THE TOWER: PART FOUR
SIMON TOYNE

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Part V

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Part VI

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Part VII

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Chapter 109

Chapter 110

Chapter 111

Chapter 112

Chapter 113

Chapter 114

Chapter 115

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Simon Toyne

Copyright

About the Publisher

53

Sergeant Beddoes drummed his gloved fingers on the wheel of the cruiser. He was parked behind a billboard on the verge of the main road into town, waiting for speeding cars, not that he expected any today.

The snow had taken everyone by surprise. They were used to it up here in the mountains, but not like this and not without warning. It had come down so fast that he hadn’t had time to put the snow chains on his car and twice now he’d nearly slid off the road. On top of that the world had gone crazy overnight. He’d been called out to a near riot at the Wal-Mart on the edge of town after people started panic-buying everything in the store. He’d gone in to help break it up and seen people who’d known each other all their lives, fighting over bottled water and canned food. He’d had to pull his gun at one point, but at least he hadn’t had to use it. He’d heard stories of full-scale riots in some of the bigger cities, police firing on civilians, law and order breaking down as the gas pumps ran dry and the stores ran out of food because the delivery trucks had stopped rolling. It had made him wonder if Reverend Parkes had been right and that judgement day was just around the corner.

For the last few months the Reverend had preached nothing else, telling his small, devoted congregation how a new Tower of Babel had brought it all about and that demons were already walking the earth in the shape of men to cause chaos and inspire sin that they might be damned and claimed by Satan when the time came. He had told them to stockpile food, batteries and water – and he had been right. He had also talked to him in private, telling about the secret army that was in place, Christian soldiers drawn from every walk of life ready to fight the forces of evil when they came.

‘We can all fight for the Lord,’ the Reverend had said, ‘each of us in our own small way.’ And he had told Beddoes how he could help, using his position as a police officer to watch out for the signs and report them to those who would know their significance. Beddoes had nodded and agreed to do whatever the Reverend thought he should, though he didn’t quite understand how he could be of much use.

Beddoes reached up and held the crucifix he kept on a chain round his neck along with the St Christopher his mother had given him when he first qualified as a patrolman. ‘To keep you safe and bring you home,’ she had said. He’d been thinking about home a lot lately, though home wasn’t the same now she had gone. The Church filled some of the gap left by her passing, but not all of it. Nothing ever could.

A ping sounded on the dashboard. He looked up to find the LoJack receiver had activated but there was nothing on the road. There was a stolen car in the area, heading north by the looks of it. He grabbed his radio to call the dispatcher then paused. He pulled his glove off with his teeth and fumbled in his pocket for the prayer book the Reverend had given him to keep close by, a weapon in the coming war, and flipped to the back. There was an alphanumeric code next to a cell phone number. He compared it to the one on the display and felt his mouth go dry.

They were the same.

He took out his own personal phone and dialled the number written in the prayer book.

Demons in human form – he thought, just as the line connected.

54

‘OK, we’re off the air.’

The Reverend Fulton Cooper held his final gesture of prayer for a few beats then opened his eyes, dropped his hands to his sides and smiled. ‘Good show, everyone,’ he said, casting smiles around the room. The bright studio lights cut out and across the room he saw the pale moon face of Miss Boerman framed by her severe haircut and suit. She was standing by the door, looking straight at him. She nodded when she saw she had caught his attention then turned and slipped back outside.

‘Take a break but don’t go far,’ he announced to the room as he moved towards the exit. ‘The Lord has much work for us yet to do. We’re live again in an hour.’

He passed through the door and felt the relative cool of the outside air on his skin.

‘They’re in the chapel,’ Miss Boerman said, the thin scar on her cheek puckering when she spoke. The mark of his hand from earlier was no longer visible. She handed him a small plain envelope. He opened it and studied the contents.

‘This up to date?’ he asked, slipping the note back in the envelope and tucking it into his jacket.

‘As of five minutes ago.’

‘Everything else set up?’

‘Gassed and ready to go.’

‘Anyone needs me, tell them I’m at private prayer and not to be disturbed.’ He moved past her and headed down the stairs, the leather of his Italian shoes clacking first against the wooden steps, then against flagstones as he arrived in the basement and passed through a solid wooden door in the shape of an arch.

The chapel had been built in the old cellars, making good use of the existing vaulted brickwork and stone floors. It was small with three rows of wooden pews either side of a narrow aisle leading to a lectern which stood before a large stained-glass window that was artificially lit from behind so God’s light could permanently shine through it. Cooper occasionally recorded segments of his shows down here, but he also used it for meetings because it was quiet and out of the way and there was another door hidden behind the altar, a requirement of the fire department regulations that also allowed people to enter the chapel without anyone in the main part of the building knowing they were there.

Eli and Carrie were kneeling at the altar, their backs to him, their heads bowed. Eli jumped as the door banged shut – still fighting his demons. Carrie reached out to him with a gentle, calming hand that had killed eighteen people to Cooper’s sure knowledge. He caught her profile as she turned; the slightly upturned nose that made her seem younger than she actually was and inclined people to underestimate her, just as they did with him, only with her it was often the last mistake they ever made.

‘Praise God for watching over you and delivering you safely,’ Cooper said, smiling down at them as they turned round. He beckoned them over to the tech desk set up at the back of the room, which they used when they recorded down here. He turned on the monitor and heard the scuff of Eli’s steps approaching, but he didn’t hear Carrie’s. She was the only person he knew who could walk up the two-hundred-year-old main wooden staircase inside the house without making a single sound.

They were showing a re-run of the morning show. After a few minutes the picture cut to a recorded section and Cooper pointed at the two men in suits sitting on the sofa opposite him. ‘Are these the people you saw in Dr Kinderman’s house?’

‘Yes,’ Carrie confirmed.

‘They came here asking about all kinds of things but left with nothing. I trust you were careful in your observations of the good doctor’s house?’

‘No one saw us,’ Eli said, his voice flat and empty as always. ‘I guarantee it.’

‘Good. That’s very good.’

Carrie and Eli exchanged a look. ‘We seen it on the news,’ she said, ‘about the telescopes. We was thinking, now that the mission you set for us is over, now that those telescopes are no longer –’

‘We want to get married,’ Eli said. ‘We want you to marry us. Right now.’

Cooper turned and smiled at them. ‘And so I shall,’ he said. ‘So I shall.’ He moved past them, walking back up the aisle towards the fake sunshine streaming in through the window. He stopped in front of the lectern and stared up at the cross. ‘We’ve come a long way, the three of us, from that hell in the desert – a long, long way. And our journey is nearly over. But it is not over yet.’

‘But the towers have fallen,’ Carrie said, her voice small and unsure. ‘The telescopes …’

Cooper turned to face them. ‘They may have been destroyed but the wrath of the Lord is still evident for all to see, is it not? He is still greatly angered by the audacity and insult of those that built them. Destroying them was only part of His plan. The architects of the heresy must also be made examples of. For if I destroy the temple of mine enemy yet suffer the priest to live, will not he go forth and build a temple anew?

‘The sacred mission I gave to you both will not end until those who fashioned this great sin are made to atone for their actions. Only by making an example of them can we warn others of the dangers of sin.

‘Now I know you two love each other with a passion that is strong and pure: and I would not seek to stand between something as beautiful as that. But God sent you to me for a purpose, just as surely as He spoke and told me in that still small voice the service He would have you do in His name.

‘Remember how I found you in the desert, broken by the sins you had been made to perform. Now I want you to remember what I said to you back in that field hospital in Iraq, I want you to recall for me the piece of Scripture I gave you to speak of your higher purpose and remind you of who you are.’

Carrie answered in her tiny voice. ‘Therefore, take up the full armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.’

Cooper nodded. ‘Ephesians, chapter six, verse thirteen. And you see now how the evil day that was prophesied is upon us, and that now is the time to stand firm. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness He prevailed by keeping His mind on His calling, on His mission on Earth, and saying, “Get thee behind me Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him alone shalt thou serve.”’

He reached out and took their hands and held them in his. ‘“Him alone shalt thou serve.” Believe me I would like nothing better, nothing better in this world than to unite you two warriors of God in the blessed union of marriage.’ He let go of their hands and took a step back. ‘But His work is not yet done. And only when it is completed will we be free to pursue our own desires.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the envelope Miss Boerman had given him. ‘But never forget that you are not alone in your service of the Lord. You will see from this information that there are many others engaged in the good fight, many others who are part of the same brother and sisterhood who would also see His will be done. Our reach is long for He sees all.’

