 
Forgotness  
Book 3: The Winter Bomber

By Tom Fraser

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2017 Tom Fraser  
v0.1 2016  
v0.4 2017  
v1.0 2018

Smashwords Edition, License Notes  
Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends.This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favourite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
Book 3: The Winter Bomber

**Chapters:  
** 1. A Maiden fan  
2. Not an ogre  
3. The Winter Bomber  
4. Time to blow the Mothership  
5. Its dark now  
6. Thank the Lord Creator  
7. In the early morning

Chapter 1  
A Maiden fan

We woke up just before the fist landed.

Bang! Bang!

"Wake up Felix!" it was Jane. "All fucking shit's happening."

Bang! Bang!

"She's coming," that was Cam, fake Cam.

We plodded across the floor and opened the door to let them in but they didn't come in.

"The Scats are attacking," said Jane a bit breathlessly.

"Here, she means here, in Topland," explained Cam.

"They've cut the internet and the phones, no one knows what the fuck's going on." Jane continued.

"Mint knows," added Cam. They both stayed outside our bedroom. We weren't sure why. We waved our arm a bit but they still didn't come in.

"How does Mint know then?" We asked. "Who stopped the phones?"

"I don't know," said Jane. "Does it matter? It's like it's a war."

"I think she has her own radio network." Cam went on, ignoring Jane, "and I think it was the Government that's cut the phones and stuff. They don't want panic or something."

"So what are we supposed to do?"

"Get dressed and get your butt along to Mint's. She's got a plan," said Jane. "So get a wriggle on. Time to go."

"OK, give me a minute." We got dressed quickly and tucked our knives away. Jane and Cam watched still by the door.

"Let's go." We said and together we walked over to the Linux main offices where Enid met us and sent us in.

*

Back at Headquarters things had moved up a gear, at last. Soldiers were running in all directions. As the Acting Command of the three remaining Trident Submarines, Vanguard, Victorious and Vigilant (Vengeance had sunk during the Flood) I had access to the very top of the military command in Scotland. This was despite two of the submarines being barely able to stay afloat and none had any working engines. But with jury-rigged generators we still had the ability to launch missiles (whether the missiles would actually launch was a different matter).

Either way, I was saluted up to the Command Room where the military forces of Scotland/Topland were controlled from.

There I joined the highest ranks of Scotland: Admiral Rackson, General Drubbington and Air Marshal Fiennes. Though all close to their centenary in age none had achieved these positions before the Flood. I was not sure if they were really up to the task, whatever that would be.

"Ah, Colme," said the Admiral. "You got here quick. Heard the news I take it?"

"I've heard rumours that the Evangelicals may have taken Loggerheads." I answered.

"Yes, well, we're sending a patrol boat to find out."

"There seems to be some radio interference as well, we can't get any messages through to ships to the south." The General interrupted. "Don't know what the bloody hell's going on."

I looked at the Air Marshal. He shrugged his shoulders. "I've got a few old Lynxs flying out to the oilrigs up north. I've got nothing down here."

I gave him a querying look. In the past he had told me that he had eight Apache gunships, but maybe he was holding them back, or they didn't exist. The Air Marshal ignored me.

"Have we got any news from the south yet?" The General banged his fist on the table. They were all standing round a table with a large map of Topland pinned to it.

"Look, if someone doesn't bloody tell me what's going on I'm going home." Said the General.

Various desks around the walls had telephone operators putting and taking calls.

"Anybody?" shouted the old General. Drubbington was famous for his bad temper and lack of military experience. But then they all were. Our entire army was old. The majority of it was over 50, like myself. The young weren't really interested, there were not that many young people anyway so, on the whole, they were getting training and work in what were considered more important areas of life in Topland. We were left with the dim-witted, the lazy and often the plain criminal elements of society. It did not make for a strong military. But then we hadn't really needed one.

That was about to change I suspected.

"I've got Cronin on line one." Said one of the operators. "General?"

The General moved over slowly and took the phone.

"Cronin? Drubbington. What? What? Speak louder man! No there's no need to shout I can here you quite plainly. You were mumbling."

Someone in the room sighed. It could have been me.

"Yes. Yes. Numbers?" Went on the General. "You'll wait until I bloody give the order! Yes, Yes. I see. Stay on the line."

The General turned to the Admiral and Air Marshal and moved back to the map.

"Cronin says the SRC can't hear anything on the radio either. Scats have got some high-end jamming equipment. Bloody Two Americas must be chucking money at them. They can't see anything from Tissington yet. He's sent riders down to the lower outpost to see what's what. Still, I think we have to assume it's an attack from both of them."

The three Lords of the armed forces began arguing. I sidled over to the phone and picked it up.

"Cronin? It's Commander Colme." There was a grunt of recognition at the other end of the line. "I've sent you a pigeon. Should have had it by now. I've got an idea what Linux is after. You were right, it is old tech."

"Don't say anymore. I'll make sure someone gets the note to me ASAP. In the meantime what are the old boys up to? Anything useful?"

"No, not really. The Prince has been so protective of his oil I'm not sure we've got anything to hold the Pennines with."

"Fuck the Pennines," said Cronin sharply. Which suddenly made me realise that my family were still down there. How had I forgotten about them?

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I think they'll land at various place up the west coast to distract us, but they're after your missiles."

"What? But they won't have the codes!"

"I think the Evangelicals have got bypass codes up out of the old Lockheed complex in California. I can't believe the Scats didn't notice them doing it but there you go. I guess the Armageddonistists still want to end the world or maybe its just to wipe out the Scientologists once and for all."

"So they don't want Topland then?" But all I was thinking was, if I give them Trident will they leave my kids alone?

"Oh, they want it all: the oil, the people, Trident."

"I've got family on holiday in the Peak District?" I said. Which was totally unprofessional. I didn't know why I said that.

"I know," said Cronin. "We'll try and bring them in."

"Thank you." Then, totally abusing my powers I asked. "Are there any Scandie ships in dock? It may be safer if you could..."

I left it blank.

"Sorry, they seem to have got wind of what's coming, there aren't any here, haven't been for days. Lots more Wetters about though, hundreds appearing every day. Not letting them in though."

"OK. Thanks, good luck Captain."

"Good luck yourself. Speak soon."

I handed the phone to the operator and turned back to the room. More top brass had appeared. The General and the Admiral were arguing about what the Scientologists' plans were.

Then the doors opened and in came Prince John and his advisers. Among them was Linux, a burst of flowing white blouse and skirt amongst the dull greys and blacks of the the rest of the entourage.

Linux saw me and came over and shook my hand, smiling.

"I'm sure your family will be fine." She said. Which made me flare up with anger inside. It sounded so threatening. But the smile of concern was genuine.

"Do you hear everything we say?"

"Try to," she said with a smile. "So do you, so it's only fair."

"But we can't hear you though." I pointed out.

She shrugged.

"We're not that interesting. Just trying to be do-gooders."

"Isn't that how it starts? Power corrupts?"

"Yes, yes it does. So, before I am fully corrupted I hope to have fixed everything."

"There's a lot to fix."

"Keeps me busy."

"So you don't want it all?"

"Me? No, not really, not much."

"What are you two talking about?" Shouted the Prince. "There's a fucking war on you know.

"Except," he continued, holding up his arms. "I have got us peace."

The room went quiet.

"I have spoken to the good folk of the Evagelical persuasion and they are nothing to be frightened of. I have done a deal with them. All they want is a few of your old missiles Commander and then they'll fuck off back to Wales or wherever they've come from."

"But Your Highness..." I began.

"Oh, calm down. You've said yourself, they probably don't work. So it hardly matters. Our army barely exists. These ancient fuck-wits." The Prince waved his arms at the three old soldiers standing round the table. "Couldn't organise a picnic let alone a fucking war. Look everyone. What have we got? Some oil, some turnips and a lot of ex-rich. I, we, have to keep this show on the road and it's not going to happen if the either of the Two Americas start a war with us. We'll all be fucked then. So we give them what they want. They fuck off. We go on as normal."

"Your Highness cannot possibly trust the Evangelicals. They'll come back, if they leave at all, and they'll demand more and more." I probably should have let the General speak but they were looking slack-jawed as ever.

"Yes, probably but this buys us time. Gets them out of our hair. Until we come up with a plan or the Scientologists knock them out. I mean there are allies out there we could work with."

"But..."

"But nothing. Commander. Get as many men as you can down to Trident and sort the handover. Do it slowly, make them wait and preferably give them something they can't use for a very long time and hopefully nowhere near us. Off you go."

He waved his hand at me. I looked at the Generals but they were ignoring me, staring at the map on the table, pretending to not hear the conversation.

I left the room and was heading downstairs when I heard the tap of heels behind me. It was Mint Linux.

"Hi Jen, J-Pop, look, could we talk a minute please, possibly?"

"What Mint? This is not a good time. In fact, I think National Emergency covers it, plus the fact that..."

"It's a seriously bad idea to hand over the Tridents to the Clappers."

"Yes, but I can't talk about it with you."

"Who can you talk about it with then?" She was following me downstairs and out of the building. "Can you stall them? How long for? Can you give them fake rockets." She asked. "Or guarantee they won't work?"

"I can do all those things." I said though, to be honest, fake rockets was stretching it a bit. "But I cannot go against my Commanding Officer. In this case, the Prince."

"But you have done, gone against your commanding officer."

"Yes, because he wouldn't carry out an order we had been given."

"And was he wrong?" She asked, grabbing my arm. "Do you regret what you did?"

I stopped and stared at her.

"Of course I regret it. Every day I regret it. But I had to do it."

"Yes, perhaps, but maybe not this time?"

"Why Mint? What can you do? The Evangelicals are probably well enough armed to just take them off me. Have you got an army we don't know about, that's just going to appear and save us? Have you?"

"Well," she paused, "actually, I might have three of them. If you can just..."

"No. I can't." I said. "His Highness asked me to stall. I will stall for as long as I can. But nothing else."

I walked away.

"Jen," Lady Linux called after me. "Stalling is good. I'll be in touch. Just stall for as long as you can."

I got back to the barracks and began rounding up as many soldiers as I could, trained, untrained, anyone. I got them onto trucks and we had set off down the A9 by midday.

*

Sam drove me back to Aviemore and I went up to my office. Enid had got everyone there. They all went quiet as I entered. I think Enid must have told them to shut up for a change. Whatever she had said, it worked.

"Thank you Enid, and thank you all for coming in at such short notice. As you may have heard, the Evangelicals are attacking Topland. They took some outer islands yesterday and are heading for the mainland."

There were murmurs but they managed to stay quiet.

"It seems the Prince thinks he has done a deal with the Clappers. They get some nuclear weapons from the old Trident submarines and they leave us alone. But I suspect they have no intention of leaving us alone. I think they will try and overrun the entire country and by the time they have soldiers on every street and in every village it will be too late for us to act. Our only chance is to fight now."

I had expected a bit of cheering at that point but it seems they did not live in the same '80's movie world that I was brought up in. There was no cheering. Everyone looked pretty scared. Sensible really.

"But," I went on, "there is hope. It will not be just us. Felix here is going back down to the southern gates to see if she can speak to the Wetlanders that have been arriving in their hundreds, if not thousands, get them to help us."

"In return for what?" asked Felix. "The Prince said he wouldn't give us anything."

"I know he did Felix, and I am going to speak to him again and to the Commanders at the Gates. I think I can get you a deal and weapons."

"Gina?" Gina looked up, her rock star swagger momentarily gone. "Gina, I want you to get the message out to as many Scots as you can. Explain the situation, explain we need their help and we need it now."

"That's it? That's the plan?" exclaimed Gina. Which was not unreasonable, though I could have done without it being said out loud and in front of everyone else.

"For the moment, yes. Bring the ones up north who are willing to fight down here and get the ones down south to Buxton. Sort out food, sort out places to stay. I'll get the weapons."

"How? Where are you going to magically get a heap of guns and how are we supposed to know how to fire them?"

"Do you know how to fire a gun?" I asked her.

"Yes, yes I think so."

"Well done. I think most people do. But if anyone doesn't, show them. Like I said, I'll get the guns. Of course, if they have any already, shotguns, rifles, that would be a help." I turned to Jane and Cam. "You two go with Felix and sort out the folk at Buxton. Just get everyone together. Tell them what's happening. Enid will give you stuff to read on the way so you can answer questions."

"But what about the police, the army?" Asked Jane. "If the Prince has surrendered aren't they going to stop us?"

"The Prince has not surrendered. He's come up with a deal. I don't think it's a good deal. I don't think we can trust him or the Happy Clappers. But I don't think the police will mind too much as long as you keep the guns out of sight at least to begin with. Just tell everyone you can what's happening and get people together. I'll get the guns to you. Enid's sorted out transport, now off you go."

Enid waved them out of my office and I sat down. A minute later she was back in.

"This is bonkers." She said as she closed the doors.

"I know. But I have to stop the Evangelicals from thinking they can just march in. Just stop them a couple of days. Did you get hold of the SANITY bunch?"

"Yes. They are on their way. But it's not fast. Their top speed is about a hundred miles an hour. It'll be a day, more like two, before they get here."

"But there's lots of them?"

"A couple of ships. They weren't clear."

"So two days, more maybe?" I asked, "Have you got the keys?"

"Yes." Enid nodded.

This was my plan. If it could be called such.

About ten years ago, during the height of the Two Americas war, both the Evangelists and the Scientologists had started sniffing around the UK, setting up bases in the Wetlands. Soon the Clappers had Wales and I could see that we were not really ready for any kind of defence so I began collecting guns. Not from the old military bases but from a more forgotten source: the public schools. Most had offered some form of Army Corps training, they had gun ranges and they had hundreds of .22 and old World War II .303 rifles, plus thousands of rounds. With a lot of help from the Wetlanders I had found over a hundred of an estimated two hundred armories. These guns, cleaned up and ready, were now lying in various garages and lockups around the country.

Enid pulled out an almost comedy-sized metal ring covered in labelled keys.

"The Keys of Doom. Are you sure you wouldn't just prefer to run to the hills?" Enid asked.

"Are you a Maiden fan?" I asked as I flicked through the keys.

"I was. First album was great. The bass solo in Run to the Hills is what got me hooked."

"Seems reasonable to me." I said when I had finished sorting them out into regional piles. "Let's get tooled up."

Enid took the keys downstairs and handed them over to the various groups of Linux staff going to the different parts of the country. I followed her down and hugged whoever I could.

"Time to raise the fiery cross." I shouted as they drove off. "Poor sods."

I went back inside.

*

"Sam?" We asked the driver. "What are the keys for?"

Sam smiled.

"You'll see Felix."

We were in a car, not the electric Range Rover, just a car, heading south with Jane, Cam and another person we had not met, called Tryn, who Jane knew. We think Tryn was part of the band Jane had claimed to be in. We weren't so sure now about that. We weren't sure about much to do with Jane actually. We never knew where we were with her. Liking us, not liking us, truth, lies. And Cam, what were we supposed to do with Cam? Talk, not talk? In the end we talked a bit with Tryn, who seemed to know a lot about Linux and the state of Topland.

Sometimes we would look at Cam and catch an eye and we would smile and Cam would half smile but then stop in case Jane noticed which only made it more likely that Jane would notice so we stopped looking at her at all.

We couldn't work out why Cam was in the car anyway. Cam as a pretend Northerner should have been sent north but was in the car with us heading south. Did that mean Mint knew Cam was from over the wall like us? Knew that Cam knew us? We could only suppose it did. We were here to work together and get the Wetlanders onside. Did that mean Cam would have to start telling the truth soon?

And then we all stopped talking and just looked out at the countryside as we headed south.

*

I checked the power level on my phone. It should have been working. It wasn't that. There was no signal. Was this Linux's doing? Was she able to track me through my phone and disable it? Cut me off from the Church?

There was a phone box nearby. I tried that. No connection. Was Linux able to turn off any phone I went near? The woman was a witch.

I went into a hotel and asked to try the phone there.

"No, sorry, all lines are down," explained the receptionist. "We're not sure why."

Well I was pretty certain I knew why. This was it. I had to deal with her as soon as possible. I went to a hardware store and bought the most expensive kitchen knife I could find. It came in a decent plastic sheath. I forced it down through the lining of the inside pocket of my jacket. The sheath caught in the lining and I found I could pull the knife out in one smooth motion. I practised it a bit in an alley and then found a cafe near the Linux building and sat by the window and waited.

