Alex Scarrow - October skies

The angel’s rage had been complete.

The deeds that had been done on his return to the camp… Sam had managed to erase, or at least dull, most of those memories from his mind: the screams, the panic of slaughter. All that remained now, rotting in the melting snow, was the aftermath.

Now he is gone, I can see with my own eyes the bad things he did to the bodies. I see with my own eyes the heads carefully placed in a pile. I see with my own eyes the cuts, the gashes, the fear in those bloated, dead faces.

I see now what the angel is.

He looked towards the temple. The lumber frame, no longer supported around the base by dense, tightly packed drifts of snow, had sagged to one side, everything askew. Inside, the angel was sealed away in Preston’s metal chest.

There had been a night, one particular night late in December, as he dined alone on frozen meat in the musky darkness of his shelter, when his wretched grief and the angel’s tormenting voice had proved too much for him. He had pulled the canvas sack from his belt, staggered into the temple and as the shrill and suspicious voice screamed accusations at him in his mind, he had opened the chest and dropped the sack inside.

Sam hadn’t dare venture within the slanting shelter since.

He knew if he did, he’d hear it whispering to him to be let out again.

I think I understand what the angel is now.

It is the darkness in our hearts, made a thousand times worse.

It made sense in a cruel, unforgiving way. It made sense to him that, guarding those precious plates on which God’s true message was inscribed, were those bones. He realised now that they were a test of purity… and intent. As a magnifying glass could be to the sun’s rays, so those angel’s bones were to a man’s soul.

Sam’s grief at losing Emily, his rage, had been turned by the angel into a storm of wrath, visited back here in the camp on those poor people who had remained.

I see now that it was a good thing Emily left me. That she escaped with the Indian and Mrs Zimmerman. I fear if she hadn’t, I might find her head stacked here amongst the others.

He looked up at the sky, clear and blue, promising an unbroken day of warmth. Today, he decided, was the day he was going to leave. Another night alone in this forsaken place and he imagined madness would finally take him completely. He looked at the space left on the last page of this journal, Benjamin Lambert’s journal. This last page was dark with new ink, a bottle he’d discovered a few days ago whilst scavenging through one of the other shelters.

I have read all of Benjamin’s words in here. Of all the bad things the angel did, killing him was the worst. He was my friend. He was a good man.

Sam wondered how different things might have been if the angel had chosen Ben to come to. His heart had seemed purest. It was a cruel joke, he considered, that the person most worthy of doing the Lord’s work, most pure in heart and capable of making good of the angel’s influence, was the one person who had no belief at all in God.

Sam had a wish.

I wish I were like Ben. I wish I could be him.

A solitary tear rolled down his hollowed cheek and dropped onto the bottom of the page, dotting his last scribbled line like a full stop.

He looked at his words, The testimony of Samuel Dreyton, and realised in that moment that perhaps he could have something of what he desired. Samuel Dreyton could die, as perhaps he should, and Ben could, in a way, live once more.

Sam realised his freshly written words should be the first thing to go.

He ripped the page out of the journal and tossed it into the muddy, slushy snow.

‘My name… is Ben,’ he uttered, with a voice weak and cracked and sounding like the frail rattle of an old man.

He stood up, painfully thin, and uncertain in his mind whether he’d make a mile from this place before collapsing, let alone finding civilisation once more. He returned the journal to Benjamin’s chest and sealed it with the solemnity of someone burying someone dearly beloved.

‘My name is Benjamin,’ he whispered.

As he stepped out of the clearing and into the trees, he looked back one last time at the browning humps of dead fir-tree branches that had once sheltered people through an unseasonably early winter.

‘My name is Benjamin Lambert,’ he croaked one last time, and set off into the wilderness, heading west.

Monday

Sierra Nevada Mountains, California

The sky above them was stained grey and overcast as they stumbled awkwardly along the silted bank of the gently burbling river. The water seemed as black as ink and moved smoothly and calmly past them, showing the way out of the mountains, west, towards safety.

‘Shit, I need another rest, please!’ gasped Julian.

Rose eased him down onto the ground. ‘Aghhh! Shit!’ he cried. ‘Leg’s killing me!’

‘It’s broken in several places,’ said Rose. ‘I think I can hear it grating.’

He winced as he lay back in the coarse grass looking up at the sky. It was tumbling with thick winter clouds that threatened to open up at any moment.

‘Yeah, thanks for telling me that, Rose. I can damn well feel it grating,’ he grunted through gritted teeth.

She offered him a pitiful smile. ‘Hang in there, Jules. I’ll get you out of here. You thirsty?’

He nodded.

She opened the backpack. It had belonged to Agent Barns. Inside was a survival pack: foil wrap, a couple of high-protein bars and a flask of water. She pulled out the flask and gave it to Julian.

She caught sight of the linen sack inside and eased it carefully out, opening it to reveal half a dozen corroded plates of metal. Beneath her fingers, she felt the indentations and bumps of unintelligible letters and shapes stamped into the metal.

‘What do you think?’ she asked, passing him one of them.

Julian turned the plate over in his hands, inspecting it sceptically. ‘Some kid’s metalwork project, looks like,’ he snorted wearily, passing it back. ‘A sheet of scrap metal with a few interesting shapes banged into it. I’m going to be honest here…’ he said. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s not the word of God written in the language of angels.’

‘And this?’ she asked, pulling out the threadbare canvas sack. The bones inside clinked softly.

‘Ten quid says they were once somebody’s bloody pet cat.’

‘They’re old,’ she said. ‘The canvas bag looks like it’s seen a lot of years.’

Julian shrugged. ‘I don’t know. An old pet cat, then.’

Rose laughed. ‘Yeah, maybe. What’re we going to do with ’em?’

‘Dunno. We’ll get someone to take a look. If they’re genuinely Joseph Smith’s scrolls, then I suppose they have some historical value. I’m sure the Mormon church wouldn’t mind having them back.’

Rose nodded. ‘I guess. Ridiculous, though, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘That there are people out there, people like Shepherd, who would kill for a bag of old cat bones and a few pieces of scrap metal.’

Julian laughed weakly. ‘It’s a world full of crazy people.’

She looked up at the sky. The first few snowflakes were coming down towards them, light and carried like pollen on the gentle breeze.

‘Starting to snow,’ she said. ‘C’mon, we better get going. I don’t want to be caught out here overnight.’

‘No.’ Julian winced.

She put the two cloth sacks back in the pack and slung it over her shoulder, then, grimacing at the pain she was about to inflict on Julian, began to help him to his feet.

‘Shit!’ he howled. ‘Ow! Slowly, Rose… slowly!’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she cooed apologetically.

He gasped, took a few deep breaths. ‘Okay… all right, I’m good to go.’