The Dark Master of Dogs

by Chris Ward

  He tried to give Suzanne a reassuring smile, but he felt nothing but a growing sense of dread. She started to get up, but before he could give her a chance to talk him out of it, he turned and ran from the room.

  The wooden stairs echoed underfoot as he hurried downstairs. The house was enormous, the floors connected by randomly located staircases which seemed designed only to confuse. He wondered if that was the point as he reached the landing below, turned left, found himself at a dead end, then turned to head back the other way.

  He passed a window, caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and paused to look.

  A car pulled into the driveway, and three men got out.

  None wore uniforms, but from the way they moved Patrick sensed danger. He turned and rushed back up the stairs, calling to Suzanne to get dressed. As he burst through the bedroom door he found her putting on a bra.

  ‘There are people here.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I didn’t stop to ask, did I? Get dressed quickly.’

  Suzanne threw on the clothes she had been wearing over the last couple of days and followed Patrick to the door.

  ‘I don’t know who they were,’ he said. ‘But they didn’t look—’

  Gunshots cut his words off dead, muffled through the floors below but still loud enough to make the door shudder in its frame.

  Patrick pulled Suzanne close. ‘Do you know if there’s a back way out?’

  Suzanne frowned for a moment, then nodded. ‘There’s that service corridor, isn’t there? The one that’s plainer than the others. Perhaps that’s what servants would have used.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Patrick regretted not preparing as Suzanne had. While she had wandered the house, getting familiar with its layout and uncovering whatever secrets it kept in its many rooms, he had sat in their bedroom and brooded over what to do, listening to an old radio Moose had provided, hoping some current news would cut through the endless loops of pre-recorded programs.

  He followed her to the end of the corridor, where she slipped through a door as thin as a cleaning closet. It opened out on a windowless, sparsely adorned corridor barely wide enough for two people to pass. At the end they found a staircase leading down.

  They had just reached the bottom when more gunshots rang out. Patrick glanced at Suzanne, who lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘Sounds like Moose is putting up a fight,’ she said.

  They carried on down. The gunshots came more frequently, echoing from the front of the house as though Moose were making a gradual retreat. The newcomers had to be DCA, but they couldn’t know how many people were here.

  A corridor at the bottom ended in another door. Suzanne cracked it, peering through. Patrick looked over her shoulder into a pantry which he knew connected to the main kitchen. The door opened out of a corner beside a larder. He remembered seeing the door from the other side but had assumed it was a closet for coats and shoes.

  Two doors led out of the pantry, one into the kitchen, the other into a porch and then out to a side terrace and a small car park where vehicles might once have stopped to make commercial deliveries, out of sight of both the front and back of the house. Patrick tapped Suzanne’s shoulder and pointed; she nodded her agreement.

  The door creaked as Suzanne pushed it open. Both froze for a moment, but no sounds came from the rest of the house. Maybe Moose was dead, and the DCA men had gone upstairs.

  ‘If we can get into the gardens, we can hide,’ Patrick whispered.

  Suzanne nodded, crossing the pantry to the back door and trying the door handle.

  It didn’t move.

  She looked back, a look of horror on her face. Locked, she mouthed.

  Patrick glanced around, looking for a key, and saw some hanging on hooks beside the door to the kitchen.

  It was only a few steps, but it might as well have been a mile.

  He glanced back at Suzanne, who appeared frozen to the spot. Patrick stared at the keys, then a sudden creak in the ceiling above galvanised him into action. He moved across to the door, peering at the faded tape stuck above each key: front door, loft, study, potting shed….

  He plucked the one labeled “pantry back door” just as the kitchen door opened and a burly man stepped through.

  At first the man seemed as surprised to see Patrick as Patrick was to see him.

  ‘Stop,’ he wheezed, as though terrified, hand reaching for a gun hostler on his hip.

