2041 Sanctuary (Genesis) (52 page)

‘Well, we won’t have to worry about controls in South Africa,’ Jason said, ‘that’s for certain. And we know the rest of Africa can be navigated below the radar if need be, and half of Asia will be just as slack.’ He reached up and stretched. ‘I’ll take the Deep Reach helmets with us tomorrow, see what I can get for them.’

‘No parchments though,’ Sarah said, ‘or the Mayan tablet; they’re priceless.’

He nodded.

‘And I’ll go on the net,’ Trish said, ‘see what’s what.’

Jason yawned. ‘I still can’t believe they don’t have it out here. Although at least they have electricity, that’s something, I suppose.’

‘You wanted remote,’ Trish said. ‘And besides, they used to have it; one of the elders told me when the dust cloud hit, a gang of outsiders stole all the infrastructure – masts, cables, the lot.’

‘I suppose the satellites will start working again soon,’ Jason said. ‘Better get hold of a cheap sat-phone if we can, might come in handy.’

‘I’m just glad it’s all coming to an end,’ Trish said. ‘The impact winter, I mean. I’ve had enough excitement to last me a lifetime and from what the news has been saying, it was getting pretty scary up here, and that was without all the wars.’

Jason murmured his agreement. ‘Civilisation is more fragile than we think.’

Sarah remained silent, immersed in a swirl of thoughts. Even talking about what was to come stirred up powerful emotions. And yet the same questions remained, and along with them, the same problems she’d faced before she’d left London all that time ago. It seemed like a lifetime, but when she thought about it was actually less than two years since she’d embarked on her journey into the unknown.
Would I have swapped it all for a life with Mark, a life of veiled threats and drunken abuse?
She would like to think not, but then that meant accepting the rest as preferable, which was hard to take. She wiped her eye with the back of her hand as it teared up.

Jason, perhaps sensing her melancholy, put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. ‘Don’t worry, Sazza,’ he said, ‘we’ll look after you, ain’t that right, Trish?’

‘Of course we will.’

‘And you’ll never walk alone, you just have to keep hope in your heart,’ – he pointed into the distance at the final rays of light – ‘don’t be afraid of the dark, at the end of a storm is a golden sky.’

‘That’s really beautiful, Jas,’ Trish said and linked arms with Sarah.

The three friends gazed into the setting sun and Sarah felt her tension ease. ‘It sounds familiar, isn’t that a football song?’

Jason chuckled. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t recognise it, I think Rodgers and Hammerstein were the ones who actually wrote it. I like the words, they have power.’

‘And we still have each other,’ Trish said, ‘that’s what counts.’

The sun flared bright before it finally disappeared beneath the horizon and the inevitable darkness closed in.

Trish gave a shiver. ‘I’m going back in; it’s a bit nippy out here.’

Jason followed her inside before stopping to hold the curtain open. ‘You coming?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘I’ll be in in a minute.’

He gave her a look of understanding and let the curtain drop back to leave her standing alone on the balcony. A moment later a light inside the cabin switched on and Sarah returned her attention to the trees and the forbidding dark that lurked in their midst.

The sounds of the night intensified, the resonant chirp of crickets prevalent amongst the squawks and croaks of the various creatures that called the cloud forest home. Nearby, a local couple strolled along a wooded path, their low tones drifting up through the foliage, and Sarah wondered what it would be like to live in such a place your whole life.
I’ll never know
, she thought and looked up at the sky where the shimmer of the brightest stars shone through the dust cloud’s fading shroud. It was good to be back on the surface, and while her sense of safety had left her, she knew, at some point, it would return.

A shooting star arrowed across the sky, its blazing arc of light fading away like a forgotten soul. Sarah closed her eyes and made an impossible wish before opening them again to gaze out at the blackness.

Her mind echoed empty before another meteor streaked across heaven’s empyrean vault and she wondered,
What does the future hold for me now?
She did not know, but one thing was for certain, the life she’d known and the person she’d been would never return. With one last look at the wilderness, Sarah Morgan re-entered the cabin to rejoin her friends, the two people she could rely on more than any other in the world, who she cared for above any other and who epitomised one unifying and emotive word …
family
.

