by A M Kirk
Mark shivered and stared at General Miller’s body.
Then, after a titanic effort of will, he made himself approach it. He looked into the dead man’s face. It held no expression. The General’s face had been animated with strength of purpose and concern with regard to Mark. Where, Mark now wondered, has that energy gone? How can it suddenly be cut off? What has happened here? He undid the buttons of the light brown military jacket and managed to slip it off the body, apologising to the dead man as he did so.
“I don’t know why I couldn’t save you,” he whispered. “I was just so afraid. So afraid. I’m sorry.” After a long pause he promised in a quiet voice, “I’ll never be like that again.”
Mark knelt down and took possession of Miller’s gun. Acting on some age-old instinct, he covered Miller’s face with the jacket. Then he stood on shaky legs and began to walk wearily towards the distant hills, beyond which had once been his home.
23Monday Evening
At seven-thirty that Monday evening, lost, exhausted and footsore and not giving a damn about much any more, Mark crept into a dirty barn on the outskirts of Kirkintilloch, crawled into the remains of the previous year’s straw and, despite the fact that the westering sun’s rays still slanted brightly between the planks of the barn wall, fell asleep in the curled-up foetal position.
The rushing in his ears had subsided now and he could vaguely hear, from the direction of the motorway, the police helicopters searching the area.
The General’s gun lay in the dirt beside him. For the first time in over twenty-four hours no images came when he closed his eyes, and for that he thanked God.
**********
Carrie awoke to darkness but quickly realised her predicament: her wrists and ankles were tied and she had been blindfolded. She was tied to a chair, a dining-room chair by the feel of it, and the angle of her body and limbs.
“Carrie – don’t be afraid.”
“Mrs Daniels? Is it you?” Although blind, she turned her head instinctively towards Janette’s voice.
“Yes, it’s me. I’m right beside you. They’ve taken my blindfold off, but I’m tied to a chair just like you.”
“Where the hell are we? What’s going on, for Christ’s sake? Is Mark here?”
“Easy now, take it easy. They’ve not harmed us and they’ve not handled me too badly so we might get out of this all right. Be calm.”
“I am calm,” replied Carrie. “I’m just concerned – concerned and furious. I think that guy might have hurt my dad. The last thing I remember was my mum running out of our house shouting something about…”
“Well there’s nothing we can do about that now. Right now, I’m afraid there’s not much we can do about anything.”
“Do you know where we are? Who’s doing this to us? What do they want with Mark?”
“Carrie – one thing at a time, all right? First – we’re in Stirling. I can see a small section of the Ochil Hills through the little window, but I recognise it. I’d guess we’re in a flat, because I think we’re high up, but I can’t be certain of that. Second, these people – and there’s at least half a dozen of them now, they’ve been coming and going for the last hour – are the Human Freedom League.”
“The anti-alien people.”
“That’s right, the anti-alien people. As for what they want with Mark, well, I guess they think he’s mixed up with the Soros in some way, but I’m afraid they’ve not really taken us into their confidence. These guys tried to kill us on a train in the Highlands, then chased us up a god-forsaken glen into the middle of nowhere, then drugged and kidnapped me. I’ve no idea what they did with Mark. He might be in the next room – “
“No – I think Mark’s okay. We got a phone call earlier. Mark’s in police custody – ‘helping them with their enquiries’ my dad said. They were supposed to be sending people round to protect us. Instead, this.”
“Well, at least we’re still alive. And after all I’ve been through these last twenty-four hours,” said Janette, “that’s what counts. Believe me.”
**********
In the barn Mark slept on. The old weathered wood made gentle cracking and creaking sounds as planks contracted infinitesimally while the cooling evening minutes crept slowly and peacefully by. Smells of old dung and rotting straw infused the air with a not unpleasant richness. A little shrew left its nest and scuttled cautiously forward before stopping, sensing the alien presence of the human. It sniffed, whiskers twitching. Slowly the sun angled down the sky.
