by Andy Remic
‘I think I could have managed softer landing,’ he said.
‘No, no.’ Carter smiled, slapping Mongrel on the back and making the huge squaddie groan in agony. ‘I think you did just fine, my friend. Ten out of ten. You deserve a fucking Blue Peter badge.’
‘Sorry I took so long. Had a few little ... complications.’
‘Believe me mate, you arrived just in time.’
Mongrel glanced at the red mush that The Priest had become. ‘I think we not have problems from that cunt again. I think that cunt gone to meet his maker in a bin bag! And I ain’t talking about no pearly gates, mind you, but the old hot-sulphur-under-foreskin kind of welcome! You digging The Mongrel?’
Carter frowned, giving Mongrel a strange look. ‘You OK? Lost a lot of blood, have you?’
Mongrel grinned. ‘It finally does look like Lord decide Priest was expendable. After all, not every day somebody drop helicopter on your head! The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways!’
‘Daddy!’
Joe ran out, followed closely by a heavily armed Roxi. He fell into Carter’s arms, and Carter held his son for long minutes, smelling his hair and his skin, feeling the warmth of love that spread through his every atom. Then, finally, he glanced up at Roxi, at her glittering green eyes, and she smiled, winked, and blew him a sultry slow kiss.
‘Joe, wait here with Rox. We have one more very important thing to do.’
Mongrel tossed Carter an H&K sub-machine gun, and the two men limped back down the ramp and into the control room; the battered leading the bruised. Carter pointed his gun at Alexis, but she shook her head, hands lifting in modest supplication.
‘Stop the Warhead,’ Carter spat.
‘I already have,’ she said, and pointed towards the screens. They showed an array of missiles floating on the ocean, a huge gathering of metal debris. ‘I have sent Nex soldiers to pick them up; to destroy them.’
‘Why they floating?’ said Mongrel.
Alexis turned, and pointed to the QIV processor—or, at least, the smashed remains of the QIV processor. Carter and Mongrel stared for a moment, then Carter looked back at her.
‘They no longer have a control source,’ she said. ‘The QIV destroyed the original Warhead’s AI; it took complete control of the machine sentience. Without the QIV, the Warhead has no guidance. Without the QIV, the Warhead has no life.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘It deserved to die,’ Alexis said.
‘It should never have been born,’ snapped Carter.
‘Yes.’ Her stare fixed on him then, a deep and questioning look. ‘There are many among us who had already turned against Durell; we were tired of his exaggerations, of his blind vision, of his lies. I allowed Roxi to take your son from the Sentinel Tower. I covered for her; I protected your little boy.’
Confusion flooded Carter’s mind. He took a deep breath, and nodded. Words would not come to him. He did not know what to say.
‘What would you have me do next, PureBreed?’
‘PureBreed?!’ choked Mongrel, but Carter’s mean stare cut off any thought of progression with that well-loved Mongrel humour. Mongrel chewed at his own tongue with his stumpy teeth, trying not to express the myriad of jokes which inundated his mind.
Carter stared into Alexis’s eyes. Then he focused. Now he understood; now he knew what he had to do. ‘I want you to evacuate the Dreadnought immediately. There is a package I must deliver.’
‘Hey,’ said Mongrel, nudging Alexis. ‘You know, your lot and our lot, we need to learn to live together! As big family, no? An int—... an integ— ... a big mixing pot of Nex and human, eh, love?’
Alexis reached over, and kissed the huge soldier gently on the cheek. ‘I think that is a battle for another day,’ she said, her copper eyes glowing. They walked from the command centre, boots crunching across shards and splinters of the shattered, broken, destroyed, QIV processor.
The Comanche touched down gently on a high ridge of jagged rock, and Carter helped the wounded Mongrel out onto the rocky mountain top. Roxi and Joe followed. In the distance the final choppers were howling through the skies as they fled the dying behemoth of the Dreadnought.
Joe came to Carter and gave his father a big hug. As they held one another, there came a series of distant detonations in quick succession. This was followed by a distant groaning, a mammoth meshing of metal with metal, and the Dreadnought slowly and majestically tipped at one end, and fell gradually towards the Earth two kilometres below.
