Chapter 01: Exit, Pursued By A Bee - Page 2

“This is so bliss,” she said.

“Make the most of it. It’ll take a few thousand years to terraform Mars sufficiently to lie in the open on a grassy hill and sing along to rock bands while scaring away wildlife.”

“Hey,” called Blake, Derek’s teenage nephew, “are we going down to the festival proper? Reheated Coldplay are due on.”

Kallandra evil-eyed him. She’d agreed, but didn’t really want the chubby youth with them, no matter how hilarious she found his attempts to dance, asynchronously to the rhythm. She swore she could feel the worms making a run for it as he thumped.

“We are coming back, Derek,” she said, devouring an escapee strawberry.

“What?” said Blake, taking off his glasses and rubbing them on his T-shirt for the millionth time, “to this weird hill and its oh-so-spooky-ley-lined-King-Arthur tower?”

“I know the plan is for the expedition to be a return trip, but did you read the small print?”

“Sure.”
“No, the tiny print in between the lines of the small print.”

Her green eyes looked at his, as they did three years before. Sometimes she felt he was such an idiot, not with his work, but as a man. But in romantic situations like this, she knew they were an item.

“Derek, I test space vehicles. Every day might be my last. Every day I wake up thinking whoopee, I survived another day.”

“I know, and your dad never tires of telling me how as a kid, you’d leap off the barn roof in homemade gliders so often, the ER called you bird girl.”

“That’s me. I was brought up on cornflakes and adrenalin. I continue to need both, so get used to it.”

“I have, nearly,” Derek said. “Blake, stop leaping around, you’re scaring the wildlife. Watch out, Kal – ants crawling up your arm.”

She leapt up brushing the insects off her tanned arm. “Good God, look at them!” The ants marched haphazardly across their picnic cloth, swarming over the basket. “They’re after the crumbs. Blake, tell them we’ve eaten the food.”

“Why me?”

“You’re nearer to having a meeting of minds,” she said, grinning at Derek, who winked back.

The bass throbbing from the rock festival continued, but she looked up as her blackbird squawked its distinctive warning to other birds.

“Are they after the ants?” Derek said, clipping up the basket while Kallandra waved the tablecloth in the air. “Maybe they’re telling us to go away so they can picnic on the little blighters.”