Mr. Tupper.' Priya said. 'We haven't tried to escape, as you can see. We've kept our end of the bargain. Can you untie us now and we'll talk like modern humans?'

Semilion looked troubled, his bald head was fraught with lines and he looked as though he hadn't slept all night. He stood by the door, looking between them as he addressed them.

'I'm not going to release you,' he said. Before Priya had a chance to flare into response, he pressed his palms towards her, saying, 'until... until I'm satisfied with whom you are. To do this I'm going to have to separate you.'

He then turned to the door, shouting, 'Baron?'

Baron came to the doorway. He wore a grey vest and some dirty looking, baggy green trousers.

'Baron, could you give me a hand taking Miss...?'

'Ravens.' Selina said.

'Would you mind taking Miss. Raven's outside? Just to the bench.'

Baron nodded and unlocked Selina's cell; his eyes were on her as he rattled the key in the lock, as though he wasn't ashamed of showing her his blatantly obscene ambitions. His unashamed desire and air of condescension made her feel uneasy; knowing that he was judging the quality of her flesh as he took her by the elbow and pulled her to her feet. He grasped her tightly, his thumb smoothing her skin as though the situation were an intimate one. As they stepped from the cell she could feel him behind her, the heat of his breath on her neck, and his heavy grip on her shoulder.

She shielded her face from the bright light as they stepped into the sun, and Baron roughly thrust her in the direction of a wrought-iron bench in the shade of a bulbous sycamore tree.

She sat, scowling at him while he prowled to and fro, kicking up dust with his dirty boots. Before them was a road – almost consumed by grass and a century of creeping foliage; it wound beside the steep cliff and disappeared beyond the summit. They had walked it the previous day, and hadn't suspected that the little square building swathed in ivy could possibly be a prison cell. It seemed hollow and untouched for generations, as did everything.

Ahead of them were the rooftops of an empty hotel complex they had searched the previous day, and then an expanse of sea cluttered with toppled wind turbines and the remnants of an old oil rig collapsed in the shallow waters like a foundered steamer.

Baron saw her gazing at the wreckage and offered her a cigarette. She declined and he lit a match and drew heavily whilst pointing to the oil platform. 'Only happened a few years back,' he said, 'we'd been out to it for ages to take bits we needed, but pa said it were getting unsafe... he were right too cause there were a storm that sent it over. You should have heard the noise it made when it fell in on itself. Brought a few of the blackeye's sniffin' around when it went, I can tell you.'

Selina said nothing, though thought of the black sphere they had seen scouring the beach the previous day. She made a mental note of the word blackeye, mildly amused by the simplicity of it.

Betty milled around the cell-block, seemingly employed to keep an eye on Selina and to be at Semilion's summons should he need her. She picked at leaves and sat on the steps, looking over to Selina every once in a while in cautious scrutiny. After long minutes there came a muted call from within the cell-block and Betty disappeared for a moment, before taking her leave and trudging lethargically up the road toward Mortehoe.

'What's it like, outside?' Baron said after a long silence between them.

Selina looked at him resentfully. He was only a few years younger than her though he carried himself like an ill-tempered prince. 'Difficult.' She said, and continued watching the cluttered sea-scape. He lit another cigarette and ignored her until his father came out of the cell-block, holding his hand about his face in the bright light.

'Baron,' he called, 'Come and sit with Miss. Cray, will you?' he stepped down on to the grass as Baron jumped to his feet, jogging the short distance.

And so it began; questions about her age, her marital status, her family, her job, her home, and her childhood. She frowned when he asked this. Why did he want to know?

'I want to know everything about you. Where did you grow up?'

She answered with a short history of a life in Invercargill, some recollections of school and past relationships, her families struggle with the council and her departure from New Zealand,

'That sums up your whole life?' Semilion asked, sitting back on the bench.

'Well, pretty much,' she said, hoping she wasn't going to have to fall into a detailed monologue of her life to date; for she was as complex as any person, yet could be,exasperatingly, reduced to nothing more than four zero's on a bank statement.

Semilion looked at her for a long time. On retiring to bed he'd considered making them tell him every single detail about themselves with techniques he'd only read about in old espionage novels: bright lights, rubber hoses, deprivation of food and long periods of isolation.

Come three o'clock, however, when sleep had seemed a luxury in which only others could indulge, he pictured fancies of water-boarding, stress positions, and a retaliation of the sleep deprivation they had inflicted upon him. He felt bile rise inside him at the thought of it. They were his grandfather's thoughts, not his own.

On his return to the cells he received word of the bodies in several bays along the coast.

He investigated the sight himself; and was lead to four brutalised corpses breaking on the rocks. The intensity of the sight, and the reports of other bodies along the coast, convinced him at once that the women had been telling the truth.

He gathered together those with him and told them to collect any who wanted to voice their opinions in a council. He made it clear to them his knowledge and his opinions, then ushered them on before making his way to the cells.

'There's not been anyone from the outside here in a long time,' he said to Selina, an air of gravitas about him, as though he were showing her the weight of responsibility on his shoulders. 'I just want to be certain that I'm not releasing someone into our community who'll be the end of it.'

'We're just...' Selina began, not sure how many times she could repeat the fact that they were merely castaways. 'I wish we'd just kept walking,' she sighed, looking back out to sea.

Semilion was quiet for a little while, watching her body language and her expressions. She seemed upset and bewildered, uncertain as to where she was and why she was there. He had found Priya much the same, though her strength of spirit was much stronger, and she appeared to be unwilling to admit that she was uncertain of anything.

'Where were you heading for?'

'My cousin lives in Russia. I was going to work there.'

There was another long silence, then he said, 'So you boarded the ship, the... what was it called?'

'The Tangaroa,'

'Right, you boarded the Tangaroa when?'

'On the second of April. Seven weeks ago,'

Semilion frowned, 'Seven weeks? It doesn't take seven weeks to sail to Russia. Was it a row-boat?'

'It was a vagrant ship, what they call an immigrant haul. I couldn't afford travel by the accepted means; fees for immunisations, antitoxins and quarantine lodging are astronomical. I'd been made redundant more times than I can remember so I emptied my life savings, a measly $430. No passport. No questions, just a one way ticket to the South of France, Ireland, Norway or Germany.'

The severity had escaped Semilion's tone, and she felt as though she were simply engaged in conversation with a stranger.

'Miss. Cray explained to me the risk of being discovered by the U.N. You were willing to risk being destroyed to get to Russia? Was New Zealand really so bad?'

'Your peaceful little community doesn't reflect the outside world, Mr. Tupper. You're not at the mercy of giant corporations and the grasp of bureaucracy. I was at the end of my tether. The only prospect at home was to wind up in the debtors reformatory alongside my father. It was a desperate risk but the only option for me was to try and build a new life somewhere else.'

Semilion leaned forward, and spoke quietly to her. 'Your friend... Miss. Cray. How did you come to meet her?'

Selina explained what had happened the morning after the shipwreck. Semilion looked at the floor as she explained how the long beach had been littered with bodies and debris, how she had roused Priya and spent hours searching for survivors.

'Some washed up here this morning,' he said solemnly.

Selina said nothing for a time, it seemed as though his questioning had come to an end. 'What will happen to us?' She asked, turning to him pensively.

'We'll have to keep you close,' he said, standing. He offered his hand and she took it cautiously. 'Welcome to Mortehoe.'

*

On her way back up the steep road to the village, a bag of bottles slung over her shoulder, Eryn came to a stop beside a stone wall hidden by a dead thorn-bush. Jasmine Sooth was sitting on the curb, picking burrs from her stockings, and Eryn slid her sack from her shoulder with a groan.

'Morning, Jasmine.' She said, catching her breath. 'Blow me! It's hot already.'

Jasmine tilted her head and peered up at Eryn, squinting in the morning light. 'It certainly is...' she said in her lyrically detached manner.