Carrie took the envelope and opened the flap with the stiletto of her finger. Inside was a printout showing a section of map with a town in the centre called Cherokee. There was also a time, an alphanumeric number, a compass heading and a note saying: approximate distance to target, four miles.

‘Some people sympathetic to our cause did me the courtesy of installing LoJack devices to the cars of Dr Kinderman and Professor Douglas. I figured it might be useful to know where they were in case they managed to evade us. Dr Kinderman’s car has been in the long-term parking lot of Dulles International airport since early yesterday evening. I think it’s safe to surmise that he is no longer in the country but we have others looking into where he may have gone. The signal from Professor Douglas’s car, however, was picked up by a State Trooper in Swain County, North Carolina about a half an hour ago.’ He pointed at the piece of paper. ‘That gives you a rough idea of where he is. It’s about a five-hour drive from here on good roads, so it will probably take you a little longer today, the weather being the way it is. If you head off now you should get there before dark.’

He closed his eyes and looked up, one hand on his heart, the other raised in front of him like a benediction. ‘I pray you, God, watch over these, your servants, along the righteous path so they may do your work, and bring these foul sinners to swift and rightful atonement so that their souls may finally be freed from the burden thou hast given them, Amen.’

He opened his eyes and smiled at them both, as though something wonderful had just happened. ‘You should make a start. Daylight is burning. If you leave the way you came in, Miss Boerman will give you everything you need. We will have more accurate information by the time you get to Cherokee. Remember, we need to send a message to anyone else who would dare to stare upon the face of God. I’m counting on you to send that message, loud and clear. And if anyone tries to stop you in this sacred mission, anyone at all, be they civilian or officer of the law, then they must also be sacrificed in the name of the greater glory.’

55

Shepherd burst from the interview room and headed across the almost empty office with Franklin following close behind. ‘It was during summer break at the end of the first year of my master’s,’ he said, bundling the laptop back in its case as he walked. ‘I was at Marshall working as a lab monkey in data analysis, cataloguing all the new stuff that was pouring in from Hubble. James Webb had just been green lit and Professor Douglas was in charge, though he hadn’t put his team together yet. It was really hot that year and everyone else seemed to be on holiday. Me and a couple of other research students were the only ones doing any work.’

They pushed through a set of double doors out to the main stairway and started heading back down to the reception area. ‘One Friday a few weeks into our placement Professor Douglas popped his head round the door and told us all to go back to the dorm we were staying in and pack for a two-day trip. We had no idea what he had planned but he was the boss so we did as we were told.

‘He picked us up in his old jeep and we headed east. We thought maybe he was taking us to one of the other launch areas but we drove right past them and kept on going. He said it was good to go back to basics every once in a while, remind yourself what it was all about, and that was what we were going to do: no hi-tech, no computers, just a simple reflector telescope, a few beers and a clear sky.

‘We wound up late in the afternoon heading up into the Smoky Mountains just north of Cherokee, North Carolina. He had this log cabin there, way up on a ridge. It looked like it was straight out of a Western: three rooms, potbelly stove, fresh water you had to pump out of a well. It even had a porch with a rocking chair on it. I guess it was just far enough away from anywhere so that the sweep of the modern world kind of passed it by. And because it was miles from anywhere it got so dark that the whole sky lit up at night. You could see more stars there with your naked eye than you could with a good telescope in a light-drenched town or a city. He had a telescope set up near the cabin in a hunter’s hide built on a rocky ledge and we spent two days up there, tracking the planets, looking at the stars, talking about Galileo and Copernicus and Kepler, where it all came from and where we thought it was all going. He was fired up about James Webb even then. Talked about how it was going to see right to the edge of the universe, right back to the beginning of time.’

They reached the bottom of the stairs and the desk sergeant looked up wearily.

‘We need a car,’ Franklin said.

‘Sure, no problem,’ the walrus replied, wearily picking up his phone and punching a button. ‘I trust your stay with us has been a pleasant one. Please let me know if you used anything from the mini-bar. I’ll let you know when your cab is here.’

‘I don’t mean a cab. We need to borrow a car. One that’s going to be able to cope with the weather out there.’

Shepherd frowned. ‘Why do we need a car? I mean, much as I hate to say it, but wouldn’t flying be quicker?’

‘I doubt anything will be taking off in this,’ Franklin said, pointing outside at the thickening snow. ‘We might get lucky and make it to Charlotte, always assuming they haven’t got worse weather there. But then it’s still about a three-to-four-hour drive to Cherokee on mostly mountain roads. It’s maybe five hours from here but mostly on dead-straight, flat plain roads. Trust me, I know this area pretty well. We’ll be better off driving.’

Franklin steered Shepherd away from the main desk and over to the row of seats by the wall. ‘Tell me why you think Douglas is there.’

‘There was something special about the place. The Professor had history there, real history, why else would he drive all that way when there are plenty of mountains much closer to Huntsville? It had all these photographs of people in frames tacked to the walls, some going way back, including one of the Professor as a kid standing on the porch and squinting into the sunlight as he held a model plane over his head. He must have been about five or six but you could still see the man he would become.’

Franklin looked over at the desk sergeant who was now resolutely ignoring the constantly ringing phone. ‘How we doing with that ride?’ he shouted over.

The sergeant looked at them over the top of his reading glasses. ‘We’re just having a Caddy waxed and polished for you now.’

Franklin turned back to Shepherd. ‘Funny guy. He should be on Comedy Central.’

Shepherd glanced outside at the swirling white. ‘What about the roads – the traffic’s all snarled up already, we saw it coming in.’

‘Exactly. We saw it coming in to town. The roads heading out will be pretty clear. So long as we get a decent car, driving’s going to be our best option. Trust me.’

Shepherd nodded, but for the first time he wasn’t sure whether he did.

56

Liv sat in the kitchen eating dried fruit and salt crackers she’d found in one of the food lockers. Kyle pulled a stool from beneath a stainless-steel counter top and sat down wearily opposite. ‘You should drink some of this,’ he said, pulling a bottle of water from a thermal box on the floor. ‘It might taste a bit funny because it’s got rehydration salts in it.’ He poured half of the bottle into a glass and slid it over to her. ‘I made up a batch for your friends. Don’t worry, it’s clean. In fact all the water’s clean. I’ve been running tests every hour and the ground water’s flowing pure again. The pressure must have blown away the contaminants, though I’ll still keep checking it. Go ahead – drink.’

Liv drank, forcing herself not to gulp it all down in one, savouring the saltiness on her tongue. ‘So tell me how you ended up here,’ she said, as Kyle poured the rest of the water into a second glass.

‘We were all working way down in the south in Dhi Qar Province as part of a project run by an international aid organization.’

‘Ortus,’ Liv said.

‘That’s right. How did you –’

‘– I recognized the logo on the side of your jeep. I know one of the people who runs it, Gabriel Mann.’

Kyle smiled in a way that suggested he both knew and liked him. ‘You know Gabriel?’

She nodded.

‘Ah, he’s a good bloke. When we first set up the project here he came and helped us out a lot. I heard he was in some kind of trouble with the law.’

‘He was. He is.’

‘Well I hope he’s OK.’

‘So do I … You said you were working down south.’

‘Yeah, way down in the southeast the other side of Baghdad in the Mesopotamian marshlands, or what’s left of them. The people there were pretty badly persecuted by Saddam and his mob after they rebelled against him in ’91. As part of his system of punishment he built huge canals to redirect the Tigris and Euphrates away from the marshes to drive the tribes out. He was pretty successful too. There’s only about ten per cent of them left. Then the war came. As soon as Saddam started losing, the locals blew holes in the dams and dykes and let the water flow back in again. We were sent to help monitor the water quality and manage the restocking of the wetlands with reed beds. There were sixteen of us.’

‘What happened to the others?’

‘Gone.’ He took a drink then carefully placed the glass down on the counter. ‘We’d been working together for six months. It was good work. The people were returning, the reeds were growing, we were even seeing some of the wildlife coming back. The marshes used to be a major staging post for millions of migratory birds until Saddam buggered it all up. Every day more life returned – both man and bird. Then all of a sudden the plug got pulled on us. It had something to do with what happened to Gabriel. Our headquarters are in Ruin and he was arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist or something, trying to blow up the Citadel using Ortus resources. The upshot was that all of Ortus’s bank accounts were frozen while the charges were being investigated. Which meant we could no longer pay for anything and weren’t getting paid ourselves.

‘We kept going as long as we could, hoping the money would get unfrozen but pretty soon we started running out of food, fuel, you name it. So we pulled out and headed back towards the border.’ He rolled the water around in the glass, staring at the liquid, deep in thought.

