Drought.

The long, hot summer roasted the city and by the end of August the entire place reeked of petrol fumes, sweat, tarmac and above all, putrefaction. The heat had meant the water treatment facilities and the dumps on the outskirts had emitted a constant, languid stink which casually drifted into town in the warm lazy breezes of evening.

I'd taken a call for a pick up at Glasgow Airport. Turned out that the fare was an old school mate, Duncan Sim. He had always been a dodgy fucker, even at school, and this had earned him the name and reputation of “Mental Dunkie.” Duncan was a criminal, mainly a drug dealer as far as I knew. I didn't have a problem with that. He recognised me instantly, though it took me a second to place his face. Dunkie looked tanned, healthy, better than I remembered him. He'd spent three months on Gran Canaria, officially. He was there getting clean which, considering all the shit that pours through that little drug port, was hard to believe but apparently he'd kicked his outrageous coke habit.

I was pleased for the guy. We weren't friends as such, you couldn't really be friends with someone like him, his impulse control was too poor. Dunkie took everything personally and any perceived slight would set him off. We hung around from time to time as kids, liked the same things, but we were never close. Still, I told him he looked good to which he replied that I probably wanted to poof him and laughed. You might get a glimpse of the sort of bloke he is from that. I shook my head, sighed and asked him about his holiday.

Dunkie shook his head, ran his hand over his shaved bald scalp and sighed. “Fuckin' terrible. Gonna be a tough few months. Fuckin' Ganny's huv shut down maist of the game.”

When he said “ganny's” he'd meant Afghani's which was his shorthand for the complex network of psychotic Islamic fundamentalists plaguing the planet. According to him their gains across North Africa had affected the drug trade coming through from Morocco. No one would deal with the zealous nutters. There was too much heat from Interpol, The cops were coming down like a ton of bricks on anyone suspected of funding terrorism, even by proxy. The “gannys” on the other hand just killed anyone they suspected of trafficking including many of those they'd been funded by in the first place. Across Europe and Asia the drug routes began to dry up.

Unsurprisingly, it turned out that Dunkie was right. In practically no time at all the drought started to kick in. It didn't affect me that much, at first anyway. I liked a bit of grass now and then but it was interesting to see so many people around me begin to crumble so quickly. All the cokeheads, speed freaks and E-heads in the city started coming apart within the week. Prices rose quickly and people started getting bumped left right and centre; oregano instead of grass; beeswax instead of hash; teething powder instead of cocaine; pro-plus instead of speed. This lead to things getting ugly by mid-September.

A couple of Top ne’er-do-wells were found hacked to bits in a disused unit down by the arse-end of South Street. Everyone knew it was that horrible fucker Gordon Skinner. He was still making tonnes of dough from somewhere and had plans for expansion. No one knew how he did it, not through drugs that was for sure. The streets at night were empty except for cops, weirdos and an ever increasing number of drunks.

A few more bodies turned up from different crews, mostly teenagers or boys in their early twenties with the kind of nicknames the press love. Tam “Hatchet” Watson; Robert “Wildman” O' Hara; Lee “Snarf” Douglas; that sort of thing, which I always found funny, like they were old Jazz stalwarts rather than ignorant, greedy, psychotic peasants.

The cops seemed happy to let it burn itself out, that was until mid-November, when a riot in Darnley led to a family being burned alive in their home. That had been bad news. One of their kids had left a message on some internet site, Myplace or something, showing a photo of about four grams of weed he'd smuggled back from 'Dam shortly after being asked to prove he had the “pounds of green” he'd been bragging about. Two or three kids passed it on to dozens who passed it on to dealers and suppliers and they all descended on that house. It was a fucking nightmare.

I tell you all this to add a little background for the decisions I made next. This is not a rationalisation, after all I'm not sure I did anything that was wrong. That, however, does not seemed to have mattered. Not one fucking bit.

I was in Central Station, waiting to use the cash machine when I heard a voice, with a thick eastern European accent, call my name. I vaguely recalled a name and turned to look into the face of Jarek about ten feet from me. Jarek was a Polish lad shipped over to Glasgow with his parents a decade or so previously. He went to my school, we were friends until I went into “driving” and he went to Uni.

He looked taller, thinner, a little bit gaunt perhaps but not in an unhealthy way. His short fair hair and goatee was a new look but other than that it was the same guy. His smile lead me to do the same and I stretched out my arms and said “Jarek, good to fucking see you mate.”

