TwentySix

  I look back at the van. Still not time. Sigh.

  I love it when it’s like this. Makes my job a lot easier. It’s not-too-hot, but also not-too-cold. T-shirt-and-shorts weather, not nothing-and-shorts. Not much wind, either. That probably annoys a few surfers, I would expect, but not me. No sir. No wind is good.

  Ah. Excellent. A man has moved to the front of the queue. I feel a bit sorry for him, but it can’t really be helped. There aren’t any kids nearby. It could take some time for this situation to be replicated.

  I hold my breath.

  I release it.

  I squeeze my index finger.

  There’s a boom.

  There’s wind now, in one direction. It lasts just a second.

  The ice cream man falls backwards, with a newly installed tennis ball-sized cavity between his eyes. The man at the front of the line gets some free strawberry sauce for his 99. Everyone’s a winner.

  I sit up in the long grass of the cliff and gently begin to pack away my beloved instruments as delayed screams ring out far below. A perfect day.

  * * * * *

  The Third Message

  It was miserable and grey. Probably no more miserable and grey than when he’d left, but after basking in the blistering Balkan sun for the past week, the dullness and normality of England seemed a whole lot more depressing than usual. The Balkans were nice this time of year. Britain was not, aside from the occasional blip.

  He dumped their bags pretty quickly - the kitchen would do for now - while his wife went to grab the post from the neighbour’s. He’d tried to get her across their own threshold first, but she was having none of it - “When I’m in, I’ll want to stay in. If I see Julie now, I won’t have to go out again later. Alright?” There was no sense arguing. He’d learnt that already.

  He put the kettle on. That was the one thing he had missed. A proper cuppa. They didn’t do real tea in Croatia. No talking monkeys or short, animated men in flat caps anywhere to be seen. It was a tragedy.

  He realised how much of a Little Englander he sounded and smiled. He pressed play on the answering machine, which was flashing at him, disgusted at having been left alone for so long. Like a cat or something, he thought. It played a stream of talking for a short while as he got the appropriate tea-making equipment organised. But he stopped when the last message clicked dead.

  He’d have to listen to that again.

  It was the intense roaring of the boiling kettle right next to the phone. It made his mishear. Yeah. Definitely. He waited for the kettle’s switch to click and the rampaging torrent of hot air and water to become silent. He tapped his fingers on the worktop, trying to forget his mistake. It was definitely a mistake. Could not have been true. Not possible.

  The click. The sound drained like the wind as a train passes though a tunnel. He stopped drumming and pressed play on the answering machine.

  The first message.

  A woman’s voice, neighbourly.

  “Hi! Looks like I just missed you. Only wanted to wish you a good holiday and ask if you could bring back a magnet for Jess. She collects them. You probably won’t hear this until you get back, now, so never mind. Anyway, I’ll collect your post for you, so feel free to come by whenever. Talk to you soon. OK, bye! Oh, it’s Julie here, by the way.”

  That wasn’t it. There were three on the machine. He pressed play again.

  The second message.

  A man’s voice, with an electrical lilt.

  “Did you know that you could claim compensation for accidents in the workplace? We at Fourth Day Lawyers are specially trained to…”

  Ugh. He pressed stop. He’d delete it in a minute. He really needed to sort all these cold callers out. But not now. He pressed play again and started to drum his fingers once more.

  The third message.

  A man’s voice. Older. Panicked.

  “Mate, if you’re there, pick up the phone. Please. Pick it up…argh pick up the phone! Shit. Shitshitshit. Look, listen, you’ve got to get out. Our man with the van is…gone. They got to him. Blew his fucking brains out at the beach. It’s all out in the open. They all know who we are, police and everything. Oh God, you’ve gotta go as soon as you get this. Don’t even think about it. Pack a bag and get the first flight you can.”

  The line went dead.

  End of messages, the machine chirped.

  He realised he wouldn’t have time for his tea after all.