‘So how come you ended up here? Did you get lost?’

‘No, nothing like that.’ He continued to stare at the glass, as if the answer might lie in it somewhere. ‘I’m still not really a hundred per cent sure what happened. We were travelling north, heading for the Turkish border in a four-vehicle convoy, which is the only safe way to travel on these roads. We were making pretty good time, considering all the roadblocks on Highway 8, had made it as far as Al-Hillah and we were getting ready to push on as far as Baghdad when I got a feeling that we were going in the wrong direction. I can’t really explain it. It was like I knew that the maps, the GPS were wrong. I wasn’t alone, Eric and Mike felt it too.

‘The rest of the guys thought we’d gone mad. They told us to shut up and keep driving but we couldn’t do it, none of us could. It was such a strong feeling. For me it was like a magnet pulling at some kind of metal core inside me.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘I’ve always been a bit of a nomad, never really stayed in one place for too long. No matter where I ended up and how good a time I was having there would always come a morning when I’d wake up with an overwhelming urge to be somewhere else. And this was exactly like that, only instead of wanting to head off into the unknown it felt like I was returning somewhere. Like I was coming home.

‘It’s like – for the last six months or so, ever since I’ve been working on the marshes, I’ve been watching the birds: flamingos, pelicans, hooded crows, teals. Some of these guys fly halfway round the world from as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as Africa and India to end up in the exact same place where they hatched. They’ve been doing it for thousands of years, hundreds of thousands probably, and we still don’t really know how they do it. It’s just an instinct in them, a natural urge. Then a few years back the marshes vanished, I mean there was nothing there at all but cracked earth and the odd abandoned boat. But as soon as the water came back, they knew. Somehow they just knew that’s where they needed to be. That’s what it felt like for me. I felt such a strong pull to be here, though I didn’t know what this place was, or even if it was here. I’ve never been here before in my life, but I felt like I was coming home. Explain that.’

Liv shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘But I felt something like it too.’

Behind her the door opened and she smiled when she saw Tariq standing there looking better than she’d seen him for a while. Her smile faded quickly when she saw the look of concern on his face. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘You better come see for yourself.’

57

Liv saw why Tariq had fetched her the moment she stepped out of the main building. A thick column of dust was rising in the eastern sky heralding new arrivals.

‘Soldiers,’ a voice shouted down from the guard tower.

‘How many?’ Tariq called back.

‘Difficult to tell. There’s one Humvee and one truck. The truck could be empty or it could have twenty men inside.’

Tariq looked over beyond the perimeter fence to where a group of workers were hurrying back to the compound. He waited until the last of the grave-digging detail had slipped through then shouted, ‘Close the gate and man the guns.’

‘No,’ Liv said. ‘We’ve been through this. We cannot meet everyone who comes here with suspicion and loaded weapons.’

‘We tried it your way last time,’ Tariq replied. ‘First we talk, then we let them in. I cannot risk all our lives again.’ Then he walked away before she had time to argue.

The Humvee and the truck pulled to a halt about fifty metres short of the gate and sat there for a while, engines running, shrouded in a cloud of their own dust.

‘American,’ Tariq said, reading the markings on the side of the vehicles.

Liv was standing next to him, inside the perimeter gate waiting to greet them. ‘What are they doing?’ she asked.

‘They are being cautious,’ Tariq replied, his eyes never leaving the lead vehicle.

‘Can you blame them.’ She glanced up at the .50-cal gun in the guard tower, a man standing behind it, poised and ready.

She noticed Tariq’s hand tighten on the grip of the AK47 slung across his back and wondered for a fleeting moment if he wasn’t spoiling for a fight. This was the problem with letting men do the negotiating. Sooner or later their hormones took over and it usually ended in battle. ‘HEY,’ she shouted at the Humvee, ‘OVER HERE.’ She waved her hands over her head and jumped up and down to get their attention.

‘What are you doing?’ Tariq looked at her as if she had gone insane.

‘You said we should talk first so I’m talking. HEY. I’M AN AMERICAN.’ She pulled a keffiyeh from round her neck and started waving it in the air. ‘USA. HELLO.’

‘You can stop now,’ Tariq said. ‘I think they heard you.’

The Humvee started to creep forward along the tracks in the dirt leading to the gate. It was impossible to see who was inside because of the sun on the windscreen, a bright slash of light that shimmered as the hard wheels crept over the rough ground.

‘Can you do me a favour?’ Liv said out of the corner of a fixed smile, ‘take your hand off your rifle strap.’

Tariq reluctantly obeyed just as the Humvee crunched to a stop ten feet short of them. The door popped open and a rangy corporal got out. Liv felt Tariq stiffen beside her as he saw the M-4 the soldier was cradling in his arms, eyes shielded by the standard-issue Oakleys most of the soldiers seemed to favour. He stood by the vehicle saying nothing. By the slight tilt of his head Liv could tell he was scoping out the guard tower and the .50-cal cannon that had tracked the Hummer all the way to where it now stood.

‘Hi,’ Liv said, smiling through the tension. ‘I’m Liv Adamsen. I’m an American. Who are you?’

A hand let go of the M-4 and pointed at the name badge stitched to the left breast of his desert fatigues. Liv squinted against the glare coming off the Humvee’s windscreen and read the name. ‘Williamson. You got a first name?’

He nodded. Liv’s smile was starting to hurt now. ‘Want to give it to me?’

The soldier ignored the question, looking straight past her at the fountain of water shooting up from the spire of the drill in the centre of the compound. ‘What is this place?’ His voice was soft, almost childlike and totally at odds with the hardened image the rest of him radiated.

‘It’s …’ Liv paused as she realized she did not have a ready word to describe it.

‘It’s beautiful,’ the soldier whispered, his shaded eyes taking in the lines of the rivers snaking away across the dust. Behind him the truck’s engine fell silent. It rocked on its springs and other men emerged, dropping down one by one to the ground, six of them, all wearing the coffee-stain camouflage of the US military. Liv was reminded of the welcoming committee she and Gabriel had encountered crossing the border from Turkey what seemed like a lifetime ago. Three more uniformed men climbed out of the Humvee. And though they were wearing uniforms and carrying weapons, there was nothing threatening or hostile about them. They just seemed like a bunch of cautious guys edging their way into a party they weren’t sure they were invited to. Tariq must have sensed it too. He raised his hand to the man in the guard tower and the .50-cal cannon swung away as the man stepped back.

‘Where you from?’ The soft-spoken corporal removed his shades and squinted at Liv with pale blue eyes that looked like they should be peering out at a wheat field from beneath a faded starter cap.

‘I’m from New Jersey,’ she said. ‘You?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m from all over, I guess. Illinois originally but I wouldn’t exactly call it home.’ He looked back at the spout of water shooting up from the ground, like a kid watching a firework. Then he smiled. ‘Did you feel it too?’

Liv frowned. ‘Feel what?’

‘The pull to this place. We all felt it. We all volunteered to stay behind when orders to ship out came through – the rest of the men were off like rabbits, they been pining for home for weeks, never seen homesickness like it. But none of us have any real homes to go to …’ His hand clenched into a fist and tapped on his chest above his heart. ‘But then we felt the pull to come here. So we came.’

Liv looked up at Tariq. ‘Why don’t you come on in,’ she said.

Tariq glanced down at her then back at the row of soldiers. ‘How many are you?’

The Corporal shrugged. ‘Just what you see here.’

‘The vehicles stay outside the fence,’ Tariq said, ‘and you need to hand over your weapons. We’ll keep them over there, locked in the armoury,’ he pointed to the nearest guard tower. ‘If you want to leave you can have them back again, no arguments, but no one walks around with a weapon inside the compound, understood?’

The Corporal stared hard at Tariq for a few long moments. Asking a soldier to hand over his weapon was like asking him to surrender. ‘How come you get to keep your AK?’ he said.

‘I don’t,’ he replied. ‘You lock up your weapons, I lock up mine. Everyone’s the same.’

‘But who gets the key?’

Tariq nodded at Liv. ‘She does.’

The Corporal smiled. ‘Well in that case it’s a deal breaker. In my experience you can never trust a Jersey girl with something of value.’ His face broke into a laugh and she saw the boy in him again. ‘I’m only kidding.’ In a few well-practised moves he made his M-4 safe and held it out to Tariq. ‘Hey man, no problem – your house, your rules, though you might want to reconsider letting the vehicles in, or the truck leastways.’ He turned to it as one of the other men climbed up and raised the canvas siding to reveal the truck was full of boxes and crates of food. ‘We just got a re-order in at the same time as all the other guys were shipping out. There’s K-rations in there and enough food to feed a battalion for about a month. We thought we’d bring it along, seeing as we had no idea where we were headed. The only thing we don’t got much of is water, but I see you pretty much got that covered.’

