The Burning

by Will Peterson

  “We have to get out of here now,” she told Kate and Rachel. “We—”

  All three of them turned slowly to face the ocean again, their faces suddenly wet with spray as the water rose up from nowhere and roared.

  “What’s happening?” Kate screamed.

  They stood and stared as, thirty metres or so offshore, the surface of the water began to spin at incredible speed. At first, it looked as though a giant whirlpool was forming, but then it lifted, hovering above the water and growing into a monstrous tornado, its funnel over twenty metres high.

  Laura was almost blown off her feet, and sand was whipping up into her eyes. “Get down!” she shouted.

  They all dropped to the floor, just as the spinning column of wind and water began to move. Just as the helicopter reappeared, swooping in from behind the cliff top. It was moving too fast to avoid getting caught in the vicious tower of water which rose up to meet it.

  Adam stared at Clay Van der Zee. It was as though the doctor had resigned himself to something, though to what, Adam could not be sure. The man’s face was impassive, even though there were still two guns pointing at him. Even though the anguished voice of the helicopter pilot was filling the cabin.

  “I’ve lost control … there’s nothing I can do…”

  The noise of the rotor blades was suddenly much louder and Adam knew that the sound was not only coming through the radio.

  “The instruments will not respond!”

  The chopper was close. Way too close…

  “I can’t bail out,” the pilot screamed. “I can’t bail out!”

  Adam released his hold on the minds of the two guards. They snapped into life, like men woken suddenly from bad dreams, took a few seconds to work out what was happening, then ran from the cabin.

  “I have to try!” the pilot shouted.

  Adam ran to the porthole, craned his neck and struggled to look up. It was hard to see anything at all with the whirlwind throwing water hard against the glass, but he could just about make out the dark shape that was getting larger, fast.

  “The boat … I have to try and get clear,” the pilot’s voice screeched.

  Adam turned just in time to see Van der Zee drop back into his chair and close his eyes. From the speaker, there was nothing but screaming through the crackle of static.

  “I think this is probably goodbye,” Van der Zee said.

  From the beach, Rachel, Kate and Laura watched as the helicopter was caught and held tight in the tornado’s grip. They saw it thrown around as though it were a toy. The aircraft rolled over and twisted inside the dark funnel, the blades “whop-whopping” to no avail as the pilot tried his best to regain control.

  “It’s like it just reached up,” Kate said. “Like the wind just plucked it out of the air…”

  The sense of horror quickly grew, until each of them felt it like a blow to their stomach; until they realized that the helicopter was going to crash, and exactly where it was going to come down.

  When they saw just what the point of impact would be.

  Laura’s hand few to her mouth. “Oh my God!”

  There was not even time to turn their heads away…

  It was like a rush of wind, just for a moment, and then the full force of the explosion broke across them, throwing them on to their backs. The noise was unbearable, and by the time it had died down sufficiently for them to get back on their feet, the fireball was already climbing high into the air. Debris was crashing down into the water on all sides and they could no longer see anything of either the helicopter or the boat it had destroyed.

  Rachel stood and watched, and for those few seconds before the realization – before the grief – hit, she was looking through a different pair of eyes.

  She was a young girl who had rushed from a cave to that same spot thirty thousand years before. When another vessel had fallen from the sky. When a fireball had risen from the ocean and smoke had blacked out the sun.

  The scream brought her out of it.

  Rachel turned to see her mother dropping on to the sand like a dead woman and Laura rushing across to offer what little comfort she could.

  “Adam!” Kate shouted.

  Then Rachel understood. She saw the smoke continue to rise and felt her world fall away as she went down.

  “Adam was on that boat.”

  Rachel clung to her mother and their tears mingled, their cheeks pressed tightly together. No words, no gestures could express the trauma of the past hour. As their shadows grew long in the late afternoon sun, they stayed on their knees in the sand and wept.

  Laura paced up and down at the water’s edge, shaking her head, trying to make sense of the burning wreckage floating offshore. Cinders and particles of smouldering boat hissed as they floated down and landed in the sea in front of her. The vortex had subsided, but a kilometre out, the sea still rolled and boiled…

  Rachel got up and wiped away the sand stuck to her cheeks. She spat bits of grit from her mouth and strode towards the sea after Laura. She caught up with the Australian and launched herself at her, grabbing at her sweatshirt, pulling her down into the water: thrashing and punching wildly. Laura tried to restrain Rachel, but she had been caught off guard and the two of them tumbled into the cold, grey Atlantic.

  Kate saw what was happening and ran in after her daughter.

  “Rachel … no!”

  Laura and Rachel were waist deep by the time Kate reached them and attempted to pull them apart. She held each of them by the neck of their shirts, like naughty children. As they struggled, the three of them fell into an awkward, wet embrace, clinging to one another for comfort, their tears coming again.

