Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Copyright

About the Publisher

“All this – this insanity, the terror and the hellish creatures everywhere – it’s all because of a book, a kids’ book, called Dancing Jax. It was written back in 1936 by… I don’t know what you’d call him there, but I’d say ‘occultist’. Do you know what that is? But he was and is much more than that: Austerly Fellows – the most dangerous and evil man to have ever lived – and he’s still very much alive. The book wasn’t published until late last year, by a man who Austerly Fellows has completely taken over. The guy was just some layabout chancer who broke into the wrong place and that was the end of him. He goes by the name of the Ismus now, after the main character in the story, and the world hangs on his every word.

“So many people have died, so many lives torn apart, so many more are suffering right now, but what really scares me, what keeps me wide awake, well into the night, is not the fear of him and his foul creatures finding me: it’s wondering what he’s got planned. What next? This isn’t it – this won’t be enough. Austerly Fellows is working to a plan, something even more terrible than what we’ve already seen. No, I have no idea what it is. How could I?

“Look, I’m nothing, a nobody – this isn’t political. That – all that – is history now; it doesn’t exist any more. I’m just a maths teacher from a tiny place in England called Felixstowe, and I’m tired and desperate. Why else would I be here, begging for your help? You’ve got to believe me, Dancing Jax is coming – and not even you can shut it out. You’ve been cut off from the rest of the world for a long time, but that won’t help you now. Nothing can stop it! Nothing… except just maybe… one of those kids back in the UK. He just might be the answer to our prayers and that’s why you have to help. It’s the only hope we have.”

The video message ended and the TV screen went blank. The Marshals turned to the figure in black seated between them.

“Do what he asks,” their Supreme Leader said quietly. “Instigate the rescue – immediately.”

1

ACROSS LONDON, COLUMNS of dark, oily smoke rose high in the still air. There were always fires now: cars, homes, people. There was always something to burn. The mirrored towers of Canary Wharf flashed with the apricot light of an evening in late summer. Although many of those windows were now shattered or smeared with the filthy trails of bloated creatures that crawled down at night, there were enough panes left for the setting sun to dazzle and flare in.

The Thames was high. Its surface was unmarred by river traffic, but fouled by scum, creeping weeds and long waving chains of jelly-like spawn. The water moved thickly around half-submerged wrecks of lorries and buses. They had been torn from the bridges by things that made their nests in the shadowy arches beneath, where great clusters of leathery eggs hung in webbed nets.

A teenage couple strolled along the deserted South Bank, heedless of the ruined city, eyes only for each other and the occupant of the buggy pushed by the boy. It was one of those overdesigned three-wheelers that looked like it should be roving the surface of Mars. But garlands of fluffy pink feathers had been twined about the handles to soften and personalise it and a foil Garfield balloon bobbed above.

Lee Charles smiled down at the infant secured safely in the seat. A knitted hat, shaped like a cupcake, with pink woolly icing and a glittery cherry on top, sat lightly on her small sleeping head. The biggest grin in the world lit up Lee’s face whenever he looked at her. She was the most precious and beautiful baby he had ever seen. He lived for her smiles, and her innocence lapped around her like a flame. He would surrender his life to keep it burning. By his side, arm linked through his, the girl called Charm rested her chin on his shoulder.

“Aww,” she said. “What is you like? What a softy. Some gangsta you is.”

Lee planted a chuckling kiss on her lips.

“You two’s my gang now, Sweets,” he told her, his nose pressing against hers.

The girl kissed him back then glanced across the river at the once grand buildings, now derelict and unsafe.

“Were it worth it though?” she murmured. “I mean… all that. All what went on. Were it worth what you did?”

Lee pushed his fingers through her long hair and guided her lovely face back to him.

“For you to be here with me, right now? For our little angel? You messin’ with me? It were worth it all. I’d do it again a million times over, babes. Don’t you never think otherwise. You hear?”

Charm lowered her gaze and nodded.

Lee gripped the handles of the buggy once more.

“Time we got back,” he announced. “Be gettin’ dark soon. We don’t wanna be out when the big things start movin’ and the sky gets busy.”

“Where we goin’?”

“Back to our place, babes. You know.”

“Our place?”

“Yeah, the rad warehouse makeover, with steel shutters, gun emplacements and trick flame-throwers – all that good stuff.”

The girl’s forehead puckered slightly as she struggled to remember.

“I don’t… is me ma there?”

“Let’s get goin’,” Lee urged softly.

“Well, is she or what?”

“She ain’t there.”

“Where then?”

“I told you, babes.”

“If you did, I forgot. Why ain’t me ma here to share this? Why ain’t she wiv her granddaughter? She’d go freakin’ mental for her she would.”

“Your mother ain’t around no more,” Lee said, walking off. “She’s gone. I told you.”

Charm hesitated and put a hand to her temple in confusion. “Gone?” she repeated. “Where’d she go? I can’t fink straight. When were this? When did you tell me?”

Lee halted, left the buggy and came back to her. Cupping her face in his hands, he looked into her eyes.

“She’s dead, hun,” he said gently. “When she found out what happened to you, it were too much. She couldn’t face it and had to bail. Man, I almost caved too. Your mother was strong and fierce – you should be proud. She got the rest of us outta that hellhole, but she couldn’t hack it out here without you. She thought you was dead forever. She didn’t know what I had planned, how I was gonna go fetch you from that Mooncaster place. I’m gonna make sure our angel don’t never forget she had a lioness for a grandma.”

Charm blinked her tears away. Lee stroked her cheek. She never remembered. Perhaps it was best that way. Perhaps he should stop reminding her. The horrors of that camp, where children immune to the effects of Dancing Jax had been interned, were best forgotten, especially by her. She moved away, towards the railing, and stared down at the cloudy river. Lee followed, drew the girl close and held her tightly. As long as they were together, nothing else mattered. He would do anything to keep her in his arms forever. Sometimes he couldn’t believe what he had already done.

And then that sudden sense of dread tore at his stomach, as it did every night. Still wrapped in his embrace, Charm raised her eyes and screamed.

Running along the path towards them were a dozen hideous little hunchbacked men, with hooked noses that curved down to meet the upturned tips of equally grotesque chins. They were Punchinello Guards from the pages of that evil children’s book, ugly and brutal creatures that had crossed over into this world. They were dressed in the yellow and crimson livery of Mooncaster, with large velvet bicorn hats on their deformed heads and spears in their fists.

Lee grabbed the girl’s hand and the couple ran back towards the buggy. But the guards were already upon them.

A savage kick knocked Lee’s legs from under him. His knees crashed on to the concrete. Charm’s hand was torn from his fingers and his face slammed against the ground. He roared in pain and rage as a steel-heeled boot stamped on his shoulders. His arms were yanked up over his back until he thought they would snap or be ripped from the sockets. His joints felt on fire. He tried to struggle, but a brass knuckleduster crunched into his ribs and a pinched, nasal voice squawked in his ear.

“Goody goody!” it screeched. “Oh, goody goody! You twitch again, Creeper, and me smash bones. Me likey hear them splintery crack, splintery crack.”

The boy could only stare as three of the Punchinellos bounded after Charm, squealing and quacking with cruel delight.

“Get away from her!” he bawled. “Don’t you touch her!”

Even as he yelled those words, the girl was dragged to the floor by her hair and powerful hands clamped over her mouth, smothering her terrified shrieks.

Then two more guards came waddling up. Between them they carried a large leather suitcase. It was so long it required two handles and, when Lee saw it, his eyes widened in horror. The suitcase was shaped like a coffin.

“No!” he bellowed.

The guards set the macabre case down and skipped around it, flicking the catches open. Then they threw back the lid. Charm was hoisted into the air and flung inside.

“We had a deal!” Lee cried. “I did what your Ismus psycho wanted. We had a deal!”

The Punchinellos ignored him. They hopped and danced about the suitcase, tormenting the petrified girl within, jabbing and prodding her with the tips of their spears.

“You hurt her and I’ll kill you!” Lee thundered.

“Prick the squassage!” they taunted. “Prick it, poke it, make it spit, make it sing and squeal in the pan.”

“Girl no belong here,” the evil voice hissed in the boy’s ear. “You not done what Ismus want.”

“I did!” Lee protested. “I did it and damned myself to Hell. But I didn’t care! Don’t you take her from me now!”

“You liar. You no do it. Girl stay dead till you does.”

Lee watched them reach for the lid of the suitcase and looked on Charm’s stricken face one final time.

“Don’t you be scared now!” he shouted across to her. “I ain’t gonna lose you again! Wherever you is, I’ll find you! I promise! I promise!”

The lid snapped down and quick, dirty fingers locked it. Then the suitcase was snatched up and the two guards went scurrying away with it. Charm’s muffled screams faded in the distance.

The crushing weight of the boot lifted from Lee’s shoulder and the owner of the voice stepped before his eyes. There stood Captain Swazzle, chief warder of the castle guards. He was dressed in the same absurd outfit as the last time the boy had seen him, back at the camp. The pinstriped, 1920s, Al Capone-style suit, complete with pearl-grey spats and white fedora, was still in place and a stream of pale blue smoke curled up from the fat cigar in his mouth.

“You want see girl again?” he snarled, tapping ash down on to the boy’s face. “Do what Ismus say.”

“Big mistake messin’ with me!” Lee thundered back. “You know what I’m capable of. You know why your head guy is so scared o’ me. I am gonna make it my personal business to take you right outta this world and scrub you from that book forever – like you never was – an’ there ain’t nuthin’ could…”

The threat died on his lips. The other Punchinellos had started to squawk.

“Oohhhh, a baby! Look at the baby! Looky – looky!”

They gathered round the buggy and began pawing at the infant inside.

Lee roared at them to get away, but they paid no attention and fawned over the baby, distorting their misshapen features even more by pulling faces and sticking their dark tongues out. A moment later, the child was crying and the guards started squabbling.

“You woke the baby!”

“No, you woke the baby!”

“You did!”

“You!”

Bickering, they jostled for possession of the buggy, wrenching it from one another’s greedy grasp.

Lee bawled at them. The hands gripping his arms gave them a sudden, violent twist and his face smacked the ground.

“Please stop,” he begged fearfully. “Don’t do this. Don’t hurt my angel. I’ll do whatever you want.”

Captain Swazzle cackled and swaggered across to join the others.

“I make baby sleep,” he declared. Grabbing the buggy’s handles, he rocked it roughly from side to side. Leering down, he brought his hideous face close to the child’s and blew a smoke ring. Then he began to croon a foul Punchinello lullaby.

“Halt your wailing temper or you shall earn a clout,

only bitches whimper, only cats mew out.

I’ll pinch and pull your nose to grow,

I’ll give your chin a curl.

Dream of stunted legs that bow

and be a humpbacked girl.”

While he sang, another guard took hold of the front wheel and, together, they swung the buggy in ever-increasing arcs.

Lee tried to break loose, but every movement was rewarded with a vicious wrench on his arms and a violent stamp on his legs.

“Stop!” he pleaded. “Stop!”

“More!” Captain Swazzle squawked. “Up she goes!”

The swings became wilder. The buggy swept higher and higher into the air until it was level with the Punchinellos’ hats. If the baby hadn’t been secured in the seat, she would have fallen out. Then it went higher still. Captain Swazzle’s yellow eyes bulged in their sockets and he hooted repulsively.

“Up and down!” he screeched. “Up and down – up and down… that’s the way to do it.”

The rest of them joined in the familiar chant, stamped their feet and flourished their spears.

“That’s the way to do it, that’s the way to do it!”

Lee couldn’t bear it. Hot tears streaked his face. He prayed and he shouted, but there was nothing he could do.

“Aaaaaand… up she goes!” Captain Swazzle shrieked one last time. As the buggy went higher than ever, he let go of the handles and the other Punchinello released the front wheel. The buggy continued sailing through the air. It flew up and over the railings, then down again.

Lee squeezed his eyes tight shut. He heard the splash, followed by the trampling of the guards’ boots as they charged across to watch the buggy sink into the river.

“Oooooh, what a pity,” Captain Swazzle cried, staring down at the cloudy waters where a woollen hat, in the shape of a cupcake, floated on the scum. “Oh, what a pity.”

Lee’s scream ripped across the Thames.

The pain bit deeply into his wrists and he lurched upright.

His face was dripping, drenched in icy sweat that stung his eyes. He wrenched at his arms, but they were still held firm. His despairing yell filled the room.

“Mr Lee Charl,” a calm, female voice soothed. “You fine, you safe, you not worry, please.”

The boy’s frantic, heaving breaths continued and his heart pounded as his eyes stared blankly around. The river was gone. The Punchinellos had disappeared. He was in a dimly lit room with blank walls and no window. A hospital bed was before him, surrounded by monitoring equipment, and four men in smart olive uniforms, armed with AK-47 rifles, were standing impassively on either side. There was a figure on the bed, sitting bolt upright, with wires attached to his forehead. A petite woman, wearing a white lab coat over her army uniform, crossed to the door and snapped on the main light switch. Overhead, a fluorescent strip began to stutter. Lee now saw that the eyes of the patient were wide and the stark, traumatised expression on that face was painful to witness. Then something pink glinted under the clinical light. It was a diamanté stud in the patient’s ear. With a jolt, Lee remembered he was staring at a large mirror covering one entire wall and the pitiful figure on the bed was him.

Repulsed, he looked away and the calmly efficient female doctor consulted his case notes.

“You want sedative, Mr Lee Charl?” she asked with crisp politeness.

“Hell, no,” he answered thickly. “I slept plenty already – and they make the dreams worse.”

“Same dream, please?” she asked, ready to jot his words down.

“Pretty much.”

“Was Ismus in dream?”

“He’s never in them, Doctor Choe. They’re just dreams. It’s not like the other thing. I’m not sneakin’ off and going to Mooncaster, you know that. They’re just bad dreams. I ain’t havin’ no secret cosies with that mad son of a…”

“Detail of dream, please.”

He shook his head. “Laters – I’ll save it for the shrink session.”

“You might forget detail,” she said a little more forcefully, though the smile didn’t slip from her face. “Detail important.”

“Fat chance of that,” he uttered bitterly. “Now can I hit the shower and get me some dry clothes? Feels like I peed in these. Is there hot water today?”

Doctor Choe Soo-jin put the notes down and reached for a syringe.

“First I take bloods,” she told him.

“More? You supportin’ a family of vampires at home or somethin’? You’ve had enough juice outta me since I got here to fill a hot tub.”

“Not so much,” she said through her implacable smile. “We need to test, Mr Lee Charl. Test important.”

“So you says, but I can hardly find a vein no more. My arms are worse than a dead junkie’s. Gimme a break, yeah? If it ain’t the red stuff, you’re moochin’ every other damn thing I got.”

Doctor Choe Soo-jin proceeded to take the sample. Lee gazed around at the four young soldiers flanking the bed. They might have been shop-window dummies for all the expression on their features. None of them spoke English, or at least had never acknowledged that they could. Sometimes he wondered if they listened to what was said when he was in the company of his friends and then reported everything to Doctor Choe, or their commanding officer, afterwards.

Lee cast a piercing glance at the mirrored wall. He was sure it was one of those two-way numbers; probably a video camera behind there taping it all anyway.

He looked back at the two grim-faced men on his left. There were three different sets who ‘nannied’ him in rotation, with a changeover every four hours. He’d given each group a name to amuse himself. This quartet were the Sex and the City women, because his mother used to enjoy that show, and they’d taken over from Take That (minus Robbie) sometime during the night when he was asleep. His grandmother had been a big fan of “that nice Gary Barlow”. Soon it would be the turn of the Spice Girls (minus Geri). He didn’t know anyone who had liked them, but it cracked him up to call these stern guards Sporty, Posh, Baby and Scary.

His eyes dropped to the aluminium chain threaded through their belts. The pair on the right were joined in the same way. Both chains ended in a set of steel handcuffs, locked round Lee’s wrists. He blew on them gently. He’d been pulling on them in his sleep and the skin was raw and broken.

“Just another day chained up in North Korea,” he murmured. “Can my life blow any more? How the hell did it get to this?”

2

THE SECRET STRONGHOLD in the northern region of the Baekdudaegan Mountains had taken seventeen years to excavate. From the outside there was no evidence of the extensive tunnel system in which 7,500 members of the People’s Army were stationed at any one time. The largest terraces and balconies were built in the style of old temples, with sagging tiled roofs, artificially distressed to appear ancient and neglected, while others were simply cut horizontally into the slope and disguised with camouflage. The two helipads and missile silos were similarly obscured. The single road which zigzagged up to the main, but discreet, entrance was constantly monitored by sniper outposts.

Beneath the pagoda-like roof that sheltered one of the terraces, Maggie rested her elbows on the low wall and pulled the fur-lined collar of the greatcoat round her chin. The biting December air was sharp in the fifteen-year-old’s nostrils and she buried them in her mittened hands. She couldn’t remember ever being warm and, to make it worse, there was no hot water in the showers. The primitive plumbing had broken down again.

The usually breathtaking view was hidden today. Beyond the wall, the grey slopes of the mountain dropped steeply into a thick white mist that filled the valley, blotting out the dark forests and surrounding snowy peaks. It was like staring into a universe of nothing, an endless blank canvas waiting for the first mark or stroke of colour to be applied. It was almost hypnotic and Maggie’s mind drifted.

She thought back to that July night, when they escaped from the prison camp in England – how she and the other aberrant children had crowded into a military helicopter, with no idea where they were being taken. Through the darkness, they were flown across the Channel to a private airstrip in France, where a jet was waiting to whisk them on across the world.

At the time it felt so unreal, like an adventure happening to someone else. They didn’t question anything. The elation of having got out of that horrendous place alive, combined with the food provided on the journey, drove all other thoughts out of their heads. They didn’t care where they were going. They were finally safe from Punchinello bullets and starvation. Each new day would no longer be a hopeless struggle for survival. Even when they touched down and sleepily discovered just where this sanctuary was, it didn’t really register.

North Korea, or ‘the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’ as they swiftly learned to call it, had shown them its most benign and welcoming face. The children of the camp had been fêted as honoured guests and, for the first week, enjoyed the best that this secretive and isolated corner of the world could offer. After the privations and sadistic treatment they had suffered back home, it was like a surreal holiday.

They were given grand tours of the capital city, Pyongyang, and the surrounding provinces. They were bussed to old Buddhist temples, imposing monuments and battle sites, and attended a banquet at which the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, was present, surrounded by an austere array of Generals and Grand Marshals. They were even ushered into the palatial mausoleum where the embalmed corpses of Kim Jong-un’s revered father and grandfather were ceremoniously displayed in glass cases. Maggie and the other refugees filed past them in disbelief: what sort of a country was this? A girl called Esther threw up on the steps afterwards.

A crew from Korean Central Television, the only news broadcaster, followed them everywhere. Just three channels were available to the people of Pyongyang and the rest of the country made do with one. There was no satellite TV or Internet for ordinary citizens: such things were forbidden. Every TV set was configured to receive only these official channels and regular checks were made to ensure they were not tampered with.

The rescued foreign children became instant celebrities. They were interviewed together, in small groups of three or four and individually. North Korea wanted to know the exact nature of the madness happening outside its borders. How could a mere book of European fairy tales be the cause of so much turmoil and confusion? Viewers watched with horrified fascination as the youngsters recounted frightening stories of the camp and the rejection by their own families.

Maggie lost track of the times she had repeated the same information.

“No, it’s not a normal book,” she had said, struggling to explain the unexplainable. “It sucks you in and you really believe you’re one of the characters in it and all this, the real world, is just a dream. Honest, that’s what it is – and you wear a playing card to show who you are in that story! No, it didn’t work on me, or any of the others here. We don’t know why, it just didn’t. That’s why they locked us up and treated us worse than animals. We were rejects. You wouldn’t believe what they did to us.”

The interviewer pressed for details and the interpreter had difficulty keeping up with the barrage of questions. Maggie was shown footage, gathered by the Research Department for External Intelligence, of foreign cities where protests against Dancing Jax had escalated into violent riots. Bookshops and publishers were firebombed. Civil war had burned fiercely but briefly until everyone was under the book’s spell.

“Same happened in Britain,” she said, watching a pitched battle storm through the streets of Moscow, between those who had read it and those who hadn’t. “We went through all that. You can’t fight it. It’s too strong. Then there are the… things.”

The microphone almost poked her in the nose as it was pushed closer.

“Somehow things are coming through, from the book,” she said. “It sounds mad, but it’s true. Nightmares, monsters in those fairy tales, are becoming real. I’ve seen them, I’ve fought them. I thought the Punchinello Guards were bad enough, but then there were… I dunno what they really are, but they’re called Doggy-Long-Legs in the book and all they want to do is eat your face. One of the guards had his nose chewed right off. Then there was the… we never found out what it was – all giant worms and tentacles. It killed my… a friend of mine. It got him – it got my Marcus.”

