Then I went to bed, my heart beating fast, thinking hard.
I intended to stay awake but once more tiredness beat me. I lay down and closed my eyes.
The dream girl came again. I tried to lift up my head but it felt as if it had been bolted to the pillow: my arms were too heavy to lift more than a few inches. The figure above me rocked and panted.
Afterwards she dropped forward, breathing deeply, her breath hot on my face. She balanced herself with an arm at each side of my head. With an effort I turned my head to one side. I could see only a dark shadow of an arm. I rolled my head the other way. This time I saw more.
A little light leaked under the door from the passageway. At first I could see a bare forearm and wrist. No jewellery. Featureless skin … No. I forced myself to see more. There was a birthmark. A red patch on the skin in the shape of a letter C.
I tried to speak but all that came out was grunt. Trying to sit up was worse. It was like trying to move in a dream. Nothing worked.
With a huge effort I snapped into a sitting position and opened my eyes.
It was morning. Daylight seeped through the curtains and Timothy was thumping the door. ‘Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast.’
‘Okay, okay … I’m awake. Timothy, I said I’m AWAKE!’
I ate breakfast feeling like something slimy had made its grave beneath my tongue. As I slipped back into focus I began looking round at the hands of people eating.
I drank four mugfuls of tea, hoping it would crank up my brain cells.
When Bernadette left the lounge to take the plates back to the galley, I followed.
‘You don’t look as peaky as you did, Nick.’
‘I feel a lot better. Let me help wash up.’
She began to run hot water onto the plates. ‘That’s very kind of you. But you need to rest. Anyway, I enjoy washing up. I always sing as I scrub. You know it—’
I grabbed her arm and pulled up the sleeve. A birthmark showed up like a red C.
‘Bernadette. It was you.’
She looked up, her dark eyes startled. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Aten. I don’t know what you mean … Don’t look at me like that. You’re scaring me.’
The Chinese twins who were making bread at the far end of the galley turned to watch me.
‘Bernadette, you damn well do know what I’m talking about. Where’s the blonde wig, Bernadette? You’ve been coming into – Hey … Come back here. Bernadette.’
She looked back as she ran. The grin on her face transformed it. ‘You’ll have to catch me first!’
I followed her down the passage, through a door and into a labyrinth of more passages, then across bridges that linked the barges.
My eyes blurred and I could barely manage a jog never mind a run. Bernadette was fit. She could easily have outrun me but every so often she’d slow down so I could catch up. In the barge where they kept their stores she unlocked a door and ducked inside.
I followed.
I expected a store room. Instead it looked like a professor’s study. I blinked in the light. Thick carpets, rugs, a desk, a swivel chair beside a table on which stood a computer, racks of computer disks.
On the walls there weren’t any wacko stick men paintings. There were charts, graphs. A map of the world covered with red and black thumbtacks. The red outnumbered the black.
Through an open doorway I saw a bedroom.
‘You didn’t expect this, did you, Nick?’
Astonished, I looked back at her. Her voice had changed. It had lost the I’m-a-simple-backwoods-girl accent. Now she didn’t look away with a shy grin. Her gaze was direct, the smile confident.
‘No. I didn’t expect this at all, Bernadette. Is this Adam’s office?’
‘No. It’s mine … Now, do you want to know a secret?’
Chapter Forty-Seven
This Is What Drove Adults Insane
‘Sit down, Nick. If you want answers, then I’ve got answers. And probably far more answers than you can imagine.’
I sat beside her on the study sofa. Bernadette looked at me in the way I’d seen my Uncle Jack look at guitars in music stores, weighing them up, gauging what they are capable of.
‘Nick, this might seem a foolish question, but are you interested in learning what happened to the adult population? And what will happen to them – and us – in the future?’
