The Unlucky Man

by H T G Hedges

  There was blood in my mouth as he moved in once more, confident now, an executioner stepping up to the block. His fist drew back as my own fingers found the cold metal handle of a one piece silver paring knife and closed around it. Corg was inordinately proud of these knives: I hoped they warranted it.

  The blow, when it came, thundered into my face, the force of it swinging me sideways as I did my best to move with it, turning on the balls of my feet into within the defensive line of his fists, slamming the blade full force into his abdomen.

  He grunted as the blade snapped against the enforced black body protection and bounced away, tip embedding in the floor. My guess was that would cause some pretty nasty bruising but nothing more.

  As Black-Ops fell back to regain his composure, I saw his hand going for the concealed holster at his waist, caught the flash of dull metal as he thumb-flipped it open and went for his gun.

  Without thinking, I leaped forward, lashing out with the jagged shard of blade still clasped in my hand, slashing it across his throat and slicing it open like steak. As the ardent spray hit the wall, painting crimson over the white paint, I offered a breathless prayer of thanks to Corg for the obsessive care with which he maintained his kitchen knives.

  And then I was alone in the room, blood over the walls and a pool of it spreading towards my filthy bare feet. The air smelled of copper and death.

  No time to take stock, no time and nothing to gain. I knelt over my late antagonist, ignoring the sickly sticky feel of the blood I had spilled spreading beneath my bare toes, and eased his gun from the holster. The cold, dead weight of it felt strange in my hand as I walked down the hallway, leaving ruby treads on the beige carpet, and fired a round into the lock of the bathroom door.

  It was the first time that I had ever fired a gun, and it seemed odd to me; the way it jumped and bucked in my hand, the noise of it.

  The door swung open on oiled hinges onto a strange scene, suddenly disturbed. Corg was on the floor, the stone tiles covered in shattered glass from the basin cabinet mirror that glittered under the soft light. There were cuts all over his right hand which was clamped around the wrist of another masked assailant, the twin of the one adorning the kitchen linoleum. This one held a knife poised over Corg’s eye in the gripped hand and had shards of glittering glass clinging to his mask. They both looked at me as I entered, intruding on their bizarre theatre.

  I raised the gun and the second, third and fourth time I fired it also felt strange. It seemed to take a long time for the thunder in the small room to die away and stop bouncing off the tiled walls. The cordite smell lingered longer still.

  "Shit," Corg breathed at long last, releasing the limp hand still held in his vice like grip. He looked around the now mostly red room; the tiles, the bath, the floor. "Shit," he said again at last, then took a deep, steadying breath. "Was that your storm?"

  I held out a hand and helped him to his feet as we both heard the sounds of movement, heavy feet double-timing on the stairwell.

  "The start of it," I replied.

  Quinn stood in the shadows across from Corg’s building, his agitation growing with every passing minute. He’d watched the targets stumble into the forgotten grandeur of the apartment complex, seemingly blind drunk, watched as the lights went on in the hallway, waited for the all clear from Cry and Rollins, lurking inside.

  Since then some twenty tense, expectant minutes had ticked by with all the speed of poured honey. He glanced at his time-piece again, staring long and hard at the dull digits. It was dark in the alley and quiet, the only sound the tin-can timpani of droplets drumming against metal trash can lids.

  The falling rain pattered too, monotonously, off his mask, echoing the mental ticking of seconds in his head. This was his first outing as task master and he really didn’t relish the idea of screwing it up.

  The tension tightening in his belly was being echoed in the men waiting behind him in the gloom, he knew – he could feel it pouring off them in waves, the darkness thick with anxious sweat. Somewhere behind the cloud a cold moon struggled to cast its weak half light onto the street.

  Quinn stared at the smudge of light against the nebulous smog and weighed up his position. One more consultation with the watch. Instructions were to go in quick and quiet, no unnecessary publicity, no collateral, no noise. Wychelo had already made enough of a ruckus at Central Station and they were playing catch up for his regrettable dramatic flair.

  The man was a liability, Quinn thought, unmanageable, messy – sure, he was good at killing people, but so too was a scorpion and just because you put a leash on one it doesn’t make it any more reliable. The fire at the funeral parlor should have been the end of it but there were always loose ends, always gaps in communication.

  It had been too long already. Worse still, he’d felt the whisper that Wychelo might be stalking the night and the thought of those odd eyes watching, creeping up on him out of the darkness, set his teeth on edge so much his jaw ached. He raised a hand, fist clenched.

  "We’re going in," he hissed to the waiting assembled troops. Their relief was palpable. Give them a good fight any day, he thought, but this waiting was murder.

  "Quiet as we can. Goggles on, at the ready. Hendriks, soon as we get in be ready, at my command, cut the power, got it?" A masked head nodded. "OK Squad. Let’s move out."

  Weapons ready, they crossed the street at a stealthy run and entered the complex.

  "We need to get the hell out of here," Corg whispered urgently as the sound of feet on floorboards intensified and whoever was coming drew closer to his door.

