they don't move or make a sound. Over Julie's heated protests I asked M to escort us out. He follows a few paces behind, huge and vigilant, scanning the crowd like a Secret Service agent.
The unnatural silence of a room full of people who don't breathe is surreal. I swear I can hear Julie's heart pounding. She is trying to walk steady and look cool, but her darting eyes betray her.
'Are you sure about this?' she whispers.
'Yes.'
'There's like . . . hundreds of them.'
'Keep you safe.'
'Right, right, safe, how could I forget.' Her voice grows very small. 'Seriously, R . . . I mean, I've seen you kick ass, but you know if someone decides to ring the dinner bell right now I'm going to be sushi.'
'They . . . won't,' I tell her with a surprising degree of confidence. 'We're . . . new thing. Haven't . . . seen before. Look at them.'
She looks closer at the surrounding faces, and I hope she can see what I've been seeing. The strange array of their reactions to us, to the anomaly we represent. I know they will let us through, but Julie seems unconvinced. A tight wheeze creeps into her breathing. She fumbles in her messenger bag and pulls out an inhaler, takes a hit from it and holds it in, eyes still darting.
'You'll . . . be okay,' M says in his low rumble.
She expels the breath and whips her head around to glare at him. 'Who the fuck asked you, you fucking blood sausage? I should have hedge-trimmed you in half yesterday.'
M chuckles and raises his eyebrows at me. 'Got . . . a live one . . . "R".'
We continue unmolested all the way to the Departures gate. As we step out into the daylight, I feel a nervous buzz in my stomach. At first I think it's just the ever-present terror of the open sky, now looming over us in bruised shades of grey and purple, boiling with high-altitude thunderheads. But it's not the sky. It's the sound. That low, warbling tone, like baritone madmen humming nursery rhymes. I don't know if I've just gotten more attuned to it or if it's actually louder, but I hear it even before the Boneys make their appearance.
'Shit, oh shit,' Julie whispers to herself.
They march around both corners of the loading zone and form a line in front of us. There are more of them than I've ever seen in one place. I had no idea there even were this many, at least not in our airport.
'Problem,' M says. 'They look . . . pissed.'
He's right. There is something different in their demeanour. Their body language seems stiffer, if that's possible. Yesterday they were a jury stepping in to review our case. Today they are judges, announcing the sentence. Or perhaps executioners, executing it.
'Leaving!' I shout at them. 'Taking her back! So they won't . . . come here!'
The skeletons don't move or respond. Their bones harmonise in some sour alien key.
'What . . . do you want?' I demand.
The entire front row raises its arms in unison and points at Julie. It strikes me how wrong this is, how fundamentally different these creatures are from the rest of us. The Dead are adrift on a foggy sea of ennui. They don't do things in unison.
'Taking her back!' I shout louder, faltering in my attempt at reasonable discourse. 'If . . . kill her . . . they'll come here. Kill . . . us!'
There is no hesitation, no time for them to consider anything I've said; their response is predetermined and immediate. In unison, like demon monks chanting Hell's vespers, they emit that noise from their chest cavities. That proud crow of unyielding conviction, and although it's wordless, I understand exactly what it's saying:
No need to speak.
No need to listen.
Everything is already known.
She will not leave.
We will kill her.
That is how things are done.
Always has been.
Always will be.
I look at Julie. She is trembling. I grip her hand and look at M. He nods.
With the pulse-warmth of Julie's hand flooding through my icy fingers, I run.
We bolt left, trying to dodge around the edge of the Boneys' platoon. As they clatter forward to block my path, M surges out in front of me and rams his bulk into the nearest row, knocking them into a pile of hooked limbs and interlocked ribcages. A fierce blast of their invisible horn stabs the air.
'What are you doing?' Julie gasps