by Simon Toyne
Thoughts tumbled through Shepherd’s head. The telescope was pointing at exactly the same part of the sky Hubble had been probing before it was turned round and put out of action. He stared at the rectangle of night, half expecting to see something new there, growing larger and brighter as it hurtled towards Earth. All he saw was a wisp of cloud and the usual stars twinkling in the black.
He looked back at the screen, Aldebaran burning bright in the centre of the video feed. Below it was a small iTunes controller, the scrub bar showing that the track currently playing had almost finished. Shepherd used the knuckle of his little finger on the trackpad to drag the arrow over to the Play button so as not to leave fingerprints. The final stab of horns and strings bounced off the thin walls then faded away. He clicked the pause button and let out a long breath that sounded loud in the sudden silence.
He quit the application to make sure the music wouldn’t come back on and studied the screen. There was an email inbox with some recent messages, the video feed from the telescope, and another window filled with a sequence of changing numbers he assumed must be something to do with the telescope, though it didn’t look like any control program he’d seen before. Normally they displayed a sequence of co-ordinates, which changed by tiny degrees as the program tracked a designated object. This looked more like a measurement, though one that was getting smaller all the time. The phone buzzed in his hand, and he stabbed the button to silence it.
‘Yes?’
‘The local sheriff is on his way to you now, name of Brodie. He’s bringing everyone with a gun he can lay his hands on. They’re also going to keep their eyes open for that vehicle. You got anything else?’
‘They’re looking for more than one person.’
‘OK good, you know this how?’
‘By the way he was killed. They nailed him to the wall and wrote “Heretic” next to him in his own blood, so I’m guessing the religious angle just got a little more weight to it.’
‘Jesus. Listen, Shepherd, I’m sorry about this. You shouldn’t be there on your own. It was … I should have –’
‘It’s OK, really. There’s something else. You remember the countdown Merriweather told us about at Goddard. The one he saw on Dr Kinderman’s computer just before the virus took Hubble out? It’s here too. It’s hooked up to a telescope pointing to the same piece of sky Hubble was exploring. Only the huge number he talked about isn’t so huge any more. Whatever it is, whatever’s coming – I don't think we don’t have long left.’
74
The heater was on full, filling the station wagon with dry air and noise. Carrie was at the wheel, Eli sitting next to her.
He was quiet and she didn’t like the character of it. Part of her gift was that she could read the stillness in people the same way others could detect a strain in someone’s voice when they were lying. She was used to silence, had known a lot of it when she was growing up, so she could see things in it others could not.
The mission had gone as smoothly as she could have hoped. They had found the target exactly where Archangel said they would. He’d been alone, passive, almost resigned, like he’d been expecting them. He barely showed surprise when they walked through the door of the cabin and caught him staring up to heaven, looking in vain for God. He was surprised when Eli punched him in the solar plexus to squeeze the air from his lungs though. He was more surprised when she slapped the Duct tape on his mouth and Eli drove the first rail spike through his hand.
Make an example – Archangel had said – Send a clear message.
Well, they’d certainly done that, though now in the shadow of Eli’s silence, she wished it could have been her who had carried out the kill. She was better at handling the consequences of death than Eli was, though he was much better at dealing it out. He was an artist when it came to that, she had seen it with the dog, with the woman and her sleeping little girl, and now back there in the cabin. It was as if all the self-doubt and awkwardness simply fell off him when he was doing what he did best, what he was born to do – God’s work. She didn’t think she could love him any more than she already did, but watching him like that, so confident and strong, had been awe-inspiring, like watching God’s terrible beauty in motion. An avenging angel. An artist.
The car slipped a little on the road and she corrected the steering, easing her foot off the gas. She had been speeding up a little without realizing it, the engine racing in time with her humming heart.
A sign by the side of the road said speed limit 25 as they approached a curve. She checked and they were barely doing fifteen. She could feel the tyres sliding over the freezing road, the back threatening to drift sideways if she was too heavy on the steering or the brakes. They couldn’t afford any accidents now, not after everything had gone so perfectly; they just needed a clean ex-filtration with no drama.
There could be no dogs this time. No sleeping little surprises in the back of a car. No mistakes.
75
Shepherd heard the engines first, growling low and distant through the forest as thick snow tyres gnawed at the ground.
He was crouched over Douglas’s computer, using a pen to type his private email address into an email message. As soon as the cops arrived everything in the cabin would become part of a crime scene, something to be tagged and bagged and ultimately shipped back to Quantico for Agent Smith to crack open and explore. Anything useful would be fed back to him through the ghost file – assuming he was still part of the investigation – but he wanted to keep his eye on the countdown and had found the application file that was running it. He had also found something else potentially even more interesting, an email message, sent less than an hour previously from a Hotmail account assigned to Mala210. There was nothing obvious to indicate who Mala210 might be except that Shepherd remembered 210 had been Kinderman’s network address at NASA. The message also got Shepherd’s antennae twitching:
The Mala star is almost in position. See you very soon.
