He buckled and fell from her and in a fluid movement she rolled and was on top of him, her face fixed in a mask of hatred as she stabbed him.
His hands came up to stop her but she cut through those until several of the fingers hung loose, she carved his forearms like roast pork to get to the tender flesh of his torso beneath. Some distant part of Christi noticed that Rottentooth’s expression had changed from sadistic indifference to primal panic. Once his hands were useless she carved that expression up too, gave him a dark and bloody smile that exposed his brown molars through his cheeks. She screamed her fear and indignation at him as she worked.
Scared of me now?
Christi did know how long she had been on top of him, screaming at the top of her lungs, but when she came to her senses there was not a lot beneath her left recognizable as a man.
She straddled him, breathing heavily, blood dripping rhythmically from her nose onto his corpse. She was utterly exhausted and her hands were shaking. Although there were no tears she realized that a sobbing was coming from her throat.
Her next thought was of the team.
Fuck. They know where we are. Usher.
Christi heard the back door casually open and a Russian voice, thick with amusement call out.
“Keep the fucking noise down Dmitri. The whole street will hear you sticking this bitch. Just kill her and be done with….”
The lookout man who had been standing vigilant outside had obviously thought her screams of rage and pain were the result of Dmitri carving her up. He stood in the kitchen doorway with an unlit cigarette hanging out of his vacant face as his mind tried to retrospectively piece together the story of how his colleague was sprawled across the floor in a hundred pieces with his intestines all around him.
“Ivan…”
His plodding intellect never got to figure out the puzzle. Suddenly Christi’s face was by his ear and the knife plunged into the back of his neck between the vertebrae. She had quietly slipped through the living room and around behind him. His shocked expression slacked off as his spinal cord was cut. Christi’s voice, thick with blood and emotion, whispered in his ear.
“See pal, that’s how you switch someone off with a knife. Saves all the hollering.”
As she let him go slack and fall, Christi deftly plucked the unlit cigarette from his dead lips and placed it in her own. She patted herself down for a lighter, found one in the lookout man’s shirt pocket.
Then she lit it up and slowly sank down against the wall onto her haunches, leaving a streak of blood all the way down. She was shaking violently.
She had to patch herself up, change her clothes and clean some of the blood off as quickly as possible. Hospitals were too dangerous, her wounds would flag her up on the system, she needed to get to the team, and they were all combat medics who could help her until she could get proper medical care. She needed to keep moving, soldier on, not let herself get any weaker. She breathed out a plume of smoke and let her shoulders sink a little.
Christ, give yourself a minute Polson. You’ve earned it.
Her heart suddenly beat faster as the urgent knock came at the door. With great effort Christi pushed herself up onto her feet and gripped the knife. She couldn’t take another one out, not in her state and she knew it. She considered bolting for the back door when she heard a familiar voice calling out her name.
With a breath of relief she dropped the knife and hobbled to the door as fast as she could, throwing it open and using the frame to prop herself up. She smiled despite her pain.
They’d sent Kruger to pick her up.
Christi had never been so pleased to see the craggy old hunter and hear his sandpaper voice.
“Kruger, there were two of them, they knew about the safehouse. We need to tell the others.”
Christi’s legs buckled a little and she felt her head swim.
Kruger stepped in and supported her beneath the arms, and Christi let herself sink down into his wiry frame. She had never imagined that the smell of Old Spice and even older sweat could be comforting but it was.
Kruger held her and stroked her hair.
“You’ve been through the wars there princess. Don’t worry, we’ll get you seen to.”
A million questions were racing through Christi’s concussed skull, inconsistencies slowly coming together to form a picture, some deep instinct in her calling out in the dark.
Kruger’s arms tightened on her small frame ever so slightly. He glanced over his shoulder down the street.
“Princess, you’re bleeding, let’s get you inside and patch you up. My car’s waiting out back.”
“This is just the start of something bigger, Kruger. The Court, they’re about to hit us hard.”
Christi was not sure if she was making sense. Kruger sat her down on the sofa.
He held out his softpack of Stuyvesant. “Here, have one of mine while I get the first aid kit. Think there’s some iodine here somewhere too.”
Christi took one of his cigarettes, winced as she leaned forward for a light.
As Kruger flicked the small flame of the lighter in front of her and leaned in, he deftly slipped his big hunting knife between her ribs, straight into her heart.
Christi’s single cough of shock blew out the flame.
She looked up at him, her pupils began to dilate, and then slow realization spread over her face. She shook her head a little and smiled, as blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth.
“Hey Kruger….. didn’t you tell me once… about how the alpha lion will sometimes sent the younger males…… to chase down and tire out the gazelles before he moves in for… the kill?”
Kruger tried to meet her eyes but couldn’t.
He nodded.
“I believe I did tell that story once, princess. It might have been bullshit though.”
Christi looked up at him. She thought of Usher and the team, and hoped they were ok.
“All your stories were bullshit, Kruger.”
Kruger let her fall forward into his arms. He stroked the back of her head until he felt her heart stop.
25
Ariel woke up with a start. He lay on his bunk, staring up at the dim red nightlight that cast an eerie glow around his cabin.
