Capes

by Drabble, Matt

  The air was still thick with fresh blood, and he knew that this had only happened recently, which meant that the killer or killers had to still be close.

  That thought was fresh in his mind when something heavy slammed into the back of him and sent him flying through the air before smashing him into, and then beyond, the wall.

  He landed hard into the large kitchen, only stopping when he slammed into the heavy metal cabinets on the far wall, creating a Bull-size dent.

  Slowly, he pulled himself free of the metal that had closed in around him on impact.

  Looking back at the distance he’d just travelled and at the hole he’d just made in the wall, he supposed that if he felt pain, then this would’ve hurt like hell. Fortunately for him, he didn’t feel anything.

  Once free of the cabinets, he pushed himself up and was stopped in his tracks by the sticky wet substance on his fingertips. He looked down and saw with widening shock that there was blood splattered against the broken metal – inexplicably, his blood.

  A quick hand up his back confirmed that he was indeed bleeding. Whatever had struck him from behind had somehow managed to rip open his skin. Now, icy fingers of fear tickled his own spine.

  Movement flashed across the hole in the wall, a red shaggy shape whipping by fast, too fast to get a good look at.

  Bull grunted and walked forwards, his old mindset returning like a muscle memory twitching for the first time in a decade. He might have been out of practice, but he was far from helpless.

  His elbow knocked against the wall and dislodged a telephone handset with the jingle of a bell. He thought about using the phone, about calling for help, about calling home, but who better could they send than him? Someone or something had just ripped through a hospital, slaughtering innocent nurses and defenceless patients. Those were the actions of a bully and he knew just how to deal with such a beast.

  A second flash of movement past the tall kitchen door porthole windows caught his eye, and he turned his head to match the movement before breaking into a sprint and charging straight through the wall in an intercept path.

  He slammed hard into the shape and kept on running. He held on to his foe and used the now squirming furry red thing in his grip as a battering ram as he ran through wall after wall after wall. Stone, brick, wood and plaster all exploded as Bull refused to slow down.

  The thing in his grip seemed to grow weaker under every hard impact, but he was unable to take a look at what he was holding onto.

  Eventually, they hit the outside, but Bull kept on running. His heart was pounding hard up in his ears and his lungs felt like they would burst, but he kept running. His eyes were blurry now as the effort sapped his strength after a decade of inactivity, but he forced himself onwards.

  The large open grounds were pleasantly landscaped, but it was one of the huge old oak trees that he headed for.

  Dimly, he was aware that while he’d grasped the thing up in his arms like a giant baby, hands had gone over his shoulders and dug into his flesh. He couldn’t feel pain, but the back of his legs felt wet as though someone was pouring water down his back.

  Beyond the huge oak tree was a large summerhouse used by the residents in the summer weather. He knew that he didn’t have much more running in him, so he headed for the tree, pushing himself to the very limits of what he had left in him.

  Just before he reached the tree, he dug his own fingers in hard and snagged a good grip in the thick fur. The thing in his arms didn’t appear to be wearing any clothing, and while it was hard to get a good grip, Bull wouldn’t be denied as his fingers dug into the red fur.

  The last second before the tree, Bull spun around and used his powerful momentum to hurl the thing like a discus thrower would. He felt flesh tear from his own back as the thing was ripped loose and sent flying forwards. It hit the tree and exploded through it in a shower of splintering bark before being sent on spinning through the air until it detonated into the summerhouse like a bomb going off, destroying the wooden building.

  Bull put his hands on his knees and gasped for air. Although he could feel no pain, he knew that he was hurt because his clothes felt soaked with what he could only assume was blood, and there was almost no strength left in his legs.

  He couldn’t quite bring himself to check the injuries on his back, but as he took a deep breath and started to walk slowly forwards towards the wreckage, each step seemed to dim his vision a little more.

  He reached the remains of the summerhouse and listened intently for any sign of movement; there wasn’t any.

  Stepping onto the rubble, he knew that he should retreat, that he should seek help, both medical and strategic, but that inner part of him wouldn’t allow it. This was his fight; this was his bully to deal with.

  He kicked out at shattered boards, trying to find his attacker, knowing that he didn’t have much time before his strength left him completely but eager to end this.

  Something stirred off to the side and he stumbled towards the movement, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind as blood soaked into, and then through, his shoes.

  He sank ungracefully to his knees and pulled apart several boards, his mind full of the senseless murders back in the hospital. He wanted to find answers and then to finish this thing with his own hands.

  He pulled apart more rubble when a clawed paw shot up, unbelievably quickly, through the wreckage and grabbed him hard by the throat.

  The fingers were tipped with razor-sharp claws, so sharp in fact that they pierced his once assumed impenetrable skin.

  Bull flapped and struggled, but the grip was too strong and the claws too sharp. The sole arm stuck up through the wreckage without revealing its owner as Bull’s eyes bulged, but he had nothing left to fight with as blood seeped from his shredded back, robbing him of his strength. The claw tightened, choking the very life from him until he sagged forwards and died.

  ----------

  “You’re avoiding me,” Jamie-Lyn said as CJ walked past.