As the Dreadnought connected with the ground, it seemed to fold in upon itself, compressing and crushing under its own titanic weight. A noise like the destruction of planets blasted out from the merging of ChainStation BCB module and the Earth as a great cloud of dust and rock rolled up into the sky and billowed out in a huge, expanding mushroom cloud.
Fire erupted then, a kilometre-high column of bright purple laced with silver and green, a huge towering inferno of flame that burned the sky and pointed an accusing finger at God ...
‘Over. Carter, it’s really over, ain’t it?’
‘Yeah, Mongrel, it s over.
‘Oh. Good.’ Mongrel beamed weakly, clutching at one of the bullet wounds in his chest and the red-soaked pad there. His face was pale with exhaustion. ‘Hey, Carter, you want to finally hear that story? Fat Chick Night?’
‘Not in front of the boy, Mongrel.’
‘Ahh. Ahh. Yes, I see what you saying. Maybe later, then.’
‘Yeah, Mongrel. Much, much later.’
Carter stood, staring at the destroyed Dreadnought, watching the rolling billowing desert and staring at the pillar of fire connecting the sky to the African continent. Roxi came up behind him and placed a hand gently on his wounded shoulder.
‘You OK?’
‘I’m OK,’ he sighed. ‘It’s just been a long fight.’
‘But now it’s done.’
‘Yeah, now it’s dead.’
‘Shall we go home?’ Her gentle words were filled with a promise.
Carter stared over into Roxi’s bright green eyes. ‘You mean the three of us?’
Roxi ruffled Joe’s hair. ‘Yeah. The three of us.’
‘That would be good.’ Carter smiled and, reaching across, kissed her warm soft lips. ‘That would be really good. Like you could never imagine, my love.’
A few minutes later, the Comanche leapt into the sky, banked, turned its tail on the devastation left by the dying Dreadnought—and cruised steadily across the endless blue.
CHAPTER 20
A GENTLE STROLL
ON KADE’S MOUNTAIN
With the world still in uproar, Carter led his new family back to the UK, where they ripped the boards from the doors and windows of his old house in Scotland and allowed fresh air to infiltrate the dusty interior for the first time in half a decade. It took them a week to clean the place up and make it liveable. When they had finished Carter bought himself a bottle of genuine Lagavulin and sat, after lighting the wood-burning fire, staring out of his old window at the snow, breathing the scent of wood-smoke and watching the distant peak of Ben Macdui. For a long time he replayed the past. He became a victim of nostalgia, but did not really mind. Now, finally, he had a lot to be thankful for.
After the attack in Cyprus where Samson, Carter’s faithful chocolate Labrador, was shot, the old Spiral woman Mrs Fickle, gnarled and ancient but with the strength of ten men, had come across the wounded animal. She had taken the whimpering dog back to her own cottage, removed the bullet and stitched the wound the old-fashioned way. With a tenderness that belied her outwardly brutal appearance of gun-toting, psychopathic granny, she had slowly and carefully nursed the dog back to health.
Mongrel had regained his full health after his bullet traumas at the hands of The Priest, had married Constanza and now headed one of the newly formed Spiral units whose aim was to re-establish world order and help with the building of new governments. On his stag night, he had faithfully retold the story o
f Fat Chick Night to a gathering of sixty-four inebriated men—including Carter, who sat in a drunken haze in the corner with his shaking head in his hands as Mongrel’s voice boomed over the crowd. The story involved Mongrel, a Twilight Zone series of events that led to every single woman in every public house in the entire town on that particular evening being at least a generous and bouncing size 18 and having breasts like melons, a subsequent encounter with thirteen drunken fat women out on a hen night who all took a shine to Mongrel and insisted on him sharing their communal bedroom—and an ensuing night of intense debauchery that would have made the Marquis de Sade blush. When questioned on his persistent choice of ample-framed ladies, Mongrel had himself blushed like an English rose and delivered the immortal statement: ‘Fat women best. I tell you, plump lady crème de la crème, they truly beautiful ones, because you never short of handful!’ Mongrel had chundered away all night. His final words, before he passed into a drunken Guinness-stained coma on the sticky bar-room floor, were the words, ‘I now revised. Is true. Mongrel finally improved in moral fibre. Mongrel new Weetabix. Little Mongrel no longer Wild Willy.’ After the wedding, Mongrel went on a mission to plump out Constanza as best he could, successfully endured a series of chemotherapy treatments, and gave a hearty two-fingered salute to the prospect of death by cancer. His favourite phrase became ‘Fuck that cancer.’ And he did. Well and truly.