Maggie fell silent. The interview had then cut to a segment of an American news report from several months ago, back when America was wondering what was happening in the UK. It was second- or third-generation video, again acquired by the intelligence department. The reporter was Kate Kryzewski, speaking from Kew Gardens, investigating a previously unknown invasive shrub with pulpy grey fruit, called minchet. Eventually she too had fallen victim to the power of the book.

When the news cut back, Maggie had been replaced by a self-conscious, bespectacled boy wearing a cowboy hat. “Er… yes,” he said. “That stuff grows everywhere now and it stinks. The creatures from the book eat it, as well as other things… and the Jaxers use it to heighten the reading experience. Makes it better… sharper somehow. It tastes worse than it smells though and gives you gut ache.”

“Gives you the trots!” Maggie’s voice shouted off camera.

The picture cut to an army scientist holding a single horned skull, fixed to a stout stick. The austere, shouting voice-over told the audience it had been thoroughly examined and undergone testing. It was not a hoax; this was a genuine unicorn skull. In North Korea they called it a kirin and its appearance was seen as an auspicious sign, for these mythical creatures only appeared during the reign of wise rulers. But where had it come from? None of the children seemed to know and the boy in the Stetson only admitted to bringing it from the camp. Another strange item was held up for the viewers. A long, crooked silver wand, tipped with an amber star. The interviewer waved it around, pulling comical faces. Maggie said it belonged to the retired Fairy Godmother character, but didn’t say how it came to be in the camp. Both it and the skull were confiscated.

“I don’t want my damn face on TV!” Lee had growled, among other things that didn’t get translated.

“What they do to you?” he was badgered. “What they do?”

“You really wanna know?” he snarled back. “They dragged my girlfriend to an abattoir and slaughtered her like a pig, that’s what. Then those sick bastards fed her to us. You got that? You comprende that? Yeah, you heard right – they fed her to us!”

And so the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea learned about Dancing Jax. For once the ceaseless, bombastic propaganda machine didn’t need to exaggerate the evils of the imperialist Western aggressors; in fact, it concentrated its efforts in downplaying the dangers to dampen the mounting sense of panic. Yes, it was a state of emergency and they stood alone against the entire world, but that was nothing new. Such a crisis is what their founder, Kim Il-sung, foresaw in his great wisdom and why they would survive even this. Whatever threatened their borders would be dealt with. They had no need to fear. Kim Jong-un, the founder’s grandson, would ensure no harm would come to his people. They would remain isolated from the world and stay safe.

But the presence of the foreign children was a constant reminder of the outside danger and so, when that first week was over, the special treatment, the visits, the interviews stopped. Then the only adult female, Mrs Benedict, was found dead in the bathroom of their hotel. She had killed herself and the euphoria of having escaped the camp died with her. Two nights later, they were all removed from Pyongyang.

Maggie recalled that less comfortable journey in the back of military trucks through rugged, hilly terrain and seemingly endless forests, along rudimentary roads until, finally, they reached this secret base built into the mountain. The holiday was over. They had swapped one prison for another.

“Your face will freeze and drop off out here,” a friendly voice declared.

The teenage girl blinked. She had stared into the fog too long and her eyes ached. Turning away from the blank void, she saw a neat, elderly gentleman approaching along the terrace.

“Morning, Gerald,” she called, glad to see him. “I was miles away.”

“A chon for your thoughts?”

“Oh – I was thinking back to when we first got here.”

The man clapped his gloved hands and shuddered inside his overcoat.

“All those months ago,” he said. “When you piled out of those wagons. It was like something from Oliver! I almost started singing ‘Consider yourself’ and giving you my Artful Dodger.”

He gripped his lapels and did some nimble footwork. Maggie laughed.

“More like an Artful Codger nowadays, mind,” he chuckled.

“I wish I’d seen you back when you were performing,” Maggie said. “I bet you were amazing.”

Gerald Benning put his arm round her. He never really spoke about his show-business past, but somehow word had got around the children here, probably via Martin, and they liked to ask him questions about his former life. Gerald always answered with good humour, but usually steered the conversation around to other things and asked them about themselves. He thought it was important to remind them, especially the younger ones, what their world was like before all this had happened.

He got them talking about the little aspects of that time, the simple things that they’d forgotten: family holidays, best birthday presents, favourite movies and songs, names of pets and who they’d sat next to in school. He didn’t promise them that, one day, those things would return and everything would be as it was. That would have been cruel. They wouldn’t have believed him anyway. But those memories told them they weren’t just refugees dependant on the charity of a suspicious nation, and that there had been goodness and love in their lives, and they shouldn’t hate their parents for rejecting them. It wasn’t their fault. Dancing Jax was to blame.

Maggie smiled at him. “God knows what we’d have done without you,” she said. “All these months, stuck away up here with less freedom than we had in the camp and nothing to do, day in, day out, but snipe and bitch. We’d have probably killed each other by now. I was ready to strangle that Esther first thing today. She’s worse than she ever was. What a spiteful cow; she’s really doing my head in.”

“She’s difficult to like, that one,” Gerald conceded. “And, since she went all limpet-like on Nicholas, he’s developed full-blown annoyingness too. But we’re none of us perfect and you’ve all been through enough to send most people round the twist and back again. Being cooped up here like battery hens doesn’t help. Don’t let it get to you. Rise above it, my dear.”

“You always make it seem better somehow. Even in this miserable place…”

“Titipu,” he interrupted with a wink. Gerald had mischievously christened the mountain base after the fictional town featured in The Mikado, which was a huge insult to their North Korean hosts. There was nothing but enmity between them and Japan, where The Mikado was set.

“See, all the kids call it that now. They dunno what it is, but it sounds funny. You’ve given them something to laugh at, as long as the Generals don’t find out. You make it bearable and keep us busy with daft schemes. Look how you wangled your way into the kitchens to make that birthday cake for Lee last month.”

“He’d have been happier if I’d managed to get him some ciggies.”

“Oh, don’t expect him to show gratitude, he’s never been the demonstrative type, but that meant a lot to him that did. He’s not the same since Charm… since she died.”

“Poor girl,” Gerald said sadly. “That was horrific for all of you. I’d like to have known her. She sounds dazzling.”

Maggie lowered her eyes. “Best friend I ever had,” she said. “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about her – and my Marcus – and miss them. After all these months, it still hurts.”

“Course it does. And it always will, but it won’t always be as sharp and you’ll remember how good they made you feel more often than the pain of losing them. Takes a long time though.”

Maggie bit her lip guiltily. She had forgotten the Scottish boy, Alasdair. He had lured the Punchinellos away so that the rest of them could escape. They had all heard the ferocity of the gunfire in those dark woods and understood what it signified. His body was probably still in the New Forest, unburied and picked at by birds and animals – or worse.

And then there was Mrs Benedict…

“I should’ve done more to help Charm’s mum,” Maggie said unhappily. “That first week, after she found out what happened, I should’ve…”

“There was nothing anyone could do,” Gerald told her firmly. “Mrs Benedict just couldn’t live with her grief. Not everyone can. Don’t you ever think you could have stopped her. Despair is a terrible thing, the absolute worst.”

He blew on his gloved hands as if to dispel the sadness and the vapour cloud melted into the fog.

“But it’s no use dwelling on the past, young Maggie,” he declared breezily. “‘Turn, oh turn, in this direction,’ as the chorus sing in Patience. Worse things are undoubtedly just around the corner and we’ve got to be ready for them. But, in the meantime, ‘Let the merry cymbals sound.’ We’re not at home to Mr Despair and we’ve got to ensure your friend Lee doesn’t slip down into that dark pit.”

The girl agreed. “He’s not about to join your choir though,” she told Gerald. “I don’t know how you roped the rest of us into it either. My voice is never going to be mistaken for Adele’s. And then there’s the music lessons you do, way more popular than Martin’s boring maths classes. You really do keep our spirits up, not to mention the stuff you coax out of the guards for us. I’ve no idea how you manage that. I can’t get a smile out of the surly buggers.”

“I let them slay me at chess,” said Gerald, waving the compliment aside. “They’re mad about it. Now, glad you mentioned the choir because I’ve decided it’s going to be Christmas carols all this week – and not just the obvious ones. There’ll be no jingle bells, Batman smells or shepherds’ socks from you lot. Let’s show these gloomy Titiputians what they’re missing.”

“They’re not going to let us sing Chrimble songs, are they? I thought you said they were anti the whole thing in a mega way?”

“Oh, they are. Before this madness happened, the South Koreans used to put lights round a tower near the demilitarised zone so it looked like a Christmas tree and this bunch always threatened to fire rockets at it. They didn’t want their hoi polloi getting any fancy ideas. So what we’re not going to do is tell them we’re singing carols. I know some lovely old ones that aren’t too specific and I can tweak the words in others. They won’t cotton on; they’ll just think we’re doing our usual practising. I might even get the interpreters and guards joining in – now there’s a challenge. If I could get them to warble a wassail, or ‘The Coventry Carol’, that would be my Christmas present to myself. How hot do you think their Latin is?”

Maggie laughed. “About as good as mine – which is non-existent.”

“Fab, I might see if we can get away with a bit of ‘Quem Pastores’. That should fox them.”

“Feels weird talking about Christmas here where they don’t believe in anything but the party and their precious leader,” the girl murmured. “I used to love it: tinsel and telly, parties and the food – specially the food. I used to really wind up my stepmum by pigging out. Seems like another life now; so much has happened since.”

Gerald gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You’ve grown up, that’s what’s happened to you,” he said. “You’ve realised you don’t need to live up to anyone’s expectations but your own. That stepmother was a monster, trying to make you anorexic, and, of course, you being you went and did the exact opposite – you barmpot. But look at you now. How much weight have you lost since you got here? Not that you needed to: you were lovely as you were. The other kids have managed to put some on, but you must’ve trimmed down by a couple of stone at least.”

Maggie looked back into the fog. “I didn’t need to be big any more,” she said. “And, one thing the camp taught me, there’s a better chance of survival if I can run a hundred metres without collapsing. That’s why I jog up and down here every morning; besides, there’s not much else to do.”

“Yes,” Gerald agreed. “And the running isn’t done with yet. This place has lasted much longer than I expected. Austerly Fellows must be saving it for the very end.”

“When do you think that will be?”

“Not long now.” He turned to glance back at the female soldier who had followed him out on to the terrace and gave her a cheery wave. Their ever-watchful hosts were never far away. “They’re extra nervy lately,” he muttered, just loud enough for Maggie to hear. “Haven’t you noticed? There’s rumours about all kinds of things happening near the demilitarised zone in the south. Quite a lot of them have families back there you know; you can learn a lot whilst twiddling with your bishop.”

“If they ever find out you’re picking up the lingo, you’ll be in serious trouble.”

Gerald grinned. “I’m not about to give myself away,” he said. “And my best teacher is General Chung’s youngest daughter, little Nabi. It’s just a game to her. Besides, I’m only picking up the odd word here and there, although the Korean for ‘piano’ is exactly the same as ours. Who’d have thought that? But, from what I gather, there’s been books smuggled in across the frontier and unnatural creatures have been sighted in the woods there.”

“It’s started then,” Maggie said flatly. “Soon it’ll be the helicopter fly-pasts with readings over loudspeakers. Not that they need them in Pyongyang: the whole place is wired up to that annoying PA system. But where do we go from here? There’s nowhere left to hide. We’re trapped in the last corner of the world. What’ll happen to us then?”

“Anything that comes flying into this airspace won’t last long,” Gerald reminded her. “The Marshals are itching to launch their missiles as it is, specially Tark the Shark. He’s a blood-soaked devil, that one, and just back from the south. He’d have pressed every red button already, given half the chance. That’s probably why the Chinese haven’t tried the old helicopter routine around here. They’re only thirty or forty kilometres behind these mountains don’t forget. No, I think Mr Fellows is going to try a different approach. After all, we’ve got the two things he desperately wants.”

“Lee and Martin.”

“Yes, Lee and Martin. For two very different reasons.”

They fell silent and huddled together, facing the featureless mist.

Gerald and Maggie had clicked the moment they met and greatly enjoyed one another’s company. The fact he was almost seventy years old and she only fifteen didn’t matter. She was not only the granddaughter he had never had, they were also firm friends and laughed at the same things.

“Time to go,” he announced presently. “Martin and I have got another of those useless coffee mornings with the big hats in half an hour. Get in out of this cold and tell everyone choir practice at the usual time later. Oh – and remember: ’tis the season…”

“Fa la la la la,” she sang after him as he departed along the terrace, followed by the female soldier.

Maggie turned back to the fog. The last time she had sung a Christmas carol had been back in the camp, over the fresh grave of a young boy killed by one of the Punchinello’s spears. Maggie was ashamed to realise that she couldn’t even remember his name now. Too many faces had gone from her life. But one she would never forget belonged to a girl called Jody. She shuddered in horror whenever she recalled what Dancing Jax had done to her. Jody had been caught between the two worlds. Here her eyes turned to blue glass, while in Mooncaster she had become a hollow glass rabbit, filled with a virulent plague. The memory of that would haunt Maggie for as long as she lived.

“Which probably won’t be too much longer,” she murmured softly.

Peering into the thick white vapour, Maggie thought over what Gerald had said, about the creatures sighted in the far south. What if others had started to creep across the nearby Chinese border? The wooded valleys and mountain slopes could already be crawling with them, invisible in the concealing mist. This disturbing thought caused her to jump away from the wall and she hurried back inside the military base. The metal door clanged shut behind her.

3

IT WAS ONLY marginally less cold inside the mountain. Martin Baxter was waiting on the concourse, behind the main entrance. It was a huge imposing space, where five of the key tunnels converged. The facility was so large and rambling it required transport to travel from one area to another, and each of those routes was wide enough to accommodate two lanes of traffic. One of the tunnels even had rails laid down to convey heavy equipment and munitions. The walls of this man-made cavern were bare rock and the lighting was basic and functional, connected by hanging wires and cables.

Dominating the central area was a scaled-down version of the twenty-metre-high bronze statue of Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang. Even though it was smaller, this was still seven metres tall. With its right arm outstretched, it looked as though it was directing the vehicles driving around it. Above the entrance to each passage hung the red starred flag, and the same design, with its blue borders, had been worked into the mosaic floor.

The first time Martin had set eyes on this impressive interior, it reminded him of early James Bond movies, with those amazing sets of the villain’s lair designed by Ken Adam. The geek in him had gone a step further and couldn’t help imagining daleks gliding around, instead of the old jeeps and bicycles that the base used, and robot Yeti lumbering around outside. But he hadn’t mentioned that to anyone. Only Paul, his partner’s twelve-year-old son, would have appreciated it. But Paul had been one of the first victims of Dancing Jax and was now part of the Ismus’s entourage, together with Carol, the boy’s mother. Martin missed them both desperately.

That morning he was agitated and annoyed. These weekly meetings with the Generals were pointless. They never listened to what he had to say and barely concealed their contempt at his presence. Since the rescue of the children from England, absolutely nothing had been accomplished. He couldn’t understand it. They wouldn’t even discuss a campaign against the Ismus. Their policy was to wait and gather as much information as they could, which, more often than not, they didn’t share with him. Martin decided that today he was going to get some answers. They owed him that much. He wasn’t just anybody. He was the thorn in the Ismus’s side, the man who had denounced him from the start, who had spent the best part of a year trying to warn the rest of the world.

A tinny voice barked and crackled from the tannoy system and went echoing through the tunnels. The language was Korean, but it was so distorted that, even if it had been in English, Martin wouldn’t have been able to understand what was said. Just the usual announcements and orders of the day, he supposed.

A veteran jeep pulled up alongside. The North Korean war machine was a curious hotchpotch of new technology and relics of the past. Although it had almost a thousand missiles trained on South Korea, possessed ZM-87 laser weapons, was nuclear capable and had an active space programme, most of its other arms and vehicles dated as far back as World War Two.

An even younger female soldier than the one that had been shadowing Gerald was at the wheel and a grim-looking guard with an AK-47 sat beside her. She directed a stony-faced expression at Martin and the former maths teacher clambered in beside Gerald who was sitting in the back.

“Piccadilly, please, cabbie,” Gerald quipped. “And don’t go the long way round or you won’t get a tip.” These trifling games were what got him through his time here. Life inside this mountain was barely tolerable, so he embraced every opportunity to tickle it along. At times his teasing attitude infuriated Martin, but the children adored him for it.

The girl betrayed no sign she had heard and drove on. Her name was Chung Eun-mi, eldest daughter of General Chung Kang-dae.

When he first arrived in the country, Martin’s irrepressible sci-fi self had noted that, just like the Bajorans in Star Trek, here the family name preceded the individual name.

Conscription at seventeen was mandatory for everyone, but, for Eun-mi, there was no other possible path. This was a vocation. It was her life’s dream to wear this uniform. She was everything her father could have wished for in a son. Perhaps, if she had been a boy, their relationship would have been different.

Eun-mi was passionately loyal to the state, determined to devote herself to the People’s Army, and strove to be the best in all she did, pushing herself to the limit at the expense of everything else. She had trained harder than any cadet in her unit, could strip a rifle and put it back together faster than the rest and was fluent in Russian, Mandarin and English. She and her young sister, Nabi, had been assigned to the Western refugees, to serve as interpreter, guide and companions. Maggie and the others knew they were also reporting back everything that was said. Well, perhaps not Nabi, who was only six and, unlike Eun-mi, appeared to enjoy spending as much time with the English children as she was allowed.

Gerald had grown very fond of little Nabi and had learned many Korean words from her, but he had no such affection for her older sister. Those beautiful yet flinty features gave nothing away. However, he could see the disgust glittering in her eyes whenever she addressed him or the others. Like everyone else in the country, she had been raised to distrust the West and she, being a General’s daughter, magnified that into rabid hatred. She genuinely considered these Europeans to be an inferior race and would’ve preferred to have been given other duties away from them, but she was fiercely obedient and it never occurred to her to even think about questioning her orders.

As the jeep skirted the bronze statue, Eun-mi and the guard bowed respectfully until they passed into one of the tunnels. Martin and the others were only permitted access to a small fraction of the base. Dormitories and an exercise area had been allocated for them in the medical centre. Everywhere else was forbidden. The personnel they were allowed contact with were also restricted and they ate in their own separate refectory. Even some sections of the medical centre were out of bounds and doors to mysterious rooms were either locked or heavily guarded, or both.

The room where these weekly meetings were held was located in the northernmost section of the base. It was one of the most secure areas, where intelligence was gathered via spy satellites, and row after row of computers were manned round the clock by teams of hackers leaching data from foreign security systems. Neither Gerald nor Martin saw any of that. They were always guided from the jeep to the meeting room without deviation and, once inside, weren’t allowed to leave, not even to use the toilet. Once the meeting was over, they were shepherded straight back to the jeep again.

Gerald always found this journey interesting. The installation was constantly bustling with activity and the ting-a-ling of bicycle bells. He wondered what everyone did, and why they were in such a hurry the whole time. Whatever it was, they were very serious and intense about it. Sometimes he tried to make the guards laugh, but the most he had achieved was a triumphant grin when they checkmated him.

The jeep came to a stop before a set of red double doors, blocked by two hefty sentries bearing the familiar Kalashnikovs.

“A wandering minstrel I,” Gerald sang softly to himself as he got out, waving a hanging wisp of exhaust fume away from his face. The ventilation system had broken down again in this tunnel. That was the third time since September.

The soldier next to Eun-mi took her place behind the wheel and drove off. The girl spoke to the sentries and they stood aside to let the three of them pass.

“And I shouldn’t be surprised if nations trembled,” Gerald continued in a low, lilting murmur. “Before the mighty troops, the troops of Titipu!”

The meeting room was another space designed to impress. It was what every supervillain’s war room should look like: oval in shape, with low-level lighting around the walls that accentuated the texture of the roughly hewn rock. A print of a vibrantly colourful, highly idealised and flattering painting of the three presidents, from Kim Il-sung to his grandson, hung in the centre of the longest wall. Sticking with his Mikado theme, Gerald called them the Three Little Maids and, whenever he saw one of these paintings, which were all over the place, sang a line from the song that seemed appropriate.

“Nobody’s safe, for we care for none.”

A large, elliptical table, made from cherry wood, dominated the centre, with a massive TV screen at one end. At least it was warmer in here than out in the tunnels. Three incongruous electric fires, the old-fashioned sort often found in pensioners’ front rooms back in the UK, had been brought in to lift the temperature and all their bars blazed brightly orange.

The Vice-Marshals and Generals were already gathered and waiting; they rose from the table when the two Europeans came in and bowed.

Martin and Gerald returned the bow and cast their eyes over who was present. These fourteen middle-aged men were the most powerful in the country, under the Supreme Leader. The Chief of the General Staff was here, as was Eun-mi’s father, General Chung Kang-dae, who made no acknowledgement of her presence. Then there was Marshal Tark Hyun-ki or, as Gerald called him, Tark the Shark. His sour face was half hidden behind large mirrored sunglasses as usual. He never attempted to disguise his hostility towards the English refugees. Martin despised him.

