The Beacon (Earth Haven Book 2)

by Sam Kates

  The water ran out clear. Peter nodded and stood.

  “Can I. . . . ?” asked Tom.

  Peter handed him the flask. The metal was ice-cold in Tom’s hands. He peered inside; no trace of powder remained. He lowered his nose to the opening and inhaled.

  “Smells a little like toffee.”

  Peter was already walking away. He reached the pebbles and sat down, facing the bay.

  Tom walked over and sat next to him. Peter’s cheeks had dried in the cold breeze, but he wore an expression of dejection. Tom handed the flask back to him.

  “The sea,” said Tom. “It’s contagious now?”

  “Doubt it,” said Peter. “The powder will disperse and degrade more quickly in the water.”

  “Why did you get rid of it?”

  “The better question would be why was I keeping it.”

  “Okay. Why were you keeping it?”

  “In case I ever needed it. I nearly found a use for it.”

  “The men in the sub. You were going to use it on them. But why?”

  “To stop them interfering with the Beacon. If they’d agreed to fire missiles at Stonehenge, I’d have made sure the powder in this canister found its way onto their sub.”

  “I thought. . . .” began Tom.

  “That I was on your side?” Peter looked at Tom for the first time since they’d sat. “I am.”

  “Then I don’t understand. . . .”

  “I want the Beacon to be reactivated. I want the rest of my civilisation to reach Earth Haven. I don’t care whether they land safely on the planet’s surface and I don’t want them to eradicate the surviving humans.”

  “You’re making no sense.”

  Peter sighed. “Tom, it’s about longing and knowledge and selfishness.” He looked back out to sea and for a few moments was silent. His right hand crept inside his coat and fiddled with something around his neck. “I can’t remember whether I’ve ever told you, but I held Megan in my arms as she lay dying.”

  “Did she know about. . . . um, your true nature?”

  “When I found myself falling in love with her and coming to realise what love actually is, I showed her what I am. I was terrified she would reject me, but I couldn’t abide having a secret from her.”

  “She obviously accepted you.”

  “She accepted that I would not age. I accepted that I would one day lose her. Those fifty years with her. . . . When the pain of her going threatens to overwhelm me, as it still does sometimes, I remind myself to be thankful that we had that time together. Then I welcome the pain for if it didn’t exist neither would those fifty years with her. It becomes bearable.”

  “There’s a quote by someone: ‘Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.’”

  “Exactly,” said Peter. “I hadn’t heard that before. It’s a very fine quote.”

  “Megan must have been a special lady.”

  “Oh, yes. She taught me how to love; how to give and not expect to receive; how to surrender yourself entirely to another. It turned me away from what I was, a tiny component of a much larger whole. I became an individual.”

  “Peter, you don’t have to answer this, but I’m curious: could you have had children together?”

  “She wanted to try. I refused. Even if I was able to successfully impregnate Megan, which is a matter of some doubt, I did not know how the pregnancy would affect her. Although our fertilisation process is mechanically similar to humans’, our birthing process is vastly different. You see, our females discharge the foetus complete with placenta after only a few weeks and it continues to develop independently of the mother. Megan’s body would have wanted to retain the foetus for the normal gestation period for humans, around thirty-six weeks. The metabolism rate for our young is quicker, much quicker, than humans’. If her body’s urge to retain the developing foetus had won out, but our metabolism rate had prevailed. . . .”

  “I see,” said Tom. “Ugh.”

  “Quite. It wasn’t a chance I was prepared to take.”

  “What about the thing you can do with your minds? The telepathy? How was she with that?”

  Peter glanced at Tom and raised his eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t believe in all that stuff. Don’t you refer to it as ‘mind tricks’?”

  Tom shifted a little, making the pebbles clink. “I’m not sure what I believe,” he said. “It’s obvious that you can do things with your minds that we can’t, but it could be an advanced form of hypnotism.”

