Everybody’s killing themselves by this point. You should teach your man Del Brogan to do they sonic attacks, The Dark Destroller says. Get him into a bit of the Hawkwinds for the tour. Fucking the Ra’s new secret weapon. I wouldn’t trust that cunt with a sonic attack, I says to them. The fuck is your problem? Mack says. I don’t know, I says to them. I just get the feeling that he’s a fucking Hun in disguise. Sure, you can’t go around making wild accusations like that, The Dark Destroller says. That’s dangerous talk. And based on what? Mack says. Did your fucking Miracle Baby see it in his crystal bollocks? It’s just a feeling, I says to them, it’s just a fucking hunch. Somebody is feeding information to the peelers. That’s a fact. And whoever it is is also responsible for Tommy getting whacked. And when I find out who it is, I says to them, I’ll fucking sonic-attack the shite out them. Could just as easily be you, Mack says to me. Don’t fucking even go there, I says to him, don’t you fucking dare, I don’t give a fuck who you are but if you fucking say that again I’ll put my fucking fist down your throat.

Easy, easy, The Dark Destroller says. Cool it, man. We all need to calm down. This is what they want. This is how they intend to divide us. I loved Tommy, I says to them, I fucking loved that guy. There were no secrets between us. Jimmy The Grunt gives out a low fucking grunt in response. I stand up and I look round the table at the lot of them, then I walk out of there without a word.

*

Tinned soup,

that’s another one,

there’s something so sad about the smell of

tinned soup.

*

Nothing was the same, though. The midnight calls had stopped. I wasn’t going down The Shamrock as much. It was almost like being in the jail, like a dry run for the future, only more boring. I would sit there, Moira would be asleep in bed, and I would find myself sitting on the stair where I used to listen to the echoes on the other end of the line, sitting there on the stair and watching the shadows pass by in the street outside and listening, to nothing anymore, to the sound of my own thoughts, to the dial tone, at the end of the line.

*

Neutrino and The Anomaly enter The Dead Zone: The Place Of Endless Echoes.

All around them, stacked in glass coffins as high as the eye can see, are the bodies of The Vanquished. What is this place?

This is The Dead Zone: The Place Of Endless Echoes.

Look! Neutrino cries. It’s Zorador The Invincible!

They approach a glass coffin wherein a helmeted bare-chested warrior stands with a lightning rod at his side.

So, The Anomaly says. He too is now one with The Vanquished.