by Tim Lees
And that was all. Because the next moment, the earthquake hit.
The car jumped under me. I couldn’t steer. The wheel jerked in my hands, and I wrenched at it without response. It was like trying to drive on ice. We jolted, thudded, slipping sideways, then—it seemed a wave came up beneath us—the cart bucked, and we were tumbling down the grassy slope, over and over, crashing on the tin roof, and the world was all at crazy angles. I kicked out. We rocked, we stuck, fell back. I shouted, “Anna!” The steering wheel was jammed into my legs. I thrashed and fought with it, struggling to free myself, then suddenly slid forwards, full length on the ground, kicking like a swimmer. “Anna!” I couldn’t see her. The land beneath me rolled and swelled. “Anna!” I tried to stand, but something took my legs away. I pressed my hands into the turf. I dug my fingers hard into the soil. A sound like thunder rolled across me. It pressed me down. My face was in the grass. The dirt. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. My every muscle strained and tensed. I wanted just to disappear, to vanish in the air. Perhaps I cried, or I yelled out. I don’t know. It seemed to last forever, on and on, but gradually, the noise around me faded and the earth grew solid once again, and it was only my own body, trembling in a fit that I could not control. I had grit on my tongue, grass in my mouth . . .
Then I looked up.
CHAPTER 60
TRANSFIGURED NIGHT
It glowed under the moonlight, filling half the sky: ash and dust and debris, flung into the air . . . and something else, some half-glimpsed core, shining, spinning, somewhere in the heart of it—the flash of lightning through a cloud.
It seemed to breathe. I can remember that distinctly, the sense that there was something living, perhaps even something sentient in there. It rose and fell, it pulsed just like a heartbeat, like an animal, a man, and for a dreadful time I feared that it would still find strength for one more terrible expansion, ballooning out and swallowing us all. But no: instead, it seemed to close up like a fist. It clenched down, folding in upon itself, a million particles still whirling through the air above it. And it held there. Tight. Firm. I could feel the power of it, the energy. A whining in my ears, almost too high to grasp, until it seemed that it would tear my skull apart . . . Then something leapt into the air, a thousand feet or more. It tumbled, over and over, moving at a dizzy speed, blazing, bright; shattered, split into a dozen pieces, racing around each other, chasing ever wilder orbits, then scattering to every corner of the landscape, gone in seconds. A huge chunk shot over my head, screaming in a kind of exultation, glowing like a tiny sun. The night sky flared. I turned, seeing the tree-topped ridge as stark and bright as daylight, the shadows racing from it, arcing back, then fading into night.
I waited, and the air grew still, and I could hear my own breath, loud in my ears, and much too fast.
I got slowly to my feet. My legs were numb. The ground seemed an uncertain thing. I held my arms out like a tightrope walker, shook each foot in turn, trying to bring it back to life.
The hill was gone.
The hall beneath it, too, I guessed. And the farmhouse, and the complex—only ruins now. In a minute, in just seconds, all of it was gone. A faint halo of dust hung, sifting down, caught in the moonlight like a strange, dry rain.
The line of Lincoln’s cheekbone jutted from the wreckage, and the dust swept in, a gentle, phosphorescent tide, and drowned it, moving with the silence of a dream.
Anna found me. She’d been flung clear early on, and she nursed a wrenched arm, but insisted there was nothing broken. Her fingers brushed on mine. I grasped her hand.
“Chris . . .”
There was something, something I had to find. I looked around. Something . . .
“Chris. This is Chernobyl, yes? Like Shailer says? ‘Acceptable accident’?”
I’d thought the cart would be behind me, somewhere close. But it was twenty yards away, a broken shape bent up against the sky. I stumbled over to it, Anna by my side. There were people here, although I scarcely noticed them. The folk from Pilgrim City. No more hymns, no more sermons. Only prayers. Soft, gabbled incantations. Prayers, and sobbing.
Sobbing, most of all.
I wasn’t interested.
I had to find the flask.
Not in the cart. Not near it. I went back the way we’d come, wishing that I’d brought a flashlight. Anna followed. Once, a rumbling in the ground made us both pause, but this was different, something settling, deep within. The sound of calm returned.
The flask had fetched up by a group of shrubs. A small black shape. I set it on its base, wiped the screen off with my thumb.
“I ask again.” Anna sounded far away. “This thing. It is what Shailer calls ‘acceptable’? The Registry approves? It is OK, they think?”
“Shailer . . . ?”
“ ‘Acceptable,’ he says. ‘Acceptable’! People are dead! This is ‘acceptable’?”
“Is Shailer here . . . ?” I looked up, half expecting him to saunter in out of the night wearing a thousand-dollar suit, his salesman’s smile across his face.
“I know where Shailer is. He is in motel, drinking beer and watching porno on TV.” Her mouth pinched in disgust. “Shit scum.”
The flask was tough. Tough as an airplane’s black box. I flicked the monitor to On. A small green light appeared.
So far, so good.
“And what of fallout? Fallout, Chris. Do we get cancer in a year? Chris, I am speaking, please. Answer, kindly. Yes?”
