Triskellion 3: The Gathering (25 page)

“Please, Gerry…”

They had stopped at a set of metal doors in which a large round combination lock had been inset. Wing stepped close and began spinning the lock, first one way, then the other.

With every click, Celia’s fear was ratcheted up a notch.

When Wing pushed open the door, the blast of cold air took her breath away.

He stepped aside. “After you, darling.”

Celia’s breath hung in plumes in front of her face and she stepped into the room. She saw a row of long wooden laboratory benches, each laid out with racks of test tubes, microscopes and Bunsen burners. There were blackboards with diagrams she could make neither head nor tail of and charts filled with columns of figures that made her head swim.

She walked further into the room and turned to a small alcove that was all but hidden from view by a translucent curtain. She stood frozen. Her hand was raised to move the curtain aside, but she was unable to go any further. In the alcove beyond she could hear something bubbling. A hiss and a hum.

Wing stepped quickly past her and pushed the curtain to one side. “Is this what you wanted to see?” he said.

Rachel and Adam opened their eyes at Gabriel’s anguished cry. He was standing at the far end of the room, holding back a plastic curtain, his weeping eyes fixed on what lay behind it.

Rachel approached. Behind the curtain was a glass cylinder, some two metres tall, its surface coated with frost. The light above shed a ghostly glow into the liquid filling the tube.

Floating in the cylinder was the body of a naked figure.

Despite the ragged scars that criss-crossed the body, Rachel thought it looked remarkably peaceful: rotating slowly in its liquid grave. As the body turned and the face came into view, she saw that the hairless skull was fine and domed with high cheekbones and the now empty eye-sockets were almond shaped.

She realized it looked like Gabriel.

Gabriel was transfixed by the figure; his hands were pressed to the cold glass of the cylinder and tears coursed down his cheeks.

“Why do they want us to see this?” Adam asked.

“To leave you in no doubt about what we do here.”

The voice – gruff and American – came from behind them. They turned to see a tough-looking man with a broken nose. “Thought you’d rather find out for yourselves than take the guided tour.”

Rachel was waiting for Gabriel to do something, but he stood still, looking at the floor as if he knew the game was up. She reached out to him with her mind, but the ringing noise was louder than ever.

“This is where we find out what makes them tick,” the man said. He flicked a finger towards Gabriel. “What makes you
all
tick. Hope you’re going to be helpful…”

Suddenly, Adam rushed at the man, ready to kill, but two black-clad military personnel materialized behind him, Taser guns raised. The last thing Adam, Rachel and Gabriel felt was the agony of the powerful voltage coursing through their bodies as they fell to the floor.

“I
t is time,” Ezekiel Crane said.

He put down his copy of the
Pennsylvania Globe
on the map table of the motor yacht. The
Ezekiel One
– a sleek forty-foot Predator – had been purchased with generous donations from his loyal followers.

They had left Philadelphia in triumph. After Crane’s barnstorming rally, another fifty thousand pilgrims would be coming to the Gathering; another fifty thousand who had pledged dollars in tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds to the Church of the Triple Wheel – as followers had from all across America.

Crane, Jedediah and a dozen or so trusted disciples from the Triple Wheel’s inner circle had picked up the boat at Tom’s River, a small harbour town on the Atlantic coast. Crane had always said that when the time came they would arrive in New York from the sea. He knew very well that when the great day came, all the major road and rail routes would be completely gridlocked.

“Hallelujah and amen,” Brother Jedediah croaked. He put down the pastor’s drink with a hand that now had a permanent tremor and watched with his remaining good eye as his master took out a bottle of pollen and tapped a small mound out on to the back of his hand, before sniffing the yellow powder up each nostril like a drug. Crane snorted the pollen back into his sinuses and let out a long sigh of pleasure. He added a splash of Dr Pepper to the vodka in front of him and drank it down.

