by Simon Clark
And that’s where they found Dominion. Above them, a hundred feet of dense branches – layer after layer of woody limbs reached the top of the gully. By this time Dominion had released Beech. Strands of copper hair still clung to his fingers.
‘Christ, you fucking monster, you nearly ripped my head off.’ She pressed her palm to her head as her face creased with pain. ‘Never do that again. I swear I’ll—’
‘Beech. Shh.’ Paul put his finger to his lips.
‘Dominion just saved your life,’ Elsa added. ‘Didn’t you hear it?’
‘Hear what? All I heard was my own damn hair ripping from my scalp.’
Paul shushed her again, then pointed upward. ‘Saps,’ he whispered. He glanced round. The rest of the beleaguered party were there.
A human voice floated through the canopy of green. ‘See them?’
‘They ran into the trees.’
‘You going to try another?’
There was laughter. ‘Just you try and stop me.’
A pitter-patter sound followed. The noise of a heavy object falling through leaves. Elsa with the rest of the group found themselves staring up into the branches. They knew what would happen in the next five seconds.
Elsa found herself counting. One, two … In that steel shell that would be no larger than an apple an internal fuse would be burning toward explosive. Three, four …
WHUMMP!
Layers of thousands of leaves muffled the explosion. Even so everyone flinched. A moment later mangled twigs, bark and pulpy gobs of mashed leaves dropped down onto them. Elsa glanced round to make sure everyone was all right. Dominion stood there, like a statue, simply staring upward. He sensed the men standing on the cliff top almost directly above them. It was from there that they tossed grenades down into the gorge.
Paul whispered, ‘Everyone OK?’ There were terse nods. Even so, West had a flesh wound to his head where a piece of shrapnel had found its way through the foliage to puncture his scalp.
Again Paul murmured to reassure them, ‘They can’t see us now. Keep still, and …’ He held his finger to his lips for silence.
A whispered voice reached them. ‘You know, they looked as if they were going further up the gorge.’
The next time an explosion reverberated against the walls of the chasm it was far enough away for none of the shrapnel to reach them. A couple of minutes later another grenade detonated but clearly it was a good hundred paces away.
‘They’re moving away,’ Paul whispered. ‘They don’t know where we are.’
‘For now.’ Saiban was grim. ‘But they’ll come back. And if it isn’t them it will be other men.’ The melancholy in his eyes deepened. ‘They’ll never give up.’
For ten minutes they sat in silence as the thunder of bursting grenades receded into the distance.
At last Paul grunted, ‘OK. Let’s go.’
Beech shrugged. ‘Where?’
Paul didn’t reply. He merely trudged along the stream downhill. Elsa fell into step behind him. The others did the same. Their pace was mechanical. Dark cloud slid over the sky. It felt as if the jaws of a giant trap were slowly – yet implacably – closing in on the them.
10
Times of Thunder
Elsa stared in disbelief. At that moment the urge to laugh and to cry rose in equal measure inside of her. They had followed the deep gully downhill after the grenade attack. No one had been seriously hurt. A few grenade fragments had found their mark, resulting in minor injuries. West’s scalp wound had trickled blood into his left eye until it was ringed a deep crimson. From that eye came the never-ending trickle of a red tear, as if for all the world her fellow God Scarer wept blood.
As they’d followed the gully, between two high rock faces that transformed what had been open countryside into a jail, that’s when even the natural world turned against them. A dark slab of cloud filled the sky. Although it threatened rain, no raindrops fell. Even so, it began to thunder. An ominous grumbling that continued without pause across the mountains. With that dry thunder came gusts of wind that blew grit into their eyes making it difficult to see. Then came the torture of the descent. The oaks, elms and birch gave way to thorn bushes that dragged bloody furrows in their bare hands and faces as they forced a pathway through.
West, with his blood-filled eye from the grenade splinter, tugged a thorn from the side of his fist. ‘See what happens to monsters when they defy God?’ A bead of scarlet crowned on his hand.
No one commented.
