A Freudian nightmare.

Jamie doesn’t like the Tree. He never has. There’s something about the way that it stands aloof from all the other trees in the garden, alone at the end of the narrow path that runs behind the garage. Then there’s the way that its roots reach beyond the circle of earth in which it is set, rising like a cluster of clenched, bony knuckles before digging back down into the concrete of the path.

The tangle of roots below is mirrored by the knot of branches above. Dark-barked and sparse-leaved, they seem indifferent to sun and sky. Come summer, come winter, the Tree retains its solitary aspect: a bleak and forbidding figure, unloved and unvisited. The only occasions on which Jamie makes its acquaintance are when a ball or Frisbee is dragged into its baleful orbit and needs retrieval.

When that happens, he inches towards its perfectly cylindrical torso, acutely aware of its looming presence, its grasping limbs. He pauses and stares for a long moment at its base, the black plastic of the dustbin blurring his peripheral vision. This standoff persists until he has demonstrated that he isn’t scared – to some imaginary spectator’s satisfaction, if not his own – and then he runs forward, scoops up the ball and returns to the garden laughing loudly at his escape, his body tingling with relief.

It’s just a tree. Never mind that his entire family refers to it as the Tree: one of the familiar landmarks of their familial psycho-geography. Jamie envies his parents’ easy acknowledgement of the Tree’s singular status. They think nothing of visiting it to fill the dustbin, even in the dead of night. He wonders if they know how he feels about it. He thinks not, but then he’s old enough to understand that they know a lot of things that they don’t acknowledge. Sometimes that understanding makes him feel grown-up. Sometimes it makes him feel alone.

Briony, on the other hand, definitely does know how he feels about it. For all that she’s four years older, and endlessly scornful of his childishness, she’s still enough of a child to understand his unspoken dread. The Tree provides a handy pretext for her to mock him when she feels the urge. “Jamie’s scaared,” she taunts. “Scared of the big scary treeee.” It hits a nerve: he can feel his face reddening even as he denies it. He wishes she would protect him, like big sisters are meant to. Like she did when he was little.

But then, Jamie suspects that Briony’s actually a little scared herself. He’s never seen her go anywhere near the Tree, except occasionally to make a point during a bout of teasing – and even then, he detects hesitation. But then, why would she? There’s nothing to see down there except concrete and bins. She always dares him to retrieve balls and the like; perhaps because she doesn’t dare herself, he thinks. That somehow makes him feel a little better: after all, shouldn’t boys go first when danger looms?

This sense of chivalry conspires with his bashfulness to stop Jamie from telling his sister just how much the Tree has begun to occupy his thoughts. By day, it is not so prominent; he’s absorbed with schoolwork and classmates. The trouble starts when he gets home, usually an hour or so before Briony, who has to catch the bus from her school. “Why don’t you go out into the garden?” suggests his mother, shooing him out of his nest on the sofa, away from the comforting babble of the television.

So it’s outside, to skulk in the falling half-light. There’s nothing to do but kick the ball back and forth: and the only safe surface to bounce it off is the garage door. He bounces it gingerly off the flaking paint, careful not to strike it into a tangent that will send it down the path to the Tree. He counts each time he kicks, each time it returns safely, ticking off the seconds before Briony explodes through the door in a frenzy of chat, discarding her shoes and raiding the fridge. He usually loses track somewhere around four or five hundred.

But it’s worst at night. The Tree, visible from his bedroom window if he folds back the corner of the curtain, has started making his way into his dreams. Or rather, it has taken them over, although he hardly dares admit it to himself. In the dream that he now has every night, Jamie is in the garden. It is dark and windy, but the air is warm. As he turns the corner, onto the path behind the garage, he sees the Tree illuminated by neither sun nor moon, but by the pale red glow emanating from a fleshy hole gaping between its roots.

Feet dragging, he paces unwillingly towards the Tree. He’s not sure why, but he feels compelled to look into the hole, even though he knows what he will see there. This is what the Tree wants. The hole looks warm, inviting, but he knows that it is a trap: the Tree wants only to press him into the cold mulch at its feet, pinioning him beneath its roots. He resists, but the Tree insists: he cannot help but advance, edging toward the hole despite the spreading cold in his chest –

– but then he wakes up, staring into space as his heart pounds and his fingers clutch at the covers. That’s how it is every night. How it is tonight. Jamie stares up into the darkness, knowing he will not dare to sleep again for hours. He is at once frightened and frustrated, tears welling up at the corners of his eyes. He thinks about shouting for his parents, but is reluctant to break their slumber. He’s getting too old for that now, anyway. Briony would mock him in the morning.

Suddenly resolved, almost before he is even aware of it, he swings up and out of bed. It feels good. The darkness is thinner now, less suffocating and more penetrable. He swings an experimental arm, finds no resistance. Stands up, bare feet on the carpet. This is it. He feels strong, like he does when he runs roaring across the playground pretending to be a soldier. It’s just a stupid tree. He’s going to prove it.

Quickly now, decisively, he moves across the room to the door. Opens it gently, astonished at his own audacity. In the corridor, he can hear the sussuration of his father’s breath and becomes aware that he is holding his own. He edges towards the stairs, starts down them, careful to tread near the edges of the steps to avoid creaks. From the bottom of the stairs, it is just a few quick steps down the landing to the kitchen door. He takes the key off the hook under the worktop, unlocks and opens the door, steps out into the garden.

