by Will Hill
Far beneath the burning Nevada desert, Julian Carpenter lay on the bed in his cell on National Security Division 9’s detention level.
In one hand he held a small rectangle of paper that had been hidden in his wallet behind one of his many driving licences, this one in the name of John Sullivan of Great Falls, Michigan.
The rectangle was a photograph.
It was creased and torn, battered by time. But the lines and small tears did nothing to diminish the power of the image, power that he sought to draw on yet again, power that had sustained him as he made his long journey through the dark heart of America.
Marie Carpenter sat easily on the stone wall at the bottom of the garden of their old house in Brenchley, Jamie standing beside her. Julian’s wife looked as happy as he could remember seeing her; her face was lit by the bright sunlight that had been shining down when the photo was taken, but also by a wide, beaming smile that filled him with equal amounts of love and pain when he looked at it.
Jamie looked embarrassed, in the way of teenagers everywhere when they are forced to pose for a family photo, but his eyes were bright and clear, and his arm was draped casually round his mother. He was half-smiling at the camera, at his father behind it, his brown hair blowing in the summer breeze.
Julian Carpenter gripped the photo in his hand. Bob Allen had come down personally to give him Henry Seward’s response to his request; he had told Julian he owed him that much at least. When Bob had explained to him that Seward was refusing to let him see his son, he had not screamed, or yelled, or attacked the NS9 Director. He had merely thanked him, and lain back down on his bed.
He had known there was a chance that Admiral Seward would say no, but he had not quite, in the deepest depths of his heart, been able to believe that Henry would stand between him and his family.
He knew that his reappearance would cause shock inside Blacklight, and he knew that they would have every reason to be suspicious of it, suspicious of him; he didn’t begrudge Henry that, not in the slightest. But he had hoped that surrendering himself to NS9 custody would have given his old friend some confidence that his motives were pure, that all he wanted was what he had asked for, the chance to make sure his only son was all right.
It’s not Henry’s fault, he thought. There wasn’t anything else he could do, you old fool. Jamie’s an Operator now: no one is even supposed to know he exists, let alone just turn up out of the blue and ask to speak to him. Stupid. Now you’re stuck in here, no use to Jamie, no use to Marie, no use to anyone. Just a stupid, useless old man in a cell under the ground.
Tears began to flood down his cheeks, and patter softly on to the narrow mattress, but he made no effort to brush them away; his gaze remained fixed on the only two things in the world he still cared about.
Eventually, long hours later, he fell asleep, and dreamt of his family.
85 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My endless thanks and gratitude go, first and foremost, to my agent Charlie Campbell and my editor Nick Lake. The Rising is a long novel, and was a long process from first draft to finished book, and their support, creativity and endless patience helped get me through it.
My friend Katherine Wheatley saved my skin by introducing me to Dr Lewis Dartnell of University College London when I was fast approaching the point of scientific despair. Lewis is the reason that the genetic explanation for vampirism makes as much sense as it hopefully does; he answered my (extremely basic) questions about DNA and gene therapy with admirable patience, and very kindly managed not to laugh while doing so. Where the science is accurate it’s thanks to him; where it isn’t it’s unsurprisingly down to me.
My friend Matt Powell and I spent five weeks driving seven thousand miles across the USA, in which time much of the climax of The Rising was researched and plotted. For the endless coffees and racks of ribs, for his truly expert map reading and patient willingness to discuss the finer points of how someone would attempt to sneak into Area 51, and above all for Mysterons, my love and thanks go to him.
My girlfriend Sarah coped admirably with the mood swings and bouts of manic hyperactivity that characterised the final months of the writing of The Rising, my petulant sulking whenever she refused to immediately put down what she was doing and read a new, slightly altered version of a chapter, and my turning our living room into an Armageddon of printouts, spider diagrams and post-it notes. Thanks for always being on my side.
Love and thanks, as always, go to my friends and family – Mum, Peter, Sue, Ken, Joe, Mick, Adam, Paul, Iso, Rich, Clemmie – and the fabulous teams at HarperCollins and Razorbill – Laura, Tom, Alison, Ben, Rebecca, Rosi, Lily, Tom, Sarah, Rachel, Tom, Kate, Geraldine, Mary, Tiffany, Sam, JP, James.
Lastly, my heartfelt thanks to everyone who read Department 19. As a debut author, my fingers were crossed that a few people might read the book, and hopefully like it – as a result I’ve been completely overwhelmed by the number of people who have taken the time to send me tweets, Facebook messages, letters, drawings and emails telling me they enjoyed Department 19 and expressing their excitement about The Rising. I hope it lived up to your expectations.
Will Hill
London, January 2012
For Sarah,
who knew what writers were like, but managed to look past it
The earth had a single light afar,
A flickering, human pathetic light,
That was maintained against the night,
It seemed to me, by the people there,
With a Godforsaken brute despair.
