'OK, maybe I'm going crazy,' said Mike slowly, 'but to me they look like…' How could it be possible? 'Pincers,' he said. 'Pincers and shells.'

Cody stared at him. 'Pincers?'

'Crabs.'

Cody's jaw fell open. He typed in a command for the satellite to search the coastline.

The KH-12- worked its way from Montauk to East Hampton and from there to Southampton, Mastic Beach and Patchogue.

'This can't be happening,' Mike said.

'Can't it?' Cody turned around. 'Well, it Fucking is. Something's coming out of the sea down there – along the whole damn coastline of Long Island. Do you still want to visit Montauk?'

Mike picked up the phone to call HQ.

GREATER NEW YORK, USA

Just past the exit for Montauk, Route 27 joined the Long Island Expressway 495. It led all the way to Queens. It was about 200 kilometres from Montauk to New York, and the closer you drove to the metropolis, the busier it became. Roughly half-way there, near Patchogue, there'd be a surge of extra traffic.

Bo Henson was a deliveryman in his own private courier business. He made the round trip to Long Island twice a day. He'd been to Patchogue to pick up a parcel from the airport and drop it off nearby. Now he was on his way back to the city. He'd had a long day already – but it was no use griping about the hours when you were up against the big boys, like FedEx. Soon he'd be able to relax, though. He'd finished all his deliveries and was clocking off earlier than he'd expected. He was worn out and longing for a beer.

Near Amityville, roughly forty kilometres from Queens, the car in front skidded.

Henson hit the brakes. The car ahead straightened out and slowed right down. Its hazard warning lights flashed on. Something was coating the road. The light was fading, and Henson couldn't see what it was, only that it was moving, and that it seemed to he coming from the bushes on the left. Then he saw that it was crabs. The highway was swarming with them. They were trying to cross the road and didn't stand a chance – the tracks of slime and shattered shell were evidence of the casualties so far.

The traffic crept forwards. It was like driving on soap. Henson swore. He wondered where the creatures could have come from. He'd read in the paper about land-crabs on Christmas Island migrating from the mountains to the sea to spawn. Every year 100 million of them set off en masse. But Christmas Island was in the Indian Ocean, and the crabs in the photo had been huge and bright red, not a seething mass of white.

Henson had never seen anything like it.

He cursed again, and switched on the radio. After a while he hit on a country music station and resigned himself to his fate. Dolly Parton did her best to reconcile him to the situation, but nothing could salvage his mood. Ten minutes later, the news came on, but made no mention of the crab plague. A snow plough had appeared, though, and was pushing its way between the crawling traffic, trying to sweep the milling bodies from the road. The effect was to jam things up entirely. Henson switched between all the local radio stations, but none had anything to say about it, which riled him even more: he was suffering and no one cared. Meanwhile, the air-conditioning was blowing an unwholesome stench into his van and he was forced to turn it off.

On the other side of the crossroads leading left to Hempstead and right to Long Beach, the traffic picked up speed. The creatures hadn't made it that far. Henson kept his foot on the gas and reached Queens an hour later than he'd hoped. He was in a foul temper. Just before he got to the East River he turned left and crossed Newton Creek on the way to his regular drinking-hole in Brooklyn-Greenpoint. He parked, got out and almost had a heart-attack when he saw the state of his van. A mush of crab plastered the tyres, the hubcaps and the paintwork, reaching all the way up to the windows. He had to be on the road first thing the next morning and couldn't deliver any parcels like that.

It was late, but the beer could wait until he'd taken the van to the twenty-four-hour carwash. He climbed back in, drove the three blocks, and told the guys to pay special attention to the alloys: he didn't want a speck of filth left on his van. Then he told them where they could find him, and walked back to the bar for his beer.

The carwash had a reputation for doing a thorough, conscientious job. The slimy gunk on Henson's van was hard to get off, but after prolonged exposure to the jet of hot water, it melted off- like Jell-O in the sun, thought the boy in charge of the pressure-washer. The effluent poured into the drains.

New York had a unique water-supply system. While cars and trains passed beneath the East River at a depth of thirty metres, pipes carrying drinking water and sewage extended 240 metres underground. Engineers with powerful drills were always boring new tunnels to ensure that water flowed freely into and out of the city. Alongside the existing pipes, countless old tunnels were no longer in use. Experts claimed that no one could locate all of the tunnels buried below the streets of New York. There wasn't a single map that showed the entire network. Some tunnels were known only to certain groups of drifters, who kept the secret to themselves. The sewers had inspired directors to make monster movies in which scary creatures were hatched in them. In a sense, everything that flowed into New York's sewers went astray.

In the course of that evening and over the next few days, the carwashes in Brooklyn, Queens, State Island and Manhattan were filled with vehicles that had come from Long Island. The wastewater disappeared into the bowels of the city, flowing along pipelines, mingling with other fluids and entering the recycling stations. Then it was pumped back into the system. Only a few hours after Henson's squeaky-clean van had been dropped off at the bar, the effluent had merged with New York's water.

Within six hours the first ambulances were racing through the streets.

11 May

Chateau Whistler, Canada

There was always a way of coming to terms with change. Or, at least, Johanson had always found one. Much as it had hurt him to lose his house, he knew he could live without it. Even the end of his marriage had been a new beginning. In Trondheim, his short-lived relationships had compounded his solitude – but none of it had bothered him. As far as he was concerned, anything that didn't add to his aesthetic sensibilities or his appreciation of harmony could be consigned to the dustbin. The surface was something he shared with others but the depths he kept for himself. That was his way of getting on with life.

Now, though, in the early hours of the morning, other, more dissonant memories were emerging from the past. He hadn't intended to open his left eye, but now that he had, he examined the world from a cyclopean view, thinking about those in his life who'd been destroyed by change.

His wife.

People grew up thinking that they controlled their lives. But he'd abandoned her, and she'd been forced to see that control was an illusion. She'd argued with him, pleaded with him, shouted, shown compassion, listened patiently, begged for his pity, and been left behind, disenfranchised, bundled out of their shared life. She'd stopped believing in her power to change anything. Life was a gamble, and she'd lost.

Was it his fault that he'd suddenly felt differently? Emotions were beyond innocence and guilt: they were biochemical reactions to the circumstances of life. It wasn't very romantic, he knew, but endorphins meant more than any romance. So what was he guilty of? Of making promises that couldn't be kept…

Johanson opened the other eye.