After an hour or so four cars pulled up, then, a few minutes later, a gang of those Linux children came out including the mutant and Jane. They split up into groups and got into the cars and drove off. I waited to see if Linux would show. But I didn't see her in the crowd.

Around me customers came and went, their chat and the staff banter barely penetrated my thoughts.

"Your phone working mate?" Asked one bearded man to the waiter behind the counter making a coffee.

"No, it's been off all day. Internet's down too."

"Weird, you'd think being this close to the Linux lot you'd get a decent connection."

"Dunno, I've had a few clients saying it's the military or something."

"No! Why? It'll be Linux. She'll have knocked a plug out with a hoover or something."

"Dunno, she's pretty switched on. Comes in here sometimes. Nice."

"Sorry, mate didn't realise you were a fanboy." The bearded man walked out with his coffee.

I got up and went over to the counter.

"Can I have another coffee please."

"Sure Father. Flat white wasn't it?"

"For my sins." I replied. It got a quick laugh.

"So, you know Linux then?" I asked.

"No, I don't know her. But she comes in occasionally, and I get orders for the offices too. But she's OK. Dunno what was bugging him." He said a bit defensively.

"Some people have a problem with women having power."

"S'pose."

"Have you seen her today?" I asked

"Who? Linux? No. Often don't see her for days."

"Doesn't she come into work everyday? I've heard stories about how hard she works."

"Oh, I'm sure she works hard. But no, she doesn't come in very often, doesn't have to, she lives on the top floor. You can see her lights on at night."

"So she could be there now."

"Probably. Not seen her leave today."

"Ah, thank you. Lovely coffee." I went back to my table.

My mission was clear to me now. Linux was too big to take down through any legal means quickly. She was too connected with too many people around her, too many supporters: the Prince, the business elite. Even the children of Topland knew of her or her ideas and ideals. If she were no longer there then who could take over from her? No one that I had heard of in all my investigations into the Linux world.

Cut off it's head and the body would shrivel and die.

I would come back tonight.

First I had to go to church and have my confession heard.

I put a tip on the table and left the cafe.

Chapter 2  
Not an ogre

We weren't able to sleep in the car. Though maybe we were asleep, it was hard to tell, when we closed our eyes all we could see was countryside passing by, and mist and water. Then we would open our eyes: countryside, mist and water.

It was strange to be heading south again. It was like we were slowly heading downhill to the sea, getting closer and closer to the waterline. Though we were often on ferries.

Where the freak was Leicester? People disappeared. We knew that. It happened quite a lot in the Wetlands. They were there, then they weren't. Treetops folk were good about sending off search parties. Sometimes we might find a body, but often not. Others, the Ridgeway folk for instance, there were too many people there to keep a count of everyone.

But where the hell was Leicester? Surely they came down somewhere? You couldn't get stuck up there, could you? Maybe there were there flying beasts we didn't know about? Giant eels of the sky?

Our head banged off the window and we woke up a bit. Sam was still driving. What kept Sam going like this? The others dozed. And farted. Once one person farted it was considered a good time to push one out as well. Things got pretty rancid. Or maybe that was just Cam and us being our disgusting Wetter selves?

"Should be in Buxton in an hour." Sam announced some time later. "Jane and Tryn, I'm dropping you off in Buxton. I'm going to have quick word with the cops there. I think they should be friendly about you spreading the word. Then I'm taking you two on down to the coast, see if we can have a word with the Gates and maybe your Wetter pals too. Then Tryn, I'll be back up to see how you two are getting on, OK?"

"Yes," we all muttered, one way or another.

"Hang on," said Jane suddenly. "Why the fuck is Cam going with Felix? I thought she was coming with me? I thought I was supposed to be looking after her or something?"

"You're from around here though, well Pennines," explained Sam, "and Tryn's kind of known from the Sisters, so Mint thought it would be better if you two worked Buxton."

"But what good's Cam going to be down with Felix? If anything she should be up north raising the clans or whatever."

"I don't know Jane. Mint seems to think Cam might be a help with Felix."

We tried not to look at Cam but couldn't help ourselves. Cam was looking straight ahead, ignoring us.

"What the fuck!" Jane slammed her body against the seat and went quiet.

"So, Cam," we said, "looks like it's us together."

"Yes," agreed Cam, "sure we'll work something out."

And that was it! Cam said nothing else.

After a bit Jane huffed loudly and started talking again.

"Do you remember this place?" asked Jane. Buxton was coming into sight in the distance.

"Not really," we replied, "we were only able to see the sky most of the time. And that cafe place."

"I wonder where the priest is?" Jane asked of no one in particular. "Fucking somebody over I bet."

"I thought Priests weren't allowed to have sex," asked Cam in the funny accent we still weren't used to.

"I don't think that has ever stopped them," said Sam.

We would have rolled a number hours ago but it seemed the wrong time. Now we wished we had.

We got into Buxton and parked outside the police station. We all went for a wander while Sam had a word with the Chief Constable.

It all seemed peaceful in the town. We overheard a few folk talking about the phone lines being down. But they didn't seem to have any idea why. Or care that much.

It was strange walking the streets of a real town. We hadn't managed to get out in Aviemore, and that was a capital. This was a normal town with normal people. The last time we had been here they had been trying to kill us. Only a week ago.

Where was Leicester?

We had no answer to that. A lot of ideas: drowned in the water, crashed on land, captured or killed by... just about anybody.

"Oi!" it was Sam. We walked back to her.

"OK. He seemed OK with it all. Well not OK with it all but he got the message and is going to get organised. Tryn and Jane, you two are staying here. You've got to get the message out and find a way of staying in touch with Mint. You have to let her know what's going on."

Sam opened the boot of the car and handed out a couple of sheets of paper to Jane and Tryn.

"These will tell you what you can do and where you'll find it: guns, ammo, radios, an old couple with pigeons. Yes pigeons, a good way to get messages through when all else fails. But use them sparingly. They don't come back.

"Right," Sam continued, "back into the car with you two, we've got to get to the Gates. I'll be back here as soon as I drop these two off. OK?"

Tryn and Jane nodded. There was a bit of group hugging and then we were off.

"Take care you two," shouted Jane.

"Take care yourself!" we shouted back, "see you soon OK?"

Sam drove out of Buxton. This time we were ready.

"Anyone mind if we skin up back here?"

"Knock yourself out," said Sam. "Just be ready in a couple of hours OK?"

"We'll make it a small one," we glanced at Cam.

"Not that small." Cam said with a smile.

*

"Guns, ammo, petrol, bottles, wire, string, matches, buckets, people," said Tryn reading through the list Sam had left us.

"Fuck me," I said. "Have you seen that film with the mullet man? Swayze? Dawn? Dawn of the Dead?"

"Red Dawn. Yeah, shit, but I get your drift. The kids are going to fight for the right to party. Or something."

"So, what now?" I asked. This all seemed impossibly unlikely but then I was with Tryn and that was cool. And I was doing something in this crazy group with these amazing secrets and we were going to change the world and all of that was kind of crazy fucking shit. But exciting.

"Better go and see the cop. See what he's up to and start to get this sorted." Suggested Tryn.

That seemed like a good place to start, so we went into the cop shop. I thought I'd let Tryn do the talking.

The chief policeman was inside with a group of officers around him. He saw us and waved us over.

"Sir. We should arrest these two. Lock them up and go buy a round of doughnuts. This is crazy." Said one constable as we walke over.

"Yes Constable, it is crazy. And normally I would say you were absolutely right, make mine a strawberry filling. But we live in strange times and have done for many decades and now it's time we sorted things out.

"The information is correct." He continued. "We are being attacked. My brother-in-law's a pigeon fancier and a pal of his out west has sent in a message that, well, everything that that young lady just said is true. The End of the Worlders are attacking and I think we can assume the lines have been cut because, as she said, His Royal Highness has done a deal, sold us out, and if we don't do something right now, we'll be praying all Sunday in church or paying the Thetans and banging on about the Eight Dynamics. Now, I intend to have a long and happy retirement without any of that crazy-arsed Scientology shit in my life or force fed any other Gods for that matter. So this is what we are going to do:

"One. Information. We need to find some kids with motorbikes. Send them out in pairs or threes or whatever and send them down Wincle, Teggs Nose, Blaze Hill, Sparrowpit way, Sheldon and all the way down to Bottomhouse. We have to know where the Happy Clappers and the Scats are, and if and when they are going to reach here.

"Secondly. Defence. These two are off to get some guns. They need a lorry, anyone?"

"My dad's got a flatbed transit?" Said one young constable.

"That'll do, Ladies, George here will help you out. I suggest you get off now. Sooner left, sooner back."

"Is he actually enjoying this?" I asked the policeman George as we left the station.

"Oh fuck aye, I mean yes ma'am. He's been bored nutless for years. He's loving this."

"Three," we heard the Chief say. "Kids, OAPs, where can we put them?"

Then he was out of earshot.

"Right then, follow me." Said George and we headed down a series of streets until we reached a small brick house surrounded by bags of cement, old piping and plasterboard.

"Hang on a sec." The young policeman left us outside the little porch as he went in shouting. "Dad! Dad, I need the transit. What? No. I've..."

And it got a bit garbled then. A few minutes later he was out again with a set of keys. We climbed into the cab of a beaten up truck.

"Where to?" asked George.

Tryn looked down the list.

"A shed in Topley Pike Quarry? Know it?"

"Oh aye. Used to sneak in and swim up there as a kid."

George's dad came out and leaned in through the window.

"George, why the fuck, sorry ladies, does the Chief Constable want to see me in the square. It's a fucking Friday for fuck's sake, sorry ladies."

"It's a Thursday Dad. I don't know, just go along. It's important. Please."

"Oh for fuck's sake, sorry ladies. Alright I'll go but don't you put any more dents in this." He slammed his hand against the bonnet. "She's my livelihood."

"Alright Dad, see you soon."

We drove off.

"I'm not sure I've see a more shagged van than this." Pointed out Tryn. "And I've toured in a few."

George chuckled.

"Aye well, this is his good van. You should see the other."

We drove out of Buxton, up a hill and out of the mist.

"Topley Pike's just up here on the left." Explained George as we neared the top.

And sure enough the side of the hill fell away in a great crater of dug-out stone.

"You swam in that?" I asked. "It looks Baltic?"

"Oh aye a bit brisk to say the least. But, what else is there to do when you're a kid?"

"Fucking anything but that." I said, which made George and Tryn laugh.

The gate to the quarry was unlocked so we pushed it open and drove in. There were a lot of big machines that had once been yellow and looked like giant versions of children's toys after they had been played with for a few years and then forgotten in a sandpit somewhere.

There was a row of sheds, each with a sign over the top of the double doors. One of them, number eight, said Linux Enterprises. We stopped and got out and waited for Tryn to unlock the doors.

George pushed them open and we stepped inside. It was empty.

Tryn bent down and brushed away some dirt at her feet. There was an iron ring in the floor. It looked like it was used to lock the doors from the inside. Tryn gave it a heave and pulled up a solid metal stick of some sort.

"What the fuck is that?" I asked. Tryn walked over to the corner of the lock up and swung the iron bar against the ground. It knocked a chip out of the concrete floor. She swung it again. Another chip. George asked to have a go but Tryn kept on.

"I think there's a pickaxe in the cab." He said after another minute.

"Well? Go and get it." Tryn was breathing heavily. I went out with George and he gave me a crowbar.

"What am I going to do with this?" I asked handling the cold lump of metal.

George shrugged.

"I've no idea what's going on, but she does. So... she's not much of a talker is she?" He replied.

Thinking about it, Tryn was a talker. Maybe George wasn't her type. I thought he looked quite nice in his uniform. For a pig.

We banged away at the floor until suddenly Tryn jumped back.

"Watch out!" She shouted, and the floor, or a section of it cracked and fell down into a dark hole. The lock-up filled with dust.

"Well, I guess your Lady Linux didn't trust us Buxton kids did she?" Said George as we peered down into the hole. There were steps under the rubble. We went down the stairs carefully. Tryn pulled on a bit of string and a light came on.

There was a room the size of the lock up above filled with wooden boxes, long and short.

"Fuck me that's a lot of guns." Said George.

"A lot of very old guns," said Tryn. "But that's better than nothing. It's going to be a few trips."

We got to work loading the truck. Not my kind of work, but still, exciting and all.

*

We had hid in the bushes for a long time. Waiting for the shouts, the shots and death. But nothing happened. Just another quiet night on the shore. But with a bloody knife in our hand and a dead body for company. Strange clobber for a soldier to be wearing in the middle of the night. Like a fancy-dress party or something. Everything bright and shiny. Even in this misty moonlight and rain.

Still nothing.

After an hour or so, the people we had seen a kilometre or so along the shore had driven off and it looked like no one else was coming out of the castle. We slipped down through the long reeds and into the water. It got surprisingly deep quickly. We had thought, what with the road running from the shore to the castle that it was like knee-high or something. But actually this was better. We might not be able to swim as well as Leicester or Felix but we reckoned we could make it to the castle in one breath. Easy. And no moonlit ripples to give us away.

We sank down slowly and then eeled down into the deep.

We felt the rock of the island even before our hands touched it, a change in temperature maybe or a reflection of sound, whatever, we didn't go crashing into it, that was all that counted.

We came up slow, only our hair and eyes above water level, just in case. The castle walls looked tall above us. We had come up just where we had hoped. There was a slight angle here between wall and tower. It made a shadow and would give us a bit of a better grip for the climb.

We looked around. We were out of sight from the army base on the shore and, whatever guards there were on the walls, if any, we couldn't see them, so hopefully they wouldn't see us.

We came out of the water and crawled to the base of the wall. It reminded us of the day we came out of the water at the Gate.

Felix, Cam, Leicester, Stamford, we were the only ones left then, and now it was just us. We knew they thought we were a plonker. A dick-led muscle butt. But we made them laugh. Even when they didn't want to. And we were still together, even when we really fucked them off. Well, we would show them now. We had a plan, a proper plan and it would freaking show them.

We freaking missed them though. When we did something annoying and funny and they would go:

"Oh Brentford." It would make us smile. And them. Dead freaks.

Our hand slid up the wall to a gap where the mortar had washed out between the stones, our left hand found another hold. Then, pulling ourselves up we got a foot in the wall that angled a bit round to us. We were right, it gave just a bit more of a grip and got a bit more of a lift. Our hand went up to another gap and our other foot found a bit of rough cut stone to push up on.

We were on the way up.

The whole climb was done in the dark, feeling our way for grips and holds. All the way up we had to force ourselves to just think about the stone, the cracks and the flakes. Always going for three good points, before moving the fourth. Up and up we went.

But we were not looking down because then we would start thinking about the fall: how long? A second? Two seconds? And then the hit. Death or just back-broken pain for hours?

Damn it we'd stopped. We could feel our hands slipping, not the best grip, don't move fast, get a good foot first, try to wedge between the angles of the two walls, but not so hard that a foot slips away. It was like holding a large ball in one hand, ball down, it was doable but you couldn't force it.

Then our hand felt something different, an overhang, a slate? We moved our hand up a bit, cut stone and then nothing. We brought it down and it reached though the wall! It was the top. Those teethy shaped things at the top of a castle wall. We were able to get a proper grip on the inside ledge. In a second we were though the gap and sitting on the walkway inside the wall.

We sat there shaking and swearing quietly. But we couldn't stay there. We moved over and peered down. Inside the castle it didn't feel so high. There were the inner buildings with some lit windows. We couldn't quite see the gate or any of the guards.

Looking along the wall we were on, we saw how the walkway entered the building, a square tower. We could climb from the wall onto the slates there and work our way round onto the main building's roof. We could see a dark shadow where the tower and main building met. We could hide up there for the day and see what was what, where this Prince lived.

And where he was going to die.

We didn't have much food on us. A bit, in an old plastic bag, nuts and some berries mainly, at least water wouldn't be a problem.

We set off for our hiding place.

*

A cassock may not seem the obvious clothing of choice but I had seen men hurdle wooden fences while wearing them. I also have personal experience in how frightening a man in a cassock is to someone who knows they are guilty.

I had my cassock on, in felt right. It also blurred the lines in the dark, making a less obvious human figure, useful for what I was going to do.

The Linux offices were in the new section of Aviemore, on the more difficult-to-build land. In this case quite a steep slope. It meant that certain sections of the building were built into the hillside. So it was easy for me to make it onto the low roof at the back. I could almost jump onto it from the grass behind. From there I climbed higher and higher, up drainpipes, scrambling over the low walls around flat roofs, until I stood above Linux's apartment.

