"So, what now?" They were sitting in Sheriff Thorne's living room. Robbie had broken in using a rock on a back window. It'd been Elias's idea though. They knew he lived alone and wouldn't be coming back. At least not unless the tide reached his doorstep. Also Elias thought it would be a good place to find guns. They might need guns soon, he reasoned.

"Search me." Robbie shook his head and slumped back on the sheriff's lounger defeated. It was a look Elias had never expected to see on his friend's face but he doubted he projected any more confidence himself.

"So we wait for the dark to drown us?"

"What the hell else can we do?" Robbie looked away toward the window. Outside the sun was low and heading down. It had taken them a long time to reach the house without being seen. At one point an old woman had seen them and started shouting, "It's the girl! It's the girl they're looking for!" And finding she had no audience in the empty street she gave chase herself, white hair in disarray. They had had to take to the back yards to escape her, clambering over fences, pushing through hedges. Later they hid from every sign of people.

A difficult journey but at least Thorne's place lay halfway up Pike's Hill and three quarters of Aspiration would drown before the dark tide came lapping along the sidewalk outside this door.

"Kia?" Elias asked. "Any ideas?"

"No." A whisper. She shook her head.

"But you can do magic!" Elias protested. "What else can you do? Mrs Eaves kept you for a reason... It wasn't because of the darkness. She didn't even know about that until just before it started. You must have done magic for her..."

Kia shrugged. "She ... took from me."

"Like you draw strength from us?" Robbie asked.

Kia nodded.

"And?" Elias prompted.

"Used it to look inside people's heads," Kia said.

"You can do that?" Elias felt suddenly guilty for every glance he'd stolen at her, for thinking about holding her hand ... all of it.

"She could when she took from me." Kia shrugged again.

"But can you?" Elias asked.

"Why would I?"

Elias, uncomfortable under her curious scrutiny, reached for something to divert the conversation. "My flashlight floated."

"What?" Robbie looked up from contemplation of his fingers.

"My flashlight. Well, yours really. It floated in the dark stuff." Elias had forgotten it in all the running and hiding but the image had unexpectedly reinserted itself into his mind.

"Like ... it floated away?"

"Just for a little bit, until the batteries got messed up." Elias warmed to his subject. "Maybe we could push the stuff back with strong enough lights."

"The sun ain't doing a particularly good job," Robbie pointed out.

"Huh." Elias flopped back into his chair.

"Or float." Kia said it so softly Elias almost missed it.

"What?" he asked.

"Float."

"I don't ... oh!" Elias got to his feet, suddenly filled with the idea.

"What?" Robbie asked. "What are you two on about?"

"It floated." Elias spread his arms, trying to shape the idea with his hands. "We could do something with that."

"Only for a moment you said."

"But what if the flashlight hadn't hung down into the dark and got fucked up?"

"Well..." Robbie frowned. "You think you can just tie a couple of flashlights to your feet and walk away, like freaking Jesus?"

"I think we could build a boat maybe! I mean..." Questions flashed through Elias's head, possible designs, problems. "We need more data. We have to test this out. Scientifically. Like Mr Davis taught us." Elias fell silent at the thought of Mr Davis rotting in his house on West Hill, turning into something else, something that wanted to harm them.

"Damn straight we have to test it out!" Robbie got up too, full of nervous excitement. "It's not like we get two chances at this. I mean ... if we're sitting in our boat when the tide comes in and it doesn't float ... that's going to be some bad shit..."

Another silence, this one filled with the memory of James's screaming.

"We need to experiment," Elias said. "We need an idea of how powerful a light is needed to support a given weight. And we need access to somewhere where the dark is reasonably deep. It's hard to tell at the edge where it's half an inch."

"You're the egghead. But we can't just go down to the shore. That's where everyone else is, looking for a way out. And even then we'd need somewhere like that barn, somewhere that juts out into. And that place looked ready to collapse. I can't believe Billy Cesar didn't fall through the roof," Robbie said.

"No..." Elias sat down, pondering. He didn't feel up to any of this. Not even the designing part. This was a long way from sketching out a treehouse, and the stakes a lot higher.

Robbie smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. "The Mason place!"

"What about it?"

"It's got a bunker. Everyone says so!"