Tariq nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You can bring the truck in, but the Hummer stays outside.’ The gate clanged like a bell as it was unlocked and then swung open to let the new arrivals inside. They filed in quietly, handing over their weapons to Tariq as if they were just checking in coats at a nightclub and Liv watched them closely, sizing them up. They were foot soldiers, enlisted men who more often than not joined up to escape jail or the crushing boredom of a dead-end life with no job and no prospects. Back home they joined gangs and fought to create the families they’d never really had. In the army they did pretty much the same. They were nomads, homeless, just like the guys from Ortus. Just like she was.

‘Where were you stationed?’

‘East of Baghdad,’ Williamson said, still staring up at the water fountain.

Liv nodded and walked over to Tariq who was checking weapons and making them safe.

‘It’s spreading,’ she said.

‘What is?’

‘The pull of this place – it’s spreading. The guys from Ortus felt it yesterday at Al-Hillah, these guys felt it today in Baghdad.’ She looked up and scanned the horizon all around, thinking of the whole world that lay beyond it. ‘We should get ready for more people,’ she said. ‘Lots more.’

58

It was early afternoon by the time Franklin and Shepherd finally eased onto the I-26 going northwest into a flurry of fine snow that drifted out of a light fog. The traffic was solid heading into Charleston, a three-lane parking lot, inching its way into the city. The outbound lanes were almost empty.

Franklin drove. Shepherd sat in the passenger seat, studying a series of maps he’d borrowed from the highway patrolman who’d ‘loaned’ them his Dodge Durango with about as much grace as someone handing over a personal credit card, pointing to a mall and saying ‘Knock yourself out’. For the first twenty minutes or so the only sound was the rumbling of thick wheels on blacktop, and the occasional rustle of paper as Shepherd unfolded the maps one by one and studied them. They were topographical maps showing the border region between South Carolina and North Carolina, with the Smoky Mountains rising up in the west. His finger traced each winding track, searching for a road he had only travelled once before, nearly twenty years previously.

‘Find what you were looking for?’ Franklin asked from the driver’s seat.

Shepherd stared out at the whiteness, the road disappearing into the fog within fifty metres either way so that it felt like they were moving but not going anywhere. ‘Hard to tell from these maps,’ he said. ‘Guess I need to be there and see what looks familiar.’

‘You won’t be seeing much if this fog doesn’t lift. The snow will make everything look different too.’

Shepherd wondered if this was all a waste of time. ‘We could always turn around and head back, follow one of our many other leads,’ he said.

Franklin chuckled. ‘Man you sure got cynical awful quick – normally takes a couple of years in a field office to wear the shine off a new agent.’

Shepherd said nothing. He kept thinking about the photograph of the dead woman and imagining how he would have felt if it had been his Melisa lying there instead. He could almost feel the pull of the laptop in the footwell behind his seat, taunting him with the knowledge it contained. It was the danger that came with allowing something to become the single pulse of your life: it drove you, gave you focus and purpose, but it could also derail you the moment it was no longer there. Melisa had been the light that lured him out of the darkness. He closed his eyes, and found himself back in the women’s shelter attached to the place he had washed up. Melisa was doing her thing, helping some poor woman who was not much more than a kid herself deliver a baby. The woman was Chinese and when the baby was finally born, wriggling and mewling into the world, Melisa whispered something to him: ‘Do you see them?’

She often did that: asked a question that made you ask one back.

‘See what?’

‘The threads. The Chinese believe that when a baby is born, invisible red threads shoot out and find their way to all the people they will connect with in their life. And no matter how tangled up they get as they grow, those threads never break so they will always end up finding their way to the people they were destined to meet.’

He imagined those threads now, connecting him to Melisa, twisting through the air and pulsing like veins.

‘That thing you said back there,’ Franklin’s voice rumbled like the tyres, low and serious, ‘the thing about something heading towards Earth, you think that’s a possibility?’

Shepherd opened his eyes and realized he must have been dozing. They were in flat country now, hardly any buildings, hardly any sign of life apart from the odd car heading in the other direction towards Charleston. ‘Statistically speaking it’s possible.’

‘So how come other telescopes haven’t seen it?’

‘Hubble can see further than anything on earth.’

‘OK, but presumably anything far enough out that only Hubble could see would take millions of years to get here.’

‘Not necessarily. There are a lot of theoretical objects in space, physics-defying things that we can imagine but have not been able to find or measure. One of them is known as a Dark Star. It has huge mass and travels at or near the speed of light. If one of these things was coming straight at us then the light from it would only just outrun the object. We wouldn’t know anything about it beforehand, not until it was about to hit because the object would arrive at almost the same time as the light, like it had just appeared out of nowhere.’

Franklin stared ahead at the road. ‘OK, say, for argument’s sake, one of these Dark Stars is heading our way, would that explain all this stuff that’s going on: the ships, the soldiers, the people heading home?’

‘It’s possible. We can see the effect the moon has on the sea and humans are sixty per cent water, our brains are nearer seventy-five per cent, so it stands to reason the moon must have some effect on us too.’

‘That’s for sure. If you ever work a midnight shift at a hospital or a police precinct during a full moon you’ll know it’s true. Everyone goes nuts.’

‘And the moon is only one tiny object. Imagine what effect a massive star would have on us all. We’re all related to each other on an atomic level – you, me the car, the stars – we’re all made of the same stuff.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean the atomic building blocks that make up you and me are the same ones that burn at the heart of stars, and all of it came from the same place. Around fourteen billion years ago the universe was born. It started out as something called the point of singularity, smaller than a sub-atomic particle, incredibly dense and incredibly hot. Every single thing that is now in the universe exploded out from it and began to cool as it expanded, forming the protons, neutrons and electrons that, over time, became atoms and eventually elements. The first element was hydrogen. Most of the atoms in the human body are hydrogen. These elements then started to coalesce into huge clouds that slowly condensed to form stars and galaxies. Then heavier elements began to be synthesized inside stars and in supernovae when they died. One of these was carbon, the essential building block of all organic life forms. And this process is still happening throughout the still-expanding universe. Things are born. Things get torn apart. And the elements of those dead things become something else. Nothing lasts for ever, but nothing ever entirely disappears either. It just becomes something else.’

The sound of the tyres rumbled through the silence that followed. Outside the white, frozen countryside continued to slip by. The Interstate was practically empty now. From time to time a building or sign would loom out of the fog giving variation to the otherwise flat white landscape, but most of the time they might just as well have been driving along in a huge hamster wheel – always moving but getting nowhere. It was a fair visual representation of the limbo Shepherd was feeling, halfway between something and nothing, with no real concept of either. Maybe the world had already ended and this was purgatory, driving through the fog for ever with Franklin at the wheel, never knowing what had happened or whether they could have done anything to stop it.

A ticking sound punctuated the silence as Franklin hit the indicators and started to ease off the highway onto a side road. ‘Just taking a little shortcut,’ he said. ‘We need some gas and a bite. There’s a town up here.’

Shepherd looked down at the map, following the line of the road they had just taken until it stopped at a dot of a town called St Matthews. ‘We could have got gas and food on the Interstate. This is going out of our way.’

Franklin reached into his pocket, took out a cigarette and popped it between his lips. He stared ahead, his fingers tapping on the wheel, the cigarette hanging unlit in his mouth.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

Shepherd thought back through all the wrong notes he’d picked up over the last few hours: the way Franklin had ushered the cop who had clearly known him out of the room back at the station; the way he had insisted on driving rather than flying up to Cherokee; even his suggestion to come to Charleston in the first place to interview Cooper rather than hand it over to other agents. ‘Sorry for what?’

Franklin wound down his window a little then lit the cigarette, blowing smoke out into the cold. ‘You’ll see,’ he said.

59

The soldiers immediately made themselves at home.

As well as the food and fresh fuel supplies – which they offloaded from the lorry with impressive and well-drilled speed – they volunteered to take over the grave-digging detail their arrival had disrupted. They also brought something far more valuable than any of these – they brought a laptop.

All the communications and technology in the compound had either been destroyed or looted, effectively cutting it off from the wider world. So while everyone else was out beyond the perimeter fence Liv traced cables from the dish on the roof of the main building and hot-wired the laptop into the compound’s satellite link.

