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"What the hell is that?" she said fiercely. "Could there be something here with us, after all? Something alive?"
"I don't know. But the sound's coming from a lot of directions at once, which suggests that there's a lot of them, and they're all around us." I glared at the shadows from which the ruins grew, but I couldn't make out a damned thing. Anything could have been hiding in there. Anything at all. I was getting less happy by the minute. "Whatever they are, they seem to be content for the moment to keep their distance. Could be they're more afraid of us than we are of them."
"Don't take bets on it," said Joa
I checked with my gift. "Half an hour's walk. Maybe half that, if we run. But ru
She looked at me abruptly. "Could it be the Harrowing, after you again?"
I shook my head firmly. "Not so soon after Razor Eddie's little message. Whoever's behind the Harrowing will want to consider the ramifications of that for a while. I would. Even the major players can get really twitchy whenever Razor Eddie's name comes up. Besides, the Harrowing have never been able to track me that accurately. Or I wouldn't have survived this long. Maybe ... it's insects. I always thought that if anything would outlast Humanity, it would be the bloody insects. Scientists were always saying the damn things would be the only creatures to survive a nuclear war. It could well be insects. Damn. I hate creepy-crawlies."
"You're sure it couldn't be anything human? Maybe some other poor soul who got sucked into the Timeslip, maybe hurt and trapped and trying to get our attention?"
I scowled. I should have thought of that. Unlikely, but... I sent my gift out into the night, trying to find the source of the sounds, and to my astonishment I locked on to a human trace straightaway. We had to be right on top of him.
"There is someone here! A man ... one man, on his own. Not moving. Could be hurt .. . this way."
I ran down the street, clouds of dust billowing up around my pounding feet, Joa
Finally, we came to a halt beside a large ragged hole in the left-hand wall. The jagged edges of the hole made it seem... organic, more like a wound than an entrance. I prodded a protruding brick with a careful fingertip, but it didn't crumble at my touch. Odd. It was very dark beyond the hole, and the air had a faint but distinct mouldy smell. I gestured for Joa
"He's in there?" said Joa
"He's in there," I said firmly. "My gift is never
wrong about such things. But it does feel... odd." I put my head cautiously into the hole. "Hello? Can you hear me? Hello!"
We waited, but there was no reply. The brickwork didn't even shudder at the vibrations of my raised voice. As I listened, I realised the faint sounds that had been following us had stopped. I told myself we'd left them behind, but I wasn't convinced. I pulled my head back and studied the hole in the wall. The more I looked at the situation, the less I liked it. The whole thing smelled of a trap, with the (possibly) injured man as bait. There could be anything waiting in the darkness beyond the hole. But there was definitely a man in there, even if he wasn't answering, and if he was hurt... we could be his only chance. And I was damned if I'd abandon anyone here in this Godforsaken place. So ... I took a deep breath, the smell of mould tickling my nostrils and the back of my throat, and then I eased myself cautiously through the hole in the wall. It was a tight fit. I found the floor with my foot and stepped into the utter darkness of the room beyond. I stood very still for a long moment, listening, but there was no reaction anywhere. I stepped aside, and Joa
It looked like two rooms had been knocked through into one, and pretty messily at that. There were dark objects all over the floor. They didn't look like bricks, but I didn't feel like touching them to
find out what they were, so I stepped carefully round them as I moved further into the room. The air was close and foul, dry and acrid, but with an underlying scent of decay, as though something had died here, not that long ago. There was no dust on the floor, but the bare brick walls were thick with ugly mounds of grey furry mould. I kept moving, following my gift, Joa
Until finally we were standing right in front of the cocoon, glistening palely in the glow from the lighter, and there was nowhere else to go.
"Tell me you're not thinking what I'm thinking," said Joa
"He's in there," I said reluctantly. "He's still alive. Alive, and in there ... because there's nowhere else he can be."
I swallowed hard, and reached out one hand to the cocoon. The material was hot and sweaty to the
touch, something like silk, something like spiderweb, and my flesh crawled instinctively just at the feel of it. I grabbed a handful at about head height, and tore it away by brute strength. The horrid stuff clung stickily to my fingers, stretching u
I thrust both hands into the hole I'd made and tore the material away from his face. It fought me, clinging to my fingers and the face, trying to repair the broken threads even as I tore them apart. I yelled for Joa
His eyes slowly came into focus as they looked at me. I scrubbed the last sticky traces from his face with Joa
loudly and comfortingly as we forced open the cocoon, splitting it apart inch by inch, until finally we had an opening large enough to drag him out of. His whole body was limp, unresponsive. He was wearing his old grey coat, even more of a mess than I remembered, much holed and tattered, soaked with slime and darkened with what looked like a whole lot of bloodstains.