Harvest

  HARVEST

  Steve Merrifield

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2010 Steve Merrifield

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  for Rob

  who encourages and supports me

  in all that I do

  HARVEST

  Steve Merrifield

  Prologue: End of Days

  The Year 60 CE

  The centurion ran. Slipping and sliding in the mud that sucked at his bare feet. His sandals had been claimed by the boggy ground at the start of his race through the trees. He had sacrificed the shelter his tall shield offered against the onslaught of rain for a burning stake to light his pursuit through the darkness. The guttering orange light plucked twisted trees clawing out of the dark. The branches were buffeted by the bitter wind that drove the deluge of rain into his face. His frantic fingers plucked at the clasp on his shoulder and he shrugged off the burden of his waterlogged cape. Beyond his arena of light, the bold moonlight became his ally and he picked out the shadowy shape of the white-haired old man he hunted.

  The armed natives that had defended the camp had largely been unskilled in war, and had fallen easily to the centurion’s forces in a short bloody battle. However, the remaining tribe had turned on the raiders. In an unsettling nightmarish skirmish, the weak, the old, the women – some with babes in their arms, and the children themselves, had all flung themselves at the soldiers with wild eyes and chilling screams. They had desperately grabbed and clung to his soldiers, giving up their chance to flee; sheathing his men’s swords with their bodies, to ensure the elder of their tribe could escape.

  The centurion had not been so easily distracted; he had left his men to slay the remaining natives while he chased the feeble old man. “Feeble”, yet the old man had somehow overcome the miring mud that was almost defeating him; a soldier of the empire in his athletic prime.

  The soldier was stopped by the shock of icy water washing over his bare feet, and he suddenly realised the rushing sound of a stream beneath the constant hiss and drum of the rain. Angling his torch down he could see the shallow stream driven into a wild race by the lashing rain and the dark mounds that dammed and channelled its flow. The shapes were corpses, boars, deer, horses, cattle – from what he could see each had a deep glistening rent in its throat or a dark puncture wound in its head. Sacrifices. Offerings to the water of the earth, or whatever Gods these people worshipped, exchanges for potency of power and magic. Sacrifices that spread as far as he could see in either direction of the stream. More offerings than he had seen before. He didn’t let the sight stop him, but used the corpses as stepping-stones to cross to the other side, as the elder had surely done. It hadn’t been the first disturbing sight of the night – that had been when he and his men had uncovered the bodies in the tribes’ camp. The seven scouts he had sent out over the last week. Their heads missing.

  The centurion found himself in a grove of oaks and sycamores that lead to a broad dark clearing. The old man stood in the middle. The soldier slowed his pace so that the sounds of the storm would hide his approach.

  Many of the resistant native tribes had been massacred in the past months; those that remained were scattered and ineffective, their leaders slain, their shamans and holy men fleeing their homes and lands on the island to head across the sea into the west and exile. This elder and his tribe were organised, and had headed away from the coast and a chance of escape, so that they could travel to this place. There had been whispers among prisoners taken in the lead-up to this raid, rumours that this shaman was opposed to co-operation and to retreat and was set on a course of action unsupported by the other mystics.

  The soldier blinked the rain from his eyes and wrapped his fingers around the wooden hilt of his weapon as he marched with quickened determination. Whatever reason this elder had come to this land so foolishly close to the port of Londinium, he would not escape. The centurion would end his life and finish his mission: his part in the completion of Governor Seutonius Paulinus’s plan to cleanse the land of the barbarian native resistance. His senses focussed on the night air, crisp around him, and the continual rapping fingers of rain on the shoulders of his leather tunic and his helmet.

  Blue light flashed with magnesium brilliance from the sky and a ribbon of energy dumped itself into one of three chest-height misshapen standing stones positioned just paces from where the old man stood.

  The soldier gathered himself from cowering, recovering from the crater in his resolve that the sudden explosion of shock had left. The old man was still there, unscathed and unmoved. The centurion returned his grip to his weapon, withdrew the wide flat blade from its sheath, and made his final approach with a quickened step. The old man’s foreign lyrical tongue danced on the wild air.

  The centurion’s torch guttered and crackled with the deluge, weakly picking out the details of the man as its radius of light encompassed him and gave away the soldiers approach, yet the frail man made no attempt to escape.

  Another blast of light hit the second stone in the triangle with a similar spray of sparks, lighting up the area and revealing seven bloody heads with wild eyes piled on a large fresh swelling in the soil that seemed to move and undulate in the midst of the stones. The soldier blinked away the blue vein of light from his eyes in time to see the old man cast small items on to the swelling.

  The old man’s poetic voice died abruptly, his tongue stilled in his palette. The last breath he had drawn drifted out of him in a slow exhalation. The shaman’s head lolled forward, staring at the foot of bloodstained sword that jutted from his chest, its wickedly angled tip pointing into the darkness. His legs buckled beneath him and a golden sickle tumbled from a gnarled hand. The soldier angled his skewering blade toward the ground and the elder slipped from the sword into a bloody sprawl of robes at his feet.

