"We will rest for a while," said Dustu. "It's getting too dark to see, but in a couple of hours the moon will rise. There will be enough light to see our way."

Jeffcott, Summers and Seabreeze scrambled down the bank of the dry stream-bed to sit at the bottom with their backs against the side. The gully was deep enough for their heads to be fully below ground level and trees, silhouetted against the darkening sky, grew along both sides, further hiding the humans from sight. Some burrowing animal had made holes in the bank, and tumbled boulders told them that quite a force of water flowed through the gulch during the summer and winter rainy seasons. The last real rain had been over a month before, though. They wouldn't be getting wet any time soon.

"At least it's getting cooler," said Jeffcott, wiping a hand across his forehead. "I don't think I could have taken that heat much longer. And I could murder a glass of water."

"They say that, even in the desert, there's water if you dig down far enough," said Seabreeze. "If we had a shovel I bet we could find water soon enough."

"You mean a spade," said Jeffcott. "Spades are for digging. Shovels are for moving stuff in piles."

"An intrenching tool, then," said Seabreeze, looking annoyed. "You know what I meant."

"Sure," Jeffcott said with a smile. "I just believe in calling a spade a spade, that's all."

He looked across at Summers to share the joke with him, but the doctor's eyes were closed in an expression of deep suffering. There was still just enough light to see by and the physicist was alarmed to find that he could actually see the other man's skin moving as living tumours squirmed under it. His skin now looked like paper soaked in oil and the irises of his eyes had turned yellow, blending into the yellow of his sclera. Jeffcott cursed his selfishness. He'd forgotten the Doctor's condition while thinking about his thirst and the ache in his legs from walking.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, and immediately cursed himself for an idiot. It was bloody obvious how the man was feeling. He was in hell, and there was no prospect of any kind of release for him.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asked.

"Kill me," the doctor replied.

Jeffcott was stunned into silence. It was obvious from the flat tone with which he'd spoken the words that he meant them with all his heart. Summers turned to look at Jeffcott, and there was a terror and an emotional agony in his eyes that tore at his heart. He had to look away. He simply didn't have the moral strength to offer even the meagre comfort that eye contact would have provided, and it caused him to feel a disgust at his own cowardice that sickened him.

"I mean it," Summers repeated. "I want you to kill me. Please."

"I can't," Jeffcott replied. It was all he could say. He stared out into the darkness as if trying to forget that the other man existed.

"I don't want one of those things to come out of me," the Doctor told him. "Anything rather than that. You don't know what it's like, to have them inside me. Feeding on my tissues and organs. Literally eating me alive. I can feel them." He held up his hand and stared at it. "I can even see them." Jeffcott knew he was seeing the skin of his fingers bulging and swelling as living tumours wriggled between his bones, but he wouldn't have been able to turn his head to see for himself if his life had depended on it.

"Dustu," said Summers. "Will you do it? Will you kill me?"

"If you're sure that's what you want," the Cherokee told him. It was clear from his tone of voice that he'd have no problem carrying out the request.

"It is what I want. It's like you said. VC Cannon. Only one of us has to make it back alive and I'll soon be slowing you down. For the success of the mission you have to kill me."

"Then I will," Dustu promised. "When the moon rises and we leave this place, we will leave you behind. Use the time to remember the good times and prepare your soul to meet God."

"Thank you," said Summers. "Thank you so much."

The relief in his voice was so great that Jeffcott turned to look at him, and he was relieved to find that the doctor was looking in the other direction. He wanted to remain still and quiet, in case he attracted the other man's attention and those awful, nightmarish eyes turned to look at him, but something inside rebelled at his cowardice. This was a fellow human being and he was suffering. A greater suffering than any sane man could imagine. The least he could do was try to offer a tiny crumb of comfort.

"I'm sorry," he said. Sure enough Summers turned to look at him but Jeffcott kept himself from looking away with an effort of willpower. "I'm sorry this is happening."

"It's not your fault."

A patch of Summers' hair was moving as something shifted under his scalp. Jeffcott forced himself to ignore it. "Not being able to help you, that's my fault," he said. "You asked for my help and..." He couldn't continue and he dropped his eyes.

"It was a lot to ask. If I was a stronger man I'd be able to do it myself. Just slash my wrists or something. Why should I ask you to do something that I'm not able to do for myself?"

"But to leave it to a stranger, a man who'll do it like butchering a pig... No offense," he added hurriedly, seeing Dustu looking across at him. The Cherokee just looked away.

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"A friend should do it," Jeffcott added. "I mean, I know we've known each other for less than a day, but I think we would have become friends if we'd known each other longer."

"You wouldn't be able to bring yourself to do it," said the doctor, though. "You'd try, but your muscles would refuse to obey you. You'd try again and we'd both end up torturing ourselves. If our good friend Dustu is willing to do it, we should let him, I think. It'll be enough that you'll be there with me when it happens. Holding my hand."

Jeffcott nodded, making himself keep his eyes on those of the other man. The idea of holding his hand, of feeling the living tumours squirming under the other man's skin, horrified him, but then he remembered the girl in the hospital whose hand he'd held. He remembered the look of infinite gratitude on her face at the simple human contact. If he'd been able to do it then, he could do it now.