  Then Rachel felt something else…

  …Something which at first she mistook for a hard knot of grief, tightening in her throat. But the feeling became warmer, a vibration, and, as a new warmth spread through her, she realized that the twin Triskellions were pulsating against her chest.

  “Can you feel it?” she asked.

  Laura nodded.

  “What is it?” Kate asked.

  The feeling grew, buzzing, filling Rachel’s head with sounds and voices. “It’s … hope,” she said. “I think it’s a good sign.”

  She looked upwards. Instead of cinders, a fine mist of raindrops was falling from the sky. They all raised their heads; the warm rain soothing their stinging, tear-stained faces.

  Gabriel? she called out with her mind.

  Silence, save for the roar of water out at sea, but in her head, Rachel could see Gabriel, Morag and Duncan, close together and moving away from her into a darkness thick with dust. Were they still alive, or was it no more than a wish?

  “Adam…!”

  Her mother’s scream wrenched Rachel away from the vision. Laura and Kate were splashing through the water along the shore, towards a wet figure that had been washed up on the beach. Rachel rushed towards the body of her brother. The three of them attempted to pull him up the beach, hauling his dead weight on to dry sand.

  His lips were blue and his dark hair was plastered across his forehead. Kate covered his cold cheeks with hot kisses.

  Rachel thought he looked beautiful. She held his limp hand.

  And then Adam coughed. His body lurched and jolted. Spasms passed through his limbs and a jet of salt water spewed from his mouth on to the sand.

  He slowly opened his eyes.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Rachel stared out across the water, her eyes drifting up from the vision of horror and destruction that still smouldered and smoked out at sea. Up to the single, bright star that had begun to glitter high above the ocean.

  How had she described that feeling to the others?

  Hope…

  Adam, Laura and Kate appeared at her shoulder. Rachel turned. “You ready?” she said.

  Adam shrugged. “For a trek across the desert with no idea where we’re going? Yeah, sure.”

  “Well, I don’t think anyone’s going to come and pick us up,” Rac
hel said. She tucked the twin Triskellions down below the neck of her sweatshirt, then hoisted her backpack up on to her shoulders.

  The others did the same, and they began to walk.

  It was long past the hour when darkness should have fallen but it was as though the sun had stopped sinking. Instead it hung low in the sky, blood-red, just above the sea. The dark water was veined with pink streaks which stretched all the way to the shore, spattering the sand and the rock face with a strange light.

  The light was even more unnatural as a result of the huge arc lamps that had been set up along the beach. They fired powerful beams against the cave’s entrance, where mechanical diggers were still working to remove the fallen rocks. As half a dozen generators hummed and rattled, people swarmed across the sand like ants: rescue workers, medical personnel, and others whose roles were a little harder to define.

  Men and women who seemed answerable to no one, who wore dark glasses, despite the absence of conventional sunshine.

  A makeshift office had been quickly set up a little further down the beach, along with an emergency room, where the staff were getting ready to receive wounded, or worse.

  There was just as much activity a hundred metres offshore, where boats manoeuvred through the wreckage of a vessel called HOPE and the helicopter which had crashed into it. The explosion and the fire that followed had been intense and pieces of both craft were still smouldering. Lights from the rescue boats cut through a thick curtain of smoke which hung across the surface of the water.

  Already, aviation experts were arguing about exactly what had caused the tragedy, but it seemed likely that the freak tornado, reported by local weather stations, had sucked the chopper down and caused the pilot to lose control. It was just unlucky that the aircraft had crashed directly into the boat – an accident no one could have predicted.

  They had searched in vain for survivors, and now divers were working to recover bodies.

  It was far quieter on the cliff top. It was darker here too, and a variety of night creatures had begun to move around, poking through the scrub and grass in search of food.

  Lizards, rats, snakes, a small fox…

  A gentle wind danced through the long grass where, eight or ten metres back from the cliff’s edge, a small patch of soil began to shift and fall in on itself. A large beetle scurried quickly for cover as the movement increased and the soil gave way.

  And a fist punched its way up from the earth.

  Out in the open, the tightly clenched hand seemed to glisten in what little light there was. After a few moments, the first insects started to settle – mosquitoes and gnats – drawn by the sickly sweet scent. But they were gone again as soon as the fist began to move.

  Once the blistered, honey-covered fingers had started to uncurl and claw at the cool night air.

  In 2007, while excavating a group of caves on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, an international team of archaeologists discovered the remains of a Neanderthal tribe. The scientists were astonished when further research showed that some of the specimens’ teeth and bones were those of a different species: more like Homo sapiens, who were previously thought to have arrived long after the Neanderthals had died out. The evidence suggested that in North Africa, this new species of human had coexisted, and possibly bred, with the Neanderthals.