He was soaked with sweat and breathing hard. The images of battle still lingered imprinted in his mind.
For a moment he did not know where he was.
His mind was caught between the vivid screams and stench of the ancient battle that felt like it had been projected into his sleeping mind, and the cold alien environment of the cabin he lay in.
When his awareness returned after as few moments, he found that he did not feel any safer than when he was asleep.
He was still aboard the Proteus, in the lion’s den. Trapped at sea with monsters of more than one kind.
Through all of this, Ariel’s mind kept returning to the filthy gateway on the back wall of Argent’s office. A bubbling primeval tar pit that occasionally stretched like a sheet of rubber as the claws of some nameless horror on the other gingerly side tested it.
Ariel was awakened from his daydream by an insistent knocking on the metal plate of his cabin door. He shook his head free of sleep and sat up, catching his bearings. Still the knocking continued.
“All right, all right! I’m coming.”
Ariel slipped on his t shirt and sloped sleepily to the door.
It was only when he opened the door that his brain fully switched on and he suddenly became aware of the insistent alarm wailing throughout the ship.
The security guard that stood outside his door was short of breath, sweating, and had a nasty gash above his right eye.
“Dr Speedman, you have to come quickly, there’s an emergency, we may have to abandon the ship.”
Ariel watched in shock as behind the guard, people were rushing along the corridor, some donning hazmat gear, other arctic survival clothing, others with pistols. The guard addressing Ariel carried a diver’s spear gun.
<
br /> “I take it we haven’t been attacked by Moby Dick? So what is it, what’s been released?”
Ariel tried to suppress his fear at the possibilities. Ebola, anthrax, god knows what other pathogens were being developed and stored within the bowels of this death factory.
“Rumours are we have a crypto zoological specimen loose aboard the ship sir. We’re trying to isolate it as we speak but it’s proving...challenging. It’s been suggested that you gather all the cold weather survival gear you have on the off chance we may have to leave the ship while it’s being contained.”
Ariel looked into the guard’s eyes, and despite the reassuring euphemisms, he could clearly see the fear and supressed panic in his eyes.
Crypto zoological specimen? Ariel knew that could only mean one thing, and he gathered every item of gear he had been issued, and then stood in front of the guard.
His heart was racing and his hands shaking, but he had to help if he could, as one of the few scientists who had seen this thing up close.
“Where is it located now? And where is Dr Carver? Take me there now.”
The guard seemed reluctant to lead Ariel closer to the source of the disturbance, but Ariel insisted, despite the cold sweat breaking out upon his forehead.
He followed the guard down the maze of narrow corridors. Crewmembers and scientists passed them in the other direction, shoving them out of the way in their eagerness to get as far away as possible, up on deck, out into the cold but pathogen free air.
“What’s your name?”
“Evans sir. I hear you’re the one Carver hired to try and figure out what this thing is? You better get thinking fast.”
Ariel zipped up his arctic coat and strapped on his backpack as he walked. Above them the red emergency lights pulsated and the alarm wailed, making it hard to talk over the din.
“I don’t know what he thinks he hired me for. What he’s found, there aren’t any experts in.”
Evans shoved a fleeing engineer out the way as they advanced towards a steel pressure door with a single frost coated window in its centre.
“Carver says it will change the world. Make the Chromium Project billions. What do you think Dr?”
Ariel assisted Evans with the wheel in the centre of the steel door. Evans beckoned Ariel to stay still while he checked the corridor beyond was clear.
“What do I think? I think he’s bitten off more than he can chew.”
Evans smiled and nodded. Ariel thought he seemed like a decent guy, and wondered how he had come to work for a company as shady as the Chromium Project.
Then Ariel noticed the frost melting in the window behind Evan’s head. He peered for a moment in confusion, then dawning horror as a hot cloud of steam hit the other side of the glass, melting the last of the frost.
Something very large breathing on it.
“Evan’s get away from the door!”
Evans started to turn when the steel door was thrown open with a screeching tear, snapping one of the hinges which pinged off the walls like a bullet. The door hit Evans square in the shoulder, shattering the scapula and knocking him to the ground with a pained exhalation.
Ariel ducked, and then tried to make a grab for Evans to pull him clear, but beyond the door he heard a growl so low and loud that the steel itself seemed to vibrate.
“Evans, get up, we have to go!”
The guard tried to raise himself but cried out in pain at his broken bones. Suddenly a huge limb thrust through the door and grabbed Evans around the calf. Black claws the size of bowie knives sunk deep into his leg. Evans looked up into Ariel’s eyes in pain and terror, before he was dragged screaming through the doorway. A second later a fountain of blood sprayed the walls.
Ariel lay there on his back, using his legs to instinctively try to push himself backwards along the corridor. The door was flung open again and a primal roar issued forth. It was so strong Ariel could feel breath heating up the air, felt it waft over him like a hot breeze, stinking of rotten meat.
Then it started to lope through. Huge, hairless, vaguely ursine, but with a twisted humanity remaining in its face, filled with rage.
Ariel closed his eyes and waited for the worst.