We poor bastards, Elsa told herself. We poor, miserable, God-shunned wretches. We’re traumatized from the attack last night. We haven’t slept in twenty-four hours. We haven’t eaten. All we’ve had to drink is stream water. Lorne was burnt at the stake. We’ve been hunted by men with bombs. Now this … Elsa plodded alongside the stream. Constantly, they had to push aside the mass of branches that bristled with flesh-ripping thorns. The trees resembled sea-urchins rather than vegetation. Black spines punctured fingers, hands, faces. Briars dragged at their shins, Stinging nettles prickled any bare skin they touched. When Elsa checked her reflection in the stream as she took a sip of water she noticed blood oozed from her earlobe where a thorn had spiked the fleshy part of her ear.
When they had respite from the thorns they were forced to climb over moss-covered boulders. Now this miserable bunch of survivors, refugees, call them what you will, repeatedly lost their footing. Each fall produced a crop of skinned elbows, bruised limbs with a whole panoply of grazes, wrenched muscles and painful jolts.
After the torture of the gully they found themselves halfway down a hillside. Immediately they recognized the valley in front of them with a river that wound its way down to a town that stood on the coast. Her eyes absorbed distant rooftops. On a cliff above the ocean stood the box-shape of an ancient castle. She, along with the rest of the group, turned to look upward. Perhaps a hundred feet above their heads was the plateau where the stone circle stood: the Nine Sisters bronze-age monument where they’d met just hours ago. A dozen paces from that would be a mound of ash that shrouded the burnt body of Lerner.
Paul’s eyes bled pure defeat. ‘I’m not going to state the obvious.’
‘I will.’ Saiban’s voice deteriorated to a rasp. ‘After walking for hours we’ve come full circle. We’re back where we started.’
Beech sighed, ‘We know that. Do you have to …’ Even the redhead was too exhausted to argue. She sat down on the hillside to stare out over the valley. It had become gloomy now. A shadow-filled rift in the earth. Dry thunder clumped away in the distance as if monstrous feet stamped in anger.
West blinked a blood-rimmed eye. ‘Thunder speaks. You know what it’s saying?’ His face was grim. ‘We belong dead.’ His laugh came as a bark. ‘We belong dead. Don’t you love a timely film reference?’
When his shoulders began to shake she thought he would burst out into manic giggles, but he put his head down. He stood like that for a long while, one hand covering his mouth. No one stared at him but they couldn’t avoid the wretchedness of his grief. It was a strange, dry weeping. A barren, painful dryness that seemed to find its counterpart in that dry thunder that beat through the air. And even though the sky grew darker it didn’t rain. Not one drop.
So we’ve come to this. Forty-eight hours ago she led a busy, fulfilled life at the transit station. She took care of her charges – the men and women who’d been gifted the chance of a second life after their old one either petered out in a hospital bed or was snatched from them by any of the million or so day-to-day accidents that can rob an individual of their life.
Elsa clenched her fists as thunder raged at them. ‘I swam too far from the shore … I didn’t know there was a riptide.’
West still sobbed into his hand. Thunder crashed against their heads.
‘I was swimming with my husband.’ Elsa couldn’t stop the words. ‘We tried to stay together. My body was the only one the coastguard recovered. Richard must have stayed with me as long as he
could … the riptide was like white water. You couldn’t …’ Her voice dried. ‘Too strong. That’s all.’
‘Elsa.’ Paul placed his hand to her shoulder; a gesture of affection.
West lifted his head. ‘I know we’re not supposed to talk about our past lives, or … or how we died … to hell with it. Why should we trap ourselves in all these rules? We can’t do this … we can’t do that … always defer to humanity …never answer humanity back …always step aside…. Always yield; they have right of way …It’s a fucking cage. You know what?’ His voice became raw as grief turned to anger. ‘I overdosed on aspirin. Do you know what a fucking mess that is? You don’t fall asleep and oh-so gracefully slip away. You wake up after they pump your stomach. You’re wide-awake. At first you feel OK. Only the damage has been done. Blood vessels rupture and you bleed from every orifice – eyes—’ He stabbed his finger at the blood streaming from the head wound into his eye. ‘Yes, just like this. And everywhere else, too. Ears. Nose. Mouth. Navel – and yes … YES! Every hole south of the equator, as well!’ He raised his face to the sky as he gave a grim laugh. ‘I’m a suicide. A successful one at that. Suicides are rejected from the transition program. My mother bribed the doctor to report it as an accidental overdose, so I got the Lazarus treatment. Mother wasn’t going to allow me to escape her as easily as that.’