When they first arrived and Lee’s incredible ability had been thoroughly discussed, Marshal Tark Hyun-ki had demanded they send the boy into Mooncaster, strapped to an atomic warhead. Upon its detonation, everyone on the planet who was under the book’s spell would be wiped out, leaving only this glorious nation in command of a depopulated earth and finally safe from foreign aggressors.

Some of the other officers supported this efficient method of genocide and were only dissuaded when the practicalities were debated. The sudden death of entire populations would have serious consequences. How could they make safe and maintain every nuclear facility, chemical plant, gas field, oil refinery, pipeline and the innumerable other toxic industries around the globe? It would be physically impossible. And what pestilence would billions of unburied human corpses produce? What guarantee did they have that the monsters from Dancing Jax would also be killed?

Marshal Tark Hyun-ki refused to listen to the counter-arguments. He was adamant it was the perfect moment to settle accounts with the hated West. The time of empty rhetoric was over and they would be triumphant.

Lee’s reaction, when he heard what they’d been planning, was nuclear in itself. In ferocious language he yelled that anything he took to Mooncaster was only a copy; the original objects always remained with his unconscious self in this world and so any bomb would blow up in both places. In spite of this raging outburst, it took a phone call from Kim Jong-un himself to dissuade the Marshal. After that, there was no more talk of sending Lee to Mooncaster and the boy had been chained to four guards, day and night, to keep him anchored here.

As a consequence, at these meetings, Tark the Shark’s bow was always the curtest and he showed his displeasure further by never facing the two Englishmen. Ever since his grotesque proposal had been rejected, he had brought his aide along and communicated only through him.

The aide, a good-looking twenty-year-old called Du Kwan, was the one person who smiled when Martin and Gerald entered, but the friendly greeting was not for them. Over the preceding months he had grown to admire the beauty and composure of Eun-mi. He longed to speak to her privately, but such contact was forbidden. He was anxious to declare his affections, but how could such a thing be? Was she even aware of his existence? Her lovely eyes never strayed in his direction; she was focused solely on her duties as interpreter and kept her gaze fixed on the centre of the table. It was making Du Kwan despondent. Just one look from her would bring him joy.

Also present in the room that morning was Doctor Choe Soo-jin, clutching an overstuffed folder. She was due to deliver the report on her findings so far and the results of the tests she had been running. She cast a quick, sly glance at Martin. She also had certain recommendations to make that she would instruct Eun-mi not to translate.

“Good morning,” Martin said in his no-nonsense schoolteacher’s voice.

Gerald scattered friendly smiles left and right. He was always amused by the oversized hats the top brass wore here. They all looked like army pillar boxes and the medals that studded their jackets were like magnified milk-bottle tops.

Everyone sat down and those with briefcases placed them on the table as they took out laptops or files or sheaves of paper. The Chief of the General Staff chaired the meeting and he called on General Chung Kang-dae to relate the most recent intelligence.

Eun-mi’s father opened a file. He was a smallish man and marginally younger than most of the others in there. Under his hat the hair was thinning, but his eyebrows were thick and black like caterpillars. It was not an unpleasant or harsh face, but laughter had been an infrequent visitor to his lips since the death of his wife, soon after the birth of Nabi.

Before he could speak, Martin interjected.

“I need to know what’s being done about the Ismus!” he said firmly. “Where is he, what is he doing and why haven’t we come up with a plan of action to deal with him?”

The officers glowered in surprise and anger. How dare he interrupt? He was only here out of courtesy. He had nothing to contribute. They stared at Eun-mi and waited for her to translate.

The girl did so dutifully. She was also angered by Martin’s outburst. Her role as interpreter meant that she too had interrupted her father and the colour rose in her cheeks as she felt his disapproval.

“All this time and you’ve done nothing!” Martin continued. “Every day you hesitate it gets worse and worse out there. God knows what abominations are crawling through the streets now. If you allowed me access to the Internet, at least I’d be able to see for myself. The one thing I do know is that Austerly Fellows has something far more evil planned than anything we’ve seen yet. The last I heard he was writing a second book, a sequel to Dancing Jax. He may have even completed it by now. When that gets published, what’s happened already will pale in comparison!”

He paused as the girl repeated his words in Korean. When she finished, she dared to raise her eyes and saw the icy fury on her father’s face. She looked away quickly and caught sight of Du Kwan. The aide was smiling shyly at her, giving her gentle encouragement. The unexpectedness of that flustered her. She snapped her attention back to the centre of the table and her cheeks burned redder.

“And then there’s the items the kids brought with them from England,” Martin pressed on, before they could stop him. “Where are they? The wand and the skull? What did you do with them? They should be monitored constantly. And what about the kids in those camps set up in other countries? Why haven’t you done anything to help them escape? There must be hundreds if not thousands of them out there, suffering God knows what, and nothing’s been done.

“Look, you’ve got this boy, Lee, who has this miraculous power to enter the world of that book and not be taken over by it. The Ismus is terrified of him. That lad is the one thing that can turn his madness against him. You should be thanking me for bringing him to you. Using him to our maximum advantage should be our top priority and I don’t mean as a method of bomb delivery. But all you’ve done is kept him chained up like a veal calf since he got here. What sort of a strategy is that?”

The Chief of the General Staff slammed his hand down and called for silence, flecks of spit flying as he yelled.

“You listen, you learn,” Eun-mi translated rapidly. “You have no voice here. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea shows you kindness and good will. You nothing, you Western beggar. This emergency the blame of imperialist weakness. Your peoples dirty and corrupt. You spread sickness over whole world. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will find solution. Wisdom of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un will protect us.”

Martin slumped back in his chair. It was no use: he couldn’t make them understand the urgency. Austerly Fellows was going to inflict something new and unimaginable upon everybody and here they were building sandcastles, believing they could withstand the tide.

The Chief of the General Staff bowed to General Chung Kang-dae. Eun-mi’s father took up his files once more and began his report.

Gerald folded his arms and listened politely. He’d had no idea Martin was going to blow up like that. He should know by now it would be a waste of energy. Nobody could comprehend the horror of Dancing Jax until they had witnessed its effects first hand on people they knew.

General Chung Kang-dae listed the fresh information gathered that week. The poorer African countries were now completely under the influence of the book and powdered minchet was being added to baby-milk formula for the remote villages where missionaries were spreading the words of Austerly Fellows. From the smallest fishing communities in Greenland, to the nomadic tribes of Afghanistan, Dancing Jax was supreme. All fighting, all disputes over territory, drugs, race or religion had been forgotten. For the first time in history, the world was at peace.

A murmur of sneering distaste rippled round the table.

The General continued. Many major cities were being abandoned. Satellite images disclosed streets empty of traffic as people sought a more rural, simpler existence to match the one in the book that they believed to be their true lives. Fires were raging out of control in Sydney, Berlin and Tokyo, while pollution clouds over Chinese factories producing components for iPads and Samsung tablets had increased to extremely toxic levels. In spite of the global desire to live medieval, Mooncaster-themed lives, the production of such electronic devices was at a record high. Of more immediate concern, however, was the fact that more and more footage of unnatural creatures was coming to light on CCTV across the world.

Flame-throwers and chemicals were being deployed near the border with South Korea to sterilise the ground so that the minchet plant could not take root and citizens had been commanded to be vigilant. Any sighting of the invasive shrub had to be reported immediately. They were forbidden to approach it themselves.

Gerald’s concentration wandered. It was pretty much the same report as last week and the week before that. He wasn’t sure why he was required at these meetings. They never asked his opinion on anything. He gazed distractedly about the table and pined wistfully for a tall gin and tonic.

Marshal Tark Hyun-ki hadn’t taken any notice of Martin’s tirade. The Shark sat there with his face turned resolutely aside, palms down on his briefcase. Gerald couldn’t begin to guess how much blood was on those hands. He suspected that man had overseen the torture of many. Brutality was graven into his face, with its cruel, downturned mouth, framed by deep creases. It was a blessing those pitiless eyes were concealed behind sunglasses. He was too sinister to be given any name from The Mikado, even ‘the Lord High Executioner’ wasn’t adequate, as that was a comic role and the Shark was anything but funny.

Gerald’s attention shifted to the young aide.

Gerald’s people radar was highly developed. Not much got past him; he could read the intricacies and dynamics of strangers’ relationships with just a few moments’ study. People interested him; his talent for observation had been put to expert use during his former career as an entertainer and then as the proprietor of the most select guesthouse in Felixstowe. He knew the main reason Eun-mi pushed herself so hard was to earn her father’s admiration and he also knew that she would always be disappointed. The General favoured his younger daughter, Nabi, over her and the more Eun-mi tried to get him to notice her, the more he found to praise in her sister. Family troubles were the same the world over.

For some time now Gerald had been perfectly aware of Du Kwan’s feelings towards Eun-mi, and that it was a futile infatuation. But now, suddenly, that granite maiden had noticed Kwan, and Gerald was fascinated to see the bloom on her cheek and how often her eyes flicked back across the table.

“Here’s a pretty how-de-do,” he told himself. “This is a story that can only end in tears.” But his estimation of Eun-mi thawed a little. She wasn’t just a robot of the party; there was a flicker of human feeling in there after all.

With a final disparaging word about the progress of the full-scale replica of the White Castle of Mooncaster that was being built in England, General Chung Kang-dae came to the end of his report and the Chief of the General Staff bowed to Doctor Choe Soo-jin.

The doctor rose from her seat.

“Medical analysis of juvenile group now complete,” Eun-mi translated. “Or complete as possible within restriction. When arrive, health poor, malnutrition. Physical and mental stress level high, test result not reliable not consistent. Good diet, good rest, thanks to generosity of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, they improve. Now final result ready.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Martin said impatiently. “This phenomenon isn’t something you can explain away with science. You can’t point a microscope at it and understand what’s going on. Don’t you think others haven’t tried? Every country I’ve been in since this thing started has had their top people on it, with better technology, better scientists than you have here! They found nothing because this is bigger… it’s older than that.”

The doctor ignored him as she consulted her notes.

“It my conclusion,” she declared, “nothing unique in any aberrant. Abnormality in blood – none. Immunology studies say no antigens present.”

“Ha!” Martin said.

The doctor carried on as if he wasn’t there.

“DNA profile: chromosomal analyses inconclusive. Cannot rule out they carry homozygous recessive trait, need more positive control tissue samples. Neural activity, cognition, ECG – also inconclusive and compare to People’s Army subject volunteer test group. Nothing to suggest medical reason for resistance to influence of book. None I can find, under restriction. Further examination of immunity not possible under restriction. Search for viable vaccine against book influence therefore not possible under restriction.”

The Generals and Marshals muttered in disappointment while Martin and Gerald wondered what on earth she meant by “under restriction”. What restriction?

“Male subject sixteen year, Lee Charl,” she continued. “Subject continue experience nightmare, but it normal and consistent with psychological trauma. No biological reason for remarkable ability. Further study necessary. Most strongly recommend lifting of restriction only way forward.”

She looked directly at Eun-mi and told her to stop translating. Then she made a direct appeal to the Chief of the General Staff.

“What was that?” Martin asked when nothing was repeated in English. “What did she say?” He hated it when they shut him out like this.

“Business of state,” Eun-mi had been instructed to reply and she did it with cold finality and controlled relish.

Gerald regarded her. The stony mask was back in place, but he thought he had marked the slightest tremble in her eye when the doctor said a certain word and then when the Chief of the General Staff said it again. He made a mental note of it and wondered what they were talking about. Doctor Choe was beginning to lose her cool, professional manner. It was turning into a bit of an argument. The Chief of the General Staff was refusing to agree to her request and she was brandishing her notes at him in frustration.

Presently he slapped the table and practically screamed at her. The doctor collected herself and sat down, defeated.

Martin and Gerald exchanged glances. Whatever she had been insisting upon, they were relieved it had been rejected.

But now Du Kwan had been invited to speak.

The young aide rose and bowed. With a hesitant, secret smile in Eun-mi’s direction, he explained that Marshal Tark Hyun-ki had been making a nine-day tour of inspection in the three provinces divided by the demilitarised zone. He had also overseen the destruction of the incursion tunnels leading to South Korea that were excavated by the People’s Army underneath the border during the 1970s.

“People near zone are afraid,” Du Kwan said. “They hear of monsters breaching fences. They hear of farmers finding book out in fields and whole families fall under its spell.”

“Is this true?” the Chief of the General Staff asked.

The young man bowed. “Soldiers of Marshal Tark Hyun-ki discover seven farms where families think they live in fairy-tale land. Marshal Tark Hyun-ki order families shot. They no in fairy tale now.”

The Chief of the General Staff nodded with satisfaction. Martin and Gerald turned away.

“Border guards also need be shot,” the aide continued. “Many loudspeakers across checkpoints; many bad Korean brothers and sisters read from book beyond fences. Border guards, they listen and believe in fairy tale. They shoot at soldiers of Marshal Tark Hyun-ki. We lose twelve men in battle. Now new guards at checkpoints wear ear defenders. Reinforcements needed. Marshal Tark Hyun-ki demand three thousand men go to south with tanks.”

The Chief of the General Staff laced his fingers together and considered this.

“Marshal Tark Hyun-ki also find monster,” Du Kwan added quickly. “Spider big as dog making nest in thorn tree. Marshal Tark Hyun-ki shoot and kill. Marshal Tark Hyun-ki most brave.”

“Where is spider?” Doctor Choe asked. “Why you not bring here?”

Du Kwan bowed to her. “Monster on way to medical centre,” he explained. “Marshal Tark Hyun-ki gave order when we arrive.”

The doctor wrote something at the top of a sheet of paper. An examination of this creature could be invaluable. She wanted to race off now and start working on it.

Du Kwan was about to say something more when the Shark stirred at his side. The young man turned to him in some surprise. It wasn’t like the Marshal to speak to him during one of these meetings. Everything that was to be said was planned in advance. The aide listened to a whispered command then sat down sharply.

The mirrored shades of Marshal Tark Hyun-ki reflected everyone around the table as he shifted to address them.

In the locked darkness of a steel box, inside a metal vault, behind one of those forbidden doors of the medical centre, a pale amber glow began to glimmer. A pulse of light flared within the star on Malinda’s wand.

“Gangle not all I find,” the Marshal announced, removing his palms from the briefcase and flicking the catches open. “I find also – blessed truth.”

Reaching inside, he brought out a book covered in plain green paper. With an expression of ecstasy on his face, he began to read aloud from it and rocked backwards and forwards in his chair.

“Beyond the Silvering Sea,” Eun-mi translated, puzzled by his actions.

Martin and Gerald sprang up.

“Stop him!” Martin yelled. He threw himself across the table and tried to snatch the book out of the Shark’s hands. But the Marshal slid sideways out of the chair and carried on reading.

The other Generals had leaped up and were shouting in fear and confusion. Suddenly the room was full of noise as four shots exploded. Marshal Tark Hyun-ki was catapulted backwards in a grotesque ballet as the bullets ripped through him. Three in the head, one through the heart. He was dead before he crashed to the floor and his mirrored sunglasses went skittering across the carpet.

Everyone’s ears were ringing. The gunshots were deafening. Gerald looked away from the Shark’s body and down the table. Pistol in hand, General Chung Kang-dae stared dispassionately at what he had done. Then he turned to the young aide.

Du Kwan was stammering with shock. A speckled mist of the Marshal’s blood was sprayed across his face. He raised his eyes, aghast. Then he saw how everyone was looking at him.

“I… I did not know!!” he protested. “Marshal Tark Hyun-ki said nothing of this to me – I swear it. I did not know. I have not read the book! I swear – I swear!”

“What are you doing?” Martin cried when he saw General Chung’s grim face. “The lad hasn’t been affected. Look at his eyes. They’re normal! He’s not a Jaxer!”

He rounded on Eun-mi and begged her to translate. The girl wavered. Then she hurriedly beseeched her father to listen.

The pistol fired two more bullets and the handsome young man joined the Marshal on the floor.

Eun-mi gave a horrified gasp.

“Animal!” Martin bawled at the General. “That poor lad was one of us! He wasn’t any threat. You just murdered an innocent boy!”

General Chung didn’t understand what he said. He merely smiled and gave a little bow as he returned the pistol to its holster.

The meeting was over. A short while later, an ashen-faced Eun-mi drove Gerald and Martin back to their section.

“They’re all innocent, Martin,” Gerald reminded him gently. “Don’t forget that. Even the Shark, vile devil though he was, wasn’t responsible once the book got hold of him. If you start thinking the Jaxers are anything but victims then what does that make you? Think of Carol and Paul: they’re innocent too.”

Martin Baxter said nothing. He was sick to the stomach by what had just happened, but there was something more. Gerald’s words had touched upon a very raw nerve and he couldn’t think about it right now.

Back in the meeting room, the Chief of the General Staff had just taken a phone call. The entire meeting had been transmitted via webcam to the palace in Pyongyang. The order from the Supreme Leader was very plain.

“Tell Doctor Choe Soo-jin the restriction is lifted – with immediate effect.”

4

LEE WAS IN the refectory that also served as the refugees’ common room. He was sitting at one of the long tables, with his feet up. The four guards he was chained to stood stiffly either side. It was the Spice Girls, four young men in their early twenties. They had taken over from the Sex and the City quartet under an hour ago.

Many of the other children were there, because their dorms were small and cell-like and unheated. Here there was a wood-burning stove, but the logs were rationed and their daily allocation lasted only about four hours.

The children were wrapped in rough blankets or oversized military greatcoats. Having escaped from the prison camp in England with nothing but the rags they had on, they now wore clothing generously donated by the People’s Army and looked like the destitute outcasts that they were. Most days they sat, clumped together in small groups, either playing the Korean board games also given to them by the military or whispering among themselves.

Maggie was a dab hand with a needle and thread, so Gerald miraculously scrounged the rudiments of a basic sewing kit for her, including a small pair of scissors. She happily filled her hours adapting the cast-off uniforms, cutting them down for a snugger fit or turning them into completely different garments. Spencer’s Stetson had been confiscated as being too strong a symbol of the US, so she had made him a cowboy-style waistcoat with a star on it like a sheriff’s badge to compensate.

She paid special attention to the group of girls who had been in Charm’s hut back in the camp. Her late friend had asked her to look out for them so she made sure their requests were dealt with first. Western dress was forbidden in North Korea so the guards raised their eyebrows at the home-made fashions. It was the closest Maggie ever got to making them smile. With the remnants, she created small dolls and animals, initially to keep herself occupied in between alterations and to put around the dorm and refectory to cheer the place up. But they turned out so well every girl wanted one, except Esther who said they were “fugly”.

That afternoon Maggie sat across from Lee, stitching eyes on to a bear with coloured thread. It was a gift for little Nabi, who spent as much time as she could in the company of the English aberrants. Maggie found it hard to believe she was Eun-mi’s sister. The two were poles apart. Six-year-old Nabi was a lively, excitable, curious child whose laughter could be heard ricocheting down the long, bleak corridors. Her raven hair was tied in bunches and her face was almost always scrunched up in a toothy grin that swallowed her almond eyes. She was nearly too cute at times and Maggie jokingly suggested Nabi had slid off one of the chocolate-boxy propaganda posters.

The six-year-old was besotted with Lee. He was something new and amazing to her. Black people were extremely rare in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, usually embassy staff and diplomats who lived separately in gated communities. They had all been ejected from the country many months ago, so she had never seen anyone like him before. For the first few weeks she’d followed him around with an open mouth and bulging eyes. When he touched something, like a door, or set a cup down, she would pounce and inspect it to see if his colour came off. To begin with he yelled and roared at her and she would run and hide like a terrified hamster. But, eventually, she would come stealing back for more and gaze at him with those bright, worshipping eyes.

Even though he was still numb with grief and raging against his chains, Lee found it impossible to take his anger out on Nabi. He knew exactly what Charm would do if she was still alive. She would have befriended and loved the child and so he tolerated her.

That morning she was sitting next to Maggie, watching the bear take shape and insisting it look fiercer by making savage faces and growling. Her English consisted of the few words and nursery rhymes Gerald had taught her and several other pieces of choice language that she had picked up from Lee, which always scandalised her sister, if her vocabulary stretched that far. Then there was that infamous occasion when Nabi had squealed, tunelessly, in front of their father, “I see you, baby, shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass.” For three weeks after that she was forbidden to visit the refugees, but had finally managed to bring the General around, as she always did.

Outside the refectory, in the long, gloomy corridor painted a bilious green that was blistered and peeling, Spencer waited for Martin and Gerald to return. There was nothing else to do; besides, he liked being on his own. In this place there was little privacy. The dorms were smaller and more cramped than the huts in the camp had been and the toilet facilities were basic and communal.

He scuffed the worn heel of his shabby shoes across the concrete floor and the sound went echoing eerily up and down. Five small dorms, the refectory, the shared bathroom, the stone steps to the terrace and Lee’s hospital room were accessed by this broad yet claustrophobic passage. Further on it turned a sharp right corner into the prohibited area with the mysterious doors they weren’t allowed to enter.

