The Beacon (Earth Haven Book 2) Read online

  The

  Beacon

  Earth Haven:

  Book Two

  Sam Kates

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Sam Kates. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America. First edition, January 2015.

  ISBN for Kindle version: 978-1-62927-018-0

  Smithcraft Press

  473 Lisa Road NE

  Palm Bay FL 32907

  www.SmithcraftPress.com

  To Mum and Dad for everything,

  including all the good advice

  and for not being too disapproving

  when I failed to heed it.

  Contents

  Part 1: The Earth is Hushed in Silence

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part 2: Pilgrim through This Barren Land

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part 3: He Who Would Valiant Be

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  About the Author

  Part 1:

  The Earth is Hushed

  in Silence

  Chapter One

  A dog stepped from behind the log-jam of abandoned vehicles. Its fur bristled and its lips drew back to reveal pointed teeth the colour of parchment. A low growl, like an idling two-stroke engine, sounded in its throat. It began to advance.

  The boy shuffling down the road noticed the dog and stopped in his tracks. The vague, unfocused expression on the boy’s face grew a little sharper. His brow drew into a frown and he closed his mouth. A line of spittle ran down his chin and onto a stinking hooded jacket that might once have been red. The frown deepened as he tried to think past the fog that shrouded his mind. He shook his head and a memory or an instinct—little more than a snippet—emerged.

  Snarling dog: danger.

  The dog wasn’t large, but wiry, terrier-like. Short brown fur that looked coarse to the touch, like coconut matting. Its stomach almost brushed the ground as it moved forward in a crouch. Sharp teeth glistened with saliva. Intent eyes. Feral. It was less than ten yards from the boy and closing.

  Fear caused adrenaline to flood the boy’s system, driving away a little more of the fog. He tore his gaze from the dog and glanced quickly to each side. To his left lay pavement, garden walls and terraced houses. To his right a line of cars, bumper to bumper. The cars were closer.

  He looked back at the dog. It was on him. As it leapt, he darted to his right.

  The dog twisted in mid-air to follow the boy’s movement and managed to snag his jacket. Its teeth clenched in the filthy cloth and it hung on grimly, its body swinging round to thump into the boy’s legs.

  The boy felt the dog’s claws scrabbling at his thighs and shrieked. He clambered onto the bonnet of the nearest car; his jacket tore. The dog fell back to the ground. It was immediately onto its feet, shaking its head to dislodge the strip of cloth from its jaws. It leapt again and gained the bonnet, claws scratching the surface as it strove for purchase.

  The boy leaned back against the car’s windscreen, trying desperately to find a grip for his hands. He lifted his left leg and swung it in an arc, nearly falling off the car in the process. His foot connected with the dog’s rump, not with sufficient force to hurt the animal, but enough to ensure its forward momentum took it off the bonnet and to the ground the other side. Without waiting to see what the dog would do next, the boy turned and scrambled onto the roof of the car. He rose unsteadily to his feet.

  The dog jumped at the side of the car, barking in high-pitched yelps. From somewhere behind the boy came an answering bark, much gruffer and deeper. Booming.

  The boy’s fear rose a notch or two. At the same time, whatever kept him in this area, this suburb of London—yes, London, he realised, he was in London—whatever kept him working like a chain-ganger each day, carrying and clearing and burning until his arms and legs and back also burned, until he was fit for nothing except to retire to his stinking bed and dream of shifting, terrible shapes wreathed in darkness, whatever enslaved him to this place and bound him to perform this ceaseless work, lifted. Though fog still clouded his mind like a peasouper for which this city had once been notorious, the compulsion that shackled him to remain had been broken.

  He took a deep breath, turned and slid back down the windscreen to the bonnet of the car. The dog’s yelps grew frantic and the booming bark answered from much nearer. Without pausing to wait for the dog to leap back onto the bonnet or for his larger-sounding friend to appear, the boy stepped onto the boot of the next car and clambered to the roof. He ran and scrambled and slithered forward to the next car and the next until he reached jumbled wreckage that completely blocked this side of the road. The side which the dog was on.

  He crawled over the roof of a car that had slewed across the road and imbedded itself in a garden wall, then sat on the roof so he could slide down to the ground. As he pushed off with his hands, the boy’s trousers caught on a jagged piece of metal and he ripped them free, tearing a gouge in his right calf. He drew in a sharp breath and the dog’s yelps grew even more frenzied as if it could smell blood.

  The boy slipped to the ground and heard a thud as the dog threw itself at the other side of the car. The deeper bark sounded again, so close that if he turned around and peered over the wreckage, the boy would be able to see its owner.

  He didn’t look. Instead, limping slightly, he ran.

  * * * * *

  The door to the hotel suite opened and two people emerged into the plush corridor. It was difficult to tell beneath the thick outdoor coat he wore, but the man gave the impression of muscularity and carried himself with an easy grace. His companion came almost to his shoulder. She, too, wore an outdoor coat and was busy tying its belt around her ample waist. As they walked down the corridor towards the staircase, she extracted a woollen hat from her coat pocket and pulled it over her dark curls.

