Tom Beckett had just finished giving his evidence. He had talked of falling into the abyss and finding himself alive. He’d spoken of the long drive to the centre of Ireland, and the scramble onto the plane to avoid the onrushing Atlantic Ocean.
He told the assembled crowd of the visions he had received, of the psychic messages he had picked up on. When he had tasted the bedrock of Ireland, he said, they had come to him and spoken to him and told him Ireland was only the beginning, that soon it would spread beyond those shores.
Europe and America would be the next to fall, he said. First they would vanish from the world and, when they came back, the people within would have come back wrong. Whoever this force was that was doing this to Ireland, he said, it hated humanity and it would not stop.
Through all of this, Tom screamed and screamed inside his own head, as the entity occupying his brain sssssh’d him repeatedly and told him it was almost over. He was half-telling the truth about one thing – the last time he had spoken to his girlfriend, she had sounded different … and then something had passed through that phone and into him, and now here he was.
If you knew how, a mind could be made to behave in any way you wished. It could also be set to self-destruct. Dian did this as he prepared to flee Tom’s body. When the first of the onrushing medics touched him, he began a journey from body to body that took him from medics to aides to officials and to his final destination as he prepared to complete his mother’s task.
One more job.
‘May God have mercy on us,’ the President said, in a voice that was not quite his own.
REGENT STREET, BELFAST ABOVE, NOW
‘Can I get anyone a wee cuppa tea?’
‘Ma!’ Danny scolded, half-rising out of his seat. ‘You’re meant to be resting!’
He’d insisted his mother come to stay with them for a while. When he’d found her, she had been beside herself with grief, stunned beyond comprehension by the loss of her husband. It had taken Danny long hours to talk her around, to make her see that what his da had done hadn’t been another act of abandonment, but of love.
‘Resting?’ Linda Morrigan snorted. ‘Aye right. Resting. The whole world’s gone mad, son. I don’t think anyone’s gonna be resting for a while yet.’
She stroked Luke’s cheek and smiled down at the sleeping baby still cradled in Ellie’s arms. ‘I wish I could have seen him. All grown up. Wee heartbreaker.’
‘You will,’ Ellie promised, but she made no move to release her son. Danny was beginning to suspect that Luke would be around eleven before his mother let him go, and he didn’t really blame Ellie for feeling that way. She had needed a toilet break two hours ago and Danny all but had to sign a permission slip to hold Luke while she’d gone.
‘Your granda won’t let anything happen to you, little one,’ Linda whispered, before her voice wavered. Wiping her eyes, she muttered something about tea and padded out to the kitchen, avoiding gazes as she went.
Giving Ellie a semi-smile of support, Danny suppressed an urge to howl with frustration. He felt ridiculous just sitting here, on the sofa, watching television, especially after the frenetic chaos of the last few days. The entire country – the entire world – was going through complete upheaval and he could think of no way to help.
But what, exactly, could he do? Sure, he’d made his wee speeches in Stormont that night, but he’d been in no rush to supply them with his name and address. He’d counted on the huge wolves at his side to stamp his authority, and somehow that had worked.
Only one person from that night knew who he was. He had told the brigadier his name, even gave him his address, before leaving to chase down Steve on Wily’s back. He had done so on the proviso that the officer share it with no-one.
Okay, the name Morrigan had been name-checked in Carman’s psychic broadcast to the entire population so his last name might attract a little attention, but whilst it was a fairly unusual surname he could easily shrug it off as coincidence.
He thought back to ancient Ireland, to the reactions of the villagers when they’d discovered the Morrigan’s Tuatha heritage, to the tragic events that had followed. Would things be so different now? Were people, when you got down to it, really more advanced now than they’d been then in terms of dealing with things they didn’t understand?
He doubted it. No, it was best for Ellie, and especially for Luke, that he continue to exist under the radar. That was why he had made the brigadier swear he would tell no one, unless there was no other option. They had shaken hands and Danny had used his newfound gifts to probe the brigadier’s mind and confirm that he was trustworthy.
