“Angela, it’s an adventure!” Sammi said. But Angela held up a hand, saying nothing.

The silence hung heavy.

“There’s nothing dangerous left, Angela,” Lilou said at last. “Everything bad happened years ago. A military experiment that the government tried to cover up, a mistake.”

“Military experiment?” Angela asked.

“I’ve only heard rumours, and most of those are from Jay.”

“You talk to Jay?”

“Of course I do. We’re both doing our best to look out for the two of you.”

“I don’t need babysitting!” Angela snapped.

“What experiment?” Sammi asked.

“They used some sort of drug or virus on the townspeople,” Lilou said. “It drove the residents mad. They died horrible deaths. So the army used a suppressant on the population to negate the virus, made sure everyone was dead, then flooded the valley. Wiped the whole place from memory.”

“They knew about the Kin here?” Sammi asked.

Lilou shrugged.

“They infected the town. Gassed it. Then made sure everyone was dead,” Angela said. “What the fuck are you bringing us into?”

“That was forty years ago,” Lilou said. “It’s just a place now, hardly even a memory. It’s not dangerous here anymore, Angela. We’re here to tell the end of the story.”

They continued downhill, skirting around a couple of casual police officers who were sitting on the bonnet of their cruiser. One was smoking, the other surfing on his phone. They didn’t seem at all concerned about the exposed valley before them.

That didn’t make Angela feel even slightly better.

11

11

Bone found it hard looking down into the valley and seeing it so changed. He walked along the ridge instead, looking left across beautiful open countryside whilst also painfully aware of the greyness to his right. There lay home, in a sea of almost featureless silt and water, a ruin that threatened to overwhelm him if he dared look at it for too long. His heart beat harder than usual, his tongue was dry and stale. He’d never believed that he would feel so sad coming back home.

Last time he’d returned he had seen the peaceful, rippling waters of the reservoir and found some affinity with them, hiding the truth beneath the surface just like him. Perhaps with the water flooding the valley there had still been a possibility that Longford persisted as it once had, a town beneath the surface, preserved and continuing on through life and death set apart from the world above. Now, he knew that it was a ruin. Longford was no more. He had spent his life adrift, and seeing the emptied, drying valley snipped the last thread that had kept him pinned to the world.