Apex Cypher (Prequel to The Techxorcist series)

by Barnes, Colin F.

  ***

  The chain-linked fence appeared on the horizon. Its shape wobbled and wavered with the morning heat like some kind of mirage. After the hour of torturous riding, Gabe couldn’t wait to arrive, regardless of what was waiting for him. His ass was numb, and his spine felt like he’d been fighting for a week. The thought of easing into the comfy seat of the Ranger was the only thing keeping him going.

  Shelley must have heard them coming, or seen them, for she was waiting just inside the fence, watching them get closer. The engine laboured badly by the time they approached the great aircraft cemetery, the scrapyard of stillborn fighter jets and passenger planes. The smoke trail behind them was enough to be seen for dozens of kilometres, he was sure.

  They pulled up to the entrance. Petal shut the engine off, and, though fun at first, Gabe was thankful to put an end to the din. It felt like his skull had trapped the rumble inside his brain. He wondered if he’d ever experience peace and quiet again.

  Before they even got off the bike, Shelley approached, shotgun in hand, called out, “You get it, then? I see you’re alive and mostly intact, so I’m guessing Jericho has met a sticky end—unless you didn’t do the job.”

  Stepping off the bike, Gabe waited for the blood to reach his muscles so he could walk straight. “Yeah, we got the info. Ya don’t need to worry about that.”

  “Is it in that?” Shelley pointed the barrel of her shotgun towards Old Grey.

  “Nah,” Gabe said. “That’s just a bit of junk I took for another job in another place. I got the info safe. How’d ya wanna do this, then? I don’t want no fucking about. A deal’s a deal as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Follow me.” Shelley turned her back, headed back towards her converted passenger plane, hobbling as she went. She struggled up the steps, disappeared inside the dark opening of the fuselage.

  Gabe stopped just outside. Petal was far behind him. He put out an arm to indicate for her to stop and wait. He felt exposed standing out there in the light. The clattering of metal rang out from within the plane.

  “I don’t like this, Gabe. This ain’t right,” Petal said.

  “It’s okay, girl, she needs the info, she won’t do anything stupid.”

  “It’s rude to talk behind someone’s back,” Shelley said, poking her head out of the gloom with a sarcastic smile on her ridged and weathered face. A set of keys flew out of the gloom and landed at Gabe’s feet.

  “There,” Shelley said. “Keys to the Ranger. She’s all yours. Bring her up to the fence, and when you hand over the information I’ll open the fence and you two can fuck off. How’s that sound?”

  Gabe turned to Petal. “You good with that?”

  Petal nodded, eyeing Shelley like she was a tiger waiting to pounce. “Yeah. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  Gabe picked up the keys, and keeping his eye on Shelley, headed back through the maze of scrap vehicles to the Ranger. Petal followed close behind, watching their backs. Every sound, smell, and change of wind direction felt like a potential threat. And yet nothing happened. They arrived at the truck safely. Gabe tested the door and it opened. He poked around the interior, expecting some kind of trap, but all seemed okay.

  Petal walked a circuit around the vehicle, checking under the fenders and bumpers before eventually opening the passenger side and sliding in on the seat. “All seems good,” she said.

  “Aye, that it does,” Gabe said, and followed her inside.

  He placed the key in the ignition and pressed the start button, half-expecting the thing to explode, but the engine simply turned once, twice, then fired up to a smooth whine. The H-core engine generated a belch of water vapour from the exhaust as he engaged the reverse gear and reversed across the dry, cracked earth in a circle so that he faced towards the fence.

  Driving carefully, he negotiated his way back through the piles of metal, all the time watching around him for an ambush or some other shenanigans. Nothing happened. He pulled the Ranger out of the tight confines of walls made from decades of dead planes and cards, and stopped just inside the edge of the fence where Shelley was waiting, with her ever-faithful shotgun.

  Petal held a pistol low beneath the window.

  Gabe stopped the Ranger and took his hands from the wheel.

