by John McNally
Al was about to turn the key in the ignition again when Yo-yo suddenly snapped his head up and became very still.
“What is it, Yo-yo?”
Yo-yo hopped out, pulling back the way they had just come. Watching the dog carefully, Al let him pull him back across the meadow which rolled down towards an area of woodland.
“Where is he? Can you smell him?” Al whispered. Yo-yo gave a snuffle and pulled forward with more urgency. He barked twice. Facing down the hill.
Al let out the lead. Yo-yo was really on to something, he could tell. He leant down and let the dog off the lead, then bounded off down the meadow after him.
Yo-yo barked and barked again. Yes…
Then a pair of squirrels broke cover beneath a fallen oak.
“NO! NO! YO-YO!!”
Yo-yo chased the fluffy rodents with evident joy. He chased them round the dead tree. Then he chased them round the meadow. Then he chased them over the wall and into the wood.
Eventually Al stopped calling. He had dared to think the nightmare might be over. Now he realised it had only just begun.
* * *
Time had been kind. Temperature hadn’t.
Yet.
The core of the Beta had remained cool, even wrapped in the carcass of a cat. Its insides had spent the night forging proteins, refitting and renewing, leaking scar gum over its damaged wings, building reserves of venom and energy. It had even allowed itself to sleep.
But now… now it could taste the scent again. Danger… the scent was distant but distinct, and sparked fury inside its nervous system.
It needed to wake. To move. To sharpen its instinct. Its purpose.
The nymphs needed it. The swarm. They had spent the night wriggling and feeding. Growing. Several had now developed full wings and were hardening ahead of their final moult. Once they were all ready to moult, the Beta could leave. But until then it must wait. And tend them. And feed them.
The night had done its work. All it needed was the temperature to rise across the day and it would be able to fly… or for a shaft of sunlight to find a way, low between two oaks, to hit it directly, a shaft of pure energy radiated across 93 million miles…
The Beta opened its wings and basked.
THIRTY-SIX
DAY THREE 07:37 (BST). Lanyard House, Coppice Lane, Berkshire
Finn and Delta stood in the gutter. Icarus and Daedalus.
Smoke was beginning to pour out of the eaves around them.
Delta had snapped and shaped the polystyrene so that they both had the equivalent of a small hang-glider on their back – a single piece of wing. Finn was attached to his through the straps of his backpack, Delta from a harness rigged out of the titanium line.
They scrambled up the far slope of the half-pipe gutter and held on to the edge to stop themselves being lifted by the breeze.
“Just centre your weight and counter whatever the wing is doing as you fall so you achieve some kind of balance. The faster the wing is moving, the more control you’ll have,” Delta instructed. “Even if you lose control and just spin, you should drift to the ground like a falling leaf. Close your eyes and brace yourself and I’ll try and follow you down.”
Finn peered over the edge. Through the smoke was the bucolic garden, laid out in the morning sunshine. But the drop was endless. His stomach turned and he felt he was looking over the edge of the abyss. There was just no way he was ever going to be able to—
WHOOSH!
Before he’d even had time to process the thought, a gust of wind caught him and he suddenly found himself tumbling, upside down and airborne.
“No no no no…”
The initial thrust had sent the jeep speeding halfway up the garden before it went spinning in a wide arc across the damp grass. Kelly had only just managed to slow it down by hauling on the brake.
“Don’t touch anything else!” yelled Stubbs.
“We just need a little less gas,” said Kelly, ignoring him.
He gave a touch on the power lever and the jet punched them forward again, Stubbs just managing to control the steering wheel this time, and taking them back in a straight line up towards the house, which they were already approaching.
“Now we’re dancing!” said Kelly.
“Contact!” cried Stubbs.
Kelly looked up. The teenager was emerging from the house, backing away, watching the house burn.
Finn’s world was a kaleidoscope of sky and ground, sky and ground.
He must stop it.
He must stop the spin.
“Fight it,” Delta had said.
He looked back and saw his wing’s whiteness against the spinning horizon. He hauled his shoulder straps to try and centre himself and level out the wing. Instantly the wing reacted and lifted him. For a moment he reached some kind of equilibrium and he found himself gliding beautifully – straight towards an upstairs window.
“Pull right!” he heard Delta call from somewhere.
Finn hauled his right strap and spun again, faster this time. Again he hauled on the straps and regained control, floating in the right direction at last, but also, impossibly, upwards, on a thermal rising from the fire.
Sparks and cinders rose from the roof with him. Far below he could just make out the other scrap of polystyrene – Delta.
He held his straps tight and leant towards her. The wing reacted and flip-flapped out of the thermal. Gaining control as he fell, Finn managed to hold the wing steady again and arrowed downward.
Delta watched him drop to within thirty nano-metres of her before he pulled out of the dive and awkwardly steadied himself. He was getting it. She circled directly beneath him, tracking him. Bringing him in. Then she heard a familiar jet-engine scream and from the corner of her eye saw a burst of flame.
Below, the toy jeep was fizzing up the garden path, spitting a corona of pure fire from its afterburner.