He approached, we gave each other a handshake and pat on the back and, after I withdrew some cash, withdrew to the Toby Jug on Hope Street. It was half-past Eleven on a Wednesday morning but as I said everyone was drinking as much as they could get away with at that point. There was even a bunch of dudes from one of the call centres. No more chopping up a quick line in the work toilets for them, they, like everyone else were slumming it down the boozers.

Jarek and I caught up for a while, exchanged numbers and e-mail addresses and complained about life. When we left, into a mid-November downpour I told him I hoped he'd have a good Christmas. He did the same, it wasn't like either of us thought we'd see each other any time soon.

“U still driving?” was the text I got from Jarek the following evening. I knew what it meant but was surprised he would ask. To save you from any further curiosity, I'm a taxi-driver but that's only a front, legit income, taxes, that whole shebang.

I'm a driver, no not the Ryan O'Neal or Gosling type. Same business, different skill-set. I don't do bankjobs but I'll take anything you want and get it delivered anywhere you want, unnoticed, within time and within reason. Well usually within reason. I'd done a couple of stupid jobs when I was younger. Spent eight months inside for one of them. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of my work but it was work. I was good at it, which was probably why Jarek wanted to talk business.

“Yes. Why?”

Almost immediately after that he phoned me, gave me his address and asked if I could meet him that night. He seemed pleased and excited.

I did ask he asked.

The estate was four blocks of high-rises, four of the cities few remaining oppression monoliths. It was one of Glasgow's dead places. Far enough from public view never to be remarked upon by the press, therefore ignored by those in power. It was a dumping ground for desperate single mothers, even more desperate asylum seekers, those poor souls who rightly belonged in an asylum and those thrown out of one prison into another.

The protective fence that lined the kerb looked like Dali had designed it. Along the length of it were bends and collapsed parts that then were pulled up in a curve. It looked like an unfinished modern art exhibit. One of the giant bins had been dragged out into the centre square between the four blocks and then had been toppled. Trash was strewn everywhere, some of the smaller lighter pieces and been whipped up by the perpetual whirlwind into a column of plastic wrap and paper.

As I left my car some kids approached. Wee wide-boys who'd never shaved looking to menace some unsuspecting tool. As they swaggered threateningly towards me, I broke them from their little performance.

“Hey boys, c'mere a second.” I ordered and looked back at my car. There were four of them, three of them were skinny kids who looked uncertain but the leader, the obvious leader, was a stocky little snot. He puffed out his chest and did that hard-man waddle-march thing they think makes them look tough. Makes them look like fucking chimps but that's neither here nor there.

He pulled his head back and chin up trying to show me he was in control of the situation, it was quite cute really. His attempt to assert dominance dwindled when he saw the wad of twenties in my hand. His collapse into subservience was a delight to watch. “Awright big man, whit kin we dae fur ye?”

I gave him twenty notes and told him they could have another forty if they kept an eye on the car. It was agreed and I walked off as he and his pals clambered along the warped fence.

There was a burnt out moped in the foyer standing tall amongst the trash that had been blown in from outside. The walls were covered in tags and slogans, no art to any of it. One of the elevators was broken, the other was a booth that stank of the piss puddled on the floor. The light kept flickering and fizzing as I passed floors. It was an entirely unpleasant experience.

I came out into the eighteenth floor hallway where some old grey haired guy, a Romanian by the looks of it, was smoking a cigarette. He nodded at me in greeting and I went through the door to the corridor and to Jarek's flat. All the sounds and smells from those flats leaked into that corridor, shouting, T.V's that were too loud, chip fat, hairspray. It was a noise as ugly as the chipped grey walls.

When Jarek finally opened the door he welcomed me heartily and we went inside his flat. There was a striking poster on the wall, that of some foreign movie. A dark green background was fronted by a forboding black shape, hooded with the face of a man and in front but partially covered by him was a little girl's face.

 “Valerie a týden divů” it was called. I remarked upon it and he told me it was his mother's favourite movie.

The flat was already small but now cramped with furniture and all the other needs of modern day living.

After we got the small talk out of the way Jarek pulled out two blond/brown objects that looked a lot candy bars from a drawer. As he passed them over to me I could already smell the sweet and earthy smell and knew they were blocks of hash. I hadn't seen any in months and felt a grin spread across my face.