Spencer glanced towards that corner and squinted at the armed soldier standing rigidly still there. It was impossible to be alone anywhere here. If it wasn’t the guards, it was the other children, or visits from that overzealous, pushy doctor wanting to do more tests. The boy craved a bit of solitude. He yearned for the desolate stretches of sand dunes in his home town of Southport and missed the lonely walks he used to take there out of season, when he could roam all day and not meet another soul. Everything about this place was so oppressive, at times it made him breathless. It wasn’t just the joyless regime and the fear of what lay ahead, but the mountain itself. He tried not to think about the millions of tonnes of rock that surrounded him, but was constantly aware of them and could almost feel them pressing down.

He would often lie awake in his bunk, listening to the distant noises of the base and the eerie sound of the air coursing through the vents and tunnels. If the main entrance was open, and the wind came squalling in, it howled through the connecting passageways. When other unknown and distant doors were unbolted, it could be like the whispering of ghosts. Spencer wondered how frequent earth tremors were in this part of the world. One slight judder would be cataclysmic and the mountain would come crushing down. When he did sleep, it was fitful and shallow and the faintest creak or scratching of mice caused him to lurch awake.

Unlike the other refugees, he didn’t call this place Titipu. Instead he preferred ‘the Hole-in-the-Wall’ after the Wild West hideout of outlaws. But that didn’t help much. Passing a hand over his bare head, he tried to suppress the anxiety he could feel rising in his chest. The loss of his Stetson had been like a kick in the gut. It was his comfort object and he felt bereft without it. In the camp, when the Punchinello with the silver nose had swiped it from him, at least Spencer knew where it was. These people had probably burned it and that likelihood distressed him deeply. Maggie had been extremely sympathetic, but the waistcoat she had made was no substitute for his beloved hat, although he secretly liked it when Lee called him “Sheriff Woody”.

Spencer turned his unhappy face to the other end of the corridor, where it opened out on to one of the main tunnels. Digging his cold hands into his pockets, he leaned against the rocky wall and waited.

“It really Christmas already?” Lee asked, back in the refectory.

“At the end of the week,” Maggie answered. She had been telling him Gerald’s plans for the choir.

“Dunno how or why you bother keepin’ track. Ain’t no point no more.”

“I bother because it helps,” she said.

“One day’s like every other in this dump. Could be Pancake Tuesday for all the difference it makes. Those things mean nuthin’ now. Sooner you stop pretendin’ they does, the better.”

Maggie didn’t let him nettle her. She had got used to his attitude and temper. After all this time, they were like background noise, but he was getting worse and not many of the others talked to him any more. Today he was particularly volatile and ready to kick off. She didn’t know the details of his nightmare, he never shared them with anyone but the doctor, but everyone could hear his screams.

“Gerald says he makes fantastic mince pies,” she rattled on, “with chocolate in. They must be gorgeous. Suppose it’ll be same old kimchi and rice or noodles here on the day.”

Nabi’s ears pricked up. “Kimchi!” she repeated, patting her stomach and nodding. “Good yum.”

Lee curled his lip at her and she squirmed with pleasure.

“Long as it’s not no more of those thin spicy soups,” he grumbled. “Thought we’d done with that kinda slop when we left the camp.”

“Don’t suppose I’ll ever so much as sniff another roast potato,” Maggie said mournfully.

“Girl, you ain’t never gonna do a whole mess of things again. This, right here, this is your life now, till the Jaxers catch up with us – and that can’t be far off. After that, you won’t have no life no more. Think they’re gonna keep you as a pet or somethin’? The lot of you’ll be lined up against the wall and be a bullet buffet.”

“‘The First Noel’,” she declared, switching back to the subject of the choir. “That’s my favourite carol. I’d rather sing that old Slade song though. Bit too obvious what they’re about I suppose, so we probably won’t be singing either of them. What’s yours? You must have one, even if you won’t join in with the Wenceslassing.”

He threw her a disbelieving ‘WTF?’ glance. “You think you pierced my brain when you did my ear?” he snapped. “I ain’t forgot the last time we sang ‘Silent Night’, over the grave of that crazy kid Jim, who thought he was a superhero and got himself stuck in the guts. Have you?”

“Ah, of course – his name was Jim. Poor lad.”

“And there’s no way I’m ever gonna forget what that Ismus guy wants outta me. Don’t you remember what he said when you, me and Spence went to Mooncaster that time? I do not want to hear no songs about no towns in Bethlehem or herald angels bein’ noisy in the neighbourhood and I specially don’t wanna hear nuthin’ about no shepherds. You got that? I am gonna be spending that entire day hooked up to my bleepy machines in my hospital bed – Scroogin’ it large.”

Maggie had forgotten nothing about that, how could she? But she had hoped he’d stopped brooding by now. She was wrong. That time when Lee had accidentally dragged her and Spencer to that other fantastical realm, the Ismus had proposed a disgusting bargain that she had never been able to get her head around. That evil man had promised Lee could be reunited with Charm, there in Mooncaster, but only if the boy did something for him, only if he killed someone – someone very special.

“That was just mad talk,” she said with a frown and a shrug. “He was screwing with your head. I don’t believe it; it isn’t possible. There’s no way she can come back, not even there. You know what he’s like, all filthy lies and nastiness. What he says eats at you because that’s what it’s meant to do. Best to shut it away and not think about it – ever. Drive you nuts that will.”

Lee swung his feet off the table and pushed his chair away. Not think about it? It was the only thing that kept his heart beating throughout the day, and what fuelled his nightmares. He gave his chains a sharp tug and one of the attached guards blurted an angry protest. If he hadn’t been tethered in this way, Lee would have returned to Mooncaster long ago. His mind was made up. He was going to accept the Ismus’s obscene offer. He would do anything to have Charm back in his life, even if it meant spending the rest of their days in that extreme world of castles and monsters. He had to be with her.

He was about to leave when the door opened and Spencer entered. His spectacles misted over as they encountered the warmer air. Some of the girls sniggered idly.

“Er… Martin and Gerald are back,” he announced, wiping the lenses. “The jeep’s just pulled in.”

“Woohoo,” Lee uttered woodenly. “Break out the Pringles and party dips.”

“Ohhh… Pringles,” Maggie breathed dreamily.

The other children stopped what they were doing and faced the door. Those weekly meetings were their only source of outside news and they looked forward to them with an intense mix of curiosity and dread.

“They don’t seem happy,” Spencer warned everyone.

“When is Baxter ever happy?” Lee asked. “He gets off peddlin’ the-end-is-nigh stuff.”

“Shh,” Maggie hissed.

The door opened again and the two men came in. A shocked murmur escaped the children’s lips. Spencer’s warning had been a huge understatement. They looked terrible. Maggie rose and tried to take Gerald’s hand, but he said he was fine and eased himself on to a chair. It was the first time he had looked his age. Little Nabi pattered over and rested her head on his arm.

Perching on the edge of a table, Martin considered what to tell them. There was no point concealing what had happened and these kids had been through too much already not to know the truth.

“No easy way of saying this,” he began solemnly. “And maybe I should wait till you’re all here, but you’ve a right to be told straight away. Now I don’t want to alarm you…”

“Spit it, Baxter,” Lee heckled. “You ain’t on TV now, no need to milk your moment. Get to the point.”

“One of the Marshals, Tark Hyun-ki, had been turned,” Martin continued. “He started reading from it in the meeting.”

The children uttered cries of dismay. They all knew exactly what ‘it’ was and they also knew this day was inevitable, but it was still an appalling jolt.

“Oh, game over!” Lee snorted with a twisted grin. “Why’d it take so long?”

“What about the others in the meeting?” Maggie asked. “Are they Jaxers now as well?”

Martin shook his head. “The Marshal was shot, killed before he could turn anyone else.”

“What?” Lee roared in disbelief. “You know better than that! It don’t take more than a few lines to sucker some people in. You, me, we both seen that happen.”

“No one else was affected,” Martin repeated firmly.

“You is talking pure, unrefined, steamin’ straight from the sphincter BS and you know it!” the boy countered. “This is how it starts. Every damn time! Them words is in this base now. No way that guy was the only one. It’s gonna be all round this place like the flu, come tomorrow. You can say goodbye to playing hide-and-seek. We been busted and that Ismus is gonna be poncin’ through this ass end of nowhere any day, rubbin’ his greasy mitts together.”

“There is no immediate danger of that happening!” Martin stated, raising his voice. “This facility is still the safest place for us and will continue to be defended for some time.”

Lee jumped to his feet. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Listen to you!” he shouted. “Who does you think you is? You don’t have no special handle on this. You know nuthin’! You is nuthin’!”

“Sit down!” Martin told him.

“What? You don’t get to order me around, Baxter. You ain’t in no classroom no more and you sure as hell ain’t the boss of me. I’m outta here – can’t stand the stink of stoopid in the morning.”

He yanked on the chains and the guards marched with him to the door.

Martin ground his teeth. That lad was impossible. He took a calming breath, but, as Lee left the room, he heard him growl the word “Loser” and Martin boiled over.

Racing into the corridor after him, he surprised the four guards when he grabbed hold of Lee’s shoulders and pushed him against the wall. The Koreans shouted and brandished their rifles to make him back off, but Martin was so incensed he didn’t hear them.

Lee yelled fiercely and lunged at him, but the chains stopped his fists flying. It took all four guards to restrain him.

“Touch me again and you’re dead, Baxter!” the boy raged, kicking out.

“What is your problem?” Martin shouted. “From the minute we met you’ve done nothing but antagonise and undermine me. So you’ve had it rough. Big deal. There’s not one of us who hasn’t. What makes you different, what makes you so special?”

Lee raised his hands and rattled the chains, almost proudly. “Is you dumb or what, Mr Maths Teacher?” he sneered. “These make me special. I’m the Castle Creeper – I’m the most special and coolest thing there is.”

A slow, mocking grin appeared on his face. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what this is about, ain’t it? You can’t stand that you’re just another nobody now. All that TV you used to do, telling the world how bad that book is, all them shrill blogs and runnin’ from country to country, tweetin’ and preachin’ – pushin’ your own brand of panic an’ drama at anyone who’d listen. Thinkin’ you’re the leader of some sort of resistance, what a joke!”

“Oh, you really are a piece of work,” Martin growled in disgust. “You make me sick. And to think, at first, I couldn’t wait to meet you. You were going to be the answer to this madness. I honestly believed you were going to turn it around. Well, more fool me!”

Lee laughed at him. “Don’t feed me that. You’re the one who thought he was somethin’. Austerly Fellows’ great nemesis, the badass Martin Baxter, the saviour from Suffolk who tried to save humanity single-handed. You got hooked on bein’ famous, dintcha? Man, that is pathetic. While the rest of them out there got addicted to the book, you became a fame junkie – just another media ho. ‘Loser’ don’t even start to cover it.”

“Shut up. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know them Generals all laugh at you. You got nuthin’ worth sayin’ to them at their meetings, you deludenoid. You ain’t no leader, no hero, just another sad reject what got caught up in this at the start an’ don’t know when it’s over.”

“And what are you? Council-estate scum! I’ve taught hundreds of identical no-marks, who can’t even spell ‘GCSE’. They drift their way through school and can’t wait for it to be over so they can start claiming benefits and sponge off the rest of us.”

“Yeah, the likes of me is what your taxes kept in flat-screens and Nikes. Real generous of you, thanks. And guess what, soon as this place gets Jaxed, I’m headed to Mooncaster to live it up as a prince.”

Martin stepped back. “You’d really do that, wouldn’t you?” he said in disbelief. “Kill the Bad Shepherd, even knowing who that is. You’d sell out everyone, just so you could get back with your girlfriend.”

“Hell, yes! If you hadn’t grassed me up and got me cuffed, I could’ve gotten there months ago. And don’t tell me you wouldn’t do exactly the same to get your old lady and her kid back – even though the Ismus has been bangin’ her this whole time and got her knocked up.”

Martin flew at him. Before the guards could intervene, he punched the boy in the stomach and cracked him across the chin. Lee crumpled to the floor, but he was laughing, knowing his words had hurt the man far more.

Martin would have waded in again, but the rifles came jabbing at his chest and Gerald’s hands were pulling him away.

“Leave it,” the old man said. “Grow up, the pair of you. I could knock your heads together, squabbling like toddlers. Martin, you go get some fresh air and you, Lee, go cool off somewhere else.”

Lee looked up at him. He had a wary respect for Gerald. That old guy had seen it all and had faced more discrimination, suffered more hate and prejudice from society than anyone he knew. Back in Peckham, Lee’s gang never messed with people like Gerald. They couldn’t be intimidated and fought vicious and dirty.

Rising, he was about to give Martin a parting snarl when a military ambulance braked at the end of the corridor and Doctor Choe stepped out, yapping instructions and slapping the vehicle’s side. Two soldiers jumped from the back and together they hauled down a stretcher bearing the body of Marshal Tark Hyun-ki.

The children had crowded out of the refectory to watch Lee and Martin’s fight and the few in the dorms had come to their doors to do the same. Now they watched in silence as the Shark was carried past. A blanket had been thrown over him. Doctor Choe guided the bearers down the corridor. They passed the guard stationed beyond Lee’s room and disappeared round the corner, into the prohibited area. When they had gone, the teenagers noticed a trail of blood dotting the concrete floor.

They stared at it in thoughtful silence. Lee was right: the power of the book had infiltrated the base and the clock was ticking. They weren’t safe here any longer.

“Never saw Doctor Frankensoo so stoked,” Lee observed dryly. “Like she got a whole new set of sticky toys to play with.”

“I wonder who the Shark thought he was in Mooncaster,” Spencer mused aloud.

“Hope it was the dung guy,” Lee said. “Nobody’s gonna waste no tears over him. That piece of crud wanted to turn me into a suicide bomber. Sizzle in Hell, you sorry-assed douche.”

The others began filing back into the refectory and the girls from the dorms hurried across to join them to find out what had been going on. Maggie went in search of a mop and bucket.

“So here it is, merry Christmas,” she muttered under her breath with heavy sarcasm. “Everybody’s having fun. Look to the future now, it’s only just begun… not.”

Little Nabi wanted to take a closer look at the blood, but Gerald led her back inside instead. There was something he wanted to ask her. Doctor Choe had just used the same word he had noted earlier in the meeting.

“Nabi,” he began with a friendly, coaxing smile.

“Itsy bitsy!” she demanded, pouting because he had denied her young bloodlust. For a little girl whose name meant ‘butterfly’ she took great delight in the gruesome.

“Later,” he promised. “I want to know, what does pookum mean?”

“Itsy bitsy!” she said, stubbornly folding her arms and glowering.

The old man realised he’d get nothing out of her until he complied. It was one of the nursery rhymes he had taught her. She enjoyed it because there were actions. She loved making spider legs with her fingers and miming raindrops and sunshine. Gerald spoke the rhyme with her and then she insisted he do it a second time.

“She’s got you well trained,” Spencer commented.

“Now pookum,” Gerald asked her again. “What does it mean?”

The six-year-old laughed and shook her head. “Nabi no no,” she gurgled.

“Maybe you’re not pronouncing it right,” Spencer suggested.

Gerald tried again, using the same inflection he had heard in the meeting earlier and just now in the corridor. Nabi put her head to one side attentively, but smiled ever wider.

“No!” she declared.

“Never mind,” Gerald sighed. “You’re probably too young to know anyway.”

“What do you think it means?” Spencer asked.

The man shrugged. “Probably just me fretting over nothing as usual. Evelyn’s always telling me—” He broke off, startled at himself. He tried not to talk about ‘Evelyn’, having suppressed her since leaving Felixstowe with Martin a year ago. But her name had been on his lips more and more recently. It was as if she refused to be forgotten. That was so like her.

Spencer noticed Gerald was disconcerted, but he didn’t like to pry. He fiddled with some snippets of olive-coloured cloth lying on the table and waited. He was slightly in awe of Gerald, ever since he discovered the old man had once worked with the legendary John Wayne on a movie, in London, back in 1975. Gerald’s part only amounted to one line that had been cut from the final edit, but he had still shared the screen for a few seconds with ‘the Duke’ and that elevated him in Spencer’s eyes to some stratospheric level way above ‘cool’.

Nabi gave a small exclamation of understanding and pulled at Gerald’s arm enthusiastically.

“Boo gum!” she cried. “Boo gum!”

Grabbing the discarded stuffed bear, she laid it on its back with its legs in the air. Then, using the scissors, she mimed cutting it open.

“Boo gum!” she said gleefully, her eyes vanishing in her expansive grin.

“What was that?” Spencer asked, mystified.

“I think she’s just demonstrated an autopsy,” Gerald murmured faintly.

“Oh, well, that makes sense,” the boy said, not sure why the old man looked so afraid all of a sudden. “That’s what Choe’s going to do to the Shark, isn’t it? Although I’d have thought cause of death was pretty obvious, what with it happening right in front of you all.”

The old man made no response. He didn’t want to tell Spencer the doctor had used that word long before the Marshal had been shot. A ghastly chill crept along his spine and he shivered.

“I need to talk to Martin,” he said quickly. “We can’t stay here.”

Doctor Choe Soo-jin dismissed the stretcher-bearers and her technicians from the laboratory, which also served as an operating theatre, and put on a plastic apron.

The lab, like much of this base, wasn’t furnished with the most up-to-date equipment, but what it had still did the job efficiently. It was vaguely reminiscent of an old-fashioned, large and sinister kitchen and smelled sharply of antiseptic. Yellow tiles covered the walls, one of which was taken up by four great ceramic sinks. A blood analyser that looked more like a bulky photocopier stood in one corner and a cream-coloured refrigerator, showing signs of rust, occupied another. Cylinders of gas stood in a row like the artillery shells in the munitions section of the base. Electrophoresis apparatus, microscope, centrifuge, organ bath, steriliser and other instruments were stored neatly along two Formica counters, as if they were food appliances. Then there were metal trays containing surgical saws, serrated knives and scalpels, drill bits, retractors, clamps and rasps. Beneath the counters were built-in cupboards that housed the beakers, test tubes, flasks and Petri dishes. The glass-fronted cabinets fixed to the walls contained drugs, medicines and chemicals that were kept under lock and key.

Two stainless-steel examination tables, with leather restraints, were in the centre of the room. The body of Marshal Tark Hyun-ki occupied one of them; a cardboard box containing the remains of the spider creature he had shot near the demilitarised zone was on the other.

The doctor hooked a paper mask over her nose, mouth and ears. Her excitement caused her hands to tremble slightly. At last she would have a subject to study, in forensic detail. She needed an affected specimen such as this and she had never liked the man. He had been more than vocal in his scepticism of her competence and had insulted her more times than she cared to remember. Medicine was not considered a suitable occupation for women and she had worked and studied three times as hard as any man to get to where she was.

But there was no sense of triumph or acrimony involved as she looked forward to dissecting him. Her scientific hunger pushed any personal feeling aside. The Marshal was merely a resource now, an object to document and label. She was eager only to discover answers to this mystery. The power of that book simply had to change the biology. She had a theory about the hypothalamus that she was keen to explore, and other investigations would prove invaluable. She was glad also that the restriction had been lifted and she would presently be able to test those same theories on the English refugees.

Moving to the table, she lifted the blanket and extreme disappointment registered in her eyes. As a result of the gunshot wounds, there wasn’t a hypothalamus to examine. Letting the blanket fall once more, she looked up and her glance rested upon the cardboard box on the other table. Curiosity dispelled her frustration. The box had arrived in her absence and she approached it with interest.

A copy of the Newspaper of the Workers, Rodong Sinmun, covered the dead creature inside. Cautiously, Doctor Choe Soo-jin removed the paper and peered down.

Her surgical mask distorted as she inhaled sharply. The thing was unlike anything she had ever seen. It was the size of a small terrier and its eight spidery legs were wrapped in a tangle round a body covered in matted black fur. The repulsive face with its wide mouth, crammed full of sharp fangs, was upturned and the round, glassy eyes seemed to be staring straight at her. She couldn’t help shuddering and she wondered how it was possible – how could this have come from a book of children’s make-believe?

Her thoughts returned to the meeting and those introductory words the Marshal had read out. She recalled that they had sounded pleasant at the time. What was there to fear in them? A wide sea, dappled with silvery light, sparkled in her thoughts, giving way to a green land of thirteen rolling hills and, in the central plain, rising over a quiet, sleepy village, the turrets and high walls of a beautiful white castle.

Inside the vault, in the room adjacent to the lab, the wand of Malinda began to glimmer once more.

The doctor shook herself and her training regained control. She would record everything: tissue samples, blood, musculature, skeleton. This was a totally new species. A series of photographs would have to be taken before any examination could take place, however, and there simply wasn’t time for that at the moment.

Lifting the box and shying away from the pungent odour rising from the Doggy-Long-Legs within, she carried it to the fridge and deposited it inside. She would attend to this monster later. But first she had other experiments to conduct.