  She was standing in a hallway at the Queen’s Guard centre, a large government building that had once been a hive of activity during the war against SOUL; now, it was three-quarters empty.

  When victory had been declared after Havencrest, the vast majority of its funding had been pulled, the prime minister no longer deeming the place cost effective. The voters had worryingly short attention spans, and when the bombings and attacks had stopped, they resented the extra taxes to fund the war.

  “Of course I’m not,” CJ replied, his notoriously difficult-to-read face failing under her specific type of scrutiny.

  “It’s okay. This is all…, well, this is all a little awkward; just when I thought I was out…”

  “They pull you back in.” CJ smiled broadly. “I have seen that particular film.”

  They looked at each other, both feeling the chasm between them and not wanting to open up old wounds.

  When Jamie-Lyn had left, CJ had stayed. Not only had he stayed, but he had continued to do the government’s bidding long after he shouldn’t have – long after Havencrest.

  “Have you been following the news of late?” she asked him.

  “I have been informed.”

  “Do you think there’s anything in it?”

  “Secret government conspiracies?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Jamie-Lyn responded with a heavy sigh.

  “I would have expected more from you,” CJ replied disapprovingly. “You saw what SOUL did, what they were capable of; you saw the bodies up close and personal. I fail to see how or why their threat would have required an artificial enhancement.”

  There was suddenly movement as several agents ran past them.

  “Something’s up,” she said, watching the men run.

  “Indeed,” CJ agreed. “Here,” he said, putting his arm onto Jamie-Lyn’s.

  “Wait, don’t you…” But he already had.

  Jamie-Lyn’s mouth was still open in protest when they materialised in the c
ommunications centre, several hundred yards from their starting point in the hallway in a crackle of purple electricity.

  She turned to chastise him, but then she was running for the nearest small metal bin to vomit into.

  “You bastard,” she grumbled as soon as she’d stopped retching.

  “I’m sorry,” CJ apologised genuinely. “It seemed… expedient.”

  “Screw your expedience,” she said, standing up and wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “You don’t do that, CJ! You don’t do that without asking!”

  “I apologise.”

  “What is it?” she demanded, turning towards Jesus who looked ashen-faced. “What’s happened?”

  “Crimson.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes… Well, no… Well, we’re not sure.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you,” CJ responded, puzzled by the inaccuracy of the man.

  “Give me a break, okay? The man’s holed himself up in the middle of a bloody jungle. We’ve got a few minutes satellite coverage a day; I can’t know everything.”

  “I thought that was your job?” Jamie-Lyn replied.

  “And I thought none of this was yours anymore?” he responded with annoyance.

  “Hey, you’re the one who wanted me here, or have you forgotten that?” she fired back with a challenging stare.

  The man had wanted her here to get inside CJ’s head. Not so much in Doc’s way, but in her own as someone – perhaps the only one – who’d ever been truly close to him.

  “Look, we don’t know if he’s dead. We do know that most of his crew are. Someone slaughtered around fifteen heavily armed and well-trained men without breaking a sweat.”

  “Who?” CJ asked.

  “I have no idea. To be honest, the only person I’ve ever known to be able to get inside a heavily guarded fortress like that without anyone sounding the alarm would have been…”

  “Crimson himself.” Jamie-Lyn finished the sentence.

  “Exactly. Now we don’t have the sort of necessary relationship with the government over there to rely on any intel we get back from them, but we’ll send in our own team to find out what they can. We’ve got some footage to review but we never caught the killer.”

  “You’re assuming that it’s the same guy that got Marshall?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “I could give you some bullshit about not making any assumptions, but yes would be my guess. Someone is hunting the team,” Jesus replied, and Jamie-Lyn looked understandably surprised by his honesty.

  “Where’s the doc?” she asked, looking around nervously.

  “She didn’t want to stay here,” CJ answered. “I understand that she took a room at a hotel in town for a couple of days.”

  “She needs to be here!” Jamie-Lyn said quickly. “She’s not safe.”

  “I’ve already sent a couple of agents to retrieve her,” Jesus said, holding up a placating hand.

  Jamie-Lyn turned to CJ. “Couldn’t you…? You know…?” She made a picking up motion from one place to another.

  “I don’t think she would appreciate that, as you’ve already made clear yourself,” he replied, sadly. “Besides, I get the impression that she doesn’t want my sort of help.”

  “And Bull?” Jamie-Lyn asked, turning back to Jesus.

  “He’ll be here by tonight. A team is just about to drive up and get him.”

  Just then a door opened, and an agent came hurrying in. Immediately, Jamie-Lyn could see that it wasn’t just bad news – it was the worst kind.

  ----------

  The nondescript minibus had blacked-out windows but was otherwise indistinguishable from the rest of the motorway traffic.

  Jamie-Lyn sat near the back as Jesus rode up front, heavily engaged with several agents making plans.

  CJ sat in the row in front of her and Forbes sat behind; none of them had felt much like talking for the past hour or so.

  The radio had been on, but angry callers were still flooding the lines with demands for an investigation into Williams’ government and the Queen’s Guard. More worryingly was the fact that now the name Havencrest was starting to be mentioned. The van driver had quickly turned it off.

