by Simon Clark
He and Caitlin spoke in murmurs. ‘What made you join us?’ he asked.
‘Like I said, I didn’t want to die young.’
‘It’s really that bad?’
‘You should see the figures for drug addiction and suicide round here. It’s not just adults who take the easy way out. Kids are jumping from the cliff tops, too.’
‘Don’t you think you’ve leapt from the frying pan into the fire?’
‘Paul, it couldn’t get any worse. Scaur Ness used to be pretty. Now it’s hell.’
‘I’ve stopped the bleeding. The buckshot nicked your skin. There’s no shot left in there. How does it feel?
‘Like I’ve been born again.’
With her uninjured arm she reached out to rest her hand on his bare forearm. Skin on skin. For a moment that contact could have been an interface for a wild, turbulent power that was thunderbolts mixed with sunlight, fused with a hurricane.
‘I do, Paul. I’ve been born again.’
How do I respond to that one? Instead he found himself asking, ‘How’s the pain.’
‘Not hurting. I’m tingling.’
‘Use this sling. You need to support your arm.’
As he finished easing her arm into the sling that he’d looped around her neck she smiled. ‘Thank you.’ Then she kissed him on the cheek.
That envelope of intimacy that had formed around the two of them exploded. This was the cafeteria of the castle that loomed over the dying town of Scaur Ness. Here were survivors from a massacre. Their assailants had been human beings, the species to which they had belonged before their deaths. Now one of their number had just kissed a God Scarer. Blasphemy. There was no was hiding it. Everyone in that room gasped in shock.
Saiban tore into Paul first. ‘Nothing is taboo in your eyes, is it?’
‘Saiban. Caitlin kissed me. I didn’t—’
‘You let it happen. You’re worse than him.’ Saiban stabbed a finger at Dominion. ‘At least he’s insane. He kills human beings, but he doesn’t know any better. You’re a doctor. As well as the rules of medical ethics you know our law.’
Paul looked to the others for support. Instead he was met by hostile stares.
Beech’s mouth was hard. ‘What were you thinking, Paul?’
West groaned. ‘Dear God in Heaven. The world’s gone mad. You shouldn’t have allowed that to happen, buddy. If those sapheads down there find out …’
‘Caitlin will become an outcast, Paul.’
‘She’s hardly damaged goods.’ Paul hissed the words. Their stare felt almost a physical burden upon him.
‘I kissed him.’ Caitlin shrugged. ‘So what?’
Saiban snarled back at her, ‘No man will want you now. You’ve become a leper. And don’t think none of your people will find out. Because they always do. You’ll be shunned by society.’
‘I’m with you now, aren’t I?’ She tossed her head in defiance. ‘Nobody down there will have anything to do with me anyway.’
For seconds no one said anything. All Paul heard was the thud-thud of his heart. In that dungeon-like place with the vaulted ceilings it could have been the thud of dead fists on the door of a tomb.
Eventually, Dominion broke the suffocating silence. ‘Tell me this …’ All eyes turned to him as he stood there in the centre of of the room. ‘How many of us pass through the transit station?’
Nobody answered. The question was so out of joint with the taboo-shattering kiss that Paul doubted if half the people there managed to absorb Dominion’s words. There was a sense of time becoming stagnant, toxic; God’s own heartbeat slowing deep in the body of the universe.
Dominion spoke again. ‘How many of us pass through the transit station?’
Saiban clicked his tongue. ‘Now, isn’t the time for discussing body counts.’
‘How many?’
Caitlin became interested. ‘What’s he asking?’
‘He means,’ Saiban began, ‘how many of us are brought back to life there.’
Paul glowered at him. ‘Saiban, you were the head of administration. Are you going to give Dominion an answer?’
‘We were discussing your crime, Dr Marais, not medical statistics.’
Dominion took a step forward. ‘Saiban? How many?’
Paul detected the aura of threat around the gigantic figure.
Saiban did, too. With a dismissive gesture he snapped, ‘So far this fiscal year: Three thousand four hundred eighty six. Satisfied?’