Around me Aviemore glowed in the dark. Car headlights swung round corners, the street lamps lighting major roads. But it was peaceful up here, quiet, apart from the slight crunch of the gravelled felt roof as I made my way across.

There was an overhang of slates on the roof here, the windows of the top floor were inset with short wooden columns at intervals on the outside edge of a wide ledge that ran round the building. It meant windows could be opened with less fear of the near incessant rain pouring in. I lowered myself down the slates feeling for a wooden column with my feet and then slid down and caught the column with my hand and pulled myself over the void of the four stories below me and onto the ledge.

It was, as I had guessed either the kitchen or utility room at the back of the building. But the lights were off so I could not be sure.

I tried the first window. It wouldn't open. So I moved along the ledge trying each window in turn.

As I got to the corner, a light came on behind me, in the window I had taken to to be the kitchen. I looked round the corner. Ahead of me was the shorter side of the building. I could see the cafe I had spent the morning in, below, across the street.

It sounded like supper was being prepared in the kitchen so I crept forwards trying the windows on this side. One of them was ajar and I was able to pull it open some more but not enough for me to fit through. There was an anti-fall lock on the window.

I had to swivel my body round on the ledge so that I was facing the window feet first and braced myself against one of the wooden columns before applying pressure on the window.

A kick would have been more effective perhaps but that could have been heard. By gently applying more pressure I hoped to force the window open without any sharp noises.

I was counting on cheap metal. I considered whether Saint Polycarp of Smyrna, patron saint of dysentery would be the best saint to pray for: good at opening things?

It wasn't working. In the end I began kicking the semi-opened window. At least my Doctor Martens deadened the sound. Again I built up the force with each kick. I tried to keep the kicks in time to make it sound more machine-like than human.

The rivet holding the bar popped out with a dull thud like a paperback book being dropped on a carpeted floor.

I slipped through the window, closing it as best I could behind me, and slid under a bed. I guessed that this was a spare room, there were no personal effects beyond some paintings and photographs on the wall.

I listened as someone walked up the passageway and opened each door, turned on the light for a few seconds, and then turned off the light and moved on to the next room.

The door opened and the light came on. I held my breath. I didn't even move my head to see what was going on. There were no steps. After a second I heard a voice say:

"No, nothing. Maybe it was downstairs. Do you want me to go down." It wasn't Linux. It was that other woman, older, the secretary? I hadn't planned on there being two people up here. Probably lovers, lesbians. That was fine by me. Two for one.

"No, come on let's eat. It sounded more like it was outside anyway. There's a couple of restaurants over the way, they're always banging about in their bins." That was Linux. It was good to know she was here for sure.

I got out from under the bed and stood up in the dark. I unwound my wire-strung fifteen decade rosary from around my waist and wrapped it around my hand.

I would let them have their last meal. I wasn't an ogre.

Chapter 3  
The Winter Bomber

It was the motorbike that caught my attention first.

"How many motorbikes is that?" I asked the driver. We were in the lead truck.

"Sorry Ma'am?"

"How many motorbikes have passed us going the other way in the last ten minutes?"

"Sorry Ma'am, I wasn't counting."

Another one went by. This time the rider made some sort of hand signal as they past us.

Then came the faster cars, a BMW filled with luggage, an old Jag. We drove on and more and more cars came the other way.

When we reached the next long straight I asked the driver to block the road: it would give the drivers enough time to stop.

The driver of the front car was already out of their Nissan as I climbed down from the cab.

"Don't start blocking the road for fuck's sake." He shouted.

"What's happening, Sir?" I asked. "Where are you all headed?"

"We're not headed anywhere," he explained, "just away from them."

He pointed down the road.

"And who are they?"

"Those bloody Evangelicals. Don't you know? Isn't that why you're here?"

"Did you see them?"

"No. We got packed up and out of there as soon as we heard the Clappers were coming."

"But who told you?" I asked.

"One of my managers said they saw holy ships in Loch Long last night, almost into the Trossachs already."

"And where are you from?"

"I've got a couple of fish farms, Falls of Dochart and Arrivain."

"Any news from Tyndrum?"

"The Trident base? No, but we drove past, all looked normal this morning, from what we saw."

"OK, thanks, we'll be out of your way."

"Are you going to get rid of them?" Asked his wife through the car window. "I don't want our kids being brought up in some cult."

"Don't worry, we'll sort this." I said with fake confidence. I really wasn't sure. But if Tyndrum hadn't been taken yet there was still time. With luck.

We moved the truck out the way. A queue of cars had built up during the short time we had blocked the road, but they were fairly good natured about it. There were a lot of encouraging shouts and honking of horns as they drove past.

We set off again.

The radio worked between the trucks but beyond that the interference was blocking any signal from the base up ahead.

We took the turning off the A96 after Roughburn and headed south which was where the old roads gave up. The only route, that we had used for the past ten years, was the West Coast rail line past Fersit and along the banks of Lock Trelg, on to Moor of Rannoch and down to old Allacher where we were able to move over to the aptly named Old Military Road and then finally the A82 to Tyndrum and beyond that, the new Trident base.

But before we got there I asked the driver to take us on to Upper Tyndrum. We got out at the railway station and I took a couple of soldiers up to the ridge to look down at the base.

We were too late.

Two patrol boats, that certainly were not ours, were moored close to the old submarines. The boats looked new, almost brand new, fresh out of some western american naval yard, and they were heavily armed.

Through the binoculars I could see signs of fighting, blackened marks on the concrete where, at a guess, grenades had gone off and smaller darker patches that could only be blood. I couldn't see any of my women and men.

The Evangelicals didn't wear uniforms it seemed. Just normal everyday clothes. Though some, and they seemed to be behaving like officers, giving orders and pointing, wore dark suits.

There would still be crews on the Clapper ships, probably eight or ten, and I could count thirty or so around the docks and on top of the three subs. Some were wounded and were bandaged up.

And it looked like they had not got into the submarines themselves. I felt a surge of pride when I realised that though my crews had lost the fight on the docks they had not lost the submarines, and were probably holed up inside. That meant the missiles were still in our hands.

But I was not sure how long they would last. It might take a few hours but a decent plasma cutter could make a hole in a ship and there were plasma cutters to be found on the base.

"Anyone got a spare white shirt on them?" I asked the Sergeant. In a few minutes he came back with one.

"Right. I'm going down there. Hopefully they won't shoot me on the spot. This is supposed to be a peaceful handover." I explained. "I want you to get into position along the railway line here. Split into two groups. First group: take out those patrol boats, Seconds group: shoot every last Clapper on the docks. When I give the signal, open fire."

"Why do you have to go down there Ma'am?" Asked the Sergeant.

"You see that man in the suit by the bow of Vanguard?" I explained. "He seems to be in charge. But in a few minutes I want him dead. I just want to ask him some questions first."

"Yes Ma'am."

"Anyone got a cigarette?" I asked as my soldiers got ready.

"Is that the sign? You lighting a cigarette?" Asked the Sergeant. "Seems a bit obvious, maybe?"

"What do you suggest Sergeant?"

"Cap off, hand through the hair?" Said a soldier, one of a few listening in to our conversation.

"OK, if you prefer," I said, "I gave up smoking a long time ago. Not really a submariners thing."

"Yes Ma'am."

"OK, well, ready?"

The Sergeant nodded.

"Stand very still Ma'am. I'll take who's ever nearest you."

"You do that Sergeant."

We went back to the trucks. The Sergeant had got a car from the village. I didn't want it to look like I had come with a lot of troops. A long stick had been duct-taped to the side of the passenger door with the white shirt flapping from the top.

I drove back down to Tyndrum and took the road to the base. I didn't drive fast, I wanted to give them time to decide not to shoot me.

The Evangelicals had guards at the gate. I slowed down to a halt and was told, at gun point, to get out of the car.

"Colme, Commander of this Trident base. I demand to speak to whoever is in charge here."

They took my Glock from its holster and marched me to the docks.

The man I had spotted earlier watched me approach. I wasn't really able to tell what age he was. He had fantastically smooth skin, almost plastic, and teeth, he smiled as I approached, so white they glowed.

"Commander, so good to meet you, The Winter Bomber herself, a true Armageddonite, what an honour." He stepped forward and offered me his hand. I shook it. "Reverend Brandon Dicks, should I salute you? I feel I should."

"That's quite alright Mr Dicks." I replied. "Tell me, I hope none of my men or women have been hurt. I am told this is to be a peaceful exchange so I see no need for weapons."

"Ah, well," said the Reverend, "there did seem to be some misunderstanding. I suspect your orders had failed to get through to the men here I am afraid. We came in peace but they just started shooting. But don't worry, I don't think many were hurt."

"I see," I said trying not to look at the rather obvious blood stains on the ground. "But you can't expect to transport the missiles on those."

I nodded towards the modern but not large patrol boats.

"No, no, Commander, quite right. We are just the advanced party, you might say, help make sure the transition goes smoothly. We have a ship on its way. Should be here in the next couple of hours."

"Excellent, excellent," I said, "well, you do seem to have everything under control."

"Yes Commander, I think we do. Though I am very grateful for the visit. Perhaps I could offer you a refreshment before you leave?"

"Oh dear," I said.

"What?" He asked, his concern not really making it to his eyes, which were hard and dark.

"Well I was going to say the same thing."

"What same thing?"

"That maybe you and your men would like a refreshment before you leave."

"We're not leaving quite yet." He said with a smile. We both watched a plasma cutter being wheeled out from one of the naval hangers. "We still have work to do."

"Oh, that's a shame, quite exasperating really." I did feel I was hamming it up a bit. A lot. All those old black and white movies of British sangfroid were having an affect on me. "You see I have to order you to leave now."

"Order me? You want to order me to leave?" He looked me in the eye as I slowly took my hat off, rubbed my forehead on my arm, pushed my hand through my hair and watched the black vapour trails of the rocket grenades as they raced across the water and exploded against the two patrol boats.

The Evangelical was still turning round when the top of his head was removed by a particularly good shot by my Sergeant. I stood very still as the bullets rained down around me.

None of the Happy Clappers survived the first volley, none got a shot off at me. Within seconds it was over. The patrol boats were in flames. Then they both exploded and sank.

I took a breath, put my cap back on and rescued my pistol from the dead guard.

I marched over to Vanguard and tapped a bit of Morse Code on the forward hatch: 7-2-c (well done, sort of). There was the familiar sound of the locking wheel being turned and my XO, Bailey, stuck his hand out.

"It's you Ma'am," he said. I pulled him up.

"Yes Bailey it is. Looks like you were in a bit of a tight spot."

"Didn't get much of a warning Ma'am."

"I see that. What're the casualties?"

"Six dead, four wounded, two not going to make it."

"Well, I'll see to them in a minute. In the mean time though we have to decide what to do. They've got reinforcements coming, in an hour or so."

"Do you know what they want?" Bailey was out of the submarine now and we were standing on the foredeck. The rest of my troop had come down the hill in the trucks though the Sergeant had left a handful up there to keep lookout.

"They want the missiles. I suppose they plan to take over Scotland or somesuch nonsense. Sadly it's up to us to stop them."

"Are we saving the world Ma'am?"

"Looks like it," I said with a sigh, "again."

*

"Yes Tissington," said Sam in answer to our question.

We thought as much. Where else would we be going? Actually, we recognised the hill now as we drove down it, the one where we had hitched a ride on the back of the truck, the hill we first met Jane. And here we were back again. We wondered where that crazy Priest was. And where the hell was Leicester?

We drove down the hill into town and through to the docks. It seemed Sam wasn't here to talk to the police this time: it was the military.

Sam asked us to follow and we were barely inside the local army headquarters before a tall soldier came bounding down the stairs shouting.

"No no no no no, you can't come in here. You're not allowed in here. You shouldn't even be here. You can't just come in here."

Sam didn't move.

"Hi John, how's it going?"

"Captain do you want me to remove them." A corporal had moved from behind the desk and was eyeing us with a certain amount of pleasure.

But the Captain calmed down and let out a sigh.

"No, Corporal, just pretend you haven't seen them, there's a good chap." The Captain waved us in. "Two minutes, that's all you've got. Bloody Linux, how the hell did she get to hear so fast. We've only known for sure for a couple of hours and you're here already. But I suppose there's a plan. That's better than we've got. I've heard nothing."

He took us up to an office and closed the door.

"So, it's Sam isn't it? I got Linux's message." He started to shake hands. "We haven't been introduced, I am Captain Cronin and you two are?"

"They're Wetters," said Sam.

The Captain almost withdraw the hand but didn't quite. We both shook it.

"So," said Sam, "the Clappers are after the nukes, the Prince has sold us out and is handing them over. Mint doesn't think they'll stop there. She's got a kind of a plan."

"A kind of a plan? That's not sounding great, but again it's better than what we have," said Cronin. "So, what is it?"

"Most of our army has never been in a fight," explained Sam, "and they've been told not to fight by the Prince."

Cronin nodded. "So far, so screwed."

"Yes, but, out there," Sam pointed towards the sea, "out there are hundreds, if not thousands of Wetlanders, who have tried to live peacefully but have had to fight to survive every day of their lives. They could help us get rid of the Claps."

"And in return?" asked the Captain.

"In return they want some land and some peace and some safety."

"And this land is coming from?"

"Details, but there's a lot, an awful lot, of unused and underused land. Something could be done."

"People do like their grouse driven. But anyway, are they armed?" asked Cronin.

"We're going to have to arm them a bit better."

"Ha!" laughed Cronin, "you must be joking! You think I'm going to open up one of our armouries and give the Wetters a bunch of high tech weaponry. If they are anything like as fierce as you say what's to stop them grabbing everything. Like the Claps but dirtier?"

"Excuse me," we butted in, "we're not freak'n End of the World Happy freak'n Clappers. Like most normal folk we just want a bit of peace and quiet to work, earn, learn, create, grow, eat, sleep and laugh. All we need is a bit of land, and to be honest there is a lot here just sitting doing bollock all, a bit of land, some space to live that isn't getting attacked by that knobend Trumps, or raided by Clappers or molested by Priests. I know the last lot are unstopppable, we'll just have to live with that, but for freak's sake, we're not the enemy here."

"I believe you are possibly a mutant though, it's not uncommon amongst Wetlanders."

"And you're not! We're all mutants, throwing up little oddities to see if it passes the Darwin test of usefulness. Sure some of us've got web toes." Everyone was looking at us with raised eyebrows. "Oh for freak's sake, yes we happen to have two brains, you've probably got two balls, it's not unheard of you know for nature to double up on shit just for the hell of it."

"Well," Cronin tried to interrupt us again.

"No! Let us in, let our families in. You've shut them out there for freak knows how long, two generations, outside the wall, why? Because they couldn't buy their way in. You've nuked them, shot them and chased them away, abandoned them for what? Nothing! To count your pennies in the dark, it's pathetic. Let us in. We'll fight these craphead Evangelicals and we'll save your land for you. Let us in, give us some guns. Just do it now before it's too late."

Captain Cronin looked at us. A soldier popped round the door.

"Everything all right here Sir?" Cronin waved him away.

"So," the Captain said, finally, "where are these guns coming from, I thought we had all the guns?"

"Ah," said Sam. "Lady Linux has been fishing them up for some time now. They're stashed away in handy places waiting for something like this."

"And you can get them quickly?"

"In this case yes, very quickly, they're here in Tissington."

"Of course they are," Cronin signed, finally smiling. "Well, you'd better go out and have a chat with your Wetlander friends and we'll see you on the docks soon I suppose."

The Captain called for the Corporal to show Cam and us the way. Sam and the Captain headed off to find the guns.

"Good speech," said Cam.

"Oh," we paused, "You're talking to us now?"

"Sorry. It's all been pretty weird this last week. I've... we've no idea what the freak is going on. We've just been kind of doing what we were told."

"Same here. This place is crazy. It's exactly like we thought it was and yet not. What happened to you?"

"After the gate?"

Cam told us of being chased and then taking a chance knocking on a farm door. The farmers had taken Cam in and had passed Cam on to another house that was sympathetic to Wetlanders and then onwards, slowly being moved north. Then, somehow, word had got to Linux and Mint and Cam had met.

"Where's Leicester?" asked Cam, as we followed the Corporal across the docks and down to a small military boat.

"Don't you start. We've no idea. Last saw Leicester flying off."

"Oh."

"Yes, oh."

We climbed down to the waiting motorboat and were soon bouncing across the waves out of Tissington Harbour. The boom was raised allowing us out into the open waters beyond.

We were shocked by what we saw.

