Paul’s voice carried over the water. ‘For God’s sake! Don’t hurt him. He’s a human being. You mustn’t do anything to cause injury!’
The corporal still carried the sub-machine in one hand. When he fired off a short burst the child closed his hand. The man’s skull did nothing to prevent the spasmodic contraction. The child’s fingers simply passed through the man’s head. Blood squirted between the fingers. That and pulped bone and clear brain fluid. The soldier suddenly hung limply in his hand. The child flung the corpse away over the rail. It fell into the water with a dead-sounding splash.
The way ahead was clear. He loped across the bridge to the pastures at the other side. The third soldier didn’t interest him now. The man had fled into the night.
When the child reached the pasture he stood there in lush grass and wildflowers that reached up to his knees. He savoured the scented air coupled with the sudden peace of the night. Above him, stars burned with a serenity all of their own.
A little while later Paul Marais joined him. For a moment he was out of breath, then he spoke. ‘Are you special, like they say? Or are you a real monster? Our kind have never killed a human being before.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Now you?’ He wiped his hand across his face. ‘For God’s sake, just tell me what made you kill that man?’
The child turned his face upwards to bask in falling starlight. At that moment he understood. ‘I know my name.’ Deeply he inhaled the scent of dew forming on the grass. ‘I am Dominion.’
5
PREY
‘Follow the river upstream. You’ll have better chance in the hills.’ Elsa heeded the woman’s advice. Within moments the village was out of sight. All that betrayed its position was a bloody red glow in the sky where the fire that consumed Elsa’s sister blazed.
She only had a vague idea of the terrain in this part of the country. For the last three years her kind had been forbidden to leave the grounds of the transit station. So the hills she now approached had only been a series of blue-green mounds on the horizon. Eyes that were sensitive enough to rely on starlight alone revealed the dirt path running alongside the river. As far as she could tell there were no people nearby. The rustling she could hear in the forest came from the animals that lived there, not the footfalls of man. Bats swung out of the night sky. Their ultrasonic piping reached her ears. She could differentiate the notes, and even something of the emotion they conveyed – the gratification of finding plump insects, or the warning that a tall creature roamed close to the water.
From the milky haze on top of the hills came the song of the ancient dead. Elsa had heard it before. It was just days after she woke up after her transition. At first she believed it had been a symptom of making that journey from life to death, then back to life again. But nobody she confided in had experienced anything of the like. The sound had continued for hours until it had very gradually became attenuated then died away completely. As a child she loved to ride in her father’s boat. On one occasion at anchor she’d gazed down at her reflection in the water. Until that moment she’d only viewed the sea as an ever-shifting horizontal plane. A vast ‘surface’ with nothing beneath it. But that day was uncannily still. The ocean didn’t even wrinkle. They could have been drifting on cooking oil. The sunlight must have reached a critical angle because at that moment, as she leaned forward on the gunwale, she looked past her reflection with its wide brown eyes. She realized she was gazing down into the depths of the ocean. And down there was another world. There was an entire topography of hills; there were deep, shadowed canyons through which fish glided. The sense of revelation had been profound. Elsa never saw the ocean in the same way again. It was the same with that faint nocturne she heard now, the soulful voices that sang a melody that she found more haunting and moving than she could say. The voices climbed the musical scale then gently descended. Just as she’d once viewed only the surface of the sea before that singular day on the boat, her intuition revealed with such breathtaking power that she was only hearing the surface of the song. Elsa sensed there was an entire universe of meaning beneath that melody.
Nobody else had heard the songs of the dead, so as her convalescence progressed she’d stopped mentioning it. By the time she’d left she pretended to herself that she must have imagined it. Only now it was back. This time stronger. As if the song contained a message for her, and her alone. At that moment she decided she had to search for the source of the music. After all, there was nothing to go back to. She’d worked at the transit station for three happy years. Now the army had stormed it and killed its occupants. If the building was still standing the authorities would never permit it to reopen. Even before the onslaught, local children had been painting ‘Castle Frankenstein’ on its walls with their parents’ blessing. She’d been fortunate to escape with a fellow nurse. For an hour or so they’d walked toward the coast in the hope they might find a way of escaping the country. Although it wouldn’t be lawful for a member of the public to kill a transient, not a single police officer would consider arresting a ‘Monster killer’. If anything the killer would be feted as a hero.
