Haven’t written a flash fiction in a while, thought it might be good to get my hand back in!

Paul was an only child. He was also small for age, a little sickly, and blond. None of this, however, was important. What was important was that the was an only child, a lonely only child, but that it had not always been this way.

Because Paul could remember a time when he had had brothers, and a sister. He could remember a time when he had had cousins who came to visit for the summer, and a best friend who lived two doors down. Paul remembered when there had been a school, instead of a quiet, empty building which was called whatever you called a school without children in it. The adults didn’t seem to notice, and if they did then none of them would talk about it. It was as if every other child Paul had ever met was some elaborate imaginary friend, a complex delusion that seemed more real to him than the possibility that there were no other children in the village, and that there never had been.

What convinced Paul more than anything else though, was the forest. Just as all the other the children had disappeared from the village, so the forest seemed to have crept undoubtedly closer. Vast, dark, and teeming with un-quiet and malevolent life, Paul was sure that the forest had somehow swallowed up the intervening fields that had once sat between it and the village, that it had crept somehow closer while no-one was looking. He would go it, sometimes, when the adults were busy doing whatever they did that preoccupied them enough that they could ignore the fact that their children were vanishing. He would creep along its outer edge, where the grass in the fields turned dry and brown and papery, where the gnarled roots of the ancient trees twisted up around each other like snakes grasping for Paul’s ankles. He wondered how trees so impossibly old could have moved, or sprouted here where once there had been only open, grassy fields. He would listen to the strange noises that emanated from within; the popping of branches, the crunch of leaves, the rasping whispers of wind squeezing between the densely backed trunks. He would listen in the hope that there might be an answer in there somewhere, that somewhere in the deep dark bowels of the forest that he dared not penetrate, might be the reason that the children and vanished and that he was so utterly alone.

It was a nondescript day in August when the forest finally answered.

The sun was high overhead, and it was one of the days when Paul found moments in which he could enjoy his isolation and forget for a moment that he was the only child in the village, the only child in his whole world. He was laying on his back in the long grass, a light breeze running low across the ground and turning the tiny patch of field that remained between the forest and the village into a bright green sea. He dreamt of being a pirate on the high seas, but had long since forgotten the faces of the other children that would have crewed his mighty pirate ship. They were nothing but blurs now, thick limbed creatures of his imagination with faces made of formless pink sponge.

He was boarding a French trading ship when he became of the eyes in the forest, the eyes that were watching him. He caught a glimpse of them from the corner of his eye at first, freezing him where he lay. His pirate ship, and his sponge-faced crew, vanished in an instance. Captain Paul the Terrible was once again Paul the boy, and he was at the edge of the forest that took children.

And it was looking at him.

Painfully slowly, Paul stood up. He didn’t turn his back on the forest for a moment, keeping his eyes on the patch of tangled roots a few feet below where the eyes were. The eyes did not waver, and did not blink. They just stared, two silver almond shaped eyes, staring out of the woods. Eventually, Paul lifted his gaze and looked directly into those strange eyes, those eyes that were right there and yet so very far away. Eyes from inside, looking outside, eyes from wherever it was the wood came from. Eyes that were fixed on Paul and did not move.

Paul swallowed, mustering his courage. “Well,” he said, his voice never more that of a lonely, little boy than in that moment, “Are you going to take me too?”

Without an answer, the eyes blinked, and were gone. No arms encircled Paul, no trees moved to grasp at him with their rough, wooden boughs. The earth did not open up, there were no thorny vines whipping out from the darkness to take him. There was nothing at all.

Just a boy, and a forest. A forest that didn’t like sickly, lonely boys. A forest that liked a challenge.

Derek’s environment suit creaked and hissed as he clambered awkwardly down the moss covered slope. Vines coiled around his boots with each step, snagging his ankles, constantly threatening to trip him and send him toppling head first towards the valley floor. A fall was the thing that all of the explorers feared the most. The environment suits were sturdy, but something about the atmosphere of this new planet made their joints brittle. They wheezed and groaned more than they should, and sometimes stiffened unexpectedly. Worst of all, the face-plates had become prone to cracking at the slightest impact. The soft crinkling of the plastic, the sudden whistle as the pressurised air escaped, these were the sounds that death made on this planet on the far side of everything.