'How's Benjamin?' Eryn asked, a little surprised that she hadn't been asked about the strangers. Then again, she considered, Jasmine was supposed to be clairvoyant.

'He's fine... he was a little frightened by all the commotion last night, but I told him there was nothing to fear. He's sound now.'

'It's got everybody a bit worked up,'

'People around here get very frightened by change... They don't much like it. Your grandfather was testament to that.'

She made a vague noise of agreement. Eryn knew loosely what had happened during her grandfather's generation, something to do with one of the Bordley's, a son who'd been ill in the head. The children all told stories that he'd been locked up in a cellar. Sometimes it changed to him being bricked into a wall, or crushed in the mill to make bread, but the foundations of their stories were true. Something had happened to the Bordley's boy, and it had cost Eryn's grandfather dearly.

'I don't suppose you want reminding of things like that?' Jasmine said, patting the curb beside her. Eryn accepted the invitation.

'You remember when you and the girls would visit me before James died?'

Eryn did, she used to enjoy visiting the Sooths', but it seemed a long time ago, before Benjamin was born, and before Jasmine's husband had been killed in an accident. She would read the children's fortune in tea-leaves and tell of what she saw in their palms. It was entertaining, that's what Eryn remembered. There was nothing sinister or immoral about it, even if their parents didn't like them going there. It was just a bit of fun with an eccentric and lonely woman.

Always, when she left the Sooth household, Jasmine would give a small bunch of tiny flowers, tied together with ribbon. Eryn had kept them all on a drawer until her father found and burnt them in a rage. The visits, even the surreptitious ones, came to an end after that.

'I remember it was a really nice time, to have someone to talk to who wasn't going to judge me.'

'We could start again, if you liked? You're pa can't stop you now.'

Eryn looked up at Jasmine and smiled. 'Yeah, I'd like that. You know, the only reason we stopped...'

'...was because of James's death, and your parents' disapproval. I know, and I understand.'

'You weren't angry that we abandoned you, because that's what it felt like.'

'At first I was hurt... but I soon came to understand that you were just giving me space to grieve... you know, it's a funny thing, grief, when you believe in what I do.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, I know there's a life other than this one... and that it's a finer place than we can ever hope to experience in this world. When James died I should have been happy that he'd gone there. I felt so selfish for missing him, I wanted him to leave that breath-taking world and comfort me. How self-centred is that?'

'It's understandable though.'

'You want to go somewhere don't you!' Jasmine said disconcertedly, a frown creeping over her. She looked ahead and tilted slightly as though searching the horizon. 'You're thinking of going somewhere!' She turned on Eryn, who was looking shocked, though thought she'd changed her expression to one of confusion just in time.

'What?' Eryn tried to sound as mystified as possible. 'Go where? Where's there to go?'

Jasmine watched her thoughtfully, not sure if Eryn was telling the truth. 'I just had an impression you were planning something...' Her voice drifted off as though she had been distracted mid-sentence. She then looked directly at Eryn and all her concentration was with her. 'You're doing the right thing, Eryn. Whatever it is, you're doing the right thing.'

'Do you know anything about it?'

Jasmine smiled and cupped Eryn's cheek. 'Know? I know how to sew and grow herbs, dear. It's not about knowing, it's about feeling.'

'Well, I can't tell you what I'm doing, but it's for Kelly.'

Jasmine smiled.

'I better start heading back. I've been gone quite a while.'

'Ok. You'll drop into see us sometime, won't you?'

'Of course. See you.' Eryn stood and picked up the sack of bottles before trudging up the steep hill. She couldn't get Jasmine's words out of her mind; they sent a shiver up her spine. Was she really aware that Eryn was planning on going somewhere? Or was she simply voicing every young woman's desire for metamorphosis? She couldn't quite tell. Though of a sudden she found herself doubting her actions; maybe it was foolish to go to Lundy, there were so many things that could go wrong. They could increase the already hostile tension between the Mortehoe community and the Lundians', they could attract the attention of the Blackeye's, and they could arouse the awareness of Kelly's murderer. Her heart sank a little further with each example, and yet, as she passed the stone wall of the churchyard she thought of Kelly laying there in the dark soil, grey and empty. She knew she must risk it all for him.
Chapter Seven

South-easterly wind.

Seventeen knots.

It was the busiest Eryn could remember the pub being for a long while. Everybody was present - even the Harvey's, who were estranged from the village, so far away was their mine on the outskirts of Ilfracombe.

She could hear her father pacing about upstairs. Everyone was speculating when he and the women would make their appearance.

She'd learned a little from her mother over the course of the day whilst washing her collected bottles. Apparently the women came from a ship that had been destroyed in the storm the night before last. They'd been washed ashore and were the only survivors.

Eryn had swallowed and asked her mother, 'Do you think they've got anything to do with Kelly?'

'What's that, dear?'

She had kept the possibility of Kelly's murder a secret because she knew how ridiculous it sounded; like the prose of the worn mystery books she had read as a child.

She let it rest.

Morgan and Jack Little, the village cobblers, were taken aback momentarily by the crowd as they entered the pub. 'Bleedin' hell,' Morgan said once he'd pushed his way to the bar – we could hear this lot right down the street.'

'Probably hear it across the Severn too, we'll be found out after tonight I reckon!' Jack smirked gesturing for Eryn's attention.

'Friends?' He leaned a little closer to Eryn, 'Or foes?' He was the fifth person to have asked her this.

'I don't think pa would be introducing them to us if they were wronguns.' She replied before being snatched away by another request for drink.

Jack turned to Morgan. 'She don't know either.'

'I got ears, ain't I?' Morgan shook his head and they peered over the crowd to Fay and Rose Schmichen.

'Fancy a try with them?'

Jack shrugged and pulled a face, and then they both squeezed through the throng of excitable chatter to sit with the young women.

Breaker squirmed between legs, licking hands and enjoying the tickling fingers that scratched his ears and rubbed his mane. He heard Ted's succinct whistle and wound his way to his master's feet, sitting proudly on his boot - his tongue lolling - while Ted held on to him protectively.

Semilion appeared from the shadows of the foyer like the compare of a Victorian Cirque de Macabre, and everyone fell to whispers. He stood before his patrons and in the shadows of the foyer, everyone was certain, lingered the two women.

'I know you've spent the day fretting, and I'm sorry for it. Needless to say there's been a lot to talk since last night, and I thank everyone who voiced their opinions at the council this afternoon. We were unanimous in our decisions come the end of it, and hope there won't be too much argument from those who couldn't attend. Well, I won't keep you in suspense...' He stepped aside, and from the shadows came the woman with curling golden hair, straight posture and an elegant stride that didn't fit with archaic surroundings.

Eryn had seen them both the night before but had been blinded by confusion and fear; she looked at Priya afresh, she appeared wholly exotic! Her skin was so smooth, unlike the women of the village whose palms were cracked after a life of toil; her hair hadn't been turned drab by dust or flour, her arms weren't scratched by thorns, and her nails weren't broken.

She was beautiful.

'...Unfortunately, killed by the storm... They are the only survivors...' Semilion was saying, as though presenting them as slaves at some ancient auction.

Next came Selina, less elegant, though no less beautiful in her plainness. Her lightly freckled nose and pale cheeks gave her features a youth that made the women envious, and her hair was so thick and black that it seemed unreal. She was thin, with less a womanly figure than Priya, her hands fidgeted, and she stood slightly pigeon-toed.

'... was going to live with her cousin in Russia,' was all Selina heard, and then her mind went blank with nerves. All eyes were on her, and it took all her focus to stand, let alone listen.

'Bear in mind that they have lost more than their families, they've lost everything they knew before coming here. I know you'll make them feel welcome. I've decided to put Miss. Cray...'

'Priya,' she corrected with a smile.

'I've decided to put Priya in the Camberwell's house. I know it'll be a shock when they return but they'll be needing a larger place soon and I want Priya and Selina here to be close to one another, therefore Selina will have Richard Kelly's old place at Channel View.'

