0.4

I shook my head.

Things started coming together in my head.

Digital code. Data. Computer code as a means of invasion. Thin flesh-coloured threads. Fibre-optic cables.

‘Not mutating,’ I said. ‘Connecting.’

27

Three simple words.

‘Not mutating. Connecting.’

The keys that started unlocking the puzzle.

Of course it wasn’t until we reached the barn that it all came together… but now I’m doing what I have been avoiding: I’m getting ahead of myself.

It’s all starting to blur together, and the pieces are starting to bleed in over other pieces. I have to keep it together.

So you’ll know.

So you’ll understand.

28

When things start moving, they can really start moving.

We were still reacting to the bizarre sight of the doctor and my dad connecting when suddenly everyone in the crowd was at it.

Filaments began spreading from person to person, to the right, to the left, behind and in front, connecting the crowd into a vast network, bound together by those unnatural fibres.

As a group we stepped back, edging away from the sight before us.

Doctor Campbell was blinking in a definite pattern of blinks – two quick, one slow, three very quick indeed, two slow, then a lot of fluttering blinks, then the whole pattern repeated again – and every member of the crowd did exactly the same thing, at exactly the same time. Connected by those terrible fleshy fibres, the crowd was now acting as one.

We turned and walked away from them.

I don’t know about the others, but I didn’t even look back.

No one followed.

We headed out of the village, along the high street. We were driven by an impulse to get as far away from the village green as we could, and it was a few minutes before any of us managed to speak.

So we carried on, along the road that led out to Crowley, and eventually on to Cambridge.

Finally, as pavement faded out into grass verge beneath our feet, Kate O’Donnell managed to speak.

‘We’re nothing to them,’ she said helplessly. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘Then we’ll get help,’ Mr Peterson told her. ‘The police. The army. Someone.’

‘That’s if there’s anyone left,’ Lilly said. ‘What if it’s not just Millgrove? What if it’s Crowley? And Cambridge? And London? Paris? New York? What if it’s everybody? Who’s going to help us then?’

On either side of us spread the countryside, with fields and trees and hedges. It seemed too ordinary, too normal, for anything to be truly wrong.

Birds sang in the trees and swooped across the landscape.

Grasshoppers and crickets leapt from the grass as we passed.

It all looked so peaceful, so tranquil, so safe.

But the road was quieter than I had ever seen it, and that made the stillness seem artificial, sinister. There were no cars driving in from Crowley, or Cambridge, or from anywhere at all. Perhaps the thing we were fleeing was widespread.

But still we walked.

There was nothing else to do.

The sky was reddening on the horizon as the sun sank in the sky, setting the clouds on fire as it went, and we walked towards that horizon.

29

Twin towers pulled me out of a downward mental spiral.

I saw them silhouetted against the bloodied sky and stopped dead in my tracks. Lots of things suddenly collided inside my head, adding up, making some weird kind of sense.

Old man Naylor’s grain silos.

A couple of hundred metres away.

Lilly stopped next to me and followed my gaze. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her face, lined by the red of the setting sun.

‘Isn’t that where…?’ she asked, trailing off to avoid having to finish the sentence with the science fiction stuff she hated.

I nodded.

‘UFO central,’ I said.

‘But Robbie Knox and Sally Baker made that story up to get attention,’ Lilly said. She paused and then asked, ‘Didn’t they?’

I shrugged.

Yes, they probably did just make it up.

They said they saw bright lights hovering over one of the silos. Not helicopters. Not planes.

Everyone said that they weren’t the type to make up a story like that, but Simon and I had seen the way it had made them minor celebrities among their peers.

‘What are you thinking?’ Lilly asked. ‘That maybe the UFOs were the first phase of all this? That maybe there’s some link there?’

To tell the truth, I don’t know what I was thinking. It just made that weird kind of sense to me. It might be nothing more than a bizarre coincidence, but maybe ‘coincidence’ was a name given to things by people who just haven’t spotted a connection yet.

Kate and Mr Peterson had joined us and were looking at the silos too.

‘I’ve never liked those things,’ Kate said. ‘I’ve always thought they were incredibly ugly.’

She had a point. Like concrete lighthouses without lights to burn or ships to warn, the silos were local landmarks that probably featured in most travel directions given to nonlocals. They were dull and grey and rose far above anything else.

‘I think we should take a closer look,’ Lilly said.

It was kind of nice that she had faith in one of my hunches.

Kate O’Donnell shook her head.

‘And why would we want to look at a couple of grain silos?’ she asked, a sarcastic tone creeping into her voice. ‘Unless we’re saying that Kyle’s alien invasion is suddenly wheat-based?’

‘Er… because it might be important.’ Lilly’s response was sarcastic too.

‘It sounds more like a wild goose chase to me,’ Kate said crossly. ‘I say we keep walking, see how far this phenomenon extends.’

Lilly pursed her lips, put her hands on her hips.

‘And I say we go and check out a possible lead,’ she said, firmly.