Outside, the engine noise grew louder and the first hint of headlights flickered briefly on the wall above his head.
He finished typing, attached the countdown application to the Hotmail message then pressed Send. He watched the activity wheel spin as the computer began slowly transmitting bits of data through the attached phone. The application was a decent-sized file so it wasn’t going to be fast. He was sending it to an address linked to his phone so he would be able to check it had gone through.
He moved over to the window and peered round the edge of the frame. He could see the bounce and wash of headlamps angling up through the woods as vehicles made their way up the track, throwing shifting, tortured shadows through the frozen trees. He figured he had maybe a minute before they arrived.
On the screen the wheel was still spinning, the progress bar creeping towards 100%. He watched the last piece of the message leave the laptop and his phone shivered in his hand as it arrived. He got to work, quickly erasing the message from the Sent log on the computer. It would still be in the hidden memory cache but it would be a while before Smith found it and he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
He stashed his phone in his pocket and dug out his ID. The last thing he wanted now was for some hyped-up local cop with a heavy trigger finger taking a shot at him. He took one last look at the charnel house of the hut then opened the door and stepped out into the night with his hands raised, just as the headlights bounced to a halt behind his own parked car.
Two figures in heavy parkas emerged from the car, guns drawn and pointing right at him. ‘FBI,’ he called out, holding his badge high above his head. My partner called this in – Agent Franklin. I’m Agent Shepherd. I got a body back here and tracks leading into the woods. Did you intercept the car?’
‘We didn’t see no car,’ a voice called back.
‘Which way did you come?’
‘From Cherokee.’
‘What’s in the other direction?’
‘Tennessee,’ the same voice replied. ‘Ga
tlinburg’s first big place you come to.’
‘Do they know what’s happened here?’
‘Not that I know of, it’s across the state line.’
Different state, not their responsibility – goddamn local cops, no wonder Franklin had no time for them. ‘Call it in,’ Shepherd shouted, moving down the wooden stairs. ‘Give them the description and tell them to arrest anyone driving a white or yellow station wagon. And tell them to approach with caution. There are at least two suspects and they’re fleeing a murder scene.’
One of the cops ducked back inside the car and got on the radio. The other started walking towards him, gun still out and still pointing in his general direction.
‘Walk through the fresh snow,’ Shepherd pointed at a pristine patch between him and the cop, ‘that way we’ll know we’re not trampling over any evidence.’ The cop complied, veering off from his intended route and trudging through the snow towards him. ‘And put your damn gun away.’
Shepherd looked away and through the trees to where he imagined the road continued. It was too dark to see much but as he scanned the wall of trees he caught a flash of light, distant and soft, moving along the road towards the border.
76
Carrie eased her speed down even more as the tyres continued to slip. They were now crawling along at barely more than ten miles an hour, good for keeping on the road, not so great for getting away. The station wagon was old and heavy and only had two-wheel drive. This was taking too long. The man she had tracked through the trees with her night scope must have found the body by now and called the cops or be driving back to town to tell them what he’d found.
It would be all over the news by morning, a warning to all of the consequences of sin and blasphemy. The cops would probably play down the nature of the death, keep the bloody details out of the public eye but it wouldn’t do any good, she had taken some pictures of her own that could be leaked onto the internet to make sure it was seen by everyone. Archangel would be pleased with them – which meant they were one step closer to being together, one step closer to driving a car like this of their own, maybe with their own baby seat in the back. She felt both happy and sad at the thought of it. They would be married for sure, but the judgement was coming too soon for them to be able to have a child of their own.
Unless.
Maybe the work they were doing now, these blood sacrifices they were making would be enough to stop it from happening. Maybe God would stay his hand and spare the judgement because he would see there were still those like her and Eli prepared to serve him and honour His name.
‘Hey baby, you want to make the call? Archangel’s gonna be real happy with us.’
Eli remained silent.
‘It’s OK, honey,’ she said, reading his mood. ‘I know how you said th’other night, how you wished you didn’t like killing so much, but it’s the Lord’s work you’re doing here, don’t you forget that – and there ain’t never no sin in that.’
Eli took a breath and blew it out, fogging the inside of the windshield. ‘Dog ain’t got no immortal soul,’ he said in the small guarded voice she didn’t like, ‘but a man do. And so does a little girl and her mom.’
She reached out and placed her hand on his cheek, risking the slippery road and feeling the jaw muscle working beneath his skin. ‘But if they were all good and righteous people, then their souls will be up in heaven right now. And if not, well then you done rid the earth of some sinners and you shouldn’t be ashamed of either thing. Why, I reckon you should be proud.’
He turned to her and she risked looking away from the road for just a second. ‘You always know the right words to say,’ he said, digging a phone from his pocket, ‘you always shine a light through my darkness in a way that no one else ever can.’
