But maybe, just maybe, it was getting better at last. He took his hand away from the wound and looked at it: his fingers were smeared with pus. He held them out in the rain till it washed the filth away. Maybe it wasn’t the drugs that helped. Maybe it was meat. Maybe eating Samira had been what had changed things. But she was rotting now, starting to stink the place out.

He needed fresh meat.

He smiled, felt a shiver of excitement.

Yes, he thought, Boney-M was right. Soon it would be dark enough to hunt.

Chapter 67

67

Blue was struggling to stay awake. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take of this. Was it ever going to end? He’d lost track of how long they’d been here. It seemed that once TV Boy got started it was hard to stop him and he was making the most of having a whole new audience for his performance. As far as Blue could tell, scientists working for Promithios Biomedical had brought samples of Inmathger DNA back here to the UK for analysis and had somehow become infected. What with, he wasn’t really sure, and now Blue had lost track of who exactly TV Boy was supposed to be. It was the guy with the nasal, nerdy voice. Buddy someone.

‘Ah, but, Professor, isn’t it indubitably true that the logging story is a cover-up? It wasn’t loggers who found the Inmathger, it was scientists, who were studying what they believed to be a giant crater caused by a meteorite strike many thousands, indeed millions of years ago, in the exact spot where the Inmathger live. Indubitably so.’

A quick change and TV Boy was someone else again.

‘I must say you have a lot of fanciful notions, Mister Dumpster, and finally, here’s a joke for you.’

The Twisted Kids cheered. Blue perked up. Maybe this was the end at last.

‘How many flies does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two, but how the hell do they get in there? Ha, ha, it’s the way I tell them. What’s the last thing that goes through a fly’s mind when it hits your windscreen? Its arse! What do you get if you cross a motorway with a flock of sheep? A flock of dead sheep. What do you get if you cross a praying mantis with a flea? A bug that says grace before drinking your blood. What do you get if you cross a flea with a donkey? An itchy ass. And finally what do you get if you cross a flea with a human being …?’

He waited a moment before all the other kids shouted out together.

‘A bloody mess!’

TV Boy whipped his wig off.