He went to have a look.
* * *
Matt’s newly mended finger bones tingled only a little as he gripped the steering wheel of Everett’s blue van and waited for him and Gar to return. Aware that he was tensing up, he forced himself to relax. He looked at his watch: just after two. They’d only been gone a few minutes but it felt like much longer. He slid a bit further down in the driver’s seat and pulled his hood further over his face, not that there was much danger of being seen. The lane was empty and the hedges were high on either side, creating a dark tunnel.
He didn’t blame them any more. Straight after it had happened he’d been tempted to tell them all to get fucked and leave, and the only thing stopping him had been the fact that he couldn’t actually walk yet, but after he’d had some time to think about it he realised that if he walked away then everything he’d been through would have been a waste. Worse than that, it was possible that what he had already been given could be taken away, and he couldn’t face the prospect of having to deal with further humiliation from that bitch Lauren and her friends. He had friends of his own now.
He even kind of understood where Everett had been coming from; you couldn’t trust this kind of work to just anybody. You had to be sure. Matt had passed the test, and so, far from feeling resentful or bitter about it he felt flattered – he’d shown that he could cope with anything they threw at him.
He looked at his watch again. The light of its dial was the only illumination; the van was switched off and there were no streetlights on this empty country lane. He was parked just to the side in a space made by a farm gate that Gar had opened by simply lifting it off its hinges, and the two of them had jogged off into the night across the field of maize towards the houses that backed onto it at the other side.
In one of those houses was the woman they had come for. The vessel, he’d been told to call it. Someone else who’d eaten the first flesh at the hog roast too, but had been chosen for this rather than to become one of the Farrow. Ellen Webster. She’d been a librarian, apparently, before it had been shut down. Matt had never heard of her but then he’d never set foot in the village library either so that wasn’t surprising.
The watch was new yesterday – a G-SHOCK the size of a tractor tyre and all in black and wasp-yellow, partially a reward for his fortitude, Everett had said, but the practical purpose being that it wasn’t a phone and didn’t have a signal that could be tracked. Matt couldn’t remember the last time he’d used his phone anyway. There was no point trying to keep up with the people who had once been his mates because they were doing nothing that interested him any more. Drinking, hanging around and trying to get girls to shag them? That was beneath him now. He was part of something important.
Movement in his peripheral vision jerked his attention back to the maize field. The first flesh had given him pretty decent night vision and he could clearly make out two figures walking back along the edge of the field, keeping to the shadows of the border hedge. The bigger of the two figures was behind, with a large bundle slung across one shoulder.
He started the engine, and then the back doors opened and Everett and Gar were sliding a long, heavy weight into the van. Gar climbed in the back and Everett came around to the passenger side.
‘Holy shit!’ said Matt. He knew he should be cool but excitement had got the better of him. ‘Did you get her? It, I mean? Did you get it?’
‘Yes. Let’s go. Straight to the allotment. Mother will be waiting for us there.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘You can drive, is what you can do. So shut up and do it.’
He shut up and did it.
* * *
Dogs were so much like men, thought Ardwyn, as she approached the old woman’s shed. Give them any amount of attention and they were your loyal friend forever, or until some other cute bitch wagged a tail at them. She was carrying a long plank under one arm and walking as slowly and quietly as she could to avoid waking the dog. It was possible that he was already awake, but she hoped that if so he would be able to smell her and recognise her as a friend. She gently wedged one end of the plank underneath the lock hasp on the shed door and the other in a gap between two planks of the decking, and then returned to her own plot to prepare and await the arrival of Everett with the next vessel.
The tusk moon had long since disappeared below the horizon, but she felt Moccus’ presence around her all the same, in the life growing from the soil, thick and green and swelling. To think she had harboured doubts about this place. It was perfect for the new church. For Everett and the other men, Moccus was the razor-toothed warrior of the deep forests, but he was also the first farmer, using his tusks to plough up the earth for roots and so revered by the earliest agrarian cultures as the bringer of crops and fertility. When the little farmers of Briar Hill saw the bounty that he would bring, they would flock eagerly to his worship, and she would turn this sad little patch of suburban scratchings into a new Eden.
* * *
Despite his improved eyesight it was still not easy for Matt to drive the van down to the allotment without headlights; they were lucky that it was close