“No cancer.” I turned the flask. Moonlight slid across the panel. If I squinted, I could almost read the numbers. If I put my face up close . . . “Clean energy,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
“There are people hurt here. Buried, trapped perhaps. We need to help them, Chris.”
She put a hand up to her hair, twisting it, pulling her head down.
“Chris.”
I clicked the monitor to Off, then counted ten, switched on again.
Off. On.
“Chris . . .”
I jiggled it. I smacked it with my palm, as if it were a broken radio. It rang out, dull and lifeless.
“I am going. Come if you please.”
She walked a few steps. “I am going, Chris.”
But she came back.
“Is it wrong? Is bust? Kaput?”
I shook my head, still fiddling with the switch.
And I was there a half hour later, too, when the first of the helicopters finally arrived; flicking the same switch up and down every few minutes, waiting, then flicking it again, and again, each time hoping for a new result.
And never getting one.
CHAPTER 61
THE DEBRIEF
“I’m glad you let me see this, Chris, I really am.” Seddon raised his tufted brows in that look of sympathetic candor that so often came before a reprimand. “It’s an interesting report—very thorough, and astonishingly detailed—in many ways a model of its kind. I wish we could train younger ops to write like this. Just because we’re going paper-free, it doesn’t mean we should be content-free as well, does it?”
He leaned forwards in his seat, placed his hands upon the desk, extended both his index fingers, and lightly touched the tips together.
“Of course, you know that it won’t do.”
This wasn’t unexpected. I’d written in a kind of white heat the day after returning home; a single draft, e-mailed without revision, before jet lag and exhaustion and sheer bafflement had seized me. Afterwards I’d gone to bed for two entire days, emerging only for microwave meals and swigs of duty-free scotch.
“Well,” I said, “that’s what happened.”
“And I’m very much indebted to your thoroughness, as I remarked. There were parts that gave me some considerable pause, I can assure you. But, officially? It’s not what happened, and you know it.”
>
I shrugged, a little adolescent gesture of rebellion. Then I looked past him, out the window to the London skyline, fading in the rain.
Seddon told me, “Of course Derek can write it if you don’t feel up to the revision. Your name would still appear. He’s quite handy when it comes to things like that, you know. Quite . . . adaptable. Certain matters raised in the original will remain between ourselves, you understand. You realize that?”
I grunted.
“I could tell him you were suffering fatigue, unable to work. He’ll moan, but I do think, secretly, he likes these little jobs. You know the way he is.”
“He’s not writing my report.”
“No? I think you’d be surprised who he’s written for. Sometimes it’s just a question of the grammar. Sometimes, more important things . . .”
“What do you want?”
“There’s a template. If you choose to call it that. You may have seen it . . . ? From our US branch. Quite comprehensive. You’d be outlining the same events, essentially, but from your own perspective. Hm?”
I looked around the office. A paper Starbucks cup lay in the bin; habitually, Seddon would transfer his drinks to china, no matter how lowly their origin.
“Shailer’s report,” I said.
“Oh no! No. Let’s get this clear: this is the official report, ratified by our US staff in Jersey City. Shailer’s name is one of several on it, true. It comprises a variety of testimonies, including from the military chaps who pulled you out of the whole mess. You should be grateful to them, by the way.”
“It’s bullshit.”
He pursed his lips. His eyes were on me, a cool, remorseless blue. Blue always looks so innocent; hard to credit guile, with eyes like that.
I couldn’t see the point of arguing. I just did it, anyway.
“I’ve read Shailer’s crap. And it is Shailer’s. It’s got to be. He was the only one around, apart from me. It’s not just wrong, it’s dangerous. You are aware of that?”
“It’s strong meat, I’ll grant you. Perhaps . . . a little too strong. The president has been outspoken on the matter, I believe.”
“ ’No terrorist shall go unpunished.’ ”
“Something like that, yes. He was a bit more . . . eloquent.”
I told him, “They weren’t terrorists. They were idiots, maybe. They were stupid and delusional, but—Christ! Some of them were kids. They were like—the Sunday school trip out. They wanted to see Jesus or God or something. And they got caught up in this—this fucking nightmare . . .”
Seddon’s face held no expression. He might have been off in another room.
He let my anger dissipate. Then his brows twitched: anything else?
I slumped back. No point arguing, no. And never was.
He said, “I don’t believe that anyone has actually been indicted yet. You may know otherwise, of course. But the act itself is being treated as a suicide mission, all perpetrators safely dead. Survivors are viewed as victims, along with our own people—those who thankfully got out. The culpable parties have yet to be named. Though I regret to say that they will probably be Muslims once again. It’s very sad. I believe that a research group found more people inclined to accept them as credible malefactors. And naturally, the government’s not likely to suggest they might be Christian terrorists . . .”
“Timothy McVeigh,” I said. “Good Catholic.”
“Hm. Well. We are, I think, getting away from our theme. Now: a rewrite? Or do we call on Derek’s skills?”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “But you owe me.”
His look was sharp. I’d over-stepped myself.
I said, “You wanted me there, didn’t you?”
His features pinched in disapproval; then, as if with second thoughts, they unclenched, and he allowed himself the smallest smile.
