“Police?” she asks.
“Dunno. Zero in the uniform department, and they haven’t got all that batty armour the new blokes get about in. I’m thinking Seekers — plus a couple’a tourists.”
“Then you do know.” Placing hands on the filthy parquetry floor — they’re just as filthy, anyway — she uses them to push her numb bum into action. The legs do the rest of the work, but when she lurches sideways, Taylor sticks out a steadying hand — the same one holding the knife.
“Careful with that,” she mutters.
“Sorted.”
“I’m not certain you know what ‘sorted’ means.”
“Hush. The window.”
Annoyed, she wades through rubbish, broken furniture and torn-up linoleum. The window is huge, twice my height, with the glass chiselled out; fly wire ripped and flapping, and the rain beating through. She doesn’t need all that space, requires only a couple of centimetres to check the devastated world two storeys below.
Four people, armed with umbrellas, two hundred metres away.
The first she picks out — also boasting salt-and-pepper hair and a beastly moustache visible from this distance — is a middle-aged man who sensibly elected to wear a suit in the rain, carnage and pools of rancid water down there. Bright boy.
The second intruder is a fairly large bounder with a round, friar’s face — hardly intimidating. Number three, however, is someone she can’t see properly, bundled in a long coat and Fedora hat. A worry.
Last one coming, spinning circles around the others with a big camera, is a skinny individual dressed in an equally oversized white coat, the letters ‘ITC’ on his back — wasn’t that a TV company? Not willing to trust her memories, the woman unpeels from the windowsill.
Straight away, Taylor is in the ear. “Verdict?”
The tattered thing she dares still to call a heart is racing, but covering the fear proves easy. “Hard to say.”
“That’s a cop-out answer, if ever I heard one. And I’ve heard a few.”
“From me?”
“You? Often.”
“That so? Live with the disappointment.” She lets him see the roll of the eyes. It’ll be a quarter of an hour before those people reach this place, if they come up at all.
Both Archer and Tux had silently entered the space and they stand on either side of Taylor, looking at the woman, waiting for something. Barked orders? She frowns, feels like kicking them. It was bloody annoying that they’d made her their ad hoc leader without dreaming to ask. Why? Because she’d been the one to leave the Hospital first, when the three of these arses were malingering, too afraid to set foot in the rain? That didn’t take leadership, it was blind panic on her part. Taylor at least hedged. Even though he threw about the word ‘guv’, she suspected he used the moniker precisely because it annoyed.
She decides she needs space, distance from their hangdog eyes, so peers out the window and up at the forbidding sky. Meanwhile, behind her, Tux croons “Rain, rain, go away, come again another day.” The only dirge he remembers.
Wasn’t wise to go near the windows. How long’d they been here? Hours? Days? Impossible to tell. There was minimal difference between day and night, thanks to the perennial downpour that blotted out the sun. Surprise was they’d made it this far since the breakout.
Breakout — what a misappropriated expression. The only breaking-out they’d perfected was the sweat in escaping from Hospital.
Before that, the sum total of her memories revolved around needles. Needles and machines and rack-mounted gear, of small white rooms and a slab where they deposited people and placed bags over their heads. Time after time after time. They had the gall to name the procedure ‘social conditioning’, but it was just a variation on idInteract gaming madness in which people died — mostly her. In these scenarios they took away the ability to speak, made her dance in zany roles, and injected some kind of irrational streak into the brain — so that she was continuously unable to sense it was fake-and-bake.
On each and every occasion this led to seizing upon a handy weapon in a stupid attempt to escape, which then led to her dispatch — by gun, knife, fist, foot, and once via a frozen leg of lamb. The pain of death remained after she awoke, every time, or p’raps each demise took with it another part of the remaining shreds of life.
This time, however, was different.
When she came to and ripped off the bag, the room was empty, the door ajar. She disconnected from the leads and plugs and cables and a catheter stuck in her arm, then staggered over and peered into the hallway. It was also devoid of life. No one there. Nobody to ask the time or bar one from leaving.
