With the twin suns of tractor lights blazing at their backs, the four of them studied the sandstorm consuming the town below. Above, thunderheads smouldered darkly and flickered with electricity. Below the dirty yellow cloud fomented in a lazy undulation, and beneath their feet the ground had begun to rumble. At first, it was imperceptible amid the storm’s rancour, but soon it was another undeniable portent that something was different this time.

  ‘It’s decided, then?’ Ma said, turning to face them.

  ‘We’ll need Nat too. If you’ll come?’ Michael asked his friend.

  All eyes fell on the mechanic. ‘Me?’

  ‘No one’s going to make you,’ Michael said.

  ‘’Course, I’ll come. But won’t Ma need me in town?’

  Michael looked to old woman. ‘Will you?’

  ‘It might all be for nothing. But if you can get my granddaughter back and that poor boy of yours, you can be sure I’ll manage. It’s not my first crossing. Could be all our last.’ She’d already told them what she saw at the ancient oak: the kids in the dunes, hungry wyrmals sweeping through the streets, and Sugnar, the Great Wyrm rearing above them, free at last to destroy them all.

  ‘Good,’ Michael said. ‘We have use for your mechanical skills.’

  ‘What, no double entendre?’ Toby said.

  ‘Seems a bit inappropriate, mate. Don’t you think?’ Nat said, deadpan.

  A beat past before Nat cracked an infectious grin that spread between them.

  Toby shook his head. ‘You’re such a tosser.’

  ‘Mate, not if front of your mum.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt how much you play with yourself, Nathaniel Wanban,’ Ma said. ‘Raised a teenage boy, didn’t I?’

  ‘Ma!’

  Although glad of the gallows humour, Michael was thoughtful. ‘We’ll take the Land Rover and stop by Nat’s yard for supplies. Then we head for the dunes.’

  ‘Through the town? Might be a bit difficult given we’ve already seen the wyrmals on the move. Not just one or two either,’ Nat pointed out.

  ‘It’s not the best place to enter,’ Michael said.

  Toby looked back down the hill in the direction of the woods. ‘The beach house?’

  ‘It seems our only option,’ Michael agreed, ‘and besides, we always enter that way.’

  Toby frowned. ‘You Lorimers might. The rest of us try to stay as far away as possible.’

  ‘Let’s hope we’re all as lucky as the Lorimers today, then,’ Nat offered.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Michael said, ‘you know how this always ends for the older Lorimer.’

  Nat looked chagrined. ‘Sorry, mate. I didn’t think…’

  Michael waved him off. ‘It’s alright. I’m okay. Really.’

  ‘Really?’ Nat was doubtfull.

  ‘Okay, not really. I’m shitting myself, but we’re getting the kids back and that’s that.’

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Ma waddled over to the trailer behind the tractor. ‘Here,’ she called, and hefted a canvas bag. ‘I got these for you.’ She dumped the heavy holdall down and pulled out a double-barrelled shotgun and snapped the breach in the practiced action of a farmer used to gunning down rabbits and pheasants. There were two more shotguns and an axe for chopping firewood. Michael lifted the latter.

  ‘I guess this is for me.’

  ‘What else would the woodcutter use?’ Ma said, looking proud of them all.

  Ma led their two-vehicle convoy back down the hill. The men brought up the rear in the Land Rover, trundling slowly behind the trailer towed behind the tractor. Conversation had dried up, and if Nat and Toby felt anything like Michael, they’d been clenching their hands to stop them shaking.

  The nose of the tractor pushed into the sandstorm. Jouncing on the potholed road leading away from the ruins, they followed Ma into the breach. The storm spat at them. A million flecks of sand stinging at the glass and metal surrounding them. Hernshore was a swirling blur, from which all detail had been sandblasted and colour had been leeched to sepia. Under it all, the ground trembled without end.

  Toby gave the trailer a good six feet of clearance. Enough to keep her in sight, or at least the hulking outline of the mechanical beast, but far enough to stop suddenly without rearending the trailer.

  ‘We’re almost at the bottom of the hill,’ Michael warned.

  Sure enough, brake lights, two on the trailer and two on the tractor, flared red. Michael held his breath. He felt Nat tense beside him in the middle seat, but then the red lights died and Ma moved off.

  Their plan was clear. At the end of Alaric’s Way, Ma would head right into town, round up any stragglers on the streets and retreat to the Stag and Snake with the supplies she’d brought. It was a natural place to congregate. Safety in numbers for those with houses that were difficult to secure. It also had the added advantage of sturdy shutters and heavy doors. In other words, it was somewhat defensible. While Ma went right, the boys would take the left back to Nat’s garage before taking the route back through the woods to the beach house. This was all assuming they didn’t meet any resistance on the way. With Ma disappearing into the sandstorm, this was it.

  Toby paused, his indicator blinking ineffectually in the near zero visibility.