They had planned to use the suits only for the first few weeks, whilst they bodies adjusted to a new gravity and they convinced themselves that there were no dangerous toxins or virii lurking in what should have been fresh, clean, compatible air. A few weeks. That’s what it should have been.

Six months into the mission, however, and the planet still had surprises for them.

As the resident xeno-biologist, it was supposed to be Derek’s job to catalogue the flora and fauna, in particular the vegetation. He had predicted viable food sources, even possible bio-fuels. So far, he had held only a single piece of native vegetation with an ungloved hand, and had spent three days in the infirmary as a result. As best he could now guess, the entire planet was completely toxic to human life.

A thriving eco-system, full of seemingly boundless life and variety, and all of it poison.

Derek suspected that was the reason they had just started calling it “the planet”. “New Earth” somehow stuck in the throat now. It was also the reason that all of them, with the exception of the Captain, had stopped sending messages home. What could make you send a message across the cosmos if all it was going to say was “We failed, you’re all doomed.”

For all Derek knew, Earth was dead by now anyway. Either that, or Earth had abandoned its explorers and gone on to “Plan B”, whatever that might have been. In either case, the seven of them were the last humans that Derek was ever likely to see and, to him, that made them the last seven humans in the entire universe.

The environment suit pinged, and a green dot floated across Derek’s heads-up display.

“Finally,” he muttered. He had been searching for the ship’s engineer, Peter “Heavy” Hudson, for two hours; ever since Hudson’s location beacon had vanished from the ships radar, along with his vital signs.

The ankle joints of the suit cracked and gasped as Derek dropped the last few inches off the mossy slope to the valley floor. Beneath his feet, the crushed vegetation let out a tiny cloud of mustard yellow spores. Derek knew the spores well. It was the spores that had put him in the infirmary, it was the spores that caked every seam and joint of his environment suit. It was the spores that had fried the insides of the ships main drive, making escape from the planet impossible.

What Derek couldn’t work out was why every plant, every flower and creeper and vine and fungus on this whole planet released the same yellow spores. Yellow spores, everywhere he looked. Yellow spores, slowly encrusting everything.

Except, it wasn’t everything, Derek knew that.

It was just them. Just the humans

Derek headed towards the green dot, carefully stepping over the gnarled roots and twisted vines. The yellow spores, seemingly caught his wake, drifted along behind him, landing one by one onto the environment suit.

Crack, hiss, pop.

Crack, hiss, pop.

Derek might have found the sounds of his suit comforting, like listening to summer rain on a rooftop, if he hadn’t been so terrified.

Peter “Heavy” Hudson had been sixteen pounds over flight weight on the day of the launch. They had all known about his weight issues, and his appalling impulse control. They were indulgences the mission team would never had allowed, had it not been for the fact that half the technology in the ship was Hudson’s design. They all knew that if they had a chance of getting from one side of the universe to another, any chance at all, it was only with Hudson on board.

Two days before the launch, he’d given the mission a four thousand three hundred and twenty one to one against chance of success. Derek had made a note of it, it was the lowest odds that Hudson had ever given and he gave odds on everything.

Derek tried not to guess what the odds were that Hudson was still alive.

Rounding the corner, he got his answer. Hudson was sitting in a small clearing of four inch high, dew kissed grass, strew with mustard yellow topped mushrooms. Sitting cross legged, letting a thin mist of yellow spores settle gently on him. Sitting with his helmet on the floor next to him.

“Hudson!”

Derek’s voice rattled the intercom as he reflexively called out his team mate’s name. Without his helmet on, Derek couldn’t be sure if Hudson had heard him or not.

Derek raced awkwardly across the small clearing. The right knee joint of his environment suit let out a loud crack and refused to bend, leaving him dragging one stiff leg behind him. He couldn’t hear any air leaving the suit, but over the sound of his own ragged breathing in his ears it was hard to tell. The suits amplified everything that you didn’t want to hear.

“Hudson!”

The engineer slowed turned, cocking his head as if the sounds of Derek crashing across the clearing were coming from somewhere much further away. His eyes finally focussed on Derek, a broad smile creasing his wide face. His eyes were glazed over, a mist turning them entirely white. Juice from the yellow capped mushrooms ran from his lips and dripped from his chin.

Derek came to a juddering halt.

“What are you doing, Hudson? Get your helmet back on!”

Hudson raised his hand, and offered Derek a palm full of half chewed mushrooms.