So she fled through a small door at the edge of a tunnel, all the time petrified of discovery — and what that’d entail — but this never came. Having taken a service elevator to the upper level, she discovered a flooded bluestone laneway swept with rain — and three others, like her discursively covered in white patient gowns, huddling under an twisted awning. Bewildered, lost.
The permanent drizzle was never going to stop her.
She pushed straight past them and out into the rain, letting it wash over, cleansing, even as it stung the eyes and began eating away at clothing and skin. She had no idea why the others followed, of how she’d collected three stray dogs named Taylor, Archer and Tux.
Taylor, you know.
Tux got his name since he’d been a tailor — surprise. Word in the wards said he’d been delivered up to Hospital gift-wrapped in a morning suit and waistcoat — nailed on his wedding day. However long later, Tux remains that good-looking, medium-heighted groom, but he’s also rake-thin and health services had sucked the vigour out of him — he lost a bout with sanity ages ago. Tux acted like a shadow and wore the expression of a lost child. You’d think, for a tailor, he’d have some pride in his wardrobe, but out of the lot of them his clothes were in the worse repair.
And Archer?
Well — while his name may conjure up notions of some Grecian warrior-king like Odysseus, with a swanky helmet and a longbow — you’d be well wide of the mark, though let’s hang onto ‘wide’ for later use.
He was diabolically strong, built like a brick shithouse, about six-and-a-half feet, almost as wide, none of this girth cellulite. Archer had a boxer’s swollen and deformed ears — what did they call them? Cauliflowers? — and his shaved head and broad jaw line were already sprouting a shade of red, peppered with grey. There was nothing to read on his face, simplicity its blessing. He also didn’t speak.
The woman wasn’t aware if this was a conscious decision or they’d stolen from him the ability to talk. Archer hadn’t said a solitary word since they’d fled the Hospital complex, and she’d heard nary a peep from him in the times they met in the holding cells beforehand.
So there was very little subtlety or elegance to the man — you’d never be able to squeeze a Corinthian helm over his thick skull — and this was one of the reasons they’d made it so far. The man was a godsend, no matter that he wasn’t godlike.
Which left the woman.
Who is she? A peachy question.
She thinks, once upon a time, she was a nice person — caring, respectful, in love. Rather pathetic. But after so long locked away, she can’t say for sure. She gets the sensation that she’s been leeched of anything that ever mattered, of losing hold of the past. The memories are so elusive she’s discarded a fair few of those as well.
Doesn’t know how long she was Hospitalized, and doesn’t give it too much thought. None of them do. There were no calendars in there, no generous souls predisposed to dish out timetables. It felt like years, probably was. Time enough for most of the people she met to vanish or die. A treadmill of ‘treatment’ and needles and examinations, of being herded into tiny communal rooms where twenty-five odd people slept, shat, fought, copulated and ate in a space measuring fifteen square metres.
She was married once, long ago. No children, thankfully, though she was four months’ pregnant when adm
itted to Hospital. The medicos threw in an abortion, gratis, the very same day. Was sick, some disease she don’t know the name of, would no doubt have died as well, but they cured her — though choice never entered into the equation.
She had no notion of why they did that, not initially, yet gradually put two-and-two together, in between medicine hits supposed to keep her zapped out. Leverage, that’s what she was, nothing more to it. Being kept alive meant she could be flaunted as a bartering tool, just like the other ‘lucky’ patients she met, the survivors, the ones who stayed round. The others who disappeared or died — they had no such use.
At first she submitted to all the pain and humiliation, the abuse, the medication. Hid in the recesses of the mind, far back as possible, but eventually they hacked through. Was a time, a black spot, when she lost any sense of self, of awareness. Didn’t know how or why she started swimming against the current. Once she did, though, she made it duty-bound to wipe clean every remaining morsel of who she was and what she’d been. The few memories clung to — being a wife, almost having a child — she kept to torment herself at the lowest depths.