Jarek told me his cousin in Aberdeen still had plenty, that his contacts up there were moving bulk but wanted to keep if for themselves. They were, so he told me, quite happy that things had gotten bloody and oppressive in Glasgow but Jarek had been going up to Aberdeen to get a bit here and there and started doing delivery jobs in return for larger chunks of hash.

He had two 250 gram bars left over from last time and was expecting another half kilo which he offered to share with me. All I had to do was keep him company and share the driving duties. He had one proviso. I couldn't give or sell the hash to anyone in Glasgow, not even my friends. That was fine with me, I'd keep half and sell the rest to by brother Neil in Birmingham when I visited him and his family for new year. Neil and his missus always liked hashish and the stuff I was holding smelt and felt top notch. Obviously I agreed to the job.

We drove up on the next Saturday afternoon. It never seemed to get light all day. The sky was a constant heavy and dark grey and the rain never stopped. Jarek was good company though.

Somehow we got onto the topic of the drought and the current gang warfare. Jarek told me a story about big Skinny, one he'd heard from from the brother of one of the Romanian lunatics who thought he'd take over Gordon Skinner's patch. According to the tale, Big Skinny had sent a couple of his boys floating down The Clyde in pieces but he wasn't done. Supposedly Skinner and the Romanian guy ended up having some meeting to sort things out and at it Big Skinny said something to the guy that left him shocked and pale. Having met the creepy bastard a couple of times myself, I can tell you that he is one of the few people who has an actual presence. If he wasn't a filthy fish-faced barbarian he would had been very charismatic. He's not though. He's intimidating. He's not the biggest or toughest looking guy by any means but all the tattoos and the piercings certainly help his image. Mostly though, it's just the way he stands and stares are you. Hard to describe really. Anyway I bring it up because according to the tale Skinny put a curse on the Romanian bloke who then goes and blows his own head off with a shotgun. I mean, it's bollocks, but not completely outside the sort of shit that Skinny would do. When he first got to Glasgow he had his crew paint all the doors of his territory with some sign in pigeon blood and the rumour had it that he was into all sorts of black magic shit.

I've never been overly fond of Aberdeen, I don't hate the place and the people have always been pleasant enough, even the few scrapes with the cops I had were fine, it's just a place I've never warmed to. We'd booked a night at one of the cheapotels which had a shower and a bed and reminded me of every prison cell I've had the misfortune to inhabit.

Jarek and I met the others about eleven in some kind of old fashioned industrial estate. They were Russians, Jarek told me warning me to be cool and quiet. I had fully intended on being both. They exchanged a few words, some laughs and a cigarette, I took one too, the guy offering it to me had a thick black bush under a wool hat and gave me a wink. I showed an appreciative smile and he told me in fractured English that they were just waiting on Surki. I did not know who that was but needed no introduction when he arrived.

Surki... Well the guy looked the image of Big Skinny with two differences. First no way would anyone call him Skinny, not even after 6 months in a famine zone. The second difference was his tattoos were different but apart from that he had the same piercings, same thinning greasy hair and bug eyes. He even had the same row of half a dozen tiny sharp teeth in the lower part of his mouth, like little glaciers being drowned by the blotchy red ocean of his gums.

Surki was a grown up version of the wee guy outside the flats, puffed up and deluded. He'd spent too much time studying movies and basing his personality on the bits and pieces he'd found there. Russian (probably) he acted more like Pacino in Scarface, with his constant “mootherfokkers” and “Bityshes”.

He was one of those guys, another unstable firework, another rocket waiting to go off. He brought with him a palpable tension but fortunately he did not stay long, just enough to talk to Jarek and wait for an introduction. Surki was courteous but uninterested in me, though he seemed pleased both of us agreed to some more work for them. He had one warning for me. “You tell no one, not even God in your mootherfokking prayers.”

Grudgingly he accepted my agreement then he took my hand and shook it vigorously. After that we were done and I spent the Christmas stoned out of my mind. Which was just as well given that Karen had come up from London and made a Christmas dinner for both of us. My sister is good that way and she'd just split with her long-term boyfriend so she was glad of familiar ground. We had planned to go down to see our other sibling Neil together for the New Year but on the morning of the 30^th I got a call from Jarek, we needed a transit van and to get up to Aberdeen that day.

I gave Karen money for her train and said I'd meet her the next day at our brother's. Apart from the inconvenience it went smoothly again. A van full of knock off or duty free smokes and crates of similarly illegal untaxed whisky and vodka. Sukri gave us 30 grand and told us to buy a good van which I did in the early days of January.