  “You got a slate on ya?” Gabe asked Shelley. “I’ll download the info to it. When you open the fence.”

  With one hand still holding her gun, she reached into the folds of her skin-coat and pulled a slate. She passed it to him. “Transfer the info, then I’ll open the fence.”

  Gabe wondered whether the Ranger would have enough power to get through the fence, but with its reinforced concrete and Polymar posts and electrified chain-link, he doubted he’d get very far. He had no choice but to trust her. If worst come to worst, he’d just have to run the bitch down, and get the security codes from her.

  Taking the slate, he connected to its wireless transceiver with his internal system. Once connected, an image of the slate’s data directories appeared in his mental HUD. He created a new folder, and transferred the blueprint file to it. The hi-res set of images and maintenance documentation copied over in a matter of seconds.

  He handed it back to her. “There ya go. The info ya wanted. Now if ya don’t mind, we’ve got places to be.”

  Shelley ignored him. With squinted eyes, she held the slate close to her face, inspected the file. She nodded once. “Yeah, this is what I wanted. You did well. It’s a shame really.”

  “Shame?” Gabe asked.

  Shelley smiled, stepped back, and gestured across the slate. The fence of the gate started to open, but before Gabe had time to press the accelerator, a bolt of electricity shot through is spine, paralysing him in place. He only managed a brief glance to Petal to see that she too had been shocked; her body arced like a bow.

  A further stab of electricity struck him, knocking him forward, face-first into the steering wheel. The flow of power ravaged his body, hit his nervous system, overloaded his systems, and knocked him unconscious.

  Part 10 – The Skins

  Gabe felt his head throb with pain before he noticed the source of light—and the stench of rotting meat. A metallic tapping noise echoed around the room.

  He noticed he was tied standing up to a flat, upright wooden board.

  Blinking, he tried to move away from the board, felt rope cutting into his neck, ankles, and wrists. In front of him, the door of an old shipping container was open, just a crack. A line of dusty sunlight cut into the gloom. A shadow broke the beam.

  Petal’s swinging body caused the shadow. She hung from a thick, rusty chain. A dirty hook on the end was embedded into her right shoulder. A length of rope was tied around her feet. Her arms were cinched to her waist. Her head was slumped on her chest, a runnel of blood trickled down her back and leg to drip into a growing pool beneath her.

  Gabe pushed against his restraints, tensed his back and neck muscles, hoping to break the rope, but it held firm, cut into his skin until he choked. “Petal!” he called, his throat tight from the earlier shock. All his muscles felt strained. His bones ached.

  Petal didn’t respond. Was she dead?

  Trapped, unable to move, he screamed, “Shelley!”

  A figure arrived at the door, blocking the light.

  She opened it wider, flooding the container with sunlight. Shadows rushed away into the far corners. The blood shone with a reflective gloss. Fresh.

  Something in Shelley’s fist glinted.

  “First I’m going to skin your little friend,” Shelley said. She stepped into the container, and with her free hand, grabbed the chain holding Petal and pulled her close. The movement must have woken her. Petal lifted her head, her face twisted in torment, her eyes rimmed with redness. Tears of anguish tracked down her cheeks. “Then, when I’
m done, you’ll be next.” She pointed the wicked-looking blade towards Gabe. It had a bone handle, and the blade itself looked like a sharpened piece of metal from one of the many scrapped vehicles.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Gabe said, rasping the words from his tight throat. “We gave ya what ya wanted. We can do a deal, or—”

  “What I wanted, eh? You tricked me, thought you could get away with palming off a forgery.”

  Shelley rattled the chain as she spoke, making Petal cry out with pain as the great hook in her back sunk deeper, and opened the wound further.

  “A forgery? I’ve no idea what ya mean. I gave ya the info ya wanted.”

  “It’s not real!” Shelley exposed her rotten teeth in a sneer. “I don’t suffer fools gladly.”

