Son of Heaven Read Online Free PDF

warmth in which we exist… it’s not viable. Not long term,
anyway… It’s no more than a sideshow. I’d say the main event’s to come, wouldn’t you, Jake?’
    Only Jake didn’t want to say. He’d had this feeling in his gut the past week or so – a feeling that the presence of the strangers on the Wareham Road that morning had
fed, like tinder to the flame. A giddying sense of uncertainty. It was like they were all on the edge of a cliff. One single push was all that was needed and they’d be over the edge again and
falling.
    ‘I dunno…’ he began, but Tom took that moment to interrupt.
    ‘How we live, here in Purbeck… I’d say it was all pretty civilized, wouldn’t you? Tonight, for instance. Who here would have it different? Or do you forget how it was before the Collapse?’
    ‘No one forgets that,’ Will Cooper said, speaking from where he sat just across the table, ruddy-faced and dark-eyed, his sparse grey hair stretched thin across his sun-burnished
pate. ‘None of us wants that back. But Geoff’s right. We can’t stand still. We ’ave to move on. This is all well and good, but it feels to me like we’re all
just sitting on our arses waiting to die.’
    There was a strong murmur at that. Some were in favour of what Will had said, but most were against. Such talk was old ground, of course. Time and again they had sat here late into the night, in
the light of the old log fire, drinking the landlord’s best ale and chewing this one over. But tonight there seemed a sudden urgency to their talk.
    ‘Things’re changing,’ Dick Grove grumbled, shaking his head in a foreboding manner. ‘Word comin’ up the road is that’s something’s ’appening out
east.’
    ‘Rumours,’ Tom said. ‘Nothing solid.’
    ‘Maybe,’ Geoff answered him, ‘but some’at’s ’appenin’, make no mistake. And perhaps it’s time it did. We’ve got too cosy. Too
complacent.’
    ‘You think so?’ Tom asked. ‘You think we’ve got soft?’
    ‘Not soft so much as accepting .’
    ‘Accepting?’
    ‘Oh, I’m not advocating a return to how things were. God help us, no! It was like bleedin’ Sodom and Gomorrah, remember? The Age of Waste. A whole society living beyond its
means. Yes, and we’re better off without it. But Mankind has to move on. It’s in our natures. It’s how we’re wired genetically. To sit on our arses, as our good friend Will
so eloquently put it, that just isn’t an option!’
    ‘You would say that,’ John Lovegrove chipped in, pointing a long, bony finger at his friend, ‘but that’s cos you’re a ’istorian. I’m just a
farmer and I rather like things as they are. Things weren’t good afore the Fall. Sod’em and Gomorrah, like you said, and all on live TV!’
    There was laughter at that, yet as it faded Jake found his attention caught by the music drifting in from outside. It was Coldplay. ‘Everything’s Not Lost’. He smiled at the
irony, then looked back, his eyes moving from face to face, tracing the circle of his friends. As Geoff talked, they looked on, their ruddy faces intent, their eyes aglow in the fire’s warm,
flickering light. They were good men, every last man jack of them, but right now they were afraid. He could sense it. Something had changed. None of them knew what, but there was the feel of it in
the air.
    Change. It was coming. Only none of them knew from which direction.
    Tom leaned close, speaking to his ear. ‘I’ve got to go. See you in the morning, eh?’
    Jake nodded, looking on as Tom said his farewells, then went outside, back into the crisp late evening air.
    The bonfire had burned down. In the cleared space near where Old Josh sat behind his speakers, couples were slow dancing now, lost in the music, while overhead the moon sat full and large in the
cloudless sky, a pearled circle against the dark.
    Jake smiled. The world could fall apart and still people would be dancing.
    ‘Jake…?’
    He went across. Their table