It looked like every Wetlander had sailed north and was now bobbing on one giant connected raft of boats about a kilometre outside the harbour. Through the mist we could make out all sizes of ships, boats and rafts tied together. There were trees and vegetables, pigs, cats and dogs, and children playing, with the very old watching over them.

We couldn't see any parents or young adults but we realised that they were probably on the south side of this floating island, armed with whatever weapons they had, keeping an eye out for the Clappers.

We slowed down and, turning gently, came up along side one of the larger rafts. We skipped out of the boat followed by the Corporal. Almost immediately children crowded round and a slightly older kid went off to fetch 'Betty'.

A few minutes later Betty arrived. Betty did not look quite as scary as Alne but you could see that she was a force and in charge of something similar to Treetops or larger, probably larger.

"Who are you?" Betty demanded, "what you doing here with your fancy clothes?"

"Hi Betty, we're Wetlanders. We were sent a week ago by Alne." No sign of recognition. "Alne? Treetops? The Ridgeway? White Horse?"

"Oh aye, we know Uffington and the likes."

"Exactly, we were sent north, here, to see if we could get help from the Toplanders. Alne may have known the Clappers were going to attack, we're not sure. But we were sent North and we got to Aviemore."

Betty looked unimpressed.

"Bill and Ben here?" asked Cam.

"Bill? And Ben?" At last Betty's face lightened slightly. "Oh, we know them. How do you know them then?"

"We're from Treetops, Uffington, been there all our lives 'til now."

"We've got drunk at the Smithy," added Cam.

"And bought beer for Frankly to keep peddling."

"OK OK so maybe you do know Bill and Ben," admitted Betty, laughing. "Maybe you do, but what you doing here. What's the soldier doing here?"

Betty nodded to the Corporal who was having a cigarette and looking out to sea, basically trying to ignore us.

"Is there a Council sort of thing here? Some sort of group we can speak to. We've maybe got a deal to get us all into Toplands."

Betty went silent and looked at us intently. There were little spots of water in the edges of the eyes.

"Freak sake! You could've mentioned that sooner instead of standing here slapping our gums with not a care. Wantage!" Betty shouted. "Go and find Ben, by the big windmills. Hungerford, follow Wantage and tell them, what're your names?"

"Felix."

"And Cam."

"Tell them Felix and Cam are here and we've got to get a council together.

"We don't really have a Council. It's not really got that organised. Mainly just staying together and fighting." Betty explained. "Come this way."

Betty turned and headed towards the centre of the giant raft.

Folk called out to Betty as we passed. Generally along the lines of: who are your rich pals, royalty or tourists? Depending on the humour. Betty waved them away. The Corporal followed behind not saying anything and pretending everything seen was normal.

We must have crossed twenty or thirty boats and rafts before we saw the windmills up ahead.

"Isn't that one from the Smithy?" Cam asked us.

"Looks it doesn't it?"

And then we scrambled onto a bigger raft than normal and for the first time in a week we started to feel a little bit of home. This had definite signs of Bill and Ben. We could see part of their greenhouse structure, their windmill and a lot of the equipment that we had played with and poked over the years, from the darker corners of the Smithy. It was mainly stuff that looked like weapons: a tennis ball machine, a hand cranked bottlng plant, a sort of huge crossbow the length and width of an adult.

"Freak's sake look at you two." It was Ben, coming out of a canvas roofed hut. "Don't believe it. Talk about glad rags."

"So you know these two then?" Asked Betty.

"Oh aye. Bunch of losers but likeable in their way." Ben gave us a hug.

"Thanks," we said but we returned the hug. "Where's Bill?"

"Ah," said Ben. "Bill's not here anymore."

"So where is Bill?" Asked Cam with a smile that died. "Oh."

We looked at Ben in silence. Ben shrugged shoulders.

No one was sure what to say.

"You could have told me we had two brains!" We blurted out.

"Ha!" Burst Ben.

"What?" Asked Cam and Betty together.

"Oh, Jane never tell you that? Yeah, we've got two brains." Betty and Cam and the Corporal stared at our head.

"They aren't both in there. One's here." We slapped our chest.

"That's lucky," said Ben a bit croakily. "We always thought it was in your arse."

"Aye," said Cam. "You do talk a lot of shite."

We smiled as everyone laughed. Even, it seemed, the Corporal, who was trying to light a wobbling cigarette.

"Come into the hut," Ben pulled back the canvas of the tent, "we are getting the others together."

"Alne?" we asked as we ducked inside.

"Um..." said Ben.

There were Bill and Ben's funny plastic bottled water lights in the ceiling, some music playing in the corner and a mild smell of grass. It was good to be home.

"Frankly?" asked Cam.

"Of course," Ben nodded to one side. There was a sound of peddling. "Couldn't leave Frankly behind."

"Now, no, not now, let's wait 'til everyone gets here, then tell us what the freak has been going on."

We sat down on rugs and drank some tea and waited. The Corporal sat in the corner.

Slowly, folk, mainly older, came into the hut, shook Ben's hand or offered a hug, helped themselves to a mug of tea and sat down facing us. Eventually there were about a dozen of them, whispering to each other and staring at us.

"Hang on," said one of them pointing at us. "Felix Felix?"

"Yes," said Ben patiently, "the Felix from Treetops, one of Alne's lot."

There was a certain amount of Oh-ing at that point. Though we noticed that though some were revelationary Ohs, others were more in sympathy, almost Ahs.

"Where is Alne?" we asked again. "is Alne coming?"

There were obvious glances between them now.

"Is Alne dead?" asked Cam. Still no one said anything. It was left to Ben.

"Sorry you two but Treetops was attacked the morning after you left. They killed just about everybody. Only a couple of kids escaped," explained Ben, "sorry."

"Was it Trumps?" We asked. Wishing it had been more than shit that I had shoved into Trumps' mouth that day.

"Well, yes it was," answered Ben, "at first anyway, but the Evangelicals followed them and chased Trumps away and then finished the job. They searched the whole camp looking for you lot, killed everyone they found."

"Fucking wank shit fuck Trumps." Despite it all, it made us smile to hear Cam swear like a Toplander.

There was more silence until Ben asked if everyone wanted more tea. We all said yes, including the Corporal.

Then we explained what Mint was hoping for, namely: allowing the Wetlanders in, arming them and getting them to help Topland fight the Evangelicals and at the end of the day repay us with land within Topland. It wasn't quite what Alne had hoped for but it was surprisingly close.

There was one question they all asked, again and again in different ways: can we trust Mint? Can we trust Topland?

In the end we all turned round and asked the Corporal in the corner.

"What do you think?"

The Corporal stared into a cooling mug of tea for a time and then looked up.

"I wouldn't trust our Prince as far as I can shit. But Lady Linux isn't like the rest of the politicians and business folk in Aviemore. She seems honest and like she's trying to do what's best for us. Over the years we've all heard stuff about her. She's brought us electricity and the internet, the phones, she's got everything working while the rest of them have sat about doing fuck all or tried to make the most money they could and screw the rest of us. So, yeah, she's OK. But whether she can give you the promised land. I don't know."

There was muttering among the Councillors at that.

"But," the Corporal continued, "but, at the end of the day, all this is happening because our army can't fight off those crazy armageddonists. We need you. And when this is over, and if we win, you'll be in Topland with a lot of guns. So you'll have us by the balls so to speak anyway."

"And that doesn't bother you?" Asked Ben.

"Me Dad took me and my brother camping in the Pennines, just before the Wall went up and those Tridents hit. We had family left behind. A lot of us did. We tried to forget about them, about you lot. But it was always there wasn't it? Knowing we abandoned you. So, yeah," he went on, "fucking take it if they don't give it to you."

Well that kind of shocked us all a bit.

"More tea?" asked Ben.

So we had more tea and talked some more.

At the end of it, it was agreed: the Wetlanders would help Topland.

We all hugged each other, some were crying, others looked scared. They were going to have to explain to their clans what was happening and what it would cost.

We got back into the boat with the Corporal, having agreed to send a message back to the raft after we had had another word with Captain Cronin. But, hopefully, the next morning the Wetlanders would be allowed ashore in Topland. At last. Just as Alne had hoped.

Though she would never see it.

*

We may not have been able to hold our breath as long as Felix, let alone Leicester, but we had other skills.

For instance: when a building, especially a shop, was locked, barred and bolted, there weren't many ways of getting into a building. But we had a way.

Once you got the knack of it and you had a good long blade, it was quite easy to get a knife under a roof tile and flick it up off its nail or clip or whatever. We could clear a space in a couple of dives, depending on how deep you had to go. Then you had to cut your way through the next layer. If you were unlucky it was soggy plywood or chipboard, but sometimes it was just a bit of plastic sheeting.

Or on really old buildings it was nothing at all. This castle roof was like that: thick old stone slates, that had a habit of snapping rather loudly, which we then had to tuck under another section of roof slate to stop them sliding off the roof onto the ground below.

We had tried to listen to Alnes music during the night but had found, expecially lately, that it actually made us more angry, the daydreams more vivid, the violence more extreme. It turned these rather pretty songs into furious anthems. We guessed this was not exactly the result Alne had been hoping for to help our mood swings.

Then we had slept for quite a long time and been woken by the sound of a bell ringing noisily in some room below us. The sun had risen, we had reckoned it was around eight thirty in the morning?

We nibbled the last of our seeds and considered our plan. It was brief but we liked things simple: get in, kill the Prince, kill anybody else, escape, see what happened next. We thought it was the best we could do, considering how many of our friends had died trying to get here. This Prince was pretty well to blame for everything, so there, that was the plan.

We began flicking up the slates and saw, very soon, that the roof opened into a large attic filled with what would have been Wetland treasure not so long ago but was of no use to us now. After about an hour we had the gap big enough to slip through and drop cat-like to the floor. We could imagine Felix snorting at the cat-like reference, but we liked it and there was no one else now to comment. Felix could move anywhere without a sound, we were always a bit clumsy in comparison. But, you know, they were cool, and we weren't, at all to be honest, so they teased us but they looked out for us too. We were friends.

So we crouched there listening to see if there was any reaction to our cat-like landing. We couldn't hear anything.

We waited for our eyes to adjust to the dark and then started looking for a route down. That took quite a long time as we were looking for a section of floor to lift when actually it was a door, like a child's door, in the wall. Beyond it were narrow little steps that went down.

The first step creaked, as did the second. We tried our foot on the third step, we hoped it would have more support. It was silent until we put our full weight on it, then it was even noisier than the first two.

We gave up worrying and just went down as quickly and quietly as we could.

There was still no response from inside the castle. Maybe nobody could hear us?

We got to the bottom of the stairs and pushed against the door gently. It didn't move. Or rather it didn't feel locked, it felt as if something large was hard up against the door, like furniture or something?

We pushed more and more and could feel whatever it was starting to slide across a stone floor. Luckily it wasn't making any noise at all until the door flew open and we fell through in time to see a large dresser fall over, down some steps and disappear round the corner of a large spiral staircase. We listened in horror as it hit every step on the way down until with a loud crunch it reached the bottom. There was silence followed a second or two later by what sounded like a vase or a really big glass thing shattering on the floor.

We closed the little staircase door, hoping that that might put someone off looking in the attic and discovering our hole in the roof, at least for a minute or two. We tiptoed downstairs to the next floor.

There was a short passageway, with a couple of doors on one side.

"Nigel! Nigel!" Shouted a loud, fat voice that was used to giving orders. "What the hell is going on out there? You know I don't like to be disturbed until at least ten. It's barely nine. Now fuck off and move your furniture when I'm not bloody here to witness it."

It came from the door at the end.

We tried the first door, it was locked and there was the sound of running water from within.

We tried the second door. It opened so we stepped inside.

"Look here Nigel," sadi a man, it had to be the Prince, who was large and wearing a dressing gown, probably naked underneath, "who the hell are you?"

The Prince reached out to a bit of cloth dangling down against a wall, probably an alarm bell. We pulled out our knife and ran towards the Prince. He yelped and ran behind a desk.

"What do you want?" the Prince asked.

Now, we have watched many films over the years, mainly at The Smithy, but elsewhere too, Bill and Ben were not the only folk with electricity and screens. So we had prepared for this. We had talked it through with ourselves a lot on the roof.

"Well," we began, "we want to help you."

"Help me? Help me how?" The Prince was eyeing our knife nervously. It was big, bigger than Felix's, with a mean looking twist to it. There were three of them sheathed in the scabbard but we ate with the two tiny ones. Our Gran once told us it was called a kukri, been in the family for years.

"This knife here," we started the routine.

"It's a kukri. What's a paki like you doing here? Why are you in my room?"

We weren't really sure what the Prince had just said, so we ignored it.

"It's called Love," we explained with a smile.

"What? Are you mad? You can't burst in here waving a knife around and start lecturing me about love. Go away you silly boy, or I'll have you arrested and hung."

That was better. We were glad he had missed the point. It made the punchline better.

"Ever heard of Jackie DeShannon?" We asked.

"You what? Jackie? What? Just... What?" The Prince looked suitably confused now.

"Good song. Great lyrics. But yes, we did think that maybe you hadn't listened to the words. You should have."

"Why?" the Prince seemed to stand a little taller now.

"We have this feeling that maybe you've been looking down on us."

"Certainly likely," agreed the Prince. "Look at you. Are you a Wetter?"

We ignored that too.

"So, we're going to help you."

"Help me how? I don't need your help." The Prince kept glancing down at his desk. A move was imminent we reckoned.

"Oh you do," we went on, "we're going to Put A Little Love In Your Heart."

The Prince pulled open a drawer and put a hand in. We didn't have time to close the gap between us so we threw the kukri, just as we had practised many many times over the years. It went into his chest.

The Prince pulled out a gun and fired as we ran at him. We jumped over the desk and knocked him to the floor. We pulled the knife out and with both hands buried it deep in his chest.

We sat there on the Prince for some time, just to make sure, but there was no more noise or movement. We must have got his heart after all.

We rolled off the body and onto our back. Breathing was difficult. We raised our arm and saw there was blood all over it. We touched the side of our chest and felt the bullet hole. Which was odd. Had we missed something?

And then the Prince was standing over us. He was bleeding from the cut in his chest where our kukri had hit him but...

We remembered now, the dive across the desk hadn't gone quite as we had thought. The kukri had not gone in deep, the Prince had got a second shot off and we had fallen together onto the ground. Had the rest been been a dream then?

"Clever to break in in the morning, when no one's about. Who told you? Who put you up to this?

We smiled. The fat freak was still looking down on us and would never see what was coming.

Then we died.

*

"And that was a diet?" I asked Enid.

"It certainly was." Enid replied, trying hard to keep the smugness out of her voice.

"It had potato?"

"I know!" she crowed. "But seems potato doesn't bloat me."

"You do look better. I mean you didn't look bad in the first place." I was digging the hole. "Do you feel different?"

"I do. It's weird how you don't notice the bloat until you don't have it anymore. And then you feel sort of tight. It's hard to describe. I feel I'm taking up less space and ever so slightly leopardy?"

"Leopardy?"

"Yes, kind of lithe. Not a swing to my step but a..."

"Cattiness?" I interrupted.

"Not a word I would use," said Enid laughing as she started doing the washing up. Never one for a washing machine. I watched her pour the old washing-up water over the pots and pans in the second sink, stacked in a russian doll way so the water cascaded down into each of the pots in turn. She filled the basin with new water and got to washing the glasses, then the plates and cutlery and then the pots. It was, somehow, all over in minutes. I tried to work out the water efficiency of it all but gave up. Life was too short.

We settled down on the sofa, me with rather a large brandy, Enid with another glass of red wine.

"You going home tonight?" I asked.

"No. Don't think so. Could be our last. There's a war on." She was smiling but I could hear all sorts in her voice.

"Seems like a normal night doesn't it?" I got up and wandered over to the window. I was going to have a cigarette! Not had one in a long time. And a rarity at that: Turkish Ovals. Filter-less and flat, you had to tap them before putting them in your mouth. I pulled out my old petrol lighter. It all added to the occasion. Reminded me of my student days.

"I remember I used to think it would be a good idea to ban ex-public school kids from awards. Do you remember the BAFTAS? Things like that. Being an MP. They were already advantaged, they shouldn't get anything else handed to them. I thought it might kill off the private schools in the end."

Enid didn't reply.

Aviemore was laid out in all its nocturnal glory. I liked it. It wasn't Edinburgh. Or Glasgow, my university town. Which made me snort. Even now, I thought of Glasgow University as the Scottish Uni and Edinburgh as the English one. Why? Funny how certain views lay undisturbed until years, decades later when you discovered that they were really a bit off, a bit embarrassing to have held. Even if true.

