Frostburn (Ultrahumans Book 4)

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘This looks like it’s the last,’ Fire Bug said as he walked up to stand beside Cygnus. ‘We haven’t had anything new in the last ninety minutes.’

  ‘That’s something, I guess. What time is it anyway?’

  ‘Four fifteen. We’ve had ten hours of this shit. As soon as they’ve got this one neutralised, you go home and get some rest.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s finished, do you?’

  ‘I think a Saturday night is a good time for more of the same, but maybe we’ll get lucky and he was just after the post-Christmas throng.’

  ‘Not at four in the morning. Not with this extended campaign. If it was me doing it, I’d have hit malls and clubs yesterday evening. The hospital too. That was a smart, if twisted, move.’

  Fire Bug nodded. ‘Almost too smart. He seems to know the emergency plans, but he also has to know we know them. He had to figure we’d look.’

  ‘So he was either hoping to catch us in the explosion, which almost happened, or he was hoping we’d stop it.’

  ‘Almost is right. Red’s right; there’s no reason that bomb should’ve failed. For whatever reason, I think he wanted us to find it, which just doesn’t seem to make sense. Does he want to get caught? After all of this!’

  Cygnus gave a shrug. ‘It’s not unknown for serial killers to want someone to stop them. But this guy doesn’t seem the type, no. Unless something’s changed…’

  Fire Bug gave a grunt, though whether of agreement or displeasure, Cygnus was not sure. ‘Get some rest as soon as you can. I’m not sure how long we’re going to have before this starts again.’

  ‘That goes for you too.’

  ‘Oh, I got used to sleeping in fire trucks. I’ll be asleep before they get us back to a station.’

  ~~~

  The apartment block Heather was walking through had seen better days, maybe. A lot of the blocks in Churchton had been put up fast and cheap, and this one looked like it might have belonged to that batch. No one had redecorated the corridors in a decade or so and there were lights out in a few places on the corridors. Upkeep was not one of the owner’s priorities it seemed. The main priority was probably extracting as much rent as possible for as little outlay as could be arranged.

  The door to apartment 41 appeared very much like all the others: badly in need of paint. The 4 numeral was also hanging upside down thanks to one of the screws being missing. Heather knocked twice and waited, and a few seconds later, the door was opened by an attractive woman who looked to be not a lot older than Heather with eyes which belonged on someone thirty years older.

  ‘Yes? If you’re selling something, I’m really not interested.’

  Heather put on her best smile, the one she reserved for playing ‘good cop’ in interrogations. ‘I’m not selling anything, Mrs Hopper. It is Mrs Hopper, isn’t it?’

  Adele Hopper eyed Heather for a second and then said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Great. My name is Heather Bryant. I’m helping the police with some cold cases. You reported your husband as missing in December twenty thirteen. It’s been a year and we’re just doing some follow-up interviews on missing persons.’

  ‘You’re with the police?’

  ‘I’m a private investigator. The city council is concerned that clean-up rates aren’t what they should be but prefers not to divert actual police resource to administrative exercises. We do want our cops on the beat, right? Especially in these trying times.’

  Adele frowned. ‘The fires and such… yeah.’

  ‘And a serial murderer operating in this area, Mrs Hopper. I’m sure you’ve seen the reports.’ There was a flicker of emotion: concern, real worry, and… nervousness. Well, that was not entirely unsurprising.

  ‘I’ve seen them. Look, Donny was a drunk. A violent drunk. I reported him missing because… Well, seemed like I had to. But he’s probably shacked up with some slutty blonde in Vegas or somewhere. Got tired of hitting me and left. Took every penny we had saved around the house and left.’

  Heather broadened her smile. ‘I see. The report indicated that your husband had a couple of tattoos.’

  Adele made a sour face. ‘Had L.O.V.E. on his knuckles on his left hand. And F.U.C.K. on the right.’

  ‘He does sound like a really exemplary citizen.’

  ‘Is that a big word for asshole?’

  ‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Hopper. I’ll mark this one down as a probable runaway and we’ll get the Vegas police to check low-rent motels.’ And Heather saw relief flash across Adele’s face before it was controlled.

  ‘That’s a good plan. Let me know if it’s a blonde or a redhead. He always liked red hair.’ Adele, Heather noted, was a brunette.

  ‘I’ll do that, Mrs Hopper. It was nice talking to you.’ Heather turned and walked away, making a mental note: Adele Hopper was a possible. For one thing, one of the recovered body parts was a right hand, with the knuckles carefully scraped of skin. For another, there was no way she believed her husband was in Vegas, whether with a blonde or a redhead.