  “Doubting Thomas, eh? But to answer your question, Megan was fascinated by my ability to speak to her without talking. She could have kept me out permanently, like you can, but chose to let me in. I tried to teach her how to do it, but the areas of her brain that she needed to tap into lay dormant. Brianne is the first human I have seen who has opened pathways to those areas.” Peter picked up a pebble and tossed it towards the sea. “Megan once placed her hands to my cheeks, looked deep into my eyes and asked me if I was God. She immediately looked shocked, as if she had voiced something sacrilegious. A strong chapel upbringing Megan had. She never spoke of it again, but the notion remained with her, right up to the end.”

  “You don’t think you’re God, do you, Peter?”

  Peter gave a thin smile. “Of course not. I used to find the idea of a supreme being completely ridiculous.”

  “Only ‘used to’?”

  “Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Really?” Tom felt perplexed. “You say you can travel at far in excess of light speed by harnessing the expansion of the universe and that you’ve travelled almost five hundred light years across it. You say you can create complex life forms and program them as you wish by tweaking their DNA. And yet you believe there may be a god?”

  “We know a lot,” said Peter softly, “but we don’t know everything. When I fell in love with Megan, I began to see things differently, to question what I’d always accepted without question. The concept of the soul intrigued me. In my culture, we have no need for such fancies. When one of our number dies, their knowledge and experience pass to the Keeper. If that is what constitutes the soul, it is subsumed into the whole. But what about a human’s knowledge and experience, their personalities? People can be similar to each other, but each is unique. What happens to their souls when they die?”

  Tom grunted. “That’s a question which has vexed the greatest minds to have ever existed. Wars have been fought over it.”

  “I wouldn’t let Megan go. At the end, I held her more than just physically. I could feel her intellect tugging to be free. Her intellect . . . her soul? Megan was exhausted with living. She was ready to leave. I was stopping her.” Peter’s voice hitched a little and he took a deep breath to steady it. “I could not have held on indefinitely. Her will to leave was stronger than my ability to hold on. I was merely delaying the inevitable. But I hoped to cling on to at least a portion of her. . . . to retain a part of her within me.” He sighed. “With her last breath, she whispered to me: ‘Peter, you have to let go. God is calling me. I will always love you, but let go. . . . ’ And I did. As the light faded in her eyes, I tried to follow with my mind. But I could no longer find her. She had gone to a place I can never follow.” He bowed his head.

  Tom tentatively reached out a hand and placed it on Peter’s back. He left it there, feeling awkward but wanting to offer some sort of comfort. He was unclear what all that Peter had just told him had to do with the silvery flask and the sailors. He began to wonder how long he should leave it before raising the issue again without appearing insensitive to Peter’s feelings, when his musings were interrupted by a shout from behind them.

  “Tom! Tom! Where are you?”

  It was Ceri. Tom sprang to his feet and scrambled up the bank of pebbles.

  “Here I am,” he called. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Tom, come quickly.” She was standing just outside the front door of the hotel. Even from this distance, she looked pale and scared. Diane appeared behind her in
the doorway, wearing a puzzled expression.

  Tom descended the other side of the storm bank. He could hear Peter following. Away to his right, he saw Dusty approaching from the beach, attracted by Ceri’s voice. As Tom began to cross the lawn, he called again. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s the children. Bri and Will.” Ceri’s face crumpled. “They’ve gone.”

  “Huh?” Tom felt as though someone had just thumped him in the stomach. “What d’you mean they’ve gone?”

  “Gone. Disappeared. I went into their room to call them down to breakfast. Their clothes and backpacks aren’t there. Their beds haven’t been slept in.”

  * * * * *

  Zach eschewed Interstate 95, preferring to follow Route 1 for no other reason than it more closely hugged the coastline than the interstate. He was in no hurry, content to head south in leisurely fashion, stopping whenever and wherever he felt like. If they encountered an obstacle that he could not drive around, such as burnt-out wreckage spanning all three lanes of the highway, he’d calmly turn and drive in the opposite direction until he came to a place where he could cross to the opposite lanes and continue on their way. There was no rush.