Muttering flowed through the pub like a draught, and Selina felt for a moment as though she were being dared to spend a night in a haunted house.

Eryn was a shocked that her father would give this woman, this girl, Kelly's house, he'd not even been buried a week.

She felt someone pinch the back of her arm and she yelped, turning.

'Boen! You sod, what did you do that for?'

He smirked; looking passed her at Priya and Selina. 'Pretty nice as far as driftwood goes, aren't they?' he said, and then looked back to her. 'Listen, I've been thinking about what you said. I'll do it, but we leave the second my pa gets back, and we have to return the boat well before he leaves in the morning.'

She bit her lip, suddenly nervous. 'When's he coming back?'

'Should be in the next hour or so, can you get away?'

She couldn't. If she wasn't present while the bar was still serving there would be hell to pay, but Boen was making a huge sacrifice, she supposed she ought to as well. 'Ok, I'll meet you at your boathouse at nine.'

'Nine!' he said, blanching. 'How's that going to give us enough time?'

'I can't make it any earlier, pa'll notice... I'll have to twist Baron's arm to help me out as it is, I can't make it any earlier.'

Boen looked ill as he disappeared into the crowd; he stopped for a moment to admire Selina and Priya, and then left.

Eryn was almost dizzy with adrenaline. Since childhood she had heard stories of Lundy Island and its inhabitants: tales of webbed-toes, bestiality, and interbreeding that she mocked in daylight. Come night, however, she felt the same as she did all those years before. It brought a flutter to her stomach, to think she was crossing the wide channel to that dark smudge forever on the horizon.

The moon was rising, and the lonely island of Lundy awaited them.

Chapter Eight.

South-easterly wind.

Sixteen knots.

Eryn waited until Jocelyn had left, and then sidled up to her brother.

'What do you make of that?' she said, awestruck.

'Make of what?'

'Jocelyn was eyeing you up all evening! Don't tell me you didn't notice!'

'Was she? She was talking to Morgan for most of the night.'

'She was talking to him but she was looking at you! It was getting embarrassing!'

'I saw her glance over here a couple of times. You think she likes me?'

'You're such a daisy, Jesus!' she cuffed his arm, 'I'm going to speak to her!'

He made a feeble attempt at protest but she was already gone. Out the door she ran, slipping behind the pub, and over the fence toward the coast.

She continuously searched over her shoulder; fearful someone might spot her and ask where she was going at such an hour. On any other night she might have thought of countless lies in response, but to be asked tonight would have sent her into a reel of stammering.

The evening was still and the air retained the heat of the day. Above the black silhouette of the old hotel, a billion stars winked nonchalantly as she stole down an overgrown path which wound steeply to the coast. Her long skirt rustled against the grass and she had to hitch the linen to silence it. She would have to leave the path and make her way blindly to the Waeshenbachs', but her knowledge of the area was absolute, and she skipped over rocks and felled trees as though she were navigating the area by daylight.

Behind her the muted sounds of laughing and drunken conversation hung in the calm until distance and lapping waves overcame it.

She reached the Waeshenbachs' in little under half an hour.

Boen was full of agitation; she found him crouching beside the shelter, shredding a leaf and twirling it in his fingers. He jumped when she whispered his name.

'For God's sake, Eryn! Where've you been?'

'Sorry... I couldn't get away. Pa was loitering. You, know, this isn't the best night to do this, what with everyone so excited.'

'Well, my pa's going to Ireland tomorrow, and he won't be back for over a fortnight. Anyway, those women might be the best distraction we're likely to get for a long while.'

Eryn looked out to sea. Maybe Boen was right; it would be a perfect night for rowing; it was clear and warm – the crescent moon outlined the black mass of Lundy on the horizon. They couldn't have asked for a better night with regard to the weather.

'Have you thought about this?' Boen said. 'I mean, when we get there, what are we going to say? Neither of us have been there before, where should we go? And if we find somewhere we can't just burst in and start accusing people.'

'We'll have to go to their pub and see if you recognise anyone.'

Boen rolled his eyes. 'You're joking! Is that what you've come up with?What if two of them have coats and galoshes? Or three of them? Or all of them? That might be the fashion over there, for God's sake. And say I do recognise someone? Am I going to tackle him to the ground and bring him back here or shall I leave that to you?'

'I don't know!' She whispered sharply. 'We'll take it as it comes.'

He shook his head. 'Take it as it comes!' he said to himself, holding out his hand to help her, 'I thought you had a plan!' The boat rocked and clumsily bumped into the equipment-filled dinghy beside it. The water lapped and seemed to Boen to make a tremendous racket. He cursed under his breath, and told her to keep as still as possible. He climbed in behind her, and heard the door of the house open as he did so.

He grit his teeth and watched, frozen with indecisiveness while his father walked towards them, muttering angrily.

Neither of them moved; they both realised the journey was over before it had begun. What could they say? That they were a couple and had chosen the boat as a good place for a romp? His father would see through that before the words had left his mouth.

Guliven was seething, and both Eryn and Boen were wide-eyed, expecting him to grab them and tear them from the dinghy. Boen foresaw a beating right on the spot, and Eryn was preparing to be dragged home by the ear, where Semilion would learn of her slipping away. A thrashing would no doubt follow.

Guliven suddenly reached down and grabbed a length of tangled reel that was hidden in the grass before striding back towards the house. '...sodding thing,' was all they caught him say.

Boen sat silently until he heard the door slam, his heart pumping so loudly he thought his father might catch the sound and return.

'Eryn, I don't...' He began to say, but she was already hoisting the oars into position.

'We can't turn back now,' she said, loudly slicing them into the water.

'We bloody well could!' he said, snatching them off of her. 'Here, let me...'

He untied the boat and they cast out slowly on the still water. All the while he kept his movements measured and deliberate, he made the catch silent, not wanting the metal collar to grate in the oarlock, and manoeuvred the boat soundlessly and smoothly onto the shallows.

Eryn was excited and she held onto the sides as they glided leisurely away from the shore. She had been at sea before, but not for years, and never under such circumstances. She could easily be accused of forgetting why they were going, but for the moment there was an innocence to be experienced, a blamelessness in the enjoyment of a calm ocean and a sky bursting with stars.

Boen was calmer now they had cast off and drew farther from land. His movements became more fluid, and the catch of the oar in the dark waters bubbled and swirled. The collar grated wetly in the oarlock, and he strained as he drew the oar through the water, leant forward and began the process again, and again, and again.

His feelings were less buoyant than Eryn's, not only for the fresh reminder of his father's temper, but for the corpses he imagined beneath the water's surface. During the day he had heard of the bodies washed up along the coast, and been shocked by the number taken down by the ship. He conjured an image of dark figures swaying to and fro with the rhythm of seaweed under the ethereal glow of the moon. The thought sent a shudder through him.

They were silent at first. Eryn felt as though she were being swept up in an unprecedented mystery, cast out on a star-mirrored sea as though they were rowing across the cosmos. She saw the rusting quarantine wires in the distance, they gleamed ochre in the moonlight, and Boen guided them to a hole that had been cut away to allow access to runners'. They ducked as they glided through it, and then they were in the Celtic Sea, and Lundy; black and jagged, windswept and lonely - couldn't have looked more oppressive.

Once through the wire, Boen set about erecting the sails, which Kelly himself had constructed from the old skiffs that lay rotting about the community. By cranking a handle over and over, the contents unfurled from a box at the bow, and slowly unfolded into a towering sail that stretched like a slumberous yawn before taking hold of the draught. Without it they couldn't hope to row the crossing in under five hours.

'So what are we going to say when we get there?' Boen asked, and Eryn scowled that he wouldn't let the matter drop. She'd been hoping that they could improvise when they reached the island. But he was right; they would have to have some kind of story.

'We could say that we've just got married and this is our honeymoon.'

Boen choked, and turned it into a cough. 'You what?'

'Why not? Reighn and Dawn had a honeymoon when they got married.'