Mongrel and Constanza had fourteen children.
Across the globe, many of the old governments were reestablished and peace descended like a gentle veil over the planet Earth. It appeared that finally humanity was sick of brutality and death. In a way, the Eden that both Durell and The Priest had so zealously sought was actually established. For a time, at least.
Sonia J created a brand new TV show called Tales of Strength and Courage, and took over the reins of HIVE Media with the aim of promoting the positive attributes of human nature. The programme became the most successful TV venture in the history of the planet.
Four months had passed since the end of Durell’s reign of terror and insanity. After the first month, Carter had started to experience headaches which grew in intensity with each passing night. He deliberated long and hard on the cause, finally making an appointment to see a Spiral specialist. After various scans and X-rays, she informed him of an alien artefact near the centre of his brain. She told him it was impossible to remove. She told him that to remove this ‘growth’ would very probably leave him in either a vegetative state or, quite simply, dead. It was too deeply buried. It was too well secured. Carter refrained from telling both Roxi and Joseph about his pain, his worries, or the recent medical diagnosis. This was a burden he knew he must carry alone.
Spring was close by, but the night was dark and stormy, filled with the dregs of a wild and vicious winter. Carter had written the letter with an old fountain pen, under the light of a small lamp at his desk, sealed the envelope, kissed both Joseph and Roxi in sleep, inhaling their mingled scent with tears in his eyes, then gathered his pack and called Samson to him.
For weeks now Samson had been limping painfully and had endured several prolonged seizures. He had been prescribed phenobarbitone as a control medication, but Carter had been informed by the emergency vet that the old dog had serious liver and kidney problems—on top of his arthritic hips—and did not have long to live.
Carter walked down the steps which led to the front door of his house and Samson followed slowly, the steep descent giving his aged frame obvious problems. They stepped out into a cold bitter world filled with a violent raging wind, with driving ice-filled rain, and began their long walk through the darkness of the storm.
Several hours later saw them weaving up a stone path which led into the mountains. Occasionally Carter would stop, pain pounding at his head and stars glittering behind his eyes despite the powerful painkillers he had taken—and had been taking more frequently for the past few weeks now. Samson would sit obediently at his feet, wet fur plastered to his chubby frame, tongue out and faithful old eyes still bright and focused.
Another hour saw them reach the deserted cave, and they ducked inside to shelter from the heavy downpour. Samson slumped to the ground and started chewing at his paws, grey muzzle working at some annoyance between his pads as Carter stripped off his wet-proofs, kicked free his walking boots and set about lighting a fire.
With the fire burning at the mouth of the cave, Carter sat and looked out into the rain. It fell in vertical sheets, and nearby he could hear the rapid flow of a swollen stream. He could smell a heady perfume of pine and wood-smoke. Samson climbed to his feet, moved over to Carter and slumped beside the man, placing his huge head in Carter’s lap.
‘God, you stink,’ said Carter, rubbing the old dog’s ears affectionately.
Samson whined, panting and gazing up at his master.
‘You been eating fish again?’
Samson lowered his head and closed his eyes.
‘I guess so.’
Carter rested his head back against the cave wall. The heat from the fire felt good. The embers glowed hot within the ring of rocks, and with a shiver Carter remembered plunging his hand into that black fire on Kade’s mountain ...
The scorching of his skin.
The stench of his own searing flesh.
The peeling of cooked meat from bone ...