‘Yes, of course. But why did—’
‘Nick. I’m going to have to make demands of you. First: be very patient. I’ve a lot to get through. And some of it’s going to seem pretty strange. Second … please accept my apologies. I’ve underestimated you. You come across as a bit of a devil-may-care bad boy but there’s a brain working away in that skull of yours. Also I hoodwinked you with my just-a-simple-girl performance. Another thing, as you know now, I’ve been raping you every night.’ She grinned. ‘It wasn’t to slake my perverted lusts. Everything I do, however bizarre it may seem, has a purpose. By the way, you’re no longer ill. I have to confess that for the last few days I have been drugging you.’
‘What kind of bastard trick is that?’ I stood up sharply, blood flaring furiously. ‘I can’t afford to piss around here out of my skull! I’ve got to get back home. There’s three hundred kids’ lives at stake. Obviously you know damn all what’s happening out there in the world. There are communities of kids being picked off one by one by the Creosotes … Jesus Christ, woman, we are becoming extinct and you keep me here, drugged up to the eyeballs so you can shag my brains out!’
She looked at me steadily. ‘Hit me, Nick. But I only ask you hit my face, not my stomach.’
‘Jesus … I feel like giving you a slap but I’ll not do that. Every single one of us is important now. You know, I’ve just come from a camp where more than forty people have been slaughtered.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Just get this into your head, Bernadette, forget about hymn-singing, arty-farty painting on the wall and get yourself into the real world. Good kids are working hard and fighting hard, and dying hard.’
She nodded. I saw no remorse in her face. If anything I felt as if I’d satisfactorily answered questions at an interview.
‘Nick … Listen to me please. I know you’re upset—’
‘Damn right.’
‘Sit down. I know you want to get back to Eskdale. There’s someone special to you there called Sarah.’
‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘You talk in your sleep, Mr Aten.’ Bernadette’s smile was sympathetic. ‘You want to get back there in a hurry but believe me, Nick, you’re stuck here for a couple of days anyway. The weather’s improving but those mountain roads are still blocked by snow. You’d die trying to get through now.’
‘But I must get—’
‘Yes, just give it a couple more days. It’s beginning to thaw. With luck you’ll have a few clear days before the snow sets in for the winter. Fancy a beer?’
‘I could murder one … You said you had answers, Bernadette. ‘I’m all ears.’
‘Patience, Mr Aten. I’ll get the beers, then we’ll talk. First, though, I must ask you to promise me something.’
I shrugged. ‘Fire away.’
‘Whilst you’re here on the Ark you must stay here in my apartment. If you go back and the children find out what’s happening here, and what I’m really like, everything will be ruined.’ She touched my lips as I started to speak. ‘No, I’m not on a weird ego trip. What I’m doing here – it won’t guarantee our survival but it will go a long, long way to help. And when I mean our survival, I mean the survival of our species – the human race.’
I nodded. My mind had taken to revolving in its skull. Today the surprises were coming thick and fast.
‘One beer coming up. You sit there, Nick. It’ll be a few hours before the drug’s completely out of your bloodstream.’
As she went to a well-stocked refrigerator I looked round numbly at the maps and charts. Shelves full of books with titles like Archetypal Psychology and Man And His Symbols. By people w
ith strange names like Jung, Freud, Progoff and Laurens van der Post.
Bernadette returned with the beers as a voice crackled over a speaker. She went to a stack of electronic hardware in the corner of the room and picked up the mike.
‘Hello, Abraxas … All quiet in Luxor? Good … Abraxas, I can’t talk now. Something came up. I’ll contact you at 1900 hours. Fine … Catch you later.’ She came back and handed me the beer. ‘See, Nick. I do know what’s happening in the outside world.’
‘Do you talk to many people on that thing? The last camp I visited they were in touch with survivors all over the world.’
‘I know. I even heard your name mentioned by someone called Sheila.’
The blood thudded in my ears and I had to look away.
‘Yes, Nick.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘I know what happened. They began broadcasting when they were attacked. They only stopped when … You can guess.’
