They leave the Spa building just before dawn. They’re dressed in pink cotton exercise outfits, the loose pants and the T-shirt top with the kissy mouth and the winky eye on the front. Pink canvas sport shoes, of the kind the ladies wore to do their rope skipping and weight training. Broad pink hats. They smell of SuperD, and of rancid SolarNix. In their packsacks are their pink top-to-toes, for when the sun gets too high. If only everything weren’t so pink, thinks Toby – like baby clothes or girly birthday parties. Not an adventurous colour. Terrible choice for camouflage.

She knows the situation is grave, as the news used to say – of course it is. But nonetheless she feels cheerful, almost giggly. As if she’s a little drunk. As if they’re just going on a picnic. It must be a surge of adrenalin.

The eastern horizon is brightening; mist rises from the trees. Dew shimmers on the lumirose bushes, mirroring the faint eerie light of their flowers. The sweetness of the damp meadow breathes all around them. The birds are beginning to stir and chirp; the vultures on the bare branches are spreading their wings to dry. A peagret flaps towards them from the south, sails over the meadow, then swoops in for a landing on the edge of the green-scummed swimming pool.

It occurs to Toby that she may never see this vista again. Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering, Mine! Mine! Did she enjoy her enforced stay in the AnooYoo Spa? No. But it’s her home territory now: she’s left her skin flakes all over it. A mouse would understand: it’s her nest. Farewell is the song Time sings, Adam One used to say.

Somewhere dogs are barking. She’s heard them at intervals over the past months, but today they sound closer. She doesn’t much like this. With nobody to feed them, any dogs left by now are sure to have turned wild.

She’d climbed up to the rooftop before they left, scanned the fields. No pigs, no Mo’Hairs, no liobams. Or none in plain view. How little I’ve ever been able to see, she thinks. The meadow, the driveway, the swimming pool, the garden. The edge of the forest. She’d like to avoid going in there, among the trees. Nature may be dumb as a sack of hammers, Zeb used to say, but it’s smarter than you.

Look, she thinks at the forest, with its hidden pigs and liobams. And Painballers too, for all she knows. Don’t push me. I may be pink, but I’ve got a rifle. Bullets too. Longer range than a spraygun. So back off, assholes.

The Spa grounds and its woodland perimeter are separated from the surrounding Heritage Park by a chain-link fence topped with electrified barbed wire, though the electricity won’t be functional now. Four gates, east, west, north, and south, with winding driveways connecting them. It’s Toby’s plan to spend the night at the eastern gatehouse. That’s not too far for Ren to walk: she’s still not strong enough for heroic trekking. The next morning they can begin to make their way gradually towards the sea.

Ren still believes they’ll find Amanda. They’ll find her, and Toby will shoot the Gold Painballers with her rifle, and then Shackleton and Crozier and Oates will reappear from wherever they’ve been hiding. Ren’s not yet free of the effects of her illness. She wants Toby to fix and cure everything, as if she herself were still a child; as if Toby were still Eve Six, with magic adult powers.

They pass the crashed pink minivan and, around a curve in the road, two other vehicles – a solarcar, a jeep-sized garboil guzzler. Judging from the blackened wreckage, both must have burned. There’s a rusty, sweetish odour mixed in with the charred smell.

“Don’t look inside,” Toby tells Ren as they walk past.

“It’s okay,” Ren says. “I saw a lot of stuff like that in the pleebs, when we were coming here from Scales.”

Farther along there’s a dog – a spaniel, recently dead. Something’s torn it open; there’s a scribble of entrails, a buzzing of flies, but no vultures yet. Whatever it was will surely return to its kill: predators don’t waste. Toby eyes the roadside bushes: the vines are growing almost audibly, shutting out sight. What a lot of kudzu. “We should walk faster,” she says.

But Ren can’t walk faster. She’s tired, her packsack’s too heavy. “I think I’m getting a blister,” she says. They stop under a tree for a drink of Zizzy Froot. Toby can’t shake the feeling that something’s crouched up in the branches, waiting to leap on them. Can liobams climb? She forces herself to slow down, to breathe deeply, to take her time.

“Let’s see your blister,” she says to Ren. It’s not a blister yet. She tears a strip off her top-to-toe, winds it around Ren’s foot. The sun’s at ten. They put on their top-to-toes and Toby smears their faces with more SolarNix, then sprays them again with SuperD.

Ren begins to limp before they’ve reached the next curve in the road.

“We’ll cut across the meadow,” says Toby. “It’s shorter that way.”

SAINT RACHEL AND ALL BIRDS

YEAR TWENTY-FIVE.

OF THE GIFTS OF SAINT RACHEL; AND OF THE FREEDOM OF THE SPIRIT.

SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.

Dear Friends, dear Fellow Creatures and Fellow Mortals:

What a cause for rejoicing is this rearranged world in which we find ourselves! True, there is a certain – let us not say disappointment. The debris left by the Waterless Flood, like that left by any receding flood, is not attractive. It will take time for our longed-for Eden to appear, my Friends.

But how privileged we are to witness these first precious moments of Rebirth! How much clearer the air is, now that man-made pollution has ceased! This freshly cleansed air is to our lungs as the air up there in the clouds is to the lungs of Birds. How light, how ethereal they must feel as they soar above the trees! For many ages, Birds have been linked to the freedom of the Spirit, as opposed to the heavy burden of Matter. Does not the Dove symbolize Grace, the all-forgiving, the all-accepting?

It is in the spirit of that Spirit of grace that we welcome among us three fellow Mortal companions on our journey – Melinda, Darren, and Quill. They have miraculously escaped the Waterless Flood by having been providentially sequestered: Melinda in a hilltop yoga and weight-loss establishment, Darren in a hospital isolation ward, and Quill in a place of solitary incarceration. We rejoice that these three appear not to have been exposed to viral contamination. Although not of our Faith – or not still of our Faith in the case of Quill and Melinda – they are our fellow Creatures; and we are happy to aid them at this common time of trial.

We are grateful also for this temporary abode, which, though it is a former Happicuppa franchise, has sheltered us from the grilling sun and the gruelling storm. Thanks to the skills of Stuart – in especial, his acquaintance with chisels – we have gained entrance to the storeroom, thereby procuring access to much Happicuppa product: the dried milk substitute, the vanilla-flavoured syrup, the moccachino mix, and the single-serving packets of sugar, both raw and white. You all know my view of refined sugar products, but there are times when the rules must bend. Thank you to Nuala, our indomitable Eve Nine, for the skill with which she has whipped up a sustaining brew for our refreshment.

We remember on this Day that the Happicuppa Corp was in direct contravention to the Spirit of Saint Rachel. Its sun-grown, pesticide-sprayed, rainforest-habitat-destroying coffee products were the biggest threat to God’s feathered Creatures in our times, just as DDT was the biggest threat to them in the times of Saint Rachel Carson. It was in the Spirit of Saint Rachel that some of our more radical former members joined the militant campaign against Happicuppa. Other groups were protesting its treatment of indigenous workers, but those ex-Gardeners were protesting its anti-Bird policies. Although we could not condone the violent methods, we did endorse the intention.