  ~~~

  Adele closed the door and turned around to find Gary standing in the door of his bedroom. ‘Mom, who was that?’

  ‘Said she was looking into old missing person cases,’ Adele said. ‘Bryant. Heather Bryant.’

  ‘Cop?’

  ‘She said PI. Some stupid city council initiative or something.’ Adele sniffed. ‘Seemed like a cop, but she said she wasn’t.’ She looked at her son and frowned. ‘She went away happy, Gary. She thinks your dad is in Vegas with a floozy.’

  Gary’s eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe. Why after all this time? It’s been a year. Why look into it now? I don’t like it, Mom. I think Miss Bryant needs a visit from Triple Point.’

  ‘Gary…’

  ‘No, Mom. No one’s going to mess this up for us. Certainly not some snooping PI. I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of her.’

  ~~~

  The fires had started again at midday. The devices were small, the paint-tin versions, but they were numerous and they had been hidden in public areas where they caused maximum disruption and a lot of casualties. By three p.m. the NMCPD and the council had issued an order for all malls to be evacuated and for citizens to stay in their homes, and New Millennium City was, once again, turning into a ghost town.

  Cygnus found herself running between conflagrations. As soon as she had killed one fire so that the chemicals causing it could be neutralised, she was needed at another, and another.

  ‘This is crazy,’ she said while standing in a mall’s food court watching men with sprayers work. ‘We need to get ahead of this somehow.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ Fire Bug replied over the radio. He was doing the same job at another mall. ‘If we don’t kill these fires, they’ll spread, and we can’t search every mall in the city, not to mention the dozens of other places he could have left these things.’

  ‘Yeah, but–’

  ‘But I think they’ll stop soon.’

  Cygnus frowned. ‘You do?’

  ‘He’s doing two things. He’s using up our supply of neutraliser and tiring us. But I think he wants the city open again tonight so he can cause more problems then. It’ll take the council a couple of hours of having nothing happen before they rescind the movement order, so he’ll have set this up to end before four or five o’clock.’

  ‘The city won’t rescind–’

  ‘Want to bet on it? I’ll see if I can get them to keep it going and the police chief will back me, but I’d put good money on commercial pressure beating common sense.’

  ‘Damn,’ Cygnus grumbled. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘I’ve been dealing with government red tape longer than you have. I’m more used to its infinite stupidity.’

  ‘Are we going to have enough of this stuff they’re spraying to cope?’

  There was a short pause before Fire Bug answered. ‘I really hope so…’

  ~~~

  ‘Andy called it then?’ June said.

  ‘…ha
ve lifted the movement ban in time for revellers to rush to clubs all over New Millennium City,’ the announcer on the TV said, sounding bright and cheerful.

  ‘Idiots,’ Penny grumbled.

  ‘I think that’s a given,’ Andrea said. She was pulling on her boots. ‘I’m going to get out there, though I don’t think I’m going to be much use.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’ll have planted bombs in clubs, bars, fairly small establishments likely to have a lot of people in them. Not the kind of thing my imps are useful for.’

  ‘City authorities have requested that citizens stay vigilant,’ the announcer said, but that was after a long list of the joys various people were heading for. ‘Report any suspicious objects to the police immediately. Do not leave bags unattended.’

  ‘And no one’s listening at this point,’ June said. ‘Andrea’s right. He’s going to kill a lot of people tonight.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Penny agreed. ‘I’m going to change and get airborne. Let me know when the first one goes off.’

  ‘I am currently monitoring all emergency frequencies, Cygnus,’ Denny said, overriding the TV sound. ‘I estimate that the first detonation will occur at or around ten p.m. given an assumed wish to maximise casualties.’

