The Power of Five Oblivion

We had to push the boat out and then jump on without falling into the river – not as easy as it sounded what with the banks being so uneven.
    The landscape opened out on the other side of the bridge, which wasn’t such good news because suddenly the Lady Jane stuck out … you could have seen it for miles. The fog had lifted too. I could see a few scattered buildings, old barns and sheds that might once have belonged to farms but there was nothing moving; no animals, no people. We passed a tractor, rusting, with grass sprouting out of the wheels, then a tangle of barbed wire, then a wall of old tyres. In the books that I had read when I was growing up, the English countryside was somewhere beautiful to visit and to have adventures. You got the impression that the sun was always shining. Well, it wasn’t now. Everything looked hostile and abandoned.
    “There it is!” the Traveller called out and pointed and, about a quarter of a mile away, I saw the lock that would take us off the river and into the canals that would in turn lead to London. Again, I’d seen locks in books but I never thought I’d go through one. The canal led between two narrow walls. There was a gate at each end, which had to be opened and closed. The one on our side was open so we would be able to cruise in to what was effectively a deep, rectangular box. Close the gate, fill the inside with water and we would slowly float up. There was a flat surface with a dilapidated house that must have once belonged to the lock keeper, and once we were level with it and the gates were opened we would be able to motor out again, heading south. I did wonder why the lock was called Four Ways, though. You could go left or right along the river or you could head off up the canal. But there was also a track leading across the fields, so maybe that was the fourth direction they had in mind.
    The Traveller had wondered whether the lock would still be working. I hoped so. I didn’t like the idea of walking all the way to London. Shouldn’t this secret society, the Nexus, have been looking after the canals? After all, it had always been part of the plan to use them.
    “Look…!” This time it was Jamie who had spoken and there was an edge to his voice that told me straight away that he wasn’t going to point out a pretty tree or flowers. He was looking up and, with a sense of unease, I tried to work out what it was that he had seen.
    There was nothing. I certainly couldn’t see any helicopters heading our way – anyway, I’d have heard them first. The sky was empty except for a dark cloud, which made me think it was going to rain. But Jamie had definitely seen something. As we cruised down the river with the lock still a good hundred metres away, he stared up and his face was filled with fear.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    He said nothing. And then I noticed something strange. There was hardly any breeze but the storm cloud was moving very quickly, heading our way. In fact, as I stared at it, I realized it wasn’t a cloud at all. It was changing shape, one minute flat and oblong like a huge pancake, the next twisting itself so that it resembled a snake.
    “What is it?” I asked a second time.
    “Fly-soldiers,” Jamie replied.
    Jamie had talked about fly-soldiers when he was describing the first battle with the Old Ones, ten thousand years before. I knew what they were but I couldn’t believe that I was actually seeing them for myself, in my own world, now. What I was looking at was thousands, maybe millions of insects, making their way towards us in a vast swarm. In the air, they were separate. But when they landed, they would mould themselves into human form and at that moment they would become solid. Fly-soldiers could kill you with a sword made up of flies – yet strike out at them and they would separate and your own weapon would pass through them. Jamie had told me all this. And here they were!
    “The lock,” Jamie said. “We have to get into the lock. Maybe they won’t see us…”
    “We can’t go any faster,” the Traveller said.
    I guessed that the cloud of fly-soldiers was about half a mile away but getting closer all the time. Were they searching for us – or were they simply heading for the village that we had left the day before? And did they have ears? Could they hear us? Suddenly it seemed to me that the Lady Jane ‘s engines were making far too much noise. With the countryside so empty, they would be heard as far away as the