  She turned to face Petal, pushed her head up with her free hand after letting go of the chain. She brought the knife to her jawline and practiced an arc that would go from ear to ear. “She has a pretty face,” Shelley said. “It’s a shame really. It’s good skin.”

  Gabe strained forward again, willing every fibre of muscle to break the bonds that held him against the wooden board behind his back, but it wouldn’t budge. Clearly, Shelley was an expert at this, but then he remembered: his super-thin blade. Would she have noticed it, tucked under his sleeves?

  She hadn’t undressed him, and the bonds were tied around his wrist and ankles. Gabe flexed his forearm, tried to ignore the general soreness of his muscles. He knocked his arm against the board with the short space available to him. He felt it. The blade was still there.

  Shelley looked around, and he became still, stared at her. “Let us go,” he said. “We didn’t know.”

  “You,” Shelley pointed her blade at him again, “will be my special project. A big man like you will provide me with a lot of material, even if some of it scarred. It’ll add to the character. I will enjoy gutting you more than the girl. You have more to lose, I can tell.”

  It was then Gabe wished he’d taken Jericho and Holly’s advice and just killed her the moment they returned, but deep down he knew he afforded a degree of trust towards Shelley as she’d not until now displayed any obvious desire to harm them. On the contrary, she’d saved Petal, but he now realised that she got her kicks from skinning her victims alive. Obviously got off on the screams and futile struggle.

  “Start with me,” Gabe said. “If you want my skin so much, why wait? Just get it over with.”

  The crazed woman took a step towards to him. He continued to flex his forearm, feeling the blade move millimetre by millimetre.

  “Oh, I never just get it over with,” Shelley said. “I like to take my time, savour the screams, the tears, the begging. It makes the prize that much more worthy. The harder they fight, the better. The panic and fear flavours the meat, you see. But Petal doesn’t seem to have much fear or fight left. She’s already resigned to her fate. Weak.”

  Gabe spat at the woman, the phlegm catching her on the rubber apron. “You disgust me. Come on then, come get your precious meat. But don’t you for a moment expect me to just lay here and let you do it.”

  “Bold statements. We’ll see how long that bravado lasts for shall we? I’ll give you a minute before you’re begging me to stop.”

  “Try me, bitch.”

  As she moved closer, Gabe tensed his muscles, hoping to free his restraints, but they held firm. She closed in on him, stinking of meat. He saw then that the black rubber apron was shiny with blood, as were her gloved hands. The stink made him want to retch.

  She brought the tip of the knife to his shirt, sliced it open to expose his skin. She ran the blade against sternum, pressed until the skin split beneath the point and a line of blood welled up in the wound. He refused to give her the satisfaction by reacting. He’d had much worse anyway. Shelley leaned in, lapped at it like a kitten. The dark colour rouged her lips. She smiled, the blood staining her already-rotten teeth.

  Before she could continue cutting, a siren went off from somewhere outside, in the scrapyard. Shelley turned her back and wheeled away, leaving the container.

  On and on, the siren wailed like a dying beast.

  Gabe took advantage of the opportunity, whatever it was. Forcing his arm underneath the ropes, he managed to get his blade to poke out of the sleeve. If he could just let it drop down, he might be able to grab it with his hand.

  “Gabe?” Petal called. The distraction made him miss. The blade fell to the metal floor of the container. “Gabe, is that you?”

  He swore under his breath. “Yeah, girl, it’s me. Ya just hold on there for a bit, we’ll get out of this.”

  “I can’t feel my shoulder,” she said. “I can’t feel anything.”

  “Right now, that’s a good thing, but don’t speak. Conserve ya energy, yeah?”

  As he thrashed his arms, he felt the rope slip every so slightly. He tried to yank his right arm upwards to free his hand, but the rope bit into the base of this thumb. No matter how much effort he put in, how wild he thrashed, it wouldn’t give. A burning heat ran through his body as his fury built and built until, with a savage pull, he broke his thumb with a sickening crack.