Like any journalist Liv was a total information junkie and she’d been cold-turkey for days now so the first thing she did when she fired up the laptop and got online was call up some news sites. She scanned the headlines feeling the buzz of an addict getting a fresh hit. Since her brother had fallen to his death from the summit of the Citadel, Ruin and the story that had unfolded in the wake of his sacrifice had never been far from the news. It was her story too – and also Gabriel’s. She did a News search on Google with GABRIEL in the subject line. Pages of results came back, all several days old and just retelling stories she already knew: his arrest at the hospital for suspected terrorist acts and homicide; his subsequent escape from custody; the manhunt that ensued with her picture and name next to his. After that there was nothing. The only more recent stories relating to Ruin were medical ones concerning an outbreak of what some of the more tabloidy sites were calling ‘a plague’.

Liv clicked on the top result, her heart racing at the implications of this. She remembered the symbol she had seen on the Starmap, the circle with the cross through it that made her think of disease and suffering. Was this what it predicted – the event that would result in the end of days?

The article opened and she speed-read it, her mind pulling out the facts as her eyes skimmed the words: outbreak centred around the Citadel – eighteen dead, eighty-six in isolation – the whole city of Ruin in quarantine and under police control.

She opened another window and searched for RUIN POLICE. Skype was already installed on the desktop and she opened this too, logging in through her own account that thankfully still had some credit on it. She copied the number of the switchboard into the keypad, adding the international dialling codes for Turkey then hit the key to boost the speakers as the number dialled and started to ring.

It rang for a long time, long enough for her to read another article about how the infected had been transferred from the Public Church into the Citadel itself. There was a link to a news clip but someone answered before she could play it.

‘Ruin Police,’ a voice said, with chaos sounding in the background.

‘Hi,’ Liv said in fluent Turkish, ‘could you connect me to Inspector Arkadian?’

‘Name please?’

‘Liv Adamsen.’

‘One moment.’

The line switched to musak and Liv flipped back to the news site, scrolling through another article about the outbreak. It featured apocalyptic photos of empty streets and people standing by the public gate to the Old Town wearing full contamination suits. The Citadel soared up in the background, so terrible and familiar. Seeing it in this context made something click in Liv’s head and she pulled the folded piece of paper from her pocket and smoothed it flat on the desk while the tinny hold tune continued to play. She scanned the symbols again, her eyes settling on the beginning of the second line.

The symbol for disease followed by …

She looked back at the photo on the screen, the man in the contagion suit with the sharp outline of the mountain behind him.

… of course …

The second symbol represented the Citadel and the disease had started there and was now spreading. The next part of the prophecy was coming to pass.

The musak cut out.

‘Liv?’

‘Arkadian.’ More noise in the background, like he was on a street full of children. ‘Are you OK? I just saw the news about the outbreak.’

‘It’s chaos here. People are scared. I’m scared. We’re evacuating the children from the city. Where are you?’

She looked out of the window at the distant movement of people working on the hill as they dug the new grave. ‘Still in the desert,’ she said. ‘We found it.’

‘I know. Gabriel told me.’

Liv felt the world shift. ‘Gabriel! You spoke to him?’

‘Yes.’ Another pause filled with the babble of children. ‘Just before he was taken into the Citadel.’

Liv felt like all the air had been sucked from the room.

‘He was sick, Liv, he had the virus – but he was not as sick as the others.’ She gripped the sides of her chair and reminded herself to breathe. ‘Most of them go mad when the disease takes them, but not Gabriel. He rode all the way back here because he knew he had it. He didn’t want it to spread. It was Gabriel who insisted the disease be contained inside the Citadel. He wanted to take it back where it came from. He wanted to beat it. And if anyone can do it, it’s him.’

Liv tried to speak but couldn’t. In her ear she could hear Arkadian still speaking but she didn’t hear his words. Her eyes dropped down to the red stained piece of paper and scanned the second line again, a terrible new meaning emerging from it in the light of Arkadian’s revelation.

Disease

Citadel

A knight on horseback – Gabriel

She remembered the words on the note he had left her, telling her that leaving her was the hardest thing he had ever done. And now she knew why. He must have known he was infected. He’d known that and had still ridden all the way back to the Citadel, just to protect her.

She looked at the remaining symbols on the second line of the prophecy, hoping she might find something hopeful in them, but all she saw was more misery.

She knew what it meant now. The T was her, the circle confinement and the moon and chevron told her how long it would all last.

Nine moons – Eight months.

She clicked on the video clip embedded in the news article. It had been filmed from a news helicopter at night so the quality wasn’t great. A bright searchlight picked out a procession of patients strapped to stretchers and being carried to the mountain. She studied the faces, all looking straight up into the sky. Even through the grainy images she could see the masks of pain their faces had become. Tears started to run down her cheeks then the light swung away, settling again on the last stretcher to emerge from the church. She hit the space bar to pause it just as Gabriel looked straight up at the camera. It was like he was staring straight at her, like he was saying goodbye. Her love. Her life – being carried away on a stretcher, and into the heart of the hateful mountain.

60

Franklin finished his cigarette and flicked it out of the window. ‘You ever been married, Shepherd?’

‘No.’

‘And you don’t have kids, do you?’

‘No, I don’t.’

They were on the outskirts of the town now with widely spaced houses emerging from the trees, a general store with lights burning in the windows and a sign outside saying St Matthews Piggly Wiggly. There was a gas station on the other side of the road, also open for business. Franklin drove past them both, all pretence of getting food and gas now abandoned.

‘When you have kids, everything changes. It’s like taking your heart out of your chest and watching it walk around. You’d do anything for them, anything at all. And if you have a daughter,’ he shook his head, ‘well that’s a whole other ball game. The world suddenly seems ten times more dangerous than it did before, a hundred times, and she is so vulnerable and fragile in it.’

He slowed down and took a right into a one-lane street lined with neat, single-storey houses with wooden porches and brick chimneys, their front lawns all blanketed in white.

‘So you work your ass off to put a roof over her head, give her a good life, protect her from all the crap that you know is out there, the stuff that you see every day. Everything you do takes on new meaning, every bad guy I ever put away was dedicated in some way to my daughter. I did it for her, to make the world a safer place for her, and for her mother.’

He took another left onto a road lined with bigger houses, some with four-car drives.

‘And you try so hard to shut off the darkness you have to deal with but it’s always there, like a stain. So you keep it from your kids by keeping yourself from them, because, in a way, you are the thing you want to protect them from.’

He brought the car to a halt outside a house with a long sloping roof like a ski jump. Franklin fixed his eyes on it and killed the engine.

‘Then one day you realize you don’t know who they are any more, either of them. You’ve spent so long working to give your family a better life that you’re no longer a part of it. You’ve become a stranger in your own home. You can’t talk to them, you can’t understand them, you’re only aware of the distance between you where once there was no gap at all.’ He looked away and Shepherd wondered if the tough old bastard was actually crying.

‘I’m sorry I dragged you all the way out here,’ Franklin said, turning back and looking him square in the eye. ‘I kind of convinced myself it was all about the investigation but in the end it looks like it’s all about me.’ He nodded at the sideways house. ‘And you were right about the homing instinct.’

‘You don’t have to explain it.’

Franklin turned to him. ‘You said you didn’t have a home.’

‘I don’t, at least not like this. But home means different things to different people.’ He took a breath ready to tell him … about Melisa, about his missing two years, even about how he was using the MPD files to try and find her again. But just then the door of the house opened and a girl of about twenty stepped out.

Cold air flooded in as Franklin got out of the car. Shepherd watched him walk up the drive towards her, like he was being pulled by an invisible thread. He stopped a few feet short of her and they stared at each other. Then she stepped forward and wrapped her slender arms round his neck and buried her face in his chest. Behind them another woman, an older version of the girl, stepped onto the porch and stared at them for a moment. Then she too came forward, a smile breaking on her face like a sunrise, and Shepherd looked away, feeling uncomfortable about sharing such a private moment even from a distance.

He stared down the street at the other houses. Some were empty and dark, the drives showing the fading tyre tracks of cars no longer there. Other houses glowed, their festive decorations lighting up the snow like Christmas cards.

Witnessing the power of the homing instinct and its effect even on someone like Franklin made him realize that the pull to find Melisa and the reckless things it was making him do was simply the same thing working in him.

The rap of a knuckle on his window snapped him back to the present.

Franklin was standing outside the car. Shepherd got out, snow crunching beneath his shoes and cold air on his skin.

‘You want to come in, grab some lunch?’

