The broadcaster was a Scot.
He blinked and leaned forward even farther, determined not to miss a word.
“Beware the comin’ darkness. All manner of crazy folk, leagues of the bastards. They came w’tout warning, and they killed all they touched. Our cities are flamin, our dead rotting in the sun. They came from everywhere, after t’eh hunger of t’eh winter jus’ gone, on t’eh prowl for revenge from us who won’t forget the ways of Before.
“We know they’ve gone south aways for a good while, that they’re moppin’ ye’s up like flies. It’s given us a wee time to prepare, but we can’t win alone. We need ye’s. We’ll be makin’ a stand, to the last man if we have’tae, but we’d not do it before we had every’un we could on our side. If anyone is out there, please, come outta the shadows.
“A break-off group’s got us messengers pinned down here, at t’eh broadcast site, but if ye could spring us from their hold, we could raise t’eh alarm elseplace—we cud bring all we’ve to give to yer lands, and stan’ beside ye. If we don’t stop them, they’ll have all t’eh lights go out fer gud.
“Please, ye must come. Our coordinates are fifty-four degrees, thirty minutes, thirty-six-point-five seconds north; three degrees, twenty-seven minutes, fifty-two-point-nine seconds west. Please, ye mus’ help.”
Another click, a groan. An electronic whine, then, finally, so distant as to be almost part of the white noise. “Please.”
Then static. Latif lowered the volume to a distant hiss. “He repeats himself, over and over,” he said. “The messaging is circling.”
“Looping,” Lincoln said. “It’s looping.”
“Whatever. It’s been the same message playing for almost two weeks now.”
“He was …” Norman began.
Alexander nodded. “Scottish. We’ve never wandered farther than Northumberland; the North has belonged to the rapture cults and highwaymen since the End. But it seems the people of Scotland have themselves a shadow of civilisation just like ours.”
“Sounds like they’re up to their ears in shit, too,” Agatha said.
“That it does,” Lincoln said. “But the fact remains, there are others. We aren’t alone after all.”
At that, there was finally the beginning of a faint spell of muttering in the crowd.
Can’t blame them, Norman thought. It’s like Columbus finding the New World.
“To plague the Far North and us at once, their numbers must indeed be enormous.” Lincoln paused. “So many … How could chaos bring so many together, hunting for blood?”
Oppenheimer, wilted and frail, looked more sorrowful than ever. Heavy rings sagged under his eyes, and his skin was almost translucent.
Look at him; he’s too old to lose a daughter, let alone face this. They’re all too old for this.
“All it takes is a loon with a pitchfork to make the first strike,” Oppenheimer muttered. “Once the frenzy starts, there’s no stopping it.”
“I don’t think we have all the facts just yet,” Evelyn said in guarded tones. “There’s always a man behind the curtain. Or woman.”
“Can we send a reply?” Norman said.
Everyone looked at him, most blinking in surprise. It seemed the concept hadn’t occurred to them.
Lincoln was looking at him appreciatively. “No. Latif and I have tried. The Blanket holds on all other frequencies, and the message broadcasts constantly, keeping the cleared one occupied.”
Norman’s stomach sank. A few grumbled in disappointment.
Alexander cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Coordinates. He spoke coordinates. Mr DeGray, could you enlighten us?”
DeGray stepped from the crowd, ashen faced and sweaty. He fumbled with his satchel of notes as Latif turned up the volume once more. The message looped around, and this time John scratched them down. He then struggled with his satchel, eventually producing a large map of northern England, which he held out horizontally for all to see. “They’re transmitting from somewhere sandwiched between Allerdale and Copeland. A district of Cumbria called Radden.”
Alexander, Agatha and Lincoln started visibly. They each recovered fast, but everyone in the room must have seen it.
The hairs on Norman’s arms stood on end.
What now? More secrets.