  He cried out with the pain. Sharp stabs of agony waved up through his arm. But he continued to pull, even as the tears filled his eyes. The broken thumb came away from the rest of his hand enough to create a flat profile, and allowed him to pull it free.

  He let it flop down. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes, waited for the worst of the pain to go, but it continued to throb, stoked his anger further. With a roar, he rocked forward, moving even with the board attached to his back. Something behind him snapped and freed him.

  Scuffling across the container, he made space so that he could fall down to his side in order to recover the blade. With a heavy crunch, he struck the floor. The wooden board reverberated behind him with the force.

  With his broken hand, he reached out and grabbed the blade. Not having the thumb made it difficult, but not impossible to pick up. Wedged between his fingers and palm, he hacked at the rope on his left wrist. Once free, he swapped the blade to his good hand and cut away the ropes around his waist and ankles.

  Scrambling to his feet, he shuffled to the open door and stared out of the container. The piles of old cars, planes and trains obscured his view, but he saw Shelley, for a brief second, pass through an opening, shotgun in hand, heading for the fence. Someone must have come. But who?

  Regardless, it bought him time.

  Despite the strained nature of his electrocuted muscles, he forced himself back to approach Petal. Her head lolled freely against her chest. She’d lost consciousness again. He started work on the ropes around her legs and waist, all the time supporting her body to take the weight off the hook.

  Once the ropes were cut away, he lifted her up so that she was chest-first over his shoulder, exposing her back. With his good left hand he gripped the shaft of the hook. It’d gone real deep into her. Taking it out was going to hurt, but there was no other way. He gritted his teeth, more for her than him, and curled the hook out, slowly at first, and then quicker once Petal started to scream.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist, and her arms around his neck, gripped him like a constrictor snake as she let out her pain in one long agony-filled cry. He pulled the hook free and let it swing away as she he stumbled back, unable to take her weight.

  Together they collapsed to the floor, hugging in equal pain.

  From outside they heard a gunshot. Then another.

  Whoever had come to visit was surely on the receiving end of Shelley’s shotgun.

  “Come on,” Gabe said, breathless and weak. “We need to get you out of here.”

  Reluctantly, and carefully, Petal let go and got to her feet with her eyes tightly closed, her right arm cradled with her left to prevent any movement of t
he shoulder. Gabe also stood, first crawling to his knees. He picked up the blade in his left hand and looked around for anything to use as a weapon.

  When he cast his vision behind him, he instantly gagged. Corpses, hanging on hooks.

  Part 11 - The Reunion

  Gabe encouraged Petal out of the container and into the bright sun. The image of the corpses on hooks burned into his brain. He didn’t want Petal to have that too. With the knife in his left hand, he crouched, kept his back to the walls of metal, and slowly made his way through the labyrinth. Petal stayed close behind, emitting the odd whimper here or there. Gabe’s right hand had become numb to the pain of his broken thumb—as long as he didn’t move it much. He cradled it against his stomach, shielding it from accidental collision.

  With every step forward, he expected the crazed, wild-eyed Shelley to suddenly jump out in front of them, shotgun in hand. He reached the end of the a narrow walkway between the tall towers of scrap vehicles and felt Petal bump into him as he stopped. He peered out and surveyed the open area in front of Shelley’s converted plane.

  At first he saw nothing, but a voice called out, grabbing his attention. Turning to face the exit in the fence, he saw a figure on out the outside, jumping and waving. On the inside of the fence, Shelley lay in a crumpled heap next to the parked Ranger.

  The red-tinged dry earth around her body darkened with blood.

  Petal looked out over his shoulder.

  “Shit me. Holly!” Petal waved with her left arm back at the girl. “Don’t touch the fence! It’s electrified!”

  Holly stepped back, and jumped excitedly like a dog seeing its owners for the first time in a long while. She waved for them to come over. It must have been her gunshots that Gabe had heard.