  The soldier had expected a third strike of lightning on the remaining stone in as quick a succession as the other two, but was grateful that it hadn’t – the two strikes had been unnerving enough. In the flickering light of his torch the centurion cast an eye over the small engraved tablets the elder had cast on the mound along with acorns and sprigs of holly and mistletoe. The heads of his scouts were gone. The soldier re-sheathed his blade, now cleaned by the rain.

  The swelling in the earth sagged and the broken clods were quickly re-knitted by the flow of water chasing along the ground as the downpour continued. Confused and unsure of what he had plundered into, he flashed the standing stones with a cursory glance of his torch, and saw that each monolith was marked with an identical trident-like symbol that meant nothing to him. The soldier kicked and stamped the old man’s tablets and offerings into the soft ground, and took satisfaction in the completion of his mission.

  The Present

  The daytime sun had baked the concrete towers that reached up for fourteen stories into the north London skyline. The communal gardens and walkways between the three tower blocks had been cast in shadow all day, but offered no relief from the unrelenting heat. The night offered little change in temperature.

  The nighttime June air was thick with a heat and a heaviness that weighed down upon everyone on the estate. It made sleeping difficult and bedclothes impossible. All waited for the distantly rumbling storm to clear the life-draining
veil that had smothered the residents for several days and nights.

  The Heights had once stood proud among the typically low-level buildings that surrounded it. It was to be the start of new life in the community, offering a better standard of living, there to solve the problem of a growing city population. Now, forty years old, the buildings of the high-rise estate stood like depressed giants of a forgotten time and abandoned ideals. The shops that had been built into the base of the east tower had been gutted by fire and had never reopened. The boarded-up windows and sealed doors of the shops gave a depressing view to those who headed to the flats themselves.

  The Heights didn’t have the reputation of the local Somers Town area for its social problems, nor did it have the desirability of the period apartment buildings of Kentish Town and Highgate, or the more modern purpose-built flats that had developed. For those new to seeing the estate it could easily share the stereotypical reputation of buildings of its type as being dirty, dangerous, poverty-filled and rife with drugs. However, there was a difference within the towers: there wasn’t a drug problem on the estate, most residents had jobs and supported themselves and its tower design ensured security; the only danger would be from the residents themselves and those that were invited in, and as a result it was more secure than most homes.

  In the same way that the locals had lobbied to keep the inadequate Camden Town Underground station for fear of changing the character of their town, there was rumour that the three towers were being considered for a preservation order. Their height afforded some of the resident’s views and glimpses of the areas that drew people to Camden, and if you were high enough, a panorama of the city basin, important considerations in the growing gentrification of the City’s more rundown suburbs, and for buyers not wanting to pay a fortune for that always desirable view.

  More importantly than all these aspects there was a sense of community, a community of casual smiles of recognition, a general familiarity with the people that shared floors or met regularly in the lifts and stairwells.

  Veins of brilliant white light chased each other down from the sky, disappearing in the horizon, leaving a brief purple, red and blue memory of its pattern in the eyes of those who watched. Thunder creaked through the air like slowly splintering tree trunks before the sound opened up into the shuddering booms of falling bombs. After a short while a rushing noise and an uplifting cool breeze swept through the estate, chased by a wall of rain that slammed against the parched earth and paving and ran off in rapid currents.

  The three towers stood amongst the dancing shafts of light that ripped the sky asunder, conquering the local skyline solid and strong, weathering the rage and power of nature. A bolt of energy lanced through the sky with blinding light and fury, striking the east tower. The raw power flashed through the narrow copper conductor running the height of the building and pounded into the ground with a dull wet thud and a spray of sparks. The tower plunged into darkness. The full 20,000 volts passed harmlessly into the ground. The energy radiated out and enriched the soil with its nitrogen, finding forgotten bones and ancient flesh buried deep down. Completing a forgotten ritual and giving them life.

  It reached out from its flesh and bones with It’s mind and senses. The air was thick with smells and tastes, and charged with noise and energy. Altogether different from the world It had fleetingly experienced so long ago. It could feel the minds of those above. The energy of so many lives. The world was brimming with life, while It was so weak. Too weak to reach them. It would grow stronger. The balance would change.

  Part One: The Reaping Begins

  Chapter One

  Craig Digby checked his camera and adjusted the angle towards the schoolchildren being corralled into place in the sports hall of the school by their teachers. It was strange being back at the secondary school he had left eight years previously. He concentrated on preparing his equipment but he felt self-aware, caught by the flaws within himself that high school had fleshed out. The headmaster strolled up to him.

  “Digby? Digby, isn’t it?”

  Craig couldn’t believe it – Benchman was still head teacher at the school. Craig had maintained a dislike for him until the day he had finished his final exam and left the secondary school. Benchman had put on his final report that Craig was an under-achiever. The man still wore cheap bland grey suits that emphasised the aura of falseness about him. Yet now his hair matched his suit.

