border, so he moved slowly at first, picking his way carefully past the military posts, before galloping the last seventy kilometres along the long dusty tracks that ran for miles through the olive and pistachio groves.
He entered the city of Ruin as dawn was lightening the sky and the city was beginning to stir. Ahead of him he could see the Citadel rising sheer and black at the centre of the city, so high the summit was lit by sunlight that had yet to rise above the rim of the surrounding mountains.
He kept to the centre of the great wide boulevard running straight to the heart of the city and away from the early risers who stared mutely at this lone horseman moving past the cars and souvenir shops. He knew the Old Town, locked each night behind its portcullises and seven-metre-thick walls, would be preparing to let the first tourists of the day inside. As soon as the sun peeped above the mountains and bathed the Old Town with light the gates would open and he would charge straight at them, relying on his appearance and the flying hooves to scatter the tourists. He would then ride to the top of the hill and ring the ascension bell at the Tribute dock, demanding that they pull him up and into the mountain. The monk Athanasius would know why he was there. They had to let him in. Just a few more minutes and his journey would be over.
He reached the end of the boulevard and cut across Suleiman Park towards the main public gate. It was the widest of all the entrances and would, he hoped, allow people to get out of his way when he charged at them. He didn’t want to hurt anyone and certainly didn’t want to touch anyone and risk passing on the fever that burned inside him.
He passed under the final tree, the foliage parting to reveal the Old Town wall. Then he saw them, two ghosts standing sentinel in shrouds of white. In his delirium he thought they must be visions of death, waiting to claim him, but as his horse carried him closer he saw that they were real.
The skull-like eyes of one turned to him then motioned to the other.
He heard the rustle of their sterile suits as they moved towards him, saw the HazMat chevrons and quarantine sign behind them, and realized – as exhaustion and defeat finally dragged him from his horse – that he was too late. The disease he had carried out of the Citadel, and travelled so far to bring back again, had already spread.
The transport plane dropped below the cloud barely two hundred feet above a field of whiteness so bright Shepherd had to squint to make out Redstone Army airfield with the space centre beyond stretching all the way to the horizon.
‘Pilot, you sure this is Alabama and not Alaska?’ Franklin’s voice crackled through the drone of the engines.
‘They got weather like this all over the South,’ the pilot replied, ‘biggest dump since records began. Christmassy though, ain’t it? If it’s nice weather you wanted we should have flown north. Apparently they got a heat wave in Chicago. World’s gone crazy.’
‘End of days,’ Franklin muttered loud enough for Shepherd to hear. ‘Maybe Kinderman was on to something.’
The tyres squealed against the frozen tarmac as they touched down on the cleared runway and the smell of scorched rubber seeped into the hold, making Shepherd feel slightly sick. He hadn’t slept all night, had barely eaten anything and the flight had been so bumpy he felt like he’d been beaten up.
‘You think NASA might stand us a little breakfast?’ Franklin asked, demonstrating again his uncanny knack of sniffing out a raw nerve and tweaking it.
‘I can take you to the canteen,’ Shepherd said, breathing in freezing air that smelt of rubber and trying hard not to think about the greasy piles of bacon and hash browns laid on each morning for the seven thousand space centre personnel.
Franklin smiled. ‘In that case I’m actually glad I brought you along.’
The plane jerked to a stop with the same lack of grace as the rest of the flight and freezing air flooded the hold as the rear-loading ramp began to lower.
Outside, a Ford Explorer was waiting for them, its engine running and sending thick clouds of exhaust fumes past the NASA logo on the side. A man in a dark blue parka with a security badge stitched on the sleeve got out of the passenger door and stood with his hands crossed in front of him. He was a carbon copy of the Security Chief at Goddard: same solid weightlifter’s build; same flat face; Shepherd bet he had the same neat office with a picture of his youthful self on the wall.
‘Dave Ellery,’ the man said, extending his hand to Franklin who led the way down the ramp. ‘I’m Chief of Security here.’ He wore gloves against the cold and didn’t bother taking them off when he shook hands. Not friendly at all. It was a territorial thing stemming from the fact that the FBI had cross-state jurisdiction and could take over an investigation if they decided to. No one likes meeting a bigger fish, especially in law enforcement. Ellery gestured to the rear doors and got back into the front passenger seat without saying another word.
The inside of the basic Explorer was like five-star luxury after the plane. It was super-heated, the seats were padded and Shepherd felt an ache in his fingers and toes as blood started working its way back into them.
‘You fellas sure picked a day for it,’ Ellery said, staring out from behind black shades at the white landscape.
‘From what I heard they done hijacked your weather and shipped it off to Chicago,’ Franklin said, subtly upping his southern accent to match Ellery’s. It was a technique they taught at Quantico called subject mirroring that implied kinship and helped promote trust, though Shepherd suspected it might be somewhat lost on the frosty Security Chief, who had probably done the same course anyway.
‘I didn’t mean just the weather,’ Ellery said without elaborating.
‘Bad day already?’
‘I’ll say. I’m running short-staffed and we’ve had to evacuate one of the research facilities because of a helium leak. You can’t mess with that stuff. Had to shut the entire building down.’ He removed a box file from an attaché case by his feet and handed it to Franklin in the back seat. ‘I dug out those documents you asked for.’
The word THREATS was written on the file in thick marker pen. Franklin opened it and slid out twelve clear plastic folders, each containing correspondence from a different month. January contained a one-page note typed on an old-fashioned typewriter that said:
Dear NASA,
Quit wasting tax dollars shooting junk up into space. The army needs equipment bad. Spend money on that you assholes or I will personally shoot the man pushing the launch button. I am deadly serious.
A Patriot
‘’Course that’s just the physical stuff,’ Ellery said. ‘We get ten times as much mail over the internet. I can show you that in my office if you want.’
Franklin sorted through the plastic folders until he found one marked May, the month Dr Kinderman had received his first card.
‘Is it true what I heard, Hubble got knocked offline?’ Ellery asked.
‘That’s classified information. And whatever you heard we would ’preciate you keeping it under your hat, sir. You know how rumours can get in the way of an investigation.’ Franklin’s accent was travelling down through Georgia and getting further south all the time.
He handed January through April to Shepherd and popped the fastener on May, carefully sliding out the contents to keep them in order. May had clearly been a bumper month for the crazies. Top of the pile was an almost illiterate letter written in crayon with some photos of astronauts stuck to it with their faces burned out by a cigarette. Below that was a photo of the Challenger shuttle exploding, with a future date and I WILL MAKE THIS HAPPEN AGEN written on it. The next item was a postcard with a Renaissance