"Aye. Simple as that."
Drake took a deep breath. "Then I accept. I"ll take the job."
Pestilence clapped his hands. "Yay!"
"And now I quit." Drake turned and began to march off, towards where he hoped the town might possibly lie. "Good luck finding a replacement."
"Where d"you think you"re going?" War demanded. The tone of his voice stopped Drake in his tracks.
"Home," he answered. "I told you, I quit."
"Fair enough," War said. "But you have to work your notice."
Drake met the giant"s gaze and held it. "What?" he asked flatly.
"Three months" notice," War said. "Ninety days. It"s in the terms and conditions."
"But..." Drake"s mouth flapped open and closed. "You didn"t tell me that!"
"Didn"t I? Must"ve slipped my mind."
Over by the bridge, War"s horse gave a snort. For the first time, Drake noticed a small shed standing just beyond it. It looked remarkably similar to the shed in his garden, but Drake decided he wasn"t going to think about that right now. He had enough on his plate as it was.
"You don"t want to go breaking the terms and conditions," War told him. "That"s really not a good idea."
"Why?" Drake asked. He"d been running on pure adrenalin since his escapades on the horse, but the effects were wearing off now, and he could feel his whole body trembling. "What happens if I do?"
War"s face darkened. "You"ll be cast into the fiery pits of h.e.l.l for a thousand millennia, forced to endure torture and suffering far beyond anything your tiny little mind could ever bring itself to imagine."
"And," added Pestilence apologetically, "we"d have to take the badge back."
War folded his arms across his impossibly broad chest. "So, Drake Finn," he said, "what"s it to be?"
BY THE TIME Drake made it to town, his feet hurt. They were also damp. The rest of him had dried off during the long walk back, and the two hours spent hanging around near the school, waiting for the final bell to ring.
He knew he couldn"t turn up at home before the end of the school day, or his mum would ask questions. Besides, the extra couple of hours had given him time to think, and to poke around the car park where he and War had made their escape.
Getting close proved impossible. Police had cordoned off the area where the wall had been smashed. They were combing over the remains of the minibus and the cars that had been trampled by the horse, or shredded by the spheres.
Drake had stared at the torn metal and the fragments of gla.s.s on the ground. Those blades, that could tear cars to ribbons, had been coming for him. He"d thought at first that the hors.e.m.e.n had sent them, but now he knew differently. But someone had been trying to kill him, and if it hadn"t been the hors.e.m.e.n, then who had it been? And why?
These thoughts were still occupying him an hour later, when he stood at the front gates, waiting.
"Hey, Chief. Where you been?"
"Oh, um, hi," he said, giving Mel a self-conscious wave. "Didn"t expect to see you here."
Mel heaved her bag higher on her shoulder. "What, exiting the school gates at bell time?" she asked. "Yeah, what are the chances?"
Drake"s face suddenly felt very hot. "Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, of course."
"No one"s ever waited for me before," she said, matter-of-factly.
For some reason, Drake felt glad about that. "Really?" he asked, doing his best not to grin like an idiot.
"Most people think I"m strange." She looked at him intently. "Do you think I"m strange?"
"A bit," Drake admitted.
Mel brightened. "Excellent. I looked for you at break," she said. She started to walk away from the school and Drake fell into step beside her. "Where were you?"
For a moment, Drake thought about telling her the truth. But he didn"t. The truth was too weird.
"I, uh, left early," he told her. "Doctor"s appointment."
"Anything serious? You"re not dying, are you?"
"Nah, just a check-up."
Mel whistled. "Must"ve been a long check-up. Break until nowa that"s, what, five hours?"
"Yeah. He was very... thorough."
"You missed some excitement," Mel said.
Drake"s ears p.r.i.c.ked up. "Oh?"
"There was a big accident in the car park. They"re saying the school minibus crashed into the wall. Knocked a hole right through it."
"Who"s saying?"
"You know... they," Mel explained. "Just they in general."
"Right," Drake said. "Wow."
"It"s by far the coolest thing to ever happen in that school. Which is tragic, really, when you think about it. Balloon ! "
Mel pointed excitedly up towards the sky. Drake followed her finger and saw a yellow balloon being carried on a breeze above the rooftops. "What"s your stance on loose balloons?" Mel asked him.
Drake frowned. "Loose balloons?"
"As in balloons that have got loose. Like that one. What do you feel about it?"
"Um... not much."
Mel looked disappointed. "I"m in two minds," she said. "On the one hand, I think they"re terrible, because it means that someone somewhere has lost their balloon, and that"s got to sting, right?"
She looked at Drake expectantly.
"Right," he agreed.
"Right. But on the other hand, it"s a balloon, so you"ve got to love it." She sighed. "I just don"t know what to think."