‘I don’t have to – I know.’
‘Look.’ She pointed at the map of the world covered in red and black thumbtacks. ‘I’ve plotted on there the communities that are broadcasting. Of course there must be thousands more that don’t have transmitters. Yours at Eskdale is one. The red tacks are surviving communities. The black tacks are those that have stopped transmitting. Why they’ve stopped transmitting is unfortunately obvious. The insane adults are doing an efficient job. They target a community, then something triggers them to attack, which they do with utter dedication. They don’t care how many of their own die. As long as they achieve the total destruction of the community – and the death of every single person within it.’
‘You talk as if there’s some kind of masterplan behind it all. Like the adults are being controlled.’
‘They are, Nick.’
‘By who?’
‘That’s a long story. Before we get down to that, tell me about Nick Aten.’ She grinned. ‘Even though we’ve fucked like crazy I don’t know anything about you. Although …’ She nodded at the transmitter. ‘I heard Sheila talk about you with something close to religious awe.’
‘The Messiah syndrome?’
‘Ah, you’ve heard about it. Yes, in times of great danger there is this instinctive craving for the appearance of a messiah, or hero who will make the world safe again.’
‘Well, they got the wrong man with me. I’m nothing but shit.’ A million images burned through my head as I said it. Sarah. David Middleton begging me to take control, then blowing his brains out. Being away from the house the night mum and dad killed John. The Singing Sisters hanging in the barn. Guilt, guilt, guilt! I could have saved them all if I’d been half as good as people expected me to be.
I sucked on the beer. It felt like a glacier going down my throat.
‘You looked as though you needed that,’ said Bernadette. ‘I’ll get you another.’
When she came back we swapped stories. As always these days you tell people what happened to you the night the world went crazy.
Bernadette lived with her mother, who was a surgeon, in the village at the end of the lake.
On the Sunday, DAY 2, Bernadette had woken at nine. Nothing seemed unusual. She thought her mother was having a lie-in after a heavy week at the hospital. At mid-day she went to check on her mother.
She found her dead in bed from a drugs overdose. Her mother’s diary was on the bedside table. An entry in odd little print only vaguely resembled her mother’s usual scrawl.
It was written on the night of the sanity crash and timed at 2 a.m.
Hating Bernie. Noises in room. Voices shouting. No one there. They shout, kill Bernie, kill her. Save yourself, kill Bernie. Feel confused. Voices demand. Hating Bernie … no I don’t hate Bernie, I love Bernie. Clear signs I am suffering from mental illness. Feeling of great danger. Can only save myself if I kill Bernie. No, Bernie’s in danger.
2.45 a.m. For the last twenty minutes I’ve rolled around my bedroom, biting sheets and my own hands. Feels as though I am fighting a battle with someone in my head. Someone very strong. They are winning. I feel it. My sanity is slipping. I managed to swallow tranquillisers. For now I feel very calm, very clear headed. I know it won’t last long. Already I can feel the thing in my head fighting to take control of me.
When it does, the real me, Mary Christopher, will be lost forever. Then whatever is in my head will use my body to kill Bernie. I know what I have to do.
Good-bye, Bernie. I am sorry to have to leave you like this.
You were always very special to me, Bernie.
Love, mum.
Then came some scribbled marks that meant nothing.
Bernadette’s eyes were glistening as she carefully returned the diary to the drawer.
‘Within a few hours,’ she said, ‘I saw that it wasn’t just my mother who’d lost her mind. It was the whole adult population. Now, Nick, what happened to you?’
We talked. When I told her about being kidnapped by my parents and the weird experiment they seemed to be conducting, seizing kids and dumping them miles away, Bernadette sat up straight.
‘Mind if I record this conversation?’
‘If you want to. Go ahead.’
‘It’s not a question of want – it’s a question of need. I need to compile as much information about the behaviour of the adults as I possibly can. Every tiny bit more we know about them improves our chances of staying alive.’