Suddenly a hand was on his collar, dragging him back down the corridor. He looked up and saw to his amazement the bruised and bloodied face of Dr Carver, still in his white lab coat, but holding a Remington pump action shotgun in his other hand.
He dropped Ariel and raised the weapon, pumping the advancing creature full of buckshot three times. The monster took a single step back as the metal balls sprayed him. Then it shook its head rapidly from side to side, and the shot was ejected from its skin and scattered onto the floor like metal rain.
Carver’s voice showed pain and exhaustion.
“Ariel get up, get up! We have to go. Come on.”
With a sudden desperate urge for survival, Ariel got to his feet and followed Carver down the corridor towards a second pressure door.
“Carver what happened?”
Carver struggled with the wheel on this second door. It grated against the mechanism and turned frustratingly slowly.
“It got out. I don’t know how, we had every procedure in place, but it got out.”
Ariel joined Carver in turning the wheel to open the door. Behind them the roars and screams were getting louder and closer. Ariel put all of his meagre strength into turning the wheel, and prayed.
26
The medical spike was moved dangerously close to Usher’s eye, to the extent that his eyelids flickered involuntarily. He wondered how it would feel as it punctured the sclera, would it pop like a balloon or crunch through the layers of tissue like a pickled onion?
You are not helping yourself by picturing this before it happens.
Dmitri Sarkhov got close to Usher’s face, his vinegar-breath stinging every cut and graze on the soldier’s face. “You, Mr police-man-secret agent, are going to fight for me, win me lot of money. Then and only then I kill you.”
Sarkhov unbuttoned his coat and produced a Sig Sauer P229, Usher’s own gun they had taken from him. “If you win, I kill you with this, one shot straight through your brain; switch you off like a light.”
He then brought up a dirty, rusted bread knife in his other hand. “If you lose, I kill you with this. It will take three days, I promise, I have taken two before, but I want break record.”
Usher tried to laugh but only a gargling wheeze came out.
“Dmitri, I appreciate you want to give me a gloating evil genius death, but I can’t stand up on my own….and I can’t stand….the way your breath actually smells. So why don’t you just turn me into the best thing since sliced bread and get it done with.”
Dmitri shrugged his big bear shoulders.
“You will fight. You will fight for your friends, for their merciful deaths. If you will not fight for them then you will fight for your other friend, the woman. Your man Kruger gave her up too you know. We know your safehouse, on Evangelist Road, Tufnell Park. This woman you work with, Kruger tells us she is your closest friend?”
Usher couldn’t believe his cover, his safehouse, and his friends had been compromised this much. He hoped someone would pay Kruger back for this betrayal once he was dead.
“I wouldn’t listen to anything that old fucker says. He’s a compulsive storyteller. The woman, she’s nothing, she’s an administrator, just the office girl, knows nothing. Not worth your effort.”
Oh God Christi get out the house.
“We will see.”
Dmitri leaned in and brought the syringe a millimetre from Usher’s eyeball. For a single terrifying moment Usher thought he was going to push it right through into his brain, then Dmitri drew it back and slammed it deep into Usher’s pectoral muscle.
Usher felt although his heart was punctured. He cried out in shock and pain as Dmitri thumbed down the plunger, sending the fluid coursing directly into Usher’s large muscle mass. The strong hands securing Usher abruptly
let him go and he crumpled face first onto the concrete of the underground car park. He lay there for a minute, breathing heavily, afraid to move any part of himself in case it fired off in agony. Beneath him he felt the warm wet slop of his own blood.
How much have they given me? Oh my god I thought it hurt last time.
Then the muscle cramps started. It was horrific, like being hit with a Taser. His limbs seized and contracted, his jaw clamped shut and he nearly bit his tongue. After hours of torture he thought there would be none left, but suddenly an adrenaline rush such as Usher had never experienced surged through his body. He heard a guttural roar from his own throat in a voice he hardly recognized. His thoughts became clear and focussed, seemed to rush through his mind like a network of lasers. Then came the fire in his heart, aggression and rage like he never thought existed. He had fought all his life, been in warzones and killed his enemies with controlled aggression but never had he felt such clear, directed killer instinct. It was terrifying but it was beautiful, pure and clear, lacking all distraction or conscience.
Then he noticed, almost as an afterthought, that the pain was fading, overruled by this new chemical high. Not only that, he could move his battered body. Like a beast springing into a defensive stance, Usher shot up onto all fours and glowered at his captors.
Dmitri took one step backwards and raised his pistol.
“Now, you will do what we were paying you to do. There are men outside your safehouse at this moment. They await my words to shoot your friend. Now fight.”
Usher was still not in full control of his limbs, but amazingly he could feel the pain subsiding. More than that, he felt the swelling in his tissues subsiding, could feel himself actually healing.
The two large Russians either side of him grabbed his arms and began to drag him towards the makeshift ring in the centre of the car park. A wide pit lay in the centre of the floor, strewn with rubble, the foundations of some as yet unconstructed building. The assorted crowd gathered around this in their best party clothes, car headlights floodlighting the arena below.
The Last Line Series One Page 19