McShay's expression dared Moulding not to say the wrong thing. 'It?'
Moulding winced. 'Bob Pruett claims to have seen it before it went in there-'
'Where is he?' McShay snapped.
As he glanced around, a thickset man in his fifties wearing a sheepish expression pushed his way through the military.
'Well?' McShay said uncompromisingly.
'I saw it,' Pruett replied in a thick Scots drawl. He looked at Moulding for support.
'You better tell him,' Moulding said.
'Look, I know this sounds bloody ridiculous, but it's what I saw. It had antlers coming out like this.' He spread his fingers on either side of his head; McShay looked at him as if he had gone insane. 'But it was a man. I mean, it walked like a man. It looked like a man-two arms, two legs. But its face didn't look human, know what I mean? It had red eyes. And fur, or leaves-'
'Which one?'
'What do you mean?'
'Fur, or leaves. Which one?'
'Well, both. They looked like they were growing out of each other, all over its body.'
McShay searched Pruett's face, feeling uncomfortable when he saw no sign of contrition; in fact, there was shock and disbelief there, and that made him feel worse. Moulding suddenly grew tense, his gaze fixed on the monitors. 'It's coming this way,' he said quietly.
Unconsciously, McShay turned towards the security door. Through it he could hear a distant sound, growing louder, like the roaring of a beast, like a wind in the high trees.
'The temperature's rising in the reactor core,' Nelson called out from the other side of the room. The second tonal emergency warning began, intermingling discordantly with the intruder alarm; McShay's head began to hurt. 'The fail-safes haven't kicked in,' Nelson continued. He pulled out his mobile phone and punched in a number; McShay wondered obliquely who he could be calling.
'It's nearly here,' Moulding said. McShay couldn't take his eyes off the security door; he was paralysed by incomprehension. That horrible noise was louder now, reverberating even through the shielding. He couldn't understand how the troops could remain immobile with all the confusion raging around them; their guns were still raised to the door, barrels unwavering.
The one in charge glanced briefly at McShay, then said, 'If it comes through, fire the moment you see it.'
What's the point? McShay thought. It's been in the reactor core and its still alive! He was overcome with a terrible feeling of foreboding.
There was a sudden thundering at the door and it began to buckle like tinfoil; McShay thought he could see the imprints of hands in it. Despite their training, some of the troops took a step back. The roaring which sounded like nothing he had ever heard before was now drowning out the alarms.
'I don't wish to state the obvious, but if that door comes down, it will take more than a shower to decontaminate us,' Moulding said in a quiet voice that crackled with tension.
McShay came out of his stupor in a flash; the thought that a security door designed to survive a direct nuclear strike might ever be breached was so impossible, his mind hadn't leapt to consider the consequences of what was happening.
'Everybody fall back!' he yelled. 'We need to seal this area off-'
The next second the door exploded outwards. McShay had one brief instant when he glimpsed the shape that surged through and then the gunfire erupted in a storm of light and noise, and a second after that a wave of soft white light came rushing from the reactor core towards them all.
The first person to see what had happened to Dounreay Nuclear Power Station was a farmer trundling along the coast road in his tractor. The sight was so bizarre he had to pull over to the side to check it wasn't some illusion caused by the sea haze. The familiar modernist buildings had been lost behind an impenetrable wall of vegetation; mature trees sprouted through the concrete and tarmac, ivy swathed the perimeter fences and buildings, dog roses and clematis clambered up the side of the administration block, cars were lost beneath creepers; all around squirrels, rabbits and birds skittered through the greenery. And if anyone had decided, for whatever reason, to check for radiation, they would have found none, not even in what had been the reactor core. Nor would they have found any sign of human life.
May 2, 8 p.m.; News International: Wapping, London:
'There's no point in us being here.' The accent was pure Mockney, hiding something from the Home Counties. Lucy Manning repeatedly punched the lift button, then shifted from foot to foot with irritation as she watched the lighted numbers' soporific descent. She was in her twenties, dyed-blonde hair framing a face that had the cold hardness of a frontline soldier.
Beside her, Kay Bliss could have been a mirror image or a copycat sister, but the look and the accent were all part of the office politics; a game they both knew how to play. 'Oh, fuck it, Lucy, we're getting paid, aren't we? It's nice not to be out doorstepping some twat until the early hours for a change.' Her voice had the hard vowels of a Geordie, though she could hide it when she had to.
'There's some idiot from Downing Street permanently in the newsroom,' Lucy continued, 'going over every piece of copy with a fine-tooth comb. DNotice on this, D-Notice on that. We'll be like some fucking cheap local rag soon. Golden wedding stories and photos from the Rotary lunch.' Lucy strode into the lift the second the doors opened, then rattled her nails anxiously on the metal wall. 'Come on. Why are these things so fucking slow? All the technology we've got in this place, you'd think they'd be able to get lifts that worked quickly.'
'We're not even supposed to be using them. All those technology crashes-'
'Like we've got time to walk up and down flights of stairs all day.'
Kay held her breath until the doors opened on the newsroom floor. She'd spent an hour stuck in it with three monkeys from the loading bay and it wasn't an episode she wanted to repeat.
Lucy was still talking as she dodged out between the opening doors, 'It started with that terrorist strike on the M4-'
'Damon covered that.' Kay looked puzzled for a second. 'Terrorists?'
'It had to be terrorists. It wasn't that long before the Martial Law announcement.'
'Someone said a Yank plane had gone down carrying nukes.'
Lucy shrugged. 'And there were all those phone calls from the great unwashed claiming they'd seen some fire-breathing monster.' She flung open the swing doors. 'Sometimes I wish I worked for the FT.'
The newsroom was quiet now that all the dayshift had departed. The night news editor stared at the slowly scrolling Press Association newsfeed on his computer while lazily chewing on a cheese roll. One of the sports reporters whistled loudly.
Mello, darlin',' Kay shouted back with a cheery wave.
'It's all right for them,' Lucy muttered moodily, 'their Ludo tournaments never get censored.'
'You're in a right mood, aren't you?'
They'd walked on a few paces before Lucy said, 'I had the splash today and they pulled it.'
'Oh, that explains it. Bitter and twisted at not getting any front page glory. What was the story?'
'A whole unit of Royal Marines slaughtered up in the Highlands. A hot tip from my man at Command Headquarters.' She stuck out her bottom lip like a sulky child.
'Wow. A proper story. No EastEnders stud getting bladdered in that one,' Kay said with what Lucy thought was an unreasonable amount of glee. 'But you didn't really expect to get it through, did you?' Lucy shrugged. Kay's expression gradually became troubled. 'Slaughtered? In Scotland?'
'Hey, it's the Barbie twins!' Kevin Smith, one of the sales managers, had been lurking around the news desk. The hacks hated him for his retro-yuppie look and his aftershave stink, but he insisted on pretending he was one of the boys.
'Fuck off, Kevin,' Kay said with a mock-sweet smile.
'Careful you don't cut yourself with that.' He patted the desk so they could both sit next to him, but they studiously went round to the other side where they could talk to the handful of freelancers doing the night shift.
'What's up?' Lucy perched on the edge of the desk so she could tease the newbies with a flash of her
