Matt turned to the Recklings. ‘Well, come on, you chickenshits!’ he yelled. ‘Take him!’
The Recklings fell on Daz with tusk and claw.
* * *
Prav tried to sidestep Moccus’ charge, but he was fast – God he was fast – had all that shuffling been a sham or was this a last-ditch burst of energy? It didn’t matter either way, because she wasn’t quick enough to avoid the tusk on the boar-side of his face; it was razor sharp and as he passed, it slashed through the stab vest, the t-shirt beneath, and her flesh beneath that in a bright line of red agony. She got in one solid whack with the baton as he went by, but didn’t think it had done him much harm. Then he was past, and behind, and she turned, and this put Dennie in front of her, pointing her little pruning knife at him. It was like seeing a mouse trying to fend off a cat with a toothpick. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a thrashing heap of creatures where Daz had been, and red, too much red, and Mark Turner screaming as he turned his shotgun to bear on Hewitson. The gun barked, and Hewitson’s shirt turned crimson, but he just looked down at it and laughed.
* * *
Sarah has the kitchen knife in both hands as Colin comes at her. He’s drunk and angry – angry about so many things. Losing his job, the bills, the fact that she’s going to have another baby when he thinks they could barely afford the first one. Four-year-old Josh is awake, she can hear him crying upstairs, and she’s tried to calm Colin down so that he’s not making so much noise but he’s just not having it. He’s clipped her a couple of times already and from the look in his piggy little eyes he’s settling in for more, and all of a sudden she realises that she’s just not having it either. She doesn’t want to hurt Colin, but she’s finally had enough of him hurting her, because it’s not just her he’s hurting, it’s the baby inside her too, and she suspects that if his beating causes her to lose it he won’t shed a tear.
She genuinely doesn’t know whether he runs onto the knife or she shoves it into him. All she knows is that once it’s there, it’s not coming out, and so she hangs onto it while his rage turns to surprise, and then fear, and then terror, and then nothing.
* * *
Moccus threw himself at the old woman with the puny little knife, except that she wasn’t an old woman any more, and the knife wasn’t puny at all – it was large and it was bright and when it went into him it hurt like the remembrance of an old death.
Oh, it hurt.
* * *
David plunged the knife deep between Moccus’ shoulder blades, and for a second he thought he saw a much younger woman standing where Dennie had been, but then the god died and the first flesh died along with him. David was seized with a sudden savage cramping low down in his guts that doubled him up, screaming. It felt like he was being twisted in half. He fell to the ground as the cramping spread out through his torso and into his limbs as if clawed things were swarming in his guts, snapping and shredding every inch of the way – and as it went, his body expelled the first flesh from his every orifice and even the pores of his skin.
* * *
Prav clutched at Dennie as she fell. Her nose was pouring blood, her eyes had rolled up to their whites, and as Prav eased her to the grass she began to spasm as if she was the one who’d taken the Taser shot instead.
‘Dennie? Dennie, can you hear me?’
But the only response Dennie made was a guttural throat-deep keening, and she began to foam at the mouth.
‘Oh Jesus, Dennie, don’t do this.’ Prav lifted her head and screamed, ‘Help me! For God’s sake please somebody help me!’
* * *
The Recklings fled at their god’s death and Matt fled with them, taking advantage of the confusion and the fact that Turner had thrown his gun away and was cradling the mutilated body of his son, weeping.
He’d never personally gone cold turkey from heroin but he knew people who had, and this felt like it might be close. He was virtually blind, his legs refused to hold him up, and it felt like every single one of his internal organs was trying to vomit and shit itself out of him simultaneously.
The Recklings had fled and Moccus was gone. He’d felt the death in his blood. He was nothing now – worse than nothing because of the knowledge of what he had lost. He ran deep into the woods and lay and let his body purge itself of the dead god’s flesh, and hoped that it might carry on dissolving, turning inside out and vanishing like a worm into the mud.
But even that mercy was denied.
Before long, he became aware that he was being watched.
Sus was standing over him, bruised and tattered, and she was holding a very large rock in both hands, raised above his head.
‘You brought this on us!’ she snarled.
‘Wait—’ he said, holding up his hands to ward off the blow. It was all he had strength left for, and it wasn’t enough.
Sus brought down the rock, hard.
* * *
Sus gathered those of her kin who still had enough wits to follow, and led them up into the deep woods and out of Swinley as the sound of sirens grew.
7
ECHOES
‘SHE’S HAVING ONE OF HER LUCID PHASES,’ DENNIE’S daughter had said. ‘But please don’t tire her out.’
David went through to the back garden where he found Dennie working on
