Capes

by Drabble, Matt

  He stumbled backwards, trying to get away, but then the rats were climbing up his legs and swarming over his feet. He dropped his rifle and started to kick out, his legs and hands flailing as the swarm engulfed him.

  The sheer sense of terror became a tangible air that hung around him until finally, mercifully, he blacked out and collapsed in a soundless heap as Dr Quantum merely watched impassively before moving onto the next target.

  ----------

  Crimson lowered the man’s body to the ground without the body making a sound either when it was alive or now. He wiped the blood from his blade and slipped it back into the one empty holster on his arm.

  “That’s three down,” he said to himself. “I hope you’ve got lots of friends out here,” he hissed at the body at his feet before lovingly running his fingers up his sleeve blade holsters. “Because my girls are thirsty.”

  The SOUL soldiers were well trained – far better, in fact, than he’d been expecting – but they were still outmatched, especially when they didn’t see him coming.

  The small fishing village might have presented a perfectly harmless visage to the occasional passing visitor, but he’d already established now that it was a cover. The first man that he’d come across had spilled his guts, both figuratively and then literally. The fanatics were notoriously difficult to break when under interrogation, but no one asked questions quite like the tip of Crimson’s blade and he was through asking nicely.

  Her name had been Jenny, an ordinary name for an ordinary woman working in one of the Queen’s Guard labs. Her job was a minor one, nothing of any great importance, and the government wouldn’t miss her, but he would.

  He didn’t know why she had gotten under his skin. There hadn’t been any great love affair, no crying out of wild passion, no steamy nights, no physical intimacy of any kind, but he had liked her.

  She had worked in the division that had produced a lot of the uniforms and equipment that most of the team used and he had met her when she’d produced a new version of his utility belt for him.

  Jenny had an easy way about her, a kind of no-nonsense approach that didn’t seem concerned with his reputation or his prickly attitude. She had been funny, quick-witted and nice, and in spite of his natural barriers, somehow she had found her way in.

  They had talked, drank and eaten together, never off site, obviously, due to his confinement stipulations, but a bond had formed and Jenny Reeve, with her quirky smile and dry humour, her sensible shoes and endless floral summer dresses even in the cold dead heart of winter, had become the first and only ever friend of the deadliest killer on the planet.

  He hadn’t found himself desiring her sexually; theirs was a deeper, more meaningful, connection, an intimacy that went far deeper than any physical fumblings. He had even begun to picture a future with her in it, one where he didn’t murder God in his sleep, one where he would retire quietly with his friend. And then she was gone.

  The war against SOUL had driven them ever further underground as the Queen’s Guard utilised every government resource to starve the fanatics out at source.

  As such, the larger sophisticated scale assaults were all but gone, but a new threat had arisen; now, desperate under-resourced extremists were staging single style, lone wolf attacks.

  They had taken to seeking out any government employees they could find. Suddenly, low-level civil servants were being targeted. Several men and women were attacked walking home or to work. Cars were used as weapons to mow down single pedestrians, and knife attacks rose as single revellers were sought out in pubs and clubs.

  It took the government a while to discover that these were not random attacks, and eventually, during a raid, a list had been found of government employee names and addresses. Jenny’s had been on the list.

  She had been shot buying a lottery ticket on her way home from work one sunny afternoon, her floral summer dress left splattered with her own blood.

  Crimson had taken his pain and his anger and buried it for almost nine months now. No one knew of his friendship with Jenny, not even the doc – his mind had buried his feelings deeper than even she could reach.

  That rage had festered and brewed inside him until the time was right to take it out and unleash it on the people he held responsible. That time was now.

  ----------

  chapter 11

  HAVENCREST PART TWO

  Bull monitored the situation from Position Charlie. As per usual, he was the last resort, the bomb to drop when all else failed. He often wondered if there would be less bloodshed if he was sent in first, a battering ram to tear through the enemy before they had a chance to react, but apparently, brighter minds than his knew better.

  He knew that while he might be the strongest member of the team, he wasn’t the smartest. He was the blunt weapon, the sledgehammer, but he wasn’t dumb – far from it.

  The benefit of being constantly overlooked and forgotten about was that he saw far more than anyone else. While they were all talking, vying for airtime, he was watching and listening and he saw all.

  He knew that Dr Quantum was slowly slipping out of control, her desire to prove herself to the men around her distorting her abilities; there was far too much emotion supercharging her powers .

  Crimson had lost someone recently. The man thought that no one knew about his burgeoning relationship with Jenny Reeve, a low-level government employee, but Bull knew. Crimson was always so focused on hiding himself from Doc, from God and from CJ that he forgot that Bull was watching. Right now, the man was hurting, and that made him even more dangerous.

  Marshall was tired and growing older by the day, weary from the battles and beaten down by his own morality that had always told him they were the good guys, but the war had made them all compromise. Those black and white hats had grown increasingly grey during the past few years, and Bull knew that out of all of them, it had been Marshall who’d believed themselves the heroes, but now he wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Even CJ was growing more and more absent from the team. Their reptilian leader-cum-creator was spending more time away from the group. Even his friendship with Jamie-Lyn was faltering; the two once-close friends had drifted further apart than either realised, but Bull had seen it. He wondered if CJ was drifting away just from the team or from mankind as a whole and that was a scary thought.