  Amy seemed content with whatever he decided. She didn’t speak much, which was okay with Zach. He was still becoming accustomed to the sound of another person breathing alongside him.

  On their first night on the road, she offered herself to him during their stopover at a cheap-looking motel that Zach pulled into simply because it was the first place they came to after darkness began to fall.

  Zach considered her for a moment.

  “How many men you been with?”

  Amy bit her lower lip. “Oh, a few.”

  “How many really?”

  She shrugged. “You’d be the first.”

  “You’re a rare woman, Amy. In your twenties and still a virgin. That’s a rare thing indeed.”

  A tear squeezed from the corner of one eye. “My momma never let me near boys. She said they’s all evil. All after one thing.”

  “I’m going to thank you, but decline. I ain’t laid with a woman for nigh on fifteen years.” Zach might have achieved isolation, but the urge to satisfy a primal need had driven him from his cabin once or twice a year to the ladies of the night plying their trade in Augusta. As long as he laid down his cash, he wasn’t required to converse with them, which suited him—and them—just fine. The urge had stopped making itself felt as strongly as he passed into his fifties, and the trips to the state capital ended.

  Another tear squeezed from her other eye. Her bottom lip quivered.

  “Don’t take on so,” said Zach. “You don’t want to be deflowered by an old fart like me.”

  “I . . . I . . .” She let out a deep sigh and Zach swayed back a little as sour breath washed over him. “I don’t want. . . .” The rest dissolved into a mumble.

  “Didn’t catch that,” said Zach.

  She looked up and jutted out her chin. “I said I don’t want to die a virgin.”

  “Doubt there’s much chance of that. I s’pect that women of child-bearing age gonna be in high demand. Assuming there’s young men still around.”

  “Are there? Young men?”

  “Dunno. But if there’s us, chances are there’s more.”

  Zach insisted they sleep in separate bedrooms, not because he was afraid he would succumb to her limited charms, but because he was still a little wary of her.

  “Don’t take it personal,” he told her as he left her room to head for his own. “I ain’t trusting of anyone.”

  Zach locked his door and placed the back of a chair under the handle. He slept with the Beretta within easy reach. The pistol was one thing he did trust.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bri had attempted to leave without Will. She sat in a chair, trying to look like she was reading a book by candlelight, waiting for him to fall asleep.

  The boy was acting weirdly. He had refused to undress or get under the bedclothes. He lay on top of the bed, fully clothed down to his swanky training shoes. Bri pretended to ignore him, while all the time watching him surreptitiously through her eyelashes.

  At last his eyes closed, his breathing slowed and deepened. Moving carefully so as not to make the slightest noise, Bri put down the book and stood.

  “I’m coming with you.” Will was wide-eyed, his mouth set in a firm line.

  She shook her head. “Not this time. You have to stay with the grown-ups. They’ll keep you safe.”

  “I don’t have to do anything any more.”

  “Well, you can’t come with me. It’s going to be dangerous where I’m going.”

  “Don’t care. I’m coming. If you try to stop me I’ll wake the others.”

  “What? Don’t you dare. They’ll never let me go.”

  Will shrugged.

  Bri stared at him, her mind a mixture of indignation and affection for this annoying, lovable boy. She puffed her cheeks and blew out in exasperation.

  “Okay, buster,” she said. “You can come, but on one condition: when we get to where we’re going and I tell you to stay back or stay hidden or whatever, you bloody well do as I say.”

  “All right.”

  “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Come on, then.”

  They crept down the dark corridors and stairs of the hotel, freezing every time a floorboard creaked. As they passed the room in which Tom and Ceri slept, Bri felt sure she heard a faint whine from within. They tiptoed past, Bri’s heart in her mouth as she waited for a volley of barks that never came.

  The bolts on the front door sounded shockingly loud in the silence. They hurried away from the hotel, expecting to hear a shout from Tom or Peter.