Saiban wrung his hands. ‘It’s our law. We never tell anyone how we died.’
Beech pushed her hair from her eyes. ‘I proved that riding my motorcycle at ninety on a wet road at night won’t get you gold medals in common sense.’ Her glare challenged Saiban to stop her. ‘Go on, Saiban. Report me for confessing that I died by blasting into someone’s garden wall. Either way, we’re all heading for the chop.’
The others in the group all began to speak.
‘I died in a fire.’
‘Heart.’
‘Cancer. Ten years, four operations. Sacks of chemo.’
‘Thrombosis.’
Elsa knew this was a radical break from traditions. We Frankenstein monsters … we God Scarers … whatever you call us. Until now we never admitted to anyone how we died. Yes, it’s on record. But the records are confidential.
‘My wife’s name is Sonia.’
I had a partner. Khan is – or was – a musician. I don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. I underwent transit fifteen years ago.’
‘I’ve four children. One was a baby when I died.’
Saiban clenched his fists. Thunder backed his voice like a rumble of drums when he shouted, ‘Shut up. You mustn’t do this. We never do.’
‘No,’ Paul said at last. ‘We never admit how we died. And we never speak about the people we left behind. It’s considered impolite amongst our kind to discuss the people we loved in our first life.’
‘We mustn’t start now.’ Saiban glared at each in turn. ‘There’s good reason for not raking up the past. We all know it won’t help. All it does is bring pain.’
Elsa realized that apart from Saiban only Paul hadn’t mentioned how he’d left his old life. Nor had he mentioned a past partner, nor family. At that moment the sense of their place in the world returned with a violent abruptness. Here they were on the hillside. Above this bleak, exposed place clouds pressed down from the sky, as grim as the roof of a tomb. Thunder muttered angrily in the distance. Here, nine men and women of her own kind slipped once more into an exhausted silence. Their faces bore scratches from slithering down the thornfilled gully. With the exception of Dominion, of course. He was unmarked.
Why have I forgotten about Dominion? He was with us during our cowardly skulk through the thorn bushes. And yet for the last half-hour he seems to have slipped away from our group. As if that huge physique has become transparent. He must have been there, of course. Only for some reason I never noticed him.
Not only were the survivors too tired to move, there seemed no point in walking again. They didn’t know the terrain. If they trudged on it might take them into the arms of their tormentors, or another five-hour walk might simply result in a dispiriting tour of the hills before the path brought them back full circle to this rocky hillside beneath the plateau on which the stone circle gazed bleakly into eternity.
Even so, Paul tried to encourage them. ‘It’s time we moved on. We’re too exposed here.’
‘What’s the point?’ West radiated defeat.
‘All it needs is for another search team to ride by. We’re sitting ducks.’
Saiban responded with, ‘We should surrender to the police.’
Even though Elsa couldn’t see the sun she guessed it must be low in the sky. Already gloomy due to the cloud, a deeper darkness crept from the sea then flowed over the coastal land like an incoming tide to engulf the valley.
‘We shouldn’t stay out here all night,’ Paul said. ‘We need to find shelter.’
‘Surrender.’ Saiban nodded at the town.
‘We can’t give in. If we hand ourselves over to the police they’ll turn us over to the mob,’ Elsa told him. ‘I’ve seen it happen.’
‘They’ll do what they want to us in the end.’
‘We can’t admit defeat.’ Even though Paul uttered the words Elsa heard resignation in his voice. ‘They don’t have the right to slaughter us.’
Saiban shook his head. ‘Legally, we’re not alive, remember? All of us have death certificates. Humanity can’t be culpable for killing what’s already dead.’