His thoughts kept drifting back to his father, and to Steve. Left behind in a strange world, a twilit facsimile of Ireland, with only the Named as allies against Carman’s hordes? Granted, Carman had consumed most of her creatures when assuming her final monstrous form, but how long before she was able to use the Cauldron to produce more? Ellie was right; what was to stop her from trying again?
BELFAST BELOW, NOW
The city was dark, but it was far from silent.
Tony knew its streets better than most; he had roamed them from his early teens, tailing his father on some mission or other. Later, after James’ death, he had taken on the responsibility himself, lied to his wife and son, told them he was working on mapping the country when in fact it was more like patrolling fields and city streets alike for murmurs of faerie activity.
He was fond of the old place, despite itself. He had noticed down the years that native Belfastians, indeed natives of Northern Ireland itself, needed little encouragement to launch into a long and impassioned stream of invective about the state of the place. Any self-respecting Norn Ironlander could readily give you their top twenty-five reasons the place was pure shite.
And yet, should they hear or see or sense so much as a syllable of unearned criticism from ‘an outsider’, they’d close ranks. Gazes would steel, brows would furrow, and voices would drop an octave or two – though in the case of Belfast males, they had a pretty high starting bar on that front.
It’s a shithole, but it’s our shithole, seemed to be the sentiment.
All of which was lovely in a Hallmark sort of way, he reflected, but it in no way explained why the inhabitants had been hell-bent on knocking the melt out of each other since time immemorial.
‘Balls,’ he said.
There were, he estimated, about sixty or seventy of them. He had been drawn to the racket they’d made, without even consciously realising it. Males, mostly. Young, in the main. Roughly equally matched on each side, with only a set of massive balls between them – the huge wire-frame spherical urban sculpture that had been officially named Rise for about seventeen seconds and had been always and forever ‘The Balls on the Falls’ thereafter.
Like everything else in Ireland, it had been copied down to the smallest detail. But this was not the world they’d left behind. It had been twenty-four hours since the white light, but he knew that only by consulting his watch. The skies had not changed. No dawn had broken. The night had remained, the dull crimson hue from the blood-red moon the only natural illumination.
A wee bit up the road, the police had cordoned off one of the shopping centres. He was fairly sure they were rushing to do the same to as many others as they could. Their motivation was obvious – to protect the supplies within. Whether they were protecting them for the greater good in an effort to ration them, or simply to fence them off for their own use was, for the moment, rather less obvious.
They were effectively in their own self-contained universe. The old social order was hopelessly obsolete. The trouble was, the old universe that supposedly had social order had still resulted in groups of young fellas like this gathering to lift lumps out of each other.
Of course, he could always let them have at it, he reasoned. After all, there was no permanent death here, as had been made perfectly clear – that was the whole reason he and these luckless lads were trapped here in the fi
rst place. He could stand back, get a comfortable seat, and wait for the first stone to hurtle through the air or the first dig to be swung. They’d surely get bored eventually when they realised even doing their worst wouldn’t do anything permanent.
And yet …
‘All right lads,’ he called out, walking to the front of the nearest group, immediately identifying the chief agitator. The one on the ‘other’ side he gestured over to and something, some dormant ability of command he hadn’t called on properly for years, prompted the youth to trot over. Capitalising on this tenuous momentum, Tony nabbed the head honcho nearest him and before he could protest, escorted him into the no-man’s land between the two groups.
Time to wing it.
‘Somebody lookin’ to start something?’ Tony began.
‘Prob’ly them fuckin’ Orange cunts,’ said the first, theatrically stabbing an accusatory finger at his opponent. He did this so exaggeratedly and with such limb elasticity that he would have had a fine career as a ballerina. Tony decided to keep this observation to himself.
