Anna turned back to the foam, eyes squinting through the gloom and the wind and the driven rain. Now that she looked, there were more of the golems, some half submerged, more bobbing up against the chain link. Dozens of them. Shivering, she looked through the gaps in the chain link at the buildings beyond. A concrete shed with a corrugated shutter for a door sat squarely in the middle of the small compound. Above it, rattling in the wind, a rainbow sign in a childish font read ‘Amusements’. Next to it a white painted burger stand. Solid-looking, made of metal. Everything looked sealed up and nailed down, and the fence stretching above them had been topped with barbed wire.

‘We need to get in there.’ Anna started wading around the edge of the fencing.

‘Ma’am!’ yelled Dawes. ‘We need equipment.’

Anna turned back. ‘Look at the water, Phil. There isn’t time.’

Dawes nodded, though it could simply have been his head shaking from the cold. It was very gloomy now; what little light was left in the day seemed to be getting sucked out of it by the battering wind. They edged their way along, behind the bus shelter to where the fence took a right angle to run back towards the sea wall. Anna’s knee banged against something solid. A wall. Concrete by the feel of it, but not tall, two feet at the most. She climbed up and held on to the fence. Inching her way along, her fingers grasping the chain link for balance, she peered in at the decrepit buildings. The concrete shed beneath the ‘Amusements’ sign sat in the middle of the compound but next to it, nearest to her, was another low building. Some sort of windowless storage facility made of the same white painted metal as the burger bar. Between it and the amusement arcade was a narrow space. In this space, something moved; flapping and clattering.

‘There.’ Anna pointed and shone the torch into the gap. The beam picked up the cut edge of a corrugated metal sheet snapping in the wind.

‘Is that a window?’ Dawes asked.

‘Maybe,’ Anna said. She inched along another foot until she was in the middle of a span of fence between two supporting posts. Here the fence sagged a little. She gripped the top edge beneath the barbed wire and yanked it down. The metal bent. Dawes saw what she was doing and lent his weight. The metal bent a lot more, leaving a fish mouth gap of three feet between chain link and barbed wire.

Standing on the wall, the water was only thigh-deep. With difficulty, Anna managed to get a knee on the edge of the fence. Dawes had his hand above, holding the barbed wire up as far as he could. There was only one way for Anna to breach the gap they’d made and that was by putting both knees across the metal, swivelling precariously and trying to pivot to face the other way. The fence with Anna’s weight upon it wobbled madly, but she used Dawes as her solid prop and managed to drop down into the compound. The water splashed up over her chest and Anna caught her breath, bobbing on her toes and sucking in air.

‘You all right?’ Dawes yelled.

‘Fine,’ Anna lied.

She turned and pushed towards the shed. It was obvious someone had pulled the sheet away from the wooden frame of a small window and left it loose to be buffeted by the wind. Something splashed in the water behind her. She looked back to see Dawes floundering. He’d landed almost up to his neck, but he righted himself and waved her on.

Bloody idiot, she thought. Bloody wonderful, loyal bloody idiot.

Then she was at the window, pulling back the metal with one hand to peer in. Another layer obscured her view. Something soft and sopping barred the way. Someone had nailed up a sleeping bag as insulation. She ripped it out and shone in the torch. The beam bounced across graffiti-strewn walls and a layer of murky water. Things floated and bobbed. Food cartons, cans, plastic milk containers. But at the far wall something was not floating. Something pale that made Anna’s breath catch in her throat and made her heart stutter.

The pale thing was unmoving. A featureless face above the water, tilted forward, glistening strangely, its chin covered by the brown river.

Beth Farlow.