Even the thunder appeared to mutter in agreement. With the encroaching darkness came chilling currents of air that made Elsa shiver as they flowed round her. And although she suspected that perhaps half of the group didn’t relish the idea of surrender to the humans there was no willingness to move on. Bruised, exhausted, traumatized, their faces raked with bloody scratches – even the strongest had no heart to continue running for their lives. Far away in the bay a ship sounded its horn. The long drawn-out note could have been the despairing cry of a lost soul.
We lost souls. We the defeated. We, the soon to be dead again. Elsa despised this litany of thoughts. What could she do? Everyone on that cold, bleak hillside felt the same as she. Where can we run? Where can we hide?
It might have not been then that Dominion spoke. She might have lost herself in her pessimistic reverie before she realized that the figure that towered above them had begun speaking. The voice was low; a near monotone.
‘… forever. How much is a bird in the sky? Today, I’ve seen trees, stones, water, cloud. Heard the thunder. Birds? How much? Mice? How much? Foxes? How much? Thunder. No rain.’
‘Dominion’s the lucky one,’ West grunted. ‘His brains are pulp. When they find us he won’t feel a thing.’
Dominion’s insane. That’s why he’s talking nonsense. Elsa told herself this, but something about the rhythm of his words, and their clarity forced her to listen.
As Dominion faced the darkness in the valley his soft voice pulsed on the air, ‘Last week there was nothing. I ate silence. I lived in darkness. The world stopped turning. I wondered what it would be like if I opened a door and I found my father and his father and his father talking … So I opened the door and I found them talking and they told me to hoard shit. Don’t flush it, keep it. Shit is better than gold. Don’t abandon your shit. Keep it safe. Hoard it. You must treasure excrement because it’s heaven sent.’
A nurse in surgical scrubs shook her head. ‘He’s no miracle. Whatever happened to him in the regenerator caused his psyche to flame out.’
‘No,’ Elsa hissed. ‘He’s not mad. Listen to him.’
‘Shit is gold. Keep it safe. Gather it in a heap and make it grow. Make it grow gold; make it grow your house; make it grow the clothes you wear.’
‘He is insane,’ added the nurse. ‘Then some of us are well down that route already.’
‘I listened to my father and his father and his father …’ Dominion’s voice quickened. ‘They told me keep the shit in secret places. Pile it higher and higher. Keep it growing because there
’s gold inside. In every brown orb is a nugget of gold.’ He spoke louder. ‘My family were poor. All my ancestors could afford were fields that were stones and everything they planted died. My family lived with hunger …what they had most of was the excrement that filled the dung pits. They dug all of it out, and they spread it on their field. The next year they were first to market with more onions than they could carry. After that they were never poor again.’
West raised his head. ‘Am I imagining this? Or did Dominion just tell us his ancestors got rich by growing onions in their own shit?’
Beech clicked her tongue. ‘Wake up, Westie. That’s exactly what he said.’
‘Hell’s bells.’ West displayed a streak of dark humour, ‘If he’s getting his synapses together ask him if he knows a good place to hide. Anywhere, as long as it isn’t in his grandpa’s dung pit’
Paul hoisted himself to his feet. ‘We should find shelter. There’s bushes back there that at least … uh, what’s he doing now?’
Dominion strode forward to stand on a boulder that had a commanding view of the valley.
‘Dominion?’ Elsa called out in a low voice. She was still wary of hunters being within earshot. ‘What is it? Can you see anyone?’
West added, ‘Tell me you see a nice deep cave where we can squirrel ourselves away.’
Dominion turned to them. ‘No … Don’t hide. Go down to the town. Take what you need.’
The command stunned them. The group looked at one another in disbelief.
‘Go down there?’ West appeared breathless at the very idea. ‘Go into the lion’s den? You are crazy after all.’
‘Dominion – no.’
The huge figure didn’t pause. He began to stride down the hill toward the coastal town. Elsa realized she didn’t know the name of the place even though she lived just a few miles from it. Now she could only dimly make out the grey smudge of buildings nestled between two high cliffs. On the north side stood what must be an old fort or castle. Scattered below, the house lights twinkled. Now that town was Dominion’s destination. The towering figure with the uncannily straight back and gigantic stride forged through ferns and stinging nettles. Right at that moment it seemed impossible anything could stand in that formidable creature’s way.