"That's not going to keep us safe, dude. Nuclear proof isn't enough."

"No, doofus! It goes down a long way, so it's going to be full of the flood. We just have to go down enough stairs to find it. It'll be deep, cos it's not edging up a slope..."

"And there won't be anyone around! Genius!"

"Well, Mason and his family might be. If there is a Mr Mason... Or is that from forever ago. Anyway, dunno, whoever owns it. They might be there."

"We have to do it," Elias said. "We can't just build something with a bunch of lights and hope. It may have been a fluke. Who knows? It wasn't like I was paying much attention at the time. And we have to go now. By tomorrow that whole street might be under for good."

Mason Street was still two blocks from the closest approach of the dark tide and quiet enough, though someone in a black helmet roared down it on a dirt bike just as Elias turned the corner. The three of them hid in a front yard then advanced with caution. A half-hearted barricade had been thrown up across one end of the street and two burned out cars had been abandoned near the other. The Mason place dwarfed all the other homes. Nobody with money wanted to live in the valley between West Hill and Pike's Hill, money rises to the top. But if you want a nuclear bunker, a really world class one, then staying low and burrow into old salt workings seemed to be the smart move. At least it had to Tobias Mason the Third. Whether the fourth or fifth Mason had shared their ancestor's concerns and stayed put Elias didn't know. He was pretty sure the Mason who made all the money had died in the 70s though, without needing the help of a nuclear holocaust.

"Getting in won't be a problem then." Robbie nodded at the open door, a monstrous ten foot thing of dark wood studded with darker metal. The mansion looked as though it had been built in the 1800s rather than in the 1960s.

Robbie led the way as the three of them hurried up from the wrought iron gates. Elias was half way there when he heard the growl, a deep throaty sound full of malice and menace.

"Oh shit!"

"Run!"

The guard dog would have looked scary enough even without the crimson mess of slobber and foam around its jaws and the lines weeping flesh where the fur had fallen from it.

Kia made it through the door just in time for Robbie and Elias to slam it in the face of the Doberman. The noise boomed throughout the wide reception hall, echoing away down the corridor and up the galleried stairs. Outside the hound scrabbled at the wood, howling.

With the door closed and the power out it was dark in the reception hall. The three stood, pressed to the door, waiting for their eyes to adjust. They took out the flashlights they'd taken from Thorne's place and swept the beams about. Robbie's was police issue, a heavy black metal tube stuffed with D cells.

"Should we check the place? Y'know, clear it, so nobody sneaks up on us while we're busy?" Robbie shone his light up the stairs where a stained sheet lay having descended for a dozen steps like a silk waterfall.

"I vote we just get on with it. No point disturbing ... anything." Elias had no desire to go poking around in gloomy bedrooms.

"I think they know we're here," Robbie whispered back. "Shit, what if there's dogs in here."

"Don't." Elias shook his head and tried to squeeze the fear out. "Come on."

He led them on, hoping to find the stairs down before something else found them.

They found an elevator first. "There must be stairs too. Nobody relies on an elevator. Not for emergencies."

In the end it was Kia who found the way, a steel door at the back of a closet-sized space hidden behind a door indistinguishable from the oak panelling all around it.

"Here," she said.

The word 'BUNKER' had been helpfully stencilled across the security door.

"How...?" The boys crossed over, amazed. They had followed Kia into the study room exchanging glances that dismissed the room and Kia's interest as a waste of time.

"Echoes," Kia said softly. "This place was important to him. It still echoes."

Elias looked around again, swinging the beam of his flashlight across a wall of leather-bound books of the sort nobody reads and that rich people use as a form of hyper expensive wallpaper. The desk was a massive thing of mahogany with scrolling carvings that coiled above the legs. A large globe on a stand and a brass telescope by high, curtained windows completed the scene that might have been taken from a stage set.

"Come on then." Elias hurried over to Kia.

The steel door was locked and sported both a keyhole and a number pad of metal buttons.

"I don't suppose this echoes too?" Elias asked without much hope.

Kia closed her eyes and set her hand to the metal. "One, nine, zero, two. The year he was born."

