Kristin
Page 20
The world fell silent. It listened. It listened intently as each deity, each focus of human belief delivered an identical message:
‘The nascent threat to this world is no more,’ Christ began. ‘But humankind will remain in peril whilst hatred and division exist at its heart. You must listen to one another, learn from one another, respect one another. You were created equally and should treat one another as equals.
‘You know from your past that hatred and persecution is a disease of the mind and of the soul — a disease that spreads like a plague. If you cannot learn from your mistakes then such a disease will surely lead to your destruction.
‘Should you fail to heed these words there will be no place in heaven for you, no future incarnation or higher level of life. There will be no redemption.’
He climbed down from the ruins of the wall, drained of energy.
A young woman dashed forwards and scrabbled at the rubble until she’d unearthed familiar, brown leather shoes.
‘ ... Dear Lord!’ she pleaded, digging frantically. ‘Please save him, please spare my beloved son, Josiah, this terrible fate. He is but a boy, his life has only just begun!’ She gazed up desperately into eyes she seemed to know so well.
‘Where is your son?’ he asked.
‘ ... Josiah is here, my Lord, beneath these heavy stones!’
He looked upon her with sympathy.
‘ ... But you can ... you can save him, my Lord, you can give life back to him ... heal his wounds?’
Fatigue overwhelmed him; his life-force was almost spent.
He knelt by her side. Others joined them, and together they lifted the rock fragments away, exhuming the broken body of the boy.
‘I cannot recognize him,’ she wept, covering her mouth.
He watched, distraught, as she rocked her dead child.
‘I will help your son,’ he said, certain it would be the last thing he would ever do. He reached out and his hand spanned the boy’s head.
He didn’t feel afraid, here at the end, at the culmination of his life. Neither did he feel bitter. He was simply glad that the whole world would see his selfless act and above all else he hoped and believed that humanity would learn to follow his example.
He closed his eyes and the essence of life flowed from his body into the dead child.
Thirty-eight
Margaret Sharman cowered beneath a moth-eaten, tartan car rug in a cramped, unlit corner of the icy attic to her house. Cobwebs hung from the crumbling underside of the roof tiles, tangling in her unkempt, grey hair.
When she’d been unable to bear the destitution of life without her husband and sons any longer, when she’d been certain the world was about to end, she’d pulled down the wooden ladder from the hatch on the landing. Then she’d climbed up, hauled up the ladder, closed the hatch and hidden.
She’d called Thom again and again, but the line had always been dead and, steeling herself, she’d walked the three miles to his home, approaching the ominous, silent building with terror, sure that the door would open and the Gorgon, the unearthly blight upon mankind who’d chewed up her son and spat him out would step forwards from the darkness inside — eyeless, drenched in his blood. But there had been nobody there.
She comforted herself with the thought that in her dreams she’d seen Thom once more, had slaked his thirst and brought him solace before it had been time for him to leave her forever.
Jammed upside down between two dust-laden, decaying cardboard boxes stuffed full with forgotten memories of her life within the house below she found an old plastic radio and pulled it free. It had been Thom’s — his very first radio. She remembered buying it for his thirteenth birthday. He’d nagged for it endlessly.
Hopefully, she turned the wheel on the side of the case and heard a click as the radio spluttered to life. Improbably, a little power remained in the twenty-year-old batteries, although she was forced to hold the speaker tight against her ear to hear anything at all. She rolled the other wheel with her forefinger until she lost the eerie whine, the rush of static, and picked up the faint sound of a female voice.
‘ ... so hard to believe ... what we’ve seen here ... today in Jerusalem. It’s so difficult to accept, to comprehend what’s been happening in our world ... over the last few weeks ... to just ... appreciate, I don’t know ... the gravity of it all, the consequences for all of humanity.
‘I’m standing on a rooftop ... a small, flat rooftop, overlooking the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall ... I mean the remains of the Wailing Wall, and I’m with the television crew ... the television crew who recorded every ...’ Her voice faltered.
‘ ... Anyone ... anybody who doubted the existence of God, myself included, must believe in him now ... they must believe in him, in his power. So many can bear testament to the second coming of Jesus Christ. This day we saw him reborn within the body of an ordinary man ... Thomas Sharman.’
Margaret Sharman gasped and her eyes filled with tears.
‘ … Millions across the globe witnessed the presence of absolute evil ... occupying the body of the woman we knew only as Kristin. And they saw that evil ... uncreated ... at the cost of her life.
‘This is the day history will remember above all others ... the day the human race was shown the path it must take in order to survive ... the day it was issued with a warning. It is the day we were delivered from evil, when Jesus Christ was resurrected ... and laid down his life ... to become our saviour once again.’
The radio tumbled from Margaret Sharman’s hands and she cried as she had never cried before.