The past. That’s all it was. A dead currency. She runs fingers over the stubble of the buzz cut on her scalp, feeling the occasional scar, counts five different ones, each with their own story.
She notices Taylor’s hand straying near, and then brushing her hip.
He’s getting predictable. If she doesn’t act now, he’ll move up and get still more adventurous, so she slaps away the hand. Nothing more necessary. He understands she won’t let him go further, but she wonders how long he’ll play ball, now he has a knife. For the time being he’s still one of her strays.
The woman frets about Taylor, and not just because of his ill-fitting name. He’s a Recent, hadn’t been in Hospital all that much time before they escaped.
Tux was in there longest and Archer predated herself. Taylor, no. She didn’t trust him. You never could put faith in a Recent. A sizeable part of her hated him as well — he hadn’t experienced what they had, never would appreciate the wonderful depth of Hospitalization. He still had life hanging on his shoulders, draped at a jaunty angle like a misappropriated fox stole.
Now she’s rubbing her face as she stares at the three men seated helter-skelter on the muddy floor, between them bits and pieces of a dead man’s weaponry: a large rifle, a double-barrelled pistol, a shotgun, a long narrow tube (a silencer?) and grenades of various sizes. The dead man had been carrying all of that, armed to his teeth, but none of the munitions stopped Archer snapping his neck.
The woman had used herself as bait — tossed off the rags to stand straight-backed, some kind of nonsensical pride in her posture, in the middle of the showroom floor downstairs. Surrounded by mannequins equally naked, littered like the slain troops of an Amazonian army — limbs missing and body parts without obvious owner. She’d shivered in the humidity as the soon-to-be-dead man approached, couldn’t see his eyes beyond the opaque black visor under a metallic helmet, but knew well enough that they’d be washing over her, ogling, just as Archer crept up from behind, wordlessly grabbed the man’s helmet, and twisted it to the right.
Snap-o.
That left Taylor to do additional handicraft with his knife —“A warning to any other arseholes,” he said, in between slicing and dicing — and then Archer had hung the dead man on a wall between cracked, weary colonnades, high above those fallen, equally mangled dummies.
What on earth were they on about? What could they do there-after? And why the hell did she remain with these sorry excuses for humanity?
Better to go it alone. Better. But where? Why bother? She had nothing. Even the rags around her were beginning to disintegrate. She feels itchy — probably this has less to do with the old hessian sack she’d appropriated as a camisole than the fact she hadn’t showered in an age. The last time was a dousing under a water canon alongside a dozen other people. Freezing water that knocked her back into a wall and dislocated the left shoulder.
She tugs the sack round and rips it at the front, in order to be able to move the neck more freely (as well as scratch a bit), but realizes she tore it too far and now you could see her sternum bulging through thin skin above a shrunken breast. Without looking to check, she senses Taylor’s eyes on her chest and therefore manoeuvres the sack again so it’s more discreet.
“What do we do, guv? Ambush those people and kill ‘em?” Taylor asks. “They look dead-easy, making a racket — it’s like a goddamned carnival.” His knife again pops out from the sleeve. “Maybe we could make them perform a jig for us. I could do with some light entertainment.”
The woman decides she’s had enough.
“For fuck’s sake, I’m not your governor, not your boss, not whatever. How many times do I have to tell you this? Don’t dump the responsibility on me — I don’t care what any of you do. Any of you. Get it? I can’t stand this role.”
“Even so — what are you planning?” This time it’s Tux speaking, in that pale, well-nigh inaudible voice.
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do we. We can do that together…can’t we?”
Tux and Archer are looking like little lost souls, heavier than they seem, pulling her down again. Taylor has an easier expression, nice and lecherous.
“Agree. Safety in numbers, and all that,” he says.
Safety? She almost laughs out loud, but decides to save such merriment for another day. It’d been years since she’d waltzed with the concept of safety and wasn’t expecting an invitation to dance anytime soon. Safety was beyond them. They were Deviants, Devs on the run, and they’d murdered someone. The law would be out in force and they’d be lucky to survive twenty-four hours. Safety? Quite the joke.
