The Forgotten Son Page 15

  ‘No, ‘ang on a sec, Staff.’ Lane removed his own beret and took the pack off Arnold. ‘That trolley’s heavy,’ he said, offering a smile. ‘It’ll take two of us to shift it.’

  Evans was watching them, looking from one to other as if they were both mad. ‘You're potty, the pair of you!’

  Arnold had just about had it with the private. ‘Shut up, will you! Do as you’re told. Play that rope out as we go; any sign of trouble whip us out sharpish. Right?’

  ‘Well, it’s your neck.’

  And so it was. Arnold and Lane placed their masks on and turned to face the web. They signalled they were ready with a thumbs-up and braced themselves. They paused for a moment, looking at each other.

  Once again Arnold knew he was not the master of his own actions. He had fought so hard, but this was it. Finally the end had come. No one had survived in the web before.

  He awoke sharply, looking around. He was no longer in the Underground but some kind of barn, lying behind bundles of hay. Arnold stood up slowly, trying to remember where he was. It took a few moments, but then he remembered. Everything since waking up in the hospital mortuary. Only now there was more – the dream that wasn’t a dream.

  It had all happened. For the first time in what seemed like weeks he knew exactly who he was. Staff Sergeant Albert Arnold of the Royal Engineers, 21 Regiment. He closed his eyes, reaching for his head, expecting his hands to brush against the cold surface of that device the Yeti had put there. But all he felt was his thin hair.

  Corporal Lane hadn’t made it, but then neither had Arnold. He’d died hours earlier, shot in the back. He hadn’t been dead for long, but long enough for the Great Intelligence to get inside his head and use him.

  He screwed his eyes shut, pressed his palms to his face. He could see it all. He thought he was in control, but he wasn’t, not really. From the moment he woke up in the Underground tunnel he’d been a slave to the Intelligence, like sleep walking his way through a nightmare. He could see it all, feel it all, every word exchanged between him and Corporal Blake as they found the explosives covered in web, removing the little Yeti models and placing one in the explosives store, making sure the army’s weapons would be of no use. He’d been responsible for the deaths of so many – even Craftsman Weams. Poor lad, cocky as they came, but a good man. He’d tried to warn them, to fight against the Intelligence’s control…

  ‘Any luck?’ Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart asked, as Captain Knight and his patrol joined them in the tunnel.

  ‘Afraid not, sir. The fungus beat us to it. A hundred yards this side of Holborn.’

  ‘Just as if it knew what we were up to, sir,’ Arnold said quickly, and as he said it he could feel the Intelligence inside him. It wasn’t happy, and it began to tighten its hold. It wasn’t much, but for a brief moment Arnold had been free.

  It was his last true moment of freedom. From that point the Intelligence didn’t let up, guiding him through the motions of life, ensuring the army always remained one step behind while the Intelligence continued to bait the trap for that Doctor fella. But he’d continued to fight, all the way until he was underneath Covent Garden with Lane and Evans. And for a while he slept, the Intelligence giving him a reprieve while it spoke through Professor Travers. But that didn’t last; once the suspicion was thrown off him, the Intelligence reanimated Arnold again.

  But something had gone wrong, only he couldn’t remember what. Whatever it was, it had killed him.

  He inspected his hands. They still showed signs of severe burning. It didn’t hurt, but when he had awoken his entire body had been as black as charcoal.

  He needed air.

  Once he was outside the barn he looked around. In the distance, due east he could see the roofs of small houses. A village of some sort. He blinked, seeing in his mind a signpost that said, Bledoe 1 Mile. Yes, he remembered: he had passed through that village.

  Something caught his eye. He rushed over to the nearest hedge and peered through. Between him and the village were several shaggy forms. They looked different, leaner, taller, but he knew them well.

  Yeti!

  Arnold crouched down, keeping himself as hidden by the hedge as possible. It was like the Underground all over again. Well, they wouldn’t get Albert Arnold this time. This time he’d fight them to his last breath, make the Intelligence pay for all the good men it had made him kill.

  He looked over at the barn. He needed weapons.