I heard Enid spill her glass of wine and turned to scold her - these were white carpets! And there was wine on the sofa too. But the dark shadow that stood up slowly behind the chair was in fact that Priest, Father? Father Fuck Knew. I watched as he wiped his knife on a handkerchief he had pulled out of a sleeve of his cassock. Looking back down at Enid I realised that her throat was cut and some sort of rosary was wrapped round her neck. The growing red stain was blood mixing into wine. A miracle!

I took a large sip of brandy trying very hard not to let my hand shake. I wasn't going to say anything. Let this fucker talk. Priests always loved to sound off about shit. Especially when they think they are doing something for their Gods. So I looked him in the eye and wondered how this was going to go. Run? A chase? Talking and torture? Talking would be torture.

His blade was clean but he was still wiping it, smiling at me, still behind the sofa. Trying to scare me.

I took the last of the brandy, put my glass down and with lighter in one hand and cigarette in the other walked towards him, stopping at Enid's feet. They still lay together smartly, as if in a business meeting. She always held herself well, even sitting down. Even dead.

I put the cigarette to my lips, put the lighter up and, with the best raised eyebrow I could manage in the circumstances, blew the brandy out into his face. I sparked my lighter under the spray and it lit up on the way.

I bolted out the room as the Priest slapped his flaming face and hair. It smelled of christmas.

I ran down the hall and out the front door slamming it behind me. Damn I didn't have my keys. I looked down: my shoes had Enid's blood on the soles. I kicked them off. I didn't want to leave a trail.

Lift or stairs? I pressed the lift button and ran down the stairs. On the next floor I heard my front door open.

"Witch!" He screamed down the stairwell. I pushed open the door onto the second floor offices but ran quietly down the next flight of steps, keeping close to the wall. I wasn't sure if he could see my feet or not. I could hear him pounding down the stairs above me.

I heard him stop running so I stopped too. He was deciding whether I had gone into the offices on that floor. But in a second he was moving on down the stairs again.

I doubted I could unlock the front door quick enough to get out before he reached me, so on the first floor I banged open the office doors noisily and went in. I ran to the end of the room, past the twenty odd office cubicles, pushed open the far door and then ducked back behind the desks and tiptoed towards the landing door.

The Priest burst into the office just in time for him to see the far door close. He ran over but stopped at the door.

Fuck fuck fuck. Why had he stopped? The wee shite. Go on, go through. No, he was looking through the little safety glass window and could see it was dark. What? He thought I was going to attack him?

His head was pretty sore looking. Quite a patch of hair was missing and the skin looked red.

I watched him though a little gap created by lining up two different cubicles. He looked round and I was careful not to move. He pushed the door open with his foot. Nothing happened. He put his arm against the door and pushed it open more. Still nothing happened so he took another look round the room behind him. He saw a light switch and turned it on. The office beyond lit up.

I realised now how he got in. He must have forced open a window in the spare room upstairs, back in the flat. The flat door was locked from the inside. So that noise we had heard must have been him breaking in. If I could get back up there, I could maybe wedge the bedroom door shut and climb out the same window. Then presumably get up onto the roof and along the top of the building to the back where it met the hillside and escape.

My offices were not as secure as I had thought.

I looked at my smart phone. The lines were down, I couldn't call anyone. The Internet of Things failed everyone the first time by being inherently shit and now it was failing me by not existing. Imagine if I could get a portable fan to attack him, fire extinguishers to explode. I put my phone away. Then I pulled it out again. A plan formed. I brought up an app and pressed record and let it record some silence, then I started whispering into the mic.

I stopped recording and turned up the volume as loud as it could go.

I opened a desk draw and had a soundless rummage around. I found a nail file and a paperclip.

I unscrewed the plug socket in the floor beneath the desk with the nailfile .

Then I pressed play on my phone and slide it as hard and as far as I could under the cubicles. The smooth office carpet tiles took it almost as far as the end wall where it hit a plastic bin and stopped.

Holding a paperclip with a handy rubber band I jammed the pin between the brown and blue wires. There was a spark and a clap of noise and I succeeded in blowing the building's main fuse. The office went dark. It did pay to be an electricians' daughter sometimes.

I heard the Priest rush back into the room and try the light switch but nothing happened. I could hear him swearing in the dark.

Then he started to feel his way along the cubicles towards me until he passed right over me and on to the main door where he tried the light switch again.

Just then my phone started whispering and whimpering in the dark at the far end of the room:

"Oh no, please don't hurt me, I'll stop. Just leave me alone...Why are you doing this, I just wanted to help people..." And a few more things along those lines. Then there was a pause for 30 seconds or so and it started again. I had recorded a couple of minutes and set it on loop.

The priest started edging back down the office.

When he was half way there I slid out from under the desk and so, so gently and quietly, lowered my chair and the neighbouring desk's chair onto the ground with their legs in the air. And I started to move toward the main door, upending chairs as I went.

I tried as best as I could to open the door but it was a heavy fire door with a strong closer at the top pushing against me.

Suddenly I heard the Priest shout and he was running towards me, banging into desks. There was a black cloud of swirling cassock surging towards me, a white face growing larger. I pulled open the door, the stairwell was lit with the low glow of the emergency lighting. I ran back up the stairs and heard him fall heavily into the knot of upturned chairs.

I ran and ran all the way up to the top of the building and slammed my door shut and locked it. Then I ran to the spare room and pushed the bed against the door and jammed the chair between the bed and the wall. Hopefully it would slow him down. Then I found the window that had been broken and made my way out into the open air.

It was terrifyingly high so I pretended that I was just looking out of the window instead of crawling along the edge of a four storey office building listening to the beating drum of my front door being kicked in.

I crawled past the kitchen and then the utility room, to the back of the building. The drumming was loudest there. The window in front of me looked onto the landing outside the door of my flat.

My door caved in finally and the Priest pushed through into my flat. I crawled past the landing window. But now I was stuck. The ledge did not go round the back of the building, the next part of the office, though lower, was inset. There was no way I could jump from a crawling position down to the lower roof. I kept looking though the landing window imagining the Priest stepping out of my flat and seeing me peering in, scared and stuck.

The only thing I could do was try to stand up, over the edge of the ledge and see if I could pull myself up onto the roof. That seemed crazy and I spent many seconds just staring down at the woodchip and rosemary bushes that I felt certain I was about to break my neck falling into. I could hear the rush of air past my ears as I fell, the ground rushing up, so quick, and the dull thud as I landed.

Just then I heard new banging. It was the door to the spare bedroom, not as strong as the front door. I didn't have much time.

I swung my feet over the edge and realised that was not the way to start. I jammed my toes against the base of the wooden column that held up the overhang of roof and gripping the top of the column I swung my bum off the ledge and out into thin air.

Enid would have been proud of me. I had to scrunch up my eyes for a second to stop myself from crying. Why would I think about Enid now?

But she gave me strength.

I pulled myself up and moved one of my feet to the other side of the column. I looked like someone trying to pull a treestump out of the ground. And I pushed up so my face started to rise above the level of the slates where I saw a curling piece of metal that came out from the bottom corner of the roof. I stared at it for a bit trying to decide if I dared loosen my grip on the column and put one hand on this random bit of roofing.

Then I realised I had to, there was nothing else I could do. I got the best grip I could with my right hand on the column and slowly raised my left hand and, with a sound between a grunt and a squeal, grabbed the metal and give it a gently pull. It didn't move. I put more pressure on it. It still didn't move. I stood a little straighter and realised that I hadn't heard any banging for some time.

I imagined the landing window bursting open in a spray of glass and clutching hands. Until I saw that it was worse than that.

Like a plague rat from the old history books I saw the Priest crawling rapidly along the window ledge towards me. He was actually hissing.

Just as he reached out for my legs I jumped up and swung sideways and landed on the slanting slates.

I hooked a toe over the top edge of the roof and pulled myself up the slope to the top of the roof until I got a handhold on the top edge. Then I pulled myself up the slates and dropped down onto the gravelled flat roof. And took a breath.

I looked around the roof in the moonlight, listening to the heavy breathing of the Priest as he followed my route. I could see the Television aerial, the satellite dishes, a pair of trainers with the laces tied together.

I stood up and faced the Priest. I was sick of running. Not to mention too tired to run anymore.

He was pulling himself up as I had done. There was a look of ferocious exertion on his face, and triumph as he rose up, over the level of the slates. He was much taller than I. He could probably lean forwards and just grab the top of the low wall.

But then his look changed. It was questioning. Puzzled. And the metal pin he was holding onto slid out from under the bottom slate and the Priest fell back into the night, spread-eagled like a black star, falling and soundless. And he was gone. There wasn't even a noise of him hitting the ground.

I half expected him to come floating back up. But he didn't. I'd obviously watched Lost Boys too often.

Exhausted, I sat down and then lay down and then it was sunlight and I had no idea what time it was.

I walked over to the back wall of the roof and let myself hang down and drop onto the roof below, the one after that was merely a step down and then it was a small jump to the sloping hill of grass behind the office.

I hobbled round to the front of the building and realised I couldn't get in. So I walked over to the cafe opposite. It had just opened and the nice old man there gave me a coffee and toast.

Then lots of police turned up at the office so I hobbled over. They didn't see me at first as they were all crowding round the front door ringing the bell.

"Hello," I said, "thanks for coming. Who called you?"

The lead officer came up to me.

"Mint Ubu Linux, I am arresting you for treason and conspiring to murder His Royal Highness Prince John and aiding and abetting Wetlanders in said attempt to commit murder."

And I really wanted a bath.

Chapter 4  
Time to blow the Mothership

This time it was the rolling thunder that woke us. Excepting it turned out to be a combination of gunfire, a lot of it, far away, and the Corporal, who's name turned out to be James, banging on the door of the little room Captain Cronin had got for us all to sleep in. We had been sleeping head to toe in the bed.

"Come along girls!" shouted Corporal James, "there's a war starting."

We opened the curtains and we could see flashes through the mist. It was like lightening but too low in the sky.

We dressed quickly and ran down to the quayside where the first of the Wetlanders were arriving. Even though it was only five in the morning lots of the inhabitants of Tissington had come down to the docks to lend a hand, helping the young and old out of the boats and onto dry land.

Soon, tables were set up with large kettles of tea and pots of soup. Possessions were being brought ashore, labeled and piled up ready to be taken away and stored in warehouses nearby.

But mainly, crowds of locals and Wetlanders gathered looking out to sea wondering what was headed their way.

Corporal James touched our arm.

"The Captain wants to have a word." James pointed over to where Sam and a group of military-dressed folk stood.

We went over.

"Hi Felix," said Sam, giving us a quick and surprising hug, "hi Cam."

"Ah, Felix is it?" asked the Captain. "Yes, well we have a slight information problem and I think we're going to need your help, if you don't mind."

"Of course, absolutely," we answered, "what's up?"

"Well, we've sent two boats out to the Wetland raft now to see what's going on and neither have come back. We really need to know what we're up against: how many there are, what weapons they've got, how long we've got and, quite frankly, how hell your friends managing to keep the Clappers at bay. None of the Wetlanders we have spoken to yet have had much of an idea what's going on."

"OK," we replied, "do you want us to swim there?"

The Captain laughed and then realised we meant it.

"No no, Corporal James here will take you out in a speedboat, sorry we can't afford to lose any more of our O.R.C.s. Just make it snappy will you Corporal."

The Corporal saluted.

"Follow me ladies." It was an order. We raised eyebrows to each other and followed, pushing through the crowds and down a jetty, to a small waiting boat, its engine was already running. We jumped aboard.

"Hold on tight!" shouted James, and in a second we were bouncing across the waves, weaving in and out of the incoming Wetland craft, past the harbour entrance and out to sea.

It was still night and we headed for the flashes and noise.

The numbers of vessels coming the other way thinned to none then, as we started to run into bits of wood and the floating remains of rafts and homes, we slowed to a stop.

The sound of fighting was much louder and clearer now and the light wind sometimes made it seem like guns were being fired right next to us when all we could see were waves and and the residue of people's lives.

"I'm stopping here," said Corporal James, tying up to a particularly large bit of upturned raft, the rows of oil drums floating high in the water. "With luck I won't be seen. Off you go then, I'll stay as long as I can. But if they come for me I'm off OK? You'll have to make your own way back."

We kicked off our boots and took off the heavier clothing.

"Ready?" we asked Cam. Cam nodded.

"Good to get back in the water really." Cam said. "Take care of yourself James."

"You too, girls. Remember, I'll stay as long as I can, but sunrise is in half an hour, I'll be a sitting duck by eight. Get a wriggle on won't you."

We sat on the gunwale and slid down underwater, not too deep, and headed south. We could still make out the flashes of weapons, but the sea was awash with noise, engines at full throttle and the roar of explosions. We had never heard so much noise underwater before.

After swimming a few hundred metres we saw the darker mass of the Wetland raft up ahead. There were gaps of light where different craft were tied together. We pointed to one that looked like it had the largest keel and swam towards it. It made sense, a large keel would give us an overhang to come up under, a bit of shadow to hide in and get a good look around in safety.

A minute later we rose slowly out of the water on the north side, hopefully away from where the gunfire would be coming from.

It was unrecognisable from only the evening before. Not a single structure was undamaged. Everything had bullet holes in, there were fires everywhere, and quite a few bodies.

"Freaking freak!" muttered Cam beside us, "are they ours or theirs?"

"Dunno," we replied, "how can you tell?"

"What we gonna do?"

"See if Ben's alive I guess, see if there's anything we can do to help. Just find out what we can and get back to the Corporal."

"But if they're all dead what's going to happen about the 'Army of Wetlanders' that's going to save Topland and get the deal done?"

"We don't know. Let's just find Ben first, hey?"

We swam under the hull to the south side and came up again. The view wasn't much different but we saw a few figures, running and ducking and disappearing again, in the distance.

"Let's go down and move over there." We pointed to a raft that had less damage than most, it was a hut, more of a caravan off its wheels and was shot to pieces but not yet on fire. It offered more shadow to hide in and was closer to the action.

We dived down and swam over. We started to notice that there were swimmers in the water, in fact lots, tens, all close to the outside edge of the enormous raft. But some were darting back into the middle where, we realised, a large container floated underwater.

We turned and headed for the container, within seconds a couple of swimmers appeared in front of us. We gave them wetter hand-signals: we're OK, let's get out of here, it's your round. It seemed to do the trick, but they stayed on either side of us as we headed towards the container.

We swam down and sure enough, there was a hole in the bottom. We popped up inside.

Someone we didn't recognise stuck a gun in our face.

"Who the freak are you?"

Ben looked over from where he was watching the screen of an old laptop.

"They're OK. Let them up." We climbed up and walked wetly over to Ben.

"How's it going?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the screen as he clicked through what looked like different camera views of what was going on up top.

"Um..." we started, "most of the oldies are ashore now, we reckon."

Cam nodded.

"They've sent us out to find out what's going on. You know, who's attacking, how many, what your plans are, stuff like that. What is that?"

We pointed a finger at the screen. Ben brushed it aside.

"Careful, don't get water on our keyboard!" Ben sighed.

"How are you getting air in here without sinking?" Asked Cam looking around.

"Oh, Frankly's next door pumping." We noticed that there was, in fact, a door cut in the wall of the container. There must have been two containers side by side down here. In fact, if you listened, over the sound of fighting that came through the water and throbbed against the walls you could just about make out the sound of Frankly's peddling.

"Must really miss bicycling," said Cam. It was an old joke.

"What are we seeing?" We asked crouching down beside Ben's chair to get a better look at the screen.

"Got about twenty old phones bluetoothed around the Mothership. Let's me see where they are. Do you remember when we got all excited about those bags you found in a barn down by Lambourn."

"Ammonium Nitrate?" Asked Cam. "Yeah we remember. About thirty of them in the end."

"Yeah, that's the stuff, great for making explosives. Anyway, mixing it up with what have you, and stick that on the end of our ballistas, big old crossbows, and we've got a radio controlled rocket launcher. Sort of anyway. Thing is, they can't see where we're firing from. We move them around. Already hit two of their boats. And we've mined most of the mouth of the bay as well. So they have to come though us and, well, every time they land, our lot pop up and take them out. It's proving quite successful really. I mean, up top's a mess but, what the freak. We've barely had any casualties."