Robert Frost
We seem to be drifting into unknown places and unknown ways; into a whole world of dark and dreadful things.
Jonathan Harker
Table of Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Memorandum
Prologue
52 Days Till Zero Hour
1. The Next Generation
2. Lazarus Revamped
3. Slow News Day
4. The Desert Should Be No Place for a Vampire
5. Everything Heals, in Time
6. Civilised Men
7. Sink or Swim
8. The Lost Harker
9. The Shock of the New
10. In Conversation
11. Time to Go Home
12. Ready to Roll
13. Social Networking
14. Girls vs Boys
51 Days Till Zero Hour
15. One of Our Own
16. Classified Means Classified
17. Old Scores
18. The Most Important Meal of the Day
19. The War on Drugs, Part One
20. The Sleep of The Just
21. The War on Drugs, Part Two
22. On The Trail of the Dead
23. Truth or Consequences
24. The War on Drugs, Part Three
25. From Beyond the Grave
26. Too Close to Home
27. Dormant for Too Long
28. Where It Hurts
29. Drowning Out
30. Preliminary Conclusions
31. From Ancient Grudge Break to New Mutiny
50 Days Till Zero Hour
32. Closing the Net
33. Playing with Fire
34. The Sum of Our Parts
35. Going Underground
36. Sin City
37. By a Thread
38. Joining Up the Dots
39. Prime Suspect
40. Paved with Good Intentions
41. Undercurrents
42. Fathers4Truth
49 Days Till Zero Hour
43. The Dark Horizon
44. Three Musketeers
45. Final Edition
46. It Never Rains…
47. Time Waits for No Man
48. Behind the Curtain
49. Pieces of the Puzzle
50. Deadline
51. … It Pours
52. Headlong
53. Le
aving on a Jet Plane
54. Guilty Parties
55. Hold the Front Page
56. We Take Care of Our Own
57. Hot Off the Press
58. After the Horse Has Bolted
59. What Might Have Been Lost
60. Homecoming
Two Days Later
61. Post-Mortem
Epilogue: Three Farewells
Epilogue: Two Prisoners
46 Days Till Zero Hour
Acknowledgements
MEMORANDUM
From: Office of the Director of the Joint Intelligence Committee
Subject: Revised classifications of the British Governmental departments
Security: TOP SECRET
DEPARTMENT 1 Office of the Prime Minister
DEPARTMENT 2 Cabinet Office
DEPARTMENT 3 Home Office
DEPARTMENT 4 Foreign and Commonwealth Office
DEPARTMENT 5 Ministry of Defence
DEPARTMENT 6 British Army
DEPARTMENT 7 Royal Navy
DEPARTMENT 8 Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service
DEPARTMENT 9 Her Majesty’s Treasury
DEPARTMENT 10 Department for Transport
DEPARTMENT 11 Attorney General’s Office
DEPARTMENT 12 Ministry of Justice
DEPARTMENT 13 Military Intelligence, Section 5 (MI5)
DEPARTMENT 14 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
DEPARTMENT 15 Royal Air Force
DEPARTMENT 16 Northern Ireland Office
DEPARTMENT 17 Scotland Office
DEPARTMENT 18 Wales Office
DEPARTMENT 19 CLASSIFIED
DEPARTMENT 20 Territorial Police Forces
DEPARTMENT 21 Department of Health
DEPARTMENT 22 Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ)
DEPARTMENT 23 Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)
PROLOGUE
CROWTHORNE, BERKSHIRE
In the village of Crowthorne is an alarm.
A direct copy of a World War Two air-raid siren, it is bright red, and sits atop a pole two metres above the ground.
The alarm is connected by an underground network of wires to Broadmoor Hospital, the sprawling estate of red-brick buildings that sits above the village, and which is home to almost three hundred of the United Kingdom’s most dangerous, damaged citizens.
It is designed to alert anyone within a twenty-five-mile radius to an escape from the hospital, and has been sounded only five times in earnest in more than fifty years.
Ben Dawson had been asleep for about forty-five minutes when the siren burst into life. He jerked up from a dream about sleep, the kind of long, deep, uninterrupted sleep that had been impossible in the six weeks since Isla was born, and felt his wife raise her head slowly from her pillow.
“The baby OK?” she slurred.
“It’s not Isla,” he replied. “It’s the siren.”
“Siren?”
“The bloody Broadmoor siren,” he snapped. It was deafening, a two-tone scream that made his chest tighten with anger.
“What time is it?” asked Maggie, forcing her eyes open and looking at him.
Ben flicked on his bedside lamp, wincing as the light hit his eyes, and checked the clock.
“Quarter to four,” he groaned.
Not fair, he thought. It’s just not fair.
Then he heard a second sound, in between the peals of the alarm; a high, determined crying from the room above their bedroom. Ben swore and swung his legs out from under the duvet.
“Stay there,” said Maggie, pushing herself to the edge of the bed. “It’s my turn.”