Shepherd looked over at the porch where the two women were standing watching them. ‘I don’t think so. I’d just be in the way.’

Franklin nodded. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘When I drove here I thought … well, I don’t know what I thought, but now I’m here I don’t think I can leave again, not for a while at least.’

‘It’s OK, I understand. I’ll go on to Cherokee alone, see if I can find Douglas’s place. It’s probably a waste of time anyway, I only ever went there once.’

‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Franklin said, his brow creasing with the difficulty of what he was doing. ‘And if you do find him, don’t approach him on your own. Call me first, OK?’

‘He’s my old teacher – what’s he going to do, give me a tough assignment?’

‘He’s a wanted terrorist who nearly got you killed in an explosion this morning. Don’t forget that.’

‘OK, if I find him I’ll call – I promise. Now get inside that house, Agent Franklin, and spend some time with your family.’

‘Ben.’

‘What?’

‘Name’s Ben, short for Benjamin: it’s not my bureau name, it’s my real one. My old man won a hundred-dollar bill for calling me it when I was born, asshole that he was. He’d probably have called me George if our name had been Washington, just to win a dollar.’

‘It’s a fine name, Ben. You wear it well.’ Shepherd held out his hand.

And Franklin shook it.

61

Rosie Andrews crunched through the snow towards the ATM. It was out of service, just like all the others. Nothing was working. Everything was falling apart. She felt tears bubbling up through her growing panic. She had about fifteen dollars in her purse, two maxed-out credit cards, a quarter of a tank of gas and at least a three-hour journey ahead of her. The gas would get her maybe fifty miles out of Asheville, about a third of the way down to her mom’s in Atlanta, maybe even less the way her station wagon was loaded up.

From somewhere across the parking lot she heard glass shatter followed by a roar of voices that made the hairs bristle on the back of her neck. She turned and hurried back to where she had left the car, parked behind a dumpster on the far side of the lot, away from the large angry-looking crowd she had seen outside the big Petro Express when she had driven in. It all added to the sick feeling that had been growing inside her that made her feel something was terribly wrong. The crowd had been arguing with security staff who were allowing only a few people in at a time to control numbers.

There was another crash and the roar got louder.

Sounded like the security guys had lost the argument.

The noise frightened her. It was the sound of violence and chaos and it made her feel small and vulnerable. She just wanted to get some money and get out of here. She just wanted to get home.

She rounded the edge of the dumpster, fretting in her pocket for her keys, and saw the man leaning down by the side of the car, his face pressed against the rear window. Rosie felt blood singing in her ears and her vision started to tunnel.

‘What are you … you get away from there.’

The man looked up but didn’t move – he just kept looking at her in a way she didn’t like.

Another crash of glass behind her. Another roar.

She pulled her hand from her coat and pointed it at him. ‘You step away from the car, you hear me?’

The man looked down and registered the gun she was holding, but still he didn’t move.

‘Is this man bothering you, sweetie?’

The voice made her jump. Rosie’s head jerked round to discover a birdlike woman standing next to her, so small she was almost like a child. She was looking up at her, her blue eyes cold against the snow. In her peripheral vision she saw movement, the man moving forward, using the distraction to close the gap between them.

She stepped backwards, slipping on the ice a little but holding the gun steady in a good grip like she’d practised on the range. She was going to shoot him. If he took one step closer she would fire without hesitation. She had often wondered if she would be able to do it if she found herself in a situation like this but now there was no question in her mind that she could. It was a nature thing. A primal instinct to protect what was yours. She took another step back, opened her mouth to warn the man one last time, then an object banged against her side.

The movement was so fast she didn’t even feel the pain until the blade was sliding back out from between her ribs, so sharp and sudden that it snatched the breath from her mouth as quickly as the man took the gun from her hand.

She felt confused, like everything was happening to someone else and she was just watching. Warmth spread out from the burning pain in her side and she looked down at the red bloom spreading over the white of her coat.

Blood. Her blood.

The sight of it shocked some sense back into her and she took a ragged breath ready to scream but a strong hand clamped over her mouth and dragged her further back into the shadows behind the dumpster.

Carrie watched Eli holding the woman tightly, making sure her blood spilled away from him and onto the snow and not his boots. When her body went limp he laid her gently on the ground and patted down her pockets until he found the keys.

‘Shame,’ he said, standing up and moving over to the car.

‘Just bad timing I guess,’ Carrie said, inspecting the blade of her knife and wiping it with a handful of snow.

‘I didn’t mean her.’ Eli pressed the button on the keyfob and the car thunked as the central locking disengaged. He opened the back door and nodded towards the interior. ‘I meant her.’

The backseat was crammed with boxes of groceries, rolls of bedding and a couple of laundry bags overflowing with baby-girl clothes. The owner of the clothes was wrapped up tight in a quilted snowsuit and strapped into a kiddie car-seat, asleep, a single strand of blonde hair escaping from beneath a hand-knitted woollen hat.

Carrie moved over and watched the tiny chest rise and fall, eyes moving beneath the lids as she dreamed her little-girl dreams. Carrie’s hand found Eli’s and she wrapped all of her fingers round one of his but he pulled away, reaching across the tiny sleeping form to pick up a pillow from the pile of bedding. ‘Look away, honey,’ he said, ‘you don’t need to see this.’

She opened her mouth to speak but then thought better of it. Eli was right. This was no world for a little girl to go through without a mother by her side, she knew that much herself, and this little poppet was sweet and innocent enough to pass straight into heaven, no questions asked. Eli was doing her a favour, a great favour, by doing this thing for her. He was so kind and strong where it really counted, in the heart – and that was why she loved him.

‘Suffer the little children to come unto me,’ she said, reaching out to gently tuck the lock of hair back under the woollen hat. Then she kissed Eli on the cheek and turned away.

V

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains and the mighty men … hid themselves.

For the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

Revelation 6:15–17

62

Gabriel drifted in and out of consciousness. At times he raved, howling and bucking against the bindings, other times he was calm enough to converse with the doctors for minutes at a time, giving them insights into how the infection felt, like a drowning man describing the experience in snatched breaths to someone in a nearby boat before another wave engulfed him and dragged him back under. He fought, he screamed, he scratched and he cried – but he did not die.

Athanasius watched it all from a seat by the bed. He was there at night when the flicker of candles and flambeaux cast ghoulish light across Gabriel’s face, and in the day when the sunlight streamed through the huge rose window, dappling the damned with colour. The beds surrounding them emptied and filled, over and over as the tide of sickness ebbed and flowed, and more and more people entered the mountain. First it was those who had rested in quarantine in the Seminary. Then new faces began appearing, steady in number, their brief stay always numbering a day or two at most and always following the same journey: carried in writhing and screaming, carried out silent and still to the centre of the mountain and the firestone where the pyre always burned.

Then, on the second day of the fourth week after the Citadel had opened its doors to the sick, Gabriel opened his eyes and they stayed open. It was the middle of the afternoon after the doctors had finished their rounds and Athanasius was away attending to the organization of what was left of his flock. He lay there, staring up at the soot-blackened stalactites high above him, listening to the drugged moans of the infected and the creak of their bindings as their bodies clenched and twisted all around him. He lay there a long time, bracing himself for the moment when the fever would drag him back down again, as it always had before. But this time it did not.

‘Hello,’ he called out, his voice raw and unfamiliar. Murmurings rose from the beds surrounding him, the sick roused from their drugged slumber.

‘HELLO,’ he called again, loud enough to hurt his throat and bring footsteps hurrying. A face appeared above his bed, brow furrowed, eyes ringed with the shadows of deep fatigue. Gabriel didn’t know him but he recognized the contamination suit he was wearing – and he also noticed the loaded syringe.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to do that. I feel better.’

It was as if the doctor hadn’t heard him, his sleep-starved brain running through the well-worn routines of patient sedation. Gabriel felt the cold alcohol swipe of an antiseptic swab on his arm. He tried to twist away but the bindings held him fast.

‘WAKE UP!’ he shouted, as much to the doctor as to those surrounding him. ‘WAKE UP!’

The effect was instant, the faint murmurings erupting into howls as the sleeping sick were shocked into wailing wakefulness. The doctor looked up at the chaos now surrounding him, every patient around him now bucking and thrashing against their bindings as they howled in torment. He looked back down at Gabriel, his eyes shining with annoyance at the trouble he’d caused, he held up the syringe and readied the shot.

‘What are you doing?’ Gabriel growled, his throat raw from his shouting. ‘I do not need sedating. See to the others first. Their need is clearly greater.’