  On the plus side, he’d heard the Balkans were nice this time of year.

  * * * * *

  Ones and Zeroes

  He felt like he was in one of those cheesy action movies. The hero, in exile for a crime he didn’t commit, communicating in Top Secret (the capital letters being of prime importance) via a Secure Connection (ditto) with the one person who was still on his side.

  Except, of course, he was no hero, had committed a very big crime, and the connection was far from secure. It was top secret, but not so secret that capital letters were a big deal, even at the start of sentences. And it was good to know there was at least one person that he could still trust…apart from his dearly devoted wife, of course.

  “how are things at hom?” he typed. “*home”

  The screen told him his partner was typing. Then a ping. “OK. you?”

  “as it goes. anything on the news?”

  “nope. nothing. think a big press is the last thing they want.”

  “good. I trust youve cleaned etc.”

  “yep. no problems.”

  “good.”

  “how bout you. as it goes isnt the best anser.”

  “we’re fine. better. we’re expecting actually. found out the other day.”

  There was a very long pause before the man’s partner started typing. “a baby.”

  “no. our dinner. of course a baby.”

  “oh. congrats.”

  “cheers mate.”

  “not the best of curcimstances though is it/”

  “not really. but we’re happy.”

  “kids gonna need school. how you gonna handle it?”

  “hopefully things will be sorted by then. We’ll find somewere to settle down.”

  “where?”

  This question threw him. Where? Why would he want to know? They’d decided, years ago, way before all this began, that if anything like this were to happen, they’d tell each other as little about their location as possible. The less they knew, the better. “who is this,” he typed.

  There was another long pause. “its me mate. you know who.”

  “no. he wouldnt ask that. who the fuck is this.”

  A pause again. Then an emoticon. A devil’s face, with a wicked snarl. A message followed a few seconds later. “OK. You got me. Nice going. It was worth a go though, right?”

  “who is this.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “…”

  “I’m the one who’s going to kill you. And your wife. And the child she’s carrying. You’re going to pay for your crimes, my friend. If it takes me a million years to track you down, I fill.” A pause. “*will”

  The man’s heart began to pump fear instead of blood. He ran into another room and grabbed a hammer. On his return, he demolished his computer, every single chipboard and silicon slice. His wife begged him to stop, seeing his anger, his fear, but he was consumed. Ten minutes later, he had a pile of useless plastic.

  It was time to move again.

  * * * * *

  Face in the Crowd

  The guy you recognise from somewhere. The man with no defining features. The average person.

  That’s me.

  Nobody would be able to pick me out of a line-up. I wear normal clothes. I have a normal hairstyle. I’m blessed with a normal face. I look like everyone and no-one. I am invisible.

  And that’s just the way I like it. It comes in handy in my line of work.

  Immediately after taking care of business I can blend into the public, one particle among mi
llions. In all my years doing this, the police have never once come close to me. I’m that good. They never suspect a thing. Why would they?

  I’m normal.

  But I’m not though, really. I’m the best in the world at what I do. I’m unstoppable. I change my tactics as often as I change my underpants.

  And I’m a hygienic fellow.

  Sometimes I shoot. Sometimes I stab. Sometimes I strangle. Sometimes I poison. Whatever it takes to get the job done. And I’ve never failed. Well. Not until now.

  I admire them, in a way. There aren’t many who survive even an hour longer than I allow them to. But they’ve been gone for months now. It’s a huge black mark on my score-sheet.

  I will find them - there’s no doubt of that. They’re just prolonging the agony. I hear the girl is pregnant, too. Maybe she thinks that’ll stop me.

  She’s wrong.

  I’m coming for you, sweetheart. And your progeny. And your husband. You’ll all face justice for what you did.

  Nobody gets away from God.

  * * * * *

  Defender of the Faith

  She was the only one allowed to see it all. Her tower stretched miles into the sky, the only building high enough to peer beyond the wall. God had granted her this lofty position as Eaglepoint’s Defender of the Faith. She saw all and heard all and knew all. Judge, jury, executioner, all without leaving the room.