  Patrick, who had entertained as many fantasies of punching out the DCA as anyone else, suddenly found himself useless. He tried to throw a punch, but it came out as a weak, half-open hand slap which glanced off the man’s shoulder as he turned, sheltering his body from the blow.

  Patrick swung again, this time catching the man in the side, but he had never punched anyone outside of school and it felt powerless, blunted by a spongy thickness that could be concealed body armour. The man already had something black in his hand, but then something blunt hit Patrick in the side of the face and he flinched away. Beside him, the man grunted, dropping to a knee. A blunt thud came again, and the man hit the floor.

  Suzanne stood there, breathing hard, holding a split bag of potatoes in her hand. One that had come loose had hit Patrick in the face, but the DCA agent now lay groaning between them, one hand clutching at air as it tried to reach his face.

  Patrick pointed at a dark patch slowly pooling out around the man’s side. ‘He’s bleeding, look.’

  ‘I didn’t do that!’

  ‘He must have been shot. Quickly, come on.’

  As though to cajole them into action, rapid footsteps came from overhead. Patrick, his hands shaking, pushed the key at Suzanne, who was nearer to the back door. She fumbled with it before getting it to fit, then finally they were through, into a porch hung with dusty coats and lined with Wellington boots.

  The back door was thankfully unlocked and they found themselves in a gravel car park. A road led around the front of the house, with a path leading down into the rear gardens. On this side a steep, wooded hill rose, a fence separating it from the garden. At the house’s rear, the garden was a series of stepped terraces lined by waist-high hedgerows which then opened out onto the wide rear lawn with the stream beyond.

  ‘There’s not much cover,’ Suzanne said. ‘But we don’t have much choice. If they were DCA, they’ll call for reinforcements.’

  Patrick pointed to the gardens opening out at the back of the house. On the far side, trees overhung the stream that bordered the other side of the grounds.

  ‘If we can get across that rear terrace, the river will give us cover.’

  ‘Let’s go. Just keep your head down.’

  He forced a smile, then pulled her forward and kissed her. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘Without you—’

  She grinned. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  Patrick went first, running low but staying close to the house, trying to avoid being seen from the windows. No further gunshots came, but he didn’t dare hope that the other two men he had seen were also dead.

  The house seemed to unfold ahead of him, as though dozens of extensions had been built on top of each other. Each time he reached a corner he expected to find himself at the back, only to find another dark alcove or patch of gravel as the house extended, more dirty windows peering back into rooms or corridors he had never seen.

  At last he reached a corner and found himself peering out on to a patio at the top of the terraced steps—

  And at the back of a man standing at the top of a staircase, a gun in his hand. Another stood a few steps farther ahead, looking out at the lawn below.

  ‘Double back?’ Patrick whispered to Suzanne, but the crunch of car tyres came from the gravel behind them. If the car was electric they wouldn’t have heard the engine, but since neither man turned, Patrick could only assume this was reinforcements come to help out.

  A thin line of hedgerow would give them cover if they could reach it, but they had to cover half the distance to the m
en across a paved patio. Patrick glanced at Suzanne, who nodded. With a terrified smile, she pushed him in the hip.

  ‘Boys first,’ she whispered, her voice trembling.

  Patrick took a deep breath, then ducked as low as he could, running in a squat so uncomfortable he had to keep moving forward or keel over. The back of the nearest man felt on top of him until he reached the hedge and ducked down. He glanced back, expecting Suzanne to be waiting by the wall, but she was right behind him, ducking down alongside, breathing hard, a hand over her mouth. Terrified eyes watched him, unblinking.

  Patrick crawled forward and risked a glance out from the edge of the hedgerow down a central stepped path that led down to the lawn. The nearest man had advanced a little farther, but the other had turned back, waving his gun. Patrick ducked in, praying he’d not been seen.

  ‘There’s footprints over here,’ came a muffled voice.

  Patrick remembered a patch of mud at the foot of the steps from when they had last ventured out. Perhaps the men had found their footprints or some belonging to Moose, but as he heard the nearest man jog down the steps he knew they had their chance. He glanced back at Suzanne and nodded.

