After
a while David had given up asking. The mist was too thick to see much
apart from a bit of gray sea water at the back of the seafort, so
he'd sat on a chair swinging his legs backwards and forward while
looking at the books. One about coalmines had caught his eye. Inside,
a picture showed an explosion, throwing men and machinery and bits of
coal and stuff along the tunnel in a big yellow blast.
Tony
had come in a lot later, looking dirty and sweaty. That's when he had
reacted oddly to the word "explosions."
"That
explosion will have been caused by methane," he explained. There
was a big black smudge on one cheek.
"Me-fane."
Tony
smiled, very tired. "Methane. It's a gas. You know ... Like air.
..." He moved his hands about him. They were dirty too. "You
can't smell methane, or see it. But it's highly inflammable ...
Inflammable means it burns very easily. A bit like the gas that comes
out of gas cookers and gas fires. Sometimes methane builds up in
enclosed places like caves-"
"And
coalmines."
"It
can be very dangerous. It only needs a little spark, then-"
"Boom
... Where's it come from then? Me-fane?"
"When
things rot they produce methane. Or it occurs naturally in some
places underground. Like your coalmine."
David
thought about the cellar beneath the seafort. He was about to ask
Tony a question when Mark walked into the room.
Tony
looked up.
"Any
more?"
"No
such luck. I don't know if those two on the causeway understood what
we did to the others, but they're staying put. John Hodgson popped
off a couple of shells at them but they're way out of range. If the
tide wasn't in I'd go out and hit them close up."
Then
the big man turned and walked out of the room. Tony followed.
David
guessed a lot had happened that morning. Important things. But the
grown-ups had all ganged up together. They were keeping secrets from
David.
"Coffee,
Ruth?"
"Please.
... You couldn't rustle up a couple of fresh croissants too?"
"I'm
expecting the delivery boy any moment." Chris handed her the
mug. "You're entitled to one digestive biscuit now. Or you can
save up your ration and orgy on three biscuits tonight with a cup of
hot chocolate."
"Oh,
I'll have it now. I'm starving."
At
least they could treat the rationing a little more flippantly now.
After the success that morning, wiping out six Saf Dar in the space
of a few minutes, the outlook looked brighter.
They
joined Tony. The little Londoner sat on one of the cannon that Chris
had bought from the Vicar. The Vicar himself walked unsteadily in the
direction of the seafort building. Pissed again.
Tony
had half finished his coffee and was smoking a cigar in nervous
pulls.
"Went
the day well?" Chris grinned. "At this rate we'll have the
lot in a day or two."
"I
hope so, Chris. I hope so."
Ruth
told Tony about the state of the food and water. There were adequate
supplies for up to four days. Surely long before then the Saf Dar
would be wiped from the surface of the earth and life could return to
normal. Chris decided that as soon as it was over they would all
drive over to Lincoln and feast on Big Macs as a special treat. Also
he could call in on the architect and see the man up to get the plans
completed. This place had to be transformed into a thriving hotel
within ten months. The days were beginning to slip by, bringing that
deadline remorselessly closer.
He
looked around the courtyard. Nothing, but nothing, could get in the
way of his dream.
Mark
looked over the wall at the two heads protruding from the water. He
said to John Hodgson, "I reckon I could wade out that far and
blow their heads clean off at point-blank."
"You'd
be a dead fucker if you did. You can see those two sods plain enough;
but what about them you can't? There'll be a couple more sat
underwater waiting to grab any silly chuff's legs who tried to get
across there."
"I
want to get out there. I want this place rid of them."
"Aye,
all in good time. It's when you take risks you start losing people.
They'll come back up to them gates. It pulls them like a bitch on
heat pulls dogs from miles around. They can't stop themselves. And
when they come it'll be like shooting rats in a tub."
Mark
Faust knew the farmer was right.
But
for some reason he couldn't explain, he felt that time was running
out.
Chris
had fallen asleep where he sat on the courtyard floor, his back to
the wall. The attack on the Saf Dar that morning had exhausted him.
And when he woke he had that drugged feeling as if he and reality
were still out of synch.
Tony
stood looking down at him. A pair of binoculars dangled from one
hand.
In
a flattened way, Tony said, "Come on."
Chris
pulled himself up, yawning into his hand, and followed Tony up the
stone steps to the top of the wall. They were alone.
Without
a lick of emotion, Tony said, "Look."
Chris
looked out over the beach. The tide had retreated.
Then
he saw what Tony had been scrutinising through the binoculars.
On
the causeway, now high and dry, stood a dozen figures.
They
stood in a domino-straight line, stretching back along the causeway,
staring impassively at the seafort gates.
Saf
Dar.
He
looked at them in silence for a full two minutes before leaning
forward, his elbow resting on the wall, his face nestled in the palm
of his hand.
"Jesus.
... We've been wasting our time, haven't we?"
Tony
nodded.
Chris
stared at the figures. Of the twelve, five appeared as before. Naked
bodies swollen tight with muscle, veins pushing through the skin; the
skin that sunburn-red color.