  Private William Bishop wasn’t sure what to make of the colonel’s briefing. He had to believe him, of course; after all, no one made colonel in the Scots Guards without integrity of character. Bishop was a Royal Green Jacket, part of the 5th Battalion, and so he had not been stationed in London, but he knew men in the 4th Battalion and hadn’t heard much from them in the last month. Now, at least, he understood why the 4th Battalion was so quiet. According to the colonel hundreds of soldiers had been killed – how many of them were known to Bishop? How many were his friends?

  The colonel’s story was amazing. Alien attack on London? It was the kind of thing he’d read about as a kid.

  He now stood in the kitchen of Mrs Hardy, a kindly old woman of about sixty who lived on her own. She had been most happy when he and Mr Barns had returned to ask her more questions about her late night visitor. She didn’t mind that someone had helped themselves to her fruit – after all, if it didn’t get eaten it would only go rotten, and she always bought more than she needed. She usually gave some to the children who played on the street of Windsor View. ‘I remember when fruit was a luxury,’ she had told them. ‘Thirty years ago we didn’t see such things.’

  Bishop was too young to remember the war properly, he was born as it ended, but he remembered growing up in a world where rationing still happened. It took the UK a long time to find some kind of economic balance, and although he enjoyed reasonable affluence now, he’d experienced enough of rationing as a kid to respect what Mrs Hardy said.

  But other than anecdotes about life in Bledoe during the war, she had nothing more to tell them. The first she knew about her visitor was when she found the muddy boot prints. They had dried and took a while to clean, which meant the intrusion had happened a few hours before she woke at 7am.

  Bishop checked his watch. It was almost eleven o’clock now. He was about to thank Mrs Hardy for her time when something caught his eye through the window. He looked closer, moving the net out of the way. ‘Mr Barns.’

  ‘Henry, please, Mr Barns was my dad.’ The older man joined Bishop by the kitchen window. ‘What is it?’

  Bishop pointed at a shape in the far distance. ‘What do you think that is?’

  It was hard to make out with the sun in the sky. Henry narrowed his eyes. ‘A scarecrow?’

  ‘There’s no scarecrows in the fields out by Puckator Farm,’ Mrs Hardy pointed out.

  The shape moved. It was indistinct, as if its limbs were covered in fur. Bishop let the net fall back into place. He smiled at Mrs Hardy. ‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Hardy.’

  The old woman smiled. ‘My pleasure. Not often I get such a handsome young man visiting me,’ she said. ‘Not since my Christopher passed on.’

  Bishop was about to ask if that was her husband or son, but thought better of it. He wanted to take the Land Rover down Fore Street and see what that shape in the field was. They hadn’t got as far as the farm when looking for the colonel’s mother. He now wished they had. They may not have found her there, but they would have found something all right.

  So much for the books he read as a kid. Life was getting much stranger than any fiction.

  Owain sat on a small chair beside the bed on which Mary lay, the felt trilby in his hands. The bedroom was smaller than his own, very Spartan and seldom used. On the chest of drawers, neatly folded, was the colonel’s uniform jacket, his black cap resting upside down on top of it, a tie folded inside the cap.

  Mary Lethbridge-Stewart still slept, her eyes moving rapidly underneath their lids. Gordon spoke to
him.

  Place the control-millin on her head.

  Owain went to move the metal hat from his head, but stopped. If he removed it he would not be able to hear Gordon’s thoughts, and Gordon would not be able to see through his eyes.

  Do not worry, Owain. My Yeti are spreading the web. It is a part of me and it extends my will on the village. I can still sense you. But I need to reach the pure consciousness that is trapped in Mary. You do not need to feel me, Owain. We are one, with or without the control-millin.

  Owain wasn’t sure he agreed, but he trusted Gordon, so he removed the control-millin and placed it gently on Mary’s grey hair.

  He sat back and watched, feeling with a chill his sudden isolation.

