Round the next corner was the second checkpoint, which should have been manned by soldiers. Thacker crept through the hedge and came up on its blindside.
The concertina of razor wire was still across the road. There was no one else around. The guards had abandoned their post, and there was no sign of any struggle: no bodies, no blood, no shell cases.
Thacker walked on, cautiously, aware that his boots were the only sound he could hear.
He kept on going up to the hedge, peering around it where it was sparse, through the roots where it was not, trying to see into the valley. The land dipped away from the road. He could see the foreslope, but not the site of the Hall unless he started off across country, where large fields made cover infrequent. He’d stick to the road as it was more sheltered, and he could access the camp without being seen from the main drive.
Time to try the radio.
‘Captain Henbury, are you there, over?’
Henbury was clearly fumbling with his handset, receiving instruction on how to use it even as he tried to answer Thacker.
‘We’re in position in the Bricklayer’s Arms. Gratifying to see that pubs haven’t changed much. Over.’
‘I’m on the access road to the camp. The second checkpoint was unmanned as well. So far, so good. I haven’t got sight of the house yet. Over.’
‘There are units of something called the Army Air Corps on their way. They intend to overfly the area in what? A helicopter? No, it doesn’t matter.’
‘I’m coming up to the third cordon. I’ll speak to you later. Over and out.’
The barricade should have consisted of a Land Rover and two soldiers in NBC suits, guarding a pole slung between two trestles. The men had gone, and on the ground was a respirator. That was it. He looked in the windows of the Land Rover, and in the back, and found it untouched.
‘Thacker here,’ he said into the radio. ‘Checkpoint three is vacant. No clue as to what’s happened yet. Over.’
‘This is Henbury. This helicopter is going to be with you in five minutes. They called it an ETA, but I think that’s what they meant. Also, we’ve intercepted a message for Dickson from the British Museum. The machine not only has hieroglyphs on it, but also cuneiform, Sanskrit, something called Linear-A, and Hebrew. They’ve translated some of the Hebrew, and they say it’s a step-by-step guide to assembling the machine itself.’
‘What, ‘part A goes here’ sort of thing?’
‘Absolutely. They’re going through Jack’s notes, but the idiot put sections of it in code. If they uncover anything important, they’ll call me direct.’
‘Right. I’m going into the camp. Don’t call me unless absolutely necessary. I don’t want to give my position away. Any last words, Henbury?’
‘Don’t trust Jack. Whatever happens. Do not trust him an inch.’
‘I’ve every intention of getting rid of him at the earliest opportunity. Over and out.’
Thacker half ran, half scuttled to the gate that led to the camp. Heavy vehicles had churned the ground into a sea of mud, waves of dirt pushed up by fat tyres and dried into place. He crouched down, and checked his rifle. He listened carefully. At the limits of his hearing he could hear the clatter of a low-flying helicopter, drifting in and out as the sound echoed around the valley.
He ran through the mud to the first tent. He burst in, and found nothing but empty camp beds. On a hunch, he rummaged through a couple of the packs and came up with a small pair of binoculars. He slung the cord around his neck, and left the way he had come.
There was no one in the camp. The mess tent still had half-eaten food on the abandoned plates. A big Burco boiler rumbled, full of steam.
Thacker followed the track down to where the main drive started. He hid behind the decontamination tents. The roar of rotor blades was suddenly very loud, and a black shape flashed overhead. The downdraft shook the canvas hard, and Thacker took the opportunity to call Henbury.
‘Thacker. In the camp. Still no one. Helicopter is checking. Over and out.’
He watched the helicopter hug the ground into the valley, so low he all but lost sight of it. Then he made a low, crouching run to the first of the dead trees that lined the drive. He crossed the drive, and ducked out of sight again. He could see people now, assembled in a crowd in front of the smouldering pile of rubble that had been Henbury Hall.
He held the binoculars up and tried to work out what they were doing.
There were a mix of people: uniformed soldiers and policemen, white-coveralled technicians, and a good number of civilians. They were all either on their knees or prostrate on the ground in front of a bizarre star-shaped statue.
The helicopter crew clearly couldn’t understand it either, because having made one high speed pass, they turned for another go.
Thacker looked again at the statue. On closer inspection, it was vaguely humanoid. Ludicrously long legs splayed, planted on the ground, and arms raised up high. The neck was stretched to impossible lengths, with a tiny head balanced on top, and they were all joined by a torso that struggled to keep the limbs under control.
The statue was moving. The statue was Jack. And the people in front of him were paying him homage, abasing themselves and surrendering their wills to his.
The thought of it made him nauseous. As he scanned the crowd, he saw that every so often, there was a twisted, blackened corpse, still part of the congregation of the damned, but no longer taking any part in the infernal worship.
The helicopter hovered overhead, turning slowly, and Jack turned his baleful gaze upwards. He shifted his stance, ponderously moving one leg, then the other, and he reached up high. The aircraft was out of reach by a good fifty feet, but that didn’t seem to matter to Jack.
The fuselage stretched. The tone of the air chopped by the rotors deepened and boomed, and the blades themselves shattered. The helicopter melted in strands of metal and plastic and flesh, dribbling and freezing solid, snapping and clattering to the ground.
In seconds, it was over, and Thacker forced himself to blink. The crowd moaned and cried and wept at the power of this spindly-limbed monstrosity.
‘You doubted Me,’ said Jack. Not using words, though. The phrase formed complete inside Thacker’s head, and made his nose bleed. He choked down his rising gorge.
The people cried and wept more fiercely, desperate. There were shouts of ‘No!’ and ‘Never!’
‘Some of you wanted Me to fail.’
There was screaming, and Thacker had to clamp his hand over his mouth to stop himself crying out. The pain was sudden and startling.
Jack reached down and picked up a shrieking man by the neck, as easily as he would pluck a rabbit from a hutch. The man exploded, sending out a shower of blood and offal as an anointing. Jack threw the head aside, and assumed his original star-splayed stance.
‘Worship Me.’
Thacker hit his head against the dead trunk of the tree, once, twice, three times. He now had blood seeping from a gash on his temple and flowing into his eye, but the new pain worked against the old, and freed him from the strange, compelling grip.
He wiped away the blood with his sleeve, tossed the binoculars to one side, and raised his rifle. He leaned over the weapon, sighting carefully, stilling his trembling hands with deep draughts of air.
Where to aim for? The head, of course, but the target was tiny. He’d trained with a rifle, kept all his certificates up to date, but he wasn’t the surest shot in the army. The torso, then. The hydrostatic shockwave would be enough to dismember Jack, if he got enough bullets into him.
He settled down, adjusted his sights for range, and selected bursts of three. It was the first time he’d ever attempted deicide.