instead stopped at a display of seventies sports cars. He finally selected one, a 1974 Ferrari Dino 246 GT.
Mahalia laughed. 'I bet you always wanted one of those.'
'And never had the money,' Crowther said. 'One advantage of the Fall… everything's there for the taking.'
'If you're strong enough,' Caitlin added pointedly.
Crowther examined the display sign. 'Actually, I chose it because it's really just a two-seater and we can shove the children in the tiny space behind the seats where I won't have to be bothered by them for the whole journey. Should be fairly uncomfortable.' He proceeded to read aloud: '2418 cc V-6 engine, twelve overhead valves, 195 b.h.p. at 7,600 r.p.m. and a max speed of 150 m.p.h. That should do the job. Now we just need to fill it up.' He opened the door, then paused uncomfortably. 'I don't suppose any of you know how to hot-wire a car.'
Mahalia pushed by him roughly and dipped under the steering column. A few seconds later the throaty roar of the engine echoed around the display hall.
'Oh, why am I not surprised.' Crowther slipped behind the wheel with obvious relish. 'Looks like there's enough in the tank to get us out to wherever the fuel depot is.'
''Thanks' would have been nice,' Mahalia said sourly.
The fuel depot lay behind the display halls. High winds had camouflaged it with plastic sheeting, broken branches, leaves and other vegetation. Crowther uncovered several cans filled with petrol and smiled as he filled up the Ferrari's tank. 'Isn't it funny,' he mused to himself, 'I'd forgotten what it smelled like.'
Carlton stood off to one side, eyeing the treetops uncertainly, his head cocked to one side. 'I think Carlton knows a lot more than he shows,' Caitlin said. 'It's as if he can sense them.'
'I don't care if they're about to tap me on the shoulder,' Crowther said as he screwed the cap back on, 'they don't stand a chance of keeping up with this machine.'
Once they were all in, Crowther revved the engine and drove around to the exit gates. The purple mist that signified the Whisperers' presence drifted through the trees, but Crowther didn't wait to look at them.
The car hit the gates at speed. The impact jolted their teeth, but the gates burst off their hinges and then they were away down the winding service road.
'We did it!' Caitlin said in disbelief.
Carlton reached over the back of the seat to give the professor a hug. 'Get off me!' Crowther roared.
'You can thank me when you're ready,' Mahalia said, positioning herself so that Crowther would see her every time he looked in the rear-view mirror.
The professor grunted. 'You're not completely useless.'
He pulled the car out on to the main road and hit the accelerator so hard they were all thrown back into their seats. 'I wish we had some music,' he said.
Euphoria gripped them as they made their getaway. Only Carlton peered back to watch the purple mist drifting slowly in their wake. Mary had battled with a feeling of unease ever since Caitlin had left. Part of it was worry for her friend's safety. The first time they had met, three years earlier, they had disliked each other: Mary, the herbalist and alternative practitioner, and Caitlin, the rational GP, could see little common ground. But over the weeks and months as they came into contact more and more, they saw past the superficialities. Mary had learned to admire so much about Caitlin. The young doctor's strength of character and ability to sacrifice her own needs for the good of others were in stark contrast to how Mary saw herself. If her past mistakes had not been so great, Mary might have found a partner she could love, and they might have had a daughter. She would have been proud if the child had turned out like Caitlin.
But Mary's uneasiness also came from the certain knowledge that not all the trouble had moved on with Caitlin and Crowther. There was something in the air; she could feel it.
As the glass of whiskey caught the light from the fire, she felt a twinge of guilt that she'd only had breakfast half an hour ago. But then, life was more painful than anyone ever imagined, and what was wrong with something that took the edge off the cutting blade? At least she wouldn't be able to indulge it to the point where she ended up hanging around the village hall doing jigs for anyone that passed. No nipping down to the off-licence to replenish her supplies. The powers that be had seen fit to enforce a period of sobriety.
The community had managed to survive another winter of long shadows and harshness. But then the plague had come with the spring. Existence certainly had a taste for irony. Where would it all end?
Arthur Lee bounded in from the kitchen with an urgency that shook her from her dismal thoughts. He was unsettled. With his fur bristling, he tried to bury himself in her calf muscles, body rigid, and he was not a cat prone to fear; indeed, being more than cat, he existed in a state of contempt for everything. Mary's spine prickled in response.
This is a warning, Mary thought.
A quick slug of whiskey fired her, and then she moved from window to window, searching the countryside now bathed in early-morning light. Trees and shrubs were budding; she could smell the season changing. Nothing disturbed the peaceful scene; no figures moving, no shift of vegetation in opposition to the wind. She let her senses envelop her, but all she could feel was that constant background unease.
'What's frighted you, then?' She dropped to her knees to look into the cat's gleaming eyes, but he was too anxious to stay still long enough for her to see. A drop of moisture splashed on to her cheek. Puzzled, she glanced up at the ceiling to search for the source. Absently, she wiped the droplet away, but then grew still when she glimpsed her fingertips: the stain was dark.
In the mirror, she saw a thin scarlet trickle running from each ear.
Thoughts of disease and death flashed across her mind, but she barely had time to consider them, for at that moment the phone began to ring; and it had been dead, like all phones, from the time of the Fall. Her heart began to pound.
Everything shifted at once; shadows in the room altered their position slightly, the light became strangely harsh, the barely perceptible sound of her feet on the carpet now buzzed loudly in her head; heightened sensations were twisted into something a step aside from reality. With a queasy sense of dislocation, Mary approached the phone.
She hesitated, rigid with apprehension, and then plucked up the handset. 'Hello?'
There was a moment of fizzing static and then a hollow emptiness that reminded her of space. Out of it came a questioning voice that was faintly mechanical. '… Sshhh… hsss… Are you there? Can you hear me?… hssss… over. Do you hear?… sshhh… not over. It is not over. You have to-'
Mary threw the phone across the room. After a moment, fighting an irrational dread, she marched across the room and picked up the receiver: the phone was dead once more. She stared at it for a second or two while Arthur Lee flattened himself under the coffee table, and then a hammering at the door jolted her alert.
Don't answer it, a shrill voice said at the back of her head. And she had every intention of obeying it, but then her hand was mysteriously on the handle, pressing it, pulling it. Her breath caught in her throat.
A large dark figure stood on the threshold. Oddly, she couldn't make out the face that terrified her so much; it was filled with shadows that moved like smoke. The figure entered and she seemed to float back before it.
Finally, she saw that it was a man, but that provided little comfort. His face had an odd plasticity that hinted at a mask, made worse by the burning, dreadful eyes stretched wide and staring through that masquerade. Yet everything else about him was thoroughly ordinary: his appearance resembled that of someone who had spent a long time on the road; mud-spattered jeans, faded T-shirt, worn jacket, long, greasy hair tied in a ponytail.
'Mary Holden.' The voice appeared to come from some other part of the room; a disturbing ventriloquism, a party trick with added menace.
'Who are you?'
'I come from a place of quicksilver and lightning.' He stood stock still, arms at his sides, and the light and shadows circled him, or seemed to, from her perspective.
The dread in Mary's heart twisted until she thought she would be sick. 'What do you want with me?'
'It is not over.'
For some reason, the words terrified her.
'You shall not walk away.' The eyes peering through the mask burned into her head. 'The girl will need you.'
'Caitlin?'
'Something has woken on the edge of Existence. It has seen you, and everything you are, and everything you