“Mush … room?” he slurred.

Derek jabbed the radio controls on the forearm of his suit. Static filled him helmet, as if every joint and seal of his suit had burst at once. Whatever had blocked Hudson’s locator was blocking Derek’s radio as well.

“Damn, damn,” Derek muttered, switching off the radio. He grabbed Hudson by the hand, scattering the half eaten mushrooms. Something squealed in his shoulder joint as he tried to haul the corpulent engineer to his feet. “Come on Heavy, help me out,” Derek gasped.

“Mush … room?” Heavy asked again, groping with his free hand in the grass for more of the mysterious fungi. “Mush … room?”

Derek lost his grip on Heavy and stumbled backwards. His boots slithered underneath him on the wet grass, refusing to grip and, for a moment, the suit didn’t make a sound at all. Derek held his breath as he felt his centre of gravity shift, and he knew that he was falling.

With a thud, Derek landed flat on this back. He didn’t breath out, didn’t dare, concentrating instead on listening intently for any sound of air escaping his suit, any hint that the fragile plastic face plate might have cracked.

He didn’t hear Hudson plodding closer, and he didn’t see Hudson pick up the twisted branch from the ground. He didn’t hear the strange, alien sounds that came from the engineer as he crept closer to him. He didn’t see the cloud of spores that burst from the mushrooms that littered the floor rush into Hudson’s nose and mouth.

All he heard, was a crinkling of plastic crumpling under pressure.

All he heard, was a thin hiss as the safe, clean air of his environment rushed out.

All he could see was a thin silver spiderweb, growing across his field of vision as his faceplate cracked.

When Hudson’s shadow fell over Derek, it was almost a relief.

He held out a handful of mushrooms again, and cocked his head to one side. When he spoke, it wasn’t with his voice, but none of his normal inflection or personality. It was as if someone else was speaking, someone else who had slipped on a suit made out of Hudson and was slowing getting used to the way that it moved, to the way that Hudson’s bones and muscles and skin popped, and wheezed, and groaned.

“It tastes … it tastes … tastes … a little like … grilled cheese …”

The mushrooms fell through the air, a rain of partly masticated fungus, as the thing in the Hudson suit raised the tree branch over its head.

Inside the suit, Derek closed his eyes and listened as the gentle rain of pops and cracks became a thunderstorm.

The first MWM Live was for someone who we honestly didn’t press-gang long in advance of the event. Probably the one person to play our “name a place, name a thing, name a person” game to get their story started too!

“OK”, said the landlord, “Here’s your uniform.” Carl looked sceptically at the bear skin hat and rusty old gas mask. The job hefting barrels at the Queen’s Head was supposed to be easy money, beer funds for his summer vacation. Gas masks and furry hats were not part of the plan.

“This.. is my uniform?”

“You’ll understand once you’re down there,” said the landlord, and opened up the trapdoor to the cellar. “Best get down there and get the lay of the land, son”

Tucking the hat and the gas mask under his arm, Carl climbed slowly down into the cellar. It was freezing cold, his breath clouding into vapour as his feet touched the stone floor. He felt the crunch of ice, and shivered.

“Put on the hat before you freeze to death,” shouted the landlord from the top of the ladder.

Carl did as he was told, and pressed on into the gloom of the cellar. With every step he took it got colder, and the air thickened with a smell that swiftly escalated into a stench that was almost unbearable. Carl strapped on the gas mask, grateful for the clean air.

He heard the trapdoor close behind him, extinguishing the light from above. In the distance, far further away than he thought the cellar should reach, he could see another tiny light.

A tiny light that was getting closer.

“Don’t run,” came a voice from the dark. “You’ll fall on the ice and break your neck.”

Out of the darkness, came the barrel-man. The legend of the Queen’s Head, the brewer of the infamous home brew. No more than three feet tall, wizened, and dressed in strips of leather and rags, the light that came closer came from a small lantern attached to his belt.

“Here,” he said, thrusting a rotting, dismembered human forearm at Carl. In the arm’s rotting hand was a key.

“Keep walking for about another hour, you’ll come to a door. Open it with this key, and bring out the barrels. The home brew should be ready.”

Carl felt the cold, dead flesh of the arm in his own hands.

“Why do I need the arm? Can’t I just take the key?” he asked.

“You see when you get there,” replied the barrel man. “New boy”

Written Sy Wyatt at the now infamous MWM Live! in Bristol, May 2009.

