Excerpt: The Black Sheep

Pip took them past regular piles of charred stone almost covered by grass now but still clearly set out in houses, buildings and streets.
“This is old Maplebeck, from before the Devastation.” Lorraine told them with her voice lowered to a whisper. “When the oil ran out people panicked and then there was plague and the panic became worse and people burned their neighbours and stole what they needed. And the world became a dark place.” It sounded like Ovine litany but it was a part of the story that neither Peter nor Colette had heard before. “The world became dark and power was lost and technology was lost. The world became dark and the people became fearful and many died. The plague took most but there was murder and strive across the whole earth until the Ovine and the Flock saved what was left, rising from the ashes of the old world and restoring conscience and structure to humankind where there was none.”
Pip snorted and it was clear that she’d heard it all before and didn’t believe it.
“How true is all that?” Colette asked. “I mean I’ve heard the stories of oil running out, famine and plague and the troubles that came after that. But that stuff about the Flock restoring humankind?”
“Well. There used to be things we can only dream of and the oil did run out and there was disease.” Lorraine shrugged. “Whether the disease was truly a plague we’ll never know but it killed billions and there was burning and people were very afraid. Maplebeck was completely destroyed and so were most of the big cities. There’s nothing left of Sheffield now but ruins. Some cities survived; Nottingham and Salisbury for example but most didn’t. Sometime after that people were living as best they could but it was a dark time and society as it was had disintegrated. There was no law, no structure, people were living in small groups and fighting amongst themselves. Later on the Ovine Brethren arrived with the Flock and started turning up all over the place, insisting on taking church services, stopping schools and imposing their own ideas on everyone. People accepted it all because it made a sort of sense and it meant they could pass their own responsibilities over to the Brethren. Oh they explained everything very well. Children shouldn’t be in schools because they’re needed in the fields or to help in the home, families should be together, all that sort of thing. Over time their suggestions became laws and then into fear and they ended up slipping into control of the country. I wonder sometimes, what would have happened if someone had challenged them right at the beginning, but no-one was organised enough to do it until it was too late.”
Peter stared at her. “It’s not the Flock’s fault.” He said quietly. “It’s the Brethren, they do it all.”
“You can hear them can’t you?” Pip stopped walking and considered the gangly boy who stopped beside her. “You can hear the Flock?”
Peter nodded, reluctantly and more than a little afraid of how she might react. “Ever since Salisbury.” He admitted.
“But you still ran away?”
“Yes. She told me to. She told me to go north, to the Hebrides and find the Black sheep who hold the key to the secrets of the Shining Place.” Peter shuffled his feet in the leaves, waiting for a reaction. Pip looked at Lorraine and then at Colette.
“You knew this?” She said to Colette.
“Yes, I did.”
“But you chose to say nothing?” Lorraine asked and Peter couldn’t tell if she was angry or upset or what.
“It wasn’t mine to tell.” Colette looked her straight in the eye defiantly.
Pip frowned at Peter but there was no anger or fear in her eyes, only concern and confusion. “She?”
“The ewe at the cathedral in Salisbury; she told me to go north when she spoke to me in my head.” Peter thought for a moment and decided to tell them everything. “She told me that I shouldn’t go to the coast but to go and find the Black sheep because they have the key to the Shining Place and that will free the Flock from the Brethren. Then she showed me the way to the East gate and helped us get out.”
“Was it just the one time? Or can you hear and speak to any of the Flock?” Pip asked and she started walking again, past the ruins of old Maplebeck.
“It was only the one time that one of the Flock spoke to me directly and just that time that I could talk back.” Peter walked alongside her, kicking at leaves and keeping his eyes down and his hands in his pockets. “But I heard them in Nottingham.”
“Ah.” Lorraine breathed behind him. “So that was it.”
Pip nodded to her. “I suspected something like that at the time. Go on Peter, what were they saying in Nottingham?”
“They were afraid and didn’t want to be there, most of them. Some were just following the herd.” He frowned as an idea struck him. “I think maybe they’re all different like people are and some can think more.”
“That does make an odd sort of sense.” Lorraine agreed from behind him as they reached the edge of Old Maplebeck and could just see the houses of new Maplebeck, with smoke rising gently from their chimneys and they could just see people moving about through the village. “We’ll say no more of this until we can talk with Robyn again.”