  "Damn straight," I agreed. "You got any more weapons here?" My scavenged one was empty.

  Corg had an odd look in his eye but he still contrived to look exasperated, like I just asked something ridiculous. "No," he said, "You don’t shit where you eat."

  "OK."

  "But I do have an escape plan." He fixed me with one last, uncertain, look and left the blood soaked bathroom, studiously ignoring the gory tableau I had created.

  Feeling somewhat relieved to be leaving myself, I followed him out of the room and down the hallway to what he had always described as a spare room, though I had slept in it a sufficient number of times, admittedly usually in a drunken stupor, that I considered it with a certain proprietary air. I even, I remembered suddenly, kept a spare work suit in a bag on the back of the door. I grabbed it, as Corg shut the door on the corridor behind us, and felt the comforting weight of a pair of old shoes in the bottom of the pile.

  The room was painted with magnolia neutrality and sparsely decorated, the only furniture a steel bed, a nightstand, and a large cheap looking wardrobe that took up all of one wall of the small room.

  It was to this closet that Corg now crossed, opening both doors wide to reveal nothing inside save a large and heavy looking lump hammer resting against the back wall. It was shiny and brand new, with an unused bright yellow handle and a dull black head.

  "This is your exit strategy?" I asked, half amused despite myself and the events of the evening.

  Corg managed a shaky grin too as he braced himself and hefted the hammer. "Always good to be prepared right?"

  He swung, the heavy head connecting with what turned out to be little more than plasterboard, gouging a huge hole in it. Three more strokes and there was a splintered, jagged edged space big enough for the two of us to climb through.

  "Shut the wardrobe door behind you," Corg said as he disappeared through his handiwork. "It might buy us a little time."

  The closet snicked shut behind me as I followed in his wake.

  The room in which we found ourselves was, aside from being completely empty, the mirror image of the one we had just left.

  "That’s a very neat escape route," I said to Corg, brushing dust from my jacket sleeves.

  "Yeah," he said mildly. "Never used it until today." He led the way across the room and out into the corridor beyond. Whispering now, he added, "Used to think maybe it was a bit p
aranoid, you know?"

  "Until today?" I whispered back.

  "Yeah, about now I’m feeling pretty vindicated." In a weird way, he sounded quite pleased. "We better hustle," he added, and we moved on in silence. The air was thick with dust that filled the grey half light of the abandoned building, filtering through sealed, grainy windows with a soupy heaviness.

  I followed Corg carefully down a flaking staircase then through another hall of creaking boards to a door chained and sealed with a big, serious looking dull padlock. The key was taped with electrician’s tape next to it on the bare brickwork.

  I gave Corg a look. He shrugged, "No one’s meant to come in from the outside. Think about it, I don’t want to be tripping over some bum who’s decided to squat in my escape tunnel." I thought about it.

  "Makes sense."

  "Course it does," he said, tearing the key from the wall and clicking open the lock. He cranked the door out into the dark street beyond then looked back at me, grinning, really getting into the spirit of things now.

  "Let’s boogie."

  Outside Corg’s front door, Quinn was making an executive decision. It was time to put covert considerations to one side.

  "Take it down."

  Wood splintered and they were in the apartment, weapons readied. They advanced cautiously into a well lit, tidy living area. To Quinn, it made their stealth seem faintly ridiculous. Still, he crossed the threshold with care, ready with the command to kill the power if necessary.

  "Sir?"

  He crossed to the kitchen and looked around the door frame. For a second the sight of Cry stretched out on the bloody linoleum was almost enough to make Quinn lose his cool. What was going on here, he thought. Cry was a trained operative, skilled in the art of stealth and exhumation: this was not the way it was supposed to be. And where was Rollins?

  "Sir!" This time from the bathroom. He stalked through the apartment, ready this time for the sight that met his eyes. For a moment he just stared at the body of his former squad member and the broken glass. There was a lot of blood liberally spread over the walls, the coppery smell of it filling the small room with a sickly headiness. It caught in the back of his throat. This was turning into a Goddamned mess.

  "So where are they?" he demanded at last. "Find them."

  It took a while, moving room to room under the sweeping cover of their gun barrels, but eventually they discovered the jagged hole in the wardrobe and this time Quinn almost did lose it but bit down on the frustration. Who were these people, he thought. And why the hell did they have a pre-planned escape route?

  "Follow," he whispered through clenched teeth.

  Lit by criss-crossing torch beams, they made their way through the empty building, automatics twitching at every sound, hackles up. Dust motes spun and floated lazily in the light whilst every sound seemed to echo unnaturally in the stillness. Boards shifted and creaked in the floor under the weight of heavy footfalls. But Quinn simply walked through it all, weapon holstered, no longer did he expect to catch his prey.