Pulling the mask under her chin, she went to the door and spoke to the guards outside.

“Bring one of the Western children,” she commanded, “immediately!”

The guards bowed smartly and hurried up the corridor.

Doctor Choe returned to the metal trays and began selecting the knives she would need, a razor to shave the child’s head – and a surgical saw.

5

GERALD HAD HASTENED out on to the terrace to find Martin. The thick fog had lifted a little and the bluish-grey blur of distant peaks could be glimpsed through the shifting vapour. Martin wasn’t wearing a coat. He’d been too wrapped up in his angry thoughts to feel the cold, but now it was beginning to bite. The dense mist drank up the noises of the base, distant voices sounded small and lonely and a truck departing down the rough mountain road was remote and strange. He was astonished to hear a helicopter landing on one of the pads. Even that sounded weirdly unreal and he found himself thinking it was a cretinous risk to fly in this sort of weather.

Gerald hurried past the female guard who was watching at the entrance and took his friend by the arm.

“We have to get out of here,” he told him urgently.

Martin looked at him in astonishment. “What’s happened now?” he asked.

“I know what that doctor is planning. She’s been impatient to do it since we arrived, the sadistic maniac.”

“Slow down. What are you on about?”

“Her argument with the Chief of the General Staff earlier: I understand what got her so irate. She’s done all the tests she can on us and found nothing.”

“So? We knew she wouldn’t find anything.”

“Exactly! Now she wants to take it further. She wants to have a go at some post-mortems. She wants to cut us up, to prove there’s a medical reason for the book not working on us. That’s what the restriction was: they wouldn’t let her.”

Martin almost laughed. “You’re imagining it. Look, it’s been a really bad day; we’re both strung out.”

“Martin! I’m serious. Don’t let your pig-headedness lead you into making another fatal mistake. Look what happened the last time. If you’d have believed Paul when he came to you, right at the beginning… well, that’s in the past, no use dredging it up again. What’s vital right now is we need to get out and quick, before that doctor gets all Sweeney Todd on us with her snickersnee. How long do you think the restriction is going to last after what happened to the Shark today? Those Generals have finally witnessed what that book can do, at close range, and they won’t want to be next. If they can turn on their own, like they did with that poor aide, they’re not going to give us a second’s thought.”

The other man began to listen. Gerald wasn’t one to panic unnecessarily. Throughout all of this he had been the solid foundation that Martin depended on, the one who had stopped him giving in to black despair, time and again, and kept him fighting. If Gerald Benning suspected something then, for him, that was as good as proof. He didn’t question his assessment of their situation again.

“OK…” Martin said. “But you’re forgetting two important things. There’s no way out of here. Even if there was, there’s nowhere to run to.”

“We’ll worry about that second little detail later,” the old man told him, brushing it aside as if it didn’t matter. “Our first priority is escape. I suggest we get the kids out here on the terrace and scramble down the mountain. It’s not as ludicrous as it sounds; it isn’t quite as steep over at the far end there. We might be able to make it to the valley and the shelter of the trees. It’s a bit too like The Inn of the Sixth Happiness for my liking, but there’s no other option.”

Martin spluttered. “What? I thought you meant steal a truck and smash our way out the main entrance. We’ll break our necks climbing down there; not only that, but there’s guards with machine guns stationed all round.”

“And in this fog they couldn’t see the cast of Show Boat promenading underneath their sentry posts. But it’s starting to thin so we don’t have much time.”

“Wait, you mean right now, this minute?”

“Absolutely. These military types aren’t going to mess about any longer. They’ll be more desperate to find this mythical vaccine than ever – and Lee was right: the power of the book has arrived. This place is done for. We’ve seen it time and again everywhere we’ve been. You know how fast it takes over.”

“But how? I mean… what about the guards here in the medical centre? We can’t get past them. They’re not going to let us bring the kids outside en masse. They’ll know we’re up to something.”

Gerald’s jaw tightened. “We could if we were armed, Martin,” he said bluntly. “They won’t be expecting that; we’d take them by surprise.”

“What? Guns! Are you… how are we going to get hold of them?”

“Quite easily. I’ve been thinking it might come to something like this for a long while. I know just where we can lay our hands on four rifles. We’re going to need weapons once we leave here anyway; there’s no knowing what we’ll encounter out there.”

“God, Gerald,” Martin breathed. “You’d have to be prepared to use them. Actually shoot someone.”

“I know. But the alternative is too horrendous to think about. In difficult times there are no easy choices. It’s them or the children, Martin.”

“They’re not kids any more, not after everything they’ve been through, everything they’ve seen. But yes… you’re right. So where are these rifles? Have you got them stashed away someplace? You’re amazing.”

The old man gave him a grim smile. “No,” he replied. “Four very generous guards are going to give them to us.”

“Sorry?”

“Our young friend Lee’s entourage. We’re going to snaffle their rifles.”

Martin finally understood. “No,” he said firmly. “That’s madness! He’ll never agree for one thing and, even if he did, we can’t trust him. You know what he’s going to do when he gets there!”

“We need those rifles, Martin. This is the only way. Lee is going to have to perform that special hoodoo he does and go into the world of that evil book, taking the souls, or whatever you want to call it, of his guards with him. What’s left behind of them here will fall down in a faint and all we have to do is relieve them of their weapons. It’s so simple, it’s frightening.”

“No, what’s frightening is what Lee intends to do once he gets there.”

“Let’s deal with one crisis at a time, shall we? What Lee does, or doesn’t do, will be up to him. I don’t believe he’s the vile scum you think he is.”

Martin could feel his temper rising again. “You don’t?” he hissed. “Really? That lout in there – that selfish, idle thug – is going to Mooncaster for one reason only: to do Austerly Fellows’ dirty work. He’s the one person in all creation with the power to kill the character called the Bad Shepherd who, according to Maggie and Spencer, is some warped manifestation of none other than Jesus flaming Christ! And you don’t think that lad is scum? He’s worse than that; he’s itching to be a second bloody Judas!”

“That isn’t the real reason he wants to go, Martin. He’s been torn apart by grief and horror. He wants to be reunited with that lovely girl. So no, I don’t think he’s scum. He’s just a person in pain.”

“Don’t give me that. He’s chucking the whole of humanity over for the sake of a dead chav who, from what I’ve heard, was so dumb she thought Jane Eyre was a cheap airline to Ibiza for hen parties – and that toerag is laughing in our faces about it.”

“Martin!” Gerald snapped angrily. “You disappoint me sometimes, you genuinely do. You can be such an elitist snob! Lee is the way he is because people like you made him that way, long before Jax happened. Outside of his family, Charm was the first person to reach out and love him for who he was – is it any wonder he’s so churned up about her? Neither you nor I met the girl, but she sounds magnificent. I know what’s really biting you; it’s what he said about Carol. I’ve told you before, she can’t help what’s happened to her. She’s a victim.”

“Is she? She knew what the book was capable of, yet she read it deliberately. She wanted to get turned. That’s what I can’t get out of my head and what eats me up inside. She wanted it.”

“She only did that so she could find Paul! Remember how distressed she was when he became the Jack of Diamonds and disappeared. She was beside herself; she had to find her son. Why is that so impossible to understand? She sacrificed her own identity, everything she was, for her child’s sake. That’s what every mother does. How can you hold that against her? She wasn’t to know she’d become the Labella character.”

“She didn’t have to do it. I would’ve found him.”

“And a fat load of good you were when you eventually did. But that was then and this is now and we need to act. We’ve got to persuade Lee to take those guards of his into Mooncaster. Whether you like it or not, he’s our one and only chance to get the rest of these kids out of here alive. We’re all dead if we don’t.”

“Then God help us.”

The water in the bucket had iced over. Maggie cracked through it with the handle of the mop then began swabbing the bloody traces from the floor. The young refugees were not given work to do, but they were expected to keep their areas clean. Sometimes they almost wished they did have some sort of duties to keep them busy, but they never found themselves missing the minchet harvesting they’d been forced to do back in the camp.

Maggie couldn’t understand why Lee hated Martin so much. OK, so he was a bit up himself, thought his opinions were more important than everyone else’s and slipped back into teacher mode too regularly, but hadn’t he been proven right all down the line? If the authorities back in England had taken him seriously at the start, the horror of Dancing Jax might have been averted.

Working her way down the corridor, she didn’t notice the guards sent by Doctor Choe emerge from around the far corner. The men stared at her and exchanged glances. That girl would do. One of them opened his mouth to call out when Spencer came from the refectory to join her.

“I’ll finish that off if you like,” he offered.

“Nah,” she said, thanking him with a smile. “I might as well do it now. Not as if I’m missing anything.”

“Gerald was a bit weird just now. Said we couldn’t stay here.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I dunno. Something Nabi said spooked him.”

“Oh, blimey, what else has Lee been teaching her?”

Before Spencer could reply, the guards began to shout. The teenagers looked back at them in surprise. The men were pointing at Maggie and beckoning.

“What’s up with them?” the girl asked.

“They want you to clean their bit as well.”

“But we’re not allowed over there.”

“They just don’t want to have to do it themselves. It’s women’s work, you know.”

The guards became impatient and started to advance down the corridor towards them.

“Well, they can sod off,” Maggie declared through a phoney smile. “I’m not cleaning a floor I’m forbidden to walk on. The lazy, sexist buggers.”

Spencer took the mop and bucket from her. “I’ll go,” he said. “You find Gerald and see why he was so rattled.”

“All right, I’ll ask Nabi what she’s been saying first. She’s a right little madam that one. Her dad’s going to have his hands full when she gets older. Can’t see her being a party drone like her sister. She’ll probably be leading the revolution single-handed.”

“It wasn’t like that,” the boy tried to tell her. “It was to do with cutting up the Shark or something.” But Maggie had already breezed back into the refectory.

Spencer approached the guards, whistling a few bars of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme to himself. They seemed a bit put out that Maggie had gone and barked at one another.

“I can handle a mop,” he assured them when it looked like they were about to follow her into the refectory. “It’s not gender-specific you know.”

They regarded him for a moment then nodded and led him away. Spencer smiled to himself. With the rest of the world in chaos, it was almost funny, perhaps even comforting, to encounter this unyielding chauvinism.

A bitter draught blew down the stone steps that led to the terrace on the left. Spencer shivered and glanced in at the last door on the right before the corridor bent sharply. This was Lee’s room. He was slouched on his bed, glaring down at the steel cuffs on his wrists. When he was in that mood, he was best left alone if you didn’t want your head bitten off. Spencer had never been the most socially adept person. Even before the Jax phenomenon, he’d been a loner at school and at home. Back in the camp, Lee had been the first to stick up for him, and accepted him and his oddball devotion to that Stetson. Spencer had never forgotten that and, as he set the bucket down, he determined to brave the boy’s temper and go talk to him – as soon as the floor was clean. After all, even if he did get his head bitten off, it was no big deal; there was no hat to put on it.

But now the guards were shouting again.

“All right!” he said. “I’m doing it as fast as I can. What’s the hur—?”

Without warning, one of them snatched the mop away and threw it to the floor. The other covered the boy’s mouth with his hand. Crying out was impossible and there was no time to struggle. Startled and fearful, Spencer was dragged further into the prohibited area. Locked doors flashed by and he was hauled into the lab where Doctor Choe Soo-jin was waiting.

“On the table,” she ordered severely.

The guards slammed him on to the gleaming metal surface. He barely registered his surroundings, but he saw the body of the Marshal covered in the blanket and, suddenly, he understood why Gerald had been so alarmed. The shock of realisation was like a violent punch.

“You’re not serious!” he yelled when the guard uncovered his mouth and began fastening the restraints about his wrists. “You can’t do this! You’re crazy!”

Terrified, he began to yell at the top of his voice and twisted and kicked, hitting one of the men in the face. A brutal fist struck him in return and Spencer shouted even louder.

“This room soundproof,” the doctor said. “No one hear you.”

Spencer continued to fight frantically. They caught his right foot and strapped it down. Doctor Choe moved closer to check the strap was secure and he booted her in the shoulder with his left. The woman went reeling sideways. She crashed against the other table and fell across the Marshal’s corpse.

Springing back, she snapped at the guards and they hastily buckled the other foot down.

“Make final strap tight!” she commanded. “Then wait outside. I am not to be disturbed, by anyone or anything.”

The last restraint was pulled under Spencer’s chin and over his throat, almost strangling him and flattening his windpipe. He choked and gasped and his cries were crushed into desperate croaks.

The guards bowed smartly and left the lab. Spencer was pinned fast to the table. He could only turn his head around a fraction before the thick strap bit into his neck. Struggling for breath, he watched the doctor move in and out of his line of sight and heard the ring of metal against metal as she sorted through her instruments. When she crossed his vision again, she was holding a syringe.

“You can’t do this!” Spencer rasped, sweating in horror. “I’m not a specimen you can cut up and examine. When Martin finds out, he’ll tell the Chief of the General Staff. They’ll have you shot – you’re raving mad!”

Doctor Choe disappeared again as she moved to the drugs cabinet and unlocked it. He heard the door open and the clink of small bottles as she examined the labels.

Spencer wrenched and heaved on the straps. He contorted his hands and feet and tried to slip them free, but the restraints were too strong and tight. There was nothing he could do. He turned his face as far to one side as he could, only to find himself staring at his dead neighbour. The boy grimaced and peered through his spectacles at the macabre sight. When the doctor had fallen against it, she had displaced the Marshal’s arm and it was now hanging over the side. Tark the Shark was still clutching a green book in his hand. Even in death the Jaxers didn’t let go of it. His blood dotted the cover.

Spencer’s mind was racing. He couldn’t break free, he couldn’t call for help, what else could he do? What else? He remembered back in the camp, when he’d been at his lowest, and had wanted to run outside after curfew so the Punchinellos would shoot him. Marcus had saved him then and made him realise that you had to keep battling, you had to keep looking for chances – you never gave up. But what chances were there here? Unless someone came barging in to the rescue, he was done for.

“Was Chief who lift restriction,” the doctor’s voice informed him. “Martin Baxter, him only important for study. His brain should be most interesting. Reason for immunity must be found. Democratic People’s Republic depend on my skill to find answer. I must create vaccine.”

“Brain?” the boy gasped. “You want our brains? You really are sick in the head. It’s your brains what need bottling! You’re out of your ruddy skull!”

“Brain of subjects only first avenue of study,” she told him. “Other organs may also hold clue that is vital.”

“There is no cure, you silly cow! It’s not a disease. When are you going to start listening to us? It takes you over. It’s evil – full stop. You get possessed. There’s no vaccine for that.”

He heard her flat heels turn on the tiled floor and, moments later, she was leaning over him. The syringe was no longer empty and a bead of clear liquid glistened on the needle’s tip.

“Lethal injection?” he asked, almost hysterical with fear. “That’s just wonderful that is. You’re putting me down like Old Yeller!”

“No lethal,” she corrected coldly. “Enough barbiturate to induce sleep or coma only. Point three five gram for now. Lethal dose might damage brain.”

“Oh, gee, bless you. You’re not going to kill me until after you’ve scooped out my skull. That’s really considerate.”

Her hand reached for his face. She wasn’t going to inject straight into his head, was she? He flinched as much as the strap across his throat allowed. He closed his eyes, expecting to feel the needle’s sting, but Doctor Choe was only removing his glasses. He felt them pulled from his nose and heard them being set on the counter. Then her gloved fingers pushed the cuff of his overcoat up his forearm as she selected a vein beneath his pale, European skin.

And then a wild and crazy idea flashed into his mind.

“Beyond the Silvering Sea!” he said, as loud as he was able. “Within thirteen green, girdling hills, lies the wondrous Kingdom of the Dawn Prince.”

Back in Britain he had been forced to read that book so many times he knew most of it by heart.

Doctor Choe Soo-jin blinked at him in surprise and annoyance. Above the surgical mask her eyes narrowed.

“No speak,” she ordered.

“Yet inside his White Castle, the throne stands empty!” he continued defiantly. “For many long years he has been lost in exile and thus the Ismus, his Holy Enchanter, reigns in his stead.”

The woman felt a strange prickling sensation crawl up the back of her neck. She gazed about the lab and it seemed to darken. Deep shadows crept out from beneath the counters and behind the sinks, seeping up through the floor. The dead fingers of Marshal Tark Hyun-ki quivered as the book they held twitched and tugged to get free.

In the vault, the metal box containing the wand of Malinda began to tremble and judder. On a shelf close by, the jaw of the unicorn skull opened slowly and the darkness seethed and breathed around it.

“Till the day of his glorious returning,” Spencer persisted, almost spitting the words out, “and the restoration of his splendour evermore!”

Overhead a fluorescent strip popped and the lab dipped into deeper gloom. Another bulb began to flicker. The syringe fell from Doctor Choe’s grasp. It dropped to the ground and she gripped the metal table for support as her head swam. The paper mask blew in and out of her mouth. A fresh morning breeze seemed to be moving through her hair. Sunlight was filtering through the fresh green leaves of spring. It was another ravishing day in Mooncaster and she had come to the bluebell woods with the other young girls from the village to wash her face with dew…

“For that day approaches,” Spencer recited, and now his voice was strong and reverberated in her ears. “The Lord of Rising Dawn is drawing nigh. He is returning to the land that was his. His light shall crown the hills with crimson flame and we shall bow before his unmatched majesty.”

“No!” the doctor declared vehemently. “I am Soo-jin!”

The spring light faded and the creeping shadows in the lab retreated. Breathing hard, she ripped the mask from her mouth and turned a stern, vengeful face on Spencer. The boy’s voice had dwindled back to a compressed whisper.

Doctor Choe stooped to retrieve the syringe. As she crouched, she heard something drop to the floor. Glancing under the table, she saw that the book had fallen from the Marshal’s hand. It was splayed open, white pages facing the ceiling. As she looked, one of them curled over, disclosing a black and white illustration of peasant maidens gambolling through bluebells.

The doctor straightened and hurried around. But, when she reached the space between the tables, the floor was empty. The book had gone.

She glared at Spencer suspiciously. The boy was still strapped down. He couldn’t have moved it. Her doubtful glance darted aside to the Marshal’s body. She scowled, angry with herself for even thinking such a thing was possible. So where was the book?

Beneath one of the sinks came the sound of rustling paper. The doctor drew back. Spencer fell silent and their eyes locked. He had only tried to get her hooked on the words of Austerly Fellows. He had no idea what forces he had awakened. Reading her concern was gratifying though and he couldn’t stop a smirk stealing on to his face.

There was another dry fluttering of pages. This time it was behind the blood analyser.

“Big mice you’ve got here,” the boy said mockingly.

Doctor Choe stepped away and went to the tray of surgical knives. She took up the largest scalpel and held it out in front as she approached the analyser. Cautiously, she leaned over and peered down into the gap between it and the wall. There was nothing there.

Suddenly one of the cupboard doors flew open. Test tubes, flasks and beakers exploded out, smashing on the floor. The doctor jumped back in alarm. Another cupboard was flung wide and Petri dishes came spinning into the lab like Frisbees.

“Vaccinate that!” Spencer taunted as the contents of a third were violently ejected.

The woman clasped the scalpel more tightly and went crunching over the powdered fragments, staring inside each cupboard. They were all empty, but the final one was still closed. Moving nearer and nearer, she reached out to yank the door wide and was primed to lunge the sharp blade at whatever was revealed within.

Holding her breath, she snatched the door open and stabbed wildly. The thin blade lacerated the melamine shelving then snapped. There was nothing in here but boxes of surgical gloves, masks and disposable aprons.

Her tense, squatting frame relaxed. But it was not over yet.

There was a clattering din. One of the metal trays came shooting off the counter above her head. It struck her temple with force and the instruments it contained showered down as she fell backwards. Sterile blades sliced her cheek and skewered her lab coat. Her skull smacked the tiled floor and she cried out. Her head thumped and for several moments she lay there in a shocked daze. Razor-sharp knives had kissed through her skin and rivulets of blood had begun to flow. Yet none of that mattered. As she blundered back, she’d caught a glimpse of something up on the counter, where the tray had been. It was the Marshal’s green book.

The doctor raised her head to look again. It was no longer there. Then she saw it. The book was now lying on the floor, by her feet. As she watched, the book raised itself upright.

“Not possible!” Doctor Choe exclaimed, shaking her pounding head. When she looked again, it had clambered on to her legs. Tilting diagonally, it balanced on one corner and swung the other forward, waggling itself along her body.

The doctor tried to hurl it away, but her arms were unnaturally heavy and she couldn’t move them. Her legs were the same. She was as helpless as Spencer on the examination table. Throwing back her head, she yelled for help then sobbed as she recalled the lab was soundproof.

Dancing Jax continued its relentless, shuffling progress until it came to a stop on her chest. With slow menace, its pages opened and her eyes were compelled to gaze.

Strapped to the table, unable to see what was happening, Spencer could only listen and try to guess.

“Doctor?” he ventured. “Doctor Choe?”

