by Heide Goody
Glass crunched beneath a boot. Okay, it was the second option. Rod craned his neck to look through the uprights of the cross trainer. The man had his rifle slung low and held a grenade in his left hand.
Rod cursed silently. If that was a high explosive grenade then he was as good as dead. If it was a smoke grenade or a flash-bang then Rod might lose any advantage he currently had.
“I struggle to understand what you’re doing sometimes,” said the King of Crimson, leaning against a support column behind Rod.
The soldier didn’t turn. It seemed the King was invisible to everyone but Rod. Maybe that meant the King didn’t even exist. Perhaps Rod hadn’t even been to Carcosa. Perhaps he’d spent the night madly digging his way out of the collapsed tunnel and squatting under bridges until he had emerged five minutes ago by the canal with a rich delusional world in his head. Perhaps.
“Can’t you distract him for me?” Rod hissed.
“I am not your servant,” the rotted creature hissed back. “I am a king, after all.”
The soldier stepped over a treadmill, readying to pull the pin on the grenade.
Rod reached between the King’s legs to the bank of power sockets in the support column. He flicked on as many of them as he could with one motion. Training machine consoles flickered, a TV screen came on and there was the whir of machinery.
The soldier gave an audible, “Wha’?” and looked around.
Rod came up and shot him twice – clean, measured shots. Both in the chest, striking body armour. The soldier stepped back in surprise. He must have trodden on the moving treadmill because his legs whipped from under him and he half-cartwheeled, half-rolled away, noisily colliding with a rack of weights.
Rod moved forward swiftly, both hands supporting his pistol, checking his peripherals as he approached.
The soldier shouted, “No! No!” but it wasn’t at Rod. The urgency and tone were wrong.
The grenade, thought Rod. The bugger had dropped it, perhaps pulled the pin as he fell. Rod spun about, hurrying back towards any cover.
The explosion was a sharp, ear-rattling crack. The light of the flash-bang was enough to disorientate Rod but, with his back turned, not enough to temporarily blind him. He doubled back again immediately. The soldier was still on the floor, on his back, breathing hard and blinking, his hands moving to his rifle as his training kicked in.
“Drop it! Drop it!” Rod yelled, pistol pointed. His voice was a wobbly muffle in his own ears. Either the soldier couldn’t hear, or chose to ignore him – closing a hand around the trigger grip of his rifle. Rod shot him, in the face, one shot. The man fell still.
“Stupid bugger,” said Rod as he swept the area for more hostiles.
Seeing none, he grabbed the soldier’s body by his chest pack and dragged him out of the gym, into the arcade, and into a corner. One last check for combatants, then Rod hurriedly went through the soldier’s things. He loosened the man’s helmet, took the personal radio ear-piece from the man and put it in his own ear.
“—team move up. Bravo team clearing the flyers. Launch all GLAMS. Get Dr Kaur and the Murray girl in there.”
“Murray girl?” Rod said out loud. He set aside the man’s SA80 rifle for his use. It was fitted with an underslung grenade launcher, which might be handy.
Another voice cut across the channel, screaming in pain and fear.
Rod grimaced and began to remove the body’s body armour and combat webbing. Undressing a corpse was awkward and difficult, like undressing a drunk friend at the end of a long night out – the passivity of the limp body felt like deliberate obstructiveness.
“Human hostile spotted,” came another voice. Rod immediately stopped and picked up the rifle. “Rooftop of buildings above Waterside Walk. Little dot of a thing. Shit—!”
The voice went quiet. Once Rod was sure the hostile they were talking about wasn’t him, he re-checked his surroundings and resumed stripping the corpse. He swapped his jacket for the body armour and webbing. There were spare ammo magazines. There was blue tape around some of them. He looked inside. The rounds were tipped with a dark shiny blue. Venislarn killers. The soldier had a half dozen grenades for the launcher. There were a couple of black striped grenades Rod didn’t recognise. He read the designation on the side and thought of the hovering drones he’d glimpsed. GLAMS. Grenade Launched Aerial Mine System.