  “That’s right,” Craig acknowledged. He remembered his frustration in the fifth form at the contradiction of being expected to act as an adult while being treated as a child. The hypocrisy burned him now as it had back then because Benchman was the embodiment of it. Except, he told himself, he was twenty-four had achieved good school college and university grades and was unquestionably an adult, and more satisfying than that Benchman had no power over him.

  “Colin Digby. Thought I recognised the name – you haven’t changed much.”

  Craig suspected Benchman deliberately mistook his name and he heard an underlying accusation in the last part of his sentence. Craig hadn’t changed much in appearance, no more spots that had kept him from being attractive, but he was still of average height with messy unkempt blond hair and blue eyes, his shoulders broader but still lacking the muscle behind his build. He stood unflinching as he had done at school, unfazed by authority, a picture of rebellion with his shirt untucked, but without the blazer that had been mandatory, and his tie was now neater than it used to be. His redemption was that his untidiness was now trendy. Craig didn’t want redemption though; he wanted Benchman to see he was still a rebel and hadn’t conformed to what his headmaster had wanted for him.

  Craig corrected him as casually as possible, wanting desperately to end his sentence with “you wanker.”

  “That’s right… Craig. How could I forget? Had you at my desk a few times to push your studies in your final year if I remember.” He winked.

  Craig simply smiled. Benchman had been his form tutor in his final year – no one wanted Benchman as their form tutor in the exam year because he wanted their passes to reflect his influence on the pupils, to be an example to the other teachers. The head had realised Craig’s commitment to his Art, Media and Graphic Design lessons was largely at the expense of his work within Maths English and Science, subjects Benchman had been head of in his rise to the top. He had pushed for Craig to work harder in those areas, forced him by restricting his time in the art and design rooms. Craig had wished he could have been rebel enough to flunk those exams just to infuriate Benchman. Craig might be stubborn but he wasn’t stupid.

  “So this is your line of work now, is it? You were always more artistic than you were academic.” There was no malice in his tone but the word “artistic” was emphasised as if it was taboo.

  “Actually, I’m a freelance photographer for the local paper.”

  “Freelance, eh? So you do this to make up the money?” He nodded over his shoulder to the children who were now arranged and seated in an order of height and symmetry.

  Craig prepared his return and decided not to bite on the assumption of how much he was paid. “Not really, I do a variety of photographic work. I get some displays in galleries from time to time.” The last bit was an exaggeration. It had been a while since he had had the time to put together a portfolio and a display.

  Benchman looked down at him through his glasses. He still towered over Craig, even as an adult Benchman made him feel small. He fixed Craig in his sights and drifted into that deliberating look he gave his pupils for late homework excuses or if he disagreed with a pupil’s opinion. Craig remembered the look, which was essentially an unanswerable last-judgement. He hated it even more because under the glare of those eyes he found himself agreeing with what Benchman saw and thought.

  “You had a brother here too didn’t you? Darren?”

  “Yeah.” Benchman got his name right first time. Typical.

  “What’s he doing with himself now?”

  “He’s ru
nning the family business with my dad.”

  “Yes, did well in business studies and maths. I remember. He had his head screwed on. I thought you had moved away after your final year.”

  Craig’s family had moved to London from Bath at the start of his secondary education. Losing all his junior school pals in the process. “Yes. We moved back to Bath as Mum wasn’t happy.” Losing him all his mates from secondary school.

  “And you returned to the big city to make your fortune.” Was he scoffing?

  “I returned for University actually. For a degree. Got a first.” Craig corrected and boasted, scoring himself a point.

  “Better let you get on with it, then.” Benchman flashed a grin and strode away. He took his seat and folded his arms sternly and produced a prepared smile, the same smile that had stared back from Craig’s own school year-photos. He didn’t know how Benchman could be so fucking smug, from what Craig had read the only notable Alumni the school had produced were two serial killers.

  Craig settled behind the camera, prepared the shot, saw Benchman’s gaping trouser zip and the off-white triangle of underwear it exposed and grinned wickedly.

  “Smile!” Craig called to the assembly.

  Flash.

  “Prick!”

  Kelly Mason walked around the east block of The Heights to get to the main entrance. She smiled and nodded to people she passed. She knew most of the faces she saw, and they knew her. She often wondered whether they feared her, with her uniform and what she represented, or whether they hated her or resented her because of it. Perhaps they respected it or got some security in seeing it, but more important than other people’s perceptions was that it gave her something to hide behind and devote herself to. She was sure they wouldn’t know it was her crutch. They didn’t know her past and how much it now meant for her to have something that she belonged to.

  That’s why she wore her police uniform on her journey home while others changed back into their civvies at the Kentish Town station where she was based. She would hang it on the back of her bedroom door in her flat so she could see it from her bed. When she couldn’t sleep for the solitude of the night, she would look to it and what it represented, to know that at thirty-four she was finally strong and in control of her life. She was a lifetime away from what she used to be like, which is where she wanted to be; as far from that time and that self as possible.