The screen lit up his face as he dialled the number and switched the phone to loudspeaker. Carrie leaned forward and turned the heater down so she could hear better, her eyes never leaving the road. Ahead of them she could see the glow of headlights sweeping across the night, picking out the trees and getting brighter as a car came towards them. It burst round the curve, full beams blazing, going far too fast for the road conditions.
‘Yes?’ Cooper’s voice rose out of the phone.
‘The Professor is dead,’ Eli said.
‘Where are you now?’
‘Driving,’ Eli looked up into the glare of the oncoming lights.
‘Anyone see you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
The headlights were almost upon them now, so bright it looked like the car was in their lane. Carrie eased further over, slowing almost to a stop as a red pick-up flew past them, the snow chains on the tyres throwing grit and ice over the side of their car. Carrie blinked away her blindness and saw a sign right in front of them saying WELCOME TO TENNESSEE with two arrows beneath it pointing back to Cherokee and on to Gatlinburg.
‘There was someone else there but they didn’t see us,’ Carrie said, picking up speed again now she could see the way ahead. ‘I left him to find the body. Maybe he saw our car.’
‘Will that be a problem?’
There was a left turn ahead and another sign for Clingman’s Dome Road.
‘No,’ she said, turning onto the road, carefully following the tyre tracks they’d made earlier, fighting the car up the gentle incline and round a shallow bend.
‘Did you take pictures?’
‘Yeah, we got pictures.’ Ahead of them, the headlights picked up the back of the black Ford Escape they’d driven all the way from Charleston.
‘Good,’ Cooper said. ‘Call me again when you’re clear. I have news. God has smiled on our mission once more.’ Carrie eased the station wagon to a halt then cut the engine. ‘Check your emails. I have sent you instructions of where you should go next. I just found out where Dr Kinderman is.’
77
Neither Athanasius nor Father Thomas had seen Father Malachi since he had opposed their plans to help the infected of Ruin. Since then Malachi had removed himself and the rest of his guild entirely behind locked doors. There were now two distinct societies within the mountain, those fighting the blight and caring for those who had it, and the black cloaks in the library.
They knew they were still there only because the supplies that were delivered weekly to the airlock were always collected, and because whenever one of the black cloaks became infected they were left outside the door, tied to a board to stop them from tearing themselves to pieces, their howls serving as an alarm to bring someone running. Athanasius found this inhuman and un-Christian and it made him furious whenever he thought of it. But now was not the time to pick that particular fight. They were here because they needed Malachi’s help.
He had agreed to talk with them at Vespers and the bell rang now, echoing six times through the tunnels of the mountain, showing that the appointed hour had arrived.
‘Do you think he’ll come?’ Thomas whispered, studying the still darkness of the library through the window of the airlock.
‘He’ll come,’ Athanasius replied. ‘I dropped hints in my note that we had acquired a document that may have some bearing on our current plight. There’s no way he could resist taking a look at something like that. However I’m sure he will first make us wait.’
Athanasius was right. They stood there for nearly ten minutes before a light finally appeared in the distant dark, flickering as it moved towards them.
‘There’s something wrong with the lights,’ Thomas whispered.
Athanasius peered at the still distant figure and realized he was right. Instead of the usual follow light, Malachi’s journey towards them was illuminated solely by a candle lamp. He held a hand in front to shield it and walked slowly to stop the flame from snuffing out. Thomas and Athanasius watched his steady progress, realizing as he drew nearer that the month of isolation inside the library had not been kind to Malachi. His pale skin, pallid and translucent from a near lifetime spent out of the sun, was flaking around his nose an
d mouth and his eyes were circled with red as though he had hardly slept.
‘Thank you for agreeing to speak with us,’ Athanasius said the moment Malachi stopped the other side of the locked door, huffing and perspiring from his long walk. ‘Is there some problem with the lighting?’
‘No,’ Malachi replied. ‘I have simply turned it off. Those of us who still cling to the sanctity of the old ways have agreed to shun the corrupting influence of modernity, in all its forms.’
Athanasius nodded as if this was a perfectly reasonable response. ‘And how are things with you and the others of your guild?’ he asked, before Thomas could lose his temper.
‘We are dying, thank you – slowly but steadily.’
Yes – Athanasius thought – we hear them screaming each time you abandon them, and then burn them for you once they are dead.
‘What about you,’ Malachi countered, ‘did your little coup achieve anything? Has the bringing of civilians into the Citadel and trampling on thousands of years of venerated tradition been rewarded with the discovery of a miracle cure?’
‘Not yet – but we are making progress.’
Malachi’s eyes brightened. ‘Really? What sort of progress?’
‘One of the infected has been successfully nursed back from the brink of death, a civilian. He seems to have developed a form of natural immunity to the disease. The doctors are now working to try and extract a vaccine from his blood.’
‘Really – a vaccine? And is he fully recovered, this – civilian?’ He said this last word as he might utter the word ‘snake’.