Oh I do like to be beside the seaside... At least, no one seemed inclined to turn round and start walking back towards the tigers just because I'd turned up again, and the works did seem to have gone away, so we trudged on following little miss perfect's plan. Which sadly hadn't included acquiring a vehicle before making our epic exodus for the coast. Mind you, I suppose she's a tad adverse to plans that involve stealing jeeps... At least now I've realised why Australia doesn't have any native cats. Try spending a week walking across burning hot coals in a fur coat, while a stuck record player endlessly repeats a ten minute conversation, and you'll wish you'd never evolved too.

The monotony was finally relieved when we caught up with the dogs again, who were camped outside a burning house (although presumably not for warmth, the way the weather currently is). As we'd been more preoccupied on shutting up Pixie's mad ramblings than on whether we were about to be attacked, they'd seen us coming for quite some time when we finally spotted them. Immediately our quick brains and trained battle instincts came into play; we stared at them. They (cunning and dangerous creatures that they obviously were) stared back. This had reached almost farcical proportions when they decided that gazing into our eyes wasn't getting them anywhere as we were obviously too dumb to attack them and started backing away. Great. The most civilised creatures we've seen in the past month (or twenty years, if you're going by some peoples clocks) and we just watch them until they wander off.

I pointed this out to the group, who's immediate response was along the lines of "yeah, great plan, you do it then," in spite of the fact I was quite eminently the least suitable member of the party for an extended friendly chat with anything Canine. Ah well. Dragging Bruce for moral support (and Pixie to stop him lurking ludicrously in bushes) I went. Whatever I expected, I didn't get it. Or maybe they were exactly like I really thought they'd be, only half coherent and preoccupied with village politics and looting houses. What was I supposed to say? "Hello, we know nothing, help us" would be slightly sillier than wearing a large neon sign saying "Incompetent foreigner, please attack". But to be honest, we know nothing. Especially not enough to bluff our way into being accepted anywhere. And they were obviously not comfortable around a group of strangers. Having humans seems to be enough to get bad glances. Being mixed species and having humans seems to be beyond explaining. They got so worked up round us that eventually it was a case of back away or they'd attack us. So we left, and they wandered off.

We pitched camp in the back garden of the house. No one seemed inclined to attempt to stop the burning, or see if there was anyone trapped, or even tidy up the bodies strewn around. Whoever the dogs were, I was really glad they hadn't decided they wanted our stuff. I sent a desultory shout into the house, but all I received was my echo and the sound of falling timbers. To think, there was once a time when we organised rescue camps and handed out blankets. Badly, admittedly, but at least we had an idea of what we were trying to work back towards. Now we let houses burn on the grounds they stop eventually, and it's much less effort that way. I went back to the gang to get some supper, and that was when the madness began.

Pixie and Spock were standing over the body of one of the houses former inhabitants, idly prodding it with the cooking knife and making speculatory comments about how much easier it would be than going out to hunt. Edith pursed her lips and said, in her "I know so much more than you but I'm not going to talk about it because that would upset me" tone "You don't eat works." Obviously that was her full contribution to defusing the situation, because she then wandered back into the woods, probably to work on her private armoury a little more. Blue, being marginally more useful, did point out that eating people wasn't really the done thing until the rations got far lower than they were at the moment, to which Pixie, the look in his eyes lending his statement more weight than any other creature has on our travels, replied "Yes, but works aren't human," and began to cut.

I couldn't stay. I didn't want to have to hear or see any more. Bruce and Blue would sort them out, and then I could come back, and things would all go back to normal. Besides, it was about time Edith told us some of these precious facts she'd been keeping to herself, especially now, when we were in danger every second. And if they did eat that stuff, what would happen to them? Was my very flesh poison now? Whether she liked me or not, if she wanted to stay with us, it was about time she stopped thinking that she could get by by setting a few snares and smiling at Bruce... Ok, I'm lying. I went into the woods to run away because I couldn't bear to watch the world go any madder. But it's nice to have an excuse.

