Page 177 of Slack Tide Kill

"Take out Scots Float," she began, "the marsh can't drain. But it's not enough … for Mercer. He'd want more. Bigger."

"How?"

"How?" she repeated.

Liam's thoughts cascaded. He was back with Bledd at Scots Float, then in the water by Prospect Cottage when the boat blew, and chasing Gerald Spate through his swollen holiday park as the deep, pulse-like thumping of the sea crashed against–

"The sea wall!" he blurted. "Dymchurch. If he blows the wall there, he drowns the whole marsh."

Sally twitched. "Then the reactor ... blows?"

For a moment Liam couldn't comprehend it. It was too big, the full scale of it too terrible. Then it sank in.

"All the shit from the reactors washes right into a swollen marsh that can't drain."

His hands went weak on the wheel. "Not just Dungeness, Sally. This would destroy all of Romney Marsh! That's got to be tens of thousands of people. Land, livelihoods, families, homes."

She nodded. "They'll all … have to leave. Contamination will … sink deep. Into the peat, the soil, the trees. The whole … marsh becomes a no-man's land for decades."

He exhaled hard. "The fifth continent."

They sat in silence as the rain buffeted them, water swelling everywhere. It was already happening. It was all around them.

Sally pointed right. "He needs to be near … Liam. To blow Dymchurch. Maybe Greatstone? So he's coming that way."

Liam turned. The road to the right was a wash of sewer water. The road to the coast. To the sea walls. An alternate vector for Mercer to reach the reactors.

"You're sure? If we gamble and he comes straight down through Lydd, we'll miss him."

Sally's eyes bored into him. "You tell … me, Liam. He's planned this for … years. He's not just trying to kill a few … people. He wants to kill the whole marsh."

Liam felt that settling within him. Chaos. Order. Heraclitus. Raving as he died in his pile of dog manure. It made sense.

"OK." He stamped the gas, pulled the wheel right and they flew east on Lydd Road, through New Romney and Littlestone to the coast road. The Gray Lady frothed with rising whitecaps to their right.

Then the radio caught.

"… completely swamped, the tide's swelling at three feet through the wall, it just ripped a hole right through! We–"

Sally looked at Liam, then she fumbled the handset and squeezed the trigger. "What's your location?"

"Our location? We're on Dymchurch High Road."

Those words rang through Liam like a bell tolling.

"When did it happen?" Sally asked.

"The blast? I think, uh, five minutes ago? Ten?"

Five minutes was long enough to reach Littlestone. Ten minutes was long enough to reach the reactor.

"He's already passed us," Sally said, dropping the radio. "Go south!"

Liam swung the wheel. In moments they burst clear of Littlestone. Wind-flung shingle cracked on the passenger side window, starring the glass and causing Sally to flinch.

Greatstone dawned around them like a gray nightmare. The sea boiled and a serrated spear of lightning forked the sky. Off to the right Liam glimpsed the sound mirrors rearing up beyond the caravan park.

No cars on the road. 50 and rising. Then the Dungeness shingle opened around them, massive and raw and wave-tossed, the reactors looming like great titans astride an ancient land.