  Penny climbed to her feet, shoulders slumped, and started for the bedroom. ‘Thanks, Denny, that’s… good to know.’

  ~~~

  ‘Seems like your estimate was off, Denny,’ Cygnus said from her vantage point eight hundred feet above Uptown.

  ‘I would be quite happy if my calculations and Fire Bug’s analysis of the situation were entirely incorrect,’ Denny replied without the slightest hint of rancour. ‘However, I do not believe we should consider ourselves safe until after midnight.’

  ‘I agree with Denny,’ Fire Bug said. ‘Uh, on all of that. If he hasn’t planted anything else, I’ll be the happiest surprised person in the city, but we can’t call it yet.’

  ‘Huh, I guess,’ Cygnus said. ‘Twilight? How are things in Churchton?’

  ‘Oh, I’m having a great time. The local goons thought they might get a free pass because I was dealing with fires.’ Twilight did sound rather pleased with herself.

  ‘Just don’t scare any of them out into traffic tonight.’

  ‘I’ll try, Mom.’

  ‘Hey! You’re only a year younger than me.’

  ‘Only physically. I’m going to give this another half-hour, then I’ll head over to Friendship. I just bet the park is teeming with muggers tonight.’

  ‘I’m betting you’re right,’ Jacob put in. ‘Maybe when this is done with, you guys could give me some pointers on patrol etiquette. I could start doing a few loops around Friendship of an evening. Gives me a chance to practise with these powers I’ve suddenly got.’

  ‘Practice is good, partner,’ Heather said. ‘If you guys don’t mind, I’m going to sit in front of the TV and watch a movie. My feet are killing me.’

  ‘Heather?’ June said. ‘You listening in too?’

  ‘This channel is way more informative than ACPN. Seriously, we should look into a broadcast licence. I bet we could make a fortune running adverts between the chatter.’

  ‘There is no way I am letting people listen in on the things I say on here,’ Cygnus said. ‘I’d have to remember to use code names, and stop swearing.’

  ‘We could do open days,’ Twilight suggested. ‘Though I kind of suspect people would just find out how boring it is most nights.’

  ‘In an emergency,’ Denny said, ‘I do have sufficient output power to override many of the public transmitters in the city. My communications systems were designed to operate effectively at some seven hundred light seconds, though my effective range here is more like eight hundred kilometres.’

  ‘Probably not required, Denny,’ Cygnus replied, ‘but noted.’

  ‘What’s eight hundred kilometres in old money?’ June asked.

  ‘Five hundred miles,’ Heather supplied. ‘It’s an eight to five ratio, more or less.’

  ‘Did you get anything aside from tired feet today?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘Maybe. There were a couple of them who seemed nervous about me asking questions. I’ll check into them further on Monday. The autopsy report on Mole came through, by the way. I don’t suppose anyone else’s had the time to read it. He didn’t freeze to death.’

  ‘He didn’t?’

  ‘Asphyxiation. He was smothered by the ice. The other victims show signs of it, but Mole was allowed to die that way rather than the cold. And there was something else which the ME said was weird. Mole showed erosion in his joints which they looked at and think was due to ice crystals being grown there.’

  ‘That had to hurt.’

  ‘Torture and a slow death,’ Twilight said. ‘That’s a nasty escalation.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Heather agreed, ‘so I think we’d better nail this guy sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Good idea. I’ll drop by in the morning and you can brief me on your suspects.’

  ‘Sure. I–’

  ‘I am sorry to break in,’ Denny said, breaking in to the conversation, ‘but we have a problem.’

  ‘She’s not kidding,’ Fire Bug added, sounding urgent. ‘I’m getting reports of three explosions–’

  ‘Nine, Fire Bug. I have nine fire alerts in Uptown and Friendship. Three Uptown clubs, six bars in Friendship.’

  ‘All at once?’ Cygnus said, looking around for any signs she could actually see.

  ‘Timed to go off together, it would seem. That number has now increased. Two sports bars in Uptown.’

  ‘Oh… shit. Feed me the largest of the venues. I’ll start there.’

