climbed stiffly from the back of the truck after the long journey was the cry of a woman.
He was naturally conditioned to respond to signs of distress and cries of pain but there was something in the sound that he recognized. His senses snapped to attention and he reacted quickly, moving along the side of the truck, heading to the source. The sound had come from a screened-off area by the water’s edge, with light coming from behind the screens.
He pushed past a staked sheet of canvas and squinted against the sudden brightness of the stand lights.
Liv was lying on a makeshift bed in the centre of a group of people. She looked tired and drawn but was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She seemed to glow in the lights. A young girl was at her feet holding a newborn baby that squirmed and cried. She wrapped it in a towel and handed it to Liv.
A baby – Liv’s baby.
Shepherd saw the man get down from the truck – and head straight for the canvas screens. Hevva was in there, he couldn’t see what was happening, he was too far away. The man disappeared behind the screens and Shepherd broke into a run, his feet slipping in the soft earth of the shore.
Over by the truck someone else started to move with the same sense of purpose the first man had displayed. He was wearing a bulky jacket, like a soldier’s tunic, and there was something about it and the stiff way he walked that set alarms ringing in Shepherd’s head. The man reached the screens and turned briefly before disappearing behind them, the light from the truck’s headlights catching his face. Shepherd stared. Shocked.
It was the Hubble control technician from Goddard. It was Merriweather.
112
Liv saw Gabriel appear at the edge of the light and walk towards her. She thought it must be some kind of hallucination brought on by hormones or pheromones or endorphins or any combination of the three.
She felt the weight of the baby as it was placed on her chest and she looked down at it – this tiny, perfect being. She had never really believed in love at first sight but in that first moment she saw her baby she loved it more than she had ever loved anything in her life. She would die for it right now if she had to.
She looked back up, expecting the vision of Gabriel to have gone but he was still there, solid and real. He too had tears in his eyes and he was looking down at her and the baby.
Liv smiled and wept all at once, holding the baby’s velvety head close to her mouth. ‘It’s your daddy,’ she whispered. ‘He came back.’
Then she saw movement, directly behind Gabriel.
Merriweather stepped into the blaze of light and beheld the bizarre nativity: the woman on the bed, holding the false prophet in her arms – the un-doer of everything, the Antichrist.
He stepped forward, unbuttoning his tunic and letting it fall to the floor, no longer Merriweather, now revealed as his true self – the Novus Sancti. He opened his arms to form the cross with his body, revealing the ritualized cuts in his flesh, and the packs of explosives strapped to his chest. In one hand he held a gun, in the other, a wire connected to the explosives.
Now he could complete his transformation and become the instrument of mankind’s delivery, the first martyr of the reborn church, ending this Satanic rebellion before it had even begun.
Gabriel saw the fear in Liv’s eyes and turned to see what had put it there.
He saw the bomb, the outstretched arms, the ritual cuts of a Sanctus.
His instinct was to just hurl himself forward and knock him away from Liv and the baby. But the Sanctus was too far back. Gabriel would be shot before he covered the distance. But he was also too far away from Liv and the baby and he could see by the look in his eyes that they were his target. He would move closer, to try and close the gap between himself and everyone else to make sure the bomb blast was effective. That was when Gabriel would do it.
Then someone stepped into view, and the Sanctus reacted, spinning round to point the gun at the newcomer. The gunshot was like thunder. The man fell back, thrown by the impact of the bullet. Gabriel threw himself at the Sanctus, hitting him