‘How many a year?’
‘For what good the information will do you …’ He shrugged. ‘Usually it averages ten thousand transients processed annually.’
Dominion finally asked the question, ‘These ten thousand people that are brought back from death every year. Where do they all go?’
15
The Vanished
This question of Dominion’s was an obvious one. Elsa thought: But why hasn’t anyone ever asked it before? OK, she could have made a pretty accurate guess at how many made it through the process from death to life. After all, Elsa worked in the team that nursed them back to health. But once those 10,000 men and women per anum left the transit station in the blacked-out buses where did they all go?
Paul said, ‘Dominion, why did you ask that question?’
He appeared deep in thought. When he didn’t reply a buzz of voices started as the God Scarers began to talk amongst themselves. Just where did the resurrected go?
West spoke up. ‘There are ten transit stations in this region. Did you know that? Some of those stations are bigger than the one that you guys worked at.’
Elsa frowned. ‘You mean, in all they were processing in the region of one hundred thousand a year? Minimum?’
‘And they all vanish into thin air.’ Paul’s smile was a grim one. ‘One hundred thousand God Scarers – fffttt!’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’
Saiban spoke coldly. ‘It’s not our place to question what happened to them.’
‘But where do one hundred thousand of our kind go?’
‘It’s not in our remit to debate their destination,’ Saiban responded. ‘But we all know that once transients are declared fit for service they are assigned work in other parts of the world.’
Beech growled in frustration, ‘Why do you have to be so pompous, Saiban?’
‘I’m in control of my emotions – that’s not pomposity, Beech.’
‘Oh, yes you are.’ The nurse’s red hair flashed in the candlelight. ‘In that patronizing way you shrug off the question: what does happen to thousands of our kind? You tell us that they’re given jobs. But where? What doing?’
‘After all,’ Elsa added. ‘All those people have a destination; they occupy a space. They need housing.’
‘Unless they secretly end up as fast-food.’
Saiban looked down his nose at Paul. ‘Even coming from you that’s a sick joke.’
‘Yes, it is a sick joke.’ Paul became angry. ‘It sickens me that I’ve worked at the transit station for twenty years. Thousands of cadavers have come in one door; thousands of transients have walked out the other. Have we been wasting our time? Have they all been dumped in the ocean? Or fed to pigs? Come on, Saiban, take that fucking pompous look off your fucking face and tell us the fucking truth.’
‘My. Three fucks in one sentence. Don’t we know what’s on your mind, Doctor?’ Saiban’s mournful face turned to Caitlin. ‘There’s no stopping your friend, is there, miss?’
Caitlin met his gaze. ‘I’m sure you’re very intelligent, sir. Although you—’
‘Please, miss.’ Saiban was politeness personified. ‘You shouldn’t address me as sir, if you will forgive my contradicting you. I am merely Saiban, if it pleases you to address me by name.’
‘Saiban, you’re far more intelligent than me. You all are.’ Caitlin looked at each in the group in turn. ‘But you’ve been so isolated you’re overlooking the obvious.’
‘Miss, you should really consider
returning home. Your family will be—’
Beech clicked her tongue. ‘Saiban, let her speak.’
Caitlin continued, ‘I don’t know anything about your lives other than you worked at the transit station. We’ve never seen inside because of the high walls. Oh, there’s rumours. That it’s where grave robbers finish their business. I’ve seen kids painting graffiti on walls. Frankenstein Factory, that kind of thing. You people don’t really know what goes on in the outside world, do you? I bet you’re not even allowed newspapers.’ She shrugged. ‘What there is of them these days. You know paper’s been rationed since January? No, you didn’t, did you? We don’t hear about your lives inside those places; you hear nothing about ours out here. You saw the state of the town. Tourists used to visit this old castle by the thousand. Now there’s not one.’
‘I see your point, miss.’ Saiban nodded.