I told her everything. She seemed particularly interested in the systematic destruction of the Croppers at Leyburn. How the adults had carefully counted how many were in the community – and kept a count of those they killed.
Two hours later, my throat sore from talking, Bernadette snapped off the tape.
‘Right, I’ve got to get back now. We’ve got hymns before lunch.’
‘But you were going to tell what happened to the adults. Why did they go crazy? Why are they killing their own children?’
‘All in good time. Make yourself comfortable. There’s microwave meals in the refrigerator, the kitchen’s through the yellow door across there. And there’s plenty of movies on disc if you want to watch TV. Now … I know you’ve lots of questions but you’ll get your answers later.’
The answers that were to come – not just about what happened to the adults, but answers to questions men and women have asked for ten thousand years – would, as near as dammitt, blow my mind.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The Mysteries
For three hours I had the run of Bernadette’s apartment. For lunch I ate microwave lasagna, swilled a couple of beers and watched a disc of It’s A Wonderful Life on the TV.
The experience was weird. In its own way as weird as seeing the mass migration of Creosotes, or the flooded towns I’d visited, or the mass crucifixion on the motorway. Here I was sitting in a snug apartment, bottle of beer in my mit, watching Jimmy Stewart doing his thing in small-town USA.
I could have been in someone’s city home where everything was fine and the adult population hadn’t gone ape-shit and murdered their kids.
After a while I felt reality slipping through my fingers so I opened the window and looked out over the lake to the snow-covered mountains.
No. Here I was on a place these people called the Ark. A whole lot of steel barges floating bang in the middle of forty square miles of cold water. Eskdale was maybe sixty miles away. What did Sarah think had happened to me? Did she care any more? Was she alive or dead?
I breathed in deeply, feeling the cut of iced air. The world sharply focused once more.
‘I hope you’re not thinking of swimming for it.’ Bernadette locked the door behind her. ‘The cold would kill you long before you reached the shore.’
I smiled. ‘No. Before I do anything I want to hear what really happened back on that weekend in April.’
‘Grab a seat, then we’ll begin.’ Before she sat down she switched on the radio receiver. A low babble of foreign voices mixed with static crackled softly from the speaker.
‘This place.?
?? I looked round the room. ‘Does Adam know anything about it?’
‘Do you mean, is he aware of the conspiracy?’
‘Conspiracy?’
‘Yes, he’s in on it. And so are you. Come on, sit down, Nick. Once I’ve told you a few things it’ll all become as clear as that window why I’ve done the things I’ve done.’
‘Like the ages of your people here in the community? I mean it seems odd that apart from you, Adam, Timothy and the two Chinese girls, everyone else seems to be under the age of eleven.’
She nodded. ‘There is a reason. When I created the community I deliberately chose young children with minds I could mould. Clearly Timothy is a special case. The Chinese twins are from a Christian mission school and are devoutly religious.’
‘Like Adam?’
‘Yes, he was. He’d planned on becoming a monk.’
‘You say he was religious.’
‘After the collapse of society in April he went off the rails. He’d either spend hours cursing God or going round every church in the district and burning it down. At that time our group lived in one hotel. It got to the point where I had to lock him in his room. He even tried to kill himself.’
‘Someone worked a miracle on him. To look at his drive and stamina now you’d think he’s on a mission from God.’
‘In a way he is.’
‘So he’s returned to the flock, then?’
‘No. Not in that sense. But he has a faith.’
‘Are you being deliberately mysterious or am I thick as pig shit?’
Bernadette laughed. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve kept you in the dark long enough. Now … Do you believe in God?’
‘No.’
I thought then she would try and sell religion to me like some doorstep Jehovah’s Witness. Instead she sighed with relief and said, ‘Good. If you were religious I’d have to give you the edited version of events to spare your feelings. Religious people might find what I’m going to tell you too controversial, and too disturbing.’