The fishing-boats started scattering as Tunbridge Wheels bore down, running goose-winged for the shelter of the shore, but one, bigger and slower than the rest, sagged away to windward. “We’ll have him,” growled Peavey, and Maggs relayed his order into the intercom. The suburb changed course slightly, engines grumbling. The steep crags of the Black Island filled the sky ahead, blotting out the eastern stars. What if there are guns on the heights? thought Tom—but if there were any, they stayed silent. He could see the white wake of the boat ahead, and beyond it a faint pale line of breakers on the shore…
And then there were other, closer breakers, dead ahead, and Hester was shouting, “Peavey! It’s a trap!”
They all saw it then, but it was much too late. The fishing boat with its shallow keel ran clear through the reef, but the great lumbering bulk of Tunbridge Wheels struck at full speed and the sharp rocks clawed its belly open. The suburb lurched and settled, throwing Tom off his feet and rolling him hard against the legs of the chart table. The engines failed, and in the terrible silence that followed a klaxon began lowing like a frightened bull.
Tom crawled back to the window. Down below he saw the streets going dark as a great rush of water came bursting through the palisades. White geysers of foam sprayed up through gratings from the flooded under-deck, and mingled with the whiteness he saw black flecks of debris and tiny, struggling figures. The boat was far away, tacking to admire her handiwork. A hundred yards of sea separated the doomed suburb from the steep shores of the island.
A hand grabbed his shoulder, heaving him towards the exits. “You’re coming wiv me, Tommy boy,” snarled Chrysler Peavey, snatching a huge gun from a rack on the wall and swinging it on to his shoulder. “You too, Amesy, Mungo, Maggs, you’re wiv me…”
They were with him, the pirates forming a tight protective knot around their mayor as he hurried Tom down the stairs. Hester came limping behind. There were screams below, and frightened faces staring up at them from a third-floor landing already knee-deep in water. “Abandon town!” hollered Peavey. “Women and mayors first!”
They crashed into his private quarters, where his daughter stood clutching her frightened brothers and sisters. Peavey ignored her and waded to a chest in the corner, scowling with concentration as he twirled the combination lock this way and that. The chest sprang open, he dragged out a little orange bundle and then they were on the move again, out on to the balcony where the sea was already spilling through the railings. Tom turned back into the room, meaning to help Cortina and the children, but Peavey had forgotten all about them. He flung the bundle down into the waves and it unfolded with a complicated hiss, flowering into a small, circular life-raft. “Get aboard,” he snapped, taking hold of Tom and thrusting him towards it.
“But…”
“Get aboard!” A boot in the seat of his breeches sent him tumbling over the balcony rail and down on to the yielding rubber floor of the raft. Mungo was next, then the others piled in so fast that the raft wallowed deep and water spilled over the gunwales. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” wailed Cortina Peavey somewhere away to the left, but by the time Tom had scrambled out from under Mr Ames the suburb was already far away, its stern submerged and its bows tilted high into the night sky. He looked for Hester and found her crouching beside him. Peavey’s monkey jabbered with fear, bouncing up and down on his head. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” came the distant cries, and there were white splashes, dozens of splashes as people leaped from palisades and the useless tatters of the air-bags. Hands clutched at the sides of the raft and Mungo and Peavey beat them away. Frantic figures came splashing through the swell towards them, and Janny Maggs stood up and fired her machine-gun, churning up red water all around the raft. The suburb was tilting steeper, steeper; there was a rush of steam as the sea poured into its boilers and then with sudden, shocking speed it slid under. The water boiled and heaved. For a while there were screams, faint cries for help, a brief rattle of gunfire as a drifting fragment of debris changed hands, a longer one as a few lucky pirates battled their way on to a beach.
Then there was silence, and the raft turning slow circles as the current drew it in towards the shore.
20. THE BLACK ISLAND
At dawn Shrike comes to the edge of the sea. The tide is turning and the deep wheel marks that lead down into the surf are already starting to blur. Eastward, smoke rises from settlements on the shores of the Black Island. The Stalker wrenches his dead face into a smile, feeling very pleased with Hester Shaw and the trail of destruction that she has left behind her.
The thought of Hester is all that dragged him through the marshes. On and on it has drawn him, through mud that sucked at his damaged leg and sloughs whose bitter waters sometimes closed over his head. But at least the tracks the suburb left were easy to follow. He follows them again now, stalking down the beach and into the waves like a swimmer bent on a morning dip. Salt water slaps at the lenses of his eyes and seeps stinging through the gashes in his armour. The sounds of the gulls and the wind fade, replaced by the dim hiss of the underneath of the sea. Air or water, it makes no difference to the Resurrected Men. Fish goggle at him and dart away into forests of kelp. Crabs sidle out of his path, rearing up and waving their pincers at him, as if they are worshipping a crab-god, armoured, invincible. He ploughs on, following the water-scent of oil and axle-grease that will lead him to Tunbridge Wheels.
A few miles from the inlet where they had come ashore, Chrysler Peavey paused at the top of a steep rise and waited for the others to catch up. They came slowly, first Tom and Hester, then Ames with his map, finally Maggs and Mungo, bent under the weight of their guns. Looking back they could see the steep rocky flanks of the island falling to the sea, and a cluster of boats gathered above the wreck of Tunbridge Wheels, where a raft with a crane on it had already been anchored. The islanders were wasting no time in looting the drowned suburb.
“Mossie scum,” growled Peavey.
Tom had barely spoken to the mayor since they first came struggling ashore. Now he was surprised to see tears gleaming in the little man’s eyes. He said, “I’m so sorry about your family, Mr Peavey. 1 tried to reach them, but…”
“Little twerps!” snorted Peavey. “I wasn’t sniffling over them. It’s my lovely suburb! Look at it! Damn Mossies…”
Just then, from somewhere to the south, they heard the faint clatter of gunfire.
Peavey’s face brightened. He turned to the others. “Hear that! Some of the lads must have got ashore! They’ll be more’n a match for them Mossies! We’ll link up with ’em! We’ll capture Airhaven yet, keep a few of its people alive to repair it, kill the rest and fly back to the mainland rich. Drop out of the sky on a few fat towns before word gets round that Airhaven’s gone pirate! Catch ourselves a city, maybe!”
He set off again, hauling himself up from boulder to boulder with the monkey riding on his hunched shoulders. The others followed behind. Maggs and Mungo seemed dazed by the loss of Tunbridge Wheels and not convinced by Peavey’s latest plan. They kept exchanging glances and muttering together when their mayor was out of earshot—but they were in strange country, and Tom didn’t think they had the nerve to move against Peavey, not yet. As for Mr Ames, he had never set foot on the bare earth before. “It’s horrible!” he grumbled. “So difficult to walk on… All this grass! There may be wild animals, or snakes… I can quite see why our ancestors decided to stop living on the ground!”