Chapter Eighty Four

The thump of a car door closing woke Sarah from a troubled dream. She opened her eyes to darkness and realised Trish and Jason were leaving for town. Full of anxiety, she knew she didn’t want to be left on her own, and she rushed to the window and heaved it open, only to see a set of red taillights vanishing down the un-surfaced road. The cry of ‘
wait!
’ died in her throat and she stood staring in forlorn disappointment at the emptiness without.

Closing the window, she returned to bed, pulled the sheets up around her and curled into the foetal position. Left all alone, she felt on the verge of tears.

She fought back the sensation, angry and disturbed by her weak resolve.
What’s wrong with me?
she thought. She tried to reclaim her hold on unconscious sleep, but her limbs felt cold and shaky and the idea she could be suffering from some kind of illness increased her concern.
You had a brain operation
, said a voice in her head,
you could have an infection, a bleed – or worse – both! I haven’t got a bleed
, she told herself,
don’t be crazy, I’ve been fine for weeks. But what if you needed drugs to suppress the chance of infection? If you haven’t been taking any, you’ve put yourself at risk
. And so the thoughts went on, round and round in her head until her stomach clenched into a knot and the taste of bile entered her mouth. Unable to get back to sleep, she lay in bed until the sun streamed into the room and her sheets clung to her with the damp cold of sweat.

As Sarah lay in a semi-catatonic state, the combined sensations of the itchy bandage round her chest and the clammy, dirt-ridden bedclothes overwhelmed her mind. Unable to stand it any longer, she flung off the covers and slid to the edge of the bed, where she sat staring at her hands, which continued to tremble and shake. Clenching her fists, she stood up and a wave of nausea made her head swim. She breathed deeply to expel the feeling and stumbled out of the room and into the dingy bathroom, with its blackout blind and closed shutters. In semi-darkness, she splashed cold water over her face and then cupped her hands to allow the cool liquid to pool before drinking it down with great, gasping gulps. She tucked the strands of hair that clung to her face back behind an ear and struggled out of her pyjama top, which she dropped to the floor in a sodden heap. Naked apart from her bandage, she moved back to the bedroom, feeling light-headed from the lack of sleep.
At least my hands have stopped shaking
, she thought, and she pulled on some clean knickers and an old T-shirt before sitting back down on the edge of the bed, which felt damp to the touch.

She ran her hands over her face and then bowed her head.
Is this my life now
, she wondered,
too scared to be on my own, a nervous wreck? What do I have to look forward to? The prospect of failing to find Mum’s killer and revealing the truth to a world too busy to care. And what difference would it make, anyway, if everyone knew about the Anakim? Will it change my life? No. Will it endanger Trish and Jason? Yes.

She knew they said otherwise, but could she really drag them back into the mire?
Or should the question be,
am I even capable? Can I function in the real world?
She held out her hand which trembled in response.
I don’t even know who I am anymore. Am I Sarah from London, daughter of a murdered mother? Am I Sarah the childless spinster, cursed to live alone? Or am I the archaeologist who’s ridiculed by her professional peers?
You’re Deep Reach
, said another voice,
don’t you remember?

She didn’t want to remember and her brief life in Sanctuary was fading fast; it was almost like it had never happened. But ever since she’d decided to leave London behind in search of Homo gigantis, she’d been either chasing secrets or fleeing from those who wanted to protect them.
Perhaps I should just give up and live a quiet life?
Go back to the soul-sucking boredom of my nine-to-five
. It sounded nice, it sounded safe.

A scratching noise at the bedroom window caught her attention. She got up and walked over to open it and the ginger cat jumped down to rub round her legs. Sarah watched it wander away to investigate beneath the bed and that’s when she remembered her drawings. She moved to the bed and peered underneath. The cat’s face popped out and kissed her face with its nose. She stroked its head before gently moving it aside as she reached out to locate the cardboard box she’d hidden away. Sliding it out, she carried it downstairs to the kitchen while the cat continued to worry around her.