Their combined hangdog expressions, however, do pay dividends. The woman relents before she understands what is happening.
“We’ve got three choices,” she decides. “We split up, go our separate ways. We stick together and do a runner. Or we stay here, to make a dumb stand.”
After a second’s silence, Taylor speaks. “I vote for number three, the dumb stand thingy,” he announces. Of course — the man continually confuses stupidity with bravery, and only because he seems to have his rancid heart set on impressing the woman in his field of vision. “Right on, Blondie?”
She sighs in return. “Stick with the ‘guv’. A tad more endearing.”
Archer and Tux aren’t capable of deciding for themselves and, like the woman, they don’t trust Taylor as far as they can toss the bugger — so they wait for her decision. If this matches Taylor’s, all the better; if it doesn’t, they’ll have a hell of a time making a choice. This causes her to sigh and settle on easy.
“Why not?” she mutters. “There’s nowhere to go, anyway. Right?”
Which is when they hear noises outside, in the alley leading to the back entrance of the ancient department store. Soft voices first, and then there arises such a clatter.
The woman glances at her companions, a finger to the lips.
Taylor has picked up the dead man’s bulky pistol, which he tucks into his Hospital tunic. He then offers the assault rifle her way, like some kind of off-season Christmas gift. She shakes her head. Wouldn’t know what to do with the thing. Archer also refuses — doesn’t need it, what with the strength of his bare hands — and so Taylor hands it over to Tux. The shotgun he hides in a dry spot beneath some rubble. “Back-up,” he says.
The quartet below is trying to find a way in.
They’re talking a lot now — which strikes her as odd — until someone yells at the others. Then they hear a door being jimmied, followed by its creak and grind upon opening.
“Shhhh!” one of the newcomers hisses.
These intruders are like a comedy act. How are they supposed to take them seriously? Even Tux has a lukewarm smile.
More whispering ensues a floor beneath. They’d soon enough find the cadaver down there, the one she led astray, Archer killed, and Taylor dise
mbowelled. That should cut the comedy.
Ten more minutes passed.
She’d motioned everybody to their places. They heeded without dispute, fanning out quietly, far enough away from one another to lay the trap, but still able to see each other in the darkness, amid falling water geysers that shower down from the smashed ceiling, courtesy of the torrential rain.
Above the sounds of gurgling water and the pound of that rain, there’s footfall on the back staircase, the one leading up to this level. Floorboards groan. Down the corridor, closer to the stairs, Taylor lifts his pistol. He gives the woman an awkward wink, and then aims at some place she can’t see.
They all hear the crunching sound, so loud you could hardly hope to miss it, despite the interference of the leaky roof — a fool had put his shoe through the floor. Taylor has a ringside seat and he’s silently laughing.
Someone promptly yells “Christ!”, and this seems all the cue Taylor needs to fire off a round. Only, he doesn’t. This shot comes from her left, closer by, and almost takes out the woman’s eardrum. Tux — it was Tux, with the assault rifle in the opposite doorway, his face dark, unreadable.
There’s more clattering around the corner, some kind of thrashing in water, and then an eerie yodel. Another person — a man? — screams.
In the darkness, she can only just make out the lanky individual with the movie camera, as he staggers into view, spinning in circles, apparently filming. Someone else grabs him and they melt away into shadows near Taylor’s position. Did Taylor see that? She’s unsure, frets, and panic rises. There’s a wealth of noise, chatter and shrieking going down — chaos has kicked its way into the quartet’s little home.
“Hey, you fucking arsehole!” she hears a voice rant nearby. Not one of her boys. “Help him! Get him the hell outta here — now!”
Get whom? The person Tux’d shot?
Still can’t see anything from her position, and to be honest the panic has abated and she’s mulling on surprised. She’d expected trigger-happy action from Taylor, not Tux. Looking across the corridor at Tux, she realizes she didn’t think he had murder in him.
The Condimental Op Page 11