So the farmers caught Elsa and Lorne. Then took them back home to burn them in the field opposite the barn. If it wasn’t for the woman who believed she owed a debt to the monsters for safely delivering her only son Elsa would be nothing but smoking bones by now.
Elsa moved as if she walked in her sleep. The darkness, the dogged rhythm of her stride, the exhaustion, they all contributed to her slipping into a state of only part wakefulness. So when she saw the grey shape drift by in the river it took a while to register what it was. When she did she bounded down the bank on to the shingle bed to look more closely. The grey smudge in the waters wore army fatigues. Her oath had commanded her not to harm humanity, it also commanded her with equal vigour to safeguard it. So, without hesitation, she waded through the water with enough force to create a huge churning wake of foam. Elsa reached out a powerful arm, grasped the jacket collar then surged back to shore, her feet splashing through the shallows. In the reeds, ducks protested noisily at being disturbed. Seconds later she hauled the figure onto the grass slope, then knelt down to check for signs of life. When she saw the state of the head she knew it would be a waste of time to continue. The skull had been crushed with so much power flaps of bone hung down onto the earth. The face was no longer recognizable as human; merely a ruinous stew of red and black shapes in a chaotic Dali-esque montage. The head wound – and what a damnable head wound – didn’t appear to be the result of gunshot, although her nostrils detected the sharp smell of cordite. The soldier had either fired a gun recently, or been very close to someone who had. Nor did the damage suggest a fall. The entire skull had been compressed with such force that the head’s contents had squirted out through lesions in the skin. She checked the uniform that bore the twin stripes of rank of corporal. Civilized morality dictated she should discover his name then telephone the police. Only the price of doing that would undoubtedly be her life. After a tussle with her conscience she pulled the corpse to the path where it would be found. Then, after covering the man’s ruined face with his own handkerchief, she continued walking.
Barely an hour after leaving the cadaver she reached a footbridge. Immediately she noticed that a flashlight lay in its centre. It still blazed its beams across the boards. After checking that no one was nearby, she ran to the fallen light. Another flashlight lay close by. This one had been crushed. Either it had been deliberately smashed, or a heavy individual had unwittingly stepped on it. Certainly it wouldn’t have been run over by a vehicle as the bridge was too narrow to allow anything other than people to cross. A brassy gleam caught her eye. She picked up a spent ammunition cartridge. It smelt of cordite smoke, so it had been fired recently. Instantly she pictured the corpse of the soldier. He’d smelt of gunsmoke, too. She took another dozen steps. Now there was a spatter of blood on the timber pathway. The way it had coagulated into such a dark, tarry mass suggested it to be human blood. Her nerve
endings tingled. So what had happened here? It connected with the mutilated corpse downstream. But her senses suggested her own kind had passed across this bridge recently. She couldn’t smell their trail, but it was as if they’d left a trace of their passing in the very timbers. Yes, I’m guessing that they came here. Yet they’d never kill a human being. It’s simply not possible. However, she’d heard rumors amongst fellow medical staff who oversaw that Frankenstein procedure for reanimating the dead. In the last few months there were whispers of unusual anomalies occurring in the bodies of transients. Normally, the dead returned to life like freshly minted coins. Each one with the identical biological characteristics, if not identical appearance. That’s why they called each other brother and sister because they belonged to the same post-mortem clan. But one old doctor pointed out that, ‘Mother Nature will never be denied her right to make changes to living creatures. Evolution is subversive. In most cases it will sneak those subtle biological changes in through the back door.’
