Spring was close by, but the night was dark and stormy, filled with the dregs of a wild and vicious winter. Carter had written the letter with an old fountain pen, under the light of a small lamp at his desk, sealed the envelope, kissed both Joseph and Roxi in sleep, inhaling their mingled scent with tears in his eyes, then gathered his pack and called Samson to him.
For weeks now Samson had been limping painfully and had endured several prolonged seizures. He had been prescribed phenobarbitone as a control medication, but Carter had been informed by the emergency vet that the old dog had serious liver and kidney problems—on top of his arthritic hips—and did not have long to live.
Carter walked down the steps which led to the front door of his house and Samson followed slowly, the steep descent giving his aged frame obvious problems. They stepped out into a cold bitter world filled with a violent raging wind, with driving ice-filled rain, and began their long walk through the darkness of the storm.
Several hours later saw them weaving up a stone path which led into the mountains. Occasionally Carter would stop, pain pounding at his head and stars glittering behind his eyes despite the powerful painkillers he had taken—and had been taking more frequently for the past few weeks now. Samson would sit obediently at his feet, wet fur plastered to his chubby frame, tongue out and faithful old eyes still bright and focused.
Another hour saw them reach the deserted cave, and they ducked inside to shelter from the heavy downpour. Samson slumped to the ground and started chewing at his paws, grey muzzle working at some annoyance between his pads as Carter stripped off his wet-proofs, kicked free his walking boots and set about lighting a fire.
With the fire burning at the mouth of the cave, Carter sat and looked out into the rain. It fell in vertical sheets, and nearby he could hear the rapid flow of a swollen stream. He could smell a heady perfume of pine and wood-smoke. Samson climbed to his feet, moved over to Carter and slumped beside the man, placing his huge head in Carter’s lap.
‘God, you stink,’ said Carter, rubbing the old dog’s ears affectionately.
Samson whined, panting and gazing up at his master.
‘You been eating fish again?’
Samson lowered his head and closed his eyes.
‘I guess so.’
Carter rested his head back against the cave wall. The heat from the fire felt good. The embers glowed hot within the ring of rocks, and with a shiver Carter remembered plunging his hand into that black fire on Kade’s mountain ...
The scorching of his skin.
The stench of his own searing flesh.
The peeling of cooked meat from bone ...
After Carter beat Kade on the dark dust mountain, the KillChip demon had never returned. He had never troubled Carter with his unwelcome presence. It would seem that Carter had finally tamed the savage dark angel; caged him; broken him.
Winds blew into the cave, and outside the stream raged.
Carter spoke, voice hollow and booming as it reverberated from the cave walls. ‘Was Kade the god in the machine? Or the machine in the god?’ He laughed bitterly then. He would never know. He would never have the answers to all of his questions. But then, some things were best left buried.
Carter’s mind drifted for a while, back over the years, back over his memories. But always his thoughts returned—returned to one simple conversation, one simple
confrontation
which had stayed with him, branded into his mind, and would stay with him until the day he died.
Durell.
Durell had said, ‘The KillChip contains my DNA. My RNA. We are linked, Carter. We are linked ... and if you kill me, then the KillChip will slowly disintegrate. I will no longer be there to hold it in place. The KillChip will gradually dissolve, will release itself like an acid into your brain, will poison you like a fast-growing tumour that will torture you over the coming months—before eating your head from the inside out. To kill me, Carter, you must, ultimately, kill yourself.’
And Carter’s reply?
‘By killing you, I kill myself. That is a sacrifice I am willing to make.’
Oh, how Durell must be laughing in his pit of despair now, thought Carter, smiling grimly. How he must be chuckling as I sit here with my head in my hands, watching his prophecy come true.
As dawn broke, so the rain ceased. Carter watched the sun rising over the mountains. He could smell the rain, and he relished the awesome splendour of nature unfolding on the game board in front of him.
Roxi and Joe would find his letter. They would understand.
Samson opened his eyes and gave a big dog yawn.
‘We’ll face this final journey together, hey, boy?’ Samson panted, and Carter rubbed the dog’s soft ears as tentative fingers of early-morning sunlight reached into the cave.
Carter placed a pan of water over the flames of the fire to make coffee.
‘We’ll face it together,’ he whispered, and Samson continued to pant, his eyes gazing out over the mountains.
A small, thin-limbed African boy, his rich ebony skin gleaming under the harsh noonday sun, walked warily along the dirt roadway, his gaze swinging nervously from left to right as he searched for enemies. He carried a gnarled stick which he beat against the edges of the verge, the feel of the wood comforting under his narrow, bony fingers. It would at least afford him a weapon if he was attacked again by the other boys.
He stopped, crouched beside some shrubs and thorn bushes, and drank a little water from the bladder sack he carried against his hip.
He suddenly froze as something in the sand to his right caught his eye; his heartbeat increased rapidly to beat a tattoo of drums in his chest.
At first he thought the object was a snake, but the hump—which was covered by a fine layer of sand—started to rock backwards and forwards in a slow, rhythmical motion. The small boy retreated to a safe distance, frowning, unsure now of what he was actually watching. He could see that the object was large and round, fuzzily defined, and it looked like an elongated football. Then he blinked as sand fell away and he thought he could see ... hair?
Startled, the boy realised that it was a human head. He climbed to his feet and sprinted away down the road, bare feet kicking up flurries of dust as he hurried to tell his mother.
Behind him, the head rocked with a final violent spasm, and then rolled onto one side against the gentle slope of red dust. It was a head that stared with milky dead eyes, and a slack-jawed open mouth. It had a vicious tear where part of the dead-flesh cheek was missing—revealing a dark, rotting interior lined with yellow teeth. The severed head trailed tendons and a small section of spinal column. An army of large black ants crawled over the exposed and corrupted grey flesh; their private banquet had been rudely interrupted.
From inside the hollow cavern of the mouth there came a shadowy movement.
Something paused, halting at the opening behind the stiff and blackened tongue. And then what looked like a tiny corrugated insect crawled free. Its segments shone like oiled black metal, gleaming under the harsh sun; and it had copper eyes in a tiny, round, but unmistakably brutally insectile face.
It undulated across the head’s sand-matted beard and leapt, burrowing down into the sand ... heading down down down towards the Sleepers in The City. And it left no traces behind it; no evidence of its metallic, copper-scented, parasitic habitation.
for everything there is a season
and a time for every matter under heaven
a time to be born, and a time to die
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted
a time to kill, and a time to heal
a time to break down, and a time to build up
a time to weep, and a time to laugh
a time to mourn, and a time to dance
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing
a time to seek, and a time to lose
a time to keep, and a time to throw away
a time to tear, and a time to sew
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak
a time to love, and a time to hate ...
a time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3 1-8
The Bible