  “So who do you think this is?” Jamie-Lyn finally asked aloud.

  “I do not know,” CJ replied.

  Jamie-Lyn turned around to face Doc.

  “Don’t look at me.” She shrugged. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  “Because it is safer for you to be here with us,” CJ answered.

  “Not if you’re the target,” Forbes bit back.

  “It would appear that we are all the targets,” he replied, seemingly unaffected by her attitude, his voice icily polite and inscrutable as ever.

  “But we’re all thinking SOUL, right?” Jamie-Lyn asked.

  “If it is, then this would appear to be a departure from their usual methods,” CJ pondered.

  “But that doesn’t mean it’s not though,” Jamie-Lyn pushed. “I mean, who the hell else could it be?”

  “We are not even sure that Cynthia Arrow is still alive,” CJ offered.

  “Oh, she’s out there,” Jamie-Lyn said bitterly. “That woman is a cockroach. There’s no way we were lucky enough that she crawled off and died somewhere after Havencrest.”

  While she talked, she watched CJ’s face as tightly as she could manage without alerting him. She supposed that she did know him as well as anyone did or ever would, but that didn’t mean she could get more than a general feeling that he was hiding something rather than anything concrete.

  In truth, it had only ever been that first brief second on the monitor when Marshall had been killed that she had seen anything suspicious on the alien’s face. Since then, his expression had been stony and unreadable which, she supposed with her journalist’s mind, was suspicious in itself.

  “I think I will go and converse with our superior,” CJ said, standing with a curt nod to them both before wandering down to the front of the bus.

  “You’re sure you can’t read him?” Jamie-Lyn asked Forbes quietly.

  “Not even if I wanted to. I never could. I’m guessing that when he enhanced me, he built some kind of safety feature to protect himself. I know I would have.”

  “It doesn’t feel like SOUL, does it?” Jamie-Lyn said, shaking her head but dropping her voice to make sure that they couldn’t be overheard.

  “I don’t know what to think. It’s been such a long time, Jamie-Lyn, all of that… well, it was a lifetime ago, one that I don’t wish to return to.”

  “You are here.”

  “Over my strenuous objections, but Jesus made it pretty clear that if I refused, then he’d send CJ to snatch me back wherever I ran to.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t…,” Jamie-Lyn started, before really considering the words. “Yes, yes he would,” she admitted, and they both laughed a little.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be here,” Forbes said after a few moments of consideration. “I mean, no offence, but you weren’t an active member of the team.”

  “No, but my face was out there. I doubt anyone would care about me personally, but they could certainly use me to draw any of you out and I don’t much like the idea of being someone’s bait.”

  “I can’t believe they got Bull. I mean, I thought the guy was practically indestructible.”

  “I guess none of us are, maybe not even him,” Jamie-Lyn said, nodding towards the front of the bus and CJ.

  “You know what I keep thinking about?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Havencrest.”

  The word hung heavily in the air between them.

  “That was a long time ago,” Jamie-Lyn replied, looking down.

  “But it happened. Maybe all of this is payback somehow; maybe it’s directly related. Hell, maybe it’s some kind of cosmic justice. After what happened, maybe we’ve all got it coming… maybe we always did.”

  chapter 10

  HAVENCREST PART ONE

&
nbsp; 20 YEARS AGO

  The town was small and the population mainly revolved around the fishing industry.

  The harbour was a hive of activity for the majority of the day; the boats headed out at dawn while the fish plant worked through the previous day’s catch until the boats returned home at dusk with their catch.

  It was a quiet town, the sort where everyone knew everyone else and their business, where curtains twitched at the mere suggestion of a newcomer, and anyone not born in Havencrest was automatically viewed with suspicion.

  The community had been settled by Krueger Stone, a large man with a larger nature who’d brought his fortune from South Africa with him when he’d relocated some 120 years ago.

  The Stone family were old school, and every generation was first obligated to produce a male heir and then name him Krueger. It was a simple system but an effective one.

  The Krueger line had all built upon their father’s work until the once tiny settlement camp had become a town. Each building that was erected belonged to the Stone family until they literally did own Havencrest, lock, stock and barrel.

  The small bay was remote and largely removed from the laws of man and they liked it that way. No one came to the town without express permission, and the locals never ventured out towards mainstream society.

  All disciplinary problems were handled in-house by the local constabulary, and while not strictly legal, the closest city was over 80 miles away.

  Havencrest bothered no one and no one bothered them; that was until an attractive, charismatic and deeply religious woman sunk her claws into the latest Krueger Stone.

  Cynthia Arrow rode into Havencrest on a mission: to snare herself a husband, a husband who just so happened to have his own town far from prying eyes, especially alien reptile ones.

  The Holy War had taken its toll on her organisation. Their tactics had been of a typically guerilla variety, high-profile hit-and-run attacks designed to weaken the government and the very devil they’d employed.

  Thus far she had managed to keep her own name and face away from the authorities in relation to the violent actions of her group. She was, of course, the friendly charming face of the public relations side of SOUL but was always quick to dismiss any notion that the violent attacks were in any way associated with her peace-loving organisation.