  It made him sad to see his family so scattered. They had once been a tightknit unit, but the war had revealed some of their worst qualities. The death and the killing had corrupted them all to a greater or lesser degree and now they all wanted it to just end.

  He was probably the only one of the group that wasn’t looking forward to the end because the end of the war meant the end of the team, the end of his family. However dysfunctional it might be, it was the only real one he had ever known.

  As he listened into the communications from Crimson, Marshall and Doc, he could hear in their voices what they were trying not to say. Crimson’s anger and desire for retribution, the doc’s giddy confidence that was now starting to border on arrogance, and Six-Shooter’s weariness. They were all at their limits and not even God could see it, but Bull could.

  He thought long and hard and made his decision. His team were going to need him; his family needed him, and he heaved himself up from his hiding place and he went to them.

  ----------

  Marshall moved to Position Beta as directed by God in his battlefield bus, as per usual parked a long way from the front line .

  The overwatch position was his trademark on reconnaissance missions, his careful eye and steady aim the perfect attributes to take an overview. God might have owned the stadium, but Six-Shooter ran the show.

  His firm belief today was that this day would be his last, that this battle would be the final one, the one to end the war because he was tired… so very tired.

  He prayed that this was what they all hoped for, the stronghold of SOUL: their home base, their hive, their downfall.

  It had been
far too long now, too many bloody fights and too many funerals of friends and colleagues, on both sides.

  He knew that they would never win over the hearts and minds of fanatics; he was too practical for childish emotions. No, the only win to ever end this war was to annihilate the enemy, to burn them out at source and kill their message and message spreaders dead. Confine them to the history books and then burn the books.

  He scouted his way along the low stone wall, which must have stood for centuries and encased the small fishing village. It was hard to believe that this sleepy picturesque haven might be holding their worst enemy’s central command.

  CJ had brought them the intel, but he wasn’t here himself yet. God had told him in confidence that their alien was attending a meeting with the PM herself, and Marshall assumed that whatever was under discussion was above his own personal pay grade. He was a soldier, a front-line field soldier; he could command the troops, but he had neither the inclination nor the ability for big picture strategy.

  He hefted the sniper scope to his eye and checked the horizon again. Nothing seemed out of place, but his senses were starting to tingle; trouble was brewing, he could feel it.

  His feelings were confirmed when he spotted a shabbily hidden body some distance away. A pair of boots were poking out of a large bush – a dead body had been dragged in but badly concealed.

  “Crimson,” he muttered to himself, knowing that the assassin had a talent for killing like no one else, but he had little in the way of patience, especially when it came to being in the ‘Kill Zone’, as the man liked to call it.

  Crimson’s Kill Zone was a state of mind that he entered when he was on the hunt, a narrowing of vision and purpose that made him even deadlier than usual but often blocked his reason and already limited proclivity to follow orders. As much as he personally detested the man, even Marshall had to admit that if Crimson was on the hunt, then there was something to hunt. Still, he was a man who followed the playbook to the letter and now he hiked it double time to the body to make doubly sure. When he reached it, the knife wounds told him everything.

  “Six-Shooter to command,” he whispered into his radio mic.

  “Command here,” God’s voice came back.

  “I’ve got a body here. Crimson’s work.”

  “We’ve had no confirmation of engagement,” came the slightly puzzled reply.

  “Well he’s been here, and I’m guessing that this body’s not the only one. I’m heading in.”

  “Negative, Six-Shooter; hold Position Beta.”

  “It’s too late for that, Command. Crimson’s already gone and so is Doc. I can’t raise either of them.”

  “I’m in control here, Six-Shooter, and you have your orders. Hold Position Beta and wait for further instructions.”

  Marshall used the scope and swept the horizon for Position Charlie; it was empty.

  “Bull’s gone too.”

  “What?” came the annoyed reply.

  “I said he’s gone, Command.”

  “Bull? Come in, Bull. This is Command. Answer, dammit!”

  ----------

  “You’re losing them,” Jamie-Lyn couldn’t stop herself from saying as God’s brow furrowed.

  “I’m not losing anything.”

  “Crimson’s off the reservation. You know what he’s like when he’s in that bloody zone of his.”

  “Command to Crimson,” God spat into the radio, but got no reply. “Dammit, Crimson, come in. Command to Crimson.”

  Jamie-Lyn sat nervously on the swivel chair. She might not be a soldier like the others, but she’d been around them long enough to get a gut reaction when something was wrong.

  “Command to Dr Quantum.” God tried a different tact but got the same dead result. “Quantum, come in. I need a scan on Crimson… Come in, Quantum!”

  “Him I get, but the doc?” Jamie-Lyn puzzled aloud. “I don’t like this, God.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you like.”

  “Well you’d better start bloody listening to someone!”

