Free The Factory Trilogy 01 - Gleam by Tom Fletcher Page A

over his shoulder. ‘Well, yes. Playing the guitar is almost the only thing I can do. One other thing I can do is sing.’ He took another slug from his own bottle and passed it on. ‘On a good day I can do both at the same time.’
    ‘Is today a good day?’
    ‘By no means whatsoever.’
    The woman smiled. ‘What songs have you got?’
    ‘ “Black Sheep Shepherd”.’ Alan tuned the guitar as he spoke. ‘ “The Ladies of Liss”. “The Ballad of Modest Mills”. “The Pit and the Pyramid”. Do you know these ones? “Old Green”. Just say if any of these would fill the hole. Are those tattoos from Spider Kurt? I wrote a song about Spider Kurt, called “The Poker”. I have some very similar diamonds from him on my inner thighs. “Frogs and Toads”. “Rooftop Ruth”, also known as “Ruth of the Rooftops”. “Dog Moon Thinking”. That’s another of mine. “Mushroom Queen”. Any requests?’
    ‘ “The Pit and the Pyramid”, then,’ said the woman.
    ‘A good slow one for the sunset.’
    ‘Aye,’ the large-bearded man chimed in, his voice slurred. ‘ “Pit and Pyramid”.’
    ‘You’ve really been at the sweat, hey? It’ll be even slower for you, friend.’ Alan ran his fingers over the strings and then put the instrument down. He took his jacket off and rolled his shirt sleeves up. He should havechanged his shirt before coming back out. His boots and trousers were still covered in the thick sticky-soft dust from the expanse around the Pyramid. He picked Snapper back up. ‘Okay. I’m called Alan, and this is “The Pit and the Pyramid”.’
    Alan watched the transients as he played. They were watching him back. Most of them swayed in time. He knew what toad sweat was like: the sense of interconnectedness, the feeling that they
had
to move. Everything would seem slower to them than it did to him, as well. It was not an unpleasant intoxicant, and it conferred a peacefulness, mindfulness and warmth that he felt many people could benefit from sometimes. But it was not really a social drug. These travellers were more or less rooted for the night, and there would be no real party on this rooftop.
    After the song was done, the group applauded and he drank some more whisky, spilling it down his chin. He started playing another song, feeling like maybe he’d do three before moving on, when he realised that everybody was shouting and pointing to the low wall running around the edge of the rooftop. He looked over and there was something strange poking up beyond it: some kind of long tendril, like the shoot of a new plant. Except it was much larger, the size of a human arm, and it was moving from side to side. Then another appeared, grey-green and shining in the last of the daylight. They lookedwet. It took him a moment to recognise them. They kept growing or, rather, more and more of them became visible as their owner neared the lip of the rooftop. This was some specimen.
    Soon the horns were towering over them all, bending and swaying as they looked around. They were joined by two more shorter, fatter ones, and then, suddenly, the bulky mass of the snail’s body. As it slimed up from the wall, its mouth was briefly visible: a downturned crescent lined with tiny sharp denticles, the only feature on the otherwise blank, smooth underside. Alan had seen some giants, but never one this big. He ran to the wall and looked over.
    ‘Fuck me,’ he said.
    ‘Must have come up from the real depths,’ the woman said. She was at the wall too. ‘It’s got a saddle hanging off it. Swampies use them to get around. Some of the traders down there have whole caravans of the things.’
    ‘What’s your name?’ Alan asked.
    ‘Churr. Look at its shell.’
    The snail, now crawling over the wall and onto the roof, had a long shell coiled unevenly to a tip that pointed backwards. It was covered with moss and lichen, and colonies of smaller, ordinary snails were nestled into the dips between coils. Discernible