“Cool,” he said, impressed in spite of himself.
The constant gunfire sounded nearer. He could mentally picture the team of soldiers on the path between the Mailbox and the Cube, pepper-potting their way along the restaurant fronts towards the Cube and Rod’s current position.
“Charlie nine,” called a voice over the radio. “Charlie nine check in. Your current position?”
Rod momentarily regarded the poor idiot sprawled beneath him.
“He looks so peaceful,” said the King in Crimson.
“Shut up,” said Rod. There was big bloody hole to the right of the dead man’s nose, and his eye socket had been pretty much sucked into the wound. He didn’t look anything like peaceful. Rod took his spoils and scurried on through the building.
06:01am
Prudence Murray didn’t have much use for being afraid. In her short life she’d seen a lot of death and destruction, and not enough of the flowers and stars she’d hoped for when she and Steve had set out. In the face of the random and senseless violence she’d witnessed, Prudence had felt more anger than fear. This was her world, and each part of it seemed to be falling apart even as she looked at it. How could she be anything but angry?
But the spluttering bang of the soldiers’ guns, the explosions and the screams of both men and Venislarn surrounding her were too startling to be ignored. She recoiled from each new shocking noise, and found herself clinging to the horrible Kathy Kaur as they were dragged from one unsafe hiding hole to another.
A Voor-D’yoi Lak peeled one man apart, seemingly just to see what his insides looked like, then danced off on tumbling limbs to find another victim. Although Kathy and the nearby soldiers were talking loudly and tersely into their communicators, giving and receiving orders, it felt like all order had vanished from the world.
Prudence wished she knew where Steve was.
“Forward!” barked a soldier. Prudence was dragged with Kathy to the next position.
On the level below, a soldier tumbled into the canal in the grip of something shapeless and slimy. Prudence watched, but he didn’t come up again. There was an explosion above, and little hard chunks of something rained down on them, brittle and sharp.
“To the door!” the soldier shouted.
In a dash that felt too long and dangerous, Prudence was pulled to the entrance of the big Cube building, soldiers all around her. There was an abrupt change in sound as they ran into a big lobby area, as though the fighting and the explosions all belonged outside and couldn’t intrude here. The soldiers even stopped to regain their breath, check their weapons and evaluate their position.
A soldier whose face was grey with cement dust all down one side, apart from where it had mingled with blood from a small cut, put his hand to his ear and then nodded. “Bravo team have taken significant losses and are going to withdraw to the forming up point.”
Kathy Kaur shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. We’re here.”
She pressed the button for the lift on the wall. The little round button lit up when she pressed it. Prudence found herself thinking despite everything – what they’d done to Yang and the concrete fish and the way she was tied to Kathy by a plastic strap that hurt her wrist – despite all that, she thought a little round button that lit up was a beautiful little thing. It wasn’t flowers, or stars, but it was something.
There was a ding, as befitted a little round light, and doors opened. The lift was empty, obviously empty, but the soldiers checked it anyway. Kathy stepped in, pulling Prudence with her. Kathy jiggled the heavy bomb device she wore on her back.
“Time?” she asked.
<
br /> “Six oh-one,” said a soldier.
“Twenty-two minutes until Yoth-Bilau appears and the Soulgate closes for good,” she said without emotion.
“We’ll maintain our position here.”
Kathy pressed one of the buttons on the large panel of illuminated buttons. It lit up. Lots of shiny buttons on the lift wall. Prudence itched to touch them.
* * *
Rod’s plan had been to cut through the lower level of the building, round to the far street and away round to the Library. Until the mention of the ‘Murray girl’ changed everything. Whether it was Morag or her baby girl, it meant either his colleague or the Venislarn anti-Christ was in the building, which meant something was afoot.
“The exit is that way,” the King in Crimson pointed out.
Rod didn’t bother to comment.