  With a deep breath to steel himself, he broke from cover, running across the open space at the top of the steps, and ducking down again on the other side. Suzanne followed, squatting down behind him. Patrick risked another glance, and saw the men standing at the bottom of the steps, peering at the ground.

  From here the route to the stream was covered by the terraced hedges and then a stand of ornamental trees. Patrick waved Suzanne forward and they made their way down. They had just reached the trees when a patio door opened and another man stepped out, this one in a full DCA uniform.

  ‘Markle, Wright, I found Hartnett. He’s down.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He must have taken a stray one. Come and give me a hand.’

  Perhaps the new arrival was a superior officer, because the two men immediately jogged to the top of the steps and disappeared inside.

  Patrick and Suzanne needed no words. They hurried across a last open path to the cover of the trees alongside the stream, then climbed down the bank. Rocks and patches of gritty sand gave them a passable passage upriver without having to expose themselves.

  ‘Those cars we saw,’ Patrick said. ‘Perhaps we can find one that works.’

  Suzanne nodded. ‘But watch out for snares this time.’ She squeezed his hand and grinned. ‘Learn your lesson, won’t you?’

  Patrick smiled back, but the relief he felt was minimal. ‘I’ll try.’

  19

  Kurou

  Tommy Crown had really pulled through, Kurou thought as he surveyed his two newest subjects. The fusions had gone perfectly, and the vital signs of both were looking good. A healing process after the surgery would take a couple of days, but the tissue regeneration systems he had installed were working almost fast enough to be visible to the naked eye.

  He couldn’t be happier.

  Torching the civil lawyer’s offices had been a masterstroke, bringing them together in a way only a good disaster could.

  Sometimes he wondered what it was like to have the simplistic mind of a person who had been born normal. Were they aware how easy it was to be read and manipulated? Once, Kurou had considered himself a great puppeteer, not just of his machines or of people, but of entire nations. All you had to do was pull the right strings at the right time, and you could incite the merriest of dances.

  The DCA’s purge had made perfect cover, although even they weren’t stupid enough to drive underground someone as close to the escaped fugitives as Tommy Crown. Now he had become Kurou’s secret weapon, hunting down DCA agents and bringing them in, acting, he believed, for himself, unaware that he too had been played.

  A game of lives was such a beautiful thing.

  Kurou left his two newest arrivals to recover, heading back into his other laboratory to check on the rest of his Huntsmen. Two of those built from runaways had expired, but the third was operational.

  ‘Awake.’

  The Huntsman sat up.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Alive….’

  ‘That’s good enough. I have a job for you. A little test run, so to speak.’

  ‘As you command….’

  He had fitted each Huntsman with a computerised tracking and visual system. He flicked a switch just behind the Huntsman’s eye to make sure it was operational, feeling a momentary flush of terror as the Huntsman, its jaws no more than a couple of inches from his face, gave a low growl.

  How it felt to be a victim with such a horror bearing down on you … he couldn’t imagine.

  ‘Go,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Head for the town and listen for your instructions. I will relay them to you. Do not expose yourself unless given orders or it is necessary for your survival. In any situation you feel threatened, do not hesitate.’ He stepped back, took an object from a table nearby. ‘Here is your weapon.’

  For a time, Kurou had lorded over a stunning castle in Romania. Before inevitably needing to move on, he had so enjoyed looking through the armoury at the old medieval weaponry. So crude, yet, in a savage time, so effective.

  And of everything, nothing was more elegant than a bow. Requiring power and accuracy, it could execute the cleanest of kills in a fraction of a second.

  The bow he passed the Huntsman was barely the length of his arm and had a far shorter range than a medieval longbow, but it was made of modern materials, and aimed using the Huntsman’s computer system, it carried a deadly level of accuracy.

  ‘Go forth and create havoc,’ Kurou said, patting the Huntsman on the shoulder. ‘I, your creator, shall be watching.’