Those guys kept us busy during the winter and it wasn't long before I found myself with a shoebox filled with bars of hash and 5 grand wads of 20 pound notes, which somewhere along the line we had asked for because we both had too much hash. Sukri had agreed, for him it was still a good deal.

By the beginning of March there had been some shootings in Glasgow another couple of riots. The police started to shut down the nightclubs and some pubs began to lose their licences which only condensed the problem into those left places still left open. The drought was having serious consequences on crime and while those who owned booze companies saw a sharp spike in profits a lot of landlords and eventually smaller off-licences lost their livelihoods. The football season had turned into a massacre both on and off the fields, some kids lost their lives snorting something they'd bought off the net. Glasgow was, with the exception of the traditional fags n booze, drug free and a large portion of it's community, from the skagheads in their squats to the Yuppie cokeheads gibbering about niche market penetration down on the waterfront, everyone was on edge if not already well over it.

I didn't care, I was making easy money while the city burned. By the end of March I'd made 6 kilos of cannabis and had £35 grand stashed away and all I'd done was drive a van back and forth from Aberdeen once, maybe twice a week. The stuff wasn't all small-time. We carried guns, diamonds, even a load of bullion one night, one bar of which was probably worth more than the van, the kilos of hash, and both our flats, but we delivered. We were seen as trustworthy, we didn't try and con anyone and didn't fuck about. In turn we made money, drugs and didn't have to deal with the weegie giro gangsters who thought defaulting on their rent was white collar crime. While the Schemey Mafiosos were doing their best to get themselves killed or arrested in their turf war, no other business was getting done in the city. The real professionals had abandoned them all to the cops and the cops their little tribal pissing contest go on practically unabated.

On the Thursday night before Good Friday Jarek called me to ask if I could drive Heavy good vehicles, specifically a 38 tonne articulated lorry. I immediately got a bad feeling when he asked me the question. I could, of course I could I even had an up to date licence to prove it. They wanted us to drive a big haul back and despite my initial suspicion I told him yes. It was, after all, my job.

We drove up in the van on the Good Friday, stayed at the Shitotel again and bumped into a Hen party from Fife. The racket from them was terrible but I managed to get a terrific blow job from an enthusiastic lass who kept insisting that she never did that kind of thing. Her wedding ring made me wonder who she was trying to convince.

If nothing had happened all of what I'm telling you would be little more than cocky bragging from an arsehole who made money while his city collapsed into a warzone. It occurs to me now that simply something happening is what makes all our stories. Obvious really, but if you think about it stories don't come from normal functioning, they come from when things become dysfunctional. They are like pain signals, warning of something that went wrong.

As you may have guessed something went wrong, spectacularly wrong. I knew I should have split when we turned up at the meeting place to be surrounded by a gang of weird looking strangers who had some machine-guns. They probably have a more specific name but I'm not a gun nit. Surki was with them and he was subdued, acting much like a sycophant to the older man he was talking to. The others all looked like mercenaries. It was a bad scene, anyone could have seen that. I did, right away, but ignored the internal programming that was screaming at me to get the fuck out of there, I stayed glued to the spot. I malfunctioned and thus we have a tale.

Everything was weird. The older man, for instance, was dressed like something out of one of those dragon fantasy things. He had an ornate robe on, full beard, loads of rings like a wizard. His goons looked like the kind of well equipped military contractors you might see on the News. Body armour, machine guns and headsets. Whatever was happening seemed to be a big fucking deal.

Surki and the old man seemed to be having a heated discussion but the old man finally shouted “It will grow because it must!” His voice was furious. Surki almost cowered then and became more passive, seemingly trying to appease his odd client. They fell back into whatever language they were speaking and I lost interest, though I was sure I heard them mention Big Skinny, at least twice.

Surki had specific instructions that he made Jarek repeat several times and to me he warned. “Do not, I repeat, do not, under any circumstance open that container.”

I looked at the big green cargo container with its corrugated sides resting atop the truck-bed. There was no logo on it. I told him I had no intention of opening it and he was satisfied with that. As we climbed back into the car the old man said “Tell the children it is a gift from one who left.”

I had no idea what that meant but nodded. After a rusty start to driving the truck and putting everyone, myself included on edge, we set off back down to our mystery destination. Both of us were glad to be out of there but it was still quite a way before we broke the tension, with me asking Jarek what had just happened.

