Then she thought, Maybe I’m inside the actual machine. Maybe I’m inside some kind of pipe or tube or channel, and it seems giant to me, but that’s only because the machine’s so big. Maybe it’s going to suddenly fill with… water or oil or liquid waste or atomic sludge or energy. Maybe it shoots down here at regular intervals as part of the machine’s operation, and I’ve simply arrived between those intervals, and if I stay here much longer I’m going to get drowned or washed away or burned to a frazzle or irradiated, or—

Amy began to panic. She began to feel very, very claustrophobic. She hurried along the hallway-that-might-also-be-a-pipe looking for an exit, or a door, or at the very least something to get up onto.

She found something else instead.

A scratching sound, a skittering noise, a flash of light in the shadows, just a glint.

‘Who’s that? Who’s there?’ she asked boldly.

Experience had taught her that being bold often helped. Well, not so much as bolshie. Whatever, it made her feel better anyway.

Then she saw what was making the sound. She saw the rats.

They weren’t actually rats. She realised that straight off. But rats were what they made her think of, and rats was the word that registered in her brain.

They had too many legs to be rats. Too many legs, and not nearly enough eyes or hair. Plus, they were the size of terriers, which was quite unusual for rats.

But by golly there were a lot of them.

Chapter

10

Underneath the Mountain

They were going to eat her.

There was no doubt in Amy’s mind about that. They were scurrying towards her along the hallway floor in a great tide of wrinkled, grey-pink bodies, with chattering teeth that looked like they were coated with metal and designed for biting through wire.

She wasn’t exactly sure why she thought they were going to eat her. It wasn’t as though they had a malicious look in their eyes, because they didn’t have eyes. They just had sockets where eyes were supposed to be, sockets that looked like surgical excisions, sockets that had been emptied and then packed with brown material the texture of foam, like the covers to headphone buds or a voice mic. They had claws that resembled bird-foot articulations built from old compass and divider sets. They had tails that looked like the coating of black electrical cable stretched over bike chain.

‘Oh my god, you’re all completely horrible!’ she exclaimed, and began to retreat very fast. They responded by accelerating towards her, rushing in a sudden flood, the larger rats pushing smaller ones aside or trampling them. The nasty, wrinkly grey flesh on their bodies was taut enough to reveal the outlines of their ribcages.

‘And you’re hungry!’ she yelped, finally understanding what had tipped her off. They were famished, and they were behaving the way any hungry creatures did when they detected food.

She started to sprint. They were after her. Their jaws snapped wide, ready to bite, revealing dentition that would have looked much more at home on posters for a film about memorable summers on Amity Island.

One of the rat-things leapt at her. It missed, but it nearly took a chunk out of her left calf with a snap of its teeth. Another leapt. She swatted it away with her hand. A third sprang at her and she struck at it but failed to connect, and it seized her mitten in its mouth, attaching itself to her through-sleeve elastic like a fish to a line.

‘Get off!’ she yelled, and swung the thing hard so that it bashed into the hallway wall. It took two fairly deliberate smacks to make it let go of the mitten and fall onto the floor.

By then, the main portion of the rat flood had reached her. She screamed in horror. What was about to happen was going to be unpleasant. About as unpleasant as unpleasant ever got.

What actually happened next was unpleasant, but not in the way she had been expecting. There was a shrill noise, like some kind of alarm or whistle. It stabbed into her ears like knitting needles and made her cry out in pain and stumble to her knees. It was an awful sound. It was the sort of sound that felt like it would break your ears, microwave your brain, and make smoke come out of your nose.

It actually did that to several of the rats. Some dropped dead in their tracks. Others fell, twitching and writhing in pain. The rest simply recoiled and fled.

Their frantic metal claws made skritchy, squealy, teeth-on-edge noises as they fled down the metal hallway, noises that Amy would not have enjoyed at all if she’d been able to hear them. Her ears, however, were still ringing from the monstrously shrill sound.

Shaking her head, she got up. The Doctor was standing right behind her, with Arabel and Samewell, both looking scared, behind him. The Doctor was smiling.

‘______ ,’ he said.‘______.’

‘What?’ Amy asked.

‘______,’ the Doctor replied, still smiling, but looking concerned.

‘Give me a clue,’ she said. ‘Is it a book? How many words? Why aren’t you talking to me?’

The Doctor turned and said something equally inaudible to Arabel and Samewell.

‘It’s my ears, isn’t it?’ asked Amy. ‘That sound knackered my ears, didn’t it?’

The Doctor turned back to her. He pointed to his sonic screwdriver, and made a sad face. ‘______,’ he said.

She could read his lips. She knew what sorry looked like.

Sol Farrow was a strong man, noted for his labour in the fields and heathouses. Sol was not quite as big as Jack Duggat, for Jack Duggat was the biggest of all Morphans in Beside, but he was an ox of a man nevertheless. Elect Groan have given him the task of nightwatching Beside’s westgate, and offered him his choice of arms to take. Sol had chosen a fine, longhandled shovel with a shipskin tongue. He’d also taken a good sickle from the tool store, and hooked it into his belt under his heavy winter coat. Sol did not intend to be found wanting. He’d heard the stories over the past weeks, all of them: the tall figures glimpsed in the woods, the killed cattle and sheep, the stars that did not stay still. What were those things in the woods?

Were they real, real giants of the forest, regarding the plantnation with evil intent? Or were they just figments of the imagination, sprites conjured by the fearful mindset of the Morphans?

Sol Farrow was a sound man, and would have normally supposed the latter. People jumped at shadows, and at sounds in the night. They saw things sometimes that weren’t really there. The hard winters and the snow, well, that was a misfortune, a hardship they had to bear, but it was making people agitated, and in that agitation, their minds raced and imagined.

Now he was not so sure. There was too much that couldn’t be accounted for, more than could be explained by imagination and a rogue dog.

How many men had not returned from the search today? There was no trace of them. If they’d been taken by something, like the livestock had been taken, then the population of Beside had suffered a mortal blow.

Nightwatching had not been done in his time, or his father’s, or his father’s father’s. According to the practices listed in the word of Guide, nightwatching had been done in the early times, when the Morphans first came to Hereafter. Nightwatch had been posted around the first camps, while the towns were being raised and constructed. Back then, the Morphans had not known much about the world Hereafter, and had no idea what hid in the dark when it fell.

Bill Groan had reinstated the practice of nightwatch after the third livestock killing. He posted watchmen at the compass gates of Beside, plus another at the heathouses, another at the well, and two to patrol from the byre to the dairy. Another watchman would beat the bounds of the plantnation through the night. Bill Groan had been determined that no mad dog would get into the town and threaten the children or the old.