‘I think it’s Babylonian. I found it in the Ankhani’s cathedral. I destroyed the machine, by the way.’
‘I’m grateful.’
‘I can almost see.’ He could even make out the pattern on the blood-spattered curtain. ‘Help me up.’
‘I can’t lift you.’
‘Of course you can’t.’ Thacker sat up, and squinted into the blur that was all that was left of his eyesight. ‘The spear. Where’s the spear?’
It clanked along the ground, and was put into his hands. He climbed to his feet, and it seemed further than he remembered it. He was unsteady, wavering.
‘Steady, Major.’
‘What’s happened to me? Why can’t I see properly?’
‘I think you’ve damaged your brain, broken the skull at the front. Pressure inside is pushing against your optic nerve. There were men like you in the field hospital, back in Belgium.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘Died of fever. We almost all did. Has eighty years brought anything to help?’
‘If I got to a hospital, the doctors could certainly save me, and probably my sight.’ Thacker blinked hard. ‘We have Jack to deal with. If he can heal himself, all this was useless.’
Henbury used Thacker to climb up and lean against. ‘My foot’s cut to ribbons. I can’t go any further.’
‘You have to.’
‘None of this was my fault.’
‘I know. We’re just the ones who have to clear it up.’
‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’ Henbury sat down again. ‘Straight on. Down the road. Jack’s in the scrub at the far end. I’m sorry, Major, I’m sorry.’
Thacker found himself walking. Shadowy figures moved aside for him as he approached, and one man called out to him.
‘What are we supposed to do now?’
‘Do? I think you’ve probably done enough for one day. Go home.’
‘We haven’t got homes any more.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘But what are we going to do? When will we get help?’
‘I saw what you did. Never would be too soon.’
‘I didn’t have a choice.’
‘You did it because deep down in your foetid little soul, that’s how you always wanted to behave. Jack just let you be your true self. I don’t care what happens to you. Not now.’ He walked on, the crowd thinned, and was eventually behind him.
Before, he could sense where Jack was. Perhaps he could do it again. He closed his eyes, concentrated, and found him, weakly, an incoherent mass of pain and rage. With his sight failing him, he instead followed his preternatural instinct.
The track that led into the scrub was strewn with rubbish. It tripped and snagged at Thacker’s feet. There were old plastic sacks, broken windows still in their frames, pallets and piles of building rubble. Cars, without seats, wheels, paint, hunkered down amongst the riotous weeds. Newspapers, discarded articles of clothing, polystyrene fast-food containers and used condoms littered the brambles and nettles. Trees had seeded freely for fifty years.
Somewhere in that dense, overgrown thicket was Jack Henbury, licking his wounds.
Thacker couldn’t see. He saw only a mess of shifting green and brown and black, shadows and light, playing indistinctly in his mind. But when he ignored what he saw and believed what he felt, it was like an arrow, pointing him to his target. He pulled down his visor, and was swallowed up in a heady mix of certainty and confusion. He advanced through the tree line, and started to hunt.
There was no sure footing, no silent approach, but he knew each step he took brought him closer to Jack. In a clearing, in the very centre of the tangled wood, he found him.
He had surrounded himself with a vortex of hissing leaves and soil. It obscured his outline, and made it impossible for Thacker to see him at all. He edged through, feeling the clatter of stones and twigs against his armour, then quiet again.
Jack twisted and contorted at the focus of the tornado. He held his stomach with one hand, and his forehead with the other. He groaned and trembled, sighed and gasped.
‘Time to finish this, Jack,’ said Thacker, ‘Time to put you out of your misery.’ He raised his spear and jabbed at empty air.
‘No,’ hissed Jack. ‘I am your god. It will never be over.’
The roar of spinning air deepened in tone, and trees started to creak. Whole branches were torn off, white wood flashing inside the dark bark.
Thacker changed tactics. He swung the spear blade from side to side, shuffling forward, until he hit soft skin and hard bone.
The tornado exploded outwards, lacerating the scrubland with sharp missiles. None of them were directed at Thacker. He swung again, and Jack, who had been standing over him, crashed backwards through the canopy of leaves.
‘Do not strike Me. I am immortal.’
‘We’ll see about that.’ He blundered on, kicking out with his metal-shod feet, waiting for a cry of indignation, then stabbing down with his spear. He found Jack’s body, and brought the point down. There was no titanic struggle. The edges of the blade cut through divine tissue and holy viscera, and into the neglected earth of England below.
‘No. I cannot die. I can not die. They promised Me.’
‘They lied,’ said a different voice. ‘They always did.’
‘Who’s there?’
‘Adams. I’ll finish this, Major.’
Thacker could dimly perceive someone standing by Jack’s head, his arm outstretched and pointing down. There had to be a gun in his hand.
‘He’s still dangerous, Adams. Watch out.’
‘Not anymore. Are you, Jack? I can feel you worming around in my head, trying to control me, but you haven’t got the strength. Have you, Jack? Where’s your power? Where are your followers? I’m not one, and certainly not the Major. All alone again, aren’t you? When you came to Henbury Hall, you brought nothing but misery with you. You betrayed Master Robert. You seduced Miss Emily. You lied to all of us, but you never supposed for one moment that what you were doing was wrong.’
He cocked his weapon. ‘This is where the reckoning is, Jack. The Ankhani used you. You could no more control them than a dog can its owners. Poor, weak, stupid Jack Henbury dies alone and hated, his head full of dreams of empires and riches.’
Thacker screamed out, ‘For God’s sake, finish him off!’
Adams pushed the barrel of the gun between Jack’s terrified eyes and pulled the trigger. And again. And again.
Each time, the body jerked.
The sense of Jack’s presence that Thacker held in his head dissipated like a summer cloud. There was nothing in its place.
‘Is he dead?’ he called.
‘There’s nothing left of the top of his skull, if that’s what you’re asking. If he comes back from that, then yes, I’ll bow to him.’
‘Don’t joke, Adams.’
‘Poor taste, I know. Are you all right, Major?’
Thacker had sunk to his knees, only keeping himself upright with the impaling spear.
‘Major?’
There was a crashing in the undergrowth around him, and he found himself surrounded by short, sallow figures. Voices foreign to him chattered excitedly, and an English tongue cut through them all.
‘Careful with him, boys, careful. He’s a hero.’
He was lifted up and turned. Strong shoulders supported him, and carried him away. Thacker’s head rolled side to side with the motion of his bearers. He watched the smudges of light and dark dancing above him blend together, into one final shade of grey.
Thacker hadn’t realised he had armed guards stationed outside his hospital door until Robert Henbury mentioned it.
‘Big buggers they are, too. Black balaclavas over their heads, that black armour your police chappies wear.’
‘They’re your police too,’ mumured Thacker. He looked at all the little lights and lines that told him that he was still alive. He put his hands down by his side to adjust his position◦– bloody pressure sores◦– and felt the tug of the drip tubes in his arms. ‘It’s good to see you.’