The doctor hesitated, looked like he was still going to spike him, then a shadow passed over Gabriel’s face and he glanced across to see the smooth-headed figure of a monk standing on the other side of his bed. ‘It’s OK,’ Athanasius said to the doctor, ‘I shall sit with him. You see to these other poor souls.’

The doctor blinked as though a spell had been broken, then turned away to start dealing with the others.

Athanasius pulled the stool out from beneath Gabriel’s bed and settled on it. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken and he smelled of wood smoke. Gabriel breathed it in, relishing the smell. It was the first time in a long while he had smelt anything other than the strange and permanent odour of oranges. And there was something else. He was cold and his sweat-soaked bindings felt wet and unpleasant against his skin.

‘The fever,’ he whispered in realization of what this meant. ‘It’s gone.’

Athanasius laid a warm hand on Gabriel’s forehead and straightened in his chair. ‘Thank God,’ he said.

Another figure appeared by the bed and held a thermometer in his ear. It beeped and he checked the reading. He reset it and did it again.

‘Ninety-eight point six,’ he said, the hint of a smile on his weary face. ‘You’re probably a few points cooler than I am.’

‘Dr Kaplan, allow me to introduce Gabriel Mann,’ Athanasius said.

Gabriel nodded a greeting. ‘I’d shake your hand but someone tied me to this bed.’ Kaplan smiled again. ‘Tell me. Did the quarantine work. Has the disease been contained?’

He knew the answer before either of them spoke. He heard it in the pause and saw it in the flick of their eyes as they looked away from him.

‘There have been new cases,’ the doctor replied, ‘ones that have originated beyond the line of the original quarantine in the metropolitan districts of the city. We have continued to remove the infected and quarantine those at risk but we have so far been unable to contain it. As of last week a state of martial law has been in place in the greater city of Ruin to try and prevent the further spread of the disease. The army and the police have set up roadblocks on the road leading out of the mountains. No one is allowed in, no one is allowed out. But we have made significant steps since moving here. And you may hold the key to all of our salvation. No one has fought the disease as long as you have, and no one has recovered – until now. But it’s still early days and you may yet relapse.’

He looked up at Athanasius. ‘We need to move him somewhere isolated.’

‘No,’ Gabriel said, ‘I’ll stay here, I don’t need special treatment.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Kaplan said. ‘You need to be in isolation, not just for your own comfort but for the safety of others. Your body may have defeated the infection but there is another possibility. Sometimes the body’s natural defences do not entirely vanquish a hostile agent. Sometimes a kind of truce is arrived at where the disease is kept in check and the symptoms disappear. If this has happened then you may now be an asymptomatic carrier of the disease, immune yourself but deadly to anyone who comes into contact with you. There is also the possibility that the infection has mutated inside you and formed a new strain, one that your body is immune to because it helped create it but one that is every bit as deadly as the first strain – maybe even more so.’

Gabriel stared up at him. He hadn’t given conscious thought to his hopes until now. The one thing that had kept him going throughout his suffering and delirium was the thought of Liv. She was the one he had fought death for. He had left her in the desert in the hope that he carried the disease away with him. He had travelled all the way back to Ruin in the hope it may not have spread. He had insisted on being taken inside the Citadel where the blight had first come from and then refused to die in the hope that he might finally be reunited with her. Now he was told that he must stay here, isolated even within this place of isolation. There were many words to describe the pain that filled him, but only one that completely summed up the way he felt.

Cursed.

Athanasius read the pain on his face. ‘I know a place where we can move him,’ he said.

63

Following her conversation with Arkadian, Liv scoured every news site and story relating to the contagion in Ruin until the laptop’s battery ran out.

She sat alone for a while in the sweltering heat of the building feeling like she had just experienced a bereavement. She closed her eyes and remembered the last time she and Gabriel had been alone together, sheltering from the dust storm in the cave out in the desert. She had thought then that her life was slipping away, that the Sacrament she carried inside her would die without finding its way back to the home it had lost, and drag her down to death with it. She had clung to him then like she was clinging to life. She remembered the feel of him, the salty taste of his skin as they had kissed when they had given themselves to the moment and each other in case it turned out to be the only night they ever had.

It was strange that someone she had spent hardly any time with and whom she knew so little about could have such a strong effect on her. There was something about Gabriel that calmed her soul when she was near him and made it ache whenever he was away – like it ached now.

She stood abruptly, angry at the world, the scrape of the chair legs cutting through the silence, and headed out through the dining hall into the bright sunlight. The thought of hard physical work seemed infinitely appealing in the wake of the emotional battering she had just experienced. She grabbed a pick, fell in line and happily took orders from Corporal Williamson, losing herself in work as they dug a pit big enough to bury all those who had drunk the poisoned water.

It took all day and when all the dead lay buried beneath the dry ground, the group collected by the water’s edge to wash and drink and relax. You could see in their easy conversation and open gestures that a new bond had been formed, one forged by hard work and collective endeavour. It was a testament to the human spirit that they had met that morning in a circumstance of mistrust and suspicion, one group inside the compound and one without, and in less than a day those divisions had been removed entirely. It reminded Liv that, despite all the darkness that had swamped her recently, there was so much goodness in the world, and so much good in people. It made her hopeful that, whatever had been started here, whatever ancient spark had been re-ignited by the Sacrament’s return, it might just have a chance to succeed and grow into something wonderful and free, the exact opposite of the Citadel in fact.

Something about this thought struck her and made her pull the folded paper from her pocket and study the symbols anew. Her eyes flicked between the upwards arrow symbol for the Citadel on the second line and another on the third which was its exact opposite.

She looked over at the fountain of water in the centre of the pool, forming an elongated ‘V’ in the air. The symbol was the fountain. The symbol was this place.

She looked back at the second and third lines again, searching for other points of comparison.

The moon sign appeared in both, linking them to the same time frame, and the T was there too, encircled in the first line and beside a circle in the other. She looked down at the perimeter fence surrounding the compound below her and understood now why she felt so strongly about not locking the gate. This place was meant to be somewhere the Sacrament was free, outside the circle not in. It had to welcome everyone and spread as far as the horizon if it needed to. The water had already begun this process, flowing out through the links in the fence and bringing the land back to life.

‘Not a fortress but a haven,’ she whispered.

‘What was that?’

Liv looked up and saw Tariq standing nearby.

‘Nothing,’ she said, aware that everyone was tired and the plan she had just hatched would keep. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’

64

Gabriel was wheeled into the Abbot’s private quarters at the head of a procession of equipment and medical personnel. The rooms had been left largely unused since the Abbot’s sudden death and the subsequent spread of the blight. Elections had been planned but the disease had ravaged the electorate before they could be held and since then, in a dark twist of irony, the only thing truly running the mountain was the very thing that had derailed the electoral process in the first place.

‘This is the main living room and office,’ Athanasius said, moving across the large space. ‘There is also a bed chamber through here that could be turned into a laboratory.’ He opened a thick, metal-studded door onto another cave containing a wooden bed, an ottoman and several smaller pieces of furniture. ‘And in here is a washroom giving you all the running water you should need.’

Gabriel surveyed what he could of the new surroundings from the fixed viewpoint of his bed while everyone else started to unpack. His mattress had been raised at one end to render him upright and the bindings that had held him so tightly and for so long had now been loosened, but not removed. Dr Kaplan had advised that they stay in place for the time being until they were sure he wasn’t going to suffer a relapse. He wasn’t allowed to walk either, which was fine with Gabriel. He was so weak that even keeping his eyes open was an effort.

He took in the room, this comfortable prison that would be his home for who knew how long. There was a huge fireplace as tall as a man that dominated one wall and a stained-glass window set into the rock, its ancient, hand-blown panes of blue and green glass forming a peacock motif that distorted the world beyond.

‘How are you feeling?’ Athanasius pulled a chair over and sat down as behind him the room began to be shifted around and dismantled.

‘Like a condemned man.’

Athanasius smiled and ran his hand over the smooth dome of his head. ‘I think we all feel that way to some degree, though I know you have suffered more than most.’ He leaned in closer and lowered his voice so only Gabriel could hear. ‘I sometimes wonder whether all this could have been averted – that if we had just left things as they were, left the Sacrament in place and not challenged the old traditions, all this pain and suffering, all this death would not have come to pass.’

‘You really think that?’

‘I have considered it. One does what one thinks is right, but sometimes we do the wrong thing for the right reasons.’

Gabriel closed his eyes and let his head fall back on the bed. He had been plagued with similar thoughts. He had lost so much as a result of the sequence of events he had helped set in motion. ‘Setting the Sacrament free was the only right thing to do,’ he said.