"Cool." Elias started to punch in the numbers. "Mrs Eaves should have used you to-"

As he turned the handle something on the other side wrenched the door open and a howling shape exploded from the dark space beyond. One hand clamped beneath Elias's chin and he found himself lifted bodily from the ground then carried across the room to slam into the opposite room. The creature that held him was every bit as horrific as his glimpse of James, a flayed horror with a wet grip and stained teeth champing amid the ruin of a mouth. Only the darkness hid the true extent of the changes from view. That and the dimming of Elias's vision as he tried and failed to draw breath. He hung in the thing's clutching hands, legs dangling. His vision swum with lights of his own manufacture, made when the back of his head had collided with the wall.

The creature's howling stopped without warning and drawing a ragged breath it spoke. Somehow that was worse. "Slow." Another wet breath. "I'm going to kill you slow-"

In the next moment Elias was falling and suddenly he could suck air into his lungs. The swinging flashlight beams showed the dark-tainted man on one knee and behind him Kia, gripping in two hands the now-broken telescope that she had swung at the back of his leg.

"You!" The tainted lurched awkwardly to his feet, snarling, and turned towards Kia. "You... I'm going to gouge out one of your eyes, little girl, and leave you the other to watch me eat it with." He took a limping step toward her. Elias could see he had been a tall man, oldish, scraps of grey hair clung to his raw scalp. "We've all been waiting for you, child. And I'm the one who-"

The shot rang out shockingly loud and the tainted fell as though someone had flicked his switch to off. Robbie stood across the room, hidden behind the glare of his flashlight and the gun smoke rising before it.

"How? Where?" Elias's voice came out in a choked whisper, almost inaudible beneath the ringing in his ears. He stood with the aid of the wall. "How?"

"I took it from Thorne's place." Robbie sounded too calm.

"We need to leave!" Elias could still feel the tainted fingers around his throat, cutting away all possibility of drawing the next breath.

"No." Kia, quiet but somehow heard even so. She returned to the steel door. Her light revealed a set of narrow concrete steps spiralling down.

About a dozen steps down and the concrete took on a cancered look, stained and pitted, the steps treacherous. Elias's fear continued to grow as they descended. His neck ached, his chest hurt, and every moment he expected to hear echo of the steel door closing, trapping them down there to drown. Robbie led them into a square room with shower heads marked DECONTAMINATION. Another door was set in the far wall but in the sunken pool they found what they had come for, the dark tide, half filling the rectangular hole.

"He wasn't far from it," Robbie said. "The ... sick guy. I mean..."

He still held the gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, and Elias felt a cold chill every time it swung his way. His friend had shot someone. Killed a man.

Elias said what they were all thinking. "He left the dark. If he can do it then any of them can. I wouldn't trust any house where it's been."

"Or the streets at night," Kia said.

Elias frowned and aimed his light at her. "That tainted one knew you. He said so."

"Tainted?" Robbie snorted. "Is that what we're calling them? Sounds stupid."

Elias rounded on him. "You want we should call them face-eating death zombies? Like they're not scary enough already? Anyway..." He turned his light back on Kia. "That thing knew you."

"They share thoughts. The big thoughts." She shrugged. "Each one is itself, and many."

"Just great! So they all know we're here?"

"Maybe." Kia pursed her lips. "Maybe just the ones close by. I'm not sure."

Robbie raised his handgun and went to guard the steps. "Better get on with it then, Brainiac!"

"What did we learn?"

They sat in Thorne's dining room with the curtains drawn and a camping lamp on the table between them. Elias hadn't figured Thorne as the sort for camping but then he realised that he hadn't ever figured Thorne as anything except a craggy face with a hard attitude and a pair of dark shades. Never thought of him in civilian clothes, at home, at any age other than the one he saw. The man's house had reinforced that lack of identity, lack of depth, but the garage ... that had been stuffed with the unexpected, varied hints at a past life that had featured family, vacations, sport, weddings, a motorcycle phase...

"Elias?"

His name in Kia's mouth brought his attention back to the table. "We've learned that we have a lot to learn."

"Great." Robbie swigged from a juice carton. The stuff in the fridge would go off soon and they were eating it up in preference to what would last. Not that it looked as though any of them would have time to starve.