The air is as warm as it was in his dream; his flannel pyjamas provide adequate protection against the breeze. The garden, though, is not the place of shadows from his dream. It is just the garden, albeit that it feels untenanted. He feels as though he is interrupting its secret, private business, then shakes it off and walks decisively down the path. As he approaches the garage, he falters. His heart is pounding again and his breath is whistling in and out. His gathered courage is seeping away.

He scrunches his hands into fists, closes his eyes tight and steps out beyond the protective corner of the garage.

There is the Tree, sere and dark in the moonlight.

And in front of it, her dressing gown wound tightly around her, is Briony.

Jamie cannot find his voice, but he feels his feet shuffling along the concrete of the path. He tries to pull back, but it is too late. And as he inches forwards, he understands that she has struck a bargain, made a deal. “I’m sorry,” she says. But as he steps past her, towards the embrace of the Tree, he looks up at her face. And in it he sees neither guilt, nor grief, nor remorse. ##

You’re not singing any more.

It was a late tackle even by the standards of zombie football, where players frequently challenged each other for possession of the ball several minutes after it had been hoofed away. And a dangerous one, to boot: Fernando had bitten deep into Fonseca’s calf and was gnawing avidly at it. A little longer and Fonseca would be rendered unipedal: and then he’d be out for at least the rest of the season.

But to the dismay of the last living man on earth, the ref did not appear to have noticed. He leapt to his feet, indignant.

“OY! Ref! REF! Foul! FOUL!”

But the ref continued to shamble absent-mindedly towards the touchline with his right hand to his mouth. He appeared to be eating his own fingers.

“Oy! Ref! You blind, or what?” the last man on earth bellowed at the oblivious black-clad figure on the pitch below. This proved equally unsuccessful at drawing the ref’s attention. It was quite possible, in fact, that he was blind. He had certainly taken a light-touch approach in his stewardship of the game so far. But the last man on earth nonetheless found himself compelled to keep up the barracking for the sake of good form. “THE REF NEEDS –”

He tailed off, uncomfortably aware that he had succeeded in getting his fellow fans to take their feet, although few of them gave much evidence of understanding why they were there. “Brainssss?” hazarded the particularly ripe gentleman standing next him, his mouth agape in a cheery, if disconcertingly incomplete, rictus.

Perhaps it would be unwise to attract further attention. So the last man on earth nodded slow affirmation at his mandibularly-challenged neighbour and then eased himself gingerly back into his plastic bucket seat. Some of his fellow fans were still standing in befuddlement; others had started milling impractically in the narrow aisles between the seats. His neighbour on the other side appeared to be having some difficulty locating his seat. That was understandable, given that his head had been sliced open like a hard-boiled egg just above the level of his eyebrows.

The last man on earth suspected that he could actually have done pretty much anything he wanted without drawing the deadheads’ ire. Certainly he had proven uniquely unattractive to their hardly discriminating tastes. (Doubly unique, in fact, given that he seemed also to be freakishly immune to the condition that had wiped out everyone else on earth.)

His girlfriend had once, during a particularly bitter exchange, accused him of being dead inside: apparently she had been more accurate than she could have possibly imagined. Of course, she was unambiguously deader than he was now, emotionally or otherwise. Initially, he had hoped their newfound emotional compatibility would paradoxically revitalise their relationship; but their differences had proven irreconcilable. Once a football widow, always a football widow. Mind you, could she really be a widow if she was already dead? For that matter, was he a widower?

His musing was interrupted by a mild surge of what passed for excitement among the Mouldy Army – to wit, a low groan, an almost frozen Mexican wave of turning heads and some sporadic twitching of limbs. While all eyes had been on Fonseca and Fernando – who now appeared to be trying to resolve their differences by disembowelling each other – Calvados, the Blues’ fleet-footed midfielder, had picked up the errant ball and taken it deep into the Reds’ half, his extraordinary turn of pace taking him past the hapless Red defenders in just three minutes.

It wasn’t only Calvados’ speed that made him such a formidable opponent, but his swift thinking: he always seemed to be one step ahead of the other team – which, to be fair, was relatively easy given how much time they spent wandering around more or less randomly. A case in point: Petrie, the Reds’ big centre back, had started marking one of the linesmen instead of homing in on Calvados. The linesman was eyeing Petrie nervously, and for good reason: the big man had only just returned to the field after a three-match ban for eating two spectators during the qualifiers.

That left the way open for Calvados to pass the ball through the Reds’ tattered back line; his strike was marred only be the fact that his foot fell off as it hit the ball. But it had the desired effect: the ball soared for twelve or more feet before splashing down in the mud and rolling gently to the feet of the Blues’ centre-forward Gerard, who by happy chance found himself with no-one but the Red goalie between him and the back of the net.

It took Gerard a few moments to work out what to do next – during which time the nearest of the Red defenders wandered tantalisingly nearby before losing focus and setting off in pursuit of one of his team-mates. Another of the Red defenders started to show interest, his attention perhaps snagged by the neat snake of pink intestine that lay coiled on the ground near Gerard’s feet.

But it was too little, too late. Gerard prodded the ball experimentally with a foot, then grunted, prodded it again – harder this time. The ball rolled forward, hesitated for a moment atop a tiny tumulus of grass before rocking over it and dribbling decisively across the line. The Red goalie was caught entirely by surprise, occupied as he was with turning a stray pigeon into a handful of bloodied feathers.

There were thirty seconds of silence. Then the Blue stands erupted – slowly, rather like toothpaste extruding unexpectedly from a tube. And the chanting went up.