Stubbs… headed straight for Kane.
The polystyrene wing was no $150-million Raptor, but Delta dropped her shoulder and took it into a perfect dive.
Kane backed away from the smoking building, leaving nothing to chance, scanning window ledges with digital optics from the drop.
Two scraps of polystyrene flapping out of the smoke and ash went unnoticed.
A screaming, flaring toy jeep did not.
“Go right up!” yelled Kelly as Stubbs guided them along the path. “He’s seen us!”
Stubbs cut the fuel so they could coast right to the spot.
“DO NOT BE ALARMED, YOUNG MAN!” Kelly started to shout, leaning out of the cab.
But just before they reached him, a sheet of white polystyrene suddenly blocked their view as Delta THUMPED and speed-rolled off the bonnet, wing shattering as it broke her fall.
“STOP!” she yelled.
“BRAKES!” screamed Stubbs. Kelly slammed the appropriate stick.
Delta looked up. Hundreds of nano-metres above them Kane raised a giant foot. Delta sprang back up at the jeep and threw herself across the bonnet.
“GO! ENEMY! GO!”
Stubbs hit the gas – WHOOSHHSHSH! – and the jeep shot forward, the G-force nearly pulling Delta’s arms from their sockets.
SLAM! Kane’s stamping foot missed them by millimetres.
Stubbs kept the gas on until they were all the way round the house and heading for the road.
“NO!” shouted Delta. “Finn… we’ve got to go back!”
Stubbs braked. Without ceremony, Delta clambered through the open windscreen, shoved Stubbs along the plastic bench and took the controls.
“Welcome home,” said Kelly. “Where’s the kid?”
“Back at the house,” said Delta.
She turned the jeep into a screaming 180-degree spin on the gravel driveway and, seeing Kane coming round the corner, charged straight at him, Kelly popping up through a hole in the roof of the cab where they’d mounted the Minimi.
DRRRRRRT! DRRRRRRT! DRRRRRT!
The tiny bullets couldn�
��t pierce Kane’s skin, but they could surprise and sting.
They snapped at his face, and he kicked out viciously and hit air as the jeep shot past him.
Finn drifted. Delta had disappeared. So had the jeep.
Hell.
He had tried to follow her down and instead flipped in a gust and again caught a thermal from the fire.
He had righted out of it. But what to do? Land? Hide?
The breeze dragged him left. If he didn’t get low enough, he would sail over the garden wall and fall into the field beyond.
Land, Finn thought. Leave the wing on the ground as a marker and get away.
He tried to angle down and right when suddenly he heard the jeep again – just as the wind shifted. He overcompensated. He flipped upside down. The wall was now hurtling towards him.
The jeep, the wall, the wind raced to see who would get the better of him.
The wall was going to win.
Fight the wing. Resist.
He pulled on the straps and swung his body round. For a moment he experienced deceleration and lift and flipped round the right way up. But he was going so fast the impact would still kill him. He pulled hard on the straps and swung right up. Just enough to stop himself dead. Then he dropped – THUMP – right on top of the wall.
The impact ripped his backpack straps through the flimsy polystyrene, snapping the wing clear. He lay still. Winded. Groaning.
When he looked up, the jeep was flying down the garden beneath him. Kane was running and taking fire—
DRTRTRTRTRT! DRTRTRTRTRTRTRT!
But Kane kept on. Not towards the jeep. Towards Finn.
He had seen the second wing come down. He was closing fast. Burnt, stung cyclops, face a rictus of cruel intent.
Finn started to scramble along the top of the wall in a useless attempt to escape. But Kane didn’t reach him. Something else did.
Finn heard:
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()!
Then all was oblivion.
* * *
It extended its wings. It felt strong. It felt a rush of hormone. Its triple stings flexed and venom seeped from them.
Its muscles twitched. The wings rose and SMASHED and slapped – but did not shatter – as it twisted to find the angle, to find lift…
Wwk… zzk… zkwkw… kwkzzz….wkzzkzkwkwkwkzzz… wkzz… kzzkzkwkwkwkzzzwkzzkzkw… wkwkwkzzzwkzzkzkwkwkwkzzz kzkwkwkwkzzz…
It rose resplendent over the waking nest site. Its reds, blacks and yellows alive. The nymphs were largely still below as they began to moult, to work their growing bodies out of their own exoskeletons for the final time.
And again on the breeze, stronger than ever, it tasted the scent of danger.
Kill…
But not yet. Resist… for the swarm, it must resist.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Finn woke and felt a desperate, impossible desire to breathe.
He sensed blackness, wetness, hotness… a squeezing and pumping… he felt a rata-tata-tata-tata heartbeat… he felt he was blacking out and throwing up at the same time and, just as he did, the wetness squeezed hard as rock and snapped at him, sending him slick and sudden and newborn into – light! Air!
His lungs gasped open and he fell headlong into an extraordinary sound.
()()()()!!!OOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!()()()()!!!OOOO!)()()()!!!OOOOO!!!()()()()!!!OOOOOO!!!!
Red.
Screaming, mile-wide red.
Falling from one wet tunnel into another.