"We learned that we can't use flashlights." Elias had pushed their strongest flashlight light-first into the darkness by balancing books on its end, with Kia steadying them. He weighed the collection of books it had taken to force the light into the dark and unfortunately ruin Sheriff Thorne's best flashlight. Just three pounds, added of course to the two pound weight of the batteries and casing. It would take over twenty identical lights just to support Elias's weight, more when you considered the platform he would need to hold them and for him to sit on. And how long would the batteries last? A few hours at most.

"We need proper lights," Elias said. "Like that." He pointed to the bulb above them. It's the only way to get enough lift."

"Sure..." Robbie flopped back. "We just get the power working again, grab up a bunch of desk lamps and a really really long extension cord, and off we go. Oh, and we'll need to leave a note asking that nobody unplugs us."

"We're going to need a generator. And gas. Lots of gas. And a shit load of lights. Enough to lift us and the generator and the petrol and the platform and our supplies."

"Supplies?" Robbie snorted.

"How far are we going?" Kia asked. She reached out to touch Elias's wrist and immediately his head filled with images of shabby picture books that looked as if they'd been scavenged from trashcans, and in them simple pictures of rowing boats, paddleboats, a steamer with jolly round-faced crewmen, then one faded picture, framed and hung on a wall, of a three-masted ship under full sail cresting storm waves out at sea.

Elias couldn't keep a smile from his face and Kia echoed it with a sad one of her own. "As far as we have to."

They sat for a while around the lamp, not talking. Part of Elias thought they should turn the lamp down or out and save the gas. A larger part didn't want to. He'd had enough of darkness to last a lifetime.

"Someone's busy out there."

Elias nodded. There had been screams and whoops for hours now. Some of the screams wild ones, and some that sounded more like terror. Gunfire had rung out twice, close at hand. Robbie said the first was rifle shots, the second maybe both barrels of a shotgun.

"Where can we get a generator?" Robbie asked.

"Mr Davis had one."

"You know Aspiration is three islands now, right? It'll probably still be islands at noon tomorrow. We need a generator that's on our side."

"We can't afford to go hunting around for stuff," Elias said. "It's dangerous enough just getting from one place to another. We have to go to where we know the thing we want is. Everyone is going to be hunting Kia by now."

Robbie frowned. "And the lights?"

"I was thinking of that tanning place. You know, up on Deer Hill, by the big church. Those beds have long rows of sun lamps-"

"Deer Hill? Another place we can't get to! And gas from a station in Scottsville?"

Elias tried a smile. "What else do we need?" He was the ideas man. Robbie would have to build the thing.

"We need a hardware store. Lumber, brackets, wire, a nail gun. Hinges too. I'll have to angle one bank of lights to give us thrust, otherwise we're just going to float in one spot until we run out of fuel." Robbie tossed his empty carton aside and sat forward, elbows on knees. He was starting to sound interested, as if he thought it might actually work. "How are we supposed to do all this shit?"

"Kia." Elias pointed.

"Kia who everyone is looking for."

"Because Mrs Eaves set them doing it."

"Because they want to live too." Robbie shook his head. "I mean ... I want to live and I'm OK with leaving people behind ... though I really shouldn't be. I mean, we've still got friends in this town. My uncle lives on Deer Hill. He might still be there. And I've got cousins... Anyway, what makes us any better than the witch hunting Kia."

"We didn't steal her, for starters!"

"We kinda did."

"We didn't take her to use. We rescued her!"

"Actually she might have got out with Mrs Eaves if we hadn't interfered. The two of them together might have been able to get through, especially back then when it was shallow ... and they had a car! For all you know ... we killed her."

Kia watched them in turn, with quiet interest and without comment, as though it were a tennis match.

"It wasn't on purpose though. And if we don't keep on going she's going to end up just as tainted as we will." Elias became acutely aware of Kia's eyes on him.

"Really?" Robbie asked. "Because I think it might be a lot easier to keep the dark a quarter inch from your skin than to make a bubble big enough for three."

"I..." Elias thought about the volumes involved. On her own Kia might be able to last for days ... weeks, who knew. "What do you say, Kia? Should we have left you in the trunk of that car?"

Kia shook her head.

"And do you want to help us now?"

Kia nodded.

"What else is she going to say to that?" Robbie asked heatedly.

"You sound like you want her to walk out on us!" Elias shouted back.