‘Aye fuck! I’ll knock your fuckin’ cun–’
‘Sure ’mon then, ’mon ta fuck then!’ roared the would-be ballerina, arms and legs akimbo, and moved to strike.
Tony moved, and he was nothing if not economical. As the two young men attempted to rush each other headlong, he reached, pulled, twisted and swept and before either quite knew what had happened, they found themselves none too gently deposited on the ground beside each another.
The real skill, which was sadly lost on them, was that Tony had done this so quickly and efficiently that the watching crowds on either side never even saw anything untoward transpire.
He sat quickly down as both were still recovering, and before they could react he reached out with his thumbs and found the pressure point on each boy’s ankle.
‘Laugh,’ he said.
‘Y’fuckin’ wha’?’ one managed to gasp.
‘Laugh,’ Tony said again. Even with his speed, the crowds were growing restless. ‘Laugh, or I’ll pop your ankles like fuckin’ corks out of a bottle,’ and he increased the pressure before lessening it again.
‘Ha ha,’ they intoned.
Another brief increase of pressure. ‘Funnier,’ Tony ordered.
From somewhere deep within, both boys found their inner Olivier, and produced a series of guffaws that caused the crowds to cease their uncertain advance. Confusion was reigning, but he still didn’t have much time.
‘Now let’s have a chat,’ he said cheerily. ‘What seems to be the problem? And for a wee geg, let’s try to form our responses without the inclusion of the following words – Taig, Prod, Orange, Fenian, cunt, bastard … oh, what the fuck, let’s just say all swear words are banned, aye?’
A long, contemplative silence. Tony could see their lips moving with conscious effort.
‘I …’ the ballerina began cautiously. ‘I came down here cos every fu– … every one knows that this,’ and he waved a hand to indicate the cosmos in general, such as it was, ‘is some sort of Brit doomsday plan.’
‘My holeeeeowww!’
Tony relaxed his thumbs and waited for the expressions of pain to subside once more. ‘I believe you had the floor?’ he said brightly. ‘Would you like to rebut?’
‘We didn’t do this! Sure now yous have got what yous always wanted!’
‘Fer fucks sake–’ Tony said.
‘Oh aye he’s allowed to swear,’ muttered one boy to another.
While this three-way conversation went on, one onlooking hothead decided he had waited long enough. He’d been holding a half-brick for so long his arm was starting to get tired. He drew in a breath to scream.
‘Drop it, son,’ a quiet voice sounded from behind him. ‘On your big toe, preferably, but the ground’ll do. Just you stand there and wait.’
‘Who the fuck d’you think yer talkin’ to – oh holy fuck!’
The impromptu peace conference concluded not long thereafter without serious incident. The two leaders waved their crowds over and slowly, slowly, they drifted into the middle, underneath those incongruous skeletal testes, and with much shuffling of feet and avoiding of eyes and exchanging of not strictly legal cigarettes and other combustibles, the tension began to ebb away.
A shadow fell across Tony. He glanced up … and up.
‘Holy Jesus, you’re a big fella,’ he whistled.
‘Good work there.’
Tony nodded to the prone body of the would-be half-brick chucker, currently spread-eagled on the tarmac, very deeply unconscious. ‘That you?’ he asked.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘There’s always a critic,’ Tony tutted. ‘He okay?’
‘Sleeping.’
‘Suppose even if he wasn’t, he’d have come back.’
‘He may hope that works on his balls too.’
Tony laughed.
‘How’d you get them not to kill each other?’
‘I found some common ground between them, Dermot.’
Wind whistled through the dark city. There was only the hubbub of adolescent conversation and the shine of mobile phone screens, as another precious few percentage points of battery charge were sacrificed.
‘It’s the eyes,’ Tony said quietly, by way of explanation. ‘I’d know them eyes anywhere.’
‘When the light hit and the power went out it hit the hospitals, too,’ Dermot said. ‘The coma patients on ventilators died.’
‘Died? Here?’
