the ground, sniffing the air. I had none of the right equipment, nothing that could do more than slow down the pack. Just checking my bag had wasted twenty yards of their inexorable stride. The nearest spectre stopped, its toes scraping the edge of my double red line. Reaching with a gloved hand into the saggy kangaroo pocket of its grey jumper, it pulled out a flick knife. The knife was cheap black plastic with a silverish blade which revealed a series of notches at the hilt end that probably served no purpose, except to make an ugly weapon somehow “cool” by being that bit more ugly. The blade was no more than four inches long; but when four inches is two inches longer than the thickness of your wrist, size doesn’t matter. We watched it, fascinated.
The spectre drew back the blade, held it up, and rammed it towards my face. As it passed through the air above the red lines it stuck, point-first, as if buried in thick foam; beneath it, the paint on the ground bubbled and hissed. Still the spectre kept up the pressure, pushing with both hands on the hilt. A little at a time, the blade began to move towards me.
Behind, a hiss-swipe through the air and the smell of burning plastic announced that the second spectre was doing the same with its knife. Coming out of a corner by the refuse bins was a third, heading towards me with a casual swagger. I knew it didn’t need to run.
I dug my fingers deeper into the tarmac. It bent beneath them with the cold, crinkly texture of dry cereal, resisted, then parted. I pushed in my fingers, my wrist, then the lower arm, then in as far as my elbow, straining to delve through the mass of the earth. Still not deep enough. I cursed and bent lower, pressing my cheek to the ground and pushing my shoulder into the tarmac. It was faint and a long way off, but close enough now for my fingers to tingle with it, and most of all, I could smell it. Gas mains have always been built down deep; it’s a sensible enough precaution.
I dragged my fingers out of the pavement, trailing loose chips of black tarmac. Wet dirt, grey, the colour of clay, clung to the length of my arm as I pulled myself free. When my fingertips finally came away, there was a broad tear in the earth, and the air above it wriggled like a desert mirage. The smell of gas is artificially pumped into it at the factory, a dry stink that makes itself known in every part of the nostrils and tickles at the back of the throat. I scrambled to my feet and let it rise around me, watched it spill out around my feet and ankles and, raising my hands, dragged more of it higher even as the red paint I had sprayed onto the ground began to melt, dribble, lose its shape. As the shimmering on the air spread around me, bringing tears to my eyes and making my lungs hurt, I reached into my satchel, digging deep for a much-used lighter that had never lit a cigarette. I slotted it into my bandaged right hand, drawing my coat up around my face and hunching my shoulders to present as small a target as possible.
When the ward broke, it did so fast. The third spectre, Mr Boom boom boom boom-te-boom, was still a few yards away. The paint bubbling at my feet gave way, turned black and peeled like dead skin off a corpse. Chi-chichi chi-chichi chi-chichi put his full weight on his blade, making it jerk forwards and down in an arc meant for my neck. I closed my eyes, and spun the wheel of the cigarette lighter.
I was aware of pain in the vicinity of my left collarbone, but it wasn’t the moment to care. Though my eyes were pressed tight, the flash from the ignition burnt to the back of my retinas like a full summer’s sun. Even with my coat wrapped around me and all the will I could spare focused on keeping the flames away, the heat dried up every inch of my lungs, burnt the inside of my nose, turned my tongue to leather, singed my eyebrows and caused black smoke to dribble from my hair. It was the thump-hiss of all igniting gas stoves, and it spread out around from me in a