Robbie kicked over the stool by his foot and hung his head. "I don't want that. I just ... don't want this either. It's all shit. All of it."

The sound of breaking glass woke Elias and for a few precious moments he had no idea where he was or what trouble he might be in.

"Whuh?" Robbie jerked awake on the couch. Between them the lamp on the table had died to a faint, guttering glow.

The sound of someone swearing and of wood or plastic splintering brought them all to their feet.

"Out the back!" Robbie gathered his thoughts first and led them toward the back door. The beam of a flashlight swung to and fro in the kitchen behind them.

"Ssssh." Robbie worked the bolt on the back door, Kia pressing close behind, her hands on his shoulders. Elias wanted to shout at them to hurry up.

At last the bolt slid clear and Robbie led them out.

"Got you!" More than one flashlight sprung into life, dazzling Elias, shadowy shapes behind them. "It's the girl! Looks like."

Robbie fumbled for the handgun, now in his shoulder-bag. A tall boy of eighteen or so came up and kicked him in the side, putting him on the ground. "Stay down!"

"Just want the girl." An older man with a black beard and lumberjack shirt stepped forward, a shotgun levelled at them. "You boys can run along." Behind him in the shadows another man held a bloodhound back, the beast slobbering and straining at the leash though strangely silent.

"You can't just take her!" Elias said. "That's kidnapping."

"Can and will, boy. Word is she can keep the black stuff off. Besides, we're just taking her to her mother. Ain't nothing wrong with that."

And although there were many things wrong with that, and much more that Elias could say, he hung his head because he knew that words would make no difference and that his actions couldn't change things either. "Don't." He said it to Robbie, reaching slowly for his bag. They would just be killed. That was even more certain than the black tide reaching the top of Pike's Hill.

The men, four of them in total, took Kia away down the street to where they had a flatbed truck waiting. Robbie and Elias followed, hanging back in the dark.

"She's gone now," Elias said, watching as the youngest of them and the man with the dog climbed into the back while the oldest took Kia around to the far side and the driver climbed in. "We're really fucked." Robbie shook his head.

"You were saying we shouldn't even have her with us!" Elias rounded on Robbie furiously, turning his back on the pickup as it revved its engine and drove off.

"But-"

"There's no buts about it! You said she'd be better off with the witch and now she's gone." Elias shoved Robbie's chest, and Robbie who never had any give in him, stumbled back. "I liked her and you..." He was going to say 'let them take her', but that wasn't true.

"But, she didn't!" Robbie was staring past him.

"Didn't what?"

"Go."

Elias swung back around and there in the street where the truck had been a small figure stood, dark and edged by moonlight.

"Kia!" He ran to her. Robbie, now free of his paralysis ran too.

As they reached her the girl started to collapse, requiring the support of both of them to get her back to the house.

"How- Why didn't they take you?" Elias demanded as Robbie opened the front door.

"They think they have," Kia said weakly.

"What?"

"They think I am sitting between them in the vehicle."

"How- You put that in their heads?" Robbie widened his eyes.

Kia nodded. "I don't know how long it will last."

Robbie beckoned them into the house. "Come on!"

"No!" Elias started to pull Kia away. "We need to leave. Now!"

Robbie fetched the flashlights and Elias led them through backyards for a block. Most of the houses stood dark but one in every three had some illumination even if it was just a hint of candlelight fingering through the gap between curtains. Slowing, he continued down the hill until they came to a house with no lights and the back door standing open. He led the way in and found the kitchen.

"We can get food later," Robbie hissed. "We need to put some distance between us and them!"

Elias ignored his friend and continued his hunt through the cupboards, shining his flashlight over rows of tins, bags of rice, bottles of cooking oil.

"Come on!" Robbie tugged at his elbow. Kia just slumped on the floor, her back to the cooker.

"Ready!" Elias snatched a large tub of black pepper and a smaller tub of chilli powder from the shelf.

Once outside and moving again he began to scatter the pepper and chilli behind them. "For that dog!"

"Where are we going?" Kia asked, exhaustion in her voice as if fooling the men's minds were even harder than pushing back the tide.

"We need to cross to Deer Hill for those tanning beds. It's going to be hard to leave during the day because everyone will be down there hunting for a way out."