“Curse all this talk o’ Radden an’ the North. Like I said before, James, git on with it and go satisfy yer curiosity. We’ll wait for Malverston’s goons, don’t you mind,” Agatha cried.
Thompson looked concerned, and sat beside the old lady whose eyes were once more cloudy and distant. Rush reached over towards her hesitatingly, but drew back when she turned her filmy gaze upon him.
Agatha shook herself and looked down at Lincoln, Alexander, and finally over at Norman. Her brows twitched constantly.
Old, Norman expected her to say. You all look so old.
Evelyn spoke up hurriedly. “What are we going to do about this?” Her voice had lost all trace of its commanding tone. It was a sincere question, flat and true.
“I should think there’s only one course of action,” Rush said. “We have to contact these people as soon as possible, take a force north to liberate them.”
Thompson started. Her gaze said it all: she thought him mad. “Just hold a bloody minute, there! We can’t be doing any such thing.”
The others tensed. Norman sensed dozens of others in the crowd wittering their disapproval, the remainder decrying their assent. The councillors remained stoic, but Norman sensed a fracture among them.
Careful, now. Keep your cool. Sides are being drawn. Pick carefully.
He glanced at Alexander, who spared him a momentary flick of the eyes before training his gaze firmly on the radio.
He’s relying on you. They all are.
Norman tried to grease his throat without swallowing too hard. Still, the click of his Adam’s apple seemed deafening.
“Why the hell not?” Rush said.
Thompson blustered with such severity that her froggy face wobbled like jelly. “We’re about to be overrun by people waving the heads of those we love on their pitchforks, and you’d have us march what little strength we have on some fool’s errand? Worse, to spring a bunch of strangers from a siege that could be just the same, if not worse, than this one?”
DeGray cleared his throat. “The world as we know it is changed by this message.” His podgy cheeks were flushed as he eyed the radio. “I advise against haste.”
Agatha squeezed a cross pendant hanging around her neck. “Bloody thing’s like Pandora’s Box,” she muttered.
“It’s not fair to ask anyone to risk their lives again, after all they’ve been through,” Oppenheimer said. He looked so far away, so defeated, that for a moment nobody looked ready to put up a fight.
Then, Lincoln cried, “I never took one of our councillors for a yellow belly!”
The others started, and Norman suppressed a groan that almost spilled from his lips.
Unlike the rest of them, Lincoln hadn’t watched Oppenheimer’s family fall to the tarmac in pools of their own blood.
“Oliver,” Agatha mumbled, “hold ya tongue. Nobody’s yella. He’s right. We’ve all lost somethin’. We can’t go nowhere on account of some voice from a box.”
“The first voice to come out of any box for forty years!” Lincoln said. “The very fact that these people even know what a radio is means they’re the kind of people we need to touch base with. We saw the banner. They’re gone! We must make contact, immediately, while there’s still time.”
John DeGray, a man who had ensconced himself safe in his classroom for so many years with only his single student to contend with, seemed on the verge of violence. “This is one of the greatest discoveries we’ve made since the End.” He licked his lips, and his eyes flickered. “We must … We must be brave. We must act!”
Evelyn closed her eyes a moment and looked around at the council afresh. Norman hoped she wasn’t going to ask him what he thought. In fact, he was
hoping the others had forgotten he was there at all.
It’s all too big for me. Let them not see me.
“Mr Cain, what have you to say?” Evelyn said.
Alexander had watched it all play out in silence, his jaw set hard as granite. Now, his trance visibly wrenched to breaking point, like the branch of an ancient tree. He dragged his hands along his face, stretching the grizzled skin.
He looks tired, Norman thought.
And old, said a voice in his head that sounded like Agatha. So old …
From the fizzing in his gut, Norman realised that was more frightening than anything else.
“These people are our kindred. They may be our only hope. I know some of you must be doubting whether we could make contact, or what good it would do if we did, or even whether this message is an ancient relic recorded years ago … something we’ve just now stumbled on by accident.