Pressure. Emmett had dealt with pressure his whole life. Pressure to deliver. Pressure to perform. Today, however, he was concerned entirely with the pressure on the outside of his deep sea exploration suit. The soft pinging in his ear told him he was safe, and still attached to the survey ship, thousands of feet above, by the umbilical.

“Can you see it, Emmett?”

“I’m pretty much on top of it. Another hundred or so feet and I’ll have contact.”

Emmett imagined the whoops and back-slapping going on on the ship. After months of searching, they had found her.

Emmett’s heavy boots hit the shell of the wreck. There was no give, ships like the Inca Queen were built to last, built to keep their cargo safe. Emmett couldn’t speculate what kind of ordnance could have sunk her.

“Can you see it? Emmett, can you see it?”

Emmett turned slowly, the high powered lights on the shoulders of his suit skimming along skin of the hulk. They reached a ragged gash, a hole punched in the side of the majestic Inca Queen. Inside, gleaming under the powerful spot lights, was her cargo. Untouched, perfect, preserved by intense pressure and cold of the Inca Queen’s deep grave.

Row after row of containers, their contents still a perfect, creamy white and, along the sides, a tell-tale flash of gold.

Emmett smiled. It would be biggest haul of his career.

“I have it. There’s at least eight thousand pints of gold top down here.”

Emmett flicked off the radio link before he was deafened by the cheers. Since the bovine flu epidemic, milk had become the most expensive commodity on the planet. The contents of The Inca Queen, once the star “milk float” of the global “Creamy Corporation”, was worth enough to make Emmett and his crew richer than God.

This one was for Richard Griffiths, of Crafty Butchers fame, who just wanted “spidermonkeys”.

We live to serve …

Cliff reloaded his rifle as quickly as he could, letting the spent cartridges join those already scattered about his feet. The barrel of the gun was hot enough to scorch the wooden parapet of the outpost as he propped it there, glad for a moment not to have the weight against his shoulder.

“How many of them are there?” asked Delilah.

“Depends,” replied Cliff. “If they breed like monkeys, we’ve got to be getting to the end of the troupe by now. If they breed like spiders …”

The words hung in the air as thick as the tropical heat.

“If they breed like spiders …?” Delilah asked meekly.

“Then I don’t have enough bullets.”

There was a crash out in the jungle, and the familiar screeching of the spider monkeys. Cliff had tried to work out where the nest was, considering in his darker moments that maybe the only way to survive this was to take the fight to them, to find their home and burn it out, but every part of the jungle seemed to be their territory. This was their place.

“Cliff, maybe we should take the other jeep, try and –”

“They know where the road is,” said Cliff flatly. “You didn’t see what happened to Clint, Helen, and the others …  Trust me Delilah, you don’t want to end up like that.”

Cliff closed his eyes for a moment. Hunting was a dangerous profession, he’d seen people hurt and killed before. He’d seen the things that an animal can do to a human in a matter of moments, he’d seen how inhuman the things that were left behind looked. What he had seen on the road out of the jungle though, what he had seen in the spider monkey’s web… that was something different entirely. That was a human level of cruelty.

The crashing in the jungle grew closer, and the screeching grew louder. Cliff cocked the rifle back up to his shoulder and peered down the sight.

“I can help,” said Delilah, awkwardly hefting up a pistol.

Cliff sighed. They were dead, of that he was certain. Delilah may as well die on her feet.

“Remember to aim low,” he said, with an uncommon note of kindness. “If you hit the poison sack, that seems to do the trick.”

Inspired by Ryan Reed, who asked for a story featuring ““A man who has been bitten by a radioactive man, a VW Camper Van, and a pie”

Rain rattled against the side of the camper van. Reed tried to ignore it, and concentrated on cooking. Cooking was a lot more complicated for Reed these days than it used to be as, since the bite, he had to work just as hard to keep things out of his meals as put things in.

Thunder crashed overhead and the VW camper rocked from side to side as Reed gingerly lifted the baking tray out of the small oven he had installed into the van. The van, like Reed, had been through a lot of changes, since the bite.

Four years on the run, four years since the bite.

Placing the tray on the edge of the sink, he picked up the piping hot pie and dropped it onto his only plate. He didn’t feel the heat of the pie, the flesh of his fingers long dead.

Long dead since the bite.