Boen hadn't meant that, he was surprised that she had even uttered those words unaccompanied by nausea. 'Do you think they'll believe it?'

She looked at him for a moment, and then turned away. 'No, probably not.'

'Well, I can't think of anything else without making them suspicious... So it'll have to do.'

'Don't get any ideas, now.'

'Why not? I've had them since I was eleven.'

He couldn't see her blush, though he noticed her shifting where she sat. And her silence, to his longing imagination, spoke volumes.

*

They came to a dilapidated pier two hours later.

In the shallow waters was slumped the carcass of an old ferry, rusting and at the mercy of barnacles. With only a breath of wind and lapping waves to accompany them, the island - as Mortehoe must to any who trespassed, seemed completely devoid of life.

A wedge of dark granite glistened above the sea-line, its lower half dank with undulating seaweed. The granite rocks gave way to open fields rolling with wild flower and waist high grass. On the clearest of days there could be seen green cliffs and the purple heather of late spring from the peaks of Rockham Bay, but the night had taken all colour from the island, which was now as bleak and charmless as midwinter.

'So?' Boen said, pulling Eryn up to the well-worn pier. 'What now?'

'Stop asking me like I'm some kind of bloodhound,' she replied, brushing herself down as she stood. 'We should make for the pub, it shouldn't be closed yet.' Judging by the moon it was close to eleven o'clock, and although they knew there was a pub on the island, when it closed was a mystery.

She looked beyond Boen's shoulder. The place was hollow and ghostly, and it was impossible to discern the direction in which they should be heading.

'Once we find it we tell them we're looking for a room, right?' Eryn said, wishing to break the silence.

'To consummate our wedding?'

'We're not going to use it, you dog. We're going to slip away before morning to get your pa's boat back. Once we've told them we're married they'll let us have a drink in the bar and we can start to ask some subtle questions.'

'Let's just hope it works out that way. Can you imagine what would happen if a couple of Lundians came to the Smuggler's and started asking questions? We'd beat them off with sticks and make them swim back home.'

'Relax...' She said, though she was as nervous as he. They made their way along the pier and up to the muddy embankment before surveying the whole island. They pointed out the dark shapes of buildings likely to be pubs, and then descended on to the fields of waist-high grass, and clambered over stone walls in their search.

It was as quiet, undisturbed, and serene as Mortehoe, and yet there was a loneliness about this place that sent a shiver through Eryn. The trees were bent by the wind and spoke of the deformity in the myths of the island; they leered in a fashion that would have been quite unnoticeable during the day. At night, however, they seemed like an accompaniment of demonic figures. She tried to shake away her grim imaginings and stepped closer to Boen.

They walked along the cliffs for a few minutes, away from the derelict lighthouse of the South, hearing nothing but the rustling trees, hissing grass and breaking water. A black church pierced the sky a way off, and they turned towards it, following the deserted roads that were nothing more than tracks of sludge.

Boen pointed, but had to nudge Eryn to draw her attention. He was directing her to a roofless set of buildings a little way away, veiled by weeds and shadow. She squinted, and then turned to him. Silently they agreed they were heading in the right direction.

On the wind they were beginning to hear muted shouting and laughter, the same as Eryn had left some hours before.

They made for the sound; it came from a building set behind a cluster of barns and disused stables. They slowed their advance as they entered the old farmstead, making their way across a marshy courtyard to the farmhouse. The Marisco Tavern was scrawled on the wall in fading chalk. They remained at the front door for some time before Eryn elected Boen to step inside.

They were greeted by a surge of laughter as the door groaned open, though the merriment dwindled as quickly as doused flame.

Boen entered the stone building first, a faltering smile on his nervous face. Eryn stood behind him, a hand resting on his back and the other to her breast.

'Hi,' Boen blurted, his pitiful smile wobbling.

Eryn looked meekly over his shoulder, and pushed him forward. Once they had cleared the threshold she stood beside him and grasped his hand tightly.

They looked idly around the room, hoping to diffuse the tension by a show of nonchalance. Boen nodded at décor and pointed at ornaments, making pleasant comments that trailed off mid-sentence; Eryn picked up a walking staff beside the door and complimented the craftsmanship of the carved pommel.

At the end of their good-natured remarks, they turned once again to the gathered villagers, hoping to see any sign of friendliness – they found none.

'Who the shite are you?' A bow-backed man said gruffly, his fingers trembling under the weight of old age. Others turned to him, muttered agreement, and then returned to scrutinising the two, who nervously glanced at one another. Was this how they had come across to Selina and Priya? They both considered Semilion reaching for the shotgun under the bar, and looked up at the bar lady, a middle-aged woman with weathered features and hair almost brindle. She was looking sternly at them, though didn't wear an expression of concern, only curiosity.

Eryn cleared her throat and smiled at the woman. 'My name's Eryn Waeshenbach, this is Boen, my husband – we got married yesterday... in Mortehoe. We wondered if it would be Ok to spend the night in a room for our honeymoon?'

The woman at the bar deflated with a smile and waved them over, baring her yellow teeth as she did so.

They stepped across the room, nodding greetings at the rapidly thawing faces.

Boen received a few slaps on the back, and the bow-backed man coughed heavily into his hands before smearing, intentionally or not, Boen couldn't decide, a streak of mucus across his shoulders. Young women kissed Eryn on the cheek and congratulated her. She felt strange, she had grown up to believe these people were backward and hostile, yet they were as pleasant -even more so - than those of Mortehoe.

The woman poured them each a tankard of a light brown wine. It smelt sharp, like fetid apples, though its taste was sweet and refreshing. 'Eryn...' The woman said, one eye half closed as she conjured a distant memory. 'Your maiden name's Tupper?'

Eryn smiled and coughed a laugh in surprise. 'Well, yes... how did you know?'

'I used to know your pa.' She replied. 'But that was a long time ago.'

Boen was whisked away by a group of young men who were taking a long flute-shaped glass from the wall. 'This here's your wedlock challenge!' one of them laughed, the others grabbed him and pinned him to the floor. Boen looked too shocked to resist.

'What are they doing?' Eryn asked, trying her best to sound indifferent.

'Ah! A tradition for all newly married men,' as she said this she hoisted a small demijohn to the bar and one of the young men took it to fill the long glass.

'That there's a yard-glass, it's an old game.'

'He's got to drink a yard of ale?' Eryn put her hands to her lips, appalled.

Boen's eyes widened as he saw the glass being filled, and was then warned that if he spilled any the glass would be refilled until he could consume it all.

The four boys holding his limbs guffawed and jeered, encouraging Boen to open his mouth wider. Then the lip of the glass was put to his lips and gently tilted so that he had time to gulp down two mouthfuls before it was tipped so quickly that he didn't stand a chance. Ale rushed over his face and up his nostrils – and the pub roared with laughter.

'Oh no!' The boy holding the glass exclaimed. He stood and began to fill it again. 'You know, a marriage is doomed if you don't drink a whole yard!'

Boen coughed, and someone was kind enough to rub his face with a cloth. He opened his stinging eyes. 'What the bloody hell was that for? I almost had it there!'

'Dear me,' the boy said loudly, so the whole pub could hear. 'He's getting rowdy, we might have to keep him restrained all night! Then he'll have no fun with his lovely new wife.'

For a second time the long thin glass was placed at his lips, and three more draughts were consumed before the glass was upended.

Eryn had found it comical the first time, but she made to stand forward and protect Boen. If this carried on for much longer he'd be of no use later. The woman at the bar grasped her arm gently. 'It's just a bit of fun, dear.'

Eryn smiled, and a grim looking man beside her got from his stool and offered it to her. 'Many happy years.' He doffed his cap, and she felt a sudden surge of guilt for coming to trick them all.

'I'm surprised your father conceded to your marriage,' the woman said, 'Guliven comes by here every now and again. He gives the impression that neither of your parents get along.'

'Love conquers all,' Eryn said, shrugging.