He was angry about it. Told me he didn't know who the others were or what was going on and made a point in telling me he felt we were being fucked over for some reason or other. After he'd complained enough we sat silent for a while. It wasn't until we were passed Stonehaven that either of us loosened up. Jarek lit a cigarette and said “So are you curious?”

I told him that of course I was but I was also a professional and didn't want to end up disappeared because I knew too much about something I should have kept my nose well out of. His single muted laugh was tacit agreement but I could tell he still felt desperate to see what's inside. “What do you think it could be?”

I'd predicted that question and told him that it was best not to think about it. He didn't seem so convinced by that. I knew his type, at the next stop he'd be fiddling about -“just looking”- at the seal on the container locks. Yeah, looking to find a way to open it without breaking that seal. I told him the story about a guy who was fond of stealing from his loads who one night broke into the container of one of his deliveries to find his client had stashed one of his boys in with the goods. The guy got his left leg sawn off with a hacksaw for that. The story seemed to snap Jarek out of his curiosity and we began sharing other stories about the horrible fates of people we'd known. Everything seemed to go back to normal for a while.

Just around one A.M. we were driving down the M90 when the engine cut out. I coasted into the hard shoulder and we both got out. I'm a driver, not a mechanic but despite expecting professionalism from others I knew it was inevitable that breakdowns occurred so learned enough to fix common problems. This time the only problem I could see with the engine was that it should have been working. I was getting nervous, even at that time on a Sunday morning we'd have the cops on us if we were here too long. It was freezing, I could see Jarek's breath on the headlights as he held the torch. Nothing, everything seemed absolutely fine until Jarek said, “oh shit.”

Coming towards us was a cop car. I kept hoping it would pass but it slid to a halt just behind us and two local transport police got out. The usual routine conversation followed and luckily, very luckily I managed to convince them I knew what I was doing. It was a miracle though that the engine started on the next try. I spun them a few lies, mundane enough to dismiss any suspicions and they were on their way. I was thankful for that.

We followed the A90 down past the outskirts of Edinburgh until we were heading South-East towards our destination, until we branched off at Penicuik onto Hoggswood near the Pentlands park region. Soon we were travelling the narrow hilly roads towards our destination. Those roads were never built to hold the type of vehicle I was negotiating along them. There were no lights either so it was slow, cautious going. Eventually, and with great relief, we stopped in the small flat car-parking area near the disused and badly vandalised train station outside the town of Dunnoch.

The lights in the car-park had been smashed out long ago. The place seemed now to be being used as a dumping ground for the locals. A rusty skeleton of a burnt out car stuffed with black bin bags was illuminated by the headlights. We got out, killed the engine and waited. They were supposed to be here already, whoever “they” were. It was well past two in the morning, approaching three at the last look of my watch. I was growing impatient, this was the sort of unprofessional shit that ended up with people in prison. I was all about ready to walk but Jarek convinced me otherwise. So I waited a bit longer, still nothing.

As we sat there in the night and bitter cold Jarek once again brought up the idea of opening the container, just to see. As I said normally I would do no such thing but then normally I'd have delivered the goods as promised and be on my way home. This wasn't a normal circumstance and Jarek was doing his best at trying to convince me to open it. He nearly did it too, we were back outside looking at the container when there was a sigh.

Well it sounded like a sigh, but the sigh of some giant creature disguised as the landscape. It was a vast sound and yet even though both Jarek and I staggered from it we could tell it was not echoing through the woods or the dark town on the hill above us. It was there inside our heads, sort of like when one is falling asleep and a little piece of music might come unbidden into the mind. The container shuddered then.

All of that deterred any further thought of opening the container.

As we were walking back to the cabin, both of us were blinded by a series of bright white lights. They had shone torches in our eyes, from the bushes, from the trees, everywhere. Dozens and dozens of torches encircling us, high and low. Jarek and I both tried to avoid the beams by putting our arms up, to see who was behind the torches. It took me a while. longer than normal because I could not believe it. These were children. Immediately I decided to assert my authority and demanded they stop shining the lights on us. They did not respond, it was only then I noticed they were all chanting under their breath. Chanting one word, with no discernible rhythm over and over. “Mammy.”

I lost patience and grabbed at one of the torches and watched a tiny hand with a knitting needle flash across my view and into my side. I screamed and fell. Jarek tried to grab me but the other chanting kids were surrounding him pushing him away. A small foot obscured my vision and with a gentle but firm kick I was on the ground looking up at two girls and a boy, none of whom could have been older than ten. One of the little girls had filthy, matted blonde hair that looked like she'd styled it herself. She was grinning and holding the bloody knitting needle in front of my face as she climbed on top of me and aimed it towards my eye.

