Whirling to face the Nar, weapon in hand, Tara flung an arm around Sam’s shoulders. ‘It’s okay, Samwise. I’ve got you.’

  His legs almost buckled at the nickname. She only ever used it in their home, either when he was being anything other than wise, or when he was sick. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings stood among Sam’s earliest memories of movies with is mother, sucking his thumb, curled into Tara, dozing off to Gandalf riding into Hobbiton on his cart. Sam had preferred Bad Taste, truth be told, but Lord Crumb and Coldfinger didn’t exactly work as pet names.

  His nickname coming from her mouth was unbelievable. He’d watched her slowly die. He’d stood by her grave under the pall of a rainy London summer’s day as they lowered her coffin into the wet ground. Of all the weirdness of Hernshore, this was the most incomprehensible.

  ‘Samwise, shift your arse.’ Tara hauled him towards a gap in the battle. Sam stumbled dumbly forward, staring at Tara. Tink had managed to reload, standing at his other shoulder, firing at Nar if they came too close. Hackles bristling, Eddie growled and flew at a Nar, snagging arms, tearing through mallow-flesh. All around them were Tara’s companions. At first sight, they seemed like people in hand-to-hand combat with the foul residents of Sugnar’s gut. But as Sam staggered through the unreality of his mother risen from the dead, their strangeness became apparent.

  They were in varying stages of decay. Skin drawn over cheekbones, pale, or rotting. Some were more bone than flesh, dressed in rags. At the edge of the fray, there was an older lady, hair grey, wearing a green Gillette and walking boots. She appeared less decayed than the rest, but her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, so that her back was her front. Angry ghosts pushed through wallpaper, the vertebrae of her spine, strained against the skin of her neck. She was struggling with her coordination. Her eyes suggested she meant to go one way, only for her legs to drag her somewhat comically in the opposite direction. This caused Sam to stare again at his mother. She booted a Nar in the gut and swung her piece of driftwood up, smashing the Nar’s cranium for six. Tink shot another in the shoulder and followed up with one to the chest. Tara’s complexion was wrong. Grey. Her eyes retained that glassy mist that had clouded them when she stopped breathing, and the heart monitor tolled a single continuous tone.

  One of the human figures went down. A male, more skeleton than flesh, with thin strands of long hair and a beard. He was lost under a scrum of four or more Nar. They latched their circular mouths onto him. He screamed, limbs flailing. Their faint green glow intensified as they fed. There were too many of their kind to try to rescue him. Ever more climbed from the floor and walls.

  It was one such Nar, emerging from the ground and grabbing Sam by the ankle, that brought him back to the fight. Tara stopped to help her son, but as she did another Nar’s hand snaked from the ground and snared her foot. She fell forward, the Nar using her to claw its way out. Rage flared in Sam. He remembered the machine gun. Seeing it amid the melee with a crystal clarity of its purpose. Body and mind reunited, he blew the head off the monster clinging to his leg. Its skull exploded in a spray of septic white matter. Whirling around, he stamped down, snapping the arm daring to touch his mother, and screamed as he unloaded a burst of lead into its face. It jerked a death dance, head turning into a lumpen flow of anaemic gore. That wasn’t enough for his anger, and he fired again. The ratatat of the machine gun vaporised the Nar’s cranium, reducing it to a stump with half a mouth, and a spluttering jet of arterial pus.

  Tara scrambled free and a way through the battle line appeared. The three of them raced through it and when they came clear, Tara’s group fell into retreat behind them, fighting

  a rearguard.

  ###

  They were back where they had started, at the shore of the green lake. Once they were free of the Nar’s ranks, it was easier to outpace them. The party had slowed to a jog. As they gathered on the shore, waiting for everyone, Tara silently counted them back in, concern written into her face, until she noticed Sam staring.

  ‘Come here.’ She spread her arms and gathered him up, even though he was taller than her, and had been for three years. Beanstalk, she called him. Her lips were cold on his cheek. She held him by the shoulders at arm’s length, taking him in. ‘You’ve grown, but you’re skinny. Has Michael not been feeding you?’

  Sam couldn’t answer. There were too many words. So many they were tripping over each other piling up in an incoherent mass, weighing down his tongue.

  ‘And who’s this?’ Tara said.

  ‘I’m Tink,’ she said, blushing, toeing the shore.

  ‘She’s a Tunstall.’ It was the lady with the broken neck, and she was carrying Eddie, although he was squirming in her arms.

  ‘Agatha, how are you doing?’ Tink asked.

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’ Even Tink was struggling with making this normal. ‘How’d that happen?’