“You’rrrrre not singinnnng… you’re noooot singing… any moarrrrrr…”

The last man on earth was consumed with despair. “Ref! Ref!” he shouted once more. “REF!” he bawled. But even if the ref had been able to hear him over the groaning roar of the crowd, his effort would still have been in vain.

Because there was no one else left who had the slightest hope of understanding the offside rule. ##

Let no man put asunder.

And so it came to pass that Gretel and Spejbl were to be married, and a glorious day it was to be.

Spejbl had long sought his true love. He had waited, patiently, for the right girl, biding his time and moving to the time of the unseen hands: directed this way and that by the constant tugging of his strings. He had waited as days turned into weeks and months and years, and wondered if he would ever meet the one for him, the one who would understand that beneath his clownish exterior lay a true, loyal heart that would never waver in its devotion. He had almost given up all hope when quite by chance one day he happened upon Gretel, and he knew almost at once that she was the girl for him.

Gretel, for her part, had also tired of the constant dance, of the perpetual, pre-ordained rituals of courtship: one step forward followed by two steps back. Her good looks had brought many suitors, but most were not what they seemed. Sometimes they were dull; sometimes they were unkind; and sometimes they were both. She longed for one who would see below her brightly-painted surface and delicately-carved features to the warm and gentle soul locked inside her wooden body. And she too had almost given up hope when she by chance happened on Spebjl, and she knew almost at once that he was the boy for her.

And so the great day came, and there was much excitement among the friends and family who gathered. For when puppets marry, they lose their strings: no longer must they follow directives from above, but they may choose their own path together. So the assembled congregation were eager to see Gretel and Spejbl tied in matrimony, and there was much hubbub as they waited in the highest chamber of the hilltop castle for the ceremony to begin.

In the event, Spejbl, though nervous, acquitted himself admirably. Gretel, for her part, was a beautiful bride, and there was a rising murmur of approval as they exchanged their vows and their strings came tumbling down. Free at last, the couple led the way down the winding stairs of the castle to the great green outside. But suddenly a terrible thing happened: a great wind blew up and, before anyone could move to intervene, Gretel, untethered, was blown away across the moors, never to be seen again.

And so Spebjl was left, alone and afraid, on the hill. The congregation called to him, to come away from the dangerous edge, to return to them. But without his bride, and without his strings, he could not move an inch. ##

School’s out for summer; school’s out for ever.

Last Trump At Malory Towers represents a dramatic, and in many ways unsettling, break with the arc of the series to date. It’s almost as though Blyton had grown frustrated with her self-imposed chronology, cramming in ideas and themes that have barely figured up in the books until now. The result is startlingly anarchic, tearing down the edifice that Blyton has constructed over the previous five books and giving the lie to claims that her work depends on formulaic appeals to base prejudices.

The catalyst for the apocalyptic events of Last Trump is the startling announcement from Mary-Lou that she is pregnant – it’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it? – which provokes a schism among the girls, who cannot understand how this has happened – after all, Mary-Lou is not married! One faction, led by Darrell and Sally, holds staunchly that it must have been an immaculate conception; the other, following Alicia and Betty, is equally adamant that something more diabolical is afoot.

“It’s perfectly obvious that this is an abomination! How else could it have happened?” asked Alicia sharply. And it was true that none of the girls could think how timid Mary-Lou could possibly be with child. “Well, I think you’re all being beastly to poor little Mary-Lou,” said Darrell.

The girls quickly divide into rival sects, their opposing perspectives inevitably setting them on a collision course. Darrell’s group seclude Mary-Lou in the sanatorium, the better to prepare her for the birth; Alicia’s followers, meanwhile, accept Betty’s offer and set about creating a stronghold in the West Tower. Both sides try to persuade the other Towers to fall in line; the South Tower girls quickly pledge allegiance to their neighbours in the West, while the East Tower remains independent. That standoffishness proves their downfall.

Darrell and Alicia call a summit in the music room, but any hopes of peace are dashed as a heated war of words breaks out. It does not take long for Darrell to snatch Alicia’s pen and smash it underfoot — a clear declaration of hostilities. (To confirm her intentions, she also pushes a first year over a stool). Oh Darrell, that temper will be your downfall! Alicia calls upon the Towers to take sides; when the girls of the East refuse to comply, they meet with a terrible fate, as Alicia’s followers set their Tower on fire; too late, its occupants call on Darrell to help them, but she refuses.

“They could do with learning a lesson!” Darrell thought, as the smell of roasting pork drifted across the quad. “Fancy being so stuck-up as to refuse to take a side!” She decided there and then that no girl from the East Tower would be named to any school team for the rest of the term.

It is at about this point that the teachers, ever watchful, first note that something is going on. Miss Potts is the first upon the scene – and the first to go to her death. Alicia’s upstart cousin June sees opportunity in rising lawlessness and leaps upon the startled Potts; she is followed by a legion of other frustrated girls. Blyton tactfully draws a veil on the ensuing scene.

From there on, the collapse of Malory Towers is all but inevitable as a war breaks out. All sides — including the Southsiders, having broken their pact with Alicia’s Western Front — are hell-bent on recovering Mary-Lou and her unborn child. Pitched battles break out at the entrances to the North Tower, with defenders snatching up makeshift weapons to buy time for Mary-Lou. Lacrosse sticks run with blood; the dorms fill with the dead and dying. Since Matron has been poisoned — after literally getting a taste of her own medicine — there is little medical support for the wounded, and the defenders are outnumbered. There can only be one outcome — or so it seems.