The
other seven differed.
Different
shades of red mottled their skin, anything from small spots to large
patches that covered half their bodies. This coloring possessed a
shiny, fresh quality. The way skin looks when you pick off a scab too
soon.
These
seven were the seven they had "killed."
They
had come back. And they didn't appear weakened by the furious
blasting from shotguns or burning by petrol bombs. In fact, the
latest growth of flesh that had infilled their wounds stood proud of
the surrounding areas as if the new flesh had been infused with more
power than the old.
And
it had taken six hours.
Now
they were back: fresh, strong, murderous.
"What
does not kill me makes me stronger..." murmured Tony. "Want
these?" He offered the binoculars.
Chris
shook his head. Whatever strength remained oozed from his body,
leaving him empty.
"We
failed, Tony."
"We
did our best. But there's something stronger behind all this. Can you
sense it? That power I told you about? It's leaking through into this
place now. You can feel it running through the stones. You know, like
when you touch a water pipe with water rushing through it. You can
feel the vibration."
"What's
it going to take to get rid of those things?"
"I'll
tell you what we have to do. We'll have to drop this civilized
pretense. This twentieth-century-man pose. We're going to have to do
what our ancestors did."
"Sacrifice?"
Chris shook his head. The man was mad. "Pick someone out? Then
what? Knock out their brains? Skin them alive?"
"Chris,
it's not as insane as it sounds. Look at every culture from the time
that human beings stopped crapping in their own nests. Independently
of each other, cultures have developed their own rites of sacrifice.
Remember what I said. It was a trade, a barter. They were saying to
their gods we give you food, or-or the life of my child. In return
you give me something. A good harvest, success in war."
Chris
shut out the words. He could only stare with hypnotic intensity at
the twelve figures strung out like red beads along the causeway.
They, in turn, glared with chiselled Easter Island statue faces at
the seafort gates as if willing them to crumble to dust.
As
he watched, the others joined him and Tony on the wall. They watched
the Saf Dar silently. Each of them must have realized that the ones
with the sticky red patches were the ones burnt and shot to shreds
that morning.
Then
he heard a cry. The kind of cry someone would make if they had walked
barefoot on broken glass.
Mark
Faust. He lunged forward to the wall, his eyes bulging as he glared
at the figures.
"No!
No! No!" The violence in his voice shocked Chris. "I won't
let the bastards beat us! I won't."
Jerking
up the shotgun, he fired two shots as fast as his finger could snatch
at the trigger. At this range the shot shredded a few scraps of
seaweed on the causeway but not much else. Mark thrust the gun out
for Chris to hold, then snatched another gun from John Hodgson to
blaze off another two rounds.
The
Saf Dar showed no reaction, even though some of the shot had struck
them. From the bare shin of one a trickle of black ran down to pool
on the causeway.
"Bastards
... Bastards. They weren't stupid after all. They knew we could do
nothing-not one little thing-to hurt them."
For
one terrifying moment Chris thought that Mark would throw open the
gates and run out onto the causeway to attack them with his bare
hands. His body shook with rage, his teeth were bared in a snarl, his
eyes blazed.
But
the moment passed as quickly as it had come. With a coughing cry he
turned his back on them and sat down on the stone walkway, arms
clutching his knees to his chest like a baby in its mother's womb.
Chris
looked around at the drawn faces of the villagers as they watched the
big man reduced to this.
Impotent.
He had seen the word a million times before. Now he knew what it
really meant. It's the feeling that breaks you in two when something
is going to happen and you know there's nothing in the world you can
do to prevent it. Like a mother watching her baby dying of cancer.
You can hold the baby in your arms; you can shout and swear at a
heartless bastard of a god who let this happen. But there's nothing
you can do to stop that tiny life slipping away through your fingers.
Watching
Mark seemed somehow shameful. He turned back to watch the living
statues who now ruled their lives. And tried not to listen to the
sounds that Mark Faust was making.
Depression.
Hopelessness.
The
villagers retreated into themselves. Most went back to the gundeck
room to stare into space.
Chris
watched Ruth help David color in a drawing.
He
found it hard to think of anything else but water. What would they do
when that ran out? He glanced out through the window at millions of
tons of the stuff sliding backwards and forward across the sands.
He
purposefully turned his back on the window.
Just
an hour before there had been a real mood of optimism. The things
bled, they seemed to die. But their hopes had all been smashed to
buggery. The things were immortal. We can make more petrol bombs,
blast them with shotguns, stone them, but they'll keep coming back.
The
one hope now was that someone from the outside would come.
From
OUTSIDE.
Chris
suddenly realized how odd that word sounded. Outside. The rest of the
world-with streets, cafes, graffiti, crowded buses, parks; it all
seemed so remote now. As if this bit of the world had somehow cracked
away from Planet Earth.
Manshead
had now become a borderland lying between the common-or-garden world
they all knew and that place Tony had talked about. Where some ...
thing that the ancients had worshipped as a god stalked.