  They worked their way with systematic patience through the abandoned building, down the winding stair, until they stood huddled around a chain left scattered negligently on the broken floor and a discarded padlock with the key still shining in the heavy lock. It had strands of tape still attached to it. The door banged emptily in the breeze, the street beyond lying dark and empty but for the cascading rain.

  Quinn rested his hand on the lintel and stared out into the night.

  "Shit," he said. He looked round at his milling troops, lurking uncertainly in the cold hall and sighed heavily. So much for snatching glory with your first command, he thought ruefully. Oh well.

  He drew his pistol and used the barrel to fully push open the door, listened to it creak wide with grim expectancy. He thought about his options: two of his six man squad were dead, how could he hope to find two men in the twisting maze of dark streets that lay before him. They could be anywhere.

  "Hendriks," Quinn hissed into his radio, "Has anyone come round the front of the building?"

  "Negative," came Hendriks’ static gargling reply. So, if they didn’t loop the building, they must have headed straight through the alleyway at its back.

  "Check your GPS, what’s East of our current position?" He listened to the crackling silence for a few moments.

  "Warehouse district, sir," Hendriks answered at length. Storage? A mental image bloomed in his mind, a picture of a honeycomb of garages and locked sheds, a spreading hive of potential hidey-holes. He swallowed down his negative thoughts like a bitter pill, squaring his shoulders against the long night.

  "Let’s move."

  We went as quickly as we dared, splashing through deep puddles whilst cold, sharp raindrops stung our faces. Passing from hidden doorways to covered fire-escapes, keeping as much as possible to the shadows. Corg led the way down the street and into a row of vast warehouse buildings and boxy, dilapidated storage units with sliding latticed chain link doors secured with big, rusty locks.

  Steam rose in unnatural formations from the tarmac as the raindrops spit and burst on the road. The sound of the droplets dancing against concrete and banging a rhythm against corrugated iron had, at some point, become familiar almost to the point of being a comfort.

  For a few moments the moon broke through its cover of cloud, bathing us in pale watery light, floating briefly in a sea of night sky.

  Corg glanced back anxiously the way we had come, exposed suddenly in the weak moonlight. The whites of his eyes glowed in the gloom. Behind, the street lay empty and still though the swirling rain filled the night with shifting grey wraiths moving soundlessly in the dark.

  "Come on," he whispered, squaring his shoulders as he turned back into the downpour, bald head floating like a buoy against the flow.

  "It's not far now."

  Quinn watched his men moving down the alley, the beams of their torches strafing and criss-crossing the street, with a sense of pride. They were still performing the job ahead of them with discipline and formation despite the knowledge that it was almost certainly a lost cause. He took some solace in the knowledge that he led a well trained team, but the thought soured his mind as he thought once again of the two members of his squad he had left cold and bloodied back in the apartment. They had been well trained too, he thought. For all the good it did them.

  He couldn’t see the moon any more but at least the buildings on either side sheltered him from the worst of the weather. Dirty steam hissed loudly from a wall vent set in the crumbling brick to mix with the falling water.

  This is fruitless, he thought. And yet he would continue searching, he knew, until the night was done and the first rosy pink fingers of dawn started to lighten the morning sky. It would be better, no matter what, than heading back to Control in failure. No, he thought, he would explore every alley between here and the docks, if necessary, before admitting defeat.

  The thought of the narrow concrete corridors of Control, buried beneath its layers or protective earth, sent an involuntary shiver across his skin. Of late he had grown to hate the dry dark of that place; he slept badly every night, waking every morning bathed in sweat, dreams half-remembered and full of disquieting images haunting his long days.

  There was a feeling within those confines, a tension that buzzed in the air and set his teeth grinding. It had been growing steadily of late but was at its worst when Wychelo was there, or that hulking scarred giant Rift that barked the orders from downstairs and spoke with Control’s voice. On the one occasion that he had been brought before Horst himself, in his cavernous immaculate office, Quinn had thought he would be sick under the pressure of the man’s dispassionate eyes.

  That had been his first day at Control after his transfer, a direct result of coming top of his unit for tactical testing. He had been proud that day, had looked on his new home with something like satisfaction. But you couldn’t leave, as he had quickly learned. Apart from on manoeuvres, Quinn had not set foot outside of t
he underground fortress labyrinth since that day. At times it felt like a prison. Of course, he thought darkly, that was exactly what it was for some.

  That was the other reason that he would not be hurrying back. This was the most freedom that Quinn had seen since his transfer. Paranoia and secrecy were the order of the day at Control and it felt good to taste fresh air once more. In a literal sense too, he thought with a wry smile. The recycled air under all that concrete tasted old and stale as dust.

  Not that Quinn would ever voice any of these thoughts. Too many others had disappeared down those narrow stairs that led to the deepest levels for him to ever risk doing so. The walls were thick stone but even so sometimes you heard things, especially in the close dark of the night.

  He wondered despondently what would happen to him if he came back empty handed. Doubtless he’d have to report to the giant and that would be bad enough. Would he get dragged down into that office as well? Would he be forced to stand in front of that big wood