The rain was gradually turning into hail, hammering harder on the sides of the van. Reed knew that he didn’t have long, that soon the rain and the hail wouldn’t be the only things hammering on the sides of his van.

The village was less than an hour away and he was sure that the children would have been missed by now. He wished that it didn’t have to be children, but they were the only things that worked.

The only things that worked since the bite.

Edging down the van, the wind threatening to topple him at any moment, Reed caught a glimpse of himself, reflected in the windscreen. His flesh was rotten, sloughing off every bone. The poisoning was getting worse. The poisoning that had been eating away at him ever since the bite.

He sat down, and let the aroma of the pie fill his nose.

Soon, he would look like everyone else. Soon, he would be able to walk among the normal people, and no one would know.

The secret was in the pie.

And all it would take was a bite.

For the #fridayflash crowd, and a little limbering up before doing some “stunt fiction” at the British International Comics Show.

As always, I started off with some random factors from http://shortstoryideas.herb.me.uk. Today’s kicker was “A School is the location, anticipation is the theme. A deckchair is an object that plays a part in the story.”

From this we get … Football Town.

He had been at the school as long as anyone could remember. Some people in the town even joked that he’d been out the field, already shouting at some long forgotten quarterback, as they built the school around him. Some people didn’t even know his real name. He was simply “Coach”.

But this was a football town, and being called “Coach” was second only to being called “God”.

This year however, had been different. The team had been knocked out of two cups already and had had to resort to friendly games just to fill the schedule and keep the people in the bleachers on a Sunday evening. This was a football town. It’s team didn’t get knocked out before the quarter finals, and they didn’t play friendlies. Ever.

Some people in town were starting to say that maybe, just maybe, Coach was past it.

That was why the team was out on the field for the sixth night in a row, running drill and drill, with Coach sitting in is quirky old deck chair, shouting instructions through a rusty megaphone. The voice of God commanded, but the flesh of his flock was undoubtedly weak.

“Come on you weaklings!” he roared, the megaphone crackling. “Pick your feet up!”

Bryce, the new quarterback, fumbled yet another throw and tripped himself up running to pick up the lost ball. The Coach sighed.

It was true, he had been here a long time, maybe even too long, even by his standards. He had to admit though, he loved football, and he loved to win. He had hoped this year that he might be able to do it without calling in any favours, but another crop of weaklings like these and he would be finished. Thankfully, second to coaching, the other thing that the Coach was good at, was favours.

“Come here, Son,” he said, a rare note of compassion entering his voice as his no-star quarterback limped to the touchline. “You know what kind of life you could have, with a football scholarship? You know how they treat a star quarterback in this town?”

“Yes Sir!” replied the boy.

“Then tell me,” asked the Coach, getting out of his deckchair, “What you give to have that life?”

“Coach,” the boy replied, “You know I’d do anything. Anything …”

“Good,” said the Coach, “Then I think we can make a deal.”

In this town, being called “Coach” was second to being called “God” …

More MWM Live practice. This one took a little longer, had trouble getting rid of the word “crawl” from the list of random words.

Travis woke up, still tied to the bed. He couldn’t see Laura, but could hear movement downstairs. Cups clicked together, water pouring. He guessed that she was making tea, and was surprised that he didn’t immediately want some. Looking up, he could see why.

Banging on the surface of the mirror that hung above Laura’s bed, desperately trying to break through from the other side, from whatever place it was that lay on the other side of Laura’s mirror, was a carbon copy of Travis. The copy’s skin looked parched, cracking in places, and it clutched at its throat from time to time. Behind it, other versions of Travis crawled across the surface, like men trapped under ice, their mouths open in soundless screams.

“There’s no point looking at them,” said Laura as she walked in, holding the predicted cups of tea. “They never do anything else. They are such base creatures.”

Her voice was emotionless and yet Travis did not find it cold. There was some pure about it, some clear and resonant, like listening to church bells chiming on a quiet morning. He realised it was not the world that had become quieter though, but his own mind.

“Will I miss them?” he asked. His own voice, although not quite as clear as Laura’s, had a clarity that he had never experienced before, as if the world moved slightly aside to accommodate his words.

“No,” replied Laura. “The mirror is so greedy, it always takes the needs first. Another few days, and you will never want or need anything again.”

“I thought so,” replied Travis. “I heard you making tea, but didn’t think for a moment I wanted any. I’m sure I used to love tea.”

