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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
**
“C’mon,” Kieren said, “We need to get out of the house.”
“There’s nowhere for me to go.”
“Uh… no, you need to get outside. We’re going on a field trip, get your coat.”
“A what?”
“A field trip. Amy used to do it all the time,” Kieren explains. The quaver of hesitation in his voice is barely noticeable, but it’s there all right.
(Meanwhile, far away from Kieren’s bedroom in Roarton, a man named Julian paces in an anonymous hotel room, and wonders how he will tell the Prophet that he has lost the Twelfth Disciple.)
**
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
**
The small group of undead in Roarton continued to gather after Amy Dyer’s death, after Simon stopped talking to them.
Zoe became their new leader, and she spoke to them with fiery words of how they would find Simon Monroe, how they would deliver him up to the Undead Prophet and how the First Risen would be destroyed and the new rising would happen after all.
The living community became polarised by the events of December 12th. There were those who listened to Maxine Martin, who collected weapons and stalked the lanes watchfully, and there were those who turned away from prejudice, and tried to accept that the undead were there to stay. There were clashes between the two groups, and those clashes were not without injuries. The count includes three undead killed, several of the living wounded and one dead.
That might not look like much of a body count, but the events in Roarton were a mere reflection of the wider situation. Blue Oblivion attacks were becoming more frequent, and so were attacks on the undead by the living. In truth, no-one was really safe.
**
Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely the Second Coming is at hand
**
Zoe and Brian had managed to get contact details for Julian, Simon’s former contact in the ULA. Zoe was the one who called.
“Look,” she said, “I know it should have happened on the twelfth, but… it’s got to happen, right?”
Julian tells her that the Prophet will pass on orders when it is time.
(Not so far away, in Kieren Walker’s bedroom, Simon tosses and turns in his sleep, the words but the second rising has GOT to happen repeating over and over in his dream.)
**
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight
**
Simon should not have answered the phone that day. It was just a basic pay-as-you-go mobile that the ULA had given him, for security purposes they’d said.
He answered it almost by default, and froze when he heard the Prophet’s voice.
“Simon?”
“Simon,” the voice said, “Are you there?”
He hung up quickly.
**
somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man
**
Halperin and Weston had not been idle, and nor had they been keeping busy with their medical products and “neurotriptylin plus”.
Two discreet individuals had been despatched to make a certain collection and return the item to Norfolk. The scientists had locked themselves away, working busily, conducting experiments.
**
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
**
Kieren had been feeling strange lately.
No, that wasn’t right.
Kieren had been feeling lately. It had started with the odd tremor in his hands. Then came nosebleeds. Blinding headaches. He thought it might be neurotriptylin side-effects, and tried not to worry.
Then, one morning, he was sitting at the table as he usually did, watching his mum and his dad and his sister eat their breakfast, and he reached for a piece of toast.
He dropped it when he realised that his family was staring at him. “Kieren?” his mum said, “are you OK, love?”
**
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
**
Kieren leant against his gravestone and stared down at his hands.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said. “Am I… am I resistant to the shots now? What if I’m going rabid, what if I hurt someone?”
Simon put a comforting hand to his shoulder. “I don’t think you’re going rabid,” he said softly.
**
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
**
Kieren was lying in bed, eyes closed, on the edge of sleep. His eyes flew open and he sat up as he felt strange, a fluttering feeling inside him. He frowned, put a hand to his chest, and realised.
His heart was beating.