"Really?" Robbie asked. "Even when it's obvious we're cut off?"

"I don't really know ... but I think so. That's what people do when they're scared. Also, they might be down there just to catch us trying to leave. We could go tonight, it'd be easier to get to the tide but it's going to be further to cross and Kia is already worn out. So I say we get close to the edge now and follow the tide down as it gets lighter tomorrow, and be ready to go in the moment we're spotted, or when it reaches its low point, whichever is first."

"It's a plan..." Robbie said. "A stupid one. But the only plan we've got. Let's do it."

Quietly and without flashlights, scattering chilli and pepper until the tubs ran out they made their way downhill. Elias kept them on track, aiming for Deer Street which ran down across the valley and all the way to the top of Deer Hill. His eyesight might be the worst in their class but he'd always had a killer sense of direction. James and Robbie had relied on him to find the oak again after they'd first selected it for the treehouse.

Shots rang out ahead of them followed by screaming and more shots. Elias crouched behind a picket fence and beckoned the others. They came, ghostly in the moonlight, picking their way around a swing set, a paddling pool and a discarded space hopper.

"I never knew so many people had guns," Elias whispered as more gunfire cracked through the night.

"What the hell are they shooting at?" Robbie whispered back.

"Looters?"

"What do they think they're going to do with the loot?"

Elias shrugged though the gesture was lost in the dark. "Seems to be coming from where we want to go, mostly."

One by one they crossed the street ahead and edged down the driveway between two houses. Elias found another empty-looking home with the door busted open and took them inside.

"I know this place," Robbie muttered. "Rose Dawson lives here."

"How come you know where she lives?" Rose was one of the prettier girls in their class, or as Robbie maintained, in the whole school.

Robbie just grunted.

"Where would she have gone? She's got sisters too?"

"Vacation?"

"Hope it's in the mountains then!"

Elias took them to an attic room giving a view out toward Deer Hill. A scattering of lights picked out the shape of it, mostly small, twinkling pin pricks in the velvet night but here and there car headlamps, bonfires, and even a brilliant array of floodlights that must have been running on a generator.

"Holy crap!" Robbie moved beside him and pushed the curtain wider.

Two thirds of Deer Hill lay submerged in the black sea, and on Pike's Hill things weren't much better with the tide reaching to within a block of the Dawson house. Even West Hill must be half gone, though that lay out of sight to their left.

Along the high tide mark several homes were ablaze. Another was burning lower down the slope and being swallowed as it burned. The flames snuffed out everywhere that the blackness touched them.

"I can see people fighting down there," Robbie said.

Elias pressed his forehead to the window, seeing only flashes of light.

"Only some of them are people." Kia spoke in a soft voice from across the room.

"Shit! Those things are taints?" Robbie whirled around to face her. "They're coming out now?"

Kia nodded.

"Will they come this far?" Robbie reached around for the Thorne's handgun, a Beretta he'd said it was.

"I don't know," Kia said. "Maybe not tonight."

"We stay here then. Raid the kitchen, block the door. Try it by daylight when there's less to cross and the taints are hiding."

"And the rest of Aspiration can see us and try to stop us," Robbie said.

"Nobody said it wasn't fucked up."

Supper was stale bread with peanut butter followed tinned peaches and evaporated milk for desert. Elias lay back against the small couch in the attic room, belly full. Four tall white candles from the kitchen lit the remains of their feast along with several fatter coloured ones that seemed to be scented. The posters on the wall and jewellery box on the dresser had already shown the room to belong to one of Rose's sisters. The eldest probably. The Norwegian lead singer from Ah Ha smouldered at them from above the bed.

"We should shoot ourselves if it looks like those things are going to get us. Or the tide traps us. Robbie-"

"Jesus H! I'm not shooting you. Find something better to talk about."

"He's right though," Kia said. "We should." She winced and looked around sharply.

"What? What is it?" Elias asked.

"My mother..." Kia frowned. "That's what I had to call her. She's searching for me."

"She's with us on Pike's Hill?" Robbie got to his feet. "I thought we left the bitch stranded on West Hill."

"She's here, searching with her mind," Kia said. "So she can send others to get us."

"She can do that?" Elias glanced at the dark window.