‘At first,’ Dermot admitted. ‘When they came back, they didn’t need the respirators but most of them were still more or less empty shells. This,’ he indicated his body, ‘was Paulie. He’s been brain dead for eighteen months. There isn’t a lot of him left in here,’ and he tapped his head. ‘But there was enough. Enough to say yes when I asked for his permission.’
‘How’d you find me?’
‘Family heritage. I’m growing into it.’
‘Why’d you find me?’
‘Your da killed mine, Tony. Your family ruined my whole childhood.’
‘Yeah. Well. You killed me.’
‘Crybaby.’
‘Fuckpot.’
Tony regarded his old friend and comrade, unwelcome memories of the night he and his da had made the fateful trip to Dermot Quinn’s childhood home resurfacing. How different would everything have turned out, he wondered, if he’d been able to make his own da see sense that night?
He doubted he would ever forget the feeling of the letter opener’s blade entering his body, or of looking into Dermot’s eyes, filled with hate, as he pushed it deeper. Yes, the man had been possessed by a faerie whose specialist subject was instilling murderous rage. Yes, Dermot had helped him – or at least tried to – when he’d been forced to say goodbye to Linda. He knew all of this, but could he ever really forgive a man capable of murder? Could he ever stop seeing his friend’s face, contorted in hate?
It was then he noticed that, during all of his musing, the now-merged group of lads were trying their damndest to toilet paper the Balls on the Falls.
‘You know what their common ground was?’ he asked Dermot as they watched.
‘Terrible aim?’
‘I told one to run away home to his ma and he burst into tears,’ Tony went on. ‘The other fella, I expected him to have a complete field day with that, and next thing you know, he starts bawlin’ too. And I realised, when the worlds split, their mas didn’t stay with them, das either. Some of them said they would, and then Carman’s election came and went. These lads – near all of them, I’ll bet ye – found themselves on their own down here. That was yesterday. And what else did they know, but troopin’ down here and flinging a few stones?’
‘There’ll be more than these lads need looking after, Tony. This whole city, this whole country, island … it’s busting to the gills with terrified people, hurting like fuck at being left behind. Somebody’s gonna need to step up.’
Tony simply nodded.
‘We made a good team a long time ago, didn’t we?’ Dermot asked.
‘That we did, mucker. That we did.’
‘Fancy getting the band back together?’
‘Band?’ Tony snorted. ‘Two people’s more a duet, wouldn’t you say?’
‘How about five?’ came another voice from behind them.
Tony turned to see Steve and the two Named, Larka and Wily. Steve was just about holding it together, Tony could tell that at a glance. He nodded to the wolves and shook Steve’s hand. The young man surprised him by coming in for a full-on hug, which Tony returned.
‘How’d you find me?’
It was Wily who spoke up. ‘The Morrigans enjoy our protection. Now, and always.’
‘What are we supposed to do down here?’ Steve asked Tony, his voice hoarse.
Tony looked to Dermot, nodding almost imperceptibly. He did the same to the wolves, and fancied he received the same in return.
‘Like the man said,’ Tony stated firmly, ‘we step up.’
PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, STORMONT, BELFAST BELOW, NOW
Whether through luck or judgment, for good or for ill, there were not many politicians who had either been forced to stay behind or who had elected to.
What little remained of their number had gone to Stormont – where else could they go? – a great white expanse set against crimson skies and surrounded by the darkness of the trees that lined the mile-long driveway.
Dire as their situation was, the debate that resounded across the candlelit assembly chamber was strangely cordial. There seemed little point in bluff or bluster, in point-scoring or one-upmanship. No one was even sure they had a country left to govern, much less how to govern it.
Outside the big house, three security guards – two men and one woman – stood watch. In many ways, the debate they were holding amongst themselves mirrored the debate going on inside the assembly chamber.
‘What are we doing here?’
‘Our jobs.’
‘Jobs? And who’s going to pay our wages?’
‘I have a family to feed. I have children. I could go … I should go.’
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