I lost it and punched her hard on the right side of the face. She flew off me with a howl but the other two kids just put their feet on my shoulders. For kids they were frighteningly strong and easily managed to keep me pinned there. I was stuck. They kept laughing and chanting. I thought I was about to get a knitting needle poked into me again. I looked away, around and saw Jarek lying on the ground too, also struggling with the small pack of children holding him down. I noticed they were all armed, knives, hammers, screwdrivers and a variety of implements they could injure with. They looked filthy, feral and half mad.

This was not normal. Not one bit. Once it was certain we were subdued one of the kids whistled from somewhere and then the torches all aimed at the container. A boy in a blue and (once) white tracksuit marched into the half-arsed circle of others surrounding the truck.

The kid had short dark hair and held a machete, he looked about fifteen but his voice, jesus, his voice should not have come from that frame. It was too deep, too adult, too knowledgeable to come from some wee ned stuck in an incest zone in the middle of nowhere. “Careful children, we do not wish to send damaged goods back to those who serve us, do we?”

He stood over me and looked down at me with a broad and cheeky smile, filled with charm and mischief. Before he said anything he snorted, a thick nasally rattle which he followed by producing a slick lump of spit and proceeded to slowly lower it down towards my face until the line of spit snapped under its own weight and dropped on my face. “Did it make you feel powerful hitting a little girl?”

I protested that she stabbed me and he just laughed. “You are a lesser thing. You should be grateful to her that you still live.”

I realised then that this was not going to end well if I struggled. “We brought you your delivery.”

It was all I could think to say but they had been so distracted by tormenting us that it appeared as if they have forgotten. The little guy who spat on me, their apparent leader, nodded and gave two short sharp whistles. We were pulled off the ground and to our feet. From that vantage the first thing I noticed was that there were children everywhere. It was still dark but their torches flashing everywhere made it a bit easier to see them, surrounding us and the truck, fucking about with trash and chasing each other. Kids, a huge gang of kids.

“Let's see if it all in tact shall we?” The leader said and moved towards the truck. The rest followed their leader and we were pushed along with them as they moved towards the back of the vehicle. Two sturdy looking lads roughly the same age as their leader came forward, both looked eager, both were, like the rest still chanting “mammy mammy.”

The leader nodded and one of them snapped the seal, pulled the lever, removed the bolt and the doors swung open. The stink from inside was like a million rotting corpses had diarrhoea. I could see nothing from my vantage point until some torches fell upon the thing.

It was a huge black cocoon, leathery and moist with some seeping lumpy gel, like grey jam. The same material had strung out like webbing and affixed itself to the walls and roof of the container. The thing suspended in the middle took up most of the inside of the container.

A sound emitted from the container, a screaming tone that once again could only be heard internally. The children all joined in with the tone, screaming that same long note. I was looking at them when I noticed Jarek screaming too, not the same note but a scream of utter terror. His face said the same. I turned back to look at the cocoon, a sphincter on which was sliding open, underneath which was an eye, the size of a football and with five black vertical slashes for pupils. It turned it's gaze from Jarek but I was gone before it landed on me.

I ran through crunching bones and slashing knives. I felt a slice in the gut, spotted the bloody trowel, I felt tiny hands pinch and crush an inch of flesh on my thigh. All I could hear was Jarek's mad screaming over the howling tone of the others. I kneed a boy no older than six in the face, heard and felt his nose and some teeth crack. Others tried to stop me, swarmed me but they were all too slow and too small to deal with the panicked wounded animal I'd become. I fled into the darkness away from the nightmare. I could still hear the screams of Jarek echo through the hills as I ran, then the screams stopped, suddenly and, I presume, forever.

I made it out alive. I don't know what happened to Jarek. I only know I never heard from him, nor any of the Aberdeen crew again. What happened that night outside that town I have no desire to discover. All I know is what I have written here is true and that that I am not safe.

I keep driving but it doesn't matter. In Doncaster and in Barcelona I was attacked by gangs of children. The same happened in Berlin, in Dallas and in Wellington. They are everywhere, so I keep driving, staying out of the towns and out of the cities as much as possible. I have nowhere to go, nowhere safe.

So I keep driving.