Phil was waiting by the van when Heinz arrived. He was staring out into the ocean again, spear and shield left discarded on the ground behind him. He turned at Heinz's approach and gave a sad smile.

“You okay Phil?”

Phil shook his head. “No. No, I'm not. When Tara gets here I’ll tell you why.”

And so they waited, both staring out into the ocean.

Tara arrived and with little fanfare they packed all the bags and weapons into the boot and packed into the front of his van. It was easy to feel Louise and Shane’s absence as they set off.

“We went to the doctors yesterday,” Phil began. “Right at the start when I got back. I explained the symptoms and a couple of hours of monitoring later, Fiona and one of the nurses had the rash. Neither of them have passed the first threshold. Anyone who had was fine.”

“And..” Heinz started before stopping to consider how to phrase it. “It wasn’t anything you brought back? We were fairly covered in god knows what yesterday.” He wiggled his still bandaged hand. “When the Swarm dissolves it kind of gets everywhere.”

Phil shook his head. “They had me take a disinfectant shower, one of those emergency things. It’s still possible but unlikely and.. there have been other reports.”

“I didn’t check,” Tara admitted in dawning shame. “I forgot to ask my mom and dad. They’ve passed the first threshold but I forgot. I got too caught up in the arson..” Tara paused and looked at them, considering for a moment. “The arsonist. It was one of the members of my group. The first one.”

“Oh,” Heinz said, not sure how to take that. A lot of that first day was a blur now but he remembered meeting Tara, blood streaming down her leg. She might have been the first person from Kinmore to be wounded by the creatures. Of her group, he could recall less. There was the mediator coach who broke his leg in the hole in the field, the man who had taken Tara side in the argument and the two teammates they had been arguing with.

Rosa said the arsonist was a kid.

They were young. Too young for this.

“I don’t understand either,” Tara said. “She could be stupid but she wasn’t - she wasn’t like this.”

“Some things make no sense to anyone,” Phil said with an air of finality. He rested his head against the door frame and stared out the window.

Louise and Shane were waiting for them at the bridge in Innishannon. Thankfully neither of them were hurt but they looked worn, both mentally and physically. Long rips ran down Shane’s front, now stitched up. Similar scars had been added to his shield. Louise was missing one of her makeshift blades and had replaced her shoes and part of her collection of knives.

The two groups took in each other for a second before Heinz hopped out to help get Louise and Shane situated in the back.

Heinz caught Louise’s eye and gestured to Shane when his back was turned. Louise made a calming gesture with her hands and lightly shook her head. She indicated in turn to the front of the van. It seemed the cloud that hung over the trio this morning was visible. Heinz shrugged and mouthed ‘later’.

With Louise and Shane in the back, they set off again.

Teams of Innishannon had been hard at work moving cars on the main road and the driving was clear most of the way. They were not finished yet however and the closer they got to halfway, the slower the going got. Here the teams had focused on getting a route through all the crashed cars rather than opening the road fully. This route turned the road into a bit of a driving course, with the path wobbling back and forth across the road and rarely going straight along.

It was a little awkward for Heinz to drive through all the turns with his hand. Between that, the dawning rays of the sun messing with his vision and the difficulty finding the correct path through, Heinz was fully focused on driving.

Which was why it was such a great surprise when the van flipped. One second he was wincing, pushing down with his right forearm to turn the wheel. The next he was hanging off the seatbelt, falling towards Phil and Tara.

A whistling bellow filled the air, drowning out their curses and shouts. The van began to scrape along the ground.

“Fuck!”

Another jolt. Heinz bounced in his seatbelt cradle, the belt digging painfully into his neck. He tried to reach the buckle.

Metal screeched and the door above his head buckled as something slammed into it. More hollow thumps came from the boot.

The van scraped along the ground again and this time when it stopped, Heinz fell, the seatbelt giving out. He landed onto Phil and Tara who were scrambling to untangle themselves.

A bellow rang out from the boot, a more human one, and metal scraped along the tarmac. A pulsing moan sounded out to match the challenge.

This time the van did not move. The impacts thumping against the ground outside grew fainter.

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“Stay still!” Heinz shouted, as he tried to untangle himself. To his relief, both Phil and Tara listened and stopped moving. With slow movements and some pained grunts from the two under him, Heinz was able to stand. The driver door was dented but opened with a shove when Heinz tried the handle. Another shove and it flew up and forward, too far forward, smacking against the front bonnet.

Heinz pulled himself out and saw what hit them. The creature stood low to the ground on three limbs. Its fourth swiped down at Shane. Shane darted back, holding up his shield - no, Heinz’s door, in between himself and the limb. He couldn't get back far enough. A glancing blow from the powerful limb tossed him back.

Louise took the chance to run to the swarm’s side and jump onto it.

Heinz judged the scene for a second before turning and offering a hand down into the van.

“Slaad. Tara, grab my hand. While I get Phil out, get the weapons.”