‘No, you don’t, because I haven’t even made it yet. You’re using that polite way you have to shut me up.’ Her face coloured. Saiban couldn’t argue with a human. It would be against his servile nature. All he could do was step back as if yielding the floor to her. ‘As I was saying. You should have been asking questions. But you shut yourselves away in that place. Dominion asked the right question. What has happened to all those people that you brought back to life. Where have they gone? And no … I don’t know the answer either. But I’ve another question that’s just as big and just as important. This country became an outcast in the world when it was the only one to keep the transit stations. For years it allowed this Frankenstein thing to go on. Sanctions were imposed. No other country traded with us. They blockaded ports to stop fuel coming in. Last winter children died of starvation. I might be asking the obvious here. But why did we continue to keep the transit stations? What made our government decide it was better to allow the whole nation to go to ruin than shut you down? Every other country abolished the transit stations years ago. Answer me this: what was in it for our people? We let you God Scarers live? Why?’
Paul shook his head. ‘You can bet your bottom dollar it wasn’t through any noble, altruistic notion of giving us Frankenstein monsters sanctuary.’ His gaze roved the room. ‘So why did they let us live?’
‘They didn’t,’ West said. ‘Forty-eight hours ago they wrecked the station. We were the lucky ones who didn’t get slaughtered.’
‘See, you know nothing,’ Caitlin said. ‘Last week we got a new government. They agreed with the UN to destroy the transit stations. In return the embargoes have been lifted. They say things are going to get better, and there’ll be jobs for everyone.’
Elsa frowned. Something didn’t add up. ‘Caitlin, if the economy is going to recover, why claim that life in this town is still hopeless?’
‘I don’t believe it will change for years. Besides …’ She rubbed her arm where the shot had torn her human flesh. ‘If you ask me, the rest of the world is still terrified of you.’
Most of the people sat with their own thoughts, or they dozed at cafeteria tables. After a while those that couldn’t sleep became restless. The first grey light of dawn had started to filter through the windows. With some light to see by they moved into the central courtyard to explore their surroundings.
Paul stretched himself. ‘If this is going to be home for the foreseeable future we should make sure it’s secure. We don’t want the townspeople walking in.’
‘If you’ll take my advice,’ Saiban began, ‘we should make contact with the police. It’s time we talked to them about our surrender.’
West grunted. ‘Stuff it up your backside, Saiban.’
Caitlin had lain down on a bench along one wall of the cafeteria. There, she’d fallen into a sound sleep.
Elsa knew it made sense to sleep, too, after forty-eight hours without, but a restlessness drove her to her feet. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she told Paul.
‘OK. I’ll be glad of the company.’ He smiled. ‘Although some might suspect that monsters are afraid to go into the dark alone … wee timorous beasties that we are?’
‘Do you really have a strong Scottish accent, or do you lay it on thick for our benefit?’
‘Oh, it’s still there from my old life. Maybe it’s a conceit – an attempt to be different – but I hang onto it. Now, after you.’
They emerged into the courtyard. The dawn air was chilly. Their footfalls echoed from the towering walls that surrounded them on four sides. Two men and a woman climbed steps that ran up a wall toward the battlements. The woman and one of the men were from the physiotherapy department. The second man was a patient who had been scheduled to leave this week.
‘What do you make of it?’ Elsa asked, as they strolled toward the portcullis that had so grudgingly admitted them just a few hours ago.
‘The castle. It’s a grand pile of stone, isn’t it? It’d have kept the invaders out and no mistake.’
‘Not the castle. Dominion’s question?’
‘Ah, what happened to all our progeny?’
‘Ten thousand from our station. At least a hundred thousand from the entire region. Nationwide there could have been half a million per year.’
He nodded. ‘Impressive. They must have been harvesting the dead from across the entire globe. There must have been a roaring black market trade in fresh cadavers, seeing as other nations forbade that kind of thing … you know, defying God, thwarting nature, laughing in the face of Satan.’
‘Don’t you take anything seriously, Paul?’
‘My terrible sense of humour is a defence mechanism inherited from the old me.’