“You were useful to us, as it all turned out, I have to say.”
“The passport. Smooth the journey. Open up the options.”
“Very happy circumstance, strategically. And the Yanks had Shailer there. We may play for the same team, but it’s always good to have a fellow Brit around. You follow what I mean?”
“To tell you how it really went.”
Seddon shrugged, allowing this.
I said, “You can’t have known I’d take the bait.”
“I thought you’d go. Your lady friend, she’d persuade you. If you didn’t go alone.”
“They forced Shailer.”
“No, they’re clever folk, the Yanks. They used his own psychology against him. He’s a good dog, after all, and longs to please. No matter if it hurts.”
“He knew what he was getting into. Or he’d got some idea. No wonder he was scared.”
Then I said something else, something I hadn’t planned to raise with Seddon, or with anyone. I said, “I could have died, you know.”
He pursed his lips, acknowledging the chance of this.
I said, “I did it because I wanted to. It needed doing. I’d have done it anyway.”
I said, “But you couldn’t have known that.”
“I could make a guess. You had a personal stake. So did Ms. Ganz. I trust people with a personal stake, Chris. They’ll go the distance. And a little more.”
I felt angry, humiliated, not because I felt he’d used me—it had been my decision, after all. But I resented how he’d read me, and read me mostly right. He’d seen the way I worked, and nudged me. Warned me off, knowing I’d do just the opposite. Was I always so transparent? Could everyone see through me? I hated the idea: my deepest thoughts, my drives, my motivations, all laid bare for anyone to just punch into, as if I were the office drinks machine.
“You handled it,” said Seddon, “very well.”
I was not appeased.
“It brings to mind a matter I’ve been looking to raise with you for quite some while.”
I tried to look disinterested. I watched the seagulls huddled underneath the cornice of the building opposite.
“I think you’re due to go back in the field. Full time. Don’t you?”
This, I’d not expected. But I was still suspicious.
“Thank you for your work, now go away?”
Seddon held up both palms. He looked genuinely shocked, or as genuinely as he could.
“Hardly! What I’m saying, Chris, is let’s play to your strengths. You’ve had your spell of light duties. Several years of it, in fact. But I’ll tell you the truth: you’re a bloody good field op. Not flashy, not showy. Not the most gifted, either. But you’re steady, solid, and reliable. And long term, that wins out. Send me a prodigy; we’ll have some great work for a time. And in a year or two, he could be dead, or mad, or vanished; you’ve seen it happen. No, I like reliability. And you have plenty of it.”
“Reliability. It’s not exactly high praise, is it?”
“Is it not?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Let’s try it from the other angle then, shall we? You’re a pretty mediocre admin chap. And not a very happy one, I tend to think.”
His eyes lit on a file on his desk. His fingers touched the edge of it; his next job. My interview was over.
“Give it a thought, eh? There’s a good fellow. Let me know in a couple of days, hm? When you bring me your report.”
CHAPTER 62
SONS OF THE PARALLEL
I talked to Fredericks, my old mentor. He’d just come back from somewhere hot, his large nose tender as a boiled plum.
“Could be a surge,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen. Sudden rush, it all reds out, you think you’ve got him, but you’ve not. Nuh-uh. Lasts—oh, a second, two at most.” He pushed his glasses up, a delicate, possibly painful move. “Suppose you’d looked away, you might have thought . . .”
“I didn’t look away
.”
“Hard to tell, though, in the moment, you know? Sense of time . . . Adrenaline, and, well, just getting near to ’em. All that.”
“Just for the sake of argument, let’s say I didn’t look away.”
“In that case . . . cables weren’t arranged well?”
“I told you, no. There wasn’t room. They were just bunched together. I tried to compensate, but . . .”
“All-reety. Then I’d suggest . . .” He put a finger to the tip of his pink, soft-looking nose. He seemed to be checking it. “I’d suggest feedback, or induction, or—some kind of false reading, most likely. Or . . .”
“Yes?”
“He’s ambulant, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Unusual. Well. He got up and he walked away? How’s that?”
“Not helpful.”
“No.” He looked at me over his glasses. “But once you have eliminated the impossible, dear Watson . . .”
Hayes was dead. I couldn’t think of him without regret—regret, and guilt, for I’ve no doubt that if we had never met, he might still be alive today. His body was discovered in the woodland near the tent city. I hope he perished quickly, and as painlessly as possible. So much in love with the divine, he must have been a pitifully easy victim.
His was one of the faces that would haunt me through the long and sleepless nights to come.
Willis, too, was dead. I might have tagged him for a toy soldier, but when it came to it, he’d taken the role seriously. While we’d been exiting the south side of the complex, he’d organized his own evacuation from the west door, getting out as many as he could, Registry, security, and a fair few of the pilgrims, too. He’d been so busy doing this he’d hung on almost to the end, leaving when the final quake had begun. It hadn’t been soon enough.
And many more were dead, as well.
The story came together in my mind, piece by piece, the fragments linked by guesswork, far from clear.
The god must have arrived in early afternoon. Seven B, they called it. I tried hard not to think of it in other terms, more human terms: the creature with my face.