  ~~~

  Heather’s attention was only barely on the movie she had found on a cable channel. Up on the screen, fake Ultras were fighting the evil Doctor Doomspider for the fate of the world. In her ear, real Ultras were fighting for the lives of real people. No contest really: reality won out the battle for Heather’s attention.

  ‘Seems like one of his paint-tin bombs,’ Cygnus was saying, ‘but he’s managed to get it right in the middle of the club. I can see… bodies. What’s left of them anyway.’

  ‘Is the same here,’ Svetilo said. ‘Is nothing I can do here. This will be down to you and Andy.’

  ‘We can’t be everywhere.’

  ‘We do what we can,’ Fire Bug said. ‘The normal fire crews will have to handle the rest as best they can and we–’

  Heather tapped the receiver off, frowning. She had heard… Turning, she looked around her apartment for any sign of anything which might have fallen over. There had been a sound, but she had been focussed on the radio, not her surroundings.

  Another sound, muffled, but definitely there and coming from the bedroom. Heather got up and started for the coat rack beside her door, which was where her brand-new, not-UID-issue pistol was hanging in its shoulder rig. She was halfway there when the bedroom door was flung open and someone stepped through it.

  Time slowed in that way it does when your brain kicks into emergency mode. The man, the figure was male, was dressed in black: black jeans, black sweater with a polo neck. His face was hidden by a balaclava-style mask, but his hands were bare. He was Caucasian, around five seven, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds. His hands were rising in a gesture which seemed threatening, even if there was nothing overtly threatening about it at all. You developed a different idea of threat when you dealt with Ultras a lot. Heather dived back toward the cover of her sofa as white mist carrying glittering particles of ice swept out toward her.

  Rolling, Heather tapped at the transceiver in her ear, desperate to call for help. ‘Denny, he’s–’ Her words were cut off as a second blast of freezing air enveloped her. Her skin tingled as ice formed over it, wrapping her in a rapidly hardening shell. She struggled, but it was too fast and her muscles were cramping in the cold. Heather let out a gasp, and then her mouth was full of ice.

  ‘Miss Bryant?’ Denny’s voice sounded in her ear,
but Heather could not respond. ‘Miss Bryant, are you there?’

  ‘You are sticking your nose where it’s not wanted.’ That was the man, the killer. ‘You’re a PI, right? Triple Point is going to make you wish you had stuck to taking pictures of cheating husbands.’

  Pain lanced through Heather’s body from most of her major joints. It was bad, but not agonising. But she still could not breathe and if she remained sealed in the ice, she was going to die.

  ‘Painful, isn’t it?’ Triple Point said. ‘It can get worse.’

  The pain in Heather’s joints increased suddenly, ripping through her body in a nauseating wave. Dimly, she heard Triple Point ranting and Denny saying something, but there was nothing in Heather’s head except for pain, agonising pain. Her vision, already blurred by the ice over her eyes, swam and then, suddenly, went black.

  ~~~

  ‘Twilight, I have received a transmission from Miss Bryant,’ Denny said into Twilight’s ear.

  ‘Okay…’ Twilight replied a little absently since she was watching a mugger who was thinking about his next victim.

  ‘I will play it back to you. It has an unusual characteristic.’

  ‘Okay, but–’

  ‘Denny, he’s–’ Twilight’s attention shifted immediately at the urgent tone in Heather’s voice.

  ‘When did you get this, Denny? Is that all there was?’

  ‘Eight point three seconds ago, and that was everything. That is the unusual characteristic. I have been unable to gain contact with Miss Bryant since, though her communicator is functioning. I have informed her that I was contacting you.’

  ‘Move,’ Andrea said from the back of Twilight’s mind. ‘Get Jacob too.’

  ‘Right,’ Twilight said aloud. ‘Call Jacob and tell him to get to Heather’s apartment as soon as he can.’ Some muggers, it appeared, had more luck than others. Pulling the shadows around herself, Twilight stepped through the darkness into Heather’s bedroom. ‘Heather better be in trouble,’ Twilight said silently, ‘or we’re going to be.’ And then she pushed her shadows out into the lounge, striding out after them as the darkness filled the room.