‘So you are happy with the apparent consequences of our actions?’

He shook his head, ‘Of course not. I feel personally responsible for every single person who has died from this blight or is still suffering now. I feel guilty that I may have helped spread it beyond these walls by leaving here, guilty that my mother is dead and my father too, but most of all I feel guilty that I abandoned Liv and left her alone in the desert. I was forced to, I was infected. I left her for all the right reasons, but it did not bring me happiness. And despite all of that I would rather never see her again than risk harming her.’

Athanasius nodded. ‘I just wish, when I see how you have suffered, that I could do more myself.’

‘Maybe you can. When I last came here I was searching for something.’

‘The Starmap.’

Gabriel nodded. ‘I thought it was the only thing that could lead us to Eden in order that the Sacrament could finally be returned to its rightful place. But in the end we found it another way – and we discovered the Starmap was already there. It had directions carved into it that used the stars as a guide. But it had something else carved on the reverse, another part of the prophecy.’

‘And what did it say?’

‘I don’t know. It was written in a language I didn’t recognize. But from what we already know doesn’t it strike you that everything that has happened was predicted – Brother Samuel climbing to the top of the Citadel and making the sign of the Tau with his body; the release of the Sacrament and its restoration to its original home. It was outlined in a series of prophecies, first in the Heretic Bible and then on the Starmap. When we first started looking for it we only had my grandfather’s notebook to go on and a photograph my father had sent him. But the photograph only showed one side of the stone. When I found it and saw it for myself I realized there was much more on the other side. If we could read it now, in the light of all that has happened, we might discover that all of this was predicted too. We might even learn how it could end or what we might do to influence it. There must be more experts in ancient languages here in the Citadel than anywhere else in the world. If the stone can be deciphered anywhere, it’s here.’

‘There are, or at least there were. Many of the scholars have succumbed to the blight, though there are still a few remaining. I myself have studied many of the lost languages. If the text on the stone is written in one I am familiar with then it should be easy to translate. But how could we get to see it?’

Gabriel smiled. ‘I took photographs and sent copies to a police inspector in Ruin.’

Athanasius sat up in his chair, his eyes alive. ‘Give me his name and I shall send a message immediately.’

‘His name is Arkadian. And if you find me a cell phone I can call him and get him to message us a copy right away.’

Athanasius frowned. ‘All communications devices are forbidden inside the mountain.’

‘So are civilians, and yet here I am. I’m sure one of the medics will have brought a phone along with them.’

Athanasius shook his head. ‘It was a condition of granting access to the sick that those admitted must abide by the rules of the mountain. Everyone had to surrender their phones before entering. You will not find one in here.’

Gabriel went quiet, his mind thinking his way around the problem.

‘What about the phone I gave you when I was last here?’

‘It no longer works, the battery is empty and you did not leave a charger – although …’ He glanced across the room at a small writing desk positioned beneath the peacock window. He rose and moved towards it, weaving between the medical staff and the stacks of equipment they were setting up. Gabriel watched until his view was blocked by a man in a contamination suit. ‘You OK?’ Dr Kaplan asked in a bedside voice that instantly made Gabriel feel nervous.

‘Just peachy,’ he replied, catching a glimpse of Athanasius over the doctor’s shoulder as he opened the desk and retrieved something from inside.

‘We’re nearly ready to start the first bank of tests.’ Kaplan stepped across and blocked his view again. ‘Which means we’re going to have to take a little blood, I’m afraid. Normally when someone has been through what you have, I would be very reluctant to take more than a few millilitres at a time to give the white cells time to recover. But the more we take now, the more parallel tests we can run and the quicker we can process the results, so I’m inclined to be slightly more aggressive – if you are willing.’

Gabriel took a deep breath. ‘Help yourself,’ he replied. ‘I’m not going anywhere, just try not to kill me.’

Kaplan smiled and nodded at a medic who stepped forward and fitted a syringe to the cannula already sticking out of Gabriel’s arm. He twisted the valve and watched dark, wine-coloured fluid fill the first of several blood-collection tubes. ‘This might make you feel a little drowsy,’ Kaplan added, ‘so feel free to close your eyes and rest if you want.’

Gabriel did as he was told and tried to relax.

‘What about this, would this work?’

He opened his eyes and saw Athanasius standing over him holding a laptop in his hand with a charger dangling from it. ‘Maybe. Can you send email from it?’

‘No. But I thought maybe this charger could be adapted to work with the phone.’ He placed the laptop on the bed, the charger coiled on top of it in a tangle. Gabriel unplugged the lead and examined the jack. It was entirely different from the socket on the bottom of the phone he had left. Next, he opened the laptop. It was a relatively new model and started up quickly, the desktop filling with hardly any icons. He searched the main directory for wi-fi hardware and software or anything that could send a message or an email.

Nothing.

Athanasius was right.

He glanced at the battery status and saw it was full, so at least the charger was working. But even if he managed somehow to customize the connectors to fit, the ampage would be too strong and would most likely fry the phone. Then something struck him. He span the computer round and smiled when he spotted the USB port. ‘We can use the laptop to charge the phone,’ he said, pointing at the square socket. ‘We can plug in the laptop and then hardwire the phone to the computer through one of these ports. It will act as a transformer and send a weaker trickle charge to the phone’s battery.’

‘Can you do it?’

‘Yes.’ Gabriel leaned back against the pillow. ‘But I’ll need some tools and both my hands.’ He could feel what little energy he had leaking out of him with every drop of blood. ‘I’ll need some raw wire, something like needle-nosed pliers –’ He closed his eyes and instantly regretted it as the room started to spin. ‘Hey,’ he said, glancing over at the medic by the bed who was still diligently taking his blood. ‘I think you should …’

Heat rose up in him like steam in a geyser, so sudden that it overwhelmed him before he could even finish his sentence. His body started to shake and he felt urgent hands clamp down on him and pin him to the bed.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ he thought as his eyes rolled back in his head and darkness washed over him. ‘Not again.’

65

Inspector Arkadian was standing in a car park just outside the city limits, supervising the disembarkation of a busload of children when he became aware of eyes upon him. He looked down at a terrified and tearful-looking girl of about eight. He crouched down, bringing his head level with hers, fully aware of how frightening he must seem after all she had already been through, towering over her in the contamination suit that had become his second skin since the outbreak.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, brushing her wavy brown hair away from her face with a gloved hand.

‘Hevva.’

‘Well, Hevva, there’s chocolate and cola inside.’ He pointed to the backpackers’ hostel that had been commandeered as a temporary orphanage.

‘Are we going to be taken into the mountain to die, like Mummy?’ she asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

He felt something break inside him. ‘No. You’ll be safe here – I promise.’

She stared at him for a moment with the clear and searching expression only a child can manage, then slowly turned and rejoined the others.

The quarantine had been swift and had been put in place the moment the first infection occurred outside the Old City walls – a local teacher who had already infected the rest of the teachers in her school and many of the parents by the time her symptoms manifested. Arkadian’s blood had run cold when he first heard this news. Madalina, his wife, worked at a school, not the one that had been infected, but it was still a chilling reminder of how vulnerable everyone was in the face of this thing. Madalina was now in semi-quarantine in St Mark’s church near their house. All public workers who’d had extended contact with other people had been moved to large civic buildings for observation and she had been one of them. But these internal precautions were only part of the overall plan.

The last thing the national and international community wanted was a new killer disease to escape into the wider world. Ruin’s natural isolation, surrounded by the high, unpopulated foothills of the Taurus mountains, made it uniquely suited to be placed in its own self-contained quarantine. The rapid evacuation of the Old Town after the first outbreak had been effective enough to hold back the spread of the disease for the first month and so the policy was now extended to the city as a whole. There was only one road leading into Ruin and it was now blocked with no access in or out save for the daily food and medical supplies delivered by truck to the outer barrier, and only collected and transported into the city once the trucks had driven away again.

Inside the city there were further divisions. Ruin was naturally split into quarters by four great, straight boulevards that radiated out from the Citadel at the centre. Each quarter was now a self-contained borough, with the boulevards between them acting as a no-man’s-land no one was allowed to cross. There had been near riots as people tried to flee one part of the city and relocate in another following a rumour in the first few days of the quarantine that all new cases of the blight were in the Lost Quarter and that the neighbouring three boroughs were disease free. The unsteady peace that had eventually been re-established was now maintained by constant armed patrols. The only movement of any kind had been the transportation of the infected down the empty boulevards towards the Old Town and the Citadel, and the evacuation of children in the other direction.

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