Phil’s seatbelt was stuck, bad enough he ended up ripping the seatbelt’s socket out of the van instead of undoing the buckle. When he was out, Tara was waiting for them with Heinz’s halberd and Phil’s spear. They turned to face the creature in time to see Louise thrown off the back of the Slaad. She crashed into the windshield of a small pickup, covered in thick sludge. More sludge dripped off the creature from the wounds she'd left.

Heinz and Tara went left. Heinz joined Shane trying to draw the Slaad’s attention off Louise. Tara circled around the back to attack the hindlimbs. Phil joined Heinz on Shane’s left.

“Cut the tendons,” Heinz shouted. He glanced across at Phil in between stabs. “When it rears we need to go under.”

Phil looked a bit sick at the thought but he too had fought the Slaad in the caravan park. He nodded and tightened his grip on the spear.

Heinz stabbed forward with the spear, Shane bashed its limbs away, Phil went for the creature's head. Tara hacked away at its hindlimbs. Only when Louise staggered to her feet and joined Tara did they make progress.

The creature moaned. Its back legs folded and a swipe at Shane struck lower than expected, tripping him up.

The Slaad was in no position to capitalise, it fell back, front limbs lifting into the sky.

“Now!”

Heinz ran forward and stabbed into where the creature's limbs met its body. A few stabs later and the limbs fell limp. From that point on the fight was butchery.

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10

Heinz flicked the message away, giving everyone a quick once over. Shane was slowly stretching. Tara was pulling her axe free and grimacing at all the sludge. Louise had collapsed back against the pickup she was thrown into earlier, eyes closed. She didn’t seem too hurt, just winded. Phil was taking deep breaths and steadying himself.

He turned to his van. It was.. It wasn’t in good shape. The Slaad had knocked some parts loose from the underside. The right was bashed in from the initial blow that had turned the van on its side. The driver’s door had fallen forward to the bonnet and the boot door was currently resting by Shane’s feet.

Heinz turned his head up to the sky, took a big breath, and screamed.

“You okay Heinz?” Tara asked.

Heinz gestured angrily at his van. “I knew Innishannon's clearing method was bad. The gap between groups was too big. Anything could have slipped through and it DID. Christ.”

“It could be cosmetic?” Tara tried dubiously.

Heinz covered his face with his hands and began to curse. His van was old and far from perfect but it was his. It had been his for ages.

“Let’s pick it up. See if it runs,” Shane said with a grunt. He gently picked up the door at his feet, showing a care for it that he hadn’t minutes before when he was bashing an alien with it.

Heinz waved at him to put the door down. At this point it was a lost cause, all bent and twisted.

“Pick it up?”

Shane nodded.

Heinz took another look at his van but this time it was assessing. “You think we can?”

Another nod.

“Right.” Heinz set the halberd down. “Let’s give it a go.”

The van was heavy, but they weren’t really picking it up, only pushing it back onto its wheels. After the initial lift, Heinz had to scramble to slow down the van before it slammed down on the right wheels.

All said and done, Heinz shared a look of satisfaction with Shane and Tara. A window was smashed, the sides dented and it was missing a door but the van was back on its wheels.

“I guess I’ll try to start it up?”

“I’ll keep an eye on the exhaust,” Shane said and turned to do just that.

Tara raised an eyebrow at Heinz. He shrugged and mouthed 'later'. Checking the exhaust was more of a marine engine thing rather than a car engine. Most engines on boats were water cooled so you needed to check the exhaust to see if water was running through. Heinz however, was happy to have Shane helping. It seemed to ease some of the man’s guilt about the door too.

“Everyone, come here!”

Heinz stopped in his tracks at the shout, scanning their surroundings. Another ambush? After a few seconds of no movement, he started towards Phil who stood over Louise.

Louise hadn’t gotten up, she was still sitting with her back to the pickup. Worry began to build in his mind. Was she hurt worse than he thought? The Slaad had thrown her off its back and into the windshield. Was it the glass?

As he got closer, the worry grew. Tears drew lines down the dust and dirt on Louise’s face. A little bit of blood had dried on her forehead.

“Louise, are you okay?” Heinz asked, jogging now. “Is something broken?”

Tara was a second behind, already pulling off her glove.

Louise shook her head, still crying but a smile grew on her face.

“I-I passed the threshold,” Louise stammered out between hiccups.

“Christ,” Heinz winced. Passing a threshold was an experience but he'd never seen it reduce Louise to tears before. Even the healing augment which felt like needles in your bones hadn’t drawn a tear out of her. “That bad?”

Louise shook her head again.

“I got another message. The fifth threshold, it removes another restraint,”

Louise whispered the next bit and Heinz couldn’t hear what she was saying. He moved closer.

“What?” Shane barked behind him. “What does it do?”

Louise looked at him, tears still flowing. “Zone restraints. I think.. I think I can leave Kinmore.”