The Eye of Zoltar

I looked around. We had covered barely four hundred yards from our starting point and had not even reached the river. Tactically speaking, it was a good place to disable the half-track, and as I looked back to where we had left the jeep, six more drones popped up from the earth where they had been buried.

‘They’re cutting off the retreat,’ said Wilson.

‘Perkins,’ I shouted, ‘we’re going to need something from you pretty soon.’

‘Working on it,’ he replied.

I grabbed a spare sword from the back of the half-track and faced the drones alongside the others.

‘Hang on,’ said the Princess, ‘they’re stopping.’

She was right. We were surrounded by at least thirty Hollow Men by now and they had halted about twenty yards out and simply stood at readiness, the gap between each drone and its neighbour precisely the same.

‘They’re waiting,’ said Wilson.

‘They’re waiting because they have time in their favour,’ said Addie. ‘Look behind them.’

Behind the row of drones, other Hollow Men were popping into malevolent being all over the scrubby land and were walking towards us. Reinforcements. I looked again at the jammed track, swore to myself and switched off the half-track’s engine.

‘Okay, the half-track is dead. We need a new plan.’

Worryingly, there were no suggestions, and Perkins climbed out to join us.

‘They’re like a conjoined military mind,’ he babbled excitedly. ‘They don’t need a chain of command because each individual is a general and a soldier combined. They will study their enemy, exploit its weakness and neutralise its strengths. The reason they’ve stopped is because they don’t yet know how to neutralise our strength.’

‘We have one?’ asked Addie.

‘It’s me,’ said Perkins. ‘They know I’m reading them. And since they’ve stopped thirty or so feet away, we must assume they do have a weakness that we can exploit. Watch this.’

Perkins took three strides towards the line of drones, and they all withdrew. When he returned to us, they moved back in again.

‘They’re waiting until they have overwhelmingly superior numbers,’ said Addie as more drones arrived behind the ones already present, ‘and waiting is something we can’t do.’

‘They might be made of nothing but drip-dry terylene,’ said Wilson, ‘but if they charge at us, we won’t stand a chance.’

He was right. The drones were now three deep, and more were arriving by the second. Just then, one of the Hollow Men who was wrapped around the track tried to grab me with an empty arm attached to a muddy empty glove. We had needed a break, and it seemed we had just got one.

‘Bingo,’ I said. ‘Perkins?’

Perkins looked at where the drone’s gloved hand was still feeling around, while the rest of it was jammed in the drive sprocket. The other drone costumes wedged in the track, I noted, were devoid of life, and just empty clothes.

‘Ah,’ said Perkins, ‘wounded. Spellcode probably disrupted. Here goes.’

He held the gloved hand of the drone for a moment, then smiled.

‘Now that’s something I can use,’ he said excitedly. ‘Sickeningly simple, when you think of it. They were right to be nervous. Wait a moment.’

And he squatted down to prepare himself as the drones became five deep. There were, I reckoned, about a hundred and fifty of them fewer than ten paces away.

‘Blast,’ said Perkins.

‘What?’

‘I need twenty years of life spirit to make this spell work, and I wouldn’t have made it past sixty-nine, so I’ve not got enough years to trade – I need a dozen more to figure out a countermeasure and to clear the swords out of the half-track.’

‘Take it off me,’ I said, ‘I’ll still be only twenty-six.’

‘No,’ said Wilson, ‘use me. This way I get the Value Added Death I’ve always wanted. Dying, to protect you all. It is poetic. It is heroic. I insist.’

‘I’m only twelve,’ countered Addie, ‘so I’m the most qualified to surrender any years. I’ll be in my early twenties and I feel twice that old already. Perkins, do your thing.’

Addie’s argument seemed the most sound, and already the drones, now six deep and in excess of three hundred, were beginning to tramp the ground in readiness for attack.

‘Okay,’ said Perkins holding out his hand to Addie. ‘It’ll be at the count of three but you have to repeat the count. One.’

‘One.’ She took his hand.

There was no time for any goodbyes or pithy final speeches. I didn’t even have time to think before the Hollow Men drew their swords in unison – a sound, like the song of the Quarkbeast, that I hope never to hear again.

‘Two,’ said Perkins, eyes tightly closed, concentrating hard.

‘Two,’ said Addie.

The Hollow Men all advanced a pace. There were so many of them I could see nothing but black suits and white shirts in every direction.

‘Three,’ said Perkins.

But Addie didn’t get to say three. Wilson jumped forward with surprising agility, and knocked Addie’s and Perkins’ hands apart – and replaced Addie’s hand with his own.