"Brandon and Thetford," said someone we didn't know who was arming the tips of something that must have been the ballista's arrows. "And Melton might not make it."

"Yeah, we know," said Ben. "But it could be a freak sight worse."

It was rare to hear Ben get angry.

"We think you've done brilliantly." We said.

"Aye," said Cam, "from the harbour it looked like you were all dead for sure."

"Yeah, well, they keep coming, more and more of them." Signed Ben.

"So what you going to do?"

"Everyone's ashore?"

"Yeah, we think so, just about anyway."

"Well then, it may be time to blow the Mothership."

A head splashed up in the hole.

"Ben!" said the swimmer urgently. "Something big's coming."

"Shh! Everybody quiet!" Shouted Ben and we all went silent and listened. At first all we could hear was the sound of fighting, explosions, shots, and the small engines of the attacking motorboats. But as we concentrated we started to hear something else, a low rumbling we'd never heard before.

"Is that an engine?" asked Cam. Ben waved a hand for silence.

"Yes, yes, a big ship alright," said Ben. "They could ram straight through us."

"Can you stop it?" we asked.

"Not sure. Doubt it. We've got small mines that can stop their motorboats, but a ship that size? We'll try our best. Let's get everyone away first."

Swimmers went diving out through the hole to pass on the orders.

"What's happening? What's the plan?" We asked as Ben began pulling a bundle wires from the floor onto his desk and started connecting them up. Cam sat down beside Ben and started connecting the wires too. Cam was always able to pick up something like that really quickly, good with wires.

Soon it was just us in the container.

"Go and tell Frankly to stop pumping and clear out." Said Ben. "Oh, and close the air lines, don't want the water to start rising in here quite yet."

We went round the corner and found Frankly pedalling steadily. We high-fived as always and said it was time to stop. Frankly got off the bike and gave us a friendly hug. We're not sure we've ever seen someone so skinny. With a face that was all hair and beard, a body that was hairless, barefoot and in a pair of raggidy shorts, there was very little to Frankly, but kind eyes and a surprisingly cool, dry, hug.

"See you on the other side." Frankly whispered and went back through to the first container and dived into the water.

"So," we said when it was the just three of us left. "What happens now?"

"Well," said Ben. "One, we've got to get up top to reach our boat, B, we've got to keep an eye on this lot and try and blow it at the right moment, and 3, it would be good to still be alive at the end of this. Agreed?"

"Yes," we both said, smiling.

"OK, well, we've just got to get this going." He began undoing taps of a large canister and suddenly there was a smell of cooking gas, hydrogen.

"So this is a bomb too?" Asked Cam looking round the container.

"Oh yes," replied Ben. "Just about everything is now. We've got rocket candy all over the shop."

"Rocket candy?" We asked.

"Everything?" Asked Cam looking even more worried than a second ago.

"Homemade solid rocket fuel, sugar and potassium nitrate, plus a few extras. Good rocket fuel, excellent explosive. It was just safer as kids to talk about making rocket fuel than bombs. Not everything is but, you know, yes there are quite a lot of bombs out there. Our folk know where not to go but quite a few have gone off at the wrong time, hit by a bullet or whatever. But, come on let's go. Oh, and by the way, we can't really swim so we're going pretty well straight up top. Could you come with us?"

Cam and us shared a glance and then we shrugged.

"Sure, we'll go first." We dived in and had a quick look around. No sign of the Evangelicals, they didn't seem to be much for swimming.

"All clear." We said sticking our head back up through the hole. The smell of gas was getting really quite bad now.

Ben sat down on the edge of the hole and with some mild swearing at the cold, edged down into the water. We led Ben out from under the container and up towards the surface towards a gap between some boats in the raft above.

We made a worrying amount of noise as we dragged Ben out of the water.

"How on earth do you stay in there for long?" Ben asked, shivering on the planking.

"Shh!" we said. There was no gunfire now, but there were searchlights from at least four boats playing over the decks of the giant raft.

We were crouched behind the gunwale of a larger boat, almost in the middle of the raft, with a good five hundred metres to open water. We couldn't see clearly in any direction, there were so many broken huts, cabins and caravans in every direction, many were on fire.

We set off on our hands and knees keeping to the shadows and lowest levels of the raft.

After we had crossed a couple of boats we grabbed Cam.

"Someone's following us," we whispered in Cam's ear.

"Ben can't go any faster. It'd be so much easier to swim," replied Cam.

"We know, you keep going, try and keep it really low so they can't be certain we are not together. We'll see what we can do here."

"OK," said Cam, pointing to a distant boat. "We think Ben is heading for that boat there with the broken mast."

"OK, we'll catch up." We slid down into the water and stayed just below the surface to watch. Cam and Ben got up and moved on.

We had our hand on the hull of the boat behind us and after a minute or two felt it roll unnaturally: someone had just climbed on board and was making their way across.

We moved closer to the surface, keeping to the shadows. Then the boat rolled again: a second person.

Then we watched a boot, then a calf, a thigh, the body of someone all in black military-style clothing move slowly over us onto the next boat. We waited. A second person started to move over the gap.

We reached up, grabbed the belt and pulled ourselves up their back as they fought against being dragged down and slid our knife across their throat and let go and dropped back into the water. The last we saw was them reaching up to their throat. We were gone before the other soldier was able to turn orund and fire a shot.

We swam under another three boats and came up again. This time making a lot of noise. It wasn't the right direction for Cam and Ben but we hoped to draw away the remaining soldier.

There were shouts and the beams of search lights angled towards us as the deck erupted with bullets. Splinters of wood went spinning in to the air and the belongings of the Wetlanders bounced across the deck, broken, dented and wrecked.

We swam back to the line we reckoned Cam and Ben were taking. Feeling the underside of the boats, looking for the other soldier tracking Cam and Ben. We couldn't find the soldier but it didn't take long to find Cam and Ben.

They were nearly at the back edge of the raft with only a couple more boats left to cross. We came out of the water a bit in front of them in the hopes of not causing too much of a scare. Ben was wheezing with effort as Cam looked nervously back, trying to see if they were still being followed.

"Freak sake Felix. You could have given us a bit of a warning." Muttered Ben, sitting low in small boat, head below the gunwale. A searchlight drifted over us.

We pulled ourselves into the boat and smiled at Cam.

"All right?" Cam asked.

"Got one. May have scared off the other, not sure."

"What are we looking for?" We asked Ben.

Ben looked up and pointed to a very plain flat bit of planking floating in the water. It looked like a bit of decking, perhaps a covered punt.

"That? What's that?" we asked.

"Well, it may not be the right time to try it but we've always fancied building a rocket boat so we stuck a bit of rocket candy into that."

"Ben," said Cam, "now really is not the time to try out one of your inventions."

"It's not an invention. People have been building these things for a hundred years or more. It's fine."

"How many of those people got to build a second one?" Asked Cam.

Ben shrugged, "Most?"

"You're not selling this." replied Cam darkly.

"Maybe not."

We were watching something small dark and round ark through the night towards our boat. Instinctively we batted the grenade away and it landed in the bottom of a boat a few metres away and we lost our balance and splashed into the bilge water as the grenade exploded.

We felt something cut across our back and felt another bit of shrapnel nick our arm. We looked up, Cam had a cut on the back of the head. Ben looked untouched.

"Time to go." We followed Ben across the next boat and down onto the flat decking of the rocket boat.

"You two will just sort of have to hold on to me on either side. Lie Down!" Ben pulled up a bit of plank and flicked a switch.

"Cut that line!" He shouted as the planks underneath us started to heat up.

"How do you steer this?" Asked Cam, from the other side of Ben.

"It's more of a straight line kind of thing." Shouted Ben over the roar. We weren't moving but there was a lot of spray coming out behind us. And it felt even hotter around our feet.

The boat began to move forwards. We looked back. There was a shadow of someone moving fast towards where we were docked, but now we were metres away and starting to accelerate alarmingly. The back spray was fierce and as the figure knelt to get a shot they had to raise their arm against the force of the water. Then we were away.

We weren't in the water like a normal boat, it was bouncing across the top, we recognised the action, it was a catamaran.

Cam was shouting but we couldn't hear what.

Then Ben was shouting too.

"We're off course. We're going to have to bail. On three."

Ben counted down with his fingers and we rolled off. We skipped across the surface like a bouncing stone before slowing and sinking into the water. We swam back a bit and found Cam and Ben swimming towards us. Cam was smiling. We knew why: it had been a total rush. Things often were with Bill and Ben.

"We've got to get ashore quick," said Ben. "We need to blow the Mothership at the right time."

We looked around in the dark and agreed pretty quickly which way to go.

Then we heard a motor boat coming towards us.

"Take a deep breath and put your head down and don't move. Play dead. We'll deal with it. Not yet," we ordered. "Wait, not yet, not yet, not yet. OK deep breath, Cam, you go right, we'll take left."

And we pushed Ben's head down, ducked underwater and swam towards the small boat as it edged closer.

We came up on either side of the boat. It was Corporal James.

"Ah! ladies, you're alive. That's a relief. Not sure what the Captain would have said if I'd come back empty handed." He nodded towards Ben. "Is he just going to lie there or is he really dead?"

Ben's head swung up.

"Oh Jesus, that's as long as we can hold our breath. Hello Corporal, come to give us a lift?"

"Climb aboard," the Corporal helped us into the boat. We set off back to the harbour. Ben pulled out a tightly wrapped rectangle of plastic from a shoulder bag and cut it open quickly. Inside was a tablet screen and a small drone. Ben had shown us one of these before. The drone was launched into the air and Ben sent it flying back towards the raft.

"Had to boost the drone's radio range, but it should be fine."

"What are you looking for?" Asked Cam.

"The best time to blow the Mothership."

"The Mothership?" asked Corporal James.

"The raft," explained Ben. "There's a big Clapper ship coming in. They've probably told it to avoid going round the raft because of the mines we laid. We reckon it'll be too tempting not to just steam through the raft and get on with it."

"So you've rigged a big bomb? My kinda guy," said the Corporal.

"We try our best. Ah, OK we're over the raft. Lots of Happy Clappers crawling all over it. Tempting."

"Any sign of the ship?"

"No yet. Oh but it looks like they're moving. They're running. Back to the edges. Getting back on their boats."

"Can you see it now?" Asked Cam.

"No, nothing. Might edge a bit south."

By this time we were just turning into Tissington harbour and the sea got much calmer

It was light enough to see all around the docks now. There was no one in sight. A ghost town.

Ben looked up.

"Everyone gone? Guess we did our job then didn't we? Will they have laid booby-traps Corporal?"

"'Spect so. Bloody should have anyway." We all looked at him. "Don't worry, I'll spot them. Probably. Bastards could have waited though."

We reached the quay and climbed ashore, nervous about every step.

"Where to now?" we asked.

"Buxton I reckon," answered the Corporal. "That's where they'll be headed. Just have to catch them up."

Ben was sitting down on the jetty watching the screen intently.

"Here she comes." We crowded round behind him. It was difficult to see what was what from such a curious angle. But then suddenly we were looking down on the bow of a large ship. The waves breaking round it showed that it was moving pretty fast. Ben angled the drone the other way and we could see the raft only a few hundred metres ahead.

"Ramming speed," pointed out the Corporal, and we watched as the ship sliced though the outer edge of the raft, boats and homes collapsing and sinking immediately, with the ship barely reacting to what it was doing.

"Well fuck you then." Muttered Ben and brought up a big red button on the screen and touched it.

Even though it was morning now and almost full daylight we saw the flash out to sea and a few seconds later we heard the huge explosion.

Ben had scrolled back to the drone and was struggling to regain control of it as it was rocked by multiple waves of energy rising up from the raft as the various bombs exploded.

Then, as the smoke cleared we saw we were looking down on the stern of the ship as it sailed on through a mass of broken wood and flotsam.

The Evangelical ship looked unscathed.

"Well, that's disappointing," said Ben.

"Never mind. Probably shat themselves when it went off if it's any consolation." Said Corporal James, patting Ben on the back. "Now I really think we should get the fuck out of here and catch up with the rest."

At which point Sam arrived in the car.

"Fuck me where've you been? I've been driving all over the place trying to find you. Saw some crazy boat rocket go by and chased after that. Thank fuck you weren't on that as it made a right mess of the salmon farm over there." Sam waved an arm towards the west.

"Where is everyone?" We asked.

"Skidaggled up the hill. Everyone who's not fighting have been sent to Buxton. The Army's up there with some stuff they're going to fire down here when the Clappers arrive. Some of the the Wetters, sorry, Wetlander fighters are going to do a bit of guerilla harassing along the way. We're retreating to Buxton basically and hope Mint has more to this plan than she's let on to us."

We climbed into the car. We introduced Ben to Sam.

"How's Lady Linux?" asked Ben.

"Oh fine," said Sam, "looking forward to all this being over though. It's a bit of a worry, obviously. But fine, not heard from her for a bit. Sure she'll be in touch soon."

We set off up the road.

We reached the top of the hill above Tissington and were flagged down by Captain Cronin.

"Ben I presume?" Captain Cronin reached in and shook Ben's hand. "Nice try with the ship. I thought you were going to do it for a second there. But you bought us enough time to get everyone evacuated and get us armed and ready for a fight. Glad you made it out OK."

We all got out of the car. It was fully morning now and we watched the Evangelical ship turn into the harbour.

"OK men," said Captain Cronin, "better let them have it. "

A small group of mortars opened fire. One mortar then a second exploded on the deck the ship. There was a small cheer.

"It's not much is it?" Said the Captain before heading over to the mortars to direct them personally.

*

"Fuck Fuck Fuck."

"Something the matter, XO?" I asked. Though I could see perfectly well what the matter was, he had a large splinter of wood through his arm.

"Nothing Ma'am, apologies for the language."

"Go and see to that will you, you're making a mess on the floor." Which was actually a joke as the floor was already a mess of spent bullet cases, glass and the remains of the tug's cabin.

It had been going well. We had managed to tow Vigilant out and scupper her over Crianlarich. Which put the old dear at a depth of about forty metres. Enough for nitrogen narcosis to start to be a problem for divers so the Evangelicals would need some professional help to be able to do anything with her for a bit. Plus we'd tucked away some nice booby-traps. They might not last for ever but I was thinking in terms of months at the moment and even that was starting to look a bit rose-tinted. We'd been towing Victorious out when the Clappers had arrived in more of their military-grade power boats.

We had managed to sink Victorious and pick up the XO, Bailey, who had been on board the old sub to open the water locks, while under fire and now we were headed back to Tyndrum in a hail of bullets as the Clappers swarmed round our slow and thankfully thick-skinned tug like it was some sort of naval western. We had a couple of SMGs and small arms to return fire with but I wasn't sure if we were going to make it until I saw a couple of our own motor boats coming down the valley to meet us.

I took a rifle off a wounded sailor and started firing at the Happy Clappers. They were bouncing over the water so fast they rarely got much of an aim at us but made up for it with the sheer amount of lead they were putting in the air. It said something for their guns that they could keep up such a heavy rate of fire without over-heating.

Which got me thinking that it may be worth sending a couple of divers down to see if they could rescue the guns from the boats we sunk when we first arrived. Could be useful.

One of ours hit a Clapper motorboat with a LAW rocket, which I was both happy and a bit cross about as we had damn few of the rocket launchers left. Admittedly there was nothing left of the boat which was nice, a few smouldering planks, but then a LAW rocket was a heavy hitter and I suspected we would be needing them soon enough if I couldn't stop the Clapper ship.

Anyway, the remaining two motorboats scarpered after that. Probably gave them a bit of a fright, though more likely made them realise that they would be better off with some bigger guns.

The two Navy boats pulled up alongside and we handed down our wounded. It would be better to get them safely back to shore as soon as possible, as the tug, never a fast mover, was slower than ever and shuddering and shaking like a wounded bear.

The XO reappeared with a bandage round his arm.

"How's the engine, XO?" I asked.

"Not good Ma'am. She may not get far towing the Vanguard." I nodded.

"She only has to go so far." We had a plan, not a great plan and probably suicidal. I had been thinking that I would have preferred to do it with that Wetlander Felix with me, as what I had in mind involved doing the one thing a submariner dreads.

It took thirty minutes or so for us to make it back to the docks. And, as fast as we could, we got a tow rope on Vanguard and started pulling her out to deeper water.

This time I was on the submarine and the XO on the tug.

The Vanguard was the one Trident submarine we had managed to keep almost operational. Her nuclear power pack was long gone but her back up generators were running and she had the working battery packs from all three remaining submarines on board: about twenty percent power in all. Hopefully enough for what I had planned.

