Sheep

An antidote to Christmas fluffiness, a one-off (or maybe not?) short story of woolly eldritchness

The drone circled high above the rugged Yorkshire countryside. It was stealthed, painted the colour of a cloudy sky with ultra quiet props and coated glass in the camera lens to stop any telltale glints. Not that the lone hiker below would have noticed it. He was focussed on the field of sheep blocking his path. The camera lens zoomed in to show him beginning to climb the stile then pausing. He had clearly heard the rumours. Then with a gesture that said ‘bugger this, they’re only sheep’ as clear as if he’d spoken it out loud the man jumped down into the pasture and walked forwards, the red bobble on his woolly hat wobbling to and fro cheerily.

The sheep parted and the hiker strode on across the field, his arms swinging by his side. When he reached the middle of the flock a few ewes drifted in front of him, not exactly blocking his way but certainly drawing his attention. Making sure he didn’t notice what was clear from the drone’s eye view, that the sheep behind him were closing round to stop any escape. Once his path back was blocked more of the flock shuffled in front, completely circling him. They stood silently, four hundred eyes looking at the man in the middle who stopped then slowly turned around. He froze for a second, then made a desperate run towards the closest hedge. Two big rams charged at him, butting him hard in the hip. The man went down and fluffy white backs closed over him.

The drone came down to get a more detailed look. For a second the hat’s bobble was visible, a flash of red in the white. Then it was gone. A few seconds later the flock parted and there was no trace that a man had ever been there. The drone began to quarter the ground to pick up any remaining traces. One sheep looked up at it, then the entire flock followed its gaze. The drone hovered. It moved to the left and every slitted pupil tracked it. Then one ewe kicked up a stone with a lazy flick of a hoof and one of the rams back-heeled it with enormous force. It arced up, far quicker than the drone could dodge.

‘Fuck,’ shouted Tracy, the remote pilot, sitting at her desk three hundred meters below an unremarkable house in Chiswick. ‘The drone’s down. And that was a coordinated attack.’ She stared at the black screen in front of her.

‘It certainly looked to be,’ said the elderly man in the suit and tie standing behind her. He sighed. ‘Tarquin, please go and fetch the Minister.’

‘Are you sure, sir?’ Tarquin looked to be just out of university, in urgent need of pharmaceutical strength pimple cream, and suddenly very nervous.

‘I am invoking Omega Protocol, level three,’ the man in the suit said calmly. There were audible gasps from the other few people sitting around the little office.

‘Is there enough evidence for a response like that, sir?’ Tarquin asked quietly.

‘How many sheep are there in Britain? Or in Europe, or the world? Does this new behaviour extend to cows? Horses? Dogs and cats? We may need to invent a new level for this one, but as level three is the highest we currently have it will suffice. Now, the Minister please.’

‘Yes, sir.’

*****

The right honourable Sir Norman Battley, Minister for Internal Security, liked the people to know he was a career politician. By this the people understood that he had entered politics to further his own career, and particularly his lucrative arms consultancies. He eyed the underground office with distaste.

‘Have you redecorated since the seventies?’ he said, pointing at the flock wallpaper and ghastly brown and orange carpet.

‘No, Minister,’ said the man in the suit. ‘That would risk leaving a paper trail of invoices. This department operates under the highest level of official secrecy.’

‘Well, I’ve signed the Act,’ said the Minister, ‘so why don’t you get on with it and tell me what all this is about? I’ve had to put off a Middle Eastern trade delegation for this.’

‘I must inform you, Minister, that we are covered by security several levels higher than the Official Secrets Act of 1989.’

‘I didn’t know we had higher levels of clearance. Why didn’t I know that? I’m a bloody Minister, you know?’

‘Of course you are, Minister,’ said Tarquin, handing him some tea in a china cup and saucer. ‘But you weren’t cleared to know about the higher levels of clearance. Almost nobody is.’

‘But that’s preposterous,’ Sir Norman spluttered.

‘But necessary,’ the man in the suit replied. ‘Now, Minister, please take a seat and Tarquin will give you a full briefing while you drink your tea.’