As she crossed the bridge to the other side Elsa stopped to grasp the rail as the revelation struck. Intuition spoke to her so loudly it took her breath away. The death of the soldier? The ability to hear the music of the ancient dead? In some mysterious way they were linked.
We, the God Scarers, are changing. Only we never realized how much. Human beings recognized the change. That’s why they want to destroy us. They aren’t envious: they’re frightened.
6
The Stone Sisters
Dawn haunted the horizon like a ghost. The whiteness of it manifested itself on top of the hill they now climbed. From a deathly pre-dawn hush the forest slowly awoke. Birds called from the trees. Rabbits emerged from warrens to smell the air. Danger or safety? Their sensitive nostrils appeared to sift those scents from the atmosphere. A deer trotted through the bushes to their left – a splash of gold against dark greens.
Doctor Paul Marais walked hard to keep up with his charge. When Dominion stopped climbing the hill to gaze back at daylight creeping into the valley he took his chance to hammer the point home again.
‘Dominion. Listen to me. I’ve told you this over and over. You must not kill. Do you understand me?’
Dominion said nothing. The light touched grass in the hollows turning it from black to emerald. Ants emerged from their nest to begin the day’s labours.
Paul pressed his argument. ‘Our people have never killed their people. Never ever. Do you follow? If a human being decides to destroy us, so be it. We must not fight back. Get the rule through that skull of yours: DO NO HARM TO HUMANITY. DO NOT ALLOW HARM TO BEFALL HUMANITY DUE TO YOUR ACTION OR INACTION.’
Dominion watched a pair of blackbirds feeding their young in a nest.
A sigh escaped Paul’s lips. ‘It’s important you understand, Dominion. Back there you threw a soldier into the river. You might have caused his death. Worse – far worse – you knowingly and purposefully crushed the second man’s skull. You killed him. I-I can’t add enough weight to this statement: THAT IS WRONG, SO PROFOUNDLY WRONG. YOU MUST NOT KILL.’ Paul grasped the massive forearm. ‘Talk to me, Dominion. Do you understand? Hey … talk!’
Dominion looked into the face of the man standing there in drab green surgical scrubs. The man’s eyes searched his face as if needing to see some flicker of understanding.
The words still didn’t come easy. ‘Ah …’ The word escaped with a sighing whisper. ‘Soldiers … they would hurt Dominion. They would make death.’
‘Yes, they would “make death”.’ Paul mimicked the slow words pushed with so much effort from Dominion’s lips. ‘That’s OK …well, it’s not OK, but that’s what we spawn of Frankenstein, we God Scarers, are resigned to. Our philosophy is writ in stone. It’s etched into our bones. We never kill. If the guys return with flame throwers we don’t fight them.’ He grimaced. ‘We let nature take its course. Do you follow?’
Dominion gave a single shake of his head.
‘Listen to me, Dominion. If you try to take another life then I will kill you myself. Got that?’
Another emphatic shake of the head. ‘You ran.’
‘I agree. When the shooting started at the transit station I ran like a frightened rabbit. That’s the instinct for self-preservation. We still have it, Dominion, despite being a bunch of dead men walking.’ He clicked his tongue as the implications sank in. ‘In the cold light of you know what?’ He indicated the grey dawn. ‘I figure now that it might have been wisest to simply stand in line like the rest, and let them stick that exploding necklace over my head.’
‘You belong in life.’
‘Belong in life? A nice way of putting it. You’re right, Dominion. I love this.’ He nodded at the tree-covered valley where herds of deer drank at the river. ‘But I won’t kill for it.’
‘Doctor, you are the same as Dominion.’
‘No, pal. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.’
‘You will fight for life.’
‘Think again. I’m nothing like you.’ Paul continued up the hill. ‘Something went wrong in the regenerator. You really are a monster.’ Grim laughter burst from his mouth. ‘You, Dominion, are a monster’s monster. You are Frankenstein’s darkest nightmare.’