He now wore the dead soldier’s armour and combat webbing over his shirt. His jacket was folded neatly and left in the doorway by the gym. It was only a cheap suit jacket from Burton’s, but he was loath to leave it. He carried the SA80 rifle, a hi-ex grenade loaded in its underslung launcher.
Knowing he might regret it at any instant, he crept up the glass spiral stairs from the lower canalside arcade to the upper walkway entrance on the ‘true’ ground level. Progressing through three-dimensions in what was an essentially transparent environment made covering one’s angle extremely difficult, but he progressed swiftly and purposefully.
When he rounded the corner to the final flight, he saw six men in the main lobby. All of them were turned to face closing lift doors. Rod caught a fleeting glimpse of two figures inside the lift: the curvaceous Kathy Kaur with some bulky snail shell thing on her back, and a shorter, slighter figure with a mass of untidy coppery hair. Too short to be Morag, but surely too tall to be Morag’s girl.
“Dr Kaur and the girl in the lift,” said one of the soldiers. Rod heard it both out loud and in his earpiece.
One of the soldiers turned. Rod was already aiming, having picked the three he was going to take down before he retreated out of shot, fired his grenade, and re-engaged.
“Give me the girl and no one gets hurt! Much!” screeched a high-pitched voice.
“Tiny hostile!” someone yelled. They began firing, off to the side.
It was a gift of a distraction. Rod shot one soldier, a three-round burst to the lower back. He switched to a second target and repeated it. Shouts or screams were lost in the gunfire.
Steve the Destroyer, the high-pitched screecher, bounced off a counter and pirouetted towards a soldier who had just discovered that shooting a high energy doll was a difficult thing. Steve slashed out with his pencil weapon but missed the man’s shoulder by a good foot.
It didn’t matter. The creature’s antics had their attention. Rod put down a third soldier before any of them had spotted him. The one who did see him managed a single syllable before Rod put life limiting wounds in him. Steve bounced between the remaining two, and they nearly caught each other in their crossfire. They were both yelling, but Rod couldn’t make out what over the noise and the cross-chatter in his ear.
He pressed forward. They were two to his one, but he had momentum and confusion on his side. They’d be wondering what had happened to their comrades, thoughts flying too quickly for analysis. Rod shot one in the gut and shoulder. The final one finally saw Rod, turning his gun toward him. The shots went wild. The soldier started running for cover, but too late. Three shots – shoulder, rib and thigh – and he crashed down against a decorative pillar.
Rod climbed the final step into the lobby. Most of the men were dead; the others soon would be. He separated the dying from their weapons. There were no words of comfort he could offer them, no credible lies about help being on its way.
Only when he was sure the area was clear did Rod check himself. No wounds, no grazes.
Steve the Destroyer stood on a dead man’s chest and repeatedly plunged his pencil spear into the man’s eye. Rod picked a spot to kneel, check his ammo and consider the surrounding area.
“The man’s dead,” said Rod.
“He’s dead when I say he’s dead, fleshing!” crowed the blood-spattered imp.
06:03am
Prudence pressed one of the buttons in the lift. It lit up and she felt a huge satisfaction. Kathy yanked her hand away.
“What are you doing?”
“I pressed a button.”
“You don’t press a button!”
Prudence glared at her. “You pressed a button.”
“I’m in charge,” said Kathy. “I know where we’re going.”
“I wanted to press a button.”
“You do what you’re told. Did no one ever teach you any manners?”
Prudence thought about the question. “No. My mummy taught me to stay safe and to not wander far, and to not poke things from other dimensions.”
“You also shouldn’t push buttons unless you’re told you can.”
Prudence looked at the woman intently. Kathy Kaur wasn’t her mum. She quickly pressed another button on the panel just to see it light up.
“Jesus!” said Kathy and yanked her back again, hard. The strap around Prudence’s wrist twisted into her flesh and burned.
“Ow!” squealed Prudence and the sound turned all by itself into a little cry.
Kathy sighed loudly. She turned Prudence round and inspected her wrist. “No permanent damage.”
“You hurt me.”
