'We've drafted men in from every division within fifty miles, Mr Milton,' said the bland face with the understanding eyes. 'The hills are being scoured. We'll have it, whatever it is.'
'It took my child, you understand me? It killed him, in front of me-'
They didn't seem to appreciate the horror of it all.
'We're doing what we can.'
'It's not enough. This thing ... it's not human.'
Ivanhoe, with the understanding eyes, knew bloody well how unhuman it was.
There's people coming from the Ministry of Defence: we can't do much more 'til they've had a look at the evidence,' he said. Then added, as a sop: 'It's all public money sir.'
'You fucking idiot! What does it matter what it costs to kill it? It's not human. It's out of Hell.'
Ivanhoe's look lost compassion.
'If it came out of Hell, sir,' he said, 'I don't think it would have found the Reverend Coot such easy pickings.'
Coot: that was his man. Why hadn't he thought of that before? Coot. Ron had never been much of a man of God. But he was
prepared to be open-minded, and now that he'd seen the opposition, or one of its troops, he was ready to reform his opinions. He'd believe anything, anything at all, if it gave him a weapon against the Devil. He must get to Coot.
'What about your wife?' the officer called after him. Maggie was sitting in one of the side-offices, dumb with sedation, Debbie asleep beside her. There was nothing he could do for them. They were as safe here as anywhere. He must get to Coot, before he died.
He'd know, whatever Reverends know; and he'd understand the pain better than these monkeys. Dead sons were the crux of the Church after all.
As he got into the car it seemed for a moment he smelt his son: the boy who would have carried his name (Ian Ronald Milton he'd been christened), the boy who was his sperm made flesh, who he'd had circumcised like himself. The quiet child who'd looked out of the car at him with such resignation in his eyes. This time the tears didn't begin. This time there was just an anger that was almost wonderful.
It was half past eleven at night. Rawhead Rex lay under the moon in one of the harvested fields to the south-west of the Nicholson Farm. The stubble was darkening now, and there was a tantalising smell of rotting vegetable matter off the earth. Beside him lay his dinner, Ian Ronald Milton, face up on the field, his midriff torn open. Occasionally the beast would lean up on one elbow and paddle its fingers in the cooling soup of the boy-child's body, fishing for a delicacy.
Here, under the full moon, bathing in silver, stretching his limbs and eating the flesh of human kind, he felt irresistible. His fingers drew a kidney off the plate beside him and he swallowed it whole.
Sweet.
Coot was awake, despite the sedation. He knew he was dying, and the time was too precious to doze through. He didn't know the name of the face that was interrogating him in the yellow gloom of his room, but the voice was so politely insistent he had to listen, even though it interrupted his peace-making with God. Besides, they had questions in common: and they all circled, those questions, on the beast that had reduced him to this pulp.
'It took my son,' the man said. 'What do you know about the thing? Please tell me. I'll believe whatever you tell me - ' Now there was desperation - 'Just explain - '
Time and again, as he'd lain on that hot pillow, confused thoughts had raced through Coot's mind. Declan's baptism; the embrace of the beast; the altar; his hair rising and his flesh too. Maybe there was something he could tell the father at his bedside.
'... in the church ...'
Ron leaned closer to Coot; he smelt of earth already.
'... the altar ... it's afraid ... the altar ...' 'You mean the cross? It's afraid of the cross?'
'No...not-'
'Not-'
The body creaked once, and stopped. Ron watched death come over the face: the saliva dry on Coot's lips, the iris of his remaining eye contract. He watched a long while before he rang for the nurse, then quietly made his escape.
There was somebody in the Church. The door, which had been padlocked by the police, was ajar, the lock smashed. Ron pushed it open a few inches and slid inside. There were no lights on in the Church, the only illumination was a bonfire on the altar steps. It was being tended by a young man Ron had seen on and off in the village. He looked up from his fire-watching, but kept feeding the flames the guts of books.
'What can I do for you?' he asked, without interest.
'I came to - ' Ron hesitated. What to tell this man: the truth? No, there was something wrong here.
'I asked you a frigging question,' said the man. 'What do you want?'
As he walked down the aisle towards the fire Ron began to see the questioner in more detail. There were stains, like mud, on his clothes, and his eyes had sunk in their orbits as if his brain had sucked them in.
'You've got no right to be in here - '
'I thought anyone could come into a church,' said Ron, staring at the burning pages as they blackened.
'Not tonight. You get the fuck out of here.' Ron kept walking towards the altar.
'You get the fuck out, I said!'
The face in front of Ron was alive with leers and grimaces: there was lunacy in it.
'I came to see the altar; I'll go when I've seen it, and not before.'
'You've been talking to Coot. That it?'
'Coot?'
'What did the old wanker tell you? It's all a lie, whatever it was; he never told the truth in his frigging life, you know that? You take it from he. He used to get up there - ' he threw a prayer-book at the pulpit' - and tell fucking lies!'
'I want to see the altar for myself. We'll see if he was telling lies-'
'No you won't!'
The man threw another handful of books on to the fire and stepped down to block Ron's path. He smelt not of mud but of shit. Without warning, he pounced. His hands seized Ron's neck, and the two of them toppled over. Declan's fingers reaching to gouge at Ron's eyes: his teeth snapping at his nose.
Ron was surprised at the weakness of his own arms; why hadn't he played squash the way Maggie had suggested, why were his muscles so ineffectual? If he wasn't careful this man was going to kill him.
Suddenly a light, so bright it could have been a midnight dawn, splashed through the west window. A cloud of screams followed close on it. Firelight, dwarfing the bonfire on the altar steps, dyed the air. The stained glass danced.
Declan forgot his victim for an instant, and Ron rallied. He pushed the man's chin back, and got a knee under his torso, then he kicked hard. The enemy went reeling, and Ron was up and after him, a fistful of hair securing the target while the ball of his other hand hammered at the lunatic's face 'til it broke. It wasn't enough to see the bastard's nose bleed, or to hear the cartilage mashed; Ron kept beating and beating until his fist bled. Only then did he let Declan drop.
Outside, Zeal was ablaze.
Rawhead had made fires before, many fires. But petrol was a new weapon, and he was still getting the hang of it. It didn't take him long to learn. The trick was to wound the wheeled boxes, that was easy. Open their flanks and out their blood would pour, blood that made his head ache. The boxes were easy prey, lined up on the pavement like bullocks to be slaughtered. He went amongst them demented with death, splashing their blood down the High Street and igniting it. Streams of liquid fire poured into gardens, over thresholds. Thatches caught; wood-beamed cottages went up. In minutes Zeal was burning from end to end.
In St Peter's, Ron dragged the filthied cloth off the altar, trying to block out all thoughts of Debbie and Margaret. The police would move them to a place of safety, for certain. The issue at hand must take precedence.
Beneath the cloth was a large box, its front panel roughly carved. He took no notice of the design; there were more urgent matters to attend to. Outside, the beast was loose. He could hear its triumphant roars, and he felt eager, yes eager, to go to it. To kill it or be killed. But first, the box. It 'contained power, no doubt about that; a power that was even now raising the hairs on his head, that was working at has cock, giving him an aching hard-on. His flesh seemed to seethe with it, it elated him like love. Hungry, he put his hands on the box, and a shock that seemed to cook his joints ran up both his arms. He fell back, and for a moment he wondered if he was going to remain conscious, the pain was so bad, but it subsided, in moments. He cast around for a tool, something to get him into the box without laying flesh toil.