“Anything else, Pastor?” Jedediah asked timidly. He had looked queasy since they’d got on the water, but he barely spoke now anyway for fear of offending Crane again – the shaking hand and the patch over his blinded eye permanent reminders of what could happen if he did.

“Hold this down for me,” Crane said. He spread a rolled-up chart out across the map table. It was a facsimile of something very old and was covered in numbers and calculations, with a large symbol in the middle and smaller ones in three of the corners. At the bottom was a verse.

Brother Jedediah held down its corners with trembling hands. “Looks very old, Pastor,” he hazarded.

“Older than anything in this God-forsaken country,” Crane said. “It’s English. I kind of grew up with it.”

Jedediah looked at him, realizing that Crane had suddenly spoken in an English accent. Crane seemed to realize at the same moment and tried to cover it by continuing, braying mockingly like a comedy English toff, “Another time, another place, another life, old boy. It’s a prophecy, don’t you know?”

Jedediah smiled. “That’s real funny, Pastor. You sound real different. Like someone in a movie.”

Crane grunted and returned to his chart. He unfolded another map, a modern one this time, of Manhattan Island and New York City. Putting the two side by side, he began marking co-ordinates taken from the numbers on the old chart on the map of New York.

“Look, Pastor,” Jedediah said. The excitement had raised his voice to a fevered squeak.

Crane already knew what he would see. It was not the first time he had done this – he had checked and rechecked the map references and locations numerous times. Each time he did so the same pattern emerged: the co-ordinates plotted three intersecting circles over the centre of New York City.

Triple wheels. And where the three wheels intersected they formed a symbol.

A Triskellion.

And the centre of the Triskellion bounded an area of downtown New York, with one building at its heart. Crane knew the history of that building, and its significance. He knew that this was where the prophecy would be fulfilled. This would be where Ezekiel One would happen again, and where he would gather his followers to him for whatever fate awaited them.

They were now motoring away from the New Jersey coast and across the harbour towards Brighton Beach. In the distance Crane could see the glittering spires of downtown Manhattan twinkling in the sun, and he felt he was about to fulfil his destiny, to do something for which he would be remembered for ever.

When the visitors came, he would present himself to them as their rightful representative on earth. As a direct descendant of the English Traveller, he was surely the natural ambassador. He would deliver up his loyal followers to the visitors – to do with as they saw fit. To breed the next super-generation with Crane himself as their leader. He was in absolutely no doubt about the role he was to play. He had not always felt this way – but he had finally come to recognize that his remarkable survival, his new-found powers, his re-birth, his
lineage
had all marked him out as the Chosen One.

Him. Not two snotty American kids from a bastard gene pool.

The water was becoming choppy and clouds gathered over the Manhattan skyline. A red sun hung heavily in the sky, casting a pink light on the glass towers. The boat powered up into the East River, past the buildings of the Lower East Side, until it found a berth alongside Roosevelt Island.

Crane gathered the crew on the teak deck.

“Look at the sunset, Brothers, and remember this day.” He took the hand of the two disciples on either side of him, who, following his lead, took the hand of those next to them and so on, until all on the deck were linked. The sun, huge now and blood-red, was sinking down behind the bristling spires and towers that yearned towards the pink-streaked sky.

Crane dropped his head in prayer. “Remember where you were on this day. Remember who you were with, and remember the sun going down on a world which from tomorrow will have been changed for ever. Amen.”

“Amen!” Brother Jedediah’s croak sounded above the low voices of the others.

Crane let go of their hands and smiled benignly at the group. “Tick-Tock,” he said breezily. “The time has come.” He looked down at the large Triple Wheel watch on his wrist, watching as the second hand swept round, waiting until it reached twelve.

And then he pushed the button…

In a pastel-pink house on a quiet tree-lined street in a suburban neighbourhood between Indianapolis and Tulsa, Barbra and Bob Anderson and their two children had just started to eat dinner. Meat loaf with gravy and mashed potatoes. Apple and raspberry cobbler to follow. It was Bob’s favourite.