The situation was desperate, Darrell had to admit. Most of the first-formers were gone, and many of the second form. Soon she would have to start sending the older girls to their deaths. And the wound in her side hurt terribly, but not as terribly as the memory of those who had already gone: Daphne, redeemed at last; Connie and Ruth, reunited in death; and of course, Felicity. She had truly served Malory Towers well.

But in a surprise twist, salvation (or damnation?) arrives in the most unlikely of forms: Gwendoline — silly, sentimental Gwendoline; proud, vain Gwendoline; Gwendoline who has spent the two terms since In The Fifth assiduously cultivating the black arts. And Gwendoline is not alone: by her side is the mewling, crazed Maureen, while the unexpected third member of the coven is the American, Zerelda, who has not forgotten her time at Malory Towers during her career as a B-Movie queen (having shot to fame in “Girls’ School Hellcats!”). Gwendoline, so long a hapless figure of fun, finally has the power to control the other girls’ destiny. It takes her no more than a few words and gestures to silence the screaming masses, scorching the earth around the North Tower.

Whose side will she pick? On the one side, there is Darrell: the model Malory Towers girl, everything that Gwendoline is not. On the other, Alicia, whose sharp tongue ensured that hours, days and weeks of torment. Both sides lobby for her favour; but Gwendoline spurns them all. And in the end, she finally proves that she did learn something at Malory Towers after all. “A plague on all your houses,” she screeches, before setting Malory Towers ablaze.

That, inevitably, wakes The Grayling, who rises, shrieking, from the pyre, her eyes glowing and her talons outstretched. The final battle has begun.

To say more would do a disservice to Blyton’s carefully constructed finale. The narrative is relatively sparse, but rich in symbolism and filled with potent imagery. Who can forget Mam’zelle Rougier, her face blackened with soot, blade clamped between her yellowed teeth, promising to “streep ze fat” from the squealing Mam’zelle Dupont? Or the scene in which Bill and Clarissa ride their horses, manes ablaze, to snatch Mary-Lou from June? Mavis, singing her final solo amid the ruins of the North Tower? Or Darrell and Sally, united at last as the flames lick ever closer? Last Term; last call: a fitting conclusion to the series. ##

— New York.

You push the door shut. The door of your all-white, perfectly rectangular hotel room. Feel the surgical-grade steel handle turn smoothly in your hand.

Behind the door, the wall. Smooth. Immaculate. White.

You draw your arm back. Ball your hand into a fist. Punch the wall.

The plaster cracks, craters. A splintered bull’s eye.

— London.

You push the door shut. Your perfect room. The steel handle.

The wall is smooth, white.

You make a fist.

The plaster cracks.

— Tokyo.

Door.

Wall.

Fist.

Crack.

— New York. Reykjavik. London. Paris. Berlin. Moscow. Mumbai. Shanghai. Tokyo. Los Angeles.

Close the door, make the fist, punch the wall. And again. And again. And again.

— New York.

And the wall cracks, craters.

— London

A palimpsest written in paint and plaster.

— Tokyo

A hundred holes in a hundred walls in a hundred hotels in a hundred cities.

— New York

You draw back your arm, but realise it’s not enough, it’s never enough.

The white wall stares at you, blind like all the rest. Smooth. Immaculate.

You take the white-headed matches from the white matchbox.

You set the fire.

And wait.

Soon, the white walls will turn black.

##

Pussy by name, pussy by nature.

Colonel Pussy barrelled round the corner in his souped-up, cut-down Jeep: its tyres left trails of black rubber as he screeched to a halt. The Willys MB had barely stopped moving as he stood and vaulted over the door: opening it would have taken too long. And his paws had no sooner hit the ground than he began striding purposefully towards the officers’ mess.

That was Pussy all over: he always hit the ground running. It was said around the base that there were only two occasions on which he took things slowly: the first was when drawing a bead on a baddy; the second was when keeping company with a lady. And there were many opportunities for both. Pussy was the best shot in the squadron, and his tabby stripes, military bearing and gallant air were like catnip to the fairer sex.

“Pussy by name, pussy by nature,” he would roar whenever his news of his latest conquest raised eyebrows in the mess hall. Strictly speaking, the corps preferred its senior men to keep their private affairs just that: private. But it was hopeless trying to hush Pussy’s bragging: it was like a force of nature. And in any case, his success on the battlefield and in the bedroom usually won admiration, rather than arousing envy.

It had obviously been a good mission: Colonel Pussy had the satisfied air of one who had got the cream and the canary. One of the engineers would be stencilling a fresh batch of pointy-helmeted heads onto the fuselage of his Spitfire tonight. He swept into the mess, smacking the door into the wall with a thunderous crash, and bellowed: “Drinks for everyone! On me!”

The words had barely left his lips, to be greeted with a cheer from the occupants of the mess hall, when someone rushed over to him with a saucer brimful of milk. Pussy seized it by the rim, applied his tongue swiftly and drank it down in one long lick. He dragged his forepaw across his whiskers to brush off the few drops that had strayed, and then downed the next saucer proffered him in similarly rapid fashion.

Two underlings – barely out of kittenhood, their ears and feet still oversized – helped Pussy out of his flight suit, while the barman scurried to distribute Pussy’s round to his grateful beneficiaries. Underneath, Pussy wore Army colours, although he’d transferred to the RAF long ago. It was just another eccentricity that his superiors chose to overlook, like his penchant for parading up and down the drill field for no readily apparent purpose. No one ever dared ask why: that was just Pussy.

