His legs were suddenly kicked from under him. The many hands that held him up were now bent on forcing him down. Mud soaked into his eyes and mouth, blinding and choking. He tried to spit it away, only to let more seep in, gritty between his teeth. As Ben feared, they had been brought back to the village; that spider’s web unseen until it was too late.

The chanting ceased in an instant. It didn’t fade. It quit like the flick of a switch.

He saw Chloe for the first time since being overrun. She was wincing tearfully to herself, nursing her ankle with both hands. The villagers had formed a circle around them; faces were as skulls beneath their hoods. Ben anticipated the glimmer of tools in the firelight. He looked for a familiar face – for Mary or Nu, anyone who might offer some answer as to what was happening. But their bodies had massed into a single entity, an impenetrable wall of flesh and splintered minds.

He scrambled over to Chloe. ‘Are you okay?’

She shook her head, burying it into him as he reached down for her.

‘What are they going to do to us?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he whispered, holding her as tightly as his sore arms could bear.

Ben could hear the flames flitting on their torches. A few villagers were gasping heavily through their mouths. Somewhere unseen, the more mentally disturbed giggled like bold children at the back of a bus. Ugliness and oddity were everywhere, across all ages and genders. The taint was in the blood and they all shared it.

There was no escape. Whatever desperate hope they clung to had died with the sun.

The crowds parted to clear an aisle into the black beyond their flames. There was order to their madness; rules that even the simplest amongst them respected. Ben watched as the wasp’s familiar shape grew from the darkness with all the poise of a mantis. The circle closed behind him like bystanders at a bare-knuckle boxing fight. This wasn’t the same rough-hewn farmer from their first encounter. He carried with him a foreboding presence like an executioner carried an axe.

The wasp removed his hood in a slow, ceremonial motion and stood, staring down at Ben and Chloe as though he had just scraped them off the sole of his boot.

‘She spoke to you about him,’ he said as matter-of-fact. ‘She can’t help herself, that little one.’

Ben didn’t reply. He guessed that what happened next might hinge on his response and he had already caused enough damage.

‘How many times have you seen him?’ the wasp asked.

‘Three,’ Ben replied, siding with the honest approach.

He’d come to these people looking for help. But the man’s face lacked even the softest suggestion of empathy. Ben’s optimism seemed like an old joke that just wasn’t funny anymore.