  The night air was bitterly cold, giving them cause once more to be thankful for their shopping spree in Harrods. A finger-nail paring moon hung in the clear sky before them.

  Will gasped. “I never knew there were so many stars,” he said.

  The surface of the road shone darkly in the starlight; they could see well enough without having to use torches, with the added benefit of being able to keep hands buried snugly in pockets.

  A horse approached them, snickering a soft greeting before going on its way. Bri sensed only curiosity in the beast, but made sure the protective aura held good. Better to have it and not need it, she reasoned, than the other way around.

  It took them the best part of two hours to reach Wick. If Will’s leg had still been sore, he might have struggled, but he assured Bri that it had healed completely and he was no longer even aware of it. She felt quite pleased with herself.

  “The cycle shop’s up a side street,” said Will.

  “Ceri told you?”

  “Yes. She said she noticed it when they were looking for tools.”

  “She’s very fond of you. I think you remind her of her son.”

  Will glanced up. “I don’t want another mum. Just a big sister.”

  It took them a while to find something with which they could smash the plate glass in the front of the cycle shop. The choice of bicycles wasn’t as wide as the shop in Lambeth, but they each found a machine that would do the job.

  As they rode the bikes slowly towards the sea front, Bri glanced across at Will.

  “Missing your other bike?”

  He nodded.

  “Me, too,” said Bri. “Hmm. We could call at Nottingham on the way south. Our other bikes should be where we left them inside the pub.”

  Will grinned. “Yeah!”

  They found the hotel near the harbour where the others had been staying, and helped themselves to the stockpiled food and water. Bri added one of the tiny paraffin camping stoves.

  “Just a few tins and bottles each,” she said. “We can’t afford to be unstable while we ride.”

  “Will they mind us thieving their stuff?”

  “No. They’ll be glad we’ve got food with us.” A shadow passed across Bri’s heart. “I w
ish we didn’t have to sneak off like this. They’ll be worried, particularly Ceri. But they didn’t leave me much choice.”

  Will gave a huge yawn.

  “I’m tired, too,” said Bri, “but we can’t stay here. If they notice we’re gone in the night, this might be the first place they come looking for us. We’ll ride out until we find somewhere we can sleep away from the town.”

  The sky remained clear and the road continued to glow faintly as they rode south. They could see sufficiently to ride in relative safety, although they proceeded with caution.

  Once they had left Wick behind, they turned onto back roads and lanes until they found a deserted crofter’s cottage. With the smell of sheep’s wool and stale wood smoke in their nostrils, they both fell into an exhausted sleep.

  Bri stirred not long after first light with a full bladder. She felt stiff and in need of more sleep, but she knew they needed to keep moving. She awoke a reluctant Will and after a hurried breakfast, they were back on the road.

  Most of the U.K. stretched before them to the south. They would need to traverse the largest chunk of it to reach their destination. Even if they rode like the wind, they still might not make it in time.

  * * * * *

  Looking out of place alongside such ancient majesty, like scaffolding on the Parthenon, the bulldozers stood on grass beyond the path that encircled Stonehenge. Beside them stood the crane, unloaded from the flatbed lorry. The bulldozers had torn down and removed the metal fences that kept out non-paying members of the public. Once more the ancient stones could be approached from any direction without obstruction, as had been the case for millennia.

  Milandra stepped down from the coach and stood for a moment, remembering this place when last she had been here, almost five thousand years previously. Not a great deal had changed. There hadn’t, of course, been roads, fences, hedges and far-off buildings back then. Dark swathes of distant forest had been replaced by farmland. There had been more hills, but since the entire plateau was composed of chalk, they had eroded to bumps and dips and undulations.

  Stonehenge itself had altered from what Milandra recalled. She was familiar with the current layout—it was one of the world’s most iconic images—but could remember the site before a single stone had been erected. Even then it had been a sacred place to the natives: a worn chalk path led across the plain, marking the route of ancient pilgrimage, and wooden posts staked out the monument in an eerie foreshadowing of the Beacon.