There was no reply. Spencer breathed a sigh of relief. He had saved himself, invoking the power of the book to ensnare her. But the real peril was only just beginning. The force he had unleashed was unstoppable and would sweep away everyone in the base. There was no escape now.

Minutes edged by, in which the only sounds were the woman’s soft, trance-like murmurs. Then, abruptly, she rose from the floor, appearing behind the Marshal’s body. A far-off look was in her glassy eyes and Dancing Jax was clasped to her bosom.

“I am the Four of Clubs,” she announced ecstatically. “I am Dulcie, the innkeeper’s daughter. All the boys and menfolk do like to kiss me, for I have ale on my ripe cherry lips, the tints of a warm summer evening in my golden hair and my pretty duckies do fill my bodice most bounteous. Blessed be.”

6

EVEN AS THE guards dragged Spencer into the lab, Martin and Gerald descended the steps from the terrace.

“You!” a severe voice shouted.

The two friends halted and looked down the corridor. Three soldiers were striding purposefully towards them from the main tunnel where a jeep was waiting.

“You, quick!” one of them ordered. “You needed.”

Neither Gerald nor Martin recognised them. They were dressed in the usual olive uniform of the People’s Army, but they had not seen their faces in the base before. Perhaps their duties kept them in the prohibited areas; those units never had cause to come here.

“You, come!” the same man called again. From the four stars on his uniform they could see he was a daewi, or captain.

“What is this?” Martin asked uncertainly. “What do you want?”

“Chief want see!” the Captain shouted fiercely. “You not keep wait!”

Martin’s and Gerald’s faces fell. Their desperate, reckless scheme was collapsing before it had begun. What was going on? Martin had never been summoned so brusquely before.

“Quick! Quick!” the Captain insisted.

“I have to go,” Martin whispered. “There’s no knowing when I’ll get back – or even if I will.”

“Don’t say that!” Gerald hissed.

“Whatever happens, the fog won’t last so you’re going to have to do this on your own. Get Lee to do his thing and you take those kids out of this place. I’ll try and keep them as busy as I can in here.”

The old man’s eyes glistened and he gave the slightest of nods. They both knew they probably wouldn’t see each other again.

“And you… look after yourself, you wonderful, dotty old gentleman. Good luck – it’s been an honour and a privilege.”

“Quick!” the Captain snorted for the last time. He grabbed hold of Martin’s arm and pulled him towards the jeep.

Gerald Benning watched them get into the vehicle. He couldn’t bring himself to shout goodbye. Instead he raised a hand in farewell and, under his breath, sang, “Hearts do not break! They sting and ache.”

The jeep roared off into the tunnels. Gerald turned his back and ran to Lee’s room. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Lee was still sitting on the bed, staring at the steel cuffs. He didn’t look up when the old man entered, but recognised Gerald by his brown brogues.

“This is not a place you wanna be,” he grunted. “I ain’t got nuthin’ to say. ’Cept Baxter is a ass, I feel like crap, an’ if you think I’m gonna join in with your Christmas glee club, you is missing more than a tinselly tree – but I knows where you can shove one.”

“Never mind about that now,” Gerald said urgently as he cast a wary glance at the four guards chained to the lad’s wrists and prayed they didn’t understand English. “I’m taking the kids out of here, but I need your help.”

Lee raised his eyes.

“You what?”

“Things have changed – drastically,” the old man told him. “That doctor is planning to experiment on us.”

“She already does that, man. She’s got enough out of me to build a spare.”

“I mean she’s going to dissect us.”

“Get outta here.”

“I was never more deadly serious. I’m taking the kids and I’m taking them now, but I can’t do it without you.”

Lee could see he wasn’t joking yet he still gave a snort of laughter. “You’re hardcore crazy, guy,” he said. “You got no place to go and zero chance of getting there and you’re sayin’ all this right in front of my big mirror here, behind which, I am damn sure, is a camera. That’s so lame-ass dumb it deserves its own reality show.”

“Will you help us?”

“Help get you killed? You doesn’t need no help from me. You is on to a sure thing there.”

“Lee,” Gerald insisted. “It’s weapons we need, not attitude.” His eyes flicked either side, to the guards, and he said pointedly, “Those weapons.”

“What you sayin’?”

“I want you to go to Mooncaster and take your friends here with you.”

Lee shook his head. “My posse ain’t goin’ no place,” he said flatly. “Bad enough they have to stalk me here. I ain’t invitin’ them to no twisted Disneyland for an outing. When I go there, it’s gonna be a single one-way ticket.”

“You can’t be that selfish.”

“Watch me.”

“Don’t you care what happens to Maggie and Spencer?”

The boy returned his reproachful stare. “I already gave,” he said quietly. “You’re all deadsauce anyways, you know that – why you draggin’ it out? You’re good as ghosts already, hauntin’ this sad dump day an’ night. This ain’t no life and you got nuthin’ better in front. Get some smarts and give it up. Show’s over for you, been over since we got here.”

“You’re not that bitter,” Gerald replied, refusing to believe him. “I’ve heard and seen how much you adored that shining girl. A heart so full can’t become that callous.”

“Don’t presume to know me.”

“I don’t, but I know what love is like and, from what I hear about Charm, she wouldn’t want you to be this way.”

“End of conversation, old man. My services are not for hire. I ain’t no black cab. Now go get yourselves all killed and leave me be. I got a gut ache. When’s lunch comin’?”

Gerald eyed the rifles one last time and his hopes of escape plummeted. It was no use. The boy couldn’t be persuaded. Was Martin right about him after all?

In the dark, narrow space behind the great mirror, Eun-mi had been watching everything. She checked the video camera was still recording and picked up the old-fashioned base telephone to call her father. A look of gloating satisfaction soured her young features.

At that moment the lights in Lee’s room sputtered and the boy doubled over. He cried out, clutching his heart. His guards began to yell as the chains yanked at them when Lee rolled wildly from side to side. Gerald sprang forward and was shocked to see sweat pouring down the lad’s face.

He dashed into the corridor, but there was no guard on duty at the corner of the prohibited area.

“We need the doctor!” he shouted, trespassing into the forbidden area. “Quickly! I think Lee is having a heart attack!”

Down the passage he saw a discarded mop and bucket and, further along, two soldiers stationed outside the lab. The old man shouted again, but they aimed their Kalashnikovs at him and yammered excitably. Gerald swore at them and hurried back to Lee’s room.

The boy was shivering and writhing in pain. His four guards were shouting and shaking him roughly.

“Get off him!” Gerald snapped, pulling them clear. “Lee, can you hear me? Lee?”

He took hold of the boy’s hand. It was freezing. Above them sparks began to spit from the cables connecting the strip lights and the room skipped in and out of darkness. Lee swung his head round and his eyes bored into Gerald.

“Let go o’ me!” he hissed through clenched teeth as he pushed him away. “You’s gonna get your gats after all. Someone real close by is readin’ the book an’ goin’ to that place for the first time. It’s draggin’ me with it. Don’t you touch me or you’ll be comin’ too. Damn! It never hurt like this before! It’s ripping me apart!”

Gerald jumped back. The boy clawed the air as his stomach kicked inside him. The breath was slammed from his lungs and his eardrums screamed as if they were going to shatter. He gave one last agonised shout, then his arms dropped and he became as still as death. At the same time, his guards uttered wails of dismay and fear. Then they too crumpled, falling where they stood, either to the floor or across the bed.

Gerald could hardly believe it. Their minds or souls, or whatever it was, had gone into the world of Dancing Jax.

Behind the mirror, Eun-mi was urging her father to come at once. Then the line went dead. She looked into the room beyond and saw the old man approach the collapsed figures. Reaching down, he took the rifles from the unconscious guards then hastened to the door. Pausing, he said a grateful farewell to Lee.

“Good luck. I hope you find what you’re looking for in that place. Just don’t disappoint that dazzling girl. Don’t do what Austerly Fellows wants. Be the person she fell in love with. You’re far from scum, Lee Charles. Goodbye and thank you.”

Eun-mi watched him leave. She tried the phone again, but the earpiece was full of wails and crackles. She threw it down in anger and took her pistol from its holster.

The secret observation area was a thin, L-shaped space that hugged two sides of the medical room. The entrance was in the prohibited area and she groped her way through the narrow darkness to find it. When she emerged, she looked for the guards, but those outside the lab were nowhere to be seen. Pistol in hand, she ran round the corner – ready to shoot at anything that moved.

The corridor was deserted.

She looked fleetingly into Lee’s room and regarded the unconscious men with disgust. They were weak and would be punished for allowing their rifles to be taken.

Silently, Eun-mi proceeded, checking the dorms as she passed them. They were empty. The refugees were probably all gathered in the refectory, waiting to be fed. So much the better.

“You must be mental!” the girl called Esther scoffed when Gerald had hastily explained his escape plan and the reason for it. “They wouldn’t operate on us and cut us up. They’re not Jaxers here, they’re normal.”

There wasn’t time for Gerald to go into just how wrong she was.

“I’m not going to argue with you,” he said impatiently. “If you come now, there’s a chance, but if you stay you’ll end up in more jars than a range of jams in Sainsbury’s. The rest of you will need to wear as much clothing as possible, everything you’ve got basically. It’s going to be bitter out there in the fog and we’ll be sleeping rough for a while. Also we can’t carry anything: you need both hands to climb down the mountain.”

“Stupid old git,” Esther butted in. “You’ve got no idea where to go out there and we’ll be frozen solid by morning, if we don’t get blown up by landmines. I’m not listening to some senile geriatric who used to prance about in frocks.”

“Oi!” Maggie shouted her down. “Shut it. No one’s listening to you. You did this last time, in the camp. Dithering until the last minute and almost getting Lee killed. Just button it or I’ll smack you one. Gerald knows what he’s talking about. You can stop here for all I care, but I’m going to risk getting away. It’s Lee I’m pig sick about, having to leave him behind.”

There were eager noises of support from the girls who had been in Charm’s cabin back in the camp, which prompted hesitant, uncertain murmurs of agreement from the others. They were all horribly frightened, but they trusted Gerald completely. If he said there was no other choice, they believed him.

Little Nabi was still seated at the table. She was watching the hurried discussion with wide eyes. The unexpected shock of Gerald’s announcement had made everyone forget the six-year-old was even present. She couldn’t quite understand what was happening, but she knew her English friends weren’t supposed to have weapons. Imagining her father’s fury when he found out made her anxious and afraid for them.

“Give me one of them Kalashnikovs,” Maggie said to Gerald. “I won a cuddly rabbit at the fair once. That was a scary night. For one awful minute I thought I’d been shot in the bum, but it was only a packet of moist handy wipes that’d burst in my pocket when I bent over.”

Gerald passed her an assault rifle. It was lighter than she expected and she struck aggressive poses as she handled it.

“Commando girl,” she purred. “And no, that doesn’t mean I’m not wearing pants.”

“Don’t touch that lever on the right-hand side there,” Gerald warned. “That’s the safety catch. Up is safe, down isn’t, so let’s keep them up, OK? I don’t anticipate having to use them, not in here anyway, they’re just in case. I don’t even know how much ammunition is in the magazines, so no one get any ideas. I don’t need to tell you they’re not toys or replicas. These are lethal, so treat them with respect.”

He looked around for another he could entrust one to.

“Nicholas, how about you? Do you think you could?”

The boy shifted uncomfortably and looked to Esther for his answer.

“He’s not having anything to do with it,” she stated, arms folded tightly. “You walk out of here with them guns and you’re all going to get shot – and rightly so in my opinion.”

“I’ll have one,” the lad called Drew piped up.

“You’re mad, the lot of you,” Esther said, cracking her knuckles nervously. “It’ll be a bloodbath.”

“Where’s Spencer?” Gerald asked. “He’s handled a firearm before, hasn’t he? Didn’t he shoot one of those Punchinellos at the camp?”

“He’s mopping up in the no-go area,” Maggie told him.

“No, he’s not. The mop and bucket are there, but he isn’t.”

“Someone go fetch him from the loo then, quick.”

A girl called Sally jumped up to get him. Before she reached the door, it was kicked open and Eun-mi was standing there, arm outstretched, pointing the pistol, finger on the trigger.

“Drop weapons!” she shouted. “Drop or I shoot!”

Shocked, the refugees stared at her for several moments.

“Told you so!” Esther said.

Eun-mi moved her aim slowly across the astonished faces.

“I say drop!” she repeated.

Gerald was the first to comply and he told the others to do the same.

“She means it,” he said. “She wouldn’t hesitate.”

“Nabi!” the girl called to her sister in Korean. “Bring the weapons here. Be careful. Don’t let them take you and use you as a shield.”

Little Nabi gawped at her and had to be told again, more forcefully.

“Anyone moves, they die!” Eun-mi warned as her sister slid reluctantly from the chair and started collecting the AK-47s. “I aim for head. There will be no error.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Gerald tried to reason with her. “You can let us go. Just give us this one chance. You know what Doctor Choe Soo-jin is planning to do. You heard her at the meeting. You can’t want that on your conscience. It’s inhuman.”

Eun-mi tilted her head back proudly. “Doctor will be hero,” she declared. “She will find cure. She will save Democratic People’s Republic from Western sickness. Doctor Choe Soo-jin is pioneer and scientist most brilliant. Lives of European refugee little price to pay. Then Supreme Leader will save rest of world. Everyone will praise Kim Jong-un.”

“What about the life of Du Kwan earlier?” Gerald asked. “Was that a small price to pay? He didn’t need to die and nor do we. There is no cure to be found because there is no sickness. It isn’t physical. You can’t inoculate against the Devil.”

“Doctor Choe Soo-jin know best!” the girl shouted, refusing to listen. “Now no speak or I fire!”

Nabi placed the rifles at her feet and stared up at her miserably. “Do not hurt my friends,” she begged her sister in a forlorn voice that was close to tears. “Please. They are kind and nice. I like them, they are good.”

“They are enemies of our Republic!” Eun-mi answered. “You do not understand, you are too young. We have given them everything; food and shelter – when our own people are starving in the provinces. We give them asylum from their own degenerate kind and they show us only disrespect and bring disease. The Supreme Leader has demonstrated his great benevolence and mercy in saving them, but these are bad people. They have no gratitude, no discipline; their island is the corrupt puppet of America. They would have killed our soldiers to escape this base. They would have killed you too. Would you take their side against your own people? Would you betray our father and dishonour the memory of our mother?”

Nabi stared at her feet and shook her head.

“Go, now!” her sister ordered. “Fetch more guards and wait for our father – hurry.”

Nabi cast a wretched glance back at Gerald and Maggie. Her bottom lip quivered. Wiping her eyes, she ran from the room.

Eun-mi’s hand was steady. She almost wished one of the refugees would try something and give her a reason to fire. She had endured their offensive company for too long and had no qualms about pulling the trigger.

Nabi stumbled out into the corridor, tears streaking down her scrunched-up face. She cast around for any sign of the guards, but there was no one in sight and the long, empty passageway was unnaturally quiet.

“Help me!” she called out and her wavering voice ricocheted down the walls. The shadows lay deep in the recesses of doorways and the little girl wrung her hands together.

“Help us!” she called again.

No answer came. She took several apprehensive steps towards the forbidden area, but it was so dark down there she grew even more frightened.

“Hello?” she murmured.

From somewhere around the corner, she heard a door clang shut, followed by the sound of footsteps striding briskly over the bare concrete floor. But there was something else – a strange clip-clopping. It was very like the hooves of a large animal.

Nabi peered into the concealing darkness and backed away. She didn’t like it. Turning, she began to run towards the junction with the main tunnel.

“Chung Nabi!” a voice rang out behind her.

The child stopped and spun round. Doctor Choe Soo-jin was there, stepping from the shadows – a welcoming smile on her Band-Aid-patched face. In one hand she held a green book; in the other was a long silver rod, crooked at one end, and tipped with a glimmering amber star.

“Come here, dear one,” the doctor said, beckoning. “I have a blessed gift for you.”

7

MARTIN SHIVERED, WISHING once again for the overcoat he had left on his bunk. He hardly gave any attention to the Captain and the two other men who had whisked him away in this jeep. His thoughts were with Gerald and the rest. He wondered if Lee had agreed to the request and if the English guests of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had managed to escape. Were they clambering down the craggy mountainside at this very minute? He hoped fortune smiled on them and they could disappear into the fog before the alarm was raised. Where they would go after that was up to Gerald, and providence. Driving through the tunnels, everything seemed business as usual and Martin took that as proof their exodus was still undetected.

He recognised this journey, it was the same one he had taken earlier that morning, and guessed rightly they were heading for the meeting room. He had no idea why he was wanted so urgently, but that didn’t really matter. His own safety was right at the bottom of his list of concerns.

Suddenly he heard the rumble and roar of four other vehicles approaching at speed. Their headlights swept the poorly illuminated gloom before them. Voices were barking commands and, as the lead car drew closer, he made out the thick black eyebrows of General Chung Kang-dae.

Martin uttered a dismal cry. They knew! They were making for the medical centre. But it was so soon. Gerald and the children couldn’t have got very far. They probably weren’t even hidden by the fog yet. They’d be sitting ducks on that mountainside. Martin didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t just sit here and let it happen.

The four jeeps raced nearer. They were only moments away from passing when Martin threw himself forward. He dived between the Captain and the driver and wrenched at the steering wheel. The vehicle swerved sharply into the other lane and the approaching headlights dazzled him.

Horns blared and startled yells shrieked out. The tunnel was filled with the screeching of brakes and the reek of scorched tyres. The oncoming jeeps veered aside, while Martin’s scraped along the tunnel wall, showering him and the three soldiers with fiery sparks.

Suddenly it was over. The four jeeps thundered on and Martin’s skidded to a standstill. He couldn’t believe he had survived and despaired that he hadn’t been able to stop them. The Captain and the other two were bawling at him and he was wrestled back to his seat. One of them hit him, but he barely noticed.

“I’m sorry, Gerald,” he muttered, staring after the receding lights. “I’ve let you down.”

“You no do that again!” the Captain was shouting in his face. “You crazy UK!”

The engine started once more and the scarred and dented vehicle spluttered on its way, rattling and juddering until they reached the red double doors of their destination.

Martin stepped out and the armed guards stood aside. The Captain pushed him forward and he entered the meeting room for the second time that day.

The Chief of the General Staff was waiting, standing stiffly by the table. Martin thought he looked faintly embarrassed, almost shamefaced, as he bowed in greeting.

“What do you want?” Martin asked. “Why am I here?” Then he realised there was no interpreter present.

The Chief bowed again. There was something awkward, even shifty, about him. Martin saw his eyes slide over to the high back of a chair that was facing the large TV screen at the end of the room. Someone was sitting in it: Martin could just see the top of their head.

The Chief mumbled something that sounded like an apology, then strode past and left the room.

Martin didn’t understand. He looked across at the chair back, but he wasn’t in the mood to play these sorts of power games. Remembering he was cold, he moved over to one of the electric fires and held out his hands. Over by the far wall, the carpet was still dark with blood. He was just wondering where the young aide’s body had been taken to when the chair swung round and Martin had one of the greatest surprises of his life.

“Hello, Baxter me old mucker!” said an extremely familiar voice. “What’s all this then, a sabbatical? Or are you playing truant or what?”

Martin couldn’t believe it and his mouth actually fell open.

“Barry?” he cried. “What the hell…?”

The former headmaster of the school he had taught at in Felixstowe was grinning at him across the table. He was the last person Martin had expected to see here. Barry Milligan was now part of the Ismus’s inner circle and travelled the world with him and his Court. Way back, so long ago now, when the book had been distributed to the unsuspecting inhabitants of that quiet seaside town out of an old camper van, Barry had been one of the first to be possessed. He had become the mischievous character of the Jockey and had fooled everyone until the very last moment.

He was a middle-aged, squarely built man, with a face florid and craggy from a lifetime’s overindulgence in salt, saturated fat and whisky. His pot belly was a testament to the same.

“Is that all you’ve got to say, Martin?” he asked, laughing and slapping the table. “Here we are in a top-secret bloody military base, dug into a mountain – in North Korea, with China breathing down our necks – and that’s the best you can manage? That’s just rubbish that is. The thickest yobs we used to try and teach could’ve come up with something better than that.”

Martin regarded him uncertainly. His former boss was wearing a large black overcoat and he could see there was a blue tracksuit underneath. Where was the Jockey’s signature caramel leather outfit?

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “That was you on that helicopter earlier, wasn’t it? Makes sense now: no one in their right mind would risk flying through this fog. Shouldn’t you be skipping around the Ismus, amusing him with puerile tricks and scaring the rest of them with jokes that only you find funny?”

Barry shook his head gravely. “I’m not part of that no more,” he assured him, putting his hand on his heart.

“Pull the other one.”