  The man nodded. “You’ll need that out there. It’s a cold one.” He spoke in a cultured, east-coast American accent.

  “I think I’ll cope, Jason,” the woman said. Her accent was also American, though with a hint of southern drawl. “After all, you don’t get to spend every Christmas in New York City and not know how to stand the cold. Still, I miss the Florida sun.” She sighed wistfully.

  “Me, too. Will you return to Florida after the Great Coming, Milandra?”

  “Yes. I think so.” Maybe to grow old she added, but only to herself.

  They descended the stairs—the lifts had been disabled to save power—and made their way through the hotel lobby to the exit. The main doors were operational now that the hotel had been wired up to a generator and opened with a swish, letting in a gust of icy air. Milandra gasped and her cheeks began to tingle. It felt good.

  Jason Grant led the way. Milandra followed in her peculiar rolling gait. T
hey stepped cautiously for the pavements glistened in the pale sunlight, the temperature not climbing high enough to melt their frosty coating.

  Although most of the British Isles, and much of London, lay empty and silent, inhabited only by formerly domesticated animals and vermin that feasted on rotting corpses, this part of London, centred on the airport and spreading outwards in a radius of two or three miles, was a relative hive of activity. Buildings had been emptied of the dead and contaminated matter like sopping mattresses and stained carpets. Bodies and bedding were being incinerated in open parkland to the northwest that had become known as the Burning Fields. If the wind was in the right or, more accurately, wrong direction, the acrid smell could be detected faintly in the immediate surroundings of the airport.

  The roads here had been cleared of abandoned vehicles, allowing uninterrupted access for delivery of food and drink foraged from houses, hotels and warehouses. Other goods were being collected, such as diesel and petrol to power the generators and fleet of vehicles, paraffin and lighter fluid for use in the Burning Fields, medical supplies for treating injured drones, and fire extinguishers. If electrical fires did break out when the Grid serving the city was turned back on, they wanted to be prepared.

  The occasional car and van passed them, the drivers tooting and waving. Grant ignored them, but Milandra waved back, enjoying being in the fresh air and exercising her legs. She was almost disappointed when Grant turned off the road into a fenced compound.

  “This was a park and ride for airport passengers,” he said. “Once we cleared the automobiles out, it gave us plenty of room.”

  They walked through the open gates and past the low building that had served as both security entrance and site office. As the vast space behind the building came into view, Milandra gave a soft whistle.

  “You have been busy,” she murmured.

  Lined up in ranks, like soldiers awaiting inspection, were more than fifty large vehicles. Double-decker buses, their red bodies glinting softly in the sunlight as though freshly buffed. An assortment of single-deckers, some white, some blue, some black. Two lumbering yellow bulldozers, their buckets raised in salute. Two squat municipal vehicles with chutes leading from their tanker-like interiors almost to the ground. A low flatbed truck standing firm under the weight of the caterpillar-tracked crane sitting on its back.

  Grant began to list the vehicles, ticking them off on his fingers. “Thirty-two genuine London buses. There’s plenty more if we need them, but these are in the best working condition. Almost brand new, some of them. Twenty assorted single-deckers; they call them ‘coaches’ over here. Again, there’s more if we need them. Ditto condition. Two bulldozers to ensure the way is clear. One crane. And two salt trucks. The Brits call them ‘gritters’. Hadn’t thought about getting some of those, but they were just standing about, already full of rock salt.” He shrugged. “Might as well put them to use.”

  “Those bulldozers and the truck with the crane, they’ll be slow,” said Milandra.

  “Yup,” said Grant. “That’s why we’re sending them out first thing in the morning. There are jerry cans of diesel on the truck so they can refuel as needed. The salt trucks will leave the evening before the buses and coaches. If there’s a heavy overnight frost or even light snow, the buses shouldn’t be held up.”

  Milandra heard a noise behind her and turned to see the door to the office building open and a man emerge. He walked towards them, a portly fellow with a ruddy complexion.

  “Thought I ’eard voices,” he said. He nodded at Grant. “Jason.” He smiled at Milandra.

  “This is Rodney Wilson,” said Grant to Milandra.

  “Rod will do,” said Wilson. “And you’re Milandra. Never ’ad the pleasure, so to speak, but I recognise you from the Commune.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Rod,” said Milandra. “So you’re the gentleman who knew where to get these splendid double-deckers?”

  Wilson nodded, his smile growing wider. Milandra found herself taking an instant liking to the man. “Worked for London Transport for over fifty years, man and . . . man. Course, ’ad to move about a bit and change identities to stop ’em getting suspicious. But I’ve driven them buses for years. Could drive ’em in me sleep.”

  “How long?” asked Milandra. “To train other drivers?”