'Well, good luck to the both of you.'

'Thanks, er...'

'Joan.'

'So, you know Guliven?'

'Yes, he's a good man – got a bit of a temper on him when he's drunk – but then again, what man doesn't?'

'Have you ever been to Mortehoe?'

'Once... when I was a little girl, but after all the troubles, well,'

'Troubles?' Eryn frowned. She had never considered that the animosity between the two communities had occurred during her grandfather's tenure

'Just a difference of opinion is all.' She poured another tankard for Eryn. 'Your grandfather, Carrick, if you don't mind me saying, was a megalomaniacal tyrant bastard.'

'I didn't know he affected Lundy at all.'

'They don't talk about it much, I suppose? Well, he wanted to oversee with an iron fist. We weren't used to it and people were... hurt. Maybe after his death we should have tried again, but some thought the damage had been too complete.'

'I didn't know.'

Joan shrugged, 'It was for the best... Lundy feeds us well, we're mostly happy here. We want for nothing.'

'I've never met a Lundian before. We were told all kinds of things when we were younger – like monsters live here and everyone drinks pig's blood.'

Joan smiled. 'Well, we do eat pigs' blood – Pig's Pudding.'

'Never had it.'

'Never had Pig's Pudding!' Joan shook her head in dismay. 'We'll sort that in the morning. A certain cure for any hangover!'

Eryn looked over her shoulder and saw that the yard glass was being refilled. Boen was laughing now, and spluttering ale all over the place. Around him people were shouting his name as though he were some tribal deity: 'Boen! Boen! Boen!' She knew already it had been a wasted journey and resigned herself to the fact she must try to probe without him. Maybe he could be of use as a distraction.

'Do many people come over our way? Any elicit liaisons, so to speak? There was a rumour a while back that a man from Lundy came to visit one of the millers on moonless nights.'

Again Joan smiled. She had an amicability about her that made Eryn feel as though she had known her for years. 'People come and go sometimes... for the odd supply of tobacco or cloth. I said we want for nothing, but we sometimes treat ourselves – and it's possible someone might come past your way, but they rarely say so if they do.' She stared into the middle-distance for a moment, frowning, then said, 'Old Mickey Dean and Graham Weston went away a month or so ago, and Red Sawbone made a dash for Iceland with his boys a couple of weeks ago... Mickey!

A large man turned to Joan from the far side of the room. 'Do you ever stop off at Mortehoe?'

He wiped a froth of ale from his thick beard.'Not for some years now, why you askin'?'

'Mrs. Waeshenbach here was wondering?'

'Sorry, ma'am...' he pulled a glum face at Eryn, 'I don't know of anyone who's been your way for quite some time.'

'No, it's Ok... I was only curious whether anyone would like to visit?' She cursed herself for saying it, her questions were more blatant than they sounded internally.Inquiring about people's toing and froing was going to get her nowhere.

'Ah, well now... I don't think we'd be overly welcome,' Mickey said in a low voice before turning back to his drink. 'Not after all the trouble,'

'People don't forget easily,' Joan said, 'your parents probably feel the same. '

Eryn nod and sipped her wine, wishing she could grab Boen and make for home.

Chapter Nine.

South-easterly wind:

Fifteen knots.

Semilion checked his watch and lit a cigarette. It was time.

He left Selina and Priya in the care of Mark Rolinger, hastened to the ground floor, unlocked the door beneath the stairs, and stepped carefully down into the library. Above his head he held a solar lamp, its crisp white light illuminating the brick walls to excess.

The library was nothing but a single bookcase, though it was crammed to the rafters with stuffed binders and aged papers. In the middle of the room were a sturdy wooden table, a battered leather chair, and a large square radio set, lined with large bulbs and a single dial.

He took a sheaf of paper and pen from a drawer before sitting in the chair. He leant over and switched on the radio before slipping the headphones on, tapping ash from his cigarette on the tiled floor.

One of the bulbs flickered, its orange filament crackling, though he leant toward it and gently turned it until it burned as brightly as its partners. Dense bursts of static squealed in his ears as he turned the dial. Broadcasts flickered and tuned in before he moved on. A sermon, a brass band, military pips and indecipherable code, then the tone of John Camberwell.

'... Ballycotton Shipping Report, transmitted from Belfast. This is the Ballycotton Shipping Report, transmitted from Belfast...'

The statement repeated for a full five minutes before a minute of tones sounded. A half-hour of meteorological forecasts followed, describing the conditions of the entire globe. Semilion took notes, frowning and shaking his head in despair, scribbling erratically as though he were concluding some ground-breaking mathematical calculation.

At the end of the half-hour there followed another minute of periodic tones before static filled the headphones. He flicked the radio off, the bulbs slowly waned.

His ears were raw, and he unburdened them gently, laying the headphones on the table and leaning back in the chair.

'How's it looking?' His wife was standing at the foot of the stairs. Semilion continued to stare at the page gravely, hoping he could forecast the future in the numbers.

'Not very good, dear,' he sighed, flapping the page and throwing it on the table.

Saran stepped lightly over to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. 'Tell me,'

He pulled the page back and cast a hand over it. 'Look. Variable three or four, visibility good...'

'European governments are doing well,' Saran said, disappointed.

'Right down to Malaga... And Germany: 'Variable three or four, becoming westerly five for a time later in the North.' So, there's a lot of woodland out of bounds still... Egypt, 'Visibility: Good,' has a long way to go but, well, all that's an aside...'

'And Britain?'

'Britain!' Semilion circled a line of text. 'Wales is fully claimed: 'Rough or very rough, occasionally high'. The Isle of Wight, Jersey, Guernsey.... All reclaimed and under quarantine.'

'And Wessex?'

'It's unclear, he said from Exmouth there's a South-easterly wind. Fifteen knots...'

'I don't remember any mention of Exmouth last month.'

Semilion exhaled. 'There wasn't.'

Saran crouched beside him. 'Fifteen miles in one month?' She took the page from him and scoured it. Her brows knitted with concern, she took in the page and laid it back on the table.

'Do you think there might be something wrong with the information?'

'I don't know, dear.'

'Speak to Guliven before he leaves in the morning. He has to get word to the Camberwells. He has to get more detailed information.'

'I know, dear.'

She took the page again. 'And what's this about a storm-front moving in over Exmoor?'

He had hoped she wouldn't notice the detail. She looked at him probingly, though his hesitation was answer enough. She almost laughed, 'It's not even a wind? It's a storm-front?'

'Saran, it might be something else entirely.'

'Nothing good, though! He wouldn't have said 'storm-front' if it were an enchanting flourish of buttercups spreading our way, would he!'

She stepped into the corner of the room, thinking deeply. 'What are you going to do?'

'What is there to do? Kelly might have helped us but he's gone.'

'And Guliven? You're sure he won't do it?'

Semilion looked at her through his brow. 'Don't be ridiculous. He has a family. Would you do it?'

Saran snorted. 'Well, you better think of something fast. You and your precious procedures are running out of time.'

She paced across the tiles to the foot of the stairs. 'Maybe it's time the Lundians' took control of things. If you're going to be the end of us, maybe they should take up the reigns.' she left the statement hanging in the air like an odious threat, before she left Semilion to his own thoughts.

Chapter Ten.

South-easterly wind.

Fourteen knots.

It was close to three when people started to filter out of the Marisco Tavern. Eryn was weary, and Joan showed her upstairs to a room where Boen had already been dumped spread-eagle on the bed.

'Charming,' Eryn sighed, shaking her head. A candle had been placed on a stool made from the trunk of a tree, and shadows danced about the sparse, musty room.

It wasn't long before the sounds of snoring filtered up from the rooms below. Eryn had learnt that several people from the island lived in the Marisco Tavern: Mickey Dean and his wife lived downstairs, Joan lived alone in a maisonette, and Red Sawbone lived upstairs with his two sons. The latter were away in Iceland, so Joan had given them the younger Sawbone's room for the night.