“Good trip, Colonel?” asked Lieutenant Snowdrop, with a twinkle in his eye. “Very good, Snowy,” rejoined Pussy, holding up a paw and extending its full complement of claws. That meant four kills – maybe five, if the dewclaw up his sleeve was standing similarly proud. “There are going to be some dashed gloomy faces behind the Axis line tonight! And not just because their women are ugly and their fish is rotten!”

There was a roar of laughter: they’d heard it all before, but the jubilance of Pussy’s return had a way of making everything seem new and exciting again, and at the same time, as though nothing would ever change. As long as Pussy kept soaring up, up and away and swooping back down to barge through the mess hall doors, the war could be kept at bay. The menace of Kitler remained little more than a looming presence.

Pussy drank down another saucer of milk – his fourth since entering the mess – and approached the bar. His stool, as always, was waiting for him, its worn leather seat welcome. He straddled it, then sat down, his rear claws scratching at familiar grooves in its sturdy legs. “A few close calls, Snowy, one got off a clean shot at me. Thought I was going to be pushing up daisies and no mistake!”

There was a concerned muttering, but not too concerned: Pussy had never suffered so much as a graze in combat. Intelligence reports suggested that even the other side knew of his charmed life.  “I made ‘em pay dearly for it, though,” said Pussy. “Made widows of a few young kitties in Berlin!” He laughed grimly and patted at his pockets, looking for a cigarette. Abruptly, he stopped: slowly brought his paw back up to his face.

Its white fur was smeared with red.

Pussy stared it for a moment, then patted again at his pocket, hesitantly this time. This time, when he brought it up, there was no mistaking it. The paw was covered in blood. The mess hall fell silent. “I say …” started Colonel Pussy. “I … Snowy, I don’t feel too well.” And with that, Pussy staggered back off the stool. As he stepped back from the bar, the dark, spreading splotch on his shirt was plain for all to see.

“What does this mean?” said the Colonel, his unaccustomed doubt striking fear into the hearts of every tomcat in the room. There was a pause, and then Snowy replied, reluctantly. “It means the day has come,” he said. “The day that we knew would come eventually. We survived sex – in fact, you seem to have rather thrived on that. But it seems that your dreamer has become aware … aware of …” His words trailed away.

“It can’t be!” hissed Colonel Pussy, and for a moment his amber eyes flared with an anger that made those nearby step back. “I can’t die! I refuse to die! I’m COLONEL PUSSY, DAMMIT!” He fell silent for a moment, then added quietly: “Anyway, it’s just a flesh wound.” A drop of blood fell to his floor, its splash audible in the hush. Pussy dragged his paw across his face; a streak of dark red stuck together the fur around his mouth.

“I’m afraid that’s just the way it is,” said Snowy. “There’s no going back now. The dreamer no longer believes.” His icy blue eyes were dispassionate, but his drooping ears told of his real feelings. “From now on, it’s for real. Everything is for real.” This time, the silence endured, the only sound the increasingly rapid patter of Colonel Pussy’s blood dripping on the floor.

It was broken by the crash of the doors. “Scramble, scramble!” cried an orderly. “We have radar contact; they’re only ten minutes out! To your planes! To your planes!”

Pussy straightened up; if the motion caused him pain, he showed no sign. “Well, that’s torn it,” he said, and started pacing towards the door, his tail stiffened. “Fun while it lasted, eh, Snowy?” A trail of spots marked his passage across the floor. “Stop,” said Snowy softly, desperately. “You’re in no shape. Let someone else take them on. You’ll live to fight another day.”

And Pussy did stop, but only for a moment. “But that’s just it,” he said, and strode out of the door. ##

Apocalypse now.

When you’re dealing with an infectious outbreak, there’s only one question you really need to ask.

Let’s say you catch the disease.

How many people will you give it to before you die?

That’s what the white coats call the reproductive number. R-zero.

Most of the diseases you got when you were a kid, and the ones you didn’t get because someone with your best interests at heart stuck you in the ass or the arm with a needle: they’re high r-zero. Measles. Mumps. Chicken pox: if you get chicken pox, you’re going to make ten other people itchy and scratchy, on average. That’s why they’re kids’ diseases: you can barely avoid them, so you catch them early. They’re endemic in the population.

That doesn’t matter too much if all you have to show for your ordeal is a few poxy scars. But it’s more of a problem if it’s going to leave you gammy-legged or sterile. Or dead. In those cases, you want to force r-zero down. Isolation’s one way to do it: keep sufferers away from everyone else and let the disease burn itself out.

But what you really want is a vaccine. And you want everyone to take it. Not only does the jab protect the vaccinee, but it’s hard – hopefully impossible – for the disease to reach susceptible people to infect in a vaccinated population. So the r-zero falls. Actually, it’s then termed r-vacc, or something, but let’s not worry about terminology right now, huh?

But the higher the r-zero, the more people you need to stick to stop it. Don’t want your kids to have the MMR because you’re still scared of that autism bullshit? Your choice, I guess. But if you don’t want them to get measles (r-zero: 14) you’d better hope that nine out of ten of their playmates’ parents were more responsible than you.

Stuff that’s low r-zero is usually easier to handle. Smallpox (r-zero:3) was pretty easy to wipe out: inoculate two-thirds of the population and you’re there. Polio (r-zero:6) is tougher: you need to get a more than four out of five. That’s why it was still hanging around in what used to be Nigeria and India years after it had vanished everywhere else in the world.

