No
one looked him in the eye. They all stared zombielike in front of
them. Not running, just walking. They crossed the causeway, the sea
swirling around their feet, while on either side of them the bigger
breakers rumbled shorewards, splashing over the watchful heads of the
things in the ocean.
The
Reverend Horace Reed passed out through the gates, dog-collar splayed
outward. The man was afraid.
Chris
looked up at the sky. The mist glowed a hot red.
It
was nearly here.
Soon
man and god would meet. On this spur of sand and rock. It had been
six hundred years since the last encounter. A long time for flesh and
bone to wait. How long for the thing that lived before the existence
of life itself?
It
didn't have a name now. Chris breathed deeply. It just was. It was
everything. Everything you could see, feel, breathe, taste, hear. It
was everything you could be and do. Chris knew it had always been
there. It was part of him. It was merely stepping from shadow to
light.
A
mental image flowed into Chris's mind. Two dancers. Dancing close. So
close you think they are one person, moving in a perfect synchronised
rhythm. Now they begin to separate. ...
Two
dancers ... moving slowly apart. Now you can see their faces.
One
has your face.
The
other's face-you see it clearly for the first time. You feel the cold
points of spider legs running down your back.
The
other dancer has a face that is shockingly familiar.
It
has your face. But your face is altered somehow.
Mark
helped Tony past Chris.
The
big man's face expressed reproach. Tony's eyes belonged to the mind
of a man that was lost and mad somewhere inside his head.
They
passed by.
Then
came the idiot girl with her mother. Then the Major carrying Mac. He
patted its head, his eyes staring straight ahead. He went outside.
Last
of all, Ruth, still carrying David. She'd hooded the blue-striped
towel over his head as if it would protect him from what waited
patiently outside.
"Why,
Chris?"
He
looked into her eyes. Even though they were frightened they were
strong. She would fight for her son's survival until her heart beat
no more.
He
wanted to answer her, but a barrier formed between his mind and his
voice. He looked back at the seafort.
The
scene left a photographic image in his mind as he turned and walked
out through the gates one last time.
Even
as he followed his wife and child across the causeway, oblivious to
the cold water sucking at his ankles, he held that image. The car
they had bought just the month before; the caravan they had moved
into as happy as children going on holiday; the cannon he had bought
from Reverend Reed", which would have formed an impressive
entrance to the seafort; the seafort itself, built from
butter-colored stone. In its two-hundred-year history, it had never
had to weather a siege. Until last week. Its builders would have been
proud that it had fulfilled its purpose.
Now
its destruction would come from inside-not outside.
Chris's
feet were sure across the causeway stones. He followed Ruth and the
others by the rusting mass of metal that had been Wainwright's car.
Waves rocked it back and forth.
He
passed the Saf Dar. Five yards away in the sea, their heads turned
smoothly to watch him pass.
The
Stainforths joined the rest of the villagers on the beach above the
high-tide mark. They clustered there looking like an Old Testament
tribe waiting for the end of the world.
Ahead
stood a line of Saf Dar, like statues. No hurry for them now. The
villagers were helpless. It would be as easy as harvesting plums from
a tree.
Between
them they had three shotguns with barely a dozen shells, the Major
his revolver with two rounds.
There
were now fifteen Saf Dar either in the dunes, on the beach, or in the
sea.
Ruth
sat on the beach with David in her arms. Other villagers sat down
too. They were waiting for this cold, cold dream to finish.
"What
now, Chris?" hissed Mark. "We can't get any further. In
God's name what do you propose we do?"
"I
know what I'm going to do. I'm going to watch my property burn."
He
walked to the edge of the group as the Saf Dar slowly formed a widely
spaced ring around them. From the dunes walked another procession.
Wainwright, the Fox twins, the drowned little boy. The dead
fisherman. The pilot. They were moving in for the kill, their minds
cruelly dominated by the Saf Dar.
The
seafort stood in the surf. From it smoke streamed up, making the
thing look like the cooling tower of a power station.
Sacrifice.
This
was Chris's sacrifice.
After
entering the seafort building, he had first collected his hammer;
then he found the jerry can of petrol. A petrol bomb remained from
the earlier attack on the Saf Dar. He took that too. With the jerry
can slowly swinging in one hand, the bottle of petrol in the other,
and the hammer tucked beneath one arm, he moved purposefully to the
room in which were stored the liquid petroleum gas bottles, standing
there in a line like blue soldiers. Against one side of the room was
a stack of wooden boards. On the window David's goldfish continued
its manic circling of the bowl.
With
alien calm, he removed the top from the jerry can and tipped petrol
over the wooden boards, then the gas bottles. Above, the ceiling was
timber. Two hundred years old and dry as a wafer.
The
stench of petrol bit into his nostrils. He retraced his steps to the
corridor; rested the hammer against the wall; lit the rag wick around
the neck of the bottle then tossed it into the room with the gas
bottles. The flare of heat scorched his face.