Waiting for silence to overcome the house, Eryn opened the door nervously and slipped into the corridor. She didn't know what to look for, and was downhearted that she only had access to three rooms on the whole island. It was better than nothing, she considered, and she would certainly achieve more than Boen's slumberous contribution - even if she discovered nothing.

A small amount of light from the candle shone from the bedroom. There was just enough illumination to see the framework of the landing – a cupboard, two wood-framed pictures on the wall, a high shelf harbouring dusty Puffin skulls, and two doors.

Regretting she couldn't take the candle for fear of being seen, she stepped towards the nearest room and lay her palm on the handle. It opened, its hinges grating softly as she pushed. Inside was crow-black, and she felt along the walls for any sign of cupboard, or book, some fitting piece of information that she knew full well she would not find.

A cough from below, hollow and blunt, arrested her and she waited for more to follow. Murmurs rose through the floorboards, whispered words, a woman's voice followed by a man's.

Silence followed, and after long minutes Eryn moved across the floor as quietly as she knew how.

Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark; she could make out the edges of a bed and a chest of drawers beside it. Gently she sat on the bed, and eased open the top drawer, it squeaked and she cringed. Again the woman below whispered, but there came no reply.

Eryn reached in and retrieved a sheaf of papers. They were papers that dated back several years, old papers full of sketches of birds and page after page of awful handwriting. In the darkness she could hardly make anything of it, apart from: Accounts for renewal... and: RE: Mr. Tanwen...

Looking through all the papers as best she could in the saturating darkness it became clear that Mr. Sawbone looked after Lundy's financial affairs with an institution in Greenland. She knew that Mortehoe ran by the very same system, there was nothing suspicious there, the Camberwells held an account for the entire community, it was this account that Kelly had used to buy particulars on his runs to Ireland. She stacked the papers neatly, disappointed there was nothing incriminating amongst it, not that she had supposed there would be, it would have been an uncommon achievement in fortuity that the person they were searching for would reside in the room beside their own and have the civility to leave clues in the first drawer she opened. None the less, she was disheartened by the handful of scrawl and drawings.

She was about to return the papers when, in the act of leaning over to do so, her weight on the floorboard affected a sharp creak. The woman's voice from the floor below exclaimed, 'Mickey!' in a manner that refused to be ignored.

Eryn froze, and more words were spoken, though again they were whispered. There came a grumble and the sound of padding footsteps. A door groaned open.

'Oh shit!' Eryn hissed, and lightly swept across the room, the papers still in her hand. From downstairs there came sighing, and Mickey Deans sonorous voice grumbled, 'Bloody woman, can't go a night without hearing ghosts!'

His footsteps were on the staircase. Eryn eased herself out of the room and pulled the door closed. It squeaked and the latch clicked, but Mickey was still grumbling; she didn't think he'd heard a thing.

She made to return to her room and saw that the door had closed in her absence. She tiptoed across the landing, just as Mickey appeared at the top of the stairs. It was too late, there was no way she could open the door and get inside without him seeing the candle in the open doorway.

She turned to say something to him as he stepped to the hallway. 'Don't see her coming up here when I hear the timbers sighing! No, that'd be too much to ask for. Lazy, guzzlin' sow...' He walked passed Eryn and opened the door to Red Sawbone's room. He peered inside and closed it again. He opened the door next to that and whispered 'Hello?' then sniffed and went back downstairs, complaining as he went.

Eryn closed her eyes and released her tight grip on the papers in her hand. She bit her lip and looked at Red Sawbone's door. She didn't dare put them back. All she could hope was that they wouldn't be missed.

*

Boen hung over the side of the boat, heaving the russet coloured contents of his stomach into the frothy waters. Eryn was rowing as vigorously as she could, though the slate-grey morning was already turning pink in the east - and in the west the stars were receding quickly.

A moan accompanied the splashing oar, and Eryn kicked him in the shin. 'Beerguts! Stop churning and come help!'

He coughed and moaned again, and then slowly dragged himself to the oars. Taking one in his quaking hand he rowed on her count, keeping his eyes closed tightly and breathing deeply - concentrating on quelling his nausea.

'Are you ok?' Eryn asked.

There was a short silence, and then a gasp for air: 'I think so.'

She slapped him hard across the back of the head, and he wrapped his fingers around the blow, shielding himself from another.

'What the hell was that for?'

'What use were you last night? You were drunk as an orchard-wasp! I needed your help and you were asleep!'

'It wasn't my fault! They were basically water-boarding me!'

'You could have stopped them; you could have said you were ill.'

'Ill, right!' He rubbed the back of his head and clenched his teeth tightly. He didn't feel up to having an argument with her.

He sighed deeply a few times, and then couldn't help but ask, sourly: 'So what did you need help with anyway?'

'I found something. In one of the bedrooms.'

'You went sneaking around the rooms? What if you'd been caught?'

'I almost was.'

'Bloody hell... what did you find?'

'I'll show you when we get back.'

'Well at least tell me. I can't spend the trip wondering what it is.'

'It's a statement. From a bank in Iceland.'

'So?'

'So you know who else has access to the account?'

Boen didn't, he knew the list of people was short, but it wasn't common knowledge who could access the community account.

'Pa, John Camberwell, and Kelly,' she said.

'So what does that mean?' He closed his eyes again; another wave of nausea was sweeping through him. 'Everyone knows the Camberwell's have access, and Kelly... it wouldn't have made much sense for him to go for provisions without being able to pay for it. And, well, I suppose it's obvious your pa has access too, he's the overseer after all.'

'It means that my pa and Kelly knew this Red Sawbone, and had accounts with the same bank.'

'Does it? Well, so what if it does?'

'I don't know, it might not mean anything, but doesn't it seem strange that no-one has ever mentioned Red? Or that we all use the same account? I mean, everyone knows about the Greenland institution,but why's this Icelandic account a secret?'

'Eryn, are you trying to wreck your pa? I don't know what these papers have got to do with Kelly but what if you found out your pa killed him? Would you let on?'

She was quiet for a long time, and in the silence Boen wondered if he would point his finger at his own father. He didn't think he could, not even for the scars across his back.

'I had a dream once,' he said to break the silence, 'that my pa was a terrorist - like the ones we used to read about from the millennium - he had a plan to put bombs in the collars of dogs and send them amongst people in the community. He got me to mix the powder for the bombs, and I remember crying, thinking: I don't want to kill people, and I knew that if I did go along with it, I would have to kill myself. I had to decide whether to kill people or tell the authorities about him.'

'And?' Eryn said.

'And I turned my back on him. It was the only thing to do.'

She was silent again, a lone wave rocked the boat, and Boen turned to navigate toward the hole in the quarantine wire. It was little over quarter of a mile away. Once through the gap they would try and use the sail, though there was no draught at all.

'Did you really have that dream?' Eryn asked. 'I mean, was that little story intended for me?'

'I really had it - what you just said reminded me is all.'

They negotiated their way back through the wire, and Boen released the sail. A breeze fluttered the dark cloth, but didn't catch it - there wasn't enough wind to make them move.

'May as well take it down.' Eryn suggested.

'We'll row with it - hopefully it'll pick up.' He sat back down and steadied his trembling fingers, trying to will his palpitations to stop. He just wanted to sleep.

Another quarter-hour passed, and the light was strong in the east now - all the stars had been replaced by a misty grey glow. They had roughly two hours before people started to wake and start their daily chores. Guliven, however, would already be awake and readying himself. Boen's head reeled.

A gust of wind pulled the cloth tight and made them jolt forward. Eryn smiled, and Boen collapsed over the side once more, heaving.

*

They arrived back at the boathouse as the sun crested the horizon.

The crying gull masked the sound of their return to the Waeshenbach's shelter. The boat with provisions was untouched from the night before, and continued to bob gracefully.

Eryn was sweating with exertion and Boen lay comatose in a pool of seawater on the floor of the dinghy, rasping for breath.