  Sometimes she gave them faith. Belief that they could get away with their blasphemous crimes. Belief that they could escape the city, or practise another religion, or speak ill of God. She gave those people just enough rope to hang themselves with.

  There was one the Defender was about to sentence. He’d been working on a bomb for weeks. His intention was not to cause harm with it - not to lifeforms anyway, but to the ideal. It had more than enough power to do so. She’d followed him ever since the idea of blasting a hole in the wall occurred to him, and seen him prepare for the event. He’d bought everything necessary, one item at a time, small quantities, imagining that this would protect him.

  Nope.

  He set off that morning with the device in a backpack. He was heading to the North Central quadrant. He was right to think that the wall was weakest near the gate. But today it would hold firm.

  He made light work of a nearby guard. The Defender would ensure that he would have a proper funeral soon. She could have saved him, but that would’ve spoiled the fun that was to come.

  The man put down his pack at the base of the wall and started to fiddle with cabling and electrical displays. The Defender did not care to understand his motions as he activated the timer. Nineteen minutes. More than enough time to get away.

  That was when she took control.

  She encompassed his mind, so that she was all he knew and would ever know. She was a parasite, he the unwilling host, powerless to stop his fate. He became she.

  She picked up the backpack and put it on her back. The timer ticked down as she made her way through the city.

  The Seventy Fifth Church Of God held sermons round the clock, and was one of the most heavily attended religious institutions in Eaglepoint. Seventeen minutes after the bomb was activated, it was heaving. At least two hundred parishioners were listening to that day’s Word of God. So no one batted an eyelid when the young man with the backpack made his way to an empty seat in the middle of the auditorium. Nor did they pay attention when he began to pray.

  The Defender made sure his last thoughts were of God.

  The church was reduced to rubble. Everyone inside was killed. Naturally, God and his Hands blamed it on blasphemers who cared not for the life of innocents. God personally mentioned Eaglepoint in his messages for the next week. The bomber had been against God, he said, against the people, and he was the only one who could protect the population from these heinous crimes happening in future. It was the perfect act of propaganda. A negative spun into a positive. And all it took was a little persuasion.

  The Defender was proud of a job well done, but the feeling was fleeting. There was always more dissent out there. She sent out her feelers, looking for the next chance to do God’s work.

  * * * * *

  Twenty-Six

  The sun was beginning to rise, a natural and wholesome red. Shepherd’s warning. A knock on the door seemed as loud as a sonic boom in this pitch silence. But it was expected. He had a script to follow. “Come,” he said.

  A middle-aged lady, dressed like the prototypical librarian, came. She was holding a tablet computer, which she occasionally tapped as she moved through his cavernous and lavish office. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning Lydia. I trust all is well.”

  “It is indeed, sir. How was your night?”

  “Excellent.” This was the end of the script. And it was a lie. He’d had a fretful sleep, filled with visions of those who would do him harm. And the phrase, “We’re the same, you and I”. He could only say that in dreams. For now.

  “Now, Lydia,” he said. “I have exciting news for you. For the world, actually.”

  “Oh yes, sir?” Lydia said.

  “Yes. Last night, I had a vision. In that vision, I saw a Prophet.” This was also a lie. He was good at that.

  “A…Prophet, sir? But…goodness, it’s been a long time…”

  “Twenty-six years, yes. It may be a long time for you, Lydia, but for me, it’s a grain of sand in an hourglass.”

  “Oh, of course. Um…well, what would you have me do, sir?”

  “The vision suggested to me that the Prophet could be found in Sandbourne. At a school. Tell me, how many primary schools are there in that city?”

  “Twenty-six.” Lydia said this without taking even a second to think. He’d blessed her with a brain more powerful than a search engine, and he always enjoyed seeing it tick.