Outside in the dusk, rooks were flying home to roost in ones and twos, enjoying their last aerobatic games of the day. Their caws were like soft calls of welcome, Hail, brother, well-met, how went your day? as they posed and preened and danced on tree limbs.
In the town a kilometre away, local youths were meeting up; but the distant sounds of cars and old motorbikes being revved hardly disturbed the peace surrounding the deep-shadowed barn where Mark slept on.
**********
In Roberts’ little house in a Glasgow suburb the Director of the Criminal Intelligence Section felt far from intelligent. He had, in fact, been crying. He was tired, worn-down, feeling ill and mad with frustration and despair. His wife, Jacqueline, still ill and exhausted herself from her sick-bed vigil over Sally, held her husband’s head against her chest and encouraged him. But he could hardly get words out. His hands gripped her fleecy top at her shoulder blades.
A phone call had told him Miller had been killed, his entourage massacred, his body found in a deserted lane somewhere to the North of Glasgow. And the boy, Mark Daniels, this strange-sounding boy that Chris had plucked off a mountainside in the wilds of Scotland that afternoon, this somehow terribly important boy, had vanished into thin air. Jacqueline stroked her husband’s hair and said hush.
Sally slept the convalescent sleep in her cot and smiled and twitched mysteriously as babies do.
**********
Eight o’clock in the evening and Logan was triumphant. He looked up from his interface. The Chairman had given him cause for great hope, and the final wheels – literally, Logan mused – were about to be set in motion. The two females in the other room were secure. Their ropes would hold, their gags were back in place. He had removed blindfolds, however. They could see, but they must not speak. The mission, the Chairman had just assured him, had been a success. Miller, (“the arch-traitor”) was dead – it was on all the news programmes. Never mind that it had cost League lives – those lives had been willingly sacrificed in the greatest cause the world had ever known. And Logan, Commander Logan, had played the pivotal role in developments.
Logan felt the same rush of pride a child might feel at a father’s sought-after praise.
The League members had all now been instructed to stand down. They were no longer to concern themselves with the boy, Mark Daniels. He was more than likely as good as dead anyway. And after this night, as a consequence of these finishing touches being made my Logan, the Soros would cease to trouble mankind.
Logan was at the front door of the flat. He had switched off the interface for the last time; he had loaded his few belongings into the Jeep waiting downstairs; he took a last look round and smiled. He was proud of all that he had achieved here, in secret, unknown and un-trumpeted. But the human race might one day discover his identity and might one day come to understand why he had done what he was now about to do. He might one day be thanked!
A metal plate was attached to the lowest point of the door. Ten centimetres from where this plate would be if the door were closed, Logan had placed a magnetic block, a twelve-centimetre cube. When the door is opened the attraction of the magnet will force the plate at the foot of the door to come into contact with it. A firmly secured wire leads from the magnetic block; another wire, equally secure, leads from the door-plate. Both wires cross the room, in which the light is now fading, and lead to the wardrobe, still strongly padlocked. The wires enter the wardrobe and enter a sealed
container that contains a small, but powerful explosive device. Attached to the explosive device is a larger, much heavier container, fashioned chiefly of grey lead. Inside this is what the CIS and MI5 have been frantically searching for since its disappearance from the former Sellafield plant in Cumbria: twenty grams of weapons-grade plutonium, and the primer all ready to smash it to atoms.
With tools from the local DIY warehouse, materials supplied by other clandestine members of the League from different parts of the country, and detailed instructions supplied from the Chairman via the Supernet, Logan has fashioned a nuclear bomb.
He fits the last contact in place on the door-plate and the preparations are complete. He closes the door and locks it. When it is next opened, and that will probably be a forced entry, the door will act as a giant switch. The circuit will be complete, the explosives will detonate, the primer will be thrust into the plutonium and the chain reaction that will ensue will be of sufficient power to take out a wide swathe of Central Scotland, from Glasgow in the west to Edinburgh in the east.