  ‘How’d you think? Chased after this little bugger.’ She gave up and set Eddie down and he promptly darted between the crowd of gathering legs. ‘Ended up in the dunes, didn’t I? Drowned in the quicksand and then broke my neck when Sugnar swallowed me.’

  ‘Are we all here?’ a man said over the hushed chatter. Everyone was staring at Sam, but he only had eyes for his mother.

  ‘Mum?’ Sam said to Tara, not wanting to risk shattering the miracle. Then the tears came, fat and burning. He broke down and Tara hugged him tightly. ‘You’re really here,’ he sobbed.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  ‘I’m here,’ she whispered in his ear, just for him. ‘I’m here, Sam.’

  ‘We lost Albert,’ someone said.

  ‘Grace and Earnest too,’ another voice added.

  With the acerbic hiss of acid burning through the steel deck of The Nostromo, the calls of the Nar made their entire group stiffen.

  The man who’d asked if everyone was here rushed to Tara. He was tall, appearing even lankier with the emaciation of death. Gaunt and as wrinkled as a crypt keeper. ‘Hurry everyone. Get to the rafts. Head home.’

  The Nar were coming. Their wriggling forms glowed dimly as they squirmed closer. More began to emerge from the walls and ground nearby.

  ‘Sam, this is your grandfather, Jonathan Lorimer,’ Tara said hustling them onto a makeshift raft. Jonathan winked at him, but there was no time for anything more meaningful.

  They mounted a small flotilla, hidden in the shadows further down the shore. Larger pieces of driftwood, plastic bottles, and barrels, even a few steel oil drums, all lashed together with an array of cordage. Thick lengths of hemp rope, blue nylon tow ropes, and a lot of it made from braided plastic bags. That crap really did pollute everywhere. When Sam stepped aboard, the raft creaked and swayed. The wood shifted underfoot. He helped Tink on board. Tara told them where to sit to distribute the ballast evenly. The hiss of the Nar was growing louder. Nar slopped out of the walls like the infection of suppurating boils.

  Snuffling and snorting hungrily, the first of the Nar had writhed frantically within metres of the shore. The last of the rescuing group held a defensive line until the last moment, wielding makeshift weapons, holding them off. But with the Nar’s fetid numbers swelling all the time, their window of escape was closing.

  Furtively checking behind them, Jonathan Lorimer pushed them off the shore with an improvised oar devised from a blue bucket lid, a thin length of dented chrome pipe, and more plastic-bag cordage. The deformed man Sam had shot at waded into the water to give them a push, before wading back and joining another raft.

  ‘Thanks, Terry,’ Jonathan called, and dipped his oar in to the thick liquid and began to paddle them away.

  Sam lowered his gaze from Terry when the deformed man waved them off. Tink must have been right. Sam had seen, thought the worst, fought, and then shot at him.

  Tink leaned close, whispering comfort. ‘Honest mistake.’ She nudged him with her shoulder.

  There were perhaps five more rafts and at least one actual small wooden boat with a broken mast, carrying four or five people on each. They moved slowly to the splash of methodical paddling. The rest of their little fleet had made it into open water, with the last of the defensive line turning to run through the shallows and hop on board the last of their boats. The Nar wormed to the edge of Sugnar’s digestive fluids and hissed a white noise of rage at being denied their quarry. With that, a sense of relief settled over their escaping flotilla.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jonathan asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the water ahead of them.

  ‘Nothing, Sam just shot at Terry. Thought he was attacking me,’ Tink said in jest.

  ‘Oow!’ his mother cooed. ‘Protective...’ She fist-bumped his shoulder.

  Sam blushed hard. ‘Mum!’ It came out as a petulant teenage whine, but he couldn’t fight the grin. She was teasing like she used to. At the same time, tears well up unbidden.

  ‘Hey, hey, it’s okay.’ She carefully shuffled closer for a hug, rocking the raft as she did.

  ‘But it’s not, is it?’

  ‘No,’ she said, stroking his hair. ‘It isn’t. I’m so sorry, my beautiful boy. I didn’t want to leave you. But now I’ve got you back, at least for a little while.’

  ‘A little while?’ Sam sniffed. ‘I don’t understand. If you’re here and I’m here, then...’ He drifted off, as if the answer was too obvious to need stating.

  ‘I wish it was that simple.’

  ‘Why? Why isn’t it that simple?’ he said.

  Jonathan cut in before Tara could answer. ‘We’re here.’ He shortened his stroke as the oar struck the submerged shore.

  Tara squeezed his shoulder. ‘We’ll explain. I promise. We’re not safe yet. Help us drag the rafts clear.’