“The fact is, we don’t have time for doubt. Mr DeGray is right: we have to act.”
A brief silence followed, then he pounded his fist on the desk lightly. “We’ll vote on it now. If we go, we’ll muster everything we can bring to bear and march on those coordinates. Then, whatever happens, happens.”
“And if we decline?” Thompson said warily.
“We prepare as best we can, then hole up, and wait for whatever’s coming.”
“That won’t be enough,” Oppenheimer muttered, pale and sunken.
“No,” Alexander said, “probably not. But if that’s what the council chooses, so be it.”
“Surely you can’t expect us to make a unilateral decision like this on gut reaction!” Thompson said.
When Alexander turned his gaze on her, Norman saw a coldness he had seen only a few times before. This was the Messiah beneath the flesh, without his draperies of bravado and diplomatic aplomb. “You were elected to lead your people and sit on this bench in their stead. There’s no time to debate, and no way to relay the news in any case. We act now. Make your decisions, and prepare to vote.”
Norman’s hands had grown clammy, and a mote of panic rattled in his chest. He couldn’t help glancing into the crowd at random, hoping to find a comforting face. He found only blank, shocked stares.
They expect me to be in on this? I’m not ready. I don’t even represent anyone.
But you do, said a voice deeper down, close to the bubbling black tar of his subconscious. You represent them all, whether you want to or not. Alexander, and all his stories, have made sure of that.
He swallowed hard. Agatha and Lincoln each gave a minute nod of encouragement. But Norman couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with Alexander; the pressure was too great—any moment it would char his flesh, burn him up and leave the chair a smoking ruin.
Evelyn cleared her throat. “The council calls a vote, regarding the matter of the distress call intercepted by Mr Lincoln and Mr Hadad. All those in favour of mounting a rescue expedition, raise their hands now.”
It was all happening too fast. Eight hands stood between them and their fate.
Alexander and Agatha were the first to thrust their hands in the air, in the name of New Canterbury, staring stonily ahead. Lincoln followed in short order, his face grave.
Norman was appalled to see a frown had appeared on Agatha’s face as she looked at her own aloft forearm. She was slipping away. They had to settle this, fast.
Evelyn’s decision was next. Marek stepped forward from the darkness and took a low bow. “I think I speak for the tower when I say we’d be fools to ignore a sign like this,” he growled. He reserved a single extra moment to send a glance of derision in Thompson’s direction, then sank back.
Evelyn’s hand was held high a moment later, and the tower-folk stomped their feet in unison, a thrumming, powerful sound that injected the will of five hundred into her wrinkled fingers.
Faltering all the way, Rush’s hands joined theirs. His brows were furrowed, and he avoided the gazes of Thompson and Oppenheimer on either side of him.
Thompson folded her arms across her chest, looking around at them all with disbelief etched onto her face. Her bulging eyes were red with moisture, and her lips had paled to a thin white line.
Oppenheimer was moments behind her, leaning back onto his bony behind. The husk of a man, and father, looked over at the remainder of his people in the crowd, and the empty seats where his family should have sat.
Rush’s vote makes four yeas against two nays. Looks like my vote doesn’t count for much anyway.
Norman sighed with relief.
Then the bottom fell out. Rush put down his hand. A hollow, wounded sound escaped his throat, then he too sat back and folded his arms.
A lump of warm lead the size of a billiard ball lodged in Norman’s throat.
Spoke too soon. Now it’s all down to you.
Yea, and they went.
Nay, and they had a hung vote. That meant hours of back-room politics, and sermons of passion. They didn’t have time for any of that.
But to say yes meant maybe condemning thousand to their deaths. It would be on his head—deaths met either on some foreign battlefield, or in homes burning in the wake of an army marching under a pigeon sigil.
It was too much. And so many eyes pressing in on him!
Wait. Wait. It’s all too too fast.
He needed to think.
No time to think.
He needed help.
You’re on your own, squire. Time you faced up to it.