‘Well?’
‘I’m mystified as the next man. Where do they hide thousands of God Scarers? Caitlin’s question is rather unsettling, too. The government was prepared to bankrupt its own industry and plunge its own citizens into poverty for what? So it could defy the United Nations by permitting transit stations to continue pumping out all us wee Frankenstein monsters. That wasn’t noble charity on their part. They had a motive. They believed that self-sacrifice would repay them with interest. So, what’s really happening, Elsa?’
They’d reached the portcullis. Through the lattice work of steel they could see the dawn light spreading through Scaur Ness. A mist had crept from the sea to lie on the harbour waters. Derelicts floated there. A number of cargo vessels had even sunk at anchor, only funnels showed above the waterline.
‘Ah …’ Paul let out a sigh. ‘A sleeping beauty of a town. Waiting to be woken by a hero’s kiss.’
‘It’ll take more than a kiss. Have you seen the buildings? They’re little better than ruins.’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Shall we take a turn around our new home? I live in hope of finding a well-stocked wine cellar.’
The rest had the same idea of exploring. She caught glimpses of more of their group on the battlements forty feet above them. West’s face appeared at a tower window. A smudge of blood still marked his cheek from the grenade injury yesterday.
The next moment the silence vanished. Shots rang out. Mainly single detonations but they were followed by the chatter of a machine-gun.
‘Damn.’ Paul broke into a run. ‘It didn’t take them long to come after us!’
They raced for the staircase that rose across the inner wall to the battlements. There, they saw Beech who was in the process of descending.
Elsa called up, ‘Beech? Do you know if there are any other entrances to the castle?’
‘There’s only the portcullis as far as I know.’ A ricochet whined by making her flinch. ‘There might be another entrance at the back.’
The gunfire slowed to a desultory snap of single shots; these in turn were punctuated by longer pauses.
Paul climbed the steps. ‘With luck they’re letting off steam rather launching a determined attack.’ Red tracer sped above the courtyard. ‘If the saps could get in they’d have waited until they were inside before they started shooting.’ He clenched his fist. ‘I hope.’
A moment later they reached the battl
ements. Elsa kept her head below the parapet. From here she could see most of the walkway that ran around the top of the walls that in turn enclosed the courtyard below. More people had spilled out from the cafeteria to find out what was happening. Parts of the walkway were piled with building materials – sand, slates, blocks of stone. The owners of the Pharos had begun renovations before the bank pulled the plug on the overdraft. Another bullet smacked into the stonework on the outward face of the wall.
‘Keep down,’ Paul hissed.
‘I hope those old-time stonemasons knew their job.’
‘Have faith,’ he told her. ‘Places like this could keep out cannonballs.’ They worked their way along the inside of the battlements. These rose above the walkway to around six feet in height with the characteristic crenellations that would allow the bowman of old to fire back. By now, they were at the far side of the castle.
‘This part must look out onto the cliff-top,’ Paul told her.
‘I’d suggest you wait until the shooting stops before you risk sticking your head up above the stonework.’
‘Suggestion noted with thanks.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘At least they are on the outside firing in at us. Which means this place is locked up safe and sound.’
Elsa tugged his arm.
‘What is it?’
She motioned to him to crouch with his back to the wall. ‘Across there. It’s a newborn and the guy from physiotherapy.’
‘It’s OK, they’re keeping under cover.’
‘But Luna was on the steps with them.’ Elsa waved to the two who crouched down on the walkway opposite – a distance of perhaps eighty feet. ‘Hey …’ She waved again to attract their attention. ‘Where’s Luna?’
What they said was buried by another wave of gunfire but their shrugs were an eloquent enough reply. As for the salvo of bullets they either cracked harmlessly into thick stonework or sailed overhead.
Paul rose from a crouch. ‘Probably a gang of hotheads that got themselves fired up on booze and decided to prove they’re not afraid.’
‘Keep your head down. We might be hard to kill but we’re not indestructible.’