  Together they beached the rafts, half-lifting, half-dragging them up the bank of pinkish-grey flesh. Even as they did it, Sam could feel the faintest whisper of the Nar in his head, itching like an infected scab.

  They lashed the fleet to ribs of gristle showing through torn and rotting patches of what Jonathan confirmed was Sugnar’s gut. He pointed over the river of bile they rowed upon, a little like a tourguide welcoming visitors, but in hushed tones, fearing the Nar would hear.

  ‘Is that moon-thread?’ Tink asked, observing the process of using the almost invisible twine to secure the vessels.

  ‘Very good, yes,’ Jonathan said. ‘That’s one thing we are not short of.’

  ‘Quickly, this way.’ Tara guided them to a larger solid piece of wall. ‘When it opens, you’ve got to jump through before it closes. Don’t hesitate. I jump; you jump.’

  ‘When what opens?’ Sam couldn’t see any edges for a door.

  Nervously, Tara glanced above them, checking the ceiling and walls, before pressing her index and middle finger together like a gun and pushing them hard into the wall. It stretched inward at the pressure, appearing to tense before the membrane spasmed open, to reveal an opening the size of a London Underground line.

  ‘Now!' Tara called, and she, Sam, Tink and Jonathan leapt through.

  A second after they were clear, the passage closed behind them.

  ‘What was that?’ Tink asked.

  Jonathan walked ahead, saying, ‘The gateway to and from Sugnar’s stomach.’

  Tara explained further by opening her mouth and pretending to stick her fingers down her throat. ‘Got to make her retch.’

  ‘Gross,’ Tink said, rubbing her arms. It was cooler. A dry breeze raised hairs on their arms.

  They followed Jonathan, and as they did, the passage behind them spasmed open and another small group hurried through. A queue was forming. Sam noticed the one they called Terry was in the second group. He saw Sam and waved genially. Chagrined by his earlier trigger-happy self, Sam timorously returned the gesture and hurried away.

  ‘What happened to Terry?’ he asked Tara.

  She had her arm around Sam’s shoulders as if she wouldn’t ever let him go again. ‘Oh, Terry,’ she said adoringly. ‘He’s always the one patrolling the gut, looking for things we can use or new arrivals. Because of that he spends too much time in water, and it... well, you can see what it does to him. Look, we’re almost there.’

  The breeze had died down and came back in a rush. They’d come to a fork in the road. Two tunnels branched off. Tara pointed to righthand one, and they cut inside.

  Tink stared around. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Carry on down there,’ Tara pointed ahead, ‘and you’ll end up in a lung.’

  ‘Great. A stomach, now a lung,’ Tink said.

  ‘Don’t worry, were passing through,’ Tara said.

  Sam didn’t care. He was reunited with his mother, and though she was physically different, she’d retained her irrepressible bounce. Not wheezing for half a breath. Not needing ice-chips fed between her cracked lips, unable to speak. Her eyes actually saw, no longer glazed by morphine and filled with terror. The rest of the world, even if it was the upside-down world of the dunes, could be whatever it wanted. It could be hell. Sam had his mother back, and that was all that mattered.

  Although, from what Sam had gathered, this wasn’t hell, more some kind of limbo, somewhere in between, a prison to trap Sugnar. Something like Dr Strange’s mirror-verse in Spiderman: No Way Home. An actually bearable Marvel offering. Stupid, but bearable and one of the last movies he and Tara watched together at the Piccadilly Odeon.

  Jonathan was waiting for them. They crouched and duck-walked in single file. The mouldering breath of an ancient tomb gusted by them, and the way opened. It didn’t look possible. A gigantic cavern stretching out below disappeared into a horizon of shadows. The cavern expanded, the spongy ledge under their feet trembling then constricting. The gust reversed direction. On the way back, the smell was infinitely more rank. Below, what looked to be ashen trees shivered in a haze of dust, and Sam remembered a diagram of a lung from Biology class, with the branches of alveoli, looking like florets of broccoli. A forest processes air in everyone’s chest.

  They didn’t stop. Jonathan and Tara led them to a wider ledge, more of a mountain pass, where the drop off was sheer and the fall beset with decaying alveoli trees for them to shatter their backs on. But fewer than twenty strides later, walking with no fear of heights, Jonathan disappeared through the lung wall.

  ‘Jonathan, wait up,’ Tara called. She beckoned them to hurry, only to stop abruptly.

  Ahead of them on the ridge, a three fingered hand from the grave rose into the air. The lung-wall pore began to disgorge a cankerous pustule in the form of a Nar.

  ‘Oh no! They’ve found us already.’

  Tara urgently plunged her hands into the membranous wall and prised it apart.