It’s never that simple, of course. People used to be scared of Ebola and lassa fever and all those sorts of diseases. Ebola basically makes people explode. All that black blood, all of it supercharged with virus. One drop, and it’s all over for you. But it’s not airborne; you have to be in physical contact with a sufferer to catch it. So  r-zero for Ebola is only about two. It’s actually pretty easy to control: all you have to do is stop trying to help people.

There’s no vaccine, so isolation’s the only way. Leave them to die as soon as they show symptoms, and they’re gone so damn fast the virus doesn’t get a chance to spread.

“Catch it, kill it, bin it”: remember that? It works just as well for the infected as it does for the virus itself.

Now flu, there’s a different problem. Flu’s r-zero is about the same as Ebola’s. The problem is, it spreads quick but shows up slow. You have plenty of time to spread the disease before anyone knows you’ve got it. So by the time we knew about Z, it was already everywhere.

We didn’t have a vaccine. So it was down to isolation and treatment with antivirals. Which seemed, thank God, to work. Z’s r-zero was supposedly just over one. Enough to persist, not enough to spread. And if you got victims into isolation quickly, that meant r-zero of less than one: unsustainable. The outbreak would fizzle out.

A lot of people got sick, a few died. But most got better.

Or so we thought.

It took us longer than it should have to catch on to the fact that people who’d caught Z and got better… hadn’t. They just looked as though they had. They were walking around, still talking to people, still spreading the disease. All the time their bodies were just going through the motions, their brains rotting away in their heads. And we didn’t know it was happening.

(Maybe they did, though. Maybe that’s why they’re so damned eager to get hold of other peoples’ brains.)

If you’ve never heard of Typhoid Mary, look her up.

So Z’s r-zero wasn’t one. It was enormous. Off the chart. That means that by the time we’d caught on, it was way too late to put it back in the bottle, even if we’d known how. You’d have had to inoculate an insanely high proportion of the population to stop it spreading. And we still didn’t have a vaccine.

Game over.

It’s amazing how long you can keep on thinking: it couldn’t happen here. First, you accept someone’s gonna die on the other side of the world. Then that someone’s gonna die in your country. Then someone you know. Then someone in your family. And then someone in your house.

Those are the worst. The mothers, the fathers, the brothers, sisters, grandparents and friends. First, you put them in a bedroom, follow the directions, leave food and medication outside the door for  them to pick up. Maybe you listen for their footsteps, for the rasping of their breath that shows they’re still alive, still able to feed themselves.

And then the breathing turns into gasping. Moaning. Something doesn’t sound quite right. You start to worry about what’ll happen if they try to leave. You find yourself locking the bedroom door from the outside. By now you’ve started to hear that bad things are happening in locked bedrooms all over the country, but you don’t dare look. You don’t have the will or the equipment to deal with what you might see.

And the moaning turns  into screeching, babbling. And the scratching at the door turns into pounding. And you’re wondering how long it will take Daddy or Grandma or little Billy to starve to death. And then you’re hoping it’ll be soon. Not for their sake, but for yours.

A full-blown zedhead – they don’t know what they’re doing. When they attack, it’s not even like an animal. It’s just savagery. Those bedroom doors didn’t hold them back long.

And if they’re strong, you die. Quickly. Sucks to be you, but that’s the end of that.

But if they’re weak, you’re just wounded.

You get away. But you catch the disease.

And if you’re wounded, you’re weak, and so you just wound your own victims.

And they get away, but catch the disease.

So what happens, weirdly, is this: survival of the weakest. If you’re a weak zedhead, your victims survive to carry the virus, and their victims survive, and so on. And the disease spreads. If you’re strong, the people you meet end up as mincemeat, and all that ripping and tearing burns you out quickly. So the disease dies out.

The zedheads were getting weaker and weaker. And the weaker they got, the more the virus spread. Until they got so weak that they were just as likely to win a fight as lose one. At that point, the selection pressure eased off.

So over time, we came to an arrangement. The most successful strains of the virus were the ones that didn’t drive their hosts to destroy themselves and others. They left their hosts just about functional, and their hosts’ victims just about functional. The virus’ reproductive number was managing itself upwards.

Until eventually, we had a population where Z was endemic. Kids get it almost before they can walk. Successful strains of the virus left the nurturing instinct intact, too. Most of the time, they go about their business; sometimes, they have violent outbursts. Just enough to keep the virus spreading.

Sound familiar?

It should. If you overlook the minor detail that the population has been quite literally decimated, it’s pretty much exactly the way things were before the virus hit.

Except we’re all zombies now. ##

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

“It’s been a while,” my former mollusc said to me. He was looking well, I was annoyed to note. Better than me: I’d put on a bit of flab and was feeling drab: but he still had his clear colours, his proud beak, his sinewy tentacles.

I wondered momentarily if his ink still tasted like the open ocean. Then I cursed myself inwardly for even thinking about it.

“Yes, it has,” I replied. “How have you been?” Polite but distant, I told myself. I hate running into exes. Particularly at work. But it had been inevitable that our paths would cross at some point. It’s a small ocean, after all. Smaller still when you both work in high-end calamari marketing. If there was one place I was bound to run into him, it was at the annual offshore conference. (Technically, all our business was conducted offshore, of course, but you know what management types are like for jargon.)

Try as I might, I couldn’t help but feel some residual affection for him. It remained true that I’d outgrown him. But it was equally true that he’d played a big part in making me who I was today. And he was the least embarrassing of my exes. I still cringe to think about some of his predecessors, particularly. Thoughtless, inarticulate and irresponsible: it was a minor miracle that I’d made it out of adolescence without losing an arm or three.

