"Listen carefully, Shell," Healey commanded her, holding her shoulders and waiting for her nod. "I need you to go straight back to Boz, as fast as you can, okay? Follow the coast path, get there as soon as you can. You and Boz go straight back to Tintagel by boat, you got it?" Waited for her nod again. "Go straight to the elders. Tell them to get Manot on the radio back to her superiors, okay?" Seeing her confusion, he clarified. "Manot needs to talk to her elders on the radio, okay?" A nod, so he continued. "She is to tell them that there is a ship here, which is collecting ravager blood. Tell them where it is, okay? On the map. And she has to tell them it cannot be allowed to leave. Repeat it back to me." He waited while she repeated it back to him, corrected an error, and then told her the whole message again.
"Wait!" O'Connor came scrabbling down the hill from the coast path, whispering ferociously as he came, his smartphone in his hand. He stood next to them, typing something furiously on the phone. As Healey watched words scrawled out across a small white page. He showed it to Healey, who read it and nodded urgent confirmation. "I've taken pictures, and written an explanation for Manot." He handed the phone to Shell. "Give this to Manot, tell her it's unlocked and it has pictures and a note. She'll understand."
"Give her the message as well, Shell. Message and the phone. You understand?" She nodded again, and he slapped her on the shoulder. "Go! As fast as you can! No delays or distractions!" Shell, serious and terrified, nodded and dashed away on the rain-slicked ruins of the old coastal path.
When they returned to the lookout the situation on the beach had changed. The recently-quickened man was dead, the two soldiers dragging away his body, and a woman was chained in the first cage, already quickened. She had the same dark skin tone, emaciated and drawn features, bruised and cut, and was also stripped down to just her underwear. One of the soldiers was laughing and poking her with a stick until one of the others told them to stop.
"They brought another prisoner," Lily told him. "Seems they're quickening them in a chain."
"Taking their blood," Gazza added, and spat on the ground.
"We should stop this," O'Connor said, eyes fixed on the tortured body of the freshly-quickened woman. "If this gets out on the mainland it'll be unstoppable."
"You stopped it once before," Healey pointed out, remembering what he had told them in the Sanctuary. "Six months after it started, an outbreak in France."
"That was before I was born," O'Connor reminded him. "I don't know what it was like then but I'm pretty sure the world ain't a better place now. And that was in some shithole in the country in France. What if these wankers are planning to drop it in a city?"
"We could be the safest place on the planet," Boots put in, and Gazza sniggered. "Imagine it, those bastards out there begging to come in."
"Quarantine ships'd probably be first in line," Gazza added, mouth twisted in a snarl. "We'd 'ave to welcome 'em." Looked over to O'Connor with a 'no offence' shrug.
"How are we supposed to stop it? Look," Healey swept his arm over the view below. "They've got machine guns, a ship. We'd get slaughtered."
"He could shoot the ravager's chains," Gazza suggested, gesturing to O'Connor. "Let it do the job."
"I'm a marine, Gazza, not an Olympic marksman," O'Connor replied. "I'd just waste bullets and kill that thing. Then they'd know we were here, and then we're fucked. Maybe we just have to rely on UNIQA to find them."
"Ravagers could do it," Lily said in a quiet, distant voice. "If enough of them came. We could distract the gunners while they get through the fence. A big enough gang would fix it."
"Get us too but," Boots pointed out.
"It would need a lot just to get through the fence," Healey pointed out, "It looks solid enough. We don't see gangs that big anymore."
"The Gorgon could gather them," she replied. He looked across to her, enigmatic as always behind the thin black muslin of her veil. "It's near here. I could get it."
From the tilt of her head he had the sense she was looking him in the eye. "It could deal with the fence, too. And maybe a few bullets won't be enough to stop it." Face obscured, she held his gaze. "Let me go to the Gorgon, Healey. Let me call it." Her voice was low, intense, breathy with anticipation.
"Is she crazy?" O'Connor asked him. Healey had noticed O'Connor was not comfortable talking directly to Lily, though he had been fine chatting with the other women in the team. He guessed it was because of the specific instructions he had been given when they set out from the community.