"Not well. Not without me. But she can ... a bit."

"And do you know where she is?"

Kia nodded. "A black room... That way." She pointed. "The other side of the hill."

"Damn, I thought we'd left her behind. At least when we make our break for Deer Hill we'll leave her stuck here," Elias said.

"Unless she finds us tonight with her ESP or whatever that shit is," Robbie muttered.

"I've hidden us from her," Kia said.

Robbie slumped back down. "If she can do all this shit and do it even better with your help ... why is she sat in Aspiration telling fortunes for fifty bucks? She could be a billionaire!"

"I didn't let her." Kia allowed herself a small smile. "I made sure the big plans went wrong. She made too many enemies. Had to run."

"And she never knew it was you?" Elias asked.

"She never knew, but she suspected" Kia drew back her sleeve to show a series of ugly burn scars along her arm.

"Jesus!"

"Jesus never came," Kia said. "But it was worth it. Worth it to stop her."

Early morning light woke them, streaming in through the window they'd forgotten to draw the curtains back across. Elias twitched back into consciousness, deliciously comfortable even though he had nothing between him and the carpet but a quilt. For a moment thoughts of breakfast and school filled his head. Then he realised that it was still the summer vacation. Then he realised that Elkins School was fathoms deep under an unnatural sea and class wouldn't ever resume.

"We need to go." Elias shook Robbie's shoulder. "It'll take us hours to get down there if we have to creep the whole way."

Robbie yawned hugely and sat up. "You think we can do it?"

"It's too far." Kia hadn't stirred but was watching them both, grey eyed, from her pillow.

"You haven't even seen it..." Elias tried not to whine. If she was right, if it was too far, he would be going under with her, drowning in that blackness as it closed in.

"I can't hold them back for that long," she said, still unmoving.

"Them? The tainted?"

"Them, the darkness," she said. "It is many."

Elias shivered and turned away. "By the time we get to the edge it won't be going any lower. Tomorrow there'll just be further to cross."

"Unless it stops." Robbie said it without hope.

"I can't do it," Kia said.

"So we just give up then? Move up this hill, fight for space, wait to drown?" Elias went to the window. The tide had retreated hundreds of yards but Kia was right. To resurface on Deer Hill was still much further than they'd gone before. "Mrs Eaves will get her hands on you and make you do it. Her or someone else. When we start getting crowded together they'll all turn nasty, even the nice ones. Won't even need the tide to taint them for that."

"Wait!" Robbie jumped to his feet. "Wait! We go by car!"

"Like you can drive!" Elias snorted. "And you do know that it's just as far on four wheels?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't take as long. So it'd be easier. Right, Kia?"

Kia nodded uncertainly. "You can drive?"

"Anyone can drive!" Robbie grabbed his backpack and went for the door. "My brother showed me."

Elias and Kia exchanged glances then went to follow. Elias figured that if Robbie's driving was the most dangerous thing they had to endure today then they would be doing a lot better than he expected.

They caught up with Robbie at the back door and followed him into the backyard. They kept low, staying close to the fence. Robbie stopped at the gate.

"We should try the garages at the rear of Williams Street. It's quiet down there."

Elias shook his head. "We need the keys, so we need an open house. We go in, find the keys, take the car from outside."

"We could just do that here then. Rose's sister drives a pink ... I dunno, some chick car ... anyway, they wouldn't have taken two cars on vacation. I think I saw it out front."

Elias shook his head again. "We need to get as close to the tide line as we can. What if we come up against a barricade?"

"Hey!" A shout from an upstairs window a few houses down. "Hey! I see them! Those kids! That girl!"

"Shit! Get back in the house!" Elias started to run.

"We can't stay here!" Robbie slammed the back door behind them.

"Find the keys. We need to take the sister's car!" Elias shouted. "Robbie, check it's there!"

The next few moments were a mad scramble. Kia headed off, hunting randomly, not knowing where people kept keys. Elias went through the bowl on the shelf by the front door, his hands shaking too much to be methodical. The whole lot fell to the floor, bowl smashing, contents scattering amid broken shards.

"Check!" Robbie returned from the living room window. "It's there." He bent to scoop up the car keys lying a few inches from the toes of his sneakers. "Come on!"