They walked toward the summit. By the time they reached the hilltop the sun had lifted its red, burning eye over the horizon. As its rays touched the trees it released their aromas to the morning air. At this altitude there was a fresher scent of pine. Behind, and below them, the valley bottom had become a jumble of copses, fields and faraway houses. The river threaded its way to a sea that revealed itself as a misty flatness in the distance. As they approached the summit of the hill with its patches of wind-bent trees and bushes Paul held his arm out toward Dominion with a palm raised. A command for silence.
‘See that circle of standing stones,’ Paul whispered. ‘That’s where I left them.’ His face darkened. ‘Our bonny little party of survivors.’ He scanned the nine columns of blue-black stone. ‘Nine Sisters stone circle,’ Paul grunted. ‘Bronze age people erected these to prove to the world that they were capable of creating something immortal. A monument to their lives that would remain long after they’d melted into the soil. Isn’t it an exquisite metaphor, Dominion? Because here we are three millennia later. We were created by those folks’ descendents to be immortal. A monument to the lives of our mortal creators.’ He shook his head. ‘While you enjoy the irony of it all I’ll scout round to see where our band have vanished to. Stay here, please. And for God’s sake don’t hurt anyone.’
Dominion stood on the highest part of the hill. The valley spread beneath him. An early morning mist clung to its hollows. He allowed the sights, scents, sounds and the feel of the place to flow through him as he remained statue-like, a flesh and bone, dead and alive colossus dominating the crown of the hill. Even the stones of the standing circle appeared lesser in stature to him. Although he did not examine the stones closely he sensed that they hadn’t occurred naturally, and the arrow head shapes of blue-black rock had been embedded there a long time ago. By now sunlight touched them. Their surfaces glinted, while the shadows they cast drew nine long blades of black across the ground.
The buzz of honey bees nudging amongst the wildflowers reached his ears. He smelt dew mingled with the musky odours of animals scurrying in the undergrowth nearby. The sunlight falling on his skin warmed it. The gunshot wounds in his chest were barely a tingle now. The brightening of the world from night into day had a symmetry with the dawning of understanding inside of him. He knew his name wasn’t ‘Child’ now: it was Dominion. He remembered the calm of the transit station before the soldiers stormed it. And he recalled snatches of what happened before. There was an immersion in a brilliant blue. Like the heart of a star it shone through him even though his eyes were closed. Its intensity seared him. Whether it hurt him or not him he couldn’t be sure. But there had been such a concentration of emotion and physical feeling that he’d been driven to scream himself awake.
He studied his hand.
No flaws marked the skin. Each pink nail was smoothly rounded. Didn’t he have a scar across his left thumb? A childhood accident when he used his father’s modelling knife to make arrows for his bow. He examined his thumb. There was no scar now.
Dominion allowed his hand to return to his side. Paul had asked him to wait there, so that’s what he’d do. He allowed his mind to submerge into the world around him. Once more he sensed the currents of the universe flow through his flesh. When he closed his eyes he fancied he could hear the Aeolian hum of atoms in the Nine Sisters. The atoms vibrated at a distinct pitch to those in the natural earth in which the stones stood. It gave them a slightly different …taste? No, not taste. That wasn’t the right word. Something like taste. A unique signature that made them stand apart from their surrounding environment.
Then the world shifted. Its rhythms altered. He sensed a taste – that word again – another taste … a flavour, that told him someone was coming. Rather than concentrating on what lay inside of him, and how his instinct related to his surroundings, he allowed his mind to rise to the surface of things again. Dominion opened his eyes a fraction. Through the slits he watched the woman approach.
Slowly, in a way that was nearer to a glide than a walk, she entered the space between the circle of upright stones. There she made her way to the tallest stone that towered over her. Then she listened. Every so often her eyes would close as if to hear some distant music.
At last she emerged from the stone circle. He sensed her watching him for a while before she asked the question, ‘Do you hear them?’
He continued to look out across the valley as the sun rose. When he didn’t answer she approached. He noticed the way she appraised the bullet wounds in his chest, plus the rust-coloured stain on his right hand.