  Archaeologists continue to argue about what caused the genetic and behavioural shift, but all agree that something happened to trigger the development and spread of modern man across Europe.

  Some kilometres south of the caves, in the town of Essaouira (formerly known as Mogador), tucked away in a narrow backstreet, there is a cafe called La Triskalla. The sign of the Triskellion hangs outside. They make delicious crêpes…

  Read an exclusive extract from the next

  book in the series.

  Available spring 2010

  Western Australia

  Molly Crocker stared across the yard to where the boy was working, cursing herself as she spilt the lemonade and reaching for a cloth to clean up the mess. When she looked up again, the boy had moved out of her line of sight and there was a large bee butting gently against the window from outside.

  Zzzzz … dnk. Zzzzz … dnk.

  Molly thought it was a bit early for bees, but it wasn’t a complete surprise. Everything was going haywire with the climate these days. Global warming was never out of the news.

  She was careful not to spill any more as she carried the lemonade outside, down the steps from the porch and out across the front yard to where the boy was painting one of the fence posts.

  “Here you go,” Molly said. She handed the cold drink across. “Looks like you could do with this.”

  The boy, whose name was Levi, had been working at their place for the last couple of weeks. He’d mended the roof on one of the barns, fixed the gate on the paddock where Molly’s horse was kept and done some basic plumbing inside. He was sixteen, Molly guessed – about the same age as she and Dan were – and according to their mother, the Aboriginal tribe he belonged to had been living in the area for over forty thousand years.

  Levi drank half the lemonade in one gulp. “Thirsty,” he said.

  While Molly waited for the glass, she stared around the compound. It was isolated for sure – their closest neighbour was seven kilometres away and it was half an hour in the truck to the nearest shops – but it was a nice place to live. They were only ten minutes from the sea and got to go surfing after school or ride horses in the hills whenever they fancied it.

  Debbie, their mum, and Mel – the woman who shared the house with them – reckoned they were lucky.

  That they all had a pretty good life.

  Molly wiped the sweat from the back of her neck and tried to remember how long they’d been here. Was it two years? Something like that…

  Levi handed back the glass. “Thanks, Rachel.”

  Molly blinked. The glass slipped from between her fingers and shattered on the ground. “Excuse me?”

  At that moment, Dan waved from the other side of the yard as he walked back to the house. Levi waved back enthusiastically. Called out, “Hi, Adam.”

  Molly watched as her twin brother stared back, confused, and walked back to the house a little faster.

  “What did you call me?” Molly asked.

  “I called you by your name,” Levi said. “Your name is Rachel, but you’ve forgotten. You’ve forgotten everything.”

  Molly stared. The boy was making no sense, and yet … something was swimming forward from the recesses of her mind. Something was struggling to come into focus.

  “I think maybe you should go,” Molly said.

  Levi didn’t move. “It’s good that you forgot; that you all started a new life. It was the only way you could stay alive. But now it’s time to remember again.”

  “You’re crazy,” Molly said. She turned at a noise from the house and saw Mel and her mum marching quickly towards them across the yard. Dan was walking nervously a few metres behind. Mel was carrying the shotgun.

  “What’s my name?” Levi whispered.

  Molly stared, held by the boy’s intense green eyes – funny how she’d never noticed that they were green before – and saw a beach.

  An explosion and a boy running. Rocks falling and a ball of flame rising high into the sky. She felt desperately sad for no reason, and the word came out of her mouth without her brain telling it to. “Gabriel.”

  The boy smiled.

  “Hey!” Mel was shouting as she, Dan and Molly’s mother got closer. She raised the shotgun. “Get the hell off our land right now. And don’t come back.”

  “You’d best do it,” Molly said.

  “I need you,” he said. “You and Adam.”

  “Need us for … what?”

  Mel and the others were only a few steps away. “Didn’t you hear me?” Mel screamed.

  “There are people in the shadows,” the boy said. “They’ve stayed hidden for a long time, working quietly to destroy you – all
of you.”

  Molly nodded. She could feel the danger and remember the urgency and the pain. She remembered running and running…

  “You’ve been hiding for a long time, Rachel, but it can’t go on for ever. It has to stop. It’s time you came out of the shadows.”

  “Why?” Molly said. She hadn’t been aware of the clouds gathering, and the first fat raindrops felt cold and heavy. “Why now?”

  The boy’s eyes darkened. “Because they’re coming…”

  WILL PETERSON is an award-winning novelist and acclaimed television writer. He lives in London and Kent. Triskellion is his first series for children.

  For William, Rosemary and James;

  Katie and Jack

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.

  First published 2009 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

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  Text © 2009 Mark Billingham Ltd and Peter Cocks

  Cover design by Walker Books Ltd

  The right of Mark Billingham and Peter Cocks to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This book has been typeset in Fairfield

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.