Into the mouth of a chick.
Regurgitated – along with a bucket or so of digestive juice and yuk.
In the split second that the oxygen hit his brain and he determined all this, Finn felt the chick’s beak snap shut and the red-black envelop him once more, dragging and sucking him down again.
He was going to drown in bird guts, dissolve in stomach acid.
No no no no… He kicked and scratched and mauled and swam and fought the pressing gut… and must have struck a nerve or hit a reflex, for he felt the world tighten around him again as he was vomited out.
“ARRRRGGGH!”
He slipped from the cluster of scything beaks and sonic hell.
()()()()!!!OOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!()()()()!!!OOOO!)()()()!!!OOOOO!!!()()()()!!!OOOOO!!!!
He wriggled between them, into the heat and muck and fluff of the nest. Into the mire. Into the straw and sticks and twigs.
()()()()!!!OOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!()()()()!!!OOOO!)()()()!!!OOOOO!!!()()()()!!!OOOO!!!
And he was all but crying when he finally forced his way down, down between the twigs, down far enough to where flies and fleas wriggled free from the beaks, down in the guts of the nest.
The mother bird dashed back with another protein fix for the chicks who increased their crazed ()()()()!!!OOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!()()()()!!!OOOO!)()()()!!!OOOOO!!!()()()()!!!!()()()()!!!
And Finn saw she was a starling and, as he looked out, he saw she had brought him high, high into a tree at the edge of the wood. The smoking roof of the house was not far, a few seconds’ flight time for a starling, but to Finn… as good as a million miles.
Game over.
* * *
Al stared up at the clouds playing British Bulldog across the sky.
It was beautiful. But he knew the brief feeling of wonder would pass, that like the sky it was just a trick of physics, that what lay beyond was infinite, a lifetime of hoping Finn would be waiting somewhere, smiling, just around the corner.
Which of course he never would.
Kids were kids. He should have just wrapped him up in sixteen tonnes of cotton wool like his mother had. The anxiety she emitted was a real thing, not a mad thing. She knew kids were too small, too delicate, too dumb… too loved. They were kids.
He had everything, and now he had nothing but the clouds. His sister was up there somewhere. “I’m so sorry…” he told her. And to her long-lost husband: “Ethan, wherever the hell you are, I need you now.”
* * *
Finn swayed in the nest and contemplated the end.
He could fight the chicks for the regurgitated food their mother brought, but he didn’t fancy his chances. He could simply drop to the forest floor, and risk breaking back and legs, for what? An endless journey into the unknown?
The black button face of a small beetle pushed through to inspect him.
A full stop.
He had lost it all now. Had too much XP. Was sick on it. Always having to stay one step ahead of… what? Grief? And fear maybe. But not any more. Not now he’d reached the end of something. If what he could do was what he was then he was at an end. All he would have to do was wriggle a little further through the lattice of twigs and grasses, close his eyes and let himself go.
Experimentally, he shifted. His hands felt fresh, free air. Free fall…
Trust yourself.
The end of the fall might contain his parents. Her. Him. Them. Which meant, although he was not a master of death like Kelly, nor could he ignore it like Delta, he was not afraid of it.
It was a thought that surprised him. Struck him like a revelation.
“I am not afraid of death,” he said aloud.
He smiled. He felt giddy. His body relaxed and he slipped
further through the nest until he was dangling out, arms extended in the fresh treetop air, senses open, drinking every last drop of life.
Yap.
I am not afraid of death, so I need never be afraid of life, he thought. He was in pain. He was starving. Thirsty. Exhausted. But… I am not afraid of life. This was something that he had learned… this was something about who he was, or would have been.
Be yourself.
And a sense of wonder, of life to be enjoyed, to be run at, to be savoured, gripped him. The sound of the birds and the fragments of sky, the scent of lemon balm somewhere in the fabric of the nest – all seemed fantastic. An endless journey into the unknown. A miracle. His every instinct and nerve ending screaming – LIVE!
LIVE! screamed Al; LIVE! screamed Grandma; LIVE! his mother said; LIVE! his father said.
Live, thought Finn.
Just keep going.
Yap.
THIRTY-EIGHT
YAP!
Finn heard the sound, and everything he’d just thought, everything he’d just felt, came together in one essential, primal –
“YO-YO!”
His eyes popped and his head snapped over to look down…
…where far below Yo-yo’s mind spun, followed closely by his whirling body.
First he thought he remembered Finn, then he thought he could smell Finn, somewhere on the edge of the wood, then he could definitely smell Finn, and now he could hear him.
“YO-YOOOO!!”
FinnFinnFinnFinn!!
WOOF WOOF WOOF BOW-WOW-WOW!
()()()()!!!OOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!()()()()!!!OOOO!)()()()!!!OOOOO!!!()()()()!!!OOOO!! went the baby birds in response.
“Oh, you idiot, you beautiful idiot…” said Finn. “STAY, YO-YO!”
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!!!!Finn!Finn!!!Finn!
WOOF WOOF WOOF BOW–WOW-WOW!
“STAY! GOOD DOG!”