  The black Humber Sixteen Saloon continued its way up another unnamed road in Cornwall, still at the start of the six-hour journey to Lancashire. The driver, Thomas Davies, focused on the road ahead, mindful of the narrowness and the possibility of oncoming traffic. In the passenger seat his nephew, Alistair, was leaning with his head hanging out of the window, enjoying the wind as it blew through his black hair. He ducked in for a second to check on the woman in the back of the car, smiled and put his head back out of the window.

  Although the woman smiled back, inside she was sad. She was leaving everything she had loved. But there was too much pain in Bledoe for her now. In the distance ahead of her she could see the houses that made up Resurgum Row, Higher Tremarcoombe. She had always considered them a long way to go, but she knew where she was going was a long way further. A long way from Cornwall, in fact. Would she ever return? Mary honestly didn’t know. Her son didn’t seem too affected, probably looking forward to spending time with his Uncle Tommy and Aunty Isobel. They would be good for him. She couldn’t tell any of them her real plans. They thought she was moving to Lancashire to be with her family, to find the support she needed to get through her loss. But Mary had no intention of staying there. Once she knew Alistair was settled she was going. She didn’t know where, but she knew she had to get away from him. Before he paid the price, too.

  First her parents and then James, and just when she thought she was coming to terms with that, she received the letter from the Air Force. Her husband, dead. She couldn’t let Alistair go the same way.

  She looked out of the car window and saw a little boy. She kept seeing him in the shadows, watching her but never able to talk. But she saw the accusation in his eyes. The warning. He told her to leave, to never come back. And she wouldn’t.

  Thomas turned the car left, taking it out of Bledoe once and for all. Mary looked back at the boy, but he was no longer there. She sniffed back a tear.

  She had lost too much. Her parents and her husband. Mary leaned forward and ruffled Alistair’s already messy hair. She couldn’t lose her only child, too.

  The three of them had passed the sports field and taken a small one-way lane due west. Lethbridge-Stewart was glad that Ray and George knew their way to Draynes Wood since he was beginning to lose his bearings a little. On either side of them were hedges that afforded little view of the surrounding countryside, and to him it seemed that one lane was much like another.

  To think he was once a country boy himself. He had spent far too much time in cities and small towns in recent years, and had clearly lost his countryside instincts. Ray and George hadn’t stopped talking since they’d left Redrose, but Lethbridge-Stewart wasn’t inclined to join in. It was mostly small talk anyway, and he had too much on his mind to let such talk distract him.

  His mind kept returning to the absurd notion that James had been his brother. He remembered the dream which he’d had the previous night, no doubt inspired by his stay in his old bedroom, and the feeling he remembered when James had been urging him to jump across the small river. In the memory Lethbridge-Stewart had only been a boy, and at first he’d simply chalked up the feeling to being egged on by older boys. The need to impress. But now he was thinking it might have been more than that.

  ‘I should apologise for earlier, Colonel,’ George said. ‘All that business with Henry. He’s not usually so stubborn, but I think all this has thrown him somewhat.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘Thrown us all, I should think.’

  ‘No doubt. But you’ve both had military training,’ Lethbridge-Stewart pointed out, smiling at the look of surprise on George’s face.

  Ray chuckled. ‘He’s got you there, George.’

  ‘Yes, well, I only made private. As did Henry, although some years after me.’

  ‘National Service.’ Lethbridge-Stewart nodded sharply. ‘As I thought. Well, I know it’s been a while, but both of you will need to pull yourselves together since I’ll need all the troops I can get. Especially if I am right about the Intelligence being at the heart of this.’

  ‘We’ll do our best, sir,’ George said, offering his best salute.

  ‘That’s all I ask.’

  They continued on in silence for a while before George piped up again. ‘I still can’t believe Henry knew about all this and never mentioned it.’ He looked at Ray. ‘I feel like I owe you an apology.’

  ‘If anybody owes Ray an apology, it’s Henry.’

  ‘Thank you, Alistair.’ Ray shook his head. ‘It hasn’t been easy, trying to keep the children safe and away from the Manor. After James I was certain it was over. But still I kept returning to Draynes Wood, like somehow I knew it wasn’t…’

  Lethbridge-Stewart had seen many a haunted man in his time in the army, haunted by the things they’d done and seen. The reality of war. In his way Ray was no different; he had lived with this weight for too long on his own. At this Lethbridge-Stewart felt a brief stab of guilt. He had promised to keep in touch with Ray, and in that he had failed. If he had been true to his word then maybe most of this could have been prevented. Ray’s isolation… Lethbridge-Stewart was as much to blame as Henry.