I stood up on the bridge as we made our way out into the valley for the third time. It was, briefly, rather lovely to be up on the sail again, seagulls dipping and crying overhead. It felt like the old days when we headed out on a six month patrol. Excitement and sadness, but mainly just a feeling of adventure, together with your crew. The submarine began to feel the waves around her. I would never feel this again.

The XO flashed a message back to me: 4-0 (Breaker one nine, this is rubber duck, I think we got us a convoy).

I replied: 4-6 (After working with you I now realise why some animals eat their young).

He replied: 7-9 (Bet you wish you were here).

I replied: 8-0 (Glad you're not here). Then I sent: 1-3-D (I must temporarily withdraw from the exercise because of difficulties with: ingress of water, I no float right).

And the XO cast off. I left the bridge, locked the hatch and went down to the control room.

Most of the computer systems still worked so, fairly quickly, I was able to blow the air out of the ballast tanks and sink slowly to the bottom of the valley.

I didn't suppose the Evangelical ship was listening out for me but I worked quietly all the same. It all came back to me naturally.

Anyway, I went forward and checked the three wire guided torpedoes the XO and I thought had the most chance of actually running. I had hoped for four but the rest looked pretty risky. I didn't want one exploding in the tube. My chances were bad enough as it was already

The three looked good on the weapons screen too, so there was a decent chance things would work out OK.

Then I poured myself a cup of tea, put on the headphones and listened to the sea outside. It always was calming.

Excepting it wasn't this time. The ship was big and clearly on its way up the A82. It had definitely turned to starboard at Crianlarich now and was steaming up the valley towards me.

I activated the first old Spearfish torpedo and wondered yet again whether the Clapper ship would have any acoustic countermeasures. Surely not? But then this was decades after the Spearfish were made so who knew what a recently built American ship may have in the way of defences?

So, wire-guided it was. And then I almost changed my mind again, so before I could second guess myself I fired the first torpedo, wire-guiding it at first and then switching to passive homing. While the first was still running I launched the second torpedo and set it to go off under the hull of the Clapper ship.

The timer for the first torpedo ran on so I had a rough idea of distance and time to the ship. After a couple of minutes I was fairly certain it had been a duff. I shouldn't have been surprised, the fuel was supposed to be replaced every five years, so God knows how it got out of the tube in the first place.

The second was still running and still sending back messages. It was coming up under the ship. It was going to blow...

Even through my two hulls I felt and heard the blast that rumbled and echoed off the steep sides of the valley. I listened intently for any sounds of the hull cracking, water coming in, sounds of the ship sinking. Surely it was damaged?

The ships engines droned on, closer now. It seemed unharmed.

I got the last torpedo ready. The ship was very close now so the torpedo would have to angle up almost immediately after leaving the launch tube. I ran the last checks and fired the third torpedo.

I listened as it ran though the water. It was just reaching top speed when it hit the hull of the Clapper ship. Nothing happened, again. And then then it blew.

My poor old submarine felt the blast properly this time, the pressured hull creaked and screamed, but held.

The Evangelical ship was in difficulty. I could hear the steel rivets popping as the hull plates around the hole were torn off by the forward momentum of the ship. I listened to the water rushing in and alarms going off on board.

Lumps of metal falling from the ship banged against the Vanguard's hull as the ship passed over me, but at least I wasn't going to be trapped under it.

The ship's engines changed tone, they were speeding up, presumably hoping to reach the head of the valley and run aground before they sank. I hoped they wouldn't make it, the fewer that made it to shore the better chance my forces had of holding them off, or holding them up at least.

I began destroying the remaining working systems. I didn't want the submarine salvaged and used again by anybody.

Next, I had to pick an SEIE, a Submarine Escape and Immersion Equipment pack. Perhaps not necessary for this depth but preferable to getting hypothermia and decompression sickness, amongst other things.

I set the timer on a little C4 charge the XO had prepared for me and placed it on the main hatch, when it went off the submarine would be flooded. I gave myself ten minutes.

I suited up and climbed up to the escape hatch. I sealed the inner hatch and started letting in water from outside. The trick is to breathe out continuously, otherwise oxygen bubbles in your blood would start forming. Baby does not want the Bends.

The outer hatch opened and fifteen seconds later I was on the surface with a little one-person life raft inflating beside me.

The sea was a riot of noise, boats and gun fire.

My forces were firing on the Clapper ship as it tried to reach the shore before sinking. It looked like I must have damaged the rudder otherwise they would surely have turned and run aground sooner. The bow was low in the water, life rafts and other on-board craft were being lowered and its patrol boats were zipping round trying to keep up some sort of covering fire while the XO directed rocket grenades and machine gun fire at them. There were bodies in the water and people waving for help in life jackets.

I climbed into my life raft and headed for shore, hoping nobody would notice me as I paddled slowly though this naval battle. It was tempting to whistle innocently.

So far so good.

*

I was still holding my street, others weren't doing so well.

"Jane!" A kid ran up behind me as I hid behind the car armed with a rifle and an array of ropes to pull. I hated that we were using children as runners but then anyone who could fight was fighting - who else was there to use?

"What?" but I knew what they were going to ask: how was it going? Was I holding my street?

"Yes, yes, they've not got passed." I raised my rifle, breathed out, pulled ahead of the running figure and nudged the trigger, and then worked the action to reload without even bothering to check whether I had killed the person or just wounded. It didn't matter, I knew I had hit. Seemed I was a natural shot. George had shown me how to use the gun and the best ways to shoot. Now I was getting a lot of practise defending Silverlands and the corner of Buxton Football Pitch. There wasn't much of the Police station left, but no one had been precious about holding that.

George and I had emptied Mint's gun store only just in time. The Evangelicals had not come from the West as expected but come right up the east coast landing just beyond Brushfield, and come down the A6. Another force had carried on up the Hope Valley and cut off Buxton from the north at Castleton. We were surrounded by teatime.

Now here I was a regular ruddy street fighter shooting Happy Clappers and setting off petrol bombs, and pulling over buckets of petrol, lobbing firecrackers and generally managing to hold off these crazy arsewipe armageddonists.

I wasn't alone. There were folk in the houses on either side and up on the roofs making sure that no one got round us, over us, or through us. But the main thing was to keep the road blocked and a death trap.

I shot another Clapper that got too close.

They had these dune buggy things with machine guns that would appear and spray everywhere with bullets and then disappear again, moving on to the next street. All you could do was keep your head down when they appeared and then try to spot where the Claps had advanced to when the cars disappeared.

Things were going to get even worse when night fell. And when we ran out of petrol bombs.

"Tell George, we're holding the bridge, but I can't see what's happening either side of the railway line."

The railway line had been a natural boundary running almost north south down the east side of Buxton. Like all good railway lines the trees had accumulated a ton of tipped rubbish that had burned happily for the first few hours, but now both sides of the line were a smoking black cinder bed and now, sadly, clear of all obstacles. We could see them easily enough but it was a long line to hold. A thousand back gardens to defend.

But all I had to do was hold the railway bridge.

The kid set off back to report.

We had tipped over quite a few cars on the bridge and set fire to them which had stopped the buggies so far, but were one to get through... I couldn't let that happen. It would be a massacre.

I saw a Clapper running away from the barracade on the bridge. I shot him in the back as the wall of cars exploded in front of me knocking me backwards to the ground.

My head felt like it was full of cotton wool and I couldn't hear properly. A young man ran out of a house nearby and banged into the car with his back as he crouched down.

His mouth moved. I nodded back and tried to say:

"Yeah, I'm fine." But I couldn't hear myself speak. I could feel my jaws moving and could hear a high pitched squealing sound like I'd been to see a Sisters of Mersey gig and stood right beside the speaker all night.

"Coming!" shouted the man.

"What?"

"The Claps are coming!" I rolled over onto my shoulder and peered under the car. I could see a big gap in the car barricade now. The wall on either side of the bridge was down and a car was hanging over the edge. I watched it slowly tip over and disappear. I could see a line of Evangelicals moving carefully over the bridge ducking behind every lamp post and bit of wreakage they could use as cover as they advanced.

I picked up my Enfield and took a shot from under the car. The young man tapped my shoulder again.

"You can't stay out here. Get into the house. Quick!"

He pulled me up and ran, bent double, back into the house he had come out of. I followed and hands reached out and pulled me in. The door was locked and blockaded behind us.

"Upstairs quick!" Urged an older man. We ran up the stairs and found men and women firing through the windows. They didn't lean out, but took up sight lines inside the room, took a shot and then ducked down as fire was returned.

"It's so they can't see our guns sticking out." The old guy explained. "They can't be sure which window we fired from."

"Until it gets dark." I pointed out. The old man shrugged.

"Then we move house." He pointed to a hole in the wall. I looked through and saw that they had dug right through to the next house.

"How far can we do that?" I asked.

"Not far. We'll have to cross Holker Road. We've done the next two buildings after that, but it's not going to be easy getting across Holker."

Through another door I saw two pairs of legs lying on the ground. There was a lot of blood. The old man shook his head and said nothing.

"Grenade!" Someone shouted and we all ducked. There was an explosion, not as big as the one earlier, but it sounded like it was against a wall downstairs. The house shook and dust fell.

I went into the front bedroom, took up position in a corner and fired out at the advancing Claps for the next hour. They never saw where I was firing from, though a few bullets came in the window.

Then there was another kid in the house. God knows how she got there.

"George says you've got to fall back to the Art Gallery. Everyone's been cleared out, they're all in the Square down to the Fitness Centre. But you've got to get back to the top end of Hardwick's Square and hold that."

Then she was gone.

"Right, you four." The old man pointed to the group in the other room. "Get over Holker road. We'll hold here. When you start shooting, we'll come over. OK? Don't shoot us. It's getting dark. Be careful, off you go."

The four crawled through the hole in the wall and we started shooting double time out the windows. I was moving between rooms taking pot shots at the moving shadows down on the street.

The old man was muttering: "Come on, come on, come on."

Then there was another explosion downstairs and the sound of a machine gun very close. The Clappers were in the house.

Holes punched up though the carpet at my feet with funny wet plop sounds and puffs of dust. I didn't know where to move so I just stood still and looked at my feet.

Then the old man grabbed me and shoved me towards the hole in the wall. At the same time he got a shoulder behind a wardrobe someone had lined up at the top of staircase and sent it toppling down the steps.

I crawled though the hole and waited to one side. He popped though a second later and then waved me on to the next. But I told him to go on this time and waited where I was.

I heard the old man grunt as he crawled though the next hole at the far end of the house and then saw the head of a Clapper appear at my feet. I waited until he noticed my shoes, he was nearly half way through. He turned to look up at me and I shot him though the skull.

Then, as his fellow soldiers struggled to pull his body out of the way, I skipped down the passageway, found the hole, reversed through it and let myself drop to the ground. The old man was waiting.

"Get him?" He asked.

"Of course," I said.

"Well done. Look, there are the others." In the gloom I could see that they hadn't bothered getting into the next house but were waiting for us, hiding behind the garden wall.

The next thirty minutes were spent retreating through the gardens down Hardwick Square until we saw the wall of vehicles stacked across the road by the Art Gallery. We had to crawl though a series of cars to make it behind the wall.

Our little group was taken to an old tapas restaurant where we were given sandwiches and a cup of tea. The old man managed to find a half bottle of brandy which we shared.

Then suddenly Tryn was there and we were hugging and crying.

"You made it!" she cried. "I heard it was bad out east?"

"I heard it was bad up north!" I replied laughing and wiping tears away.

"It was..." She began and stopped. We stood back from each other and held hands.

"Fucking hell," I said.

"Well that too yeah," answered Tryn.

"Have you heard from anyone else?" I asked. "Sam, Camille? Felix? Mint?"

"No, no one. The radio's been silent. The lines are down or something. Can't get hold of anyone."

"Are we getting rescued?" I asked, looking round. "Or is this it. Is this where we..."

I looked back at Tryn. She shrugged.

"I don't know Jane, but we can't give up. I'd rather die than become some Evangelical fucker."

"Well then," I said. "Better make sure it doesn't come to that."

I offered her a brandy and then we headed off to the nearest ammunition station and stocked up on bullets. Luckily Mint had gone totally overboard on the ammunition. Or rather, the schools she got them from had. I guess the army just gave it away.

Then George was there with the elderly Police Chief who had a wounded arm now.

"I can't tell you how proud I am of you, of all of you. It's not just Buxton folk here, it's all sorts, fighting against these crazy..." He shook his head, "crazy religious bastards who want the world to end. They've already had a damn good try at wreaking the planet and now they want to finish it off. Well, we can't let them. We have to stop them here, now, in Buxton."

There was a half-hearted cheer. We'd all heard better in a million action films.

Someone shouted:

"Braveheart!"

That got a bigger cheer. Someone else shouted:

"I'm Spartacus!"

And someone else shouted:

"That's Spartacus over there by the door." Which got the biggest cheer of all.

"He stole my sandwiches!"

We went outside and lined up behind the barricade.

At first it was just the odd shot here and there. By midnight it was getting regular. By one in the morning it was constant, and then it was all out war. Screaming, running, reloading, ducking, pulling the wounded out the way. Crawling through cars where we thought we saw a Clapper creeping in. Not having time to aim as they crept over the barricade. Shooting them in the face and hardly noticing their heads exploding in a watery ark of blood, brains and skull, all the time staying close to Tryn, often back to back to make sure no one was coming at us, the gun barrels hot, and the noise getting louder and louder and louder, a roaring that became almost one note, the note of war and guns and explosions and screams, just getting louder and louder until it felt you had to lean into it. And then it became so thick you couldn't move.

Chapter 5  
It's dark now

I really wanted a bath. A bath and to brush my teeth, and a sleep. A bath, bed, teeth brushing and clean clothes, pyjamas if I really was going to bed, though just clean clothes would have been nice, and a wash, and Enid.

What a cunt that Priest was and I still couldn't remember his name. It would come to me. He kept popping up in the Merseys' reports, hassling them, preaching his shit.

There used to be that story of a Last Supper and there's this couple with a kid and they're hoping their food's not poisoned and they're showing what good God fodder they are but at the end of some prayer the kid goes "Thanks Peter God". And the priest hears it and comes over and asks the kid what God's name is and he says 'Peter' again, and the parents smile, and the priest reaches into his pocket and gives the kid a sweet excepting it's not a sweet, it's poison and the kid falls down dead and the parents start shouting: what have you done and why, that the kid had misheard 'Thanks Be To God' as 'Thanks Peter God'. And the Priest turns round and says: there's nothing funny about God.

How true.

I often wondered if the parents made it out alive.

Probably not.

I wondered if I was going to make it out of this alive?

Probably not.

Though I wasn't too sure what this was exactly. It certainly used to be a lock-up under Loch An Eilein Castle, but now I suspected it was some sort of sex dungeon for Prince John, all kinds of plush and furry, in reds and golds and purples. I was sitting on what looked like the most normal bit of furniture in the room: a chair with leather cuffs on the arms and the two front legs. They were not attached to me thankfully, but then I was several decades too old for the Prince, and his friends by all accounts.

It had been a couple of hours since I had been pushed into the room. Not much was said in the car, so I was really not sure what was going on.

I could have done with a bath.

Finally I heard the rattle of keys, footsteps and quiet conversation and then the door opened.

It was the butler and a couple of burly looking men in dark suits: the Prince's bodyguards. No one was very sure where they came from, they didn't speak, as far as anyone had heard. The general vote went to Eastern European.

"Yes Lady Linux," said the butler, "sorry to have kept you waiting."

As if I had just come for an interview with the Prince. But I supposed that's how butlers were supposed to behave.

"If you would follow me."

"Do I have a choice? Can I go home and get changed? Can you tell me what this is all about, as I've absolutely no idea?"

The butler looked at me sadly, and gave a sort of finger wave to the bodyguards who stepped forward and lifted me by my elbows out of the chair and carried me until I was outside the room. Then they lowered me to my feet. All done very gently, and very fast.

"OK," I said, brushing down my clothes and generally pretending nothing had just happened. "Can't keep the Prince waiting."

"Quite Madam," answered the butler and he squeezed past and lead us out of the, what I guessed was the lower ground floor (AKA dungeon) and up the stairs. I saw daylight: hadn't been sure if that was going to happen again.

So we went up past the normal state rooms, up and up again into the Prince's private apartments and I was shown into a room with a big desk, his private sitting room.