‘Shouldn’t I explain the security implications first?’ said Tarquin.

‘I rather think the Minister needs to know the important and salient facts as a matter of urgency. After all, he will be making the key decisions from this point. I will brief him fully on the security issues at an opportune moment.’ The man in the suit turned to Sir Norman. ‘If that’s all right with you, Minister?’

‘Yes, just get on with it.’ Sir Norman took a sip of tea. Tarquin and the man in the suit exchanged a glance as he did so. Tarquin gulped, then nodded.

Tracy dimmed the lights while Roger wheeled out the projector screen and Eric and Vanessa wrestled with the USB interface on the laptop projector. For once the power of Plug and Play worked first time.

‘You’re still using Windows 95?’ Sir Norman said in a disbelieving voice.

‘It’s completely secure now, Minister,’ Tarquin said. ‘All other security or terrorist organisations are using at least Windows 10. Or Macintosh. There isn’t a hacker left alive who can code a worm for this OS.’

‘They can’t all be dead, surely? 1995 was only thirty years ago,’ said Sir Norman.

‘I can assure the Minister that they are indeed all dead,’ said the man in the suit, ‘thanks to a particularly virulent reverse-Trojan hex we were able to engineer with some special assistance. Every one of them suffered a brain-stem infarction, so what you are now watching is utterly unknown to anyone outside of this room.’ He held up a hand to stall Sir Norman. ‘Please, Minister, watch the recording. There will be plenty of time for questions once the crisis is resolved. Tracy, be so kind as to press play.’

The video of the hiker and the sheep appeared on the projector screen.

Tarquin watched Sir Norman’s facial expression shift from carefully concealed boredom through amusement, then shock to finally end on horror. Tracy raised the lights while Roger, Eric and Vanessa put the projector and screen away. Everyone except Tarquin, the man in the suit, and Sir Norman quietly left the room, closing the door behind them.  

‘But, but, where did he go?’ said Sir Norman once they were alone. ‘They can’t have just eaten him. Sheep aren’t carnivores and there would still have been blood and, well, bits left.’

‘Well spotted, Minister,’ said the man in the suit.

‘And that stone, they aimed it. I thought only apes used tools?’

‘Some birds do, corvidae mainly,’ said Tarquin. ‘And a few other mammals. But again, well spotted, Sir. You’ve grasped some of the niceties very quickly.’

Sir Norman visibly puffed up. ‘Well, you don’t get a portfolio like Internal Security without being quick on the uptake, you know.’

‘Quite, Minister. It is a relief to have someone of calibre giving the orders. Should I continue with the briefing?’

‘Yes, absolutely. Give me everything.’

‘Of course. So this is the fourth known ovine related disappearance, or ORD as we’re calling them. But the first we have video confirmation of.’

‘Wait, I don’t understand,’ said Sir Norman.

‘We very strongly suspect there have been three previous ORDs, but we have only now been able to absolutely confirm this, Minister.’

‘No, I mean I don’t understand the word. What’s ovid?’

‘Ovine, Minister,’ said Tarquin. ‘From the Latin. It means sheep.’

‘Well why not bloody well say sheep then?’

‘ORD is a better acronym than SRD, Sir,’ replied Tarquin. ‘And if it does get released to the public all our research shows they put more faith in acronyms based at least partly on Latin, or Greek. It makes them sound scientific.’

‘Oh. Well, how long has it been going on then?’

‘Just under a month, Minister. To the best of our knowledge.’ The man in the suit shifted to look Sir Norman straight in the eyes. ‘We fear they have developed a collective consciousness. A herd mind, if you will.’

‘Which means parallel processing,’ added Tarquin. ‘Which means they’ve got a lot cleverer, and the flock’s IQ is increasing exponentially as it grows. And there’s a lot of sheep, Sir. If we can’t stop them it’s possible they’re on the evolutionary fast-track to becoming an ovine minor deity-class being.’