Ben slid his feet into his trainers and pulled a jumper over his head. “You see to Isla. I’m going outside, see if anyone else is awake.”
“OK,” said Maggie, stumbling through the bedroom door. She was barely awake, moving with the robotic lurch of new parents everywhere. Ben heard her footsteps on the stairs, heard her begin to gently shush their daughter.
Ben felt no fear at the sound of the siren. He had been up to the hospital several times, had seen the electric fences and the gateposts and the sturdy buildings themselves, and was not the slightest bit concerned about the possibility of a breakout. There had been several, over the years; the escape of John Straffen in 1952, who had climbed over the wall while on cleaning duties in the yard and murdered a young girl from Farley Hill, was the reason the siren system had been built. But the last time anyone had made it out had been almost twenty years ago, and security had been increased and expanded since then. Instead, as he stomped down the stairs towards the front door, knowing the baby was already awake so it didn’t matter, what Ben was mainly feeling was frustration.
The last six weeks had been nothing like the parenting books had suggested, or as their friends had described. He had expected to be tired, expected to be grumpy and stressed, but nothing had prepared him for how he actually felt.
He was utterly, physically, exhausted.
Isla was beautiful, and he felt things he had never felt before when he looked at her; that part was exactly as advertised, he had been glad to realise. But she cried, loudly and endlessly. He and Maggie took it in turns to go and check on her, to warm bottles or burp her or just rock her in their arms. Eventually, her eyes would flutter closed, and they would place her back in her cot, and creep back to their own bed. If they were lucky, they might get two hours of uninterrupted sleep before the crying began again.
Ben shoved open the front door. The night air was warm and still, and the siren was much louder outside. He walked out on to the narrow cobbled street and saw lights on in the majority of his neighbours’ homes. As he lit a cigarette from the pack he kept for emergencies, like when he had been woken up for the third time before it was even four o’clock, doors began to open and pale figures in pyjamas and dressing gowns began to appear.
“What on earth is going on?” demanded one of the figures, a large, broad man with a huge, bald dome of a head that gleamed in the light. “Why doesn’t someone turn it off?”
Charlie Walsh lived next door to Ben and Maggie. Ben glanced at him as he made his way over, then returned his gaze to the hill above the village. The hulking shape of the hospital was visible as a distant black outline in the centre of a faint yellow glow.
“I don’t think you can,” Ben replied. “I’m pretty sure you can only turn it off at the hospital.”
“Then maybe someone should go up there and see what’s happening?”
“Maybe someone should,” replied Ben.
“All right then,” said Charlie. “I’ll come with you.”
Ben stared at his neighbour. He wanted nothing more than to go back upstairs, wrap his pillow round his head, and wait for the terrible ringing to stop. But that was now no longer an option.
“Fine,” he snapped, and strode back into his house to grab the car keys from the table in the hall.
A minute later the two men were speeding out of what passed for central Crowthorne in Ben’s silver Range Rover, heading up the hill towards the hospital.
Behind the desk in Crowthorne’s tiny police station, Andy Myers was trying to hear the voice on the other end of the phone over the deafening howl of the siren.
Crowthorne police station was rated Tier 1 by the Thames Valley Police, which meant that its front desk was staffed entirely by volunteers. There were twelve of them, mostly retirees, who took turns to field the small number of enquiries that came in from local residents – everything from minor incidents of graffiti and vandalism, to requests for advice on traffic accidents. The station was not manned overnight, but one of the volunteers was always on call. Tonight, Andy Myers had drawn the short straw.
He had dragged himself from the warmth of his bed when the siren burst into life, grumbling, stretching, and feeling every single one of his sixty-eight years. The space in the bed beside him was cold and empty; his wife, Glenda, had occupied it for more than thirty years before cancer had claimed her the previous summ
er. Since then Andy, who had spent his working years in the brokerage houses of the City of London, had been looking for ways to fill the hole in his life that she had left behind. Volunteering at the police station was just one of the ways he tried to do so; he was also on the board of the local Rotary Club, an active member of the Village Green Association and secretary of Crowthorne Cricket Club.
He dressed quickly and made the five-minute walk to the station. He did not hurry; he was no more concerned about the possibility of an escape than Ben Dawson was. But there were protocols in the event of the siren sounding, and Andy Myers was a great believer in protocol.
He walked into the station’s car park, wincing at the bellowing noise from the siren that stood behind the building. It was little more than a converted house, sitting at the end of a row of terraces. He unlocked the door and went inside, flopped down into the worn leather chair behind the desk, reached for the phone, and dialled a number.
The official response to a suspected escape from Broadmoor was twofold: it required all local schools to keep children inside and under direct supervision of staff until parents could arrive to take them home, and it called for the establishment of a ring of roadblocks at a ten-mile radius from the hospital. Crowthorne station had a single police car, an ageing Ford Focus that was sitting outside, so Andy’s only duty was to call the Major Incident Response Team in Reading and request instructions.