The Prince was sitting in a big chair by the fire with bandages and a bit of blood. There was a doctor, and some more guards and, lounging in on sofa were Boris and Dave, of course. When it came to cronies there were none finer.

Then I saw the body on the floor and quite a lot more blood. It was the body of a Wetter, the smell alone would have told you but the rotting clothes made it obvious.

"Ah, you do recognise him do you?" asked the Prince. "I thought you might."

"I've never seen him before in my life." I replied. "Who is he? Is he a he? How did he get in?"

"I don't think so Mint. I saw your face. You sent him, one of your Wetter comrades hey? Lucky I've still got my old military training, some things you never forget, hey boys?"

Boris and Dave nodded knowingly. I knew from my files that neither had ever been in the military, or done any real work for that matter.

"Bloody well done Sir," said Boris, "gave him the old one-two."

He chopped his hand down as if he was some kung-fu expert. I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

"Yes, something like that," agreed Prince John, he was still watching me. "Quicker than him anyway."

"You're wounded Your Highness." I pointed out.

"He had the cheek to throw a knife at the Prince!" shouted Dave. "You should have your tits cut off for that and shoved down your throat."

"It was nothing to do with me." I said, ignoring the little man. "I've never seen him before in my life."

"That may even be true," said the Prince. "I would want to be able to say that, if I were you. Keep the cells separate and all.

"Thing is," he went on, "thing is, I know you're involved with the Scottish underground thing, bringing Wetters in, keeping them out of my way, giving them work. You think I don't know what you're up to? I know exactly what you're up to."

"What's that Your Highness? I'm just trying to get everything working again."

"The thing is Lady Mint, I'm not actually stupid. Not like these two buffoons," he pointed to Dave and Boris, who were smirking at me. They nodded happily. "Like you, I have my spies and my intercepts and people do love to talk, just talk and talk as if they have nothing better to do. Anyway, I know about your Scottish underground. I know about your youth movement and the Sisters Of Mersey. I know you want to get rid of me and get rid of all of us who have been running this dump for decades. You think you can do something better, nicer, kinder? Well fuck you! Do you think I like this place? This bunch of no-hopers, gloomy fucks who feel all guilty about what we had to do to save their skins. People like Commander Colme who, despite being a bloody woman, did what she was told and made the hard decisions. And what thanks do I get? Nothing but moaning and complaints. All I want now is enough money to move to Switzerland and put my feet up. Do you know how much I need nowadays to get there? Do you?"

"About a hundred million dollars?" I suggested. I didn't know exactly what the figure was but in much the same way that the rich of Britain had bought their way into Scotland, Switzerland had a similar but even pricier system.

"It's eighty million actually. But yes. I would love to leave this damp lump of mud, but I'll go when I'm ready. I will not be pushed out by some traitorous bitch like you."

"You want to strip the country bare and then leave? And I'm the traitor?"

"You swore allegiance to your King and country. I'm the Prince. I come first. So fuck you!"

"And the Evangelicals?" I ask. "Where do the Armageddonists fit in?"

"I'm getting paid handsomely for my nukes. And my application for a Swiss passport is getting filled out as we speak."

"So you don't care if the Clappers keep going and take the whole country?"

"Not a bit. It'll do those teuchters good to have a bit more organisation in their lives. Get some standards. Weed out those mutant Wetters you love so much."

I looked back at Boris and Dave, they were busy pinning fish badges to their lapels.

"It's a done deal," the Prince went on, "and you can't stop it."

There was a knock at the door.

"What!" shouted the Prince. "I'm busy."

The butler entered.

"My apologies Your Highness. There's a lady here to see you."

"I don't care if Jesus fucking Christ himself is standing out there. I'm fucking busy!" screamed the Prince.

The bedroom door was pushed open.

*

The Evangelist ship made it to shore, and a fair way up it at that. There must have been a lot of broken arms and legs as everyone fell over and for a moment everything was still, but then hundreds of soldiers appeared on deck, threw netting down the side of the ship and came crawling down the side of the ship like ants.

The XO turned his guns on them to try to stem the tide. But more and more appeared.

By now I was on shore myself and running down the rocky beach to to get to the docks. Occasional shots came my way, making that odd whistle in the air and flicking up pebbles at my feet. I was glad I still kept up my jogging as I didn't dare stop.

I made it to the docks.

Bailey had managed to retrieve a Clapper heavy machine gun from out of the water and had set it up behind a wall of cement bags. The rest of our women and men were spread out in small groups in a zigzag pattern around the base. It was a good job, lots of covering fire and routes to each position made safer with pallets, skips and bits of machinery dumped along the way.

I found a hole in the fence and made small dashes between each position until I reached the control centre: the old service shed.

Everyone came to attention as I entered. Which I expected but hadn't expected, if that made sense.

The XO came over and saluted me.

"If I can congratulate you Commander on a successful mission."

"Not that successful XO, they still got here."

"Maybe Ma'am, but they won't be leaving again, not on that anyway. I think our missiles are safe for a bit yet."

"True. What's our position?"

"Taking casualties, only two fatalities so far. They don't seem the greatest shots. Fond of pulling the trigger though."

"Yes I noticed. Can we hold them?"

"I think they are going to get behind us quite soon. We'll be cut off. We could retreat now back to Tyndrum maybe, but it's a mile of open country, we'd take a lot of casualties."

"And I don't think we need to involve the locals if we can avoid it." I said.

"Yes Ma'am," answered Bailey, continuing, "or we stay here and fight it out. Maybe we can scare them off. Maybe there're reinforcements on their way?"

Sheets of one inch steel had been lent against the walls of the shed with small holes cut in them that lined up with similar holes in the corrugated tin so we could look at the battle outside.

The Happy Clappers were up at the fence-line now taking heavy casualties as they tried to cut holes in the wire and force their way onto the docks. They seemed uncaring about their numbers of dead.

"I think we're just going to have to stay put and fight it out." I replied.

"Yes Ma'am."

I looked over at the beached ship.

"Oh crap," I said, before I could stop myself. My time away from the confines of a submarine had loosened my tongue badly. But I did have good reason to swear.

The Evangelist's ship obviously had power still as its derricks were lowering what looked like armoured dune buggies onto the shore. The fact that my successful torpedoing of the ship had led to it being able to land these vehicles straight onto the beach was particularly galling.

The XO came over. He grunted.

"Yes, I suppose they would. We still have a couple of NLAWs."

"Yes please," I said, "fire at will."

The two remaining disposable rocket launchers were fetched and the XO oversaw their deployment.

I watched with some satisfaction as the first rocket hit the armoured car before it reached the ground and the second rocket destroy the ship's crane.

I was about to say something congratulatory when a second car appeared round the bow of the ship: they had been lowering one on the other side as well.

It came roaring across the beach and up the hill towards us, its heavy machine gun spraying bullets across the dock. There was an explosion and an entire section of fence collapsed in time for the armoured dune buggy to bounce over the wire and onto the base.

The car sped across the dock destroying two of our defence points and disappeared behind our shed only to reappear on the other side a second later, taking out another of our positions.

The Clapper soldiers began charging in through the fence.

"Get them in here now!" I ordered. The Warrant Officer blew on her whistle and while my soldiers ran for the cover of the shed, the XO and I kept up covering fire as best we could with the rifles to hand.

In a few seconds everyone was inside. There weren't many left, perhaps twenty or twenty four, and a dozen more wounded.

I could hear the bullets now coming though the shed walls and hitting the sheet steel. They rattled and jumped with every hit.

We blocked the doors and spread everyone out along the walls and made sure no one could get close enough to set up bomb.

But we were trapped.

The Clappers organised themselves around us and the shooting, though steady, became less frantic. I knew they would be making plans and kept an eye on the ship to see if they had anything else to surprise us with.

The more mobile of the wounded were set to work handing out ammunition, making tea and even brewing up some soup.

Soon it was the evening and I worried about how much harder it would be to keep the enemy away from our walls.

The XO took me away to a corner. I knew what was coming.

"Ma'am, I don't know what you're orders are, but this is the second time today we have been trapped."

"And I came to your rescue XO."

"So who's coming to ours?"

"What are you suggesting?"

"We've done our job Ma'am, haven't we? The missiles are out of reach for a fair time and we've given them a good fight. Is it impossible to think of surrender?"

I was silent for a minute and looked round the interior of the shed. I had been bred up on this. My father had been a soldier and his before that. I'd watched hundreds of old war films with him, what would he say to this? A desparate final charge, surrender, a rousing song? But looking round I doubted a chorus of 'Men of Harlech' would help now.

"Have they offered?" I asked the XO.

"Sorry Ma'am, what do you mean?"

"Have they asked you to surrender? Did they ask when you were trapped on Valiant?"

The XO opened his mouth and then shook his head and sighed.

"No," he said, "no they didn't. I suppose it's not really in their plan is it?"

"And if we did, would they keep us alive? Are we useful?"

"Probably not."

He looked at me.

"Cup of tea Ma'am?" He asked.

"Why not?"

The base's Chief Petty Officer came over. She pointed to the row of lockers along the back wall.

"Ma'am," she paused, looking sheeping. "it's just that I happen to have a bottle of whisky in my locker, Christmas present from the lads. I must have forgotten about it."

"Well, it's lucky you remembered it today, would have been wasted on the Evangelicals, no sense of fun."

"Yes Ma'am," she saluted and soon we were all sipping on Irish Tea. Not a favourite of mine, or probably anyone's in the shed, but welcome all the same.

I sat on a box and cleaned my pistol, then visited the wounded, chatting to each in turn. Afterwards I went round the perimeter wall with the XO, peering out though the slits to see if we could make out what the Evangelicals were up to.

Later we moved whatever we could to form two inner barricades, each slicing off a corner of the shed. If the Clappers got in we would need to fall back somewhere. The shed had a service pit with heavy beams covering it, we lifted them out and they formed the base of the two new walls. Then we split up the wounded and put half in each area and split up the remaining ammunition and supplies as well. It gave us something to do while we waited.

"What time would you attack, XO?" I asked.

"Historically it's between four and six in the morning isn't it?" He answered. I nodded.

"Do you think they can be bothered to wait that long?"

"They don't seem to care about casualties do they?" replied Bailey.

"They should do, unless, of course, there's a second ship coming soon."

We looked at each other. I tapped my watch.

"It's dark now." I said, Bailey nodded. He looked a mess, tired, bandaged and bloody. I looked down at my clothes, I wasn't much better. I glanced back over to the lockers, it wouldn't be much but it might help.

"You know, a change of clothes might be in order." Bailey gave me a funny look, I shrugged. "Every little advantage helps."

So we went round our women and men telling them to get ready, and helped the wounded change into something cleaner.

Then tea was finished and the few remaining lights were put out.

We waited in silence, the lookouts straining to see in the dark.

The firing had petered out some time ago.

One of the wounded groaned and was quickly given a shot of morphine.

Someone kicked a tin mug that rattled across the floor.

"You fucker!" A shot was fired by one of the lookouts. "Got him!"

And the side of the shed blew in with a roar and a hail of brick, wood and steel. As we coughed in the dust and tried to see what had happened, the shed was lit up with flood lights.

It was impossible to see even the slightest outline of the attackers as they leapt through the huge hole torn out of the side of the shed.

I raised my pistol and fired into the gap as the bright white dust billowed around me. There was shouting and firing and screams.

*

"How many the freak are there?" We shouted at Cam who lay beside us at the top of Tissington hill. We were working our rifles and firing down on the Evangelicals as they swarmed through the town and started heading up the hill.

"Don't know. Just keep firing."

The Clapper ship had docked, even though it had been hit by three more mortars. Then its hatches had opened and hundreds, probably thousands of Evangelicals had come running out.

Cronin had given us each a gun and given us a quick rundown on what to do and left us to it.

Cronin's few soldiers made an easy and obvious target for the Claps to attack. They headed towards us.

They crawled though gardens and houses, slowly widening their line of attack and always pushing up hill.

Soon they were into the fields below, running forward and dropping to the ground to fire at us in sections. It was gradual, efficient and unstoppable.

Our mortars stopped firing; they had run out of ammunition.

Ben was sitting below the hilltop, out of sight from the Happy Clappers, fiddling with a laptop, headphones on, which was reassuring in a way. We hoped it meant Ben was organising help. But knowing Ben it could equally mean a pretty impressive mix tape being concocted or a good game of Worms. We all had our ways to take our mind off the present.

We passed the joint back to Cam.

The Evangelicals were getting closer and closer.

It was then that we realised where the rest of the Wetlander fighters were.

It seemed that the Clappers really were incapable of learning their lesson as we watched our friends rise up out of the harbour water and within minutes capture the Evangelical's ship.

Very soon they were armed with Clapper weapons and attacking the Claps from behind.

The attack up the hill faltered and stopped.

But they still outnumbered us even with their forces halved as one group turned and started attacking the Wetlanders to their rear, the second group resumed its march up the hill.

At least the half hour or so pause in their attack had given us time for Cam to roll another number.

"You know the smoke gives our position away?" Cam pointed out as we rolled out of sight to push another clip of bullets into the ancient rifle.

"'Our position away'," we giggled. "You've been watching way to many movies at Ben's. It's bollocks anyway, there's smoke everywhere. It looks like the whole hillside's wrecked."

We rolled back up and started shooting again. In the few seconds we had been out of sight the Clappers were metres closer.

Then their arms rose as if they were waving, or swimming or something. There were explosions below us.

"Freak's sake, grenades!" muttered Cam, ducking down.

We kept firing. A few seconds later the arms rose again and we could see the grenades flying through the air. Luckily they still weren't close enough. The little green bombs landed and rolled downhill slightly. Cam reached over and slapped our head down.

"Don't freak'n watch them! Have you not heard of shrapnel? You're a freaking idiot sometimes!" Cam stopped and gave us a look. "Hang on it's you isn't? The sensible one's fucked off, Raid's gone?"

"No idea what you're on about." We shouted. We rolled back up and took aim. "Freak they're close!"

Then the next throw brought the grenades down around us and we were up and running and then flying through the air as the explosions knocked us off our feet and we landed in hail of pebbles and bodies. There was thick white smoke everywhere and we couldn't see and could barely hear or feel anything beyond the pain of the cuts and breaks in our bodies.

Then there was this deafening shout.

"You will all stop this now. Stop!"

And the last thing we saw was this giant reefer in the sky and we thought if that's what heaven's about then maybe we've been on the wrong side all along.

Chapter 6  
In the early morning

"Sorry, my nuts just fell off," said Brentford waking us up. It was still dark.

It was Brentford's turn to stand in the sea and hold us together. We're not sure how long Brentford managed before waking us.

"What the freak, Brentford?" we asked, but we were pretty cold too, barely asleep ourselves.

Around us rattled a sea of plastic waste. It must have floated into us in the night.

So we made our way back to the island, Poo Island as Cam called it and swam down to our boat.

Most of our possessions had floated away but when we brought it up we found the petrol bombs and our water supply were still intact. We found Leicester's hammock.

"You taking that?" asked Cam. We nodded.

The four of us set off north, unsure of our exact position anymore.

Most of the the way we were able to sail and made good time. There was a lot of sleeping, though Brentford was feeling talkative.

"You know. We've been thinking." We didn't have the energy to even groan. "We were reading about this scientist once, who said: everything has an equal and opposite reaction. It sounds daft, if we throw an apple, it doesn't come back and hit us in the face. But maybe that's not what they were on about. Maybe it was more about life. Like when we all liked beer and then we all liked cider. Or we all travel by water and now Leicester's flown off and actually we're all going to start flying soon. Well, we reckon it's like that with history too and women."

Brentford really could be a brute sometimes. If Brentford was going to start talking about there being a difference between males and females we might well have to shove our needle through Brentford's eyeball.

"No, no don't get us wrong," Brentford hurried on, seeing us warming up. "We mean, we think women were in charge at the beginning, you know, Amazons, the Queen of Sheba, but somehow they blew it and men took over and invented religion that hid women away, made them dress like nuns and lock them up, burn the wise women as witches, that sort of stuff, but now the men have wrecked everything, an entire planet, women are back in charge, trying to fix it. They probably will too."

"Maybe. Apart from the Leicesters of the world." We pointed out.

"Well, you need the crazies, however annoying they can be," offered Cam.

"Where the freak is Leicester?" Asked Stamford for the umpteenth time.

By the evening the ground began to rise again. Often we had to sail round small islands or drag the boat over waterlogged fields.

As night began to fall we saw, through the mists, glimpses of hills in the distance, so we decided to walk through the night.

We reached Threewall in the early morning.

THE END