As the boat came in to moor, Eryn nudged him awake. He groaned, and she hushed him. 'Quiet!' she whispered. 'We don't want to your pa to hear us!'

Boen, with a head filled with cast-iron bells, clambered shakily to the pier and tied the dinghy to a heavy, rusted ring.

He helped Eryn out of the boat – and without exchanging words they slipped away from one another, both disappointed their forbidden excursion had been an ultimate, and dangerous, waste of time. Boen would have watched her go, always taking the opportunity to catch a glimpse of her lithe behind, but his lids were heavy and it took all his effort to stop from collapsing in the grass.

The garden seemed a mile long as Boen meandered towards the house, and as he got to the front door, he fell forward – hitting his head hard on the kitchen floor. He blinked, not sure what had happened, and then felt a hand on his shoulder, grasping tightly.

'Get up you thief!' A hard voice growled.

'Pa!' Boen blurted, before retching bile on the tiles.

'You dirty bastard! Get up, get out!'

His head spinning and his throat burning, Boen was dragged into the garden and punched hard in the face. He fell, clasping his head as he looked up. His father was standing over him, coiling his belt around his knuckles, his face contorted in a lour of ferocity.
Chapter Eleven.

Tranter.

Eighty per cent of the formerly civilised world was wasteland. Homes throughout all nations had been left ransacked and dilapidated for generations. Entire cities slowly sank into the landscape rising around it. Spires reached skyward as though claiming last breath before inevitable submergence. Market towns and villages were reduced to enclosures for buddleia, vines and ivy. Thousands of years of civilisation were being reclaimed by nature in one century-long sigh.

Marshal Law had ruled the world-over the first years after the outbreak, and even though the office of power was grudgingly handed back to governments in those countries least affected, most in the western world had grown accustomed to their newly formed authority, reluctant to return power once the initial threat had passed. With each year they had grown more involved with civic interests, until all but few governments were militant, either openly or otherwise.

After a swift suspension of Habeas Corpus, the United Kingdom dwindled into a facade of government that veiled the might of the intelligence services. The military opposed their strength, and after a decade-long struggle two distinct powers emerged. The Ministry of Defence's headquarters became the parliament alpha and joined a grudging coalition with the Ministry of Custody - the governing body that had formed out of the military, while Westminster became a theatre housing nothing more than pantomime jousts of wit - a change that few noticed. Before a generation had passed the Crown was absolved, and the United Republic of Britain, under the Union Chancellery and governed separately by the MoD and the MoC, followed in its wake.

Of the five cities that remained after the first six-year plague, Birmingham had risen to be England's capital city. Home to the headquarters of the Ministry of Defence, the city had retained a police battalion that few others could afford. The ugly headquarter building, known mockingly as The Soufflé, rose from the old city like an apprentice's unforgivable mistake; uneven and crumbling, it would have made architects of yore weep. The entire building had been cobbled together hastily, and built with the brick and stone of local structures. Every home, warehouse and factory in a radius of a mile had been dragged down to not only construct it, but to create a wide perimeter, an expanse that none could traverse the length without being garbed in a gown of copper-jacketed bullets. Rules had become lax in the intervening years; several small communities had even grown into a small shanty quarter, by the name Dead Zone, in the shadow of the government complex. Overspill of the bursting populace of Birmingham, the borough of Dead Zone, with its narrow roads and confusion of buildings, had become a district of brothels and dice-houses, and had rapidly gained for its citizens a reputation for debauchery and abandoned morality.

Only thirty years old, a vast proportion of The Soufflé was supported by an ever increasing network of scaffolding which protruded several metres from the cement and loose-flint surface, making it look as though the building had already collapsed out of embarrassment.

Laur Tranter sat staring across the office on the seventeenth floor. He was sick of looking at the tower of scaffolding and luminous netting outside the window, the glass of which had been appropriated from a nineteenth century factory. Mullioned and oval at its crest, it must have been beautiful in its original setting, he thought, though now it looked alien and malapropos.

It had been three years since his scandalously dishonourable discharge from imaging, one year since his release from Walsall Judicial Reform, and his subsequent ten months of heading the office of Topography and Statistics, though the lack of natural light made it feel like ten years.

He had been welcomed every morning by Birmingham's industrial visage and had quickly grown weary of the flint walls and cherty gravel. In addition, the office faced the north expanse of Dead Zone, and received next to no direct sunlight. If you positioned yourself correctly, you could see through the lattice of scaffolding and see a corrugated steel roof that shone brightly come mid-afternoon, though other than that the office was in perpetual half-light.

It had been the motive behind slowly moving Kimberly closer to the window. For some reason he had been under the impression it was less depressing in the spot where she worked at the far end of the office, though when he had appropriated her desk for himself with the excuse that the glare from the window was setting off an old eye complaint, he had quickly realised that the scaffold-induced gloom was ubiquitous. She had initially thought the changeover had been an advancement of sorts, though he could tell by the look in her eyes that the constant panorama of iron, dust and masonry was bleeding her motivation. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her smile, which was unfortunate as it had been uplifting; something he missed now that he thought about it. Maybe it was time to re-arrange the layout of the staff again.

He took a deep breath and stole another glance at the figures in front of him. He turned the page and winced at the scatter graph; under a quarter of a mile of reclamation in six months. How was he going to convey it in a favourable light to the pamphleteers who clamoured for answer their readers questions? How was he going to present it to Sanders?

Sally slid past him and laid a mug of coffee at his desk. He barely noticed it, though looked up and grunted a pleasantry before turning back to the thick document. 'What a mess,' he repeated under his breath, viewing the analyses of the hundreds of operations throughout the country. He skimmed the abstract of each, looking for those two important words, though each time being met by that singular noun beginning to give him chest pains: Void.

He stopped filing through the pages, his eyes catching the words Confirmed Advance. He turned back several pages to the beginning of the report marked with a grid reference. He opened a drawer and retrieved a pocket atlas, scouring the index to find the corresponding location. After an intolerable search, both with and without his glasses, he picked up the phone and dialled Kimberly. He watched her as she glanced at the telephone's orange bulb pulse before turning back to the television screen in the high corner of the room. A report was following the proceedings of the Monclova Convention, the series of high profile military tribunals held in Mexico two years after the 48 Hour War with America had concluded. Taking the stand was General George Bishop, one of forty high-ranking officials accused of war crimes during the terrible weekend nine years previously.

Kimberly looked as though she might ignore the phone, he thought. She reluctantly put her pencil down and picked up the receiver before jabbing the 'talk' stub and answering, 'Hello?'

'Jesus, Kimberly... Do you always leave the phone ringing so long?'

'Oh, Mr. Tranter,' she looked across the office and blushed. 'I'm sorry, I... I was just watching the news.'

'Never mind 'sorry'. Where in East Anglia does 'Fifty-Two' correspond to?'

'Fifty-Two? What're the next three digits?'

'Eight. Nine. Three.'

'Fifty-Two is the... Norfolk County of Walsingham?'

'Walsingham, right...' He flipped through the pocket atlas to find it. 'Walsingham. Got it. Christ.'

'Something wrong, sir?'

He blew a long breath and gave her the rest of the reference number. 'I need to know exactly where it is, ok?'

'It won't take a minute, sir.'

He replaced the handset and marked the page before continuing to scour the document for Confirmed Advance.

Void.

Void.

Void.

Negative Progress.

'Negative progress!' He lay the report down and pinched the bridge of his nose. The papers would have his boss on a spit if they found out his office had ordered a withdrawal. He scoured the page for the name of the lead officer, unwilling to let an agent who called a retreat to continue at the post.

'Captain David Peterson!' Tranter said, tapping the page. 'By tomorrow you're going to be scraping pigeon shit off Nelson's Column with your fingernails, you bastard.'

'Sir?' Kimberly said, holding a scrap of paper toward him. 'The location of the reference?'

He ignored the note and thrust the atlas at her. 'Show me.'