She placed the box on the dining table, withdrew the sheets of white paper and spread them out. Sitting down on a creaky chair, she chose one of the pencils at random, selected a blank sheet and paused as her hand trembled. She reached out and held it with her other hand and waited until the disturbance eased. Able to continue, she drew a straight line, and then another, and soon she was immersed in the task, connecting series after series of bisecting lines. She didn’t know why she was doing what she was doing, but it felt right somehow.

She hadn’t told Trish and Jason about her midnight preoccupations, the time when she usually succumbed to the compulsion to put pencil to paper. She felt guilty for not telling them, but she knew they wouldn’t understand, or would ask questions she didn’t want to consider. She finished shading the drawing and held it out to assess. It wasn’t quite right. She moved it aside and started afresh on a new sheet.

Hours passed and Sarah didn’t realise how long she’d been lost in her artistic fervour until the lack of illumination halted her progress. Frustrated at the interruption, she got up and switched on the light. The ginger cat stared at her with green eyes from where it sprawled on the kitchen counter. Sarah gave it a quick stroke before deciding to take on some food and drink.

After she’d nourished herself she looked at the fruits of her labour and frowned. Representations of pentagrams and sphinxes lay strewn around the kitchen. Many of them included detailed symbols and depictions of various constellations she had no right to know, let alone draw. She picked one up from the floor to examine and wondered why, when she wanted to forget the past, was she unable to stop drawing it? But it wasn’t these pictures that concerned her most; the other element of her artwork was a single image, repeated over and over again: the symbol of a cross. But none of the slight variations she’d drawn matched what she’d been striving to get down on paper, and it was perhaps for this reason that she’d been unable to cease the task for so long.

She picked up some of the papers from the table and leafed through them. ‘None of them are right,’ she murmured, her anger rising. ‘None of them match!’ She threw them to the floor and then swept the rest from the table in a rage before she stopped and stood breathing hard in confused despair.

She sank down onto a chair and looked over at the cat, who remained unmoved by the commotion, the docile feline just stopping to gaze at her before resuming its never-ending chore of washing.

Sarah knew why she’d drawn the cross; how could she not when the constant reminder of her last hours in Sanctuary had left such an indelible imprint on her flesh?

She turned her palms up to stare at the marks she normally tried so hard to ignore. An image of the bloody Anakim altar appeared in her mind’s eye and she grimaced at the remembered trauma. Thrusting the thought away, she continued to inspect the scars and the white tissue at their centre. Around each one the skin had blackened into a circular patch, perhaps induced by the device that had also fused her shoes to her feet. She glanced down at the marks where the metal clasps from her climbing boots had conducted the heat to leave their brand on her skin. She’d hoped, after all this time, that the ugly welts would have healed better, but it seemed she was destined to endure a visual reminder of the past for as long as her body deemed fit.

The sound of distant thunder brought back more unwanted memories and soon the first raindrops fell, their strength and frequency increasing into a deluge. The rattle of the downpour filled the cabin’s interior and she wondered if Trish and Jason were okay.
If it continues like this
, she thought,
they might even turn back
.

Sarah looked around at the drawings scattered all over the floor, her madness on display for all to see. A sense of urgency gripped her. She bent down and scooped up a handful and stuffed them into the box before repeating the process again and again until the container bulged with the crumpled mass of paper.

She went to return upstairs, but something caught her eye. A single piece of paper had evaded her purge and hung in wedged suspension between the cooker and fridge. She stooped down and pulled it out. The image of the cross was bent in half and she flattened it out to see a single crease remained through its centre. Another image seared into her mind. An image of a bloody wound and beneath it the tattoo of a crucifix. Shaken by the sudden insight, she lowered herself back to her chair and picked up the pencil to sketch in what she’d been missing all along.

When she’d finished she held up the image of the crucifix and realised the man she’d drawn in sacrifice was the very one she was refusing to think about. In her attempt at divorcing herself from the pain, she’d lost sight of the very thing, the very person, who caused it. She closed her eyes and held the paper to her chest and her heart beat faster. She knew she had to release the pain to be free, but it was so hard, there was so much and she’d been holding onto it so tightly she didn’t know how to let it go. She didn’t even know if she wanted to, because if she did, she’d accepted it was over, and he was really – truly – gone.