“Not bad, not bad,” he said with unconvincing casualness. “I’ll have to tell you all about it. Actually, do you fancy a drink?”

I hesitated.

“Oh, come on,” he said, smelling slightly annoyed. “Can’t we at least be civilised about this?”

“I tried to be civilised about it, remember?” I snapped, my flanks flaring red despite myself. And blowing any remaining chance that this encounter would pass unnoticed by my colleagues. I could smell half the department nearby — including, I was horrified to realise, my boss, my boss’ boss, and my boss’ boss’ boss. I could practically feel their eyestalks protruding in my direction. “It was you that got all hysterical.”

“Well, I was the one that was being dumped, wasn’t I?” One of the ways in which we were similar was that neither of us had ever been much good at hiding our emotions. And one of the ways that we were different was that he always tried to; I never did. His flanks were as ablaze with fiery colour as mine, despite his attempt to conceal them with his pseudopods. I tried not to notice that it looked rather good on him.

“Time to move on, you said,” he continued bitterly. “I was stifling you, apparently. You needed your space.” Were we just going to recap the clichés we’d spawned during our break-up, I wondered? Or would we get down to good old-fashioned character assassination in due course? Maybe some shouting: that’d impress the octopodes from Head Office.

Despite his tone, he’d actually been more worried about surviving on his own than about losing me. And he’d had a point: it’d taken me a long time to accept that it was time to go our separate ways, and even longer to suggest it to him. He’d taken it well initially, and it’d all been pretty amicable to start with. But then came the monosyllabic conversations, the heated arguments, the cold negotiations over the books, the records, the furniture, the exoskeleton, the nervous system…

Now, he just looked withdrawn and hurt, his mantle pulsing with dolorous green-brown rings. I began to worry that he might actually start crying. Or disappear into the background as his camouflage kicked in. I hated to make him fade out this way – but actually, I rather wished I could disappear myself, what with all the Head Office pseudopods pointing in our direction.

“C’mon,” I said gently, reaching out to tap his carapace. “How about that drink? For old times’ sake. A martini? With zooplankton and bladderwrack on the side?”

He clacked his beak sullenly. But there was a hopeful tang in his odour.

##

I felt a bit better once we were back in the bar, ensconced in a semi-circular rock booth. The decor was banal, the ambience lousy and the lighting so bright you could barely see yourself think. And the drinks were weak. That’s hotel bars for you, I suppose. But then again, I was more interested in the quantity of the booze than its quality; the lilting tidal motion reminded me of my carefree barnacle days; and the company… Well, I was warming to the company despite myself.

We’d been silent for a few moments — a companionable silence, like in the old days — when he gave an abrupt laugh. “Can I ask you something?” he said. “Did you leave because… because you found someone else? You can tell me, I promise I won’t get angry.”

I paused, wondering what answer he was hoping for, before opting for honesty. “No,” I said, “I just thought it really was time we went our separate ways.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. How could I possibly have been carrying on with anyone else without you knowing about it?”

He visibly deflated, flushed pale blue and then an embarrassed, sickly green. “I suppose I thought you might have developed some independent motility and didn’t tell me about it. Sneaking around while I was asleep, maybe.”

“Don’t be daft,” I said, slapping him gently with a tentacle to show I was teasing. “I couldn’t have moved an inch without you. Until… well, until the end.”

“I’d rather hoped there was someone else,” he said. “Was I really so difficult to live with?”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t like that. We’d just — you know, we’d just gone as far as we could together.”

“That’s even more depressing,” he said, “the idea that you just didn’t need me any more. It makes me feel completely redundant.”

I was starting to feel unsympathetic again. “Well, that’s just how things are, I’m afraid.”

“I wonder what it’d be like to be a squid,” he said. “You know, with one continuous lifecycle. They just develop from one stage to another. Larva to instar to adult.”

“Sound bloody weird to me,” I said, dipping my beak further into my drink. Avoiding his eyes.

“Perhaps it’s better that way,” he continued. “No exes hanging around, wondering if there’s anything left to live for.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. “That’s life. You’re just going to have to accept it.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” he said. Then a half-smile crossed his maw and he flushed a satisfied pink. “For the moment.”

Something about the way he said this chilled my already cold blood still further.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He laughed, and it was not a kind laugh. A dark black stripe raced over his body from tail to tentacles. “Oh, none of us think our time will come,” he said. “But honestly, do you really think you’re the last in line?”

“Well -” I started. Then I stopped. Remembered my feeling that I’d put on a bit of weight. I touched my tentacle to my side. It probably was just a bit of flab. But then again… weren’t you supposed to know if you were budding?

He looked at me, raised his glass in a half-rueful, half-amused style.

“Drink up,” he said, “and perhaps we’d better go get some dinner. After all, you’re eating for two now.” ##

Like a wolf on the fold.

He had always believed in the black dog.

He had heard, as a child, of its depredations. Of how it stole away those who were too old and infirm, or too young and naïve, to cry out before they were snatched up in its jaws. Of how it did not even need to do that: even its poisoned breath was enough to ensure that sleepers would never wake. Of how it crept through the dead of night, its velvet footsteps falling softer than snow, its breath smoking in the chill air, its form shrouded by darkness but for the red of its eyes and the white of its teeth. He had learned to be afraid, with a child’s unquestioning belief.