  “Bull, Command to Bull…” But he was only met with dead air.

  “When is CJ getting here?”

  “I don’t need his help. I’m in control here, understood?”

  “If you really think that, then you’re deluding yourself! This team has been straining for weeks now.”

  “They’re just eager to get this done. CJ says that this is the SOUL home base; if he’s right, then we can end this war once and for all right now.”

  “But he’s not here, is he?”

  “I don’t need him!” God shouted back, and Jamie-Lyn flinched. This was the first time that she had ever seen the controller show any kind of real emotion, and she didn’t like it.

  “Yes we do. Call him in, you arrogant prat; can’t you see what’s happening here?”

  “I’m in control here!”

  “If you believe that, then you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.”

  ----------

  It was a perfect storm that fell on Havencrest that day, and if Cynthia Arrow had seen it coming, she would have run… run for her life. Instead, she was unaware of the imminent threat and simply going about her day-to-day terrorist life.

  She had no reason to feel afraid as this was her home, her sanctuary, her Eden paradise, and from here, they would rebuild.

  She watched out over her workers as the old cannery gave home to a new kind of produce – a far deadlier kind.

  The scene below her sealed office window was like something out of a science fiction movie. Around two dozen men and women buzzed about wearing full length hazmat suits complete with masks and flexible breathing tubes suspended from oxygen tanks above them.

  The chemicals that they were working with were highly unstable and hazardous, but she had faith – faith that the Lord would watch over them and not allow their work to falter at this stage.

  “Are you sure about this?” her husband, Krueger Stone, once the owner of Havencrest, asked nervously.

  “This is the way. This is the path that we are going to ride to victory,” she replied without turning around.

  “But that stuff…, well it’s a little…, indiscriminate, isn’t it?”

  “I thought that you were a believer?” she asked without turning around.

  “I am, my love, of course I am, but…”

  “But what?” she asked, finally turning around to face him.

  “Look, I understand your attacks on the government targets, I get that, I really do, but this?”

  “This?”

  “A chemical weapon? Releasing a chemical weapon on the public? I don’t see how this advances the cause… I’m sorry.”

  Cynthia looked at her husband, her eyes taking in his appearance and evaluating him and his usefulness. He had been a good husband, a good father, a good asset, but now she wondered just how deep his faith ran.

  “This is the way, Krueger, my love. He has spoken to me; he came to me and laid his glorious words upon my ears alone. Ours is not to reason his word, Krueger. Our job is simply to follow, to bask in his love and walk the path to his glory.”

  “But… chemicals…? A lot of innocent people could get hurt, couldn’t they?”

  “Innocent? Is there such a thing anymore because I wonder, my love, I truly do. There are only two sides to any war, and the people out there have made their own allegiances very clear. They have sided with the devil that walks amongst us. They have chosen to walk in the darkness, but I shall show them the light.”

  “But… you always said that we needed the people, that if we showed them the devil’s true face, then they would turn against him.”

  “Do you have faith, Krueger? Do you have faith in the word? In me?”

  “Of course I do. You know that,” he answered quickly as he crossed the room and knelt at her feet, taking her hand and lowering his head in subservience.

  “This is a cleansing, a heavenly cleansing that shall purge the earth of the non-believe
rs. We shall purify the soil and plant the seeds for a whole new generation, a brighter one, a cleaner one. God’s one.”

  There was a sudden commotion from down on the factory floor and Cynthia released her husband’s hand and turned back to the window. Krueger stood up and joined her.

  Down below, one of the workers was suddenly flailing around in panic as the attached tube that pumped oxygen into his suit broke away.

  The man flapped at the now torn hole in his suit. Even through the mask and the distance, Cynthia could see the look of sheer terror on his face.

  His co-workers started to back away from him as he desperately tried to hold his breath. His hands lashed out for help, but people moved away, terrified of having their own suits compromised.

  The man could only hold his breath for so long before the noxious substances in the air started to enter him. His face began to distort in pain, and his mouth suddenly opened and gulped in a great gasp of poisoned air. His skin started to blister and boil on his face and his eyes widened as he began convulsing.

  Cynthia watched on with an analytical eye. She had, of course, intended to test the chemical weapon in the near future but here was an up-close volunteer.

  The man was on his knees now, clawing at his throat as his insides boiled, cooking his organs. His skin began to pop open as volcanic sores burst all over his body until finally, mercifully, he collapsed and died.

  “Thirty-three seconds,” Cynthia noted. “That’s pretty good.”

  “Oh my God,” Krueger muttered, sickened by the sight. “You can’t… this isn’t…”

  “Oh, my love,” Cynthia said with genuine sadness. “I fear that we are no longer on the same path.”

  Krueger turned to his wife but never saw the blade in her hand. The knife was across his throat in an instant; one minute he was looking at his wife, and the next, his legs were buckling under him.

  He died at her feet as his blood soaked the carpet while Cynthia watched the scene below as the unintended test subject was carefully removed from the factory floor and work started up again. A small contented smile crept across her lips. Today was a good day.