  The Huntsman turned and ran from the room.

  Kurou headed back to his main office. He pulled up the Huntsman’s systems on a computer screen, establishing both visuals and sound as well as a two-way audible control and a systems-override button in case the Huntsman got out of hand. Then he settled back with a glass of fine wine from Carmichael-Jones’s private stock to enjoy the show.

  Kurou had named the Huntsman Jun after an old, now sadly deceased, adversary. He sipped wine while a dark trail blurred on the screen in front of him, displayed in more detail by an infrared version in a corner box, which was the version Jun was seeing to allow him to navigate in the dark. To Kurou’s dismay, Jun slipped and fell twice before emerging at a main road, although both times he climbed back to his feet, seemingly unharmed.

  Moving along the gravel left where the road had been proved far easier. Jun ran at full speed, an estimated twenty percent faster than his human body might have managed, the metal inserts giving him a power boost, and a small device behind his lungs injecting additional oxygen when Jun’s human lungs began to struggle with the requirement. Still, as he paused at a junction, considering, as his programming told him, to assess each new route for signs of danger, his breathing came in ragged gasps over the audio receiver.

  Kurou frowned, worried the Huntsman would run himself out. Divan could easily outrun Jun, his metal inserts of a lighter grade and his oxygen component larger, but the differences concerned Kurou as he pulled up a spreadsheet in a side bar and compared the two Huntsmen.

  Lower your speed ten percent, he typed into a manual command box, afraid that the Huntsman would have nothing left by the time the fun started.

  Moving a little slower, Jun headed into the outskirts of the town, choosing smaller roads now, pausing frequently to look for people breaking the draconian curfew laws by being outside, watching out for DCA patrols. Every so often, Kurou added a small manual adjustment, sometimes reminding Jun to look up, to check behind him, to consider each alley and side street. The Huntsmen were fifty percent automated, but the other fifty percent—the bad fifty percent, as Kurou called it—was the specimen’s original personality. A brave man would continue to be brave, a coward to shrink away. Having not known his test subjects in their former lives, a test r
un was as much an education for Kurou as it was for the Huntsmen themselves.

  Across the street from a small cubicle building tacked on to the end of a row of houses, the Huntsman came to a stop, crouching down and shrinking back into the shadows well away from the streetlights.

  Kurou watched through Jun’s vision as the DCA agents worked in the local outpost across the street. By all accounts, there were half a dozen across Wells, and more were appearing all the time. One on each street corner, was a policy of the current Conservative prime minister, and when Cale got in it was only likely to intensify. Lightweight, metal and glass buildings, they were checkpoints only, and their resident agents would bail at the first sign of trouble. Here, on the eastern part of town, they were a long way from most of the unrest.

  Two were looking at computers; the third sat with his feet up on a desk, reading a newspaper.

  You have your orders, Kurou typed. Good luck.

  Jun began to move forward, low to the ground, and Kurou knew he was moving on all fours, extra inserts used to lengthen his arms addressing the balance between back and front and giving him a more doglike gait. He was across the road so quickly Kurou wondered if he ought to give up on the two-legged models altogether.

  None of the DCA agents were paying attention to what was going on outside. Jun pulled a tiny canister out of his shirt, jerked the door open a couple of inches and tossed it inside.

  The outpost filled with smoke. The DCA agent with his feet up fell off his chair, while the other two scrambled for their weapons. Kurou could also see nothing, but Jun’s vision in the corner box changed to heat-sensor, and three warm shapes appeared, frantically moving about. One was turning in circles as though unsure what to do, another was crawling across the floor, and the third was scrambling at his clothes, perhaps looking for a mobile phone or a gun.

  Jun pulled the bow out of his jacket, notched an arrow, and shot the crawling man at pointblank range. From the heat sensor image it appeared to pierce the back of his left shoulder and reemerge through his chest. He slumped to the ground, twitching.