‘Well, why don’t we just shoot the flock then? Seems simple enough. Send in a couple of SAS squads with light assault vehicles. Turn the buggers into minced lamb. Then stick the brains under microscopes so the boffins can work out why it happened.’

‘It’s not just this flock, Minister.’

‘How many?’

‘We think it’s spread through most of North Yorkshire, Sir. The worry is what happens if it gets to the Scottish Highlands. Or Wales.’

‘Shit,’ said Sir Norman.

*****

The Flock marched down the Great North Road, referred to on modern maps as the A1, taking up all the lanes on both sides as well as the central reservation. The village of Leeming Bar had been evacuated using a story of a gas leak, carefully designed to be an obvious cover up with a secondary story of a nuclear convoy coming through leaked as the real reason. As long as people thought they’d found the conspiracy they never bothered to dig any deeper.

‘There’s no more settlements on the road itself before Langthorpe, Minister,’ shouted the man in the suit over the noise of the helicopter’s rotors. They were hovering about two hundred metres above the road.

‘How many of the fluffy bastards are there?’ asked Sir Norman.

‘Around two hundred thousand in Yorkshire, Minister,’ said Tarquin. ‘We think there’s around fifty thousand down there now though.’

One of the soldiers sitting in the chopper put a hand to his ear. ‘The pilot’s seen something, Sir,’ he said to the man in the suit. ‘Taking us around for a look.’ The helicopter banked uncomfortably tightly, then headed north to the centre of the flock. Sir Norman looked ill.

The ram walking in the centre of the flock was bigger and more primeval than any modern sheep had a right to be.

‘It must be two meters high,’ said Tarquin.

‘At least,’ said the man in the suit. ‘Impressive horn structure, I’ve never seen a triple curl like that before.’

‘I thought fewer tenacles were traditional for ovines too?’

‘Indeed they are, Tarquin,’ said the man in the suit.

‘My God,’ moaned Sir Norman.

‘No, Minister,’ said the man in the suit.’ Their God. It’s starting to manifest. At least we know where the hikers disappeared to.’

‘We do?’ said Sir Norman.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Tarquin. ‘This makes it pretty obvious actually. The Ram must have built itself up from the offered flesh of the hikers. And it has an infernal aura, so they were sucked directly into one of the lower realms whereupon their somatic and psychic essences were decorporated to form the minor-deity manifestation down there.’

Sir Norman looked at Tarquin like he’d started speaking in tongues while he was ordering ham at a deli counter. ‘Well, we have to nuke it, surely?’

‘Oh, that won’t work now,’ said Tarquin. ‘It might even make things worse if it’s advanced to a point where it can incorporate atomic energy directly.’

‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s correct,’ said the man in the suit. ‘Well done, Tarquin, I see you’ve been doing some extra-curricular studying in your own time.’ Tarquin blushed and looked away.

‘I think we can skip marking assignments and get to what we do about that thing!’ A thin strand of spittle hung from Sir Norman’s lower lip. The man with the suit reached forwards with a handkerchief and dabbed it away, stuffing the handkerchief back in his pocket.

‘Unfortunately it’s rather simple now, Minister. We only have one course of action open before the Ram gathers enough of a Flock to present us with a serious problem. I need you to give an order authorising the use of a lupine incursion.’

‘A what?’

‘There isn’t time to explain in detail. The Ram is growing by the minute.’ They looked down. The Ram was nearly three meters high now. Its slitted pupils glowed a fiery red. ‘Please say the words, Minister. It has to be your instruction.’

Sir Norman Battley, Minister for Interior Security, cleared his throat. ‘I authorise, what was it again?’

‘The use of a lupine incursion, Minister.’

‘I authorise the use of a lupine incursion.’

 ‘Thank you. And if you just place your thumb here, Minister.’ The man in the suit took a metal disc the size of his palm from his pocket and held it out. A thumb-shaped depression was in the middle. Sir Norman pressed his thumb down into it.

‘Ouch! I say, that well bloody stung!’ A perfect, blood-red thumbprint remained on the disc when Sir Norman snatched his thumb back.

