It was autumn, and the pathetic, half wooden, God-forsaken little town was sodden and smelling of rot. It had been swallowed by the dank sky as if it had fallen into a pit. It was lost, but it was not the weather had taken it from people and life. Something had arrived and changed everything, the way the plague once did.
Leaves torn from the trees fluttered down in the wind and rubbish clattered. A day darker than night fell like murky, poisonous rain. A day longer than night, but with enough time in it to last to the very end.
Everything was shut. It could have been night. No buses were running, like at night. You could scent the toilets, the petrol, the slaughterhouse, the beer bar, but the way an animal might scent them. The fouled, slippery railway station, the streets awash with mud