Still
calm, he had picked up the hammer and walked outside. The gas bottles
would have to heat up inside the inferno for a good five to ten
minutes before they burst. Then they would go up like a bomb.
Now
he watched the seafort from the beach. The villagers watched too.
This
was his sacrifice; his dream about to erupt into flame. He had loved
the place. Nothing in his life had ever been so important to him. Now
he was giving it up. He was sacrificing his most precious possession.
Tony
and Reed had been right. The ancient god had a contract with everyone
who came to live on this stretch of coast. Even though the
inhabitants might not know it, that contract was still valid.
This
old god expected it to be fulfilled. It demanded the sacrifice. In
return it would trade something of its own.
And
this was no gentle god, meek and mild, it was a god of muscle, sinew,
blood, life and death. If the deal wasn't fulfilled, then there would
be only the full force of its fury. He knew the Saf Dar would become
the vehicle of that fury. The human race would have more than just
its fingers burned.
In
the seafort he had realized that their survival depended on him now.
No one else could help. He had to act.
This
was his trade, then. The grief he would feel at the destruction of
the seafort. His dream for the future.
He
knew that in a few hours the Saf Dar would have been inside the
seafort. They would hound the villagers through the building,
breaking them apart with their bare hands. He saw himself frantically
trying to barricade Ruth, David and himself into a room; the red
things swelling through the passages to rip down the flimsy doors.
Then what would those monsters subject them to? He imagined them
snatching David, crying, from his mother's hands and dragging him
away to the beach ... playing with him for a while first.
What
would they do to Ruth? Those things had been men once. Now they were
inflated with a supernatural life force that might have inflated
their other appetites too.
Then
later they would be like Wainwright and Fox. They would become the
Saf Dar's puppets, marching across the countryside to the next town,
their bodies driven on by the sheer power of the life force that
would bloat them with its cancerous vitality.
He
watched the seafort.
Concentrated
everything on it. This was his dream. All the stomach-twisting
endeavour to buy the place. The work; all the money they had poured
into it. This place was going to be his future. His family would grow
up there.
Then,
as he watched, the white smoke streaming from the building turned
yellow. A flash swelled up from the well of the courtyard in a burst
of flame.
Later
came the thunder rumble. Fire poured upward through the rising smoke.
He
waited.
This
was it. His home, his business, his future had just become a bonfire.
What
did he feel?
Come
on, Chris, what do you feel?
Everything
you've worked for is burning.
Where's
the bitter grief at losing it all?
What
do you feel?
I
feel nothing.
The
realisation thudded home.
Nothing.
I feel nothing.
He
rocked on his feet.
The
sacrifice had not worked. He was supposed to feel the pain of the
loss. He didn't. The seafort had been just a pile of stone. The loss
just wasn't that important. He had no outburst of emotion to give to
the god. He would receive nothing in return. Now there was nothing he
could do to save his family or neighbors.
Above,
the sky was turning a brighter red; the sand beneath his feet began
to steam.
In
the seafort the bottled gas must have burned itself out. The
building, still intact, was just pouring out smoke to that living red
sky.
Feeling
a cold emptiness, Chris turned to the villagers who were watching
him.
"Sorry
... I thought..." The emptiness inside robbed him of speech.
Mark
and the Hodgson brothers had raised their shotguns. They turned to
face the red men as they took another step toward the villagers.
Confused,
the Major took a shaking step away from the group. "I want to go
home," he muttered, bewildered. One of the red men moved toward
him, its long arms swinging by its side in a way that seemed so
relaxed it was sinister. Like a professional mugger strolling toward
another victim.
Snarling,
the old man's dog leapt at the man-shaped monster. It tore at the
thing's shins with its small teeth. For a second the thing did not
react. Then one of its long arms swept down.
Mac
screamed like a child.
His
spine broken, the dog dragged itself frantically along the beach by
its forelegs, its back legs dragging a moist furrow through the sand.
"Mac,
come here, boy. Come back, boy. Come back..." From somewhere in
the mist came a sudden crack. The dog stopped squealing.
The
Saf Dar took another slow step forward. The circle tightened around
the villagers.
David
opened his eyes and pulled the towel from his head. The graze above
his forehead tingled. For a while he had been frightened. He had
closed his eyes. Everything had seemed dark and cloudy inside his
head. Then in his mind he had seen two people dancing. Very, very,
very, close. In fact he thought at first it had been one person. A
boy, like him. Then they had moved apart. There were two people.
Then
the dark clouds inside his head had broken apart and a brightness
like sunshine had come flooding down. The other dancer spoke to him.
David
looked around at the people on the beach: Tony Gateman sitting down,
looking sad; Mark with the gun to his shoulder. The nasty red men
were there. His mum was looking at his dad in a funny way, her eyes
watery and silvery.
Tears.
"Don't
cry, Mum. I know what to do. To make it all better."
She
shushed him gently. She had not understood.