Kings of the Night
Page 41
Chapter 21.
“You’re sure now?” asks The General.
I nod, again.
“Why do we all have to be in the room together?” he asks.
“I don’t know. It’s just what he told me to tell you.”
“It’s a trap” says Marx. “It’s obvious. The microphone didn’t work, he didn’t want us to hear what you were saying. He thinks he can destroy us all.”
“Is that right?” says The General, turning on me. “Is it a trap?”
“Nooooo” I say quietly. “No, he agreed to do this. I don’t know why else he had to do this stuff.”
“It’s all right” says Marx. “I’ll handle it. Put him in a room with me and these band guys, and I’ll make sure he delivers.”
“But he said…” I start, worried.
“Never mind what he said.” He turns to Marks. “Put him in a room with the band guys, and I’ll join him. I’ll take it from there.”
She shrugs. “Whatever you say”. She gets out her phone, and murmurs some instructions into it. “Right” she says, “We’re having him moved now. Come with me.” As they start walking, she says to him “You better get this right, Marx” but he just laughs. “Or what?” They walk on together in silence, disappearing through a small door towards God knows which part of this building.
The General raises his eyebrows at me. “Well, I guess we should have a drink” he says, “not much else we can do.” That is a very good idea.
The three of us sit silently at the large wooden table, each with a large glass of whisky in our hands. The General keeps glancing nervously at his phone. I’m wondering how annoyed Mike will be when he finds out we didn’t do what he asked. Jason is silent, pensive. Behind us, the same two guards stand alert, immobile, by the entrance door. “Perhaps I should call Sara” says The General. But he doesn’t do anything. Jason starts drumming the table with his fingers, looking up at me occasionally. I swill the remainder of the whisky in my glass, looking down into it, wondering what happens next. The General picks up his phone, taps a few keys, puts it to his ear for a second, then drops it. He turns to one of the guards. “You” he says, “go and find out what’s happening over there.” The guard nods, clicks his heels together and walks purposefully in the direction that Sara and Marx went.
“Another drink?” asks The General. He doesn’t wait to answer, but leans over and fills our glasses. His hands are shaking slightly. The whisky touches the back of my throat, stings it and I close my eyes to enjoy the feeling. Jason has stopped tapping, he rolls the whisky around his glass, not drinking. He takes a deep breath and looks at me. “Where’s Nadia?” he asks.
Me and The General look at each other, but we don’t have a chance to answer. The centre of the table suddenly changes, comes alive, and we all sit back, startled. It turns a deep blue and flashes a couple of times, and I realise that it’s a screen, built in there, made to look like antique wood. It flashes again and then an image appears. It’s Sara Marks, down to her shoulders, but she looks awful. Her hair, her raven black hair is singed and red, there are streaks of blood on her face and her hand is clutching her right shoulder. She’s panting, out of breath. Behind her there are just lights, red and blue, flashing brightly and quickly. There are flashes, white light, like lightning, streaking across the room. And there’s smoke, so much smoke everywhere. The noise is deafening, harsh, heavy blows, crashes and bangs, shuddering and scraping. “Jesus, help us” shouts Sara, and her face is gone, as something flies across where she was, some torn, deadly piece of metal, flashing colours in the light. And then she’s back, holding on to the screen, and we can see a huge gash in her shoulder, blood pouring out but she needs to use both hands to steady herself, she can only let herself bleed.
“Jesus, can you hear me, help us, please! It’s all gone to hell in here!” she screams. The General leans across the screen, “What happened? What the hell happened?” he shouts.
“God knows! I don’t know!” she pants, the life draining from her face. “Draman, he did this thing with the band, and then him and Marx, they kind of… I don’t know. They’re all dead! They’re all fucking dead! Everyone started dying, then everything started exploding. Please, for God’s sake, help me, I’m dying here!”
“Just open the door! Use the emergency code!” Jason’s screaming too, his whole body shaking like a leaf. “I can’t! I can’t! It doesn’t fucking work! You’ll have to get down here! Open it from the outside! Now! Please!” The General looks at us. Jason’s up on his feet. “Come on!” he says, grabbing The General’s arm. “Let’s go!” The General’s looking at him, but he’s not moving. “But what… we don’t know what’s in there…”
“We’ll have to take the risk!” shouts Jason. “You can’t just let her die…”
“No, no, no, we can’t do it, it’s too dangerous” The General’s shouting, shaking, holding his whisky glass, trying to bring it to his lips, but he can’t. “We’ll have to evacuate. Must start the emergency procedure…” He looks round, confused, sees the guard, starts walking towards him, but Jason grabs him, holds him back, “We’re not leaving without them!”
The lights in the room start flickering, off, on, off on, off. It’s pitch black for a second then they come back on, unsure, flickering all the time.
“Nadia!” We all turn back to the screen at Sara’s voice. “Nadia! Open the door! Please! Open the door!” Sara’s moved away from the screen and we can see her at the locked door, and through the glass panel, the ghostly image of Nadia’s face, staring at her impassively from the other side. “Nadia! Pull the lever! Open the door! Please!” With what looks like the last of her strength Sara is banging on the glass screen, banging at Nadia’s image. And Nadia does nothing. Just on her lips you can make the faint trace of a smile. Then there’s a sudden flash, a huge explosion, and the screen goes blank.
“Oh, no, Jesus, God, no!” shouts The General. “They may be all right” Jason tries, uncertain. “They’re not all right” I find myself saying. “There’s no way.” We look at each other. The guard is suddenly there, standing by The General’s side. “Sir, we need to move. The place is becoming unstable. I’ve started the emergency evacuation procedure, but nothing seems to be happening. I don’t know why. Quick, please, come with me.” There’s an urgency in his voice.