Stirling Command, the ancient rock the castle occupies, and the Soros ship a few miles away, will be no more than floating dust.
“And goodbye to you too, Mrs Hartley,” Logan whispers as he passes her door downstairs. Then he is in his Jeep and away, and will be many safe kilometers to the south by the time the sun rises.
**********
The shrew has overcome its natural timidity and has approached to within a few dangerous centimetres of Mark’s face. Its whiskers continue to twitch and test the air for the least sensation of danger. The smell from the metal object on the ground near the sleeping figure is certainly not pleasant. It stands on hind legs, and rubs its forepaws together. Realising that this enormous incomprehensible intruder in its domain is harmless – at least while it sleeps – the shrew scampers off to scavenge some grains from the floor of the barn before venturing out into the night.
Now, however, the images are beginning again…
**********
Mark sees his father, panic-stricken, desperate, one dark November night. (But it’s not the November night – that will come later.) Mark seems to be looking through his father’s own eyes. What he sees is a reflection in the mirror in a bathroom. Green, flower-patterned tiles surround the metallic mirror-frame; behind, a string light-cord swings to and fro in a gentle rhythm; water runs quietly from the cold tap into the white sink below. The face in the mirror is lined with worry, tired, the eyes glittering with near-madness. A syringe is in his hand. It floats slowly up to eye-level, and there are two syringes – the real and the mirror image. John carefully and slowly begins to insert the long point – in his imagination Mark grimaces at this, but the image is unavoidable - into the opening of his right nostril.
Mark feels sick. He is unsure if the feeling is his own or his father’s. Mark watches through his father’s eyes as the needle is pushed further and further up towards the brain. Although Mark can see, he cannot guess the motive, and he cannot influence the action.
The face in the mirror grimaces in pain and disgust as the needle makes contact with something. Perspiration runs down his father’s face. John’s eyes have the glassy look of total fear, but his expression is set in lines of courage driven by sheer will power. Mark feels his father brace himself: he moves his feet slightly more apart and presses his upper thighs against the cool porcelain sink edge; he takes a deep breath… holds it. Then the hands jab upwards, there is a sickening soft crack, as of an egg shell gently breaking, and the needle slides in.
Into what, for God’s sake? What made that sickening, hypnotic, satisfying sound?
But the needle is not for injecting. It is to extract.
John is making a low wailing sound now. He is forcing himself to continue. Holding the syringe firmly with one hand, and closing his eyes, Mark’s father gently pulls the plunger back. A thin, yellowish syrupy liquid trickles down the sides of the container.
The abduction story his father told was true. He had been implanted with some sort of … what? An organic device?
Another room: his mother sleeping. She is heavily pregnant, unable to lie on her side now, but apparently getting the rest that only a deep sleep might bring. But Mark’s father has drugged her with a concoction of tranquillisers he has once been prescribed. He has held on to the unused pills because he is the kind of person for whom throwing things away is like tearing out hair. Janette is sleeping soundly, for the first time in weeks.
I’m alive inside there, Mark thinks. How young his mother looks. Her hair is cut in a different style. The room is not one he recognises.
The syringe appears, and it seems as if it is in his own hand. Mark instantly guesses the purpose: his father is going to use the material from the implant against those who have implanted him. But this is not what the implant was for. He is taking it outside of its intended purpose. The liquid in the syringe should act like antibodies, he has reasoned, and it will make his son, his unborn son, immune to anything the aliens try on him. Such is his father’s reasoning. Mark is appalled at what his father is about to do.
His mother’s exposed stomach is there, its skin stretched tight with the growth of the unconscious baby within. Mark feels a strange disorientation. His father is crying now, silently, his mind raging with the implications and the risks of what he is doing. It is madness, he knows; he is mad; but he has no choice.