Drake nodded. "It"s difficult."
"That it is," she agreed. "That it is."
They watched the balloon until it disappeared into the fluffy white clouds. It looked, to Drake, impossibly high, and he tried not to think about the fact he"d been racing through those very clouds a" or ones quite like them, anyway a" just a few hours ago.
"So, this accident," he said, as they continued walking, "what did you say caused it?"
"Well..." began Mel. She took a deep breath, and Drake got the feeling she was about to launch into a detailed account of what had happened. "They don"t know," she said, proving him completely wrong.
"I thought you said it was the minibus?"
"No, they think the minibus crashed into the wall, but loads of other cars were damaged too, and the minibus couldn"t have caused all of it."
"Oh, right."
"They even found horse droppings!" Mel said. "Can you imagine? Horse c.r.a.p in the school car park? Picture it, Chief, a horse doing a great big poo right there on school grounds! Just picture it."
"I"d rather not."
Mel shrugged. "Suit yourself."
"So no one saw anything... strange?"
"What, apart from the horse c.r.a.p? No, don"t think so."
So, no one had witnessed Drake"s involvement in the destruction of the car park, or seen the flying spheres. That was a good thing, he decided. Probably.
"Why do you ask?"
"Um, no reason. Those boys turn up?" he asked, changing the subject.
"What? Oh, no, not yet. They will, though."
"How do you know?"
Mel puffed out her cheeks. "This is them all over. They"ll have run away, but they"ll come back when it starts raining or they run out of food or whatever. Everyone knows it, that"s why no one"s all that bothered about it." Her brow furrowed. "There was something else I was going to tell you."
"What?"
She looked up and to the left and right, as if she"d find the answer written there somewhere. "Nope, can"t remember," she said at last. She stopped walking. "This is me."
Drake found himself looking up the long gravel drive of a grand detached house. Two cars stood in the driveway, both as big as his kitchen, both brand new. Drake made a mental note never to let Mel see where he lived.
"Wow, is this your house?" he asked. "Yeah," she said matter-of-factly. "I"d invite you in, but my parents are Devil Worshippers."
"Really?"
"Nah. Well, my Dad"s not."
A statue in the middle of the neatly cropped lawn caught Drake"s eye. It stood twice as tall as him, reared up on its hind legs. "Hey, another horse."
"Oh, yeah, my whole family"s into horses," Mel said, following his gaze. "I used to have one."
"What happened?"
Mel drew a thumb across her throat and made a sound like the snapping of bone.
"Oh, right," Drake mumbled. "Sorry."
Mel shrugged. "She was ill. It was her time. Horses die, and them"s the facts." She looked at the house, then back to Drake. "So," she began, "see you tomorrow?"
"a.s.suming no more check-ups."
She smiled her crinkled-nose smile. "You look pretty fit to me," she said, then her face fell. "I mean... fit like healthy, not... you know? Though, I mean, not that you"re not..." She pointed with a thumb towards her house and smiled lopsidedly. "I"m just going to go," she said, turning and crunching her way up the drive.
Drake watched her until she had disappeared inside the house. Then he watched for a few seconds more, in case she came back out again.
When he was sure she wasn"t going to, he turned and looked in both directions along the leafy street. "Right, then," he muttered, recognising nothing. "How the h.e.l.l do I get home?"
Drake lowered himself on to the fourth seat. It had been pulled into place at the rickety table, between Famine and Pestilence, and directly across from War. The three men barely paid him any notice as he sat down. Their attention, instead, was fixed on War"s hand. It crept slowly across the table, a short coil of red rope clutched between his trembling fingers.
"Careful," Pestilence whispered, then he clamped a rubber-gloved hand over his mouth to stop himself saying any more.
"Of course I"ll be careful," War said through gritted teeth. "I"m being careful."
War took a deep, steadying breath, then he a" carefully a" hooked the rope in place. The Hors.e.m.e.n of the Apocalypse watched, none of them daring to speak a word untila"
"Buckaroo! " cried Famine, as the plastic donkey kicked its back legs, showering the tabletop with a selection of brightly coloured bits of plastic.
"b.u.g.g.e.r it," War muttered. He looked up and met Drake"s withering gaze.
"You quite finished?" Drake asked.
"Aye, well, we are now," War said. "You here to start your training?"
"I don"t know," Drake said. He leaned back in the chair. "I want you to explain it all to me first."
Pestilence cleared his throat. "Right, well, you see the donkey there?"
"Not Buckaroo," Drake said. "I meant explain..." He gestured around at the shed. "Everything."
"I know," said Pestilence, smiling sheepishly. "Just my little joke." He began packing the game away into its battered box.
"Where do you want me to start?" War asked.