“Yes, yes, of course” mutters The General, allowing himself to be led away. The guard glances at us. “You guys better come too if you want to survive.” Unspeaking, we follow, as the lights grow dimmer, as we enter a small corridor leading off the main room. It’s completely dark in here, the guard guiding us with a torch as we follow the twists and turns leading us to God knows where. The guard’s in front, followed by The General, then Jason, with me at the back. There’s a crack and a jolt, and I look behind me to see a flash of light in the corridor, round the last bend, and a swift movement, I don’t know what of, but instinctively I duck, and I grab Jason and pull him down with me, just as something shoots above our heads, something small and dark, bathed in white light, screeching as it passes. And then there’s a scream, and a crack, and then silence. The corridor is bathed in dim, shaky light as Jason and me look at each other, and get up unsteadily. “What the hell was that?” I ask but Jason doesn’t even bother to answer. He picks his way forward. “General?” he asks, but there’s no reply. “General? … Shit. Ouch. What was… oh Jesus. Oh God…”
“What? What’s going on?” I ask. I look up at Jason’s silhouette, kneeling in front of something, but I can’t make out what it is. Jason turns towards me. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.” Uncertainly I move towards him. “Don’t look down” he says as I reach him. I look down to see the bloodied, mangled body of The General, his chest ripped apart, organs hanging out, and his head… his head reduced to a grinning skull, with just the eyes left in the sockets, everything else gone. “What the….?” I ask. “I told you not to look down” he says quietly, “come on.”
“
What about the guard?” I ask. Jason shakes his head and moves forward, holding the guard’s torch, and so I follow, making my way behind him through the bloody maze.
And suddenly there’s light ahead, not artificial light, but daylight, something ahead and we look at each other and we start running, and as we run I can start to feel the heat behind me, I glance back and there’s something coming, yellow and orange, a fireball, rushing at light speed towards us and I run, faster, as fast as I can, pushing Jason, pulling him as we get closer and closer, and the heat is intense, it’s immense, it’s overwhelming and we’re not going to make it and
We’re falling. Out into the light. Outside. Falling away, running, falling, escaping, and then we collapse, unable to go any further and I’m holding onto my chest wanting it to stop hurting so much, my clothes are black and charred, like I’ve been burned and I look at Jason and he looks at me and he grins. “Well that was fucking close” he says and I laugh and we look back. There at the warehouse, it’s burning, it’s dying, fire enveloping it, escaping through all the windows and doors, its wooden frame slowly turning black, and even from this distance we can feel its heat, growing more and more intense, lighter and lighter in the pale afternoon sky until suddenly it explodes and we both duck, feeling fire fly over us, pieces of wood land around us, the heat engulf us.
And then there’s silence. As if planned, rain starts falling, engulfing the old, destroyed warehouse, putting out the flames, calming down the destruction. Jason sighs. “They’re all dead, then, I guess.”
“I’m sorry” I say.
He looks at me. “You’re sorry? I’m sorry. It’s your brother who was in there” and for the first time, I feel a pang of loss, something missing.
“Hello boys”
We both look up, startled, and there, somehow, she is standing there, Nadia, her hair burnt, black marks on her face, blood running down her arms, her clothes blackened and burnt but she is smiling.
“Nadia!” I cry, jumping up. “How the hell did you…”
But Nadia puts her finger to her lips to silence me, and steps forward, giving me a huge, strong hug.
“Hello, baby brother” she says softly and I step back. “But…?” She nods, smiling. “Yes, it’s me.”
“Mike?” I ask. Jason jumps up. “Mike???” he says.
Nadia laughs and nods. “You know, there are no rules about staying in a man’s body. And I just fancied a change. That’s why I had Nadia wait outside that room, whilst, well, everything went on.”
“Now” he smiles at me, “you can finally have some fun with the love of your life.”
“But…” I start, “you and me… fall in love?”
Nadia grins. “No fucking way. You know I don’t believe in love. Now sex, there’s something different, definitely up for that…” and she sees my shocked face. “Jesus! Not with you! That would be too weird.” He looks at Jason. “What do you reckon? Sleeping with a man in a woman’s body?”
He laughs as Jason can’t find the words to reply, and he puts his arm around my shoulder. “Now, baby brother, this time we are going to do things properly. I figure we’ve done enough here. Let’s get out of here, South America, Peru maybe, we can set ourselves up there and really have some fun. What do you think?”
“God yes!” I laugh, and we start walking down the long drive away from the warehouse. Then a thought strikes me. “Look, could we stop off at this tattoo parlour first? I’ve got some kind of, well, unfinished business there.”
“Sure” laughs Nadia. “A man has to have a tattoo right.” She looks at Jason. “Fancy joining us? Going to South America, I mean. Not the tattoo parlour.”
He looks uncertain and then nods. “Yeah, sure, why not. It’s all gone to shit here anyway. But you know, I was thinking, Mark, I mean, John… Gary, you remember you threw him over the cliff when we first tried to kill him? Right. Well I was thinking, he almost died didn’t he… well, that was after he had had the procedure run on him, right…”
Nadia smiles, “so, he may have switched bodies? Is that what you’re thinking?”
Jason nods, gravely.
“Great!” smiles Nadia. “Good to know there’s still evil in the world to combat. Our first mission. Find out who he’s become, and destroy him. Deal?”
Jason smiles. “Deal.”
“Okay, great” I say. “But listen, about the sex thing…”
“Forget it” says Nadia.
###
The End
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