“You did,” said Laura, “But now you are free even of that foible.”

“Man unbound …” whispered Travis, remembering the name of the book that Laura had given him, back at the very beginning of their bizarre experiment.

“Not quite yet,” Laura countered, and poured the boiling tea across Travis’ chest. “We have still to remove your pain, and your fear.”

But Travis didn’t hear her. The part of him that was screaming in pain was already trapped on the other side of the mirror.

More practice for Monkeys with Machineguns Live!

Found a fantastic site for generating random ideas, http://shortstoryideas.herb.me.uk/index.html, which I will blog about later. In the meantime, here’s the end of the line.

Vera had heard about the telephone box. It was the last one left in the county, apparently, sitting quietly on the corner of the village green. It was never vandalised, unlike the play area just a few yards away, never put into service as a make shift toilet or short term accommodation for teenagers overcome by hormones and cheap cider.

No, the phone box just sat, and waited for you to make a call.

It was after John left, that Vera used it.

“It is only for emergencies,” Vera’s mother’s voice rang in the ear of memory as, with a trembling hand, she took hold of the telephone box door’s shiny brass handle. “Real emergencies”.

Vera caught sight of her reflection in the glass. Dark rings surrounded her bloodshot and tear ruined eyes. Her hair had taken on a peculiar shape, mirroring her dishevelled three-days-on clothes.

“Real emergencies,” she whispered to herself, and opened the door.

Inside, the telephone box was silent. The outside world seemed a million miles away as the door shut behind Vera with a soft click. Vera had never been inside the phone box before, but she had heard descriptions, in the rumours and the stories that people told from time to time.

She looked at the sturdy gunmetal grey telephone case. She gingerly lifted up the handset. As she had been told, there was no dial, and nowhere to insert any money. Just a grey metal box, a handset … and a voice at the end of the line.

“Hello?”

Vera jumped, involuntarily. “Hello?” she replied.

“Hello. This is the voice at the end of the line. Can I help you?”

“It … it’s an emergency,” said Vera.

“We understand,” replied the voice. “Tell us what you need, Vera”

Vera didn’t even flinch at the mention of her name. Her mother hand told her that the voice at the end of the line knew things, things about the people in the village.

“It’s Steve, my husband,” said Vera. “He’s left me and …”

“Do you want him back?” asked the voice. “Back can be … difficult”

“No, I don’t want him back,” replied Vera.

“Good,” said the voice. “Then let us discuss your options”.

More MWM Live practice. This time I try to fit Hitler, a museum, and a monkey covered in jam onto one side of A5.

It is a little known fact that Hitler maintained a secret museum, three storeys below his bunker in the heart of Berlin. At first, it was home to the ransacked treasures of the nations crushed under the Nazi jackboot but, as the war came towards its end and Hitler’s mania for the esoteric and the occult reached its height, the museum became home to artifacts and relics of a very different nature.

On the final night of the war, it was Private Klaus Gunderson who held the keys to the museum. Loyal to the end, he believed it to be the safest place in all of Berlin. And so, naturally, he brought his wife and child there, sure that the Feurer would approve. She was good, Arian stock, their child a blond haired, blue eyed boy.

He walked with them both through the cramped aisles of the private museum, their small talk designed to drown out the sounds of bombardment and fighting from above, but failing miserably.

“What’s that?” asked Klaus’ wife, pointing a shadowy, hunched figure in the darkness.

“That is a stuffed monkey from the court of Louis the Sixteenth of France. We liberated it from the Bastille.”

“It has been … mutilated?”

“Louis had his private surgeon stitch bladders into the creature so that he could be breast fed his favourite foods by it. When we took it from them, the French had it full of jam.”

“Amazing. And how about this?”

Klaus took the bottle from his wife and studied it carefully. “I believe we took this from the body of a British spy.”

He turned the bottle over in his hands. Although his English was not terribly good, he could read the simple inscription.

“Drink me …”

With a thunderous crash, something hit the bunker from above. Boxes toppled in the museum, throwing up a thick cloud of dust.

Klaus could hear shouting from upstairs, and splashing noises. Someone shouted something about kerosene, and that the Feurer must not be captured, no matter what the cost.

“What should we do?” asked Klaus’ wife.

Klaus took a last look at his wife, uncorked the bottle, and drank.