I found her quite easily, and she was shaken up enough that at least she'd talk half civilly to me. In fact, we were becoming almost cordial when there was a rustling in the bushes and Pixie strode into the clearing. Six foot high, his fur matted, fresh blood stains trickling out the corners of his mouth and down his jowls, holding out a lump of raw quivering flesh, and advancing on us, insanity gleaming in his eyes. "Wouldn't you like to try some? It's very nice. You'll have some, won't you? Cats like to eat mice..."

And at that whatever was holding me snapped, and I fled, anyway so long as away, still seeing the blood and the insanity and hearing or imagining everywhere throughout the wood cries of "here kitty, kitty, come here, join me for dinner, you want to dine with me, because we're so alike in so many ways" until I wanted to scream to drown it all out, cry out my humanity in the hope that at least I could believe in it again.

Instead I stumbled across Edith, and we sat beneath the tree, unable to run any further, finding comfort in each others terror, shared relief that we didn't have to bear the burden of sanity alone. I suppose she's had a lot of opportunities to become good at comforting lost causes in her life. I was just beginning to calm down when Pixie stumbled into the clearing. I didn't hear what he was saying, didn't want to hear. The look in his eyes and the blood in his fur told me all I needed. I reached for my pistol and shot him.

Chaos, and Pixie down, and more shots, from nowhere, and I wondered what they'd seen, a killer cat armed with a gun, slaughtering her friend, and I ran towards them because I wanted it to stop, wanted everything to stop, and I didn't care whether the bullets stopped or hit me so I wouldn't know anything about them anymore. I don't know what happened, one of the peasants, and then he too was down, a knife in his chest, and I seized the gun as my training bid me do, and Blue, Blue was there then, and Bruce and Edith, and Pixie had vanished into the woods and the man was just dying, dying in front of us as they argued whether to waste a med kit on him, and the world was slipping away...

But the knife was there and it was shiny, so shiny, and I turned it so the light danced over its surface in darting patterns, the oily poison swirling through the darker blood in multiple rainbows. It was so nice, to sit there and know that this was safety, and that I could stop the world any time I wanted too. Just to tell them finally how stupid they all were, how they didn't have a clue what they were doing and had made a huge hash of everything. Not that I had anything to boast about. I'd tried so hard, but the whole continent had been against me. There wasn't really any point in a world where noone could think, no one was going to make everything better, no one knew anything, and there wasn't any way back to normal, any way to a home I'd recognise. I'd tried so hard... and our only hope was that this was really just Australia and get as far away from this continent as possible. I couldn't take this bumbling from pillar to post any more, watching people die as my own humanity ebbed away. Anyway, if I wanted a normal world again, killing myself was just one small but logical step. And at least then all the worry and the pain would go away...

She took the knife off me, didn't she. I should have known she would. At least the rest still acknowledge my life as my own, to do with what I will. But no. Despite the fact that she would happily slit my throat given half a chance herself, she couldn't just let me be, interfering prying meddler that she is. Life for life's sake?! If she believed in life for life's sake she'd have let them come back as works rather than decapitating them. If she believed in life for life's sake she'd be settled down somewhere bearing children by now. But she's just some dried up old bat who hasn't achieved a thing with her life, never understood what's going on, never attempted to find out, just tagged along from day to day with whoever deigned to feed her and keep her safe and run away from everything interesting. No friends, no family, nowhere to call home and not a single happy memory. That's not living. And I couldn't take that for twenty years of existence.

But I suppose I can take it for a few more weeks. I thought maybe things would change, we'd do something promising and useful, like build a self sustaining economy or sail off to a new world. But no. Instead, they've adapted their plan of finding a friendly stretch of coast to "lets find the largest concentration of dangerous armed intelligent works, including the pyromaniac dogs who know how inept we are, wander in looking as blatantly uninformed and human as we can, and just in case they don't take the hint make our first move to ask around about things even a child in this society would know". And they call me the suicidal one.

Index ; What the F*ck ; Body Count ; Who's playing Who ; What's been happening