The Naked God - Flight

“They’re going to make a stand,” Moyo said.

Stephanie glanced back at the ominous line moving towards them. “They’ll lose,” she said, morosely. “Nothing can resist that.”

“We’ve no food left,” McPhee said.

Cochrane used an index finger to prod his purple sunglasses up along the bridge of his nose. “Plenty of water, though, man.”

“There’s nothing to eat up here,” Rana said. “We have to go down.”

“The town will hold them off for a while at least,” Stephanie said. She resisted glancing at Moyo, though he was now her principal concern. “We could use the time to take a break, rest up.”

“Then what?” Moyo grunted.

“Then we move on. We keep ahead of them.”

“Why bother?”

“Don’t,” she said softly. “We try and live life as we always wanted to, remember? Well I don’t want to live like this; and there might be something different up ahead, because there certainly isn’t anything behind. As long as we keep going, there’s hope.”

His face compressed to a melancholic expression. He held one arm out, moving his hand round to try and find her. She gripped his fingers tightly, and he hugged her against him. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she murmured. “Hey, you know what? The way we’re heading, it takes us right up to the central mountain range. You can show me what mountain gliding is like.”

Moyo laughed gruffly, his shoulders trembling. “Look, guys, I hate to fuck up my karma any more by breaking up your major love-in scene here, but we have to decide where we’re like going. Like now. This is one army that doesn’t take time out, you dig?”

“It has to be down to Ketton,” Stephanie said briskly. She eyed the long slope below. It would be slippery, but with their energistic power they ought to cope. “We can get there ahead of the army.”

“Only just ahead,” Franklin said. “We’ll be trapped in the town. If we stay up here, we can still keep ahead of them.”

“Not by much,” McPhee said.

“And you’ll not have time to gather any food,” Rana said. “I don’t know about you, but I know I can’t keep this pace up for much longer without eating a full meal. We must consider the practicalities of the situation. My calorie intake has been very low over the last couple of days.”

“It’s a permanent downer,” Cochrane said. “Your practical problem is that you don’t eat properly anyway.”

She glared at him. “I really hope you aren’t going to suggest I should eat dead flesh.”

“Oh brother,” he raised his arms heavenwards. “Here we go again. Check it out: no meat, no smoking, no gambling, no sex, no loud music, no bright lights, no dancing, no fucking fun.”

“I’m going down to Ketton,” Stephanie said, overriding the pair of them. She started to walk down the slope, her hand holding on to Moyo’s fingers. “If anyone else wants to come, you’d better do it now.”

“I’m with you,” Moyo said. He moved his feet along cautiously. Rana shrugged lightly, and started to follow. A reefer slid up out of Cochrane’s fist and the tip ignited. He stuck it in his mouth and went after Rana.

“Sod it!” Franklin said wretchedly. “All right. But we’re giving up by going down there. There’ll be no way out of that town.”

“You can’t keep ahead of them up here,” McPhee said. “Look at the bastards. It’s like they can walk on mud.”

“All right, all right.”

Tina gave Rana a desperate look. “Darling, those things will simply demolish the town. And we’ll be in it.”

“Maybe. Who knows? The military always makes ludicrously extravagant propaganda claims about their macho prowess. Reality invariably lags behind.”

“Yo, Tina.” Cochrane proffered the reefer. “Come with us, babe. You and me, we could like have our last night on this world together. Fucking-A way to go, huh?”

Tina shuddered at the grinning hippie. “I’d rather be captured by those beastly things.”

“That’s a no, is it?”

“No it is not. I don’t want us to split up. You’re my friends.”

Stephanie had turned to watch the little scene. “Tina, make up your mind.” She started off down the slope again, leading Moyo.

“Oh heavens ,” Tina said. “You simply never give me time to decide anything. It’s so unfair.”

“Bye, doll,” Cochrane said.

“Don’t go so fast. I can’t keep up.”

Stephanie made a deliberate effort to expel the woman’s whining from her mind. Concentrating solely on navigating her way down the slope. She had to take quite a shallow angle, constantly reinforcing the slippery soil below her boot soles with energistic power. Even then her progress was marked by long skid marks.

“I can sense a lot of possessed below us,” Moyo said when they were a hundred yards above the quagmires of the valley floor.

“Where?” Stephanie asked without thinking. She hadn’t been paying attention to what waited below, traversing the tricky slope required her complete attention. Now she looked up, she could see the convoy of jeeps was barely a mile behind them. The sight gave her heart a cold squeeze.

“Not far.” His free hand pointed out across the valley. “Over there.”

Stephanie couldn’t see anyone. But now she scrutinized the mental whispers around the edge of her perception she was aware of rising anticipation in many minds.

“Hey, Moyo, man, good call.” Cochrane was scanning the valley. “Those cats are like low in the mud. I can’t see anyone.”

“Come on,” Stephanie said. “Lets find out what’s happening.”

The last section of the slope started to flatten out, allowing them to increase their speed. Stephanie was tempted just to keep to the undulating foothills that ran along the valley wall. They could certainly make good time on the reasonably dry ground. Except it curved gradually away from Ketton. One of the visible sections of road was about three hundred yards away across a perfectly flat expanse of slough. Stephanie stood on the edge, mud oozing round her ankles. Her boots kept her feet dry, but as a precaution she made the leather creep up her shins towards her knees. The silence down here was unnerving, it was as if the mud had some kind of anti-sound property. “I don’t think it’s very deep,” she ventured.

“One way to find out,” McPhee said vigorously. He struck out for the road with confident strides. Mud sloshed away slowly from his legs as he ploughed across. “Come on, ye great bunch of woofters. It’s not like we can drown.” Cochrane and Rana gave each other a reluctant glance, then started in.

“It’s going to be all right,” Stephanie said. She kept a tight grip on Moyo’s hand, and they waded in together. Tina held on to Franklin’s hand as they went in. The action drew a lecherous grin from Cochrane.

Stephanie was right about it not being particularly deep, but the mud was soon up to her knees. After a couple of attempts to clear a trench through it with her energistic power, she gave up. The mud responded so sluggishly it would have taken at least an hour for them to reach the road by such a method. This had to be crossed the hard way, and the level of exertion needed to keep going placed a terrible strain on already fatigued muscles. All of them diverted their energistic power to force recalcitrant legs forward against mud that seemed to exert an equal pressure against them. Their efforts were given an extra edge by the onward march of the army. They were travelling almost at right angles to the front line, losing precious separation distance with every minute.

Stephanie kept telling herself that as soon as they made the road they’d be able to build it back up again. But even using the road, there was a lot of mud to surmount before Ketton, and her body was already approaching its physical limit. She could hear Cochrane wheezing loudly, a sound which carried a long way over the quagmire.

“They’re right ahead of us now,” Moyo said. He’d opened the front of his oilskin jacket in an attempt to cool