They climbed the long slope towards the dark barren horizon in the east. Where the cranes and chimneys of Portsmouth had been there was nothing but the same grey waste. From time to time there...

He pointed to the gun. ‘That thing loaded?’ ‘Both barrels.’ ‘All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Matthew 26: 52. You feel like some food, a drink maybe, before you go...

‘What about competition?’ ‘Competition?’ ‘From other foragers.’ He shook his red locks; his hair was long but well combed. ‘It’s a lonely part, this. I don’t get many visitors. Those that come are welcome to...

He also insisted on putting food in their packs, entirely stripping his shelf. When Matthew demurred, he said: ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof. And I can get plenty more, friend. There...

He turned from her, from the accusation, from the experience of pain and ugliness, to the sea of the past. There had been rain in the night, he remembered – he had heard it beating...

The things one found, though, were less and less valuable with time and exposure to the elements. Blankets, with a Harrods label, but damp and musty, growing some kind of fungus in the folds. If...

He found it quite easily: the hermit’s body was a marker. He saw that first, but on coming closer realized there were two bodies. They lay together, the hermit’s fingers clenched round the other’s throat,...

Billy was awake, but delirious again. His skin seemed to be hotter even than it had been earlier. Matthew realized he could not leave him here – it was essential, anyway, to get him to...