  “Well, the ’ow is the easy part, ain’t it?” said Wilson. “That’ll take seconds. But I can’t implant practical experience. That can only be acquired manually. They’ll need to get a feel for ’ow they ’andle. We don’t want anybody toppling one on an icy bend, do we? Hmm, let’s see. . . .” His brow beetled in thought. “Seven days. Five if you’re in an ’urry.”

  Milandra considered for a moment. “Make it five,” she said. She turned to Grant. “Let’s get the Deputies together. We need to decide how many we’re going to send.”

  * * * * *

  The girl raised a hand and gingerly explored her forehead. Her hair, normally silky and fine, felt thick and matted. It crackled a little under her fingers, reminding her of the crust that kept forming on her eyelids during the fever. The skin beneath her hair was sore to the touch, causing her to wince, and her fingers could make out a ridge and indentation that hadn’t been there before.

  Before.

  Before what? She could remember sitting on the seafront in Looe, huddled against the winter wind, watching the waves and gulls. Then something had happened, something that gave her a purpose, inexplicable though it might have been. Until that moment, she had been adrift, doing nothing but forage, eat and sleep. Her thoughts had been dark; terror her only friend, terror that she was the only one left alive.

  It hit her like a hammer blow and she’d cried out, startling a gull that had been regarding her with a yellow, alien eye. A sensation of someone—some thing—invading her mind, psychic tentacles encircling, grasping, squeezing. . . .

  It did not last long, probably only moments, too quick for her to attempt to resist, though she sensed with a teenager’s frank appraisal that resistance would have been futile. The presence withdrew, leaving behind a notion. No, stronger than that: a compulsion.

  She had delayed only to throw together a small backpack with some food and water. She had returned home only to fetch her bike from the garage. She did not enter the house. Her parents would still be lying on their bed where she had left them, hands entwined, heads tilted towards each other. Her brother would be beneath his duvet that she had drawn up to cover his rapidly-cooling brow. She had fled the house after her father, the last to go, had taken his final wheezing breath. Coughing and spluttering, she sought refuge in a nearby hotel. Finding an unoccupied room with an en-suite bathroom, she had locked the door, retired to bed and ridden out her own storm.

  Days—weeks?—later, when she returned for her bike, she could not bear to go into the house. She had been in many others that contained corpses, and would never become accustomed to that sweet stench. She did not want to associate it with her own family.

  Mounting the bike, she pedalled away, heading northeast out of Cornwall, and not once glanced back.

  It took her five days to reach the outskirts of London. Still weak from what she could only assume was a brush with the Millennium Bug, she tired easily and stopped frequently to rest. If the compulsion to press on hadn’t been so strong, she would have holed up for a few days and regained her strength. As it was, after only a few hours’ rest each time, it drove her back to the saddle. Any unease that she might have felt about the compulsion and where it had come from was itself subsumed into the imperative to reach London and Hillingdon Hospital.

  On the fifth evening, close to exhaustion and her destination, it started to snow. Half-blinded by gritty flakes, she ducked off the main road into what she imagined would be a leafy suburb in summertime, but was now a darkening maze of foreboding brick houses.

  The third door that she tried had been stiff but opened under her shove to a musty, unlived-in smell, though blessedly free of the saccharine
odour of death. Wheeling the bike into the hallway, she closed the door behind her.

  And that is where her memory of before ended.

  * * * * *

  Less than twenty miles from John o’Groats (often regarded, wrongly, as the most northerly tip of mainland Britain), lies the estuary town of Wick. Originally a Viking settlement, the town held a population of around eight thousand people before the Millennium Bug wiped out most of them. The remaining few headed south to London, summoned in a peremptory fashion that they were powerless to ignore.

  Now the town played temporary home to just four people, and only two of them were human in the generally accepted sense. This bitter January afternoon found these two sat before a crackling log fire in a waterfront hotel.

  Ceri Lewis clenched her hands together and extended her arms until her knuckles cracked. She sighed.

  “Warming up nicely,” she said.

  Tom Evans nodded. “That wind outside is biting,” he said. “If it’s like that here, what does he think it will be like in the middle of the North Sea?”

  “Hmm. He does seem set on leaving as soon as he’s identified a suitable boat.”

  “Well, I’m no sailor. And you said you hate the water. . . .”

  “I can swim a little, but I hate going out of my depth. The thought of crossing an entire sea in anything smaller than a cruise liner gives me the screaming hab-dabs.” She took out a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply.

  “Whatever he finds, it won’t be a cruise liner, that’s for sure. It’ll have to be small enough to operate on his own, unless she knows how to sail. Otherwise, it’ll have to be something with a reliable engine and enough fuel to reach Denmark or whatever’s the closest.”

  “He mentioned Norway.”

  Tom grunted. “I could do with a drink. Fancy one?”

  “Vodka, please. Orange or tonic if you can find any.”

  Tom stood and walked to the bar. Ceri could hear glass clinking and the fizz of bottle tops being removed. She gazed at the flames, momentarily lost in her own dark thoughts.