about alliteration,' he added half-apologetically. 'You probably think it's all a bit strange in here. Which it is, make no mistake. Mind if I sit down?' Once they'd agreed he pulled up a chair; there was an old-fashioned politeness about him.
'Look, can I be blunt?' he said. 'You all look like intelligent people. You obviously know there are some very strange things going on all over.' He warmed when he saw the recognition in their faces, then asked them further questions until he was sure they understood the change that had come over the world. 'That's a relief. There's nothing worse than having to tell some unbelieving idiot the world has become a fairybook. So I can talk plainly, that's good. Now I haven't quite figured out what's happening, but the way I see it, for some reason reality has skewed away from science to the supernatural. The way appliances, cars, everything, fails suddenly for no apparent reason. The sudden rise in coincidences, premonitions, prophetic dreams. Do you get where I'm coming from?'
Church nodded. 'We've experienced all that. And more.'
'Good, good. If that was the end of it, it would have been bearable.' A shadow crossed Max's face. 'A few weeks ago a local farmer came in here raving about this strange sighting he'd had in one of his fields. It was a great laugh for everybody. We all thought he'd been inhaling too many organophosphates. Then some of the other farmers claimed they'd seen something. So then we decided we'd got our very own Beast of Bodmin. You know, some escaped panther living in the wild. Only it didn't really fit with the descriptions…' He chewed on a knuckle briefly, his thoughts wandering. 'And then things just went crazy. People went crazy. You can't just adapt overnight to having the whole world turned upside down. There were… a lot of casualties. Psychologically speaking. Depression, wouldn't leave their houses-'
'We saw that on our way here,' Veitch said.
'No, that's because it's dark. You don't move round much after dark, not if you can help it. A few of us meet up here mob-handed, to plan. I suppose, really, just to keep some kind of normality ticking over. We see each other home.' He took a deep draught of his beer, then grew animated. 'The problem's been the isolation. When all the phone systems went off-line and the postal system was suspended, and all the media, we were just left to stew in our own juices. It would have helped if we could have found out if other people were suffering too. Misery isn't so bad if you know it's been spread around.' He laughed humourlessly.
'Believe me, it's been spread around,' Ruth said. There was something about Max that she was warming to; a geniality, perhaps, or a lack of cynicism.
'Yeah, so I gather. I'm a reporter by trade, a stringer for the nationals. 'Course, when the phone lines went down, that put paid to that career. Thank God for the food-sharing system we've got going. Anyway, journalism, you know, it's in your blood. I wanted to know what was happening, and I wanted to let everybody else know. So we set up a jungle drums news service, passing information to the next village along, and they would pass it along to the next, and so on.' He shrugged in embarrassment. 'It was the best we could do. We had to know.'
'I admire your ingenuity,' Ruth said. 'Getting it set up so quickly. Most people wouldn't have bothered.'
'Information is power. I've had that drummed into me ever since I started on a local rag.' He seemed warmed by the praise. 'We've managed to stretch from Appleby to Durham so far. And you wouldn't believe how much trouble we had setting that up. Some bloody civil servant or council twat stumbled across it at some point and tried to stop it. Can you believe it? He was ranting on about D Notices and not causing a panic. Then he set out to the next village in his car at twilight and we never heard from him again.' There was a long pause while he sipped his beer. 'You've got to adapt, haven't you? Nothing makes sense, but if you don't get your head round it you're just…' He searched for the right words. 'Driving in a car to the next village, thinking it's a normal trip.'
'You've done a good job here,' Ruth said. He seemed to need the comfort; when he relaxed the strain was evident on his face.
'So tell me what you know,' he said, suddenly excited. 'Anything will help. Any little thing.'
'Any little thing,' Church repeated with an amused expression.
They didn't see anything wrong with filling Max in on many of the things they'd experienced since they'd got together. A hour and a half had passed before they'd finished and Max looked shellshocked. 'That's amazing. Stupendous.' He eyed them suspiciously for a moment, but it was obvious from their expressions that they weren't spinning him a yarn. 'So you're some kind of heroes. Basic, day-to-day people standing up against unimaginable odds. This is just what people have been waiting to hear!'
'You've got it all wrong,' Church said with a dismissive laugh. 'From our perspective it looks very different.'
'You're right there,' Laura added grumpily.
'No, don't you see! This is something I can do! Tell the world about what you're doing-or at least the world as far as I can reach. Give people hope. You know, war reporting. Because that's what it is.'
Veitch shook his head with irritation. 'We don't need that. A bloody spotlight shining on us all the time! No way. Anyway, we wouldn't even recognise ourselves once you've finished. I know what bleedin' reporters are like.'
'You owe this to the people. It's part of your job-'
'We don't owe anybody anything.' There was an unpleasant harshness to Witch's voice.
'We were thinking about camping in the village somewhere,' Ruth said to change the subject.
'You can't do that.'
'No, you're probably right there. How about getting some rooms here?'
Max glanced over at the barman. 'I'll have to ask Geordie. I don't know… In the current climate I'm not sure how keen he'll be to have strangers in the place.' He sighed. 'But we can't send you out into the night either, so he'll have to.'
Tom leaned across the table to catch his attention. 'You haven't told us what's going on here.'
'Yes, of course.' He scrubbed the hair at the nape of his neck, suddenly uneasy. 'Well, it's not like we really know. We've all glimpsed things out there in the fields, but what they truly are-'
'What do they look like?' Ruth asked.
'We've only seen flashes, but we pieced things together from different accounts. When they move they're like sheets blowing in the wind. They seem to change and twist all the time, so they look, you know, not really solid, like they're not quite there. But they are.' He took another swig of beer to moisten his drying mouth. 'They've got teeth. One of the farmers saw them go through a sheep like it was a threshing machine. Turned the poor beast into chunks. That was the start of it.'
'But not the end,' Church said.
Max shook his head. 'While they were out in the fields they were terrifying, but we could deal with it. They weren't here, you know? We were safe in our castles.'
'But once they'd found their footing they began to come into the village.' Tom nodded at the familiar pattern. 'More prey, and easier to catch.'
'They came into town one night like a storm blowing in, sweeping up the High Street, swirling around all the houses. Everyone knew what was out there in the fields, so they didn't really venture out that much at night. Anyway, they found their victim. Mrs. Ransom. She lived on her own in the big house at the top of the High Street. Quite well-to-do, but everyone got on with her, I suppose. There was a lot of blood, and…' His words dried up. As he stared blankly into the dregs of his pint, the awful strain was apparent on his face. 'After that the place just shut down. It was hard to go anywhere during the day. A farm hand, Eric Rogers, went missing in the fields. They found him. Part of him. Some people thought they'd try to drive away to the city… some did, but most were afraid even to go anywhere in their cars. We were virtually prisoners in our houses. Every night we barricaded ourselves in, and every morning we'd run out to meet here.'
'It's a wonder you managed to carry on living your lives,' Veitch said.
'We didn't, at first. But we began to get an idea of their patterns. They'd be in the village every night after dark, but we didn't actually see them in the environs during the day. Just on the outskirts, in the fields and the roads. Then we realised something. After Mrs. Ransom, they hadn't taken anybody else from their house, even though a lot of the barricades were pretty flimsy things. But one night Jimmy Oldfield, who was this old lush from Recton Close, he got a bit funny in the head from all the pressure. He'd been in here drinking all day, telling everybody he'd had enough, that he was going to make a stand. Everybody thought it was just the booze talking.' A guilty expression crossed his face.
'Anyway, that night they seemed to know Jimmy had the least defences because they hovered all around his door for ages, but they couldn't get in, didn't even try, really. That's what the people holed up across the road said.
