“I’m not sure.” He got up and padded over to the window. His fingers pressed the slim tubes of bamboo down. “Ah. Come and look.”
The sky above Exnall was clotting with wisps of cloud, slowly condensing into a broad disk. And they glowed a muted red. Dawn’s corona was rising up to blend with them. Only in the west was there a dark crescent of night, and that was slowly being squeezed to extinction.
“The stars will never rise here again,” Moyo said happily.
There was a power thrumming through the land now, one which he could feel himself responding to, contributing a little of himself towards maintaining the whole. A vast conjunction of will, something he suspected was akin to an Edenist Consensus. Annette Ekelund had won, converting the peninsula to a land where the dead walked free once more. Now two million of them were marrying their energistic power at a subconscious level, bringing about the overriding desire which also dwelt within the latent mind.
Several shadows flittered across the bottom of the garden where the overhanging boughs granted immunity against the spreading red light. The horticultural mechanoids had long since cranked to a halt, though not before wrecking most of the flower beds and small shrubs. When he opened his mind to the dark area he found several nervous bundles of thought. It was the kids left over from the possession again. He hadn’t been alone in letting one go. Unfortunately the Royal Marines had executed a fast, efficient retreat.
“Damn. They’re back for the food again.”
Stephanie sighed. “They’ve had all of the sachets in the kitchen. What else can we give them?”
“There are some chickens in one of the houses opposite; we could always cook them and leave the meat out.”
“Poor little mites. They must be frozen sleeping out there. Could you go and fetch some chickens, please? I’ll get the range cooker hot, we’ll cook them in the oven.”
“Why bother? We can just turn them straight into roasts.”
“I’m not convinced about that; and I don’t want them to catch anything from food that hasn’t been cooked properly.”
“If you just zap the chickens they’ll be cooked properly.”
“Don’t argue. Just go and get them.” She turned him around and gave him a push. “They’ll need plucking, as well.”
“All right, I’m going.” He laughed as his clothes formed around him. Argument would be pointless. It was one of the things he enjoyed about her. She didn’t have many opinions, but those she did have . . . “By the way, what are
“That’s something we can start thinking about later,” she said. “If necessary we can move out of the town and set ourselves up in one of the farms.”
He didn’t like the idea—he’d lived all his life in cities—but didn’t say anything out loud.
Someone knocked on the front door before he got to it. Pat Staite, their neighbour, was standing outside dressed in elaborate blue and grey striped baseball gear.
“We’re looking for people to help make up the teams,” he said hopefully.
“It’s a little early in the day for me.”
“Absolutely. Terribly sorry. If you’re free this afternoon . . . ?”
“Then I’ll come along, certainly.”
Pat was one of Exnall’s growing band of sports enthusiasts who seemed intent on playing every ball game ever devised by the human race. They had already taken over two of the town’s parks.
“Thanks,” Staite said, not registering the irony in Moyo’s voice or thoughts. “There’s an ex-Brit living in the street now. He said he’d teach us how to play cricket.”
“Fabulous.”
“Is there anything you used to play?”
“Strip poker. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and catch some chickens for my breakfast.”
The chickens had broken out of their coop, but they were still pecking and scratching around the garden. They were a geneered variety, plump, with rusty yellow feathers. They were also remarkably quick.
Moyo’s first couple of attempts at catching one ended with him falling flat on his stomach. When he climbed to his feet the second time, the whole flock was squawking in alarm and vanishing fast into the shrubbery. He glared at them, banishing the mud caking his trousers and shirt, and pointed a finger. The tiny bolt of white fire caught the chicken at the base of its neck, sending out a cloud of singed feathers and quite a lot of blood. It must have looked ludicrous, he knew, using his power for this. But, if it got the job done . . .
When he’d finished blasting every chicken he could see, he walked over to the nearest corpse. And it started running away from him, head flopping down its chest on the end of a flaccid strip of skin. He stared at it disbelievingly; he’d always thought that was an urban myth. Then another of the corpses sprinted for freedom. Moyo pushed his sleeves up and summoned a larger bolt of white fire.
There were voices drifting through the open kitchen door when he returned to the bungalow. He didn’t even have to use his perception to know who was in there with her.
Under Stephanie’s control the range cooker was radiating waves of heat. Several children were warming themselves around it, holding big mugs of tea. They all stopped talking as he walked in.
Stephanie’s bashful welcoming smile was transformed to an astonished blink as she saw the smoking remnants of chicken he was carrying. A couple of the children started giggling.
“Into the lounge everyone,” Stephanie ordered the kids. “Go on, I’ll see what I can salvage.”
Once they had left he asked: “What the hell are you doing?”
“Looking after them, of course. Shannon says she hasn’t had a meal ever since the possessed arrived.”
“But you can’t. Suppose—”
“Suppose what? The
He dropped the burnt carcasses onto the tile worktop next to the range cooker. “Sorry.”
“We’re responsible only to ourselves now. There are no laws, no courts, no rights and wrongs. Only what feels good. That’s what this new life is for, isn’t it? Indulgence.”
“I don’t know. It might be.”
She leaned against him, arms encircling his waist. “Look at it selfishly. What else have you got to do today?”
“And there I was thinking I was the one who’d adjusted best to this.”
“You did, at first. I just needed time to catch up.”
He peered through the door at the children. There were eight of them bouncing around on the lounge furniture, none over twelve or thirteen. “I’m not used to children.”
“Nor chickens by the look of things. But you managed to bring them back in the end, didn’t you?”
“Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, how long do you want to look after them for? What’s going to happen when they grow up? Do they hit sixteen and get possessed? That’s an awful prospect.”
“That won’t happen. We’ll take this world out of the reach of the beyond. We’re the first and the last possessed. This kind of situation won’t arise again. And in any case, I wasn’t proposing to bring them up in Exnall.”
“Where then?”
“We’ll take them up to the end of Mortonridge and turn them over to their own kind.”
“You’re kidding me.” A pointless statement; he could sense the determination in her thoughts.
“Don’t tell me you want to stay in Exnall for all of eternity?”
“No. But the first few weeks would be fine.”
“To travel is to experience. I won’t force you, Moyo, if you want to stay here and learn how to play cricket,