She joined him behind his desk and flipped through the book before perusing a page for a moment. 'Here.' She laid it before him and placed a long fingernail on a railway station in the village of Walsingham.

He swore under his breath and took back the document, scrawling 'Void' where Confirmed Advance had been. 'The bastards have included an old railway line. Anyone can get down railway lines. That kind of trick might have worked fifteen years ago but the media are savvy to it now. It's not reclaimed land!'

Several heads turned in his direction as he ran his fingers through his greying hair. Kimberly had stiffened beside him and he shooed her away, saying, 'Get a message to Reece. Tell him to get his men in order. Remind him that I worked in the field longer than the list of his affairs and child-prostitutes. Remind him I know all the dodges, and we won't stand for any of them!'

'Yes, Mr. Tranter.' Kimberly clasped the atlas to her chest as though protecting herself from his outburst. She turned and retreated to her desk, and Tranter sighed violently, remembering the pressure that agents in the field were under. It had been bad in his day, and although the Crenatin Four situation had been addressed it was still unimaginably bad. Not a month passed without several reports of suicide.

'Kimberly?' He said in a calmer tone. 'Don't mention the affairs.'

She looked at him darkly. 'Shall I mention the child-prostitutes?'

His telephone rang, severing his trail of thought. He looked at Kimberly reproachfully over the rim of his glasses. The orange bulb upon the handset glowed in step with the shrill tone; he plucked the receiver, pressed 'talk' and leaned back in his chair.

'Tranter.'

'It's Burkett.' It was Director General Stranghan's personal assistant. He hadn't spoken to the condescending arse for years, not since after Captain Stumm's death. He swallowed spontaneously at the memory.

'Yes, Sir.'

'Get down to Analysis.' The abruptness was replaced by a dial-tone, and Tranter hesitated as the receiver clicked back into its rest. Analysis, he thought. Why on earth would they want him in Analysis?

He unlocked the drawer and placed the thick wedge of papers within, before standing and making his way from the office.

The fluorescent lights cast a sickly sheen on the walls, and as Tranter ducked into the stairwell he was glad to escape them. Daylight struggled to penetrate the thick crosshatched glass, and pitched the stairs into a hazy, unearthly light. At least it was natural. He ignored greetings as he descended several flights, though stopped briefly to sign an expense form before stepping into another grim corridor. Here he slowed his pace as he tried to remember how to get to Analysis as he hadn't been there in years. He double-backed, made his way across a bridge, and then wound his way down a serpentine staircase to the third floor.

He stepped through an unmarked door into a small room. A policeman was behind a desk upon which sat nothing but a telephone. He noted briefly that the phone had two bulbs, blue and green, rather than the customary orange, and wondered for a moment what they signified.

He fished about in his jacket pocket for his identification, and handed it to the policeman, who studied it closely before passing it back and making a phone call.

'Mr. Burkett? Mr. Tranter has arrived. Yes, sir.' He replaced the phone. 'Mr. Burkett will be here shortly, sir.'

'Any idea what this is about?'

The policeman looked at him with a raised brow and Tranter nodded, suitably admonished, before turning and inspecting the drab photos of countryside that lined the walls. Minutes passed in silence before Burkett entered the room and shook Tranter's hand. 'Long time, Tranter. If you'll follow me?'

They exited through the doorway from which Burkett had appeared, and marched down another ghoulishly lit corridor before entering a large workshop. The cold was the first thing to strike Tranter, and he buttoned his jacket as they stepped amongst the banks of machinery and hanging wires. The last time he had been in Analysis was a few months after its renovation; it had been orderly then, with fewer generators and less clutter.

There was a slab in the centre of the workshop that had been presented by the Prime Minister at the buildings official completion, though it was now lost under the piles of cables they now negotiated, like colonials traversing tropical undergrowth.

A blast of steam and a klaxon signalled they had entered the workshop proper, and Burkett drew back clear rubber drapes and gestured Tranter to enter.

Tranter ducked through into the workspace, his feet kicking up a swirl of vaporous nitrogen. Surrounding him was an array of pumps and bundled power-cords, and of course, the Dark Lens to which it was coupled.

Its black surface shone in the bright strip-lights like a dilated pupil, its lens-protecting domes appearing dark blue and brown, and Tranter couldn't help himself from laying his hand on the smooth surface, feeling the machine's innards pulsate softly.

Burkett walked beyond the machine and gestured Tranter to follow. They passed through another rubber drape, to where sat a woman in her late thirties. She wore the sunken-eyed expression of one who lives before a monitor and comprehends the inner workings of everything. Tranter disliked her instantly, considering her the sort to take apart radios for enjoyment before writing a report on it to express orgasm.

'Tranter, this is Sally Toubec.'

One of her monitors showed a small news window, the same channel that was airing in his office. The report of the trials had been replaced by a run-down of the parliamentary candidates being considered for the berth of President of the proposed, and publicly abhorred, European Nation.

Tranter offered his hand, and asked if there had been any progress in the trial. Sally nodded tersely in greeting, but ignored his hand and his question, before turning back to her monitor. She tapped the keyboard three times and the screen switched from black to blue.

'You're familiar with the mutations of S18K4, Mr. Tranter?' She asked, her voice deflated. She sounded as though she were sick of explaining this to people.

'To a degree. Up to five years ago, yes.'

'Five years? I suppose that will do.' She sighed. 'The D.L. you just had your hands all over came back from a circuit of the Cornish peninsular recently. One of the undergraduate teams was going through the code last week when they came across something peculiar. They sent it up here, we had a look at it, you were called, and now you're here.'

She stood and offered him the screen. He lowered his glasses and stooped. The screen was nothing but a mass of random digits and unmarked tables.

He cleared his throat. 'I'm sorry, it's been a long time since I had to read field statistics, it's changed a lot since...'

'What you're looking at here,' Toubec said, snatching back her seat as though she had offered someone without a license to drive her car, 'is a sample of four-hundred and six locations. These locations are where the D.L. stopped when it sensed, or thought it sensed, an anomaly. These anomalies happen all the time and we have to cross-reference them with other D.L. reports continuously. This one here, for example, has been flagged on four separate occasions, but when you get down into what was actually picked up you can see it's the code of something that died naturally, probably a rabbit or something similar. Over the four separate instances you can see its emitting the elements you would expect from decomposition.' She pointed at various number groups. 'Increase in soil carbon. Phosphorus, potassium, calcium, etc. The pH of the cadaver decomposition island increases the soil nitrogen with each subsequent visit. Just a rotting carcass, nothing exciting.'

Tranter looked at the string of numbers, and wondered how he had ever known how to read it. When he'd been an undergraduate working in analysis, there were always labels to point you in the right direction. These days, however, it seemed as though people understood the code as well as any form of script.

'If you look at this line,' Sally clicked to a separate page and highlighted a passage, 'that's when things start to come alive.'

'What do you mean? Without code. Just tell me what you've found.'

She looked up at him and fixed him with her gaze. 'Someone's making new strains of S18K4.'

'What?' Tranter straightened and turned to Burkett. 'What the hell does she mean?'

Burkett took a packet of cigarettes from his jacket, placing one on the tip of his lips.

'Not in here, Mr. Burkett.' Sally said, unable to muster urgency in her voice. 'You'll blow the place to kingdom come.'

Burkett hesitated a moment, then lit the cigarette. He took a long drag, and gave Tranter a sheet of paper with two separate grid-references typed on it. 'You know where these are?'

'I haven't a clue.' He said, hardly looking at them.

'You should do. They were in the report I sent you yesterday. This was one of the few places to show any sign of advance.'

'You mean in East Anglia? Where was it?' He clicked his fingers frantically. 'Walsingham?'

'No. Beyond the Wessex Border. In Devon. Twenty miles or so north-west of a town called Barnstaple. Village on the coast. Ring any bells?'

Tranter looked down at the grid-reference again. It couldn't be. And yet, there it was.

Mortehoe.