“It’s true, I swear! I don’t know why or how, but a few months ago the effects of that book simply stopped working on me. I think it’s because of something that Ismus geezer was writing on his laptop. I caught a glimpse of it over his shoulder one day and… I dunno, the bit I read made my old head feel like it was about to split wide apart. After that, I stopped believing in it. Everything I thought was real – that mad, medieval place and the plonker I was supposed to be there – had gone. There I was, finally wide awake, and wondering what the hell had been happening. It’s like waking up from the longest pub crawl with the rugby lads. There’s a lot of it I can’t even remember.”

“Don’t do this,” Martin said. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Honest, Martin! I’m out of it, and today I managed to get away without them even suspecting I was back to normal. I just had to find you. I know how to get Carol and Paul out of it. We’ve got to get that laptop and make them read it. Just think – if we could email that file to everyone, this huge sorry mess would be over.”

Martin staggered and steadied himself against the table. Could it really be that simple? His heart began thumping with excitement and his eyes started to swim. The horror, the anguish, the horrendous loss of life, was the end of all that so near? Was he going to see the two people he cared most about in the world again? Was it possible?

A flame of hope spluttered in his heart and a tear ran down his face. In that brief instant of blazing joy, he totally forgot about the plight of Gerald and the children.

“Oh, thank God!” he uttered. “Oh, thank, thank God!”

Barry rose. He clapped his hands and cheered, as if his favourite team had just scored a try.

“We’re going to save the world, old son!” he shouted.

Suddenly Martin’s elation perished and the light that had flared so briefly in his eyes was quenched. When Barry moved, he could hear the creak and squeak of leather beneath his clothes. Martin stumbled back and gave a howl of anger and frustration.

“You evil, evil freak!” he raged.

“Haw haw haw!” the other man crowed. “I teased you, I tricked you, I taunted you and played you. What a bad boy the Jockey is. How he rides them all.”

Throwing off the coat and tracksuit, he revealed the toffee-coloured costume underneath and hopped around in a triumphant circle.

“But you were too easy, Mr Baxter,” he scolded, wagging a finger. “You wanted it to be true so much you quite took the pleasure of my game clean away. I was expecting to have to work much harder at the dissembling. Gullible chumps like you are no fun.”

The bitterness of Martin’s disappointment was almost unbearable. He felt utterly crushed. To have that sparkling hope dangled in front of him, only for it to be snatched away, was a pain he didn’t think he could endure.

But he had to.

“So what are you here for?” he asked, broken. “You’ve found me, you’ve won. What are you going to do now? I’d have thought your precious Ismus would want to be here and gloat in person at the finish.”

“Hoo hoo hoo!” the Jockey guffawed. “I’m not here because of you! You really do have an inflated view of your significance, even worse than that charlatan, Old Ramptana. No, we’ve known exactly where you’ve been skulking from the beginning. You just weren’t important enough to go chasing. Did you honestly think you were? Haw haw haw – that is very funny. Wait till I tell the Lady Labella; how she will laugh.”

“How… how is Carol? Is she OK?”

“The Lady Labella,” the Jockey rebuked him, “is in the pinkest of health. Since the advent of the Holy Enchanter’s son, she has been as radiant as the morning.”

Martin closed his eyes. Hearing that revolted him.

“And Paul?” he asked. “I mean the Jack of Diamonds, how is he?”

“The light-fingered doings of Magpie Jack are none of your concern, Martin Baxter.”

Martin gritted his teeth and fought the urge to smash the other man’s face through the large TV screen. It wasn’t easy.

“What about this new book?” he asked instead. “Was that part true? Is the Ismus writing a sequel?”

“Oh, most assuredly so. Wherever we go in this silly dreamland he has been tappy-tappy-tapping on his laptop, late into the night, shunning company and comforts. But it is not a sequel, for how can there be such a thing? ’Tis a furtherance of our merry lives in the Realm of the Dawn Prince. We of the Court are agog and breathless to be granted even so much as a fleeting glimpse of it, but that is forbidden for the moment, yes, for the moment.”

He gave a twitch of agitation and Martin guessed correctly that the Jockey had already tried and failed to read the manuscript.

“All will be revealed betimes though,” the Jockey continued. “A declaration shall be made this very day and the whole of this grey drabbery will know of it. Oh, such plans are a-place, such excitement there shall be for you all, yea, even the aberrants. We genuinely do all we can to make this drudging gloom more sprightly for you – perk it up and keep it lively, keep it bright and frolicsome.”

“You really shouldn’t bother.”

“Now, now, don’t irk. Let us not curdle this jolly day with your vinegary humour. I have come to rescue you from these dank grots and caves, fit only for worms and pin-eyed bats. You should be glad and singing.”

“You’ve already said it wasn’t me you’ve come for. So who, as if I didn’t know?”

The smirk slipped from the Jockey’s face. “My Lord Ismus wishes the Castle Creeper brought unto his presence,” he told him with great solemnity. “There is a covenant between them he is most keen to pursue.”

“I know all about that. It’s his maddest, most disgusting scheme yet. What I don’t know is how you persuaded the North Koreans to let you come here.”

The Jockey threw back his head and let out a throaty laugh.

“Persuade them?” he hooted. “They really aren’t in a position to deny me. When my Lord Ismus tells them to hop, they leap like hares from a burning field. Dear me, Mr Baxter, you cannot truly believe your raggle-taggle band of aberrants have been their guests these many months? You silly, dolting muttonhead. This impecunious country is on its knees and the people are suffering. Famine bites hard and their children are stunted and starving. Though they are friendless in this silly world, they are dependent on foreign aid, even from the West whom they despise. You and your young vagabonds have not been guests here, you have been hostages – and used as articles of barter for an increase in that aid. What wily hagglers they are. They have done well from the bargain. My Lord Ismus has been sending them oodles of food and fuel – such munificence! ’Tis a marvel their trousers still fit.”

Martin finally understood why the North Koreans had not explored ways of utilising Lee’s gift. They were too busy profiting from keeping him here. They hadn’t wanted to attack the Ismus, because they were accepting aid from him and now it was time for their benefactor to collect. This was why the Chief of the General Staff had looked so ashamed a few minutes ago.

“And have they also done a deal to keep their republic free of Dancing Jax?” he asked.

The Jockey tittered behind his hand. “Of course they have! The Holy Enchanter has given his word not to distribute the hallowed text within these borders.”

The sentence had scarcely left his lips when the lights began to flicker.

“Oh, the Ismus is such a rascally swizzler!” he giggled. “His promises are spun of the most brittle, sugary strands. Now I am charged to fetch the Creeper. You are to be taken to the whirlycopter. There are some surprises and japes in store for you, Martin Baxter. What a thrilling Christmas you’ll have in this tedious sleep world this year.”

“Wait,” Martin called as the Jockey brushed past him. “I just want to know… is there anything of the Barry Milligan I worked with for over twenty-five years still left inside you? Was that only an act before? Is there no trace of that rugger-loving sod anywhere?”

The Jockey stared at him in puzzled amusement. “We are the Aces,” he explained slowly, as though to a simpleton. “We do not have to pretend to be who we are not, in these shabby dreams. I am, and forever was, the Jockey. The man you thought you knew as Barry Milligan was but a pretence of my invention because the jest suited me. No more than that. There was never a drunken headmaster, there was never a school nor a mirthless place called Felixstowe – there is only Mooncaster. That is the one reality. How pitiful it must be to be an aberrant and not know this plainest of truths.”

Martin looked away and the Jockey scampered out of the room.

In the tunnels, the lights were exploding and panic and chaos had started. Harrowing cries were echoing through the passageways. The Jockey clambered into a jeep, his pinching caramel outfit squeaking and creaking. Then he was driven off, towards the medical centre.

The Captain and two soldiers who had brought Martin here marched him in the direction of the helipad. Gunfire crackled in the distance. Martin hung his head. It was over. Dancing Jax had finally conquered everything.

8

EUN-MI WONDERED WHAT was keeping the reinforcements she had sent her sister to find. It had been too long. Where had Nabi gone? What was she doing? Had she betrayed the Republic in favour of her new Western friends after all?

The young English refugees didn’t dare move or utter a word. They couldn’t take their eyes off the barrel of the gun that continuously switched aim from face to frightened face.

“Do you want to shoot us?” Gerald asked quietly. “Is that it? You want to punish us? What crime do you think we’re guilty of?”

“You steal People’s Army weapons!” Eun-mi reminded him.

“That’s not the reason,” he answered. “That’s the excuse. Your hatred goes back much further. You just don’t like us, it’s as basic as that – xenophobia. How very sad in one so young to be so completely brainwashed into despising and persecuting the unlike. But then that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Because my young friends and I are different. The rest of the world has the Ismus to tell them that; you have your Supreme Leader. Pogrom is pogrom, no matter who’s behind it.”

“I shoot you first!” the girl threatened, aiming between his eyes.

“Human nature really is so depressing,” he replied. “I could almost wish you would.”

“Gerald!” Maggie exclaimed anxiously. “Don’t say that.”

The old man gave her a gentle smile. “And then,” he said, “I remember that there are people like my dear friend Maggie here. Lovely, joyous souls with open hearts, brimming with kindness and affection, and I know we’re not so bad after all. But then you wouldn’t understand that, would you, Miss Chung? I don’t suppose your life has been a particularly happy one.”

Without taking her eyes off the Westerners, Eun-mi leaned back, into the corridor. It was deathly quiet. Scowling with impatience, she called for her sister. Where was Nabi?

“Of course,” Gerald continued fearlessly, “what you loathe most of all is yourself, isn’t it?”

Eun-mi’s face didn’t betray the fact that his remark hit home. If he was trying to provoke her, to get her to release them, it wasn’t going to work. Her self-control was impervious to his clumsy psychology. She prided herself on her detachment.

“I shoot,” she repeated implacably.

“That won’t make your father love you,” he told her. “The great General Chung – just what is it makes him so… indifferent towards you? You might as well be part of the furniture as far as he’s concerned.”

“No more talk.”

“Why is he so cold to you, but lights up whenever he’s with little Nabi? Why does he cherish and adore her, but treats you like something he’s trodden in? What did you do?”

Eun-mi pulled the trigger.

The air exploded. The teenagers shrieked and covered their ears. Most of them dived to the floor. The gunshot seemed to shake the room and Eun-mi’s nostrils flared with exhilaration as she kept the pistol level.

Gerald let out a staggering breath. For all his bravado, that had shocked and frightened him. Looking at the solemn-faced girl with the gun, he knew she had missed deliberately.

“Next time I kill,” she said coldly, the ghost of a smile pulling the corners of her mouth. “Next time you dead.”

Overhead the refectory lights crackled. Everyone glanced upwards. The fluorescent strips were flickering. Out in the corridor it was the same. The lights there were dying. A fizzle of sparks ran along the cables like a firework. Then the passage was engulfed in the supreme darkness that is only found underground.

The refugees murmured dismally and Eun-mi looked annoyed. She believed the generators were breaking down again. Too much of the machinery and equipment here was out of date. Too many elements had been repaired and jury-rigged far too often. It was infuriating that the power should fail at this critical moment.

Suddenly there was a snap of electricity from the wiring above their heads and the refectory was tipped into darkness too. The only light was an infernal orange-red glow from the grill of the wood-burning stove. It threw ominous black shadows around the room, leaping up the walls like tormented souls.

“I don’t like this,” one of the younger girls whimpered.

“Don’t be scared,” Maggie reassured her, trying to sound as if they weren’t being held at gunpoint, deep inside a mountain in North Korea, where the lights had gone out. “It’s just a glitch. They’ve probably not paid their leccy bill.”

“Be silent!” Eun-mi commanded. “People’s Army engineers will fix.”

“That wasn’t a surge or a blown fuse,” Gerald told her. “Something else is happening here, can’t you feel it?”

“It’s getting colder,” Nicholas said, huddling up to Esther.

“Nobody move!” Eun-mi demanded. Then she too shivered and the gun trembled in her hands.

A blast of freezing air had squalled in from the corridor. They heard a door slam, followed by echoing footsteps.

“It’s just the door to the terrace,” Maggie said, although it sounded nothing like that door.

Even Eun-mi held her breath as they waited and the steady, measured footfalls drew closer. There was a predatory menace to those steps.

“Who’s out there?” Sally asked fretfully.

Eun-mi wanted to twist round and look, but she felt the threat of that approach and the hairs on the back of her neck lifted as gooseflesh spread up her spine. For the first time since the death of her mother, she felt afraid and didn’t know what to do.

Then, very softly, in the corridor, a voice began to chant. It was a young child’s voice, slowly reciting the first two words of an English nursery rhyme.

“Itsy bitsy…” it repeated over and over. “Itsy bitsy…”

“Nabi!” her sister declared with overwhelming relief. “Nabi!”

Taking her eyes off the refugees, she stepped back through the doorway and looked along the corridor. Maggie and the others watched a furrow form across Eun-mi’s forehead. Something was wrong.

“Itsy bitsy…” the voice continued.

Eun-mi saw the six-year-old walking slowly from the prohibited area. Before her, she carried a silver wand as though it was a standard. Her face was lit by the pale golden light radiating from its amber star. When she passed the door to Lee’s room, she halted. Her large eyes were glinting but glassy – and so were those of the creature that sat upon her head.

Eun-mi caught her breath. It was a large, spider-like shape, its fang-filled mouth resting on Nabi’s brow.

“Itsy bitsy…” the little girl intoned.

At first Eun-mi thought it was alive, and she nearly sprang forward to tear it away. But then she saw its spindly legs dangling limply around Nabi’s shoulders and knew it was dead. That made it worse somehow. Nabi had placed it there willingly. It was macabre and repulsive. Before Eun-mi could think of what to say, other figures emerged from the darkness at the end of the corridor.

It was Doctor Choe, her two technicians, the guards, and the female who had been stationed on the terrace. Behind them came something else.

Eun-mi’s lips parted and she cried out in horror and disbelief.

“Nabi!” she called urgently. “Come here, hurry! Get away from that!”

Within the refectory, the Westerners had no idea what she was seeing. They had never known her react to anything like this before. It alarmed and unnerved them more than staring at the barrel of her gun.

“What is it?” Gerald asked. “What’s out there?”

She did not hear him and a new sound prevented him asking again. It was the clip-clopping of hooves on concrete. Eun-mi swung the pistol round and aimed it down the corridor.

“Nabi!” she cried again. “Move away! Come to me.”

“Chung Eun-mi,” a female voice called to her. “Put away your gun. There is naught to be afraid of.”

The refugees recognised it immediately.

“Doctor Choe,” Maggie whispered.

“Yes,” Gerald breathed. “But listen. She doesn’t have an accent any more. Her English is perfect.”

Eun-mi stared at the doctor incredulously.

“What is that?” she demanded, shaking her head in confusion at the shape that walked beside her. “What is it?”

“A wondrous beast from the true Realm,” the doctor answered. “It has come to guide you, to guide us all there. This is but a dream and we have tarried here too long. Nabi has seen the blessed truth, now you shall also.”

The doctor began reading the familiar opening paragraph of Dancing Jax.

“Oh, God,” Maggie uttered. “DJ’s here. It’s got her.”

“Don’t let her read to you!” Gerald shouted to the girl in the doorway. “Stop her!”

“Put book down!” Eun-mi ordered fiercely. “Down or I fire!”

The doctor ignored her and the guards and technicians joined in, their voices filling the corridor. Little Nabi added to the intoning chorus.

Maggie and the others looked at Eun-mi anxiously. How long could she hold out against the power of Austerly Fellows’ infernal words?

“Do not make me do this!” Eun-mi warned.

The chanting and the menacing advance of the hooves continued. Eun-mi closed one eye and fired the gun. The shot thundered throughout the corridor, followed by a weird, unearthly bellow that made every heart thump faster.

Unable to sit still any longer, Gerald leaped up and ran to the door. He had to see what was happening out there. Maggie tried to call him back, but the old man joined Eun-mi and gasped at what he saw. Another bestial cry trumpeted and the other refugees scrambled to the furthest corner of the refectory and hid beneath the tables. With her heart in her mouth, Maggie edged to the doorway.

Gerald was reaching down for one of the rifles. Eun-mi didn’t stop him. Peering past them, Maggie had to fight to stop herself screaming.

“The Ismus said Malinda’s wand wouldn’t work in this world,” she cried fretfully. “‘Just a pretty stick,’ he said.”

“Austerly Fellows and the truth don’t mix,” Gerald told her, grimly flicking up the safety catch as he took aim.

At that moment there came a roar of engines, and four military jeeps sped in from the main tunnel. Their headlights flooded the corridor with harsh light and General Chung Kang-dae jumped out, pistol at the ready. Yet the orders to his men died in his throat when he beheld the scene before him and he struggled to take it in.

There was Eun-mi, pointing a gun at her own people. The white-haired Englishman was next to her, an automatic rifle in his hands. Beyond them, in the line of fire, were his beloved six-year-old daughter, Doctor Choe Soo-jin and five base personnel. Had Eun-mi gone mad?

He was about to scream at her when another bellowing screech resounded and he finally realised what the strange shape next to the doctor actually was. At first he’d thought it was merely the peculiar skull on the stick, but now he realised it was more than that, much more.

Caught in the dazzle of the headlights, every shiny bone was gleaming. Vertebrae had replaced the stick.

“Kirin,” he whispered.

Behind him, the General’s men uttered cries of dismay when they too saw the unicorn’s complete skeleton pawing at the ground with dainty, bony hooves. The dark, empty sockets of the grinning skull angled round to gaze at them and the teeth champed together, causing the tuft of reddish beard still attached to the jaw to flick and swish.

Then it bellowed again.

Gerald opened fire.

The rifle sprayed light and noise. Eun-mi rushed to drag her sister to safety against the wall, swiping the dead Doggy-Long-Legs off her head with the back of her hand and wrapping her arms round her.

The horned skeleton reared, paddling the air with slender forelegs. The bullets bounced off the white bones like dried peas. Then it stamped and kicked and gave an unearthly scream as it charged. Gerald leaped aside, but he wasn’t quick enough. The unnatural creature crashed into him. The old man was flung into the air, as easily as one of Maggie’s stuffed toys, and hit his head on the concrete when he fell. The unicorn galloped over him, stampeding towards the General’s stupefied troops.

With its macabre head lowered, it rampaged into their midst. Screams and shots erupted as the unicorn slaughtered every soldier in its path. The single, tapering horn went slashing through the uniform of the People’s Army, impaling hearts and ripping out lungs.

The bravest tried to surround it. They wrenched at the exposed ribcage, shoving their rifles inside, using them as levers to try and snap it apart. But the ferocious skeleton was too strong for them. Its limbs lashed out and it spun round wildly. Moments later, those men were on the floor, their heads torn from their shoulders. Hooves kicked out and headlights smashed. The corridor collapsed back into gloom and Doctor Choe Soo-jin continued reading aloud.

The surviving soldiers drew away from the unicorn, retreating between the jeeps. It went stalking after them. Then, one by one, they dropped their weapons and began rocking backwards and forwards, their lips mumbling in time with the doctor’s. The skeleton tossed its blood-dripping head and tapped the ground as if applauding.

Standing in the centre of all this, General Chung stared around, aghast. He saw the dismembered bodies of his men and the nightmare apparition now dancing over them. He saw the entranced, smiling faces of the doctor and those with her. Then his dumbfounded gaze took in the old Englishman, lying deathly still, with Maggie crouched at his side, tearfully calling his name. Finally he saw Eun-mi, shielding her sister from the surrounding horrors.

Shakily, the General stepped towards them. His head was buzzing and felt light and giddy. A cold breath blew on the back of his neck and the corridor seemed to peel away, revealing the blue sky of a summer day where the towers of a white castle rose tall and majestic.

General Chung yelled in protest and he was in the corridor once more. The words of the book were burning inside his mind, consuming his will and strength. He clenched his teeth and swayed unsteadily. He had to fight it, he had to resist. He had to stop the destruction of everything he was, stop that overwhelming, leaching force.

Raising a quaking hand, he shot Doctor Choe Soo-jin through the head. She dropped like a stone. At once, and without blinking, one of the guards with her picked up the accursed book and continued reading from where she had left off.

Shafts of sunlight came breaking through the crackled paint of the ceiling. Birds were singing in the trees. The General’s shoulders sagged and his legs bowed. The infernal words were raging through his brain.

His thick eyebrows clashed and he snarled in agony. The torment of resisting was unbearable. Shrieking, he snatched up Gerald’s discarded rifle and emptied the magazine into the guards and technicians. He had to silence the words. He had to save the Republic from the contagion of this foul, Western disease.

Breathing hard, he let the AK-47 fall. But the words had not been silenced. A single voice was still reciting the opening passage from Dancing Jax.

Once more the paint flaked from above and sunlight came streaming in. He heard a lute playing and happy voices singing.

“No!” he raged.

The General threw off his hat and clawed his scalp. He would not be able to resist much longer. Desperate and driven half mad, he turned to that one remaining voice and raised his pistol to silence it.

Still held tightly in Eun-mi’s arms, Little Nabi’s glassy, doll-like eyes stared back at her father as she chanted Austerly Fellows’ bewitching words.