Out the front an elderly man had emerged from the house opposite carrying a baseball bat. He looked as though he might reach them in the next five minutes if they waited for him. Mrs Sheedy, one of the school cooks, looked a more dangerous prospect, hurrying down the street toward them faster than her bulk suggested she could move, her ample bosom bouncing. "You kids wait there!" She shouted. "Wait, I'm telling you!"

"Quick! Get in!" Robbie fumbled to get the key in the lock.

"We can't it's locked!" Elias shouted.

"Hurry!" Robbie got the driver's door open and launched himself inside.

Kia tugged at the back door. Still locked.

"Oh crap." Elias stopped trying the door handle on the other side, fixated by the sight of Billy Cesar approaching from the opposite direct to Mrs Sheedy, several of his gang at his shoulder. They spread out across the street as they came, blocking the way ahead.

A thump on the passenger window dragged Elias's attention back to the car. Robbie had leaned back to release the catch.

"Hurry! For fucksake! It's-"

"I see him." Robbie's voice carried an edge Elias knew, the tone he used when he'd decided on a course of action and was past being talked out of it. Last time he used that voice Sam Grange got his jaw broken. Robbie started the engine. He looked down at his feet. "Just gotta..." The engine roared. The car stayed where it was. Billy was twenty yards away now.

"He's got a g-" The rest of Elias's observation and the crack of Billy Cesar's revolver were both lost in the squeal of tires as Robbie remembered to put the car into drive and the vehicle lurched into motion.

"Holy shit!" Elias would have said more but Robbie had driven through the boys ahead of them before he had time. Elias thought it possible that all of them got out of the way in time but not likely.

"Hey this is even easier than-" Robbie took the corner too fast and slammed into a parked station wagon. Rose's sister's car kept going, escaping the encounter with a screech of tearing metal. Kia and Elias ended up hard against the car door and tangled together. Hitting the door hurt too much for Elias to have space left in his head for being embarrassed.

"Uh oh!"

Elias managed a groan. "What?"

"Barricade."

"Go through! Go through!"

A juddering impact and a cacophony of squealing and crunching followed. The car sent trashcans and furniture flying while wrapping its fender around something altogether more solid.

It took a few moments for Elias to gather his wits, untangle himself from Kia and climb back onto the rear seat from the footwell where they'd both been thrown. By that time Robbie had lifted his head from the steering wheel and turned to look in their direction, his face divided by crimson trickles from a wound on his forehead. "Tell me that's not Billy."

Elias turned to follow Robbie's gaze. A cold dread overrode all his body's complaints, banishing pain to the corners of his mind. Three figures were running down the road after them. Not large enough to be men but waving weapons. The cracks that radiated from a small hold in the rear windscreen made it hard to tell which of Billy's gang they were. A bullet hole. "Go! Drive! Go!"

Robbie stamped on the accelerator, or the brake. Elias couldn't tell because nothing happened.

"The engine," said Kia, sounding calmer than either boy.

The engine wasn't running.

"Shit!" Robbie grabbed the key. The engine turned over, kaff, kaff, kaff, but didn't start.

"Hurry!" Elias shouted. The gang were close now. The car sat amid the scattered remnants of the barricade. It felt slightly tilted as if something were wedged under the front, lifting it.

Kaff! Kaff! Kaff! "It won't start!"

The fastest of the chasing boys jumped triumphantly onto the trunk and beat on the car roof with the length of railing he carried.

Kaff! Kaff! Kaff!

"We need to run!" Elias made to open his door but something had it wedged.

Too late. The gang were all around them now. Billy Cesar came to Kia's window and tapped on it with the end of his revolver, leaning down to gaze in, his smile broad and ugly.

"Change his mind, Kia!" Robbie shouted, terrified now. "Do that trick."

"I can't." She sounded sad. "He's too broken."

"He's going to kill us." Elias was surprised at how calm he felt now the end had arrived. Billy might make it slow but it was better than the tide. "Just do what he says, Kia. He needs you."

Kia though had turned slowly from the window, her back to the gun. Her body trembled with effort rather than fear and her eyes were wholly black. She raised her hands and a black smoke bled from them.

Without warning everything seemed to turn inside out and Elias doubled up, his hands pressed to his ears to block out his own screaming.