"Stay out of arm's reach at all times, do not touch her, do not share any food or water with her," he had warned O'Connor, and replied only with, "She is Liminal," when the inevitable questions had been asked, and then, "Her survival is more important than ours. We all protect her," and walked away. Explanations, he had decided, could wait until O'Connor was more familiar with their way of life. He guessed that members of the quarantine forces from the mainland were not pre-disposed to treat asymptomatic carriers of the infection well, and thought he would be more accepting of her presence if he saw the rules as some strange local superstition than a sensible response to the threat in her blood.
"No," Healey replied shortly. He was remembering the first time the Gorgon had come to the Wall of Silence, carrying the bawling infant, the gentle moment of connection between them when Lily had stood in front of it, arms open and trusting, waiting for the deadly baby. Had the beast touched her? It was years ago now, a moment of intense panic for those in the tower observing her, but that brief moment when they faced each other, Liminal and bestial, had impressed upon all of them her difference, her feral essence. "Are you sure about this, Lily?" He asked her, and as she nodded her head slowly he had a sense of something passing, some resolution on her part.
"Then go." He gestured to one of their spearmen where he lay on the slope a little distance from her. "Whispers, go with her until you're sure she's safe past this camp, then come straight back here."
Lily nodded and slithered a little way down the slope until she could stand up without being seen from below.
"We'll give you until nightfall," he told her. "If you aren't back by then, we'll leave it to UNIQA."
#
She returned in the late afternoon, the beast in tow. While they waited they watched the soldiers drag another prisoner out of the grey vehicle, repeating the experiment. This one was a man, naked and badly beaten, with an obviously broken arm that they enjoyed pushing through the cage while he screamed. His arm flopping uselessly, he could not struggle, but he seemed to remonstrate with the ravager, the woman who had been in a cell with him just hours earlier, begging her to relent. They watched his desperate pleas and then he was gone, vomiting blood and spasming his way into the bestial state of the quickened. No longer troubled by its broken arm, the ravager he had become pawed and clawed at the air as the soldiers shot its former cellmate dead and dragged away the body. Not in 28 years had Healey felt any sympathy for the beasts, not until he witnessed this sordid transfer of rage happening in the cell on the beach below them.
They fell into brooding silence after that, waiting on the slope under the cover of the bushes and watching the beach until Whispers, lower down the slope on guard, hissed an alert. They turned at his warning and Healey saw Lily emerge from the trees on the far side of the coastal path, walking calmly towards them. The Gorgon loomed still and silent in the shadows of the trees behind her, watching them. It was huge, easily bigger than O'Connor or than any man O'Connor had ever seen, healthy and solid and clean like no ravager could ever be. Long, thick arms hung loose at its sides, locks of tangled dark hair cascaded over a heavily-muscled chest that hung in huge slabs of brawn over a tight, washboard stomach. Its tanned skin glowing in the late afternoon light that fell through the trees at the edge of the path, it looked more like a Greek god than a monster.
Lily stopped at the base of the slope, the prescribed distance from Whispers, and Healey scrambled down the slope to meet her, gesturing for O'Connor to let his weapon go when he saw the Gorgon twitch in response to his panicked first movement. "Lily," he greeted her, tones hushed out of fear or, maybe, reverence. As he approached her he was conscious of the thing watching him. "You're safe." He glanced into the forest beyond the Gorgon, saw nothing moving in the darkness. "Did it bring others?"
"Many," Lily told him. "They're gathered in the old village. The Gorgon will start the attack. When it does, you need to distract the gunners until the fence is down." With that she turned and walked away, heading along the coastal path in the direction of the head of the bay. The Gorgon disappeared into the trees, moving through the brush with a swift, assured stride.
Healey scrambled back up the slope to the others to set up their attack. "Whispers, Gazza, go find a few rocks to throw on the gunners down there." He gestured to the beach below them, where the machine gun nest was obscured by the line of the cliff edge. "O'Connor, can you use that –" pointing at the gun "- to distract the gunners?"
O'Connor nodded and slapped his pouch. "I've got two grenades as well, I'll try and throw them to the fence." He unslung his rifle and began shuffling forward towards the cliff edge. Around them the remaining team members were preparing crossbows and spears, spreading out and creeping forward. Tense with anticipation, they waited for Lily and the Gorgon, and the first alliance of ravagers and their prey since the Quickening.