General Chung lurched forward and pressed the gun to her young forehead.

“Stop!” he ordered. “Stop!”

Eun-mi could not believe what he was doing.

“No, Father!” she begged.

“Stop!” he repeated when the six-year-old continued as if he was not there.

Terrified by his insane, murderous expression, Eun-mi covered her sister’s mouth and implored him to put the pistol down.

The General glared at her. There was a demented light in his eyes and she hardly recognised him. His nostrils quivered and he sniffed her suspiciously. Why was she not affected? Why was she still in control? Couldn’t she hear the songbirds? Couldn’t she feel the sunshine beating down? How could she stop her feet from skipping to the merry tune of the minstrels? All the other young maidens were cavorting on the green with their gallants. What was she? Why was she different?

“Ab… b… aberrant,” he stuttered thickly and he began to growl.

“Father!” Eun-mi wept.

“I am the Six of Clubs – head bowman of the outer wall!”

“No, Father! Come back to us!”

The sunlight dimmed and the man shivered. He moved the gun from Nabi’s head and put it against his own. This was the only escape for him.

“Don’t!” Eun-mi yelled.

Reaching out to him, her other hand slipped from Nabi’s mouth. The six-year-old instantly resumed spouting Dancing Jax.

General Chung’s face contorted. In an unhinged fury, he rounded on Nabi again. The barrel of the gun pushed against her temple and his finger closed over the trigger.

“Father!” Eun-mi screamed.

A single shot blasted out.

Cowering with terror and filled with despair, Maggie was nursing Gerald’s head in her lap. He was deathly pale and it was too dark to tell if he was breathing. With jittery fingers, she fumbled for a pulse, but couldn’t find one. The gunshot cut through her desolate sobbing and she turned to see General Chung Kang-dae slump lifeless to the floor. A thin wisp of smoke was rising from Eun-mi’s own pistol.

Eun-mi’s eyes were wet and sparkling, but she appeared frozen and unaware of what she had done. Then, slowly, she tilted her head and stared at the weapon in her hand. At that moment nothing else existed for her, just the gun and the painful scratch of her own voice as it tried to howl.

Nabi disentangled herself from her grasp and stepped casually over their father’s body.

“I am the Five of Spades,” she chirped dreamily. “I am naughty Posy, the Constable’s daughter. I spy on everyone in the castle and know all their secrets. Blessed be.”

The six-year-old retrieved the copy of Dancing Jax from the dead guard then strode past her trembling sister, to join the unicorn and the soldiers who were anxious to hear more of the sacred text. Little Nabi greeted them with a gurgling laugh. Cheering, they lifted her on to the skeleton’s back and she rode haughtily through the tunnels – towards the main concourse and the booth that housed the microphone for the tannoy system.

In the refectory, the other refugees finally dared to creep from under the tables and ventured to the doorway. With horrified faces, they looked out at the carnage in the corridor.

Maggie was huddled over Gerald, stroking his forehead – bereft and grieving.

“In fields where they lay,” she sang in a halting, tuneless whisper, “keeping their sheep. On a cold winter’s night that was so deep.”

The girl wiped her streaming eyes.

“Goodbye, Gerald,” she sniffled. “You’re safe now. Safe from DJ. Reckon I’ll be seeing you soon. We’ll have a merry Christmas then, won’t we, eh? Me, you, my Marcus and Charm. Give them my love and don’t start on those chocolate mincies till I get there. Promise me now.”

Throughout the mountain base the tannoy crackled into life and little Nabi’s voice began to read…

9

LEE WAS JOLTED AWAKE. His four guards were yelling and shaking him roughly. He looked up and found himself lying on the ground, with them standing over him. Their young faces were angry, fearful and wrought with panic. Shouting at him in Korean, they pulled on the chains attached to his wrists and forced him to sit upright.

“Quit that!” the boy barked at them, giving the chains a vicious tug back that almost wrenched the nearest guard off balance. “Give me a second to wake the hell up. I feel like crap.”

Ignoring their continued cries, he looked about. It was a deliciously warm afternoon and they were in a forest. All around them, the leaves were intense shades of gold, red and orange and the sky was an unbelievable blue. Beneath the branches, fallen chestnut casings were in abundance, split open – displaying cream-coloured flesh and the fattest, shiniest, chocolaty-brown fruits. A faint and delicate scent of sweet-smelling woodsmoke laced the air, combining with the damp must of rich, fertile earth. Early autumn in Mooncaster was a ravishing feast for the senses, just like every season here.

Lee felt nauseous. This time the crossing had been different. He still felt groggy and exhausted and bile burned the back of his throat. Remaining seated, he shifted around and saw that the trees stretched far into the distance in every direction. Whatever forest this was, they were deep in the middle of it. He had no idea exactly whereabouts in Mooncaster they were. There was no landmark in sight to help him.

“Don’t matter,” he told himself. “We ain’t hangin’ here longer than we have to.” But he wasn’t looking forward to the trip back if it was as rough as the journey getting here. His innards felt like they’d been put through a blender.

Looking up at the guards’ rifles, he hoped Gerald had removed the real versions from their sleeping selves back in North Korea and was making good use of them this very minute.

“Tough if he ain’t,” Lee said aloud. “Cos we is outta here.”

Rising to his feet, he tried to get the guards to calm down.

“Hey, Sporty!” he said, calling them by their Spice Girl nicknames. “Enough with the whinin’, and Scary, if you nudge me with that rifle butt one more time, I is gonna leave you here, I swear to God.”

The guards waved their arms and continued to shout.

“Yeah – yeah,” Lee said. “It’s mad, it’s off the hook, but stressin’ out and boohoos won’t do no good, ladies.”

Suddenly, close by, there was a furtive rustling. The guards leaped around in alarm and ‘Baby Spice’ opened fire. The autumnal peace erupted with a blizzard of bullets that went ripping through the undergrowth and a tree trunk splintered as lead hammered into it. A red squirrel fell from a branch and another half-dozen shots made it jump and twitch before the nervous guard realised what it was and ceased firing.

The others stared across at the thoroughly dead animal, then began to snigger in embarrassment. Their shared tension had been released and they gave Baby teasing punches on his arm.

Lee shook his head at them. “You all got that outta your systems now, yeah?” he asked warily. “That weren’t cool, you assholes. That furry bullet bag coulda had somethin’ to say – you have no idea what the zoo life is like round here. That coulda been anythin’. That was dumb, guys – real baseline dumb! Trigger-happy ain’t the word; trigger-hysterical is what you is. You need to frost up, right now, ’fore one of us gets capped the same way.”

The guards had no idea what he was saying. They pointed at the squirrel and laughed. It was the only time Lee had ever seen them display any jubilant emotion. Their relieved, joking chatter sounded weird in this place. One of them, the thinnest, and usually the surliest, was the first to become grave once more and lifted the chain that tethered him to Lee’s wrist. Then, with urgent gestures, he mimed the boy taking them away from here.

“You got it, Posh,” Lee agreed. “That’s what I is ’bout to do – take us back over that rainbow. This messed-up Oz has got enough crazy muthas in it already; it don’t need four more with guns, what don’t speak local.”

After several frustrating minutes in which he tried to indicate what he was going to do, he finally had them lined up on either side of him. They were on an overgrown forest path and, by scissoring his forefingers, managed to demonstrate that they were going to run along it a little way and wake up back in the medical room.

“In North Korea,” he said, nodding his head slowly. “DPRK – yeah? That crap heap, ass end of nowhere. We go back there, mkay?”

“Kay!” affirmed Scary and Posh Spice on his right.

“Kay!” chimed in Sporty and Baby on his left.

Lee took a moment to compose himself and crunched his neck muscles a few times. Glancing along the forest path, he reckoned they’d be back in the mountain base before they made it past three trees. What they’d find waiting for them back there, however, was an entirely different matter.

“You’d best be long gone when we get back, old man,” he muttered. “These ladies is burnin’ to shoot something bigger than squirrels.”

Closing his eyes, he tensed and then ran forward. The chains rattled and the four guards ran with him.

After passing at least ten trees, Lee slowed to a stop and took deep breaths as he gazed about, frowning. Why were they still here? What had he done wrong? He didn’t understand it.

The guards looked at one another uncertainly and voiced their confusion.

“I know, I know,” the boy said. “I got me no idea neither. We go again, yeah?”

“Kay!” they said in military unison.

Lee closed his eyes again and concentrated harder than before. He thought of the familiar room, with its monitors, wall mirror and hospital bed. That’s where he was going to find himself this time. No doubt about it.

With a grunt, he ran along the path, leading the eager guards.

When that attempt also failed, followed by a third, fourth and then a fifth, during which they’d held hands, the guards’ keen anticipation had gone and they had reverted to shouting at him angrily.

“We should be gone by now!” Lee declared, holding his hands up. “We should be back in that dump you call home. This is not my fault.”

Posh Spice had run out of patience and he turned his rifle on the boy, prodding him in the stomach to get this most basic threat across in no uncertain terms.

“Hey!” Lee yelled. “You do somethin’ crazy an’ there’s no way you’re gonna get back, stupid.”

The others seemed to agree with him and they shouted at Posh in Korean, pushing the barrel of the Kalashnikov away.

Posh railed back at them and Lee let them bawl at each other. He tried to work out what he was doing differently. There’d never been any trouble getting back to the real world. He had flitted in and out of this twisted place at will. Mind you, he’d never had to take four adults with him, but there hadn’t been a problem bringing them here in the first place.

“Yeah, but that weren’t down to me,” he told himself. “I was dragged here, like when I brought Spencer and Maggie back in the camp. Maybe I got me a two-person max limit?”

“Hey, ladies,” he called, interrupting their argument. “Let’s try this again, but different this time. Just two of you come with me. I’ll bounce straight back for the others, yeah?”

He tried to show them this new idea by pretending to remove one of the cuffs from his wrists and leaving with just two guards. The four men scowled at him, perplexed, as he repeated the actions again and again. It was Scary who grasped his meaning first and he rapidly explained it to the other three. The proposal was not met with joyous approval and they shouted at Lee louder than before. None of them wanted to be left here, even for a short while.

“Then we is stuck!” he told them fiercely. “I can’t think of no other way.”

Lee kicked the top off a toadstool that was growing at the side of the path. Perhaps he was just too damn tired. Maybe, if he gave it a bit more time, his mojo, or whatever it was that made him the Castle Creeper, would be back to full strength and there’d be no problem. He hoped that’s all it was.

“Listen up,” he announced. “We need a time out. I gotta park and recharge.”

But the guards wouldn’t let him sit down. They had got it into their heads that the only way to get home was to keep moving and he couldn’t make them understand that wasn’t how it worked. They were determined to march down the track and see where it led to. Chained to them the way he was, there was nothing Lee could do except be pulled along.

“This won’t get you no place,” he objected, trudging along unwillingly, “’cept mebbe dead. This neighbourhood is full of monsters you never dreamed of. We’re gonna end up toasted if you don’t stop – right now!”

They refused to listen. He had had his chance and failed. Seeking refuge in the familiar, they started singing ‘No Motherland Without You’, the signature song of Kim Jong-il, at the top of their voices in Korean.

“You pushed away the severe storm.

You made us believe, General Kim Jong-il.

We cannot live without you.

Our country cannot exist without you!”

They marched as if they were on parade and Lee groaned. He hadn’t realised just how accurate he had been, referring to this place as a messed-up Oz. Here they were, prancing through the forest, singing and looking for a way home. All they lacked was a yellow brick road. Even their number tallied with the characters in that old movie.

“As long as I’m the dog,” the boy grumbled. “No way am I one of them other suckers. Woah, am I glad no one I know can see me right now.”

When the guards had finished that song, they began another. It bolstered their confidence in this strange place, but Lee’s unease mounted. Whatever lived in this wooded corner of Mooncaster was more than aware of their presence. He was sure they were being watched, but by what?

The third stirring, patriotic song came to an end. The North Koreans were in a better humour and they debated what to sing next. Scary Spice turned to Lee and invited him to start one, signalling that they would join in. The boy shook his head in disbelief.

“You yankin’ me?” he cried. “Ain’t no way…”

Then, in spite of their predicament, or maybe because of it, he was struck by a sudden notion and a slow, mischievous grin spread across his face. He wondered if he could remember the words…

Presently he was leading the guards in an excruciating, out-of-tune rendition of the old Spice Girls song, ‘Wannabe’.

“You wann be ma lovah, you got get wi’ ma frenn,” the guards sang heroically, repeating what he had taught them, but not understanding any of the words. “I wann-ah, I wann-ah, I really really really wann-ah zig ah zig hah!”

Lee was in creases. He couldn’t believe he had got them to do it. It was so surreal and he wished Maggie had been able to share this; she would have got such a kick out of it, seeing them march in their uniforms, mangling those lyrics. No one would ever take his word for it. But then he probably would never see any of the other refugees again. For all he knew, they might be dead by now. Gerald’s pathetic escape plan never had a chance.

“Hell,” he hissed, pushing that thought away and returning his attention to the guards. “This makes me Geri, don’t it? Man, that blows!”

The meandering path gradually began to take a steady downward course as the land dipped into a valley. Lee guessed they were skirting round one of the thirteen hills, but he was completely lost. Along the edge of the track, the toadstools now grew in dense clusters. They were large and ugly, with greyish-brown, leathery caps, dotted with pale spots, and, as the terrain sank lower, the toadstools grew taller.

A glimmer of recognition sparked in the back of Lee’s mind. He was sure he had read about this in Austerly Fellows’ book. This exact place was mentioned – but he couldn’t recall why or what happened here.

“Where is you when I needs you, Sheriff Woody?” he muttered, knowing that Spencer would have remembered without hesitation. Geeks really had their uses. But Spencer was probably lying face down on the mountainside back in the real world, his body peppered with bullet holes. Lee ground his teeth together. There was nothing he could have done to stop that. He just had to keep focused on what he wanted.

Some of the toadstools were as high as his waist now. Up ahead, they loomed over the pathway. The afternoon was slipping into evening and, beneath the trees, the shadows deepened.

The guards stopped singing. They too were growing uncomfortable and they stared at the oversized fungi with suspicion. Sporty raised his rifle and tapped one tentatively. A cloud of bloated flies came buzzing from the gills beneath the cap and everyone sprang back.

“We come the wrong way,” Lee declared. “This ain’t takin’ us no place good.”

He was about to signal the others to turn back when a high, squeaky voice began to sing.

“Tra la la, tra la lee.

Who is this that I can see?

Five fine fellows on a strolling spree,

finding their way to merry me.”

On to the path leaped a strange little creature. It was a long-legged goblin, wearing striped woollen stockings under a soft leather tunic, over which was a waistcoat of orange velvet. A hooded cape was fastened under his chin and a pair of pince-nez was balanced on his sharp nose.

It was like an Arthur Rackham illustration come to life. Both eyes were bright green, but one was larger than the other. They gleamed in the gathering dusk and the golden buckles on his pointed brown shoes glinted as he capered in a dainty, twirling dance.

“We shall play some games, but I shall win,

for my name is Nimbelsewskin.

I like to snip and stitch and mend.

Each of you I shall make my friend…”

The four guards opened fire simultaneously – yelling as the AK-47s blasted the goblin back down the path.

When the shooting was over, they were out of breath and smiling at a job well done.

“Oh, you dumb, dumb asswipes,” Lee uttered in shock and disgust.

The guards pulled him over to where the goblin’s body lay across the path and they stared at it with intense curiosity, prodding and nudging it with the toes of their boots.

“Hey, the guy’s dead, OK?” Lee said, suspecting that if one of them had a camera they wouldn’t waste any time in getting snapshots of themselves with their fresh kill. They were so excitable they’d be plastering any such photos all over Twitter and Facebook. But social media didn’t exist here in Mooncaster – or back in North Korea.

“Silver linings,” the boy commented dryly.

He glanced down. The goblin had been about the same height as little Nabi and there was a look of blank surprise on its face. He felt sick and wanted to get away, but the guards were still gawping.

“Dokkaebi!” they exclaimed several times over. “Dokkaebi!”

It was the Korean word for a mischievous sprite. Posh was sceptical, but Sporty whistled through his teeth and his eyes opened wide with amazement. He had always loved those old stories his grandmother had told him when he was very young.

He and the others pointed to the uncanny features, the like of which they’d never encountered, then scrutinised the clothing. The waistcoat lapels were stuck through with a collection of threaded needles of different shapes and sizes and, strapped to one knobbly wrist, was a large and crowded pincushion. Cotton bobbins of various coloured twine had tumbled from the waistcoat’s many pockets and a tiny pair of scissors was strung across the stomach, looping about the gold buttons on a fine chain. A silken tape measure was draped round its neck.

“Congratulations,” Lee said bitterly. “You done murdered some kinda tailor. Guess that explains why you people dress like crud. We done here now? Show over, yeah?”

The guards were satisfied and Sporty was still grinning. They were about to retrace their steps along the path when a new sound came bellowing through the trees.

“What the hell is that?” Lee whispered.

It was a deep, baying howl. None of them had ever heard anything like it before. Some large beast was crying mournfully, back there, behind them.

Even though the efficacy of their rifles had just been proven, the guards didn’t like the sound of whatever this new creature might be. There it was again – a bass lowing like a nightmarish mongrel of cow and bear.

“I don’t think we should go back after all,” Lee said quietly. “Your gats work just fine on midgets, but that thing out there – that sounds way bigger. I don’t wanna be around when you find out there’s some things in this place tougher than Kevlar.”

The guards appeared to understand and agreed, with worried nods.

Leaving the dead goblin behind, they hurried on down the sloping path. The toadstools soon towered over them and mossy roots criss-crossed the way, forming a natural, uneven staircase as the ground sloped ever more sharply. Then, abruptly, the trees and the toadstools opened out and they stumbled down into a wide, grassy glade. The sun was hanging low in the autumn sky, just dipping behind the surrounding treetops, its slanting light drenching everything in a deep amber glow and vibrant purple shadow.

“This damn place is made of weird,” Lee muttered, staring ahead at what stood in the centre.

The guards gripped their rifles a little more tightly as they exclaimed in wonderment.

In the middle of a closely clipped lawn that was freckled with daisies and buttercups, bordered by the vivid colours of hollyhocks, lupins, foxgloves, snapdragons and loosestrife, was a picturesque, circular cottage made from woven hazel twigs and roofed with bark. It was built around three enormous toadstools that reared up between two stone chimneys and whose broad, domed caps provided extra shelter from bad weather. The chimney pots had been fashioned in the form of comical, expressive faces and the smoke that curled from the top of their terracotta heads was pale green and smelled of burnt sugar and fried onions. At the front was a low wicker door and here and there were little windows of leaded glass, whose diamond panes winked in the sun’s failing rays. It was an idealised, child’s vision of a fairy dwelling.

Behind this twee building rose a gnarled and ancient oak, the greatest in the Realm of the Dawn Prince. Its serpentine boughs twisted over the tops of the three toadstools and were heavy with golden leaves. But other things were hanging from those branches. Bundles of garments of every sort – jerkins, hose, scarves, kirtles, cloaks, tunics, hoods and hats – dangled down like cloth fruit.

“Must be laundry day,” Lee muttered. “But that’s gotta be a year’s worth of wardrobe up there.”

He lowered his head, remembering that Charm’s mother had been a laundress in this world. He wished he hadn’t been so consumed by grief after escaping the camp in England. If he had only taken time out to help her deal with her despair, Mrs Benedict might still be alive. Even though he’d dreamed about it most nights since, it was going to be real tough to finally tell Charm her mother was gone, when they were reunited here.

The North Koreans were hesitant about stepping out on to the lawn and venturing near the strange cottage, but they stared, entranced, at the abundant flower borders. They were the loveliest they had seen. Even in Pyongyang there were no blooms to match the intensity and perfect beauty of those growing here. A sea of heavenly perfume flowed out from them and the four members of the People’s Army breathed deeply as memories of their childhood began to stir and they recalled things that had been suppressed or forgotten and dreams that had been forbidden. Even Posh’s perennial scowl lifted.

Another roar behind them wrenched them all back to the present and they hurried over the grass.

Lee wasn’t happy about approaching the cottage either. There was no telling who or what might live there. The woods in this Kingdom were full of peculiar creatures that weren’t even mentioned in Austerly Fellows’ book and he’d learned that the most innocent and sweetest-looking places could harbour the worst dangers. But what other choice was there? As they crossed the lawn, he strained and concentrated, trying once more to return them back to the real world, but it was no use.

Stepping on to a central path made from wide, flat stones, they passed beneath the shadow of the radiating oak branches and moved cautiously closer to the cottage.

There was no movement behind those leaded windows; no sharp little face peered out through the half-open door. The stillness and silence were even more unsettling.

“Hey!” Lee called. “Anyone in there? We just wanna find out where we is. We got ourselves lost.”

There was no answer. Sporty Spice was gazing up at the laundry dangling down from above. He said something to the others and they too stared upwards.

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