Thirty-nine
United Nations Security Council President James Bathurst sat alone at the head of the circular table formation in the Chamber staring at Per Krough’s wall mural depicting a phoenix rising from the ashes of its previous incarnation, and considered how perilously close the human race had come to having to do the same.
The world had been a matter of seconds away from a holocaust when the blip representing the missile launched from the Middle East vanished from radar monitors across the globe. Moments later, the flashing dot denoting the rapid progress of the Trident II missile, fired in retaliation from the nuclear submarine HMS Vengeance in the Baltic Sea, also disappeared.
Intelligence indicated that the terrorists’ missile hadn’t conformed to normal launch pattern — if its target was London its vertical trajectory had been twenty degrees too low, putting it on course to annihilate northern Poland. It seemed that the launch had been entirely uncontrolled, its victim random — the willful act of a psychotic, supernatural phenomenon.
Now he could believe in her.
Now he could accept that Christ had risen for a second time, reborn within Thomas Sharman, and had died protecting humankind from its own aggression and greed.
Less than forty-eight hours after his death Sharman, the ordinary man, the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, was buried in a beautiful marble tomb on the Mount of Olives. Bathurst had watched the entire, sunbathed service on television, alone in his office. Three quarters of the world’s population had watched with him.
Afterwards, when the people of Jerusalem returned to the remains of the Western Wall to remove the black deity’s corpse for burning it had gone, fuelling rumours of imminent rebirth and vengeance. But it was not reborn, and vengeance was not forthcoming.
Bathurst had received frequent updates as a seven-day search covering more than three million square miles of Europe and the Atlantic Ocean failed to discover any physical evidence of either missile: Exhaustive tests indicated the total absence of radioactivity. There had been no detonation. It was as if the missiles and the nuclear warheads they carried had simply never existed.
The glossy, black telephone to his right rang. He caught his breath, hesitated for a few moments and picked up the receiver.
‘Mr President?’ said the soft, woman’s voice.
He couldn’t answer.
‘Mr President?’
‘ ... Yes?’
‘I’m patching through a call from overseas. The caller won’t identify himself. He will only speak to you.’
‘I see. Put him through.’
‘And Mr President?’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s another call on hold, for you, personally.’
The line went temporarily dead. Then it crackled back to life, rushing loud in his ear. ‘President?’ scratched the distant voice.
‘ ... Yes?’
‘President ... UN?’
‘I am James Bathurst, President of the United Nations Security Council, yes. Who is this, how did you get ... ?’
‘I am Kim Hae Kyong, leader, Democratic People Republic North Korea.’
‘Yes?’
‘I will not bring death and destruction upon my country, my people. Nor will I wage war upon my fellow man. North Korea’s Taepodong -2 missiles have been disarmed. Permission is given for UN teams to enter North Korea to inspect the decommissioned weapons, effective immediately.’
‘The nations of the West reciprocate,’ he replied. Our weapons of mass destruction have also been deactivated. North Korea is invited to examine them at its earliest convenience.’
The line fell silent.
‘Sir?’ said the woman. ‘Will you take the second call?’
His eyes reddened. ‘Yes ... put it through will you? ... James Bathurst,’ he said, taking the initiative.
This time the line was crisp and clear. ‘You are speaking to Badr Udeen Sistani, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,’ the caller responded in near perfect English. ‘This administration has taken the decision to agree to United Nations requests to allow inspection teams into Afghanistan. They will not be hindered in their journey north to the remaining missiles’ location, which we now disclose to you personally by email. Our understanding is that their owners have disarmed and abandoned the weapons.’
Bathurst replaced the receiver, picked it up again and called the Secretary-General, William Devereux, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Bob Hayes. Then he leaned back in the light blue chair and blew out his cheeks, his face awash with tears.
Epilogue
The world changed. People changed. The extremist activist groups of the Middle East met with the governments of the West to discuss their grievances and renounced aggression, returning to the teachings of the Koran. In response the West vowed never again to meddle in the affairs of the East.
The world’s superpowers terminated their nuclear arms programmes — moves that would eventually lead to the end of all warfare.
Globally, accord and understanding was reached. Greed became an unheard-of human characteristic. The rich nations of the Northern Hemisphere gave generously to the Third World, consigning its poverty to the history books. The world became a better place in which to live, worthy of creation.
But high above the rejuvenated, glorious Earth something waited. It was new. It was progeny. Blessed with goodness and cursed by evil, it was the most powerful force in all creation.
The infant spirit turned restlessly in its heavenly womb and looked down upon the the Earth in adoration. And with utter malice.
It waited.
It waited for the soul of humanity to rot, waited for the chance it knew would inevitably come, the chance to return to the physical world.
It would live amongst them in peace. Silent. Duplicitous. Its altruistic anima would seek, and gain their unquestioning trust. They would suspect nothing.
And then it would make them rip each other’s throats out.