Kathy’s expression became difficult to read. She brushed the shoulder of Prudence’s T-shirt, and the short trousers she was wearing. Prudence had adjusted them several times in the night as they’d become tighter and tighter. Kathy looked at Prudence’s grubby bare feet.
“What are you?”
Before Prudence could answer the lift dinged. Kathy drew the little pistol holstered at her belt. “This is your doing,” she said.
The door opened. Kathy repeatedly tapped a button marked with double arrows and nervously watched the grey carpeted corridor outside.
There was a series of wet thumps coming from somewhere. The door closed.
“How many levels are there in hell?” Kathy said, but Prudence could tell she was talking to herself.
The doors closed again.
“That’s what happens if you press buttons,” said Kathy.
Prudence looked at the two lit floor buttons on the panel and wondered if she could get away with pressing more.
* * *
Soon enough, Steve tired of mutilating the man’s face. Rod had switched out his ammo to a full clip of Venislarn killers and tried to make sense of the cross-chatter on his earpiece. There was a lot of confusion. As best as he could work out, Charlie team were holding their position, Bravo team was fighting off a skrendul, whatever that was, and it appeared Rod had wiped out most if not all of Alpha team. There was no mention of a Delta team, or an Echo or a Foxtrot. Rod decided to take that as a good sign.
The two voices on the chat that he recognised were Captain McKenna (who Rod knew as Malcolm: he used to work security detail for the consular mission before turning traitor) and Kathy Kaur. Her signal cut out intermittently from inside the rising lift.
“—child pressed all the buttons,” she said. “We saw a shadow of Yo Khazpapalanaka on the fifteenth floor. Screwed with our perception of time for a … felt like a week. Do not press another button, damn—!" The chatter went quiet.
“Is Morag up there?” Rod asked Steve.
Steve stepped away from his stabby pencil fun. “I don’t know, morsel! But I’m going up there to save the kaatbari. Who’s the big guy?” He pointed with the bloody end of his pencil.
Rod glanced over his shoulder. The King in Crimson stood in his shadow, rot blackened limbs, weeping wounds on his chest and face, the stained mask quivering with the King’s rattling breath.
“This is— Wait, you can see him?”
“Course I can see him, foolish lump! What other big guy would I be referring to?”
The outer doors to the lobby imploded. Something huge charged inwards. Girders popped, the ceiling actually rippled, ceiling tiles and light fittings burst from their housing as the monster powered into the building.
With a kick against the stair support, Rod propelled himself laterally across the floor away from the destruction. He scrabbled on hands and feet for an instant, slid into a firing position, and began shooting at the thing before it could clear itself from the rubble.
For a Venislarn it had a surprisingly regular appearance. It had two feet, two arms and a head, and no extra weird bits like tentacles or pollen sacs or fungoid frills. It was still definitely a monster. It was fifteen feet high at least, and its overall body shape was a round-topped cone. Crease lines marked its eyes, mouth, neck and groin, but it was otherwise featureless. It appeared to be made of stone: weathered and pocked stone. It was a fifteen feet high, walking, thrashing, concrete bollard.
It was also bullet proof, even to blue john Venislarn killers. Rod shifted his aim from chest to neck joint to eyes, but only struck stone.
“You could punch it,” said the King in Crimson conversationally.
“And let you have my soul?” Rod grunted.
The creature marched forward. The top of its head was in the ceiling, but that offered no resistance. It carved through metal, plastic and glass like an upside-down icebreaker.
“Skren-dul!” cried Steve, as he hauled himself over the wreckage and charged the thing. It took Rod an instant to realise Steve was shouting its name, not a generic war cry (an instant during which Rod discovered the thing’s groin was almost impervious to bullets – he was testing it out methodically, section by section – with no Achilles heel in the trouser department).
Steve scrambled up its leg. The thing actually noticed the tiny doll. The skrendul could have just sat down and pulverised Steve, but instead swept its stone arm round and scooped him up. The creature’s mouth opened a crescent moon crack to eat Steve. Rod shot it in the mouth.