  ‘Herne’s balls,’ he muttered, and the four-by-four moved off with the burr of its diesel engine. Toby shifted up the gears and they picked up pace. They were in it now and they had to commit. The longer they dallied the longer their kids were in the dunes without them. They’d wasted enough time. But still Toby could only push it so fast without risking a collision that would ruin their meagre plan. As such, the pace was excruciating. Michael sat throttling the neck of the axe Ma had supplied, his knee in a jackrabbit bounce.

  ‘Stop!’ Nat cried out, twisting in his seat. ‘We’ve passed it.’

  Toby slammed on the brakes, throwing them forward. Gears crunched. The engine whined in reversed. Toby made another hard stop, hauled on the wheel as though he was at a boat’s tiller fighting a gale, and they sped into Nat’s yard, skidding to a stop. The engine idled.

  ‘What do we need, exactly?’ Nat asked.

  ‘Anything you think will help us get a wreck going?’

  ‘That a description of my entire business, Mikey?’

  ‘Alright then. Anything that will get a wreck going that we can carry between us. Bare essentials.’

  In under five minutes they had what they needed. Every minute of it was a torture, hurrying towards something for which they might already be too late. On top of that, it was impossible not to make noise. They had to hope the storm provided them with enough cover. Each one of them kept their weapons close at hand while they scavenged. Until, coughing on sandstorm, they were back on the road, three childhood friends heading into the woods together one final time.

  Toby swerved around fallen branches and thudded over several he saw too late or not at all. At any moment, Michael expected to see a swaying figure block the road, more of the wyrmals closing in through the woods, coming for the Lorimer. The further they got unchallenged, the more he realised they wouldn’t be coming for him. Everything was about getting the Lorimer to the dunes. It always had been. That was the deal struck and restruck generation after generation. It wasn’t just about the Lorimers and their luck. They had a duty. It was the price they paid, and it wasn’t something that could be walked away from. The town depended on them, and they depended on the townsfolks, and they all depended on keeping Sugnar, that most ancient force of destruction, trapped. Realising this, Michael understood nothing more would stand in their way of getting to the dunes. And so it was.

  The road wound out of the trees. Toby drove by the old red telephone box, that everyday nexus of magic and luck of Michael’s childhood. He felt the urge to tell Toby to stop so he could check the change slot for a fifty-pence piece, which he’d slip into his pocket, a talisman to ward off evil and turn the fates in their favour. But he didn’t. The faded telephone box slipped into the rearview, swallowed by the bilge of dust. A useless relic of a time that had come to an end.

  Toby sped up. Faster and faster down the lane they’d run and biked through their childhoods. He knew the way without looking. Even so, the porch of the beach house seemed to come out of nowhere, which was apt because that’s exactly where they were going. Toby hung on the wheel and stamped on the brake, throwing out the backend and bringing them to a bone-jarring stop.

  Wordlessly, they gathered their things and mounted the creaking porch. Michael bent for the key he’d instinctively put back under the painted stone, what felt like days ago, but had only been a matter of hours. Down on his haunches, one of the stray witch’s stones caught his eye and he picked it up. It fit the palm of his hand and had a good-sized hole in its centre. Another thing they needed.

  The house’s interior was eerie for its quietness in comparison to the storm.

  ‘Wait here a minute,’ Michael said, and disappeared into the kitchen. He crashed around, looking. Water ran from the taps, and he reappeared with two large leather water bladders, shaded like tear drops. He slung one across his body and gave the other to Toby, as Nat was laden down with a hold-all across his shoulders, a toolbox in one hand and a shotgun in the other.

  They entered Michael’s father’s office. The room was full of as many memories, fond ones Michael now knew, as there were movies lining the walls. They called to his fear, inviting him to stay a while and get lost in the comforting dream of nostalgia. He pressed on, up the stairs, behind the secret passage, to the landing. More memories lay in wait in his bedroom, but they were scattered to the wind when he opened the door to the storm.

  Sand lay an inch thick on the balcony. Their footprints were blown away as soon as they made them, trudging down the stairs single file to the garden, which was swamped with sand. They waded on, reaching the path of railway sleepers, which were unnervingly clear above the deluge, as if they had been waiting for Michael. Michael’s foot was trembling as he mounted the path. The wind blew in their faces, stinging them raw. They bent to their mission, step after step, until the wall was the final barrier separating them from the dunes.

  ‘This is it, then,’ Nat shouted over the howling wind.

  ‘You sure about this?’ Michael shouted back.

  ‘You’re not going to kiss me, are you?’ Nat cried.

  Michael shook his head. ‘You’re such a wanker.’ He turned his head to his other friend. ‘Tobes?’

  Through slitted eyes, Toby stared resolutely into the storm. With his red bandana tied around his face to cover his nose and mouth, he looked as though he was waiting on the 3:10 to Yuma. ‘Last one in buys the next round,’ he called and crossed the threshold.