After Carter beat Kade on the dark dust mountain, the KillChip demon had never returned. He had never troubled Carter with his unwelcome presence. It would seem that Carter had finally tamed the savage dark angel; caged him; broken him.
Winds blew into the cave, and outside the stream raged.
Carter spoke, voice hollow and booming as it reverberated from the cave walls. ‘Was Kade the god in the machine? Or the machine in the god?’ He laughed bitterly then. He would never know. He would never have the answers to all of his questions. But then, some things were best left buried.
Carter’s mind drifted for a while, back over the years, back over his memories. But always his thoughts returned—returned to one simple conversation, one simple confrontation which had stayed with him, branded into his mind, and would stay with him until the day he died.
Durell.
Durell had said, ‘The KillChip contains my DNA. My RNA. We are linked, Carter. We are linked ... and if you kill me, then the KillChip will slowly disintegrate. I will no longer be there to hold it in place. The KillChip will gradually dissolve, will release itself like an acid into your brain, will poison you like a fast-growing tumour that will torture you over the coming months—before eating your head from the inside out. To kill me, Carter, you must, ultimately, kill yourself.’
And Carter’s reply?
‘By killing you, I kill myself. That is a sacrifice I am willing to make.’
Oh, how Durell must be laughing in his pit of despair now, thought Carter, smiling grimly. How he must be chuckling as I sit here with my head in my hands, watching his prophecy come true.
As dawn broke, so the rain ceased. Carter watched the sun rising over the mountains. He could smell the rain, and he relished the awesome splendour of nature unfolding on the game board in front of him.
Roxi and Joe would find his letter. They would understand.
Samson opened his eyes and gave a big dog yawn.
‘We’ll face this final journey together, hey, boy?’ Samson panted, and Carter rubbed the dog’s soft ears as tentative fingers of early-morning sunlight reached into the cave.
Carter placed a pan of water over the flames of the fire to make coffee.
‘We’ll face it together,’ he whispered, and Samson continued to pant, his eyes gazing out over the mountains.
A small, thin-limbed African boy, his rich ebony skin gleaming under the harsh noonday sun, walked warily along the dirt roadway, his gaze swinging nervously from left to right as he searched for enemies. He carried a gnarled stick which he beat against the edges of the verge, the feel of the wood comforting under his narrow, bony fingers. It would at l
east afford him a weapon if he was attacked again by the other boys.
He stopped, crouched beside some shrubs and thorn bushes, and drank a little water from the bladder sack he carried against his hip.
He suddenly froze as something in the sand to his right caught his eye; his heartbeat increased rapidly to beat a tattoo of drums in his chest.
At first he thought the object was a snake, but the hump—which was covered by a fine layer of sand—started to rock backwards and forwards in a slow, rhythmical motion. The small boy retreated to a safe distance, frowning, unsure now of what he was actually watching. He could see that the object was large and round, fuzzily defined, and it looked like an elongated football. Then he blinked as sand fell away and he thought he could see ... hair?
Startled, the boy realised that it was a human head. He climbed to his feet and sprinted away down the road, bare feet kicking up flurries of dust as he hurried to tell his mother.
Behind him, the head rocked with a final violent spasm, and then rolled onto one side against the gentle slope of red dust. It was a head that stared with milky dead eyes, and a slack-jawed open mouth. It had a vicious tear where part of the dead-flesh cheek was missing—revealing a dark, rotting interior lined with yellow teeth. The severed head trailed tendons and a small section of spinal column. An army of large black ants crawled over the exposed and corrupted grey flesh; their private banquet had been rudely interrupted.
From inside the hollow cavern of the mouth there came a shadowy movement.
Something paused, halting at the opening behind the stiff and blackened tongue. And then what looked like a tiny corrugated insect crawled free. Its segments shone like oiled black metal, gleaming under the harsh sun; and it had copper eyes in a tiny, round, but unmistakably brutally insectile face.
It undulated across the head’s sand-matted beard and leapt, burrowing down into the sand ... heading down down down towards the Sleepers in The City. And it left no traces behind it; no evidence of its metallic, copper-scented, parasitic habitation.