‘Excellent. Tarquin, the portable invoker, if you please.’

‘Already set up, Sir.’ Tarquin pushed a matt black cube about the size of a basketball forward with his foot. He turned to the soldier with the earpiece. ‘Tell the pilot to hold us absolutely steady,’ he said.

The man in the suit placed the disc with the thumbprint on top of the cube. It sat for a second then sank into the material, leaving no trace. After another couple of seconds, runes glowed red where it had been. The man in the suit placed his index fingers over two of them, then said a word which nobody could quite hear.

On the southbound carriageway of the A1, the air began to shimmer. The image of a cave’s mouth appeared. Eyes glowed yellow within, and the absolute archetype of a big, bad wolf padded out into the daylight. It was the size of a horse with fur like steel wool and teeth as long as your fist. It leaned back its head and howled, and all who heard it knew the fear of the first humans who heard the wolves howl in the darkness beyond the firelight. The smell of it hit like a solid thing even two hundred meters up. Primeval, stinking musk. Utterly savage and animalistic.

The Flock scattered to the four winds, sheep scampering away in every direction. The Ram faced the Wolf, and it was still the bigger of the two. But the Wolf had the weight of ten thousand years of stories behind it. Everyone knew that wolves ate sheep. It pounced, seizing the Ram by the throat, dragging it back inside the cave as it kicked and bleated. The cave mouth faded. Below on the A1 an opportunistic driver in an Audi A6 did ninety down the empty carriageway.

*****

They debriefed back in the office under Chiswick.

‘I’ll have to let the PM know, of course,’ said Sir Norman.

‘I’m afraid that will not be permissible,’ said the man in the suit.

‘But he’s the PM!’

‘Exactly, an elected official. So he will leave office at some point. Omega clearance doesn’t permit anyone who has left office to retain knowledge of Omega class operations.’

‘But, but I know about this operation.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And I’m leaving Parliament, I’m not standing at the next election. I’ve got a consultancy with the UAE arranged already.’

‘I’m sure the next Minister will be extremely appreciative of the arrangements you have made, Minister.’

‘This is preposterous. I’m leaving right now.’

The man in the suit said another word that couldn’t quite be heard and Sir Norman felt strange. Then he said ‘Stand still, Sir Norman Battley.’ And Sir Norman found he couldn’t move.

Tarquin wen carefully through the Minister’s pockets, removing his phone (not that it worked down here) and wallet. ‘Sorry, Minister,’ he said. ‘You drank the tea, you see, so now you’re susceptible to the geas. It’s the mandrake seeds in it.’ He fetched the black cube, shoving it across the floor with his foot. The man with the suit pressed his own thumb into a disc, laid it on top of the cube, and touched the runes that appeared.

This time the office with the flock wallpaper and ghastly carpet faded. Sir Norman and the man in the suit were standing in a forest of tall trees, with a full moon visible through high branches. They smelled the Wolf before they saw it, the primeval stink telling them it was there. It slunk out of the darkness, a deeper shadow in the black.

‘We have to pay for the services we receive from the Lupus,’ said the man in the suit. ‘And unfortunately it likes to hunt. Do try and give it a good chase, won’t you?’ He said another word, and Sir Norman regained the use of his limbs. The Wolf growled, low and menacing, and Sir Norman sprinted into the dark without a word. The man in the suit waited for a full count of twenty before he held the handkerchief with Sir Norman’s spit on it up to the Wolf’s nose. It howled, a sound of terror and death, then sprang forward into the shadows.

The man in the suit knelt down and did something to the black cube. Red runes glowed once more, and then he was standing in the underground office.

‘It’s a shame about Sir Norman,’ said Tarquin.

‘Not really,’ said the man in the suit. ‘He’s sold half the blueprints for the new amphibian lander to the highest bidder already.’

‘Oh. Which half?’

‘The decoys.’

‘Well I suppose that’s all right then.’

‘I think so, Tarquin, yes.’

‘Jolly good, sir. Shall I put the kettle on?

*****