  “That’s…a lot,” he said, but he enjoyed the symmetry of the numbers. Twenty-six years. Twenty-six schools. It was a coincidence, but one he could easily pass off as a divine plan. “No matter. I want you to send a team to every school in the city and write a report on every child there. No…more than that. I want to know the workings of the schools, too. Rumours, gossip, that kind of thing.”

  “Sir…if you don’t mind my asking…”

  He was silent.

  “Why can’t the Defenders do this job?”

  He paused for a moment before answering. His quiet voice had an undercurrent of annoyance. “I want this public, Lydia. As public as possible. I want to make a speech tomorrow. It’s important for the people to know that the world has been blessed.”

  “That’s…OK, sir. I’ll organise that for you. Right now, in fact.” She tapped her screen a few times.

  “Get Emerson to come and see me in ten minutes, while you’re doing that.”

  “…Emerson Daley, sir?”

  “Yes. That Emerson.”

  “But sir, he…”

  “I know. Just get him.”

  Lydia’s finger trembled as she kept tapping her screen. The eyes of her Lord burned into her forehead as she did. She could feel them. Those eyes.

  “OK. Done.”

  “Good. Thank you, Lydia. You can go now.”

  “…are you sure? There’s nothing el-”

  “Nothing at all. See you tomorrow.” See you tomorrow. Lydia breathed a sigh of relief with those three words.

  “See you tomorrow, sir.” She turned and started to walk towards the door, quickly, but not so quickly that he’d notice she was walking quickly.

  “Oh, Lydia?” She froze.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Don’t ask questions.”

  Lydia couldn’t breathe. She thought it was just fear at first, but then she felt pressure, building slowly. Her neck was being squashed by some invisible vice, pushing harder and harder and harder until everything went black.

  But he didn’t stop. He kept squeezing. He put every ounce of strength he could draw into his mental grip until finally, after twenty-six secon
ds…Lydia’s head popped off like the top of a shaken cola bottle. Blood went everywhere - dribbles of arterial spray on the wall, a trail as the head rolled, and a pool of crimson that gradually extended into a lake when he let her corpse flop onto the carpet.

  It was a shame. He’d liked Lydia. He also liked the floor. A hell of a lot more, actually. Now it was ruined. But Emerson would deal with both. He was an excellent cleaner.

  He turned to look out the window and drew in a deep breath. That felt good. He treated his staff - and his servants, the people of his world - with mercy most of the time. But just occasionally, he had to squash an ant to make sure the rest fell in line. He couldn’t wait for the day he could do that to Lucas. “We’re the same, you and I.” Splat.

  He was a vengeful God, after all.

  * * * * *

  Shattered

  The glass glistened like morning dew in the sunlight. That was what caught Sara’s eye.

  It looked like the remains of a bottle, smashed as it hit the concrete track. Someone must have flung it over the wall. Lying among the shards of processed sand was a strip of paper, red, with black writing.

  Well, not writing. Not quite. They were symbols and appeared to have some sort of grammatical structure to them, sure, but they were not the letters that Sara was always taught in school. They were more like pictograms or hieroglyphics from an ancient era. An era older than God.

  She reached for the paper carefully, making her fingers run a gauntlet of glass. It had a weird texture to it. In fact, it wasn’t paper, it was rigid and rough and quite resistant to bending. More like a banknote that had been washed than torn-off sheet of newspaper.

  “What are you doing?” said a voice. Sara spun and saw a shadowy man. He was tall and wearing rather ragged clothes. A few days’ stubble dusted his pockmarked cheeks. It looked as though someone had once used him as a dartboard. “You shouldn’t play with broken glass, little girl.”

  “Oh, but I wasn’ sir!” Sara said. “Honest I wasn’! I was just lookin’ ‘round. Din’t mean nothin’ by it.”

  “It’s OK. It’s not like I’m not your mum. Just don’t want you hurting yourself.” He paused for a moment. “So what have got there? A love letter?”