And he had learned, as an adult, how to invoke the black dog’s power. The fear remained, but became deeper, more complex, more intimate. People swore by it and cursed at it; they begged its indulgence and asked its forgiveness; they wished it upon their friends in jest and their foes in earnest. They spoke of it as a faithful companion, an eternal enemy; a fell beast and a fever dream. But like the children they had once been, they believed in it absolutely; and yet they believed it would never come for them.

The black dog was rarely seen, and its witnesses were unreliable – sots, dotards and infants, in the main – and the suspicion was that they sought attention for themselves rather than speaking the truth. Occasionally, their testimony had the ring of truth; even more occasionally, it coincided with the discovery that a victim had been taken in the night. But even then, it was often difficult to tell if the sighting had prefigured or post-dated the discovery. And so some of the people came to believe that the dog was perhaps more spectre or symbol than flesh and blood.

They argued that it was needless for the congregation to huddle fearfully in the crossed arms of the church through the long winter nights: that the muttering of prayers and the trailing fumes of incense amounted to little more than insipid superstition unbecoming of their race. They scoffed at the long clawmarks in the church door; they mocked the priest’s talk of the devil playing games with shapes. Their ancestors, and their ancestors’ ancestors before them, had spoken of the black dog: what safety could the upstart from Palestine provide against such ancient evil?

To keep the peace — and to be doubly sure — the people began tethering a sheep outside overnight; but when morning came, they more often found its corpse frozen than gnawed. And when it had been taken by violence, the marks were those of a wolf; sometimes a bear. And the shepherds began to grumble that the preacher talked of protecting flocks inside the church even as they sacrificed theirs outside it. And so, in time, that practice, too, came to an end, and the people merely barred the door of the church and fed the fires that kept them warm through the night.

But it was a hard winter that year.

The first deaths were few and far between, and while mourned, did not give rise to general alarm, beyond some remarks upon the unexpectedness of the passings, of the marks that disfigured the departed. But it was not until the trickle of deaths broadened into a stream that people started to talk of the black dog: first in whispers, then in murmurings. The priest began to speak of unseen adversaries, but words rang hollow in their ears. Sheep began, once again, to be tied outside the church.

He watched all this with detachment. He did not know if the black dog had returned; he did not care. He had always believed in the black dog, but for him, it was a question of surviving the night. He was strong; he was alert; he was hale and hearty. If the black dog came, then he would fight it. If it did not, he would not think of it.

But the dog did not come for him.

It came, instead, for his mother, who did not wake, one morning, to stoke the fire. It came for his sister, who did not break bread, one morning, to feed her family. It came for his daughter, who did not shout, one morning, to greet the dawn. And it came for his wife, who did not turn, one morning, into her husband’s arms.

In his grief, he stood numbly by as the people peered at the door, looking for fresh marks. He stood by as they cried and shouted and argued, as the priest alternately prayed and preached and chastised, as the shepherds cast lots to decide whose sheep to give up to the black dog. And as he stood by, his grief smouldered and kindled and burst into a perfect effulgence of rage.

The night came. The people barred the church door.

He remained outside, wrapped in his robes.

And he waited for the black dog.

And he waited. The stars became hard and brilliant, but he waited, motionless, watching his breath cloud the moonlight. And the longer he waited, nursing his anger, the more he felt of a piece with the night. He felt as though it was his home. Like the dog, he thought. The dog was of a piece with the night. And then he started to think that perhaps there was no dog. Perhaps there was only him and the night. Or perhaps there was only him. Perhaps he was the night, the black dog. Perhaps he was the curse on the people, his family. And after a while, he could no longer tell where the black dog ended and where he began.

But later, much later, he saw the smoke of breath in the air, though the black dog remained hidden among the trees. And so he ran, crying out, screaming out, into the darkness, into the night, calling its name, the blood flowing into his eyes and his arms and his heart; but he was heedless, exulted in it, wished that he had more blood to give if only that would sate the beast; and in his rage he tore and kicked and struck out with his fists.

And he did not know, or care, if he won or if he lost. It mattered only that he fought. ##

#1. trim

The sheet of wrapping paper was too big for the parcel.

“Oh sweet Jesus, what are we to do?” said Mother.

“I don’t know, Mother, but we must be brave,” said Father.

“We’re frightened, Mother,” said the children. “We’re frightened, Father.”

#2. snip

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” came the voice.

Rapunzel’s heart beat fast as she lowered her tresses out of the window.

There was a sharp tug as the prince started to climb, and Rapunzel almost cried out.

“Gently, my love,” she called.

“I’ll give you gently,” said the voice, and this time it cackled horribly.

It was not the prince at all, but the crone, who had stolen his voice.

“Oh shit,” said Rapunzel.

#3. clip

It looked bad.

He was far off the trail, which few people used in any case.

There was no way to free his hand from under the rock.

In his desperation, he had pried and scrabbled and scratched at the rock with his free hand, hoping desperately that he might be able to move it, even if only an inch.

Now his nails were in a terrible state.

#4. cut

“A horse!” he cried. “My kingdom for a horse!”

“Here, sire,” said a trusty aide, holding the stallion’s bit with one hand and taking the crown with the other.

No sooner had the former king mounted the horse than it bolted.

He tried to leap free of the saddle, but realised his garments had become hopelessly entangled in the reins.

The horse was heading full-tilt for the enemy.

“A blade!” he cried. “A blade!”

But all he had left to give was the horse.

And nobody wanted it.

#5.

The fate of the human race hung in the balance.

“Rock,” said Kirk.

“Paper,” said the Gorn.

And the Earth died screaming. ##