In a moment he has ever so gently inserted the needle. Janette stirs slightly, but is too drugged to register this pain. John cannot know what precisely he is inserting the needle into; for all he knows this could kill the child; but he has gone far beyond that point of reason at which he would hesitate over anything that could hit back at his tormentors. They are playing games with him, he knows. Well, now he will break their rules. What the real effects of his actions could be, he only hopes – he hopes for a son who would one day hit back not just for him but for all those who have been taken and experimented on. A lunatic act, a lunatic risk, but one he is prepared to take. One he is taking… now. Gently the plunger moved down the barrel of the syringe, pushing the liquid through the needle.
His mother, drugged, sleeps through the act of madness.
**********
On the barn floor, stirring uneasily in his own sleep, Mark fingers the little brown birthmark on his neck. That, some part of his mind is now aware, was where the point of the needle went in.
**********
Suddenly it is a wild night and they are driving through darkness. This is the night, the night Mark would avoid having to experience if he could, but there is no way he can escape this insane replay.
Mark’s father is in great pain. It throbs and balloons inside his skull, and the implant, or whatever is oozing from it now since he has punctured it those few days ago, is forming a blockage at the back of his throat that makes swallowing difficult, like some horrible out-of-control infection. Lightning outside and lightning inside, huge bolts of it slashing through his head. He can hardly keep the car on the road now. His hands grip the wheel with cold white fingers. Mark’s mother is asleep in the passenger seat.
Then the pain, so searingly intense that John cries out, and the blood, blood everywhere, gushing from his nose. The thing in his head is killing him now, or he has killed it. So much blood!
His mother awake, crying out. His father saying “The pain in my head!”
The narrow Ayrshire road cuts quite steeply down a valley side. It is pitted and eroded at the sides and has been resurfaced many times, making it a rough ride. The car’s speed picks up.
In his pain and panic some deep instinct tells John to stop the car, for God’s sake stop, and his foot presses then pumps the brake pedal and it comes to him then that the hydraulic fluid pipes must be leaking or cut and his left hand flies to the handbrake but the pain is crushing him now. The car hurtles down the poorly surfaced, angled road and Mark’s mother’s screams rise above the battering noise of the wind
and the rain and then at the foot of the hill there is a bend and a tree, a tree thrown into dark relief by the bouncing beams from the car’s headlights. The shallow ditch beside the eroded edge is crossed and the low hedge smashed apart and for a brief, frighteningly brief instant of time the car leaves the ground and then in sickening, deadly, final quick-motion comes the crash.
The car strikes the tree with a brutal bang, and it breaks, crumples, folds in upon itself. John’s rib cage hits the steering wheel and bones crack, his lungs and heart are pierced by their shards. He grunts once as the air is driven from his lungs and his face turns to the side, even after his head has bounced off the collapsing windscreen and he knows, he knows he is to die and he sees his wife’s fear-filled face as the pain engulfs him completely and he wishes - oh, how he wishes! – that he could see the child he could have loved so much.
**********
In the barn tears roll down Mark’s face leaving grimy traces. His fingers curl into fists.
**********
24Awakening
The sun began to sink in the sky.
The cooling air grew thick about him as dusk closed in and deepened, wrapping the barn around. Lights came on in distant farms and isolated houses. The glow of the city began to be noticeable over the hedgerow. Big-bellied planes curved overhead, bending their path over the Campsie Hills on the long slow descent to Glasgow Airport miles to the south-west. Police helicopters and flying ambulances come and go over the motorway and the scene of carnage.
**********
Carrie had had an idea. The guy who gagged her had not bothered to search her. Maybe he thought old Alice Cooper, or whatever his name was, had already done it before he brought her here. But in any event, she could feel the pressure of her mobile in her jeans pocket. If only there was a way now to turn the damn thing on! It was awkward, but it might just be possible to edge her way over to the table corner and somehow manoeuvre her pocket into a position where she could press her jeans against the table to exert enough force to switch the thing on… Hell, she thought, in the general and incontrovertible absence of seventh cavalries, it sure was worth a damn try.