‘I’m Ryan,’ the soldier says. ‘Look.’ He bends over in the crowded space to show two spurs sticking out of his shoulder blades. They twitch as though they have a life of their own. Anto feels that way about his arm – that it’s not really his; that it doesn’t belong in this world at all.
‘They were going to make me into a bird, but I got away.’ The man shudders and twitches, although the event must be two decades in his past by now. ‘Doctors couldn’t cut them out without killing me. Have to sleep on my front.’
Ryan covers up again and they shake hands. ‘Thank you,’ Anto says. And he means it, because however useless he may feel, now he belongs.
They clatter over roads, passing the lights of farm dorms that Anto can only see in flashes through the open flap at the back of the truck. He hasn’t eaten in hours and nobody thinks to offer him anything.
‘Where are we?’ asks a hoarse voice. It’s Corless, the hulking man with the cross on his forehead and gleaming sweaty skin.
‘Meath,’ says Ryan.
‘The worst ones are always in Meath.’ Corless rubs at the cross.
‘The worst what?’ Anto wants to know.
‘That should be obvious,’ says Karim. ‘Infestations of course. But don’t you worry, dear. You shall have the big, big job of minding the truck. Don’t let anybody siphon off the diesel.’
Anto hangs his head.
‘She’s not so bad,’ Ryan whispers in his ear. ‘Honestly. You’ll see. She’s great.’ The soldier has no chance to say more. He’s interrupted by the captain’s voice coming in over the radio. ‘We’re pulling in by the field on the right. Everybody exit the vehicles. Extinguish all lights. It’s time for a hike.’
A moment later the truck swings over beside the two others.
‘Off we pop,’ says Karim, and as everybody rushes to obey, she turns back to Anto, ‘Stay put,’ she warns him. ‘We may be all night.’
‘OK.’
‘And let there be no sneaking after us. Some of the boys and girls are a little flighty and might shoot you. We’d all be devastated by the mistake of course.’
‘Uh, of course.’
Anto’s not the sort to sneak. Not like poor Squeaky Emma or Megan. He’ll hang out all night in the hopes that in the morning they’ll send him home again, or at least let him know where Nessa went. Oh, where is she? He’s hardly had a second to think of her all day.
The soldiers pile out of the truck and not one of them is speaking now, apart from the odd muttered prayer. Anto slides down the empty seats to look out of the flap. A full moon shows him moss-covered dry-stone walls with men and women clambering over them, ripping themselves free from brambles without so much as a curse.
What could possibly be out here? he wonders.
Time passes. Enough for the moon to rise a finger in the sky. He’s starving.
Since … since his experience, he needs so much more food than he used to. His arm needs it. Or so the doctors tell him. He’s hungry enough to eat the wooden benches, to chew on the leather straps, for all that he’s a vegetarian. But in the end what drives him outside is the shivering. The truck was never meant to stay warm, and the soldiers didn’t think to leave him so much as a blanket.
He jumps up and down a few times on the gritty ice of the roadside. He windmills his normal arm and does some of the back exercises the doctors gave him while his breath forms clouds through chattering teeth. The only distraction is the sight of a rabbit, and then another, running through a gap in the wall and sprinting across the road.
Anto laughs aloud. Are rabbits even nocturnal? Nessa would know, culchie that she is. He adds that question to the growing list of jokes and endearments he’s been saving up for her. But then the rabbits fall right to the back of the queue as another pair of shadows expose themselves to the moonlight. ‘Badgers!’ he cries. ‘By Crom! By Danú!’
And now a whole flood of animals are squeezing themselves past the wall: fieldmice, a fox, more rabbits, something that might be a weasel or a pine marten or Crom knows what. Above him are crows and bats and birds of every size and shape and slowly, slowly, Anto’s delight fades.
The infestation squad. Was it named for all these animals? Certainly, the wildlife of the countryside thrives now that both Ireland’s population and its industry are dying. But even a city boy like Anto knows something is terribly wrong here.
In the distance, far across the fields, a great crump sounds. Two more follow, each accompanied by a flash on the horizon. Next come tiny pops and cracks, like the snapping of twigs. And now the ground shakes through the thin soles of Anto’s shoes. It’s a rhythm, somehow familiar: the pounding, panicked heartbeat of a dying land. And in the moonlight Anto sees it: an inkblot that grows enormously quickly even as the tremors intensify.
It’s just another fleeing animal, he thinks. What else could it be? But then it reaches the edge of the field, and the dry-stone wall explodes. Rocks bigger than his head smash through the cab of the nearest truck, ripping apart the shrieking metal, shaking it on its axles. Other stones hurtle over the icy ground as though shot by a cannon, spraying splinters as they skip across the road.
And then silence.
Except for the breathing. A great bellows.
Anto finds himself on hands and knees with no memory of falling. Blood drips from his scalp and he realizes then that a stone must have clipped him. He crawls over to the wreckage, pulls himself up and looks round the edge of it.
The first truck stands completely unharmed, but the second has been thrown right into the next field. Anto doesn’t spare it a thought – how can he? – because all his attention is taken up by the bull. Its mighty boulder of a head whips from side to side in what must be fury, while thick mucus dribbles from nostrils that could hold a man’s fist.
The boy has seen minibuses that are smaller.
Moonlight glitters off its hide. Some of that is sweat, and some of it is darker, pooling on the ground beside it. It takes one step – away from Anto, thank God! – and then another. Limping. But a shot comes out of the darkness of the field and Anto fancies he can see where it hits the creature in the buttock. The bull roars. Anto cries out at the sound of it, stumbling backwards even as the beast whirls around and sees him there.
It charges: a tank of flesh. Its twisted horns are longer than he is. It barges through the wreckage to get to him even as he flings himself out of its path and scrambles away. The monster skids on the icy surface; makes ruins of another wall before wheeling around to take a second run at him. More shots come, worse than the sting of any horsefly, each creating its own geyser of blood, so that the monster roars and spins in search of the enemy, finding none except, again, the boy.
‘It’s not me,’ Anto says to it. He’s used to terror, yet that’s not what he feels as it moves towards him again. The bull isn’t charging now because it can’t. But it’s not giving up.
Bullets ripple against its hide. Its breath bubbles and it must be thinking – if such a beast can think at all, it must be thinking – I’ll take one; I’ll take just one down with me. And Anto weeps to see its bravery and its pain, for how is it any different from a child that is hunted in the Grey Land? And he feels a kinship with it. Of course he does! Because a bull this size is no natural thing. No more natural than he is himself. Twisted by cruel hands to become a monster. Turned violent and dangerous.