He couldn’t. It wasn’t his place.
It’s your place alone.
Why?
Because it’s your destiny. It’s what Alexander drilled into their heads, because the son of a bitch always knew that eventually something would come along that was too big for him, and when that happened people would need someone to look to with blind faith. Not a leader, but a hero.
But I’m no hero. I’m a mess. When I’m not sucking air with ribs that feel like chunks of broken glass, I’m hallucinating ghosts from Before.
But did it matter? Did the truth actually matter? Wasn’t the idea of a hero always more powerful than any man, no matter how great, could ever be?
Shit.
“Mr Creek?” Evelyn’s voice split off into myriad crannies until a thousand separate echoes whispered his name. “Mr Creek, the deciding vote falls to you.” For a moment he thought he saw a pleading twitch amidst her icy brow.
Norman took a last look into the crowd and he found Allison. She nodded with such vehemence that, compared to the council’s subtleties and vagaries, it carried real power. His hand rose into the air as though yanked on invisible wires.
“It’s settled, then,” Evelyn said. “We go.”
PART 4 – THE LAST TRUMPET
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
— T.S. Eliot
CHAPTER 13
Lucian grunted, gritting his teeth hard enough to set his gums bleeding. The sentries’ leather whipping straps had gotten to know the flesh of his back well of late. By now the breadth of his shoulders felt hot enough to smoulder like last night’s campfire. But he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of knowing just how bad it hurt—that he wanted to get down on his knees and squeal, just like dozens who did just that every other minute, somewhere along the miles-long trail of slavers and captives.
“Keep it moving,” Charlie growled. “You’re slowing up, my friend. A guy could think you’re getting near quitting time.”
Lucian ignored him. Stumbling beside him, Max Vandeborn grunted something that sounded suspiciously like “little prick”.
Along the whole throng of ragged bodies, held aloft by the mounted sentries, were long hollow poles, fluttering from which were blood-red flags. Upon each was a hastily painted white symbol, one that by now played Lucian’s heartstrings like a harpsichord. The white pigeon sigils glared just as much as the real pigeons that hovered overhead and alighted on people’s shoulders.
More people had been appearing for the last few hours. At first it had been only small groups, sometimes only twos or threes being shepherded by a single guard. Then there had been staggered clumps, then wispy threads strung out over a hundred yards. Slowly, those threads had thickened, multiplied and lengthened, until now ribbons of marching hangdog figures linked up with the main drag like capillaries converging on a vein.
All of them laboured north under the sigil.
“So many,” Vandeborn muttered. “I didn’t think there were even this many left.”
Charlie grunted somewhere out of sight. “You’d be surprised what you can find if you push hard enough.”
Up ahead, someone crumpled to the mud, falling flat on their face in a stupor of blind exhaustion. Nobody dared try picking them up; they’d all learned that the punishment for that was to be beaten until they were lying right next to the fallen. An exasperated guard shunted the muddied figure to the side of the path with the base of his pole, and the droves of feet marched on.
Hundreds of bodies lay in their wake, strung over endless miles.
“How long are you going to keep marching us like this? You won’t have any of us left if we go much farther,” Lucian said.
Vandeborn guffawed. “Wouldn’t put it past the sick fucks to have it as their plan all along. March the lot of us into the ground, then keep the strongest for house-slaves. Men can be cruel. Just read your history. It’s the same story, over and over. All that crap about civilisation was just a phase … a spark in the shadows.”
Charlie laughed openly. He was within shooting distance of genuine humour. “Don’t you worry now. Won’t be long.”
As though to illustrate his point, he pointed to a sign that had appeared from over a hilltop ahead.
“No,” Lucian whispered.
“What?” Vandeborn said.
Lucian didn’t reply. He wasn’t sure he could even if he’d tried.
The sign was old, beaten and so weathered that the paint had been stripped away completely. But the raised lettering was still there, and Lucian read it with mounting terror:
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