"That's what we'll do, then," he said. "I'll hold your hand while he does it." He looked back at Dustu, who nodded back at him. He saw Seabreeze looking back and forth between the three of them, his face pale and his eyes wide. Jeffcott could guess what he was thinking. Ever since joining the army he'd known that he might face death one day, his own or that of a friend, but not like this. Not like this.

"Do you have family?" he asked the doctor.

"My wife, Jasmine, and two boys. Sam and Brian. Twelve and ten. I've also got a sister, with a family of her own."

"If I make it back, I'll go talk to them."

"Don't tell them how I died," said Summers urgently. "Don't tell them what happened to me. Tell them I... Tell them I died saving a busload of kids or something. Say it was quick and painless."

"I will. I promise."

"I don't want them to know what my last moments were like. I want to spare them that. I want them to think I went painlessly. Instantly."

"They'll know you went into the anomaly. They'll find out one day, and they'll find out what happened to others who went in. Those poor sods back at the hospital."

"Yeah," said Summers, "but you can make up some story about what happened to me. Say the creatures got me, like the soldiers. A claw through the heart. Something like that."

"I will," Jeffcott promised. "I'll say you got a dozen of them before you went down yourself. That you died standing on a pile of enemies."

Both men laughed, but in Summers it turned into a fit of coughing. He pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and held it over his mouth to cough into it. When he took it away there was blood on it. He tucked it up a sleeve as if expecting he'd need it again before long.

"Don't go too over the top," said the doctor, "or you'll know it's not the truth. Just say the creatures got me. There's no need to say more than that."

"Keep it simple," Jeffcott confirmed. "I'll make them believe it. I promise."

Above them, the stars were coming out. The men fell silent as they stared up at them, imagining that they were back in friendly territory with nothing more to worry about than the result of an oncoming football game. It was quiet and peaceful and, as the evening drew on, comfortably cool. It was also quiet, which surprised Jeffcott at first. His only knowledge of an Arizona night came from watching movies and so he was expecting to hear owls, coyotes and, of course, crickets, but there was nothing. Of course there's nothing, he told himself. Everything's been killed by the anomaly. Even the lizards and the insects.

A frightening thought came to him. "Do you think those creatures can grow inside animals as well as people?" he asked.

"I don't see why not," Summers replied. "Whatever affects human cells should do the same thing to animal cells. You think we might find creatures out here?"

"Yeah, I think we might. I think there might be a lot of them, and a lot closer than we think."

"You could be right," said Summers. "A whole creature couldn't grow inside a tiny lizard, but one of those fish eggs could, and maybe the fish eggs from a whole bunch of lizards could join up to form a single creature. We've seen that they're modular, and that the modules can be combined and rearranged to form different creatures. Even a creature that came from a hundred lizards might be quite smart if they're getting their orders from a controlling intelligence."

"And there could be one right here, in this gully with us, right now," said Jeffcott. "Telling the others where we are. Waiting for reinforcements to arrive."

"You are right," said Dustu, rising to his feet and grabbing his spear. "It was a mistake to stop. We must keep moving and risk walking in the dark. The moon will he rising soon in any case." He turned to Summers. "Do you still want me to..." He raised his spear for emphasis.

"At least pretend to care!" Protested Jeffcott, also rising to his feet. Seabreeze also stood, leaving Mark Summers the only one still lying against the side of the gully. "This is a human being!"

"There are many human beings out there," said the Cherokee, sweeping with his free hand to indicate the rest of the human race, outside the anomaly. "They are currently watching television, eating meals, getting ready for bed. Oblivious to what is creeping towards them one inch at a time. We have to warn them. As you yourself said, the enemy may even now be moving in to surround us. That is what I care about. The life of one man is nothing in comparison."

"It's okay, Jeffcott," said Summers, looking up at him. "He's right. You need to move fast, and I can't bear what's happening to me any more. Let him do it."

Jeffcott stared at Dustu, who stared back implacably, but then Jeffcott nodded and dropped his eyes. "Alrignt," he said, "but I made you a promise and I'll keep it."

He sat down beside Summers again and took the other man's hand. As he'd known he would, he felt an awful movement under the doctor's skin as if it were full of worms, writhing and squirming as they fed upon his flesh. The urge to fling the other man's hand away in horror was almost too strong to overcome. In his imagination, he expected the living tumours to break out through the doctor's skin and burrow into his own, or contaminate him in some more subtle way. Don't you dare let go! he commanded himself. Don't you dare!

He obeyed the command and held the doctor's hand more tightly. Summers squeezed his own hand in return, and when Jeffcott turned his head to look at him he saw the same infinite gratitude that had been on the face of the woman in the hospital. It gave him the strength to hold his hand tighter, and he was still holding it when Dustu's spear came plunging down into the doctor's chest.

Summers' body jerked as the steel tip penetrated his heart, and jerked again as the Cherokee pulled it back out. Then the doctor lay still, except for the writhing under his skin that continued for a few moments longer. Then it also stopped. Jeffcott climbed back to his feet, wiping his hand on the leg of his trousers, and looked down at him. He half expected something more to happen, for all the living tumours to come bursting out, searching for a new body to grow in, but nothing did. The doctor, and everything in him, was dead.

Jeffcott stared down at it for a moment longer, mentally saying goodbye. Then he felt Dustu's hand on his shoulder. "I am sorry," he said, "but we must go now. Tread very carefully. You don't want to break an ankle in a gopher hole. We will navigate by the stars."

Jeffcott nodded silently, and the three men carried on their way. North, towards Phoenix.