  They stopped next to a gate onto an open field. Ray waved ahead. ‘We can cut through here,’ he said, ‘just watch out for the cows.’

  As Ray opened the steel gate, which creaked from lack of use, Lethbridge-Stewart looked over at the field, watching for cows walking in circles. No such odd behaviour here. Lethbridge-Stewart wasn’t sure if he was glad about that or not. Circling cows would have at least suggested Arnold was near.

  The three men set off across the field. They had only crossed half way when on the horizon Ray spotted three very familiarly shaped figures. They looked different from how Lethbridge-Stewart remembered them, but then he had been told that those he’d encountered in London had looked different from the one Travers had brought back from Tibet. Mark two, as someone said. He guessed that made these Yeti mark three. They may have looked slightly more advanced, but the guns they held were exactly the same as those he’d seen used in London.

  The men pressed against the hedge that lined the field.

  ‘Grizzly bears, eh, George?’

  George shrugged at Ray’s question. ‘It wasn’t me who said that. But, no, definitely not.’ He looked at Lethbridge-Stewart. ‘These the Yeti you were expecting?’

  ‘Yes.’ He glanced around. Beyond the Yeti was something else familiar to him: the strange pulsating web the Intelligence had used to block off London. ‘We need to move around them somehow, that is, if there is a gap in the web. Hopefully it hasn’t spread too far yet. If we can get to this Manor, I may know a way to stop the Yeti before they attack the village.’

  ‘Attack?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Ray. Almost certainly.’ Lethbridge-Stewart lifted his head up, trying to get a better lay of the land. ‘In London the Intelligence used these little model Yeti to guide the real things, like pieces on a chess board. If we can destroy those…’ His voice tailed off as he looked back to George and Ray. The two men were staring ahead, their eyes vacant. ‘Ray? George?’ He waved his hands in their faces. There was no response.

  This was all he needed.

  As Owain sat watching Mary sleep, Lethbridge-Stewart was on his mind. Or rather, the events
in London as the colonel had explained them.

  Owain was confused. He knew from joining Gordon that he was part of this Great Intelligence that had been the cause of the evacuation of London, but he also knew from Gordon that the boy meant no harm. He just wanted Mary and that Albert person to make them both whole, to bring them to the pure consciousness that was the end result for all men. Gordon wanted to bring peace, not kill people.

  But Lethbridge-Stewart had been right about the Yeti. They did attack people. Now that the control-millin was removed and Gordon was silent, Owain remembered. He remembered the Yeti racing off after Lewis and Charles. He shook his head. How had he forgotten that?

  He hoped his dad found Lewis.

  No, this made no sense. Gordon was Lethbridge-Stewart’s dad returned. Why would a man once responsible for protecting England be connected to the entity that was responsible for so many deaths in London?

  Owain stood up.

  The colonel had to be lying. Owain knew Gordon, there was no way he’d be connected to something so evil.

  Without Gordon nothing was making sense. He needed to talk to Gordon, to understand again.

  ‘What the hell happened?’

  George held his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know. I just went… blank. I could see you, hear you, but nothing was going through my mind.’ He looked up at Lethbridge-Stewart. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything so peaceful.’

  He had pulled both men back to the lane, first George and then Ray. The two of them were now sitting on the concrete dirt path, while Lethbridge-Stewart peered around the hedge at the Yeti through the gate. They weren’t moving, still on the horizon, static. Watching or waiting? Probably both.

  The last time he encountered the Yeti it had cost him many good men. All over London soldiers had been slaughtered, while of those under his direct command only a handful had survived. If they attacked Bledoe… Lethbridge-Stewart didn’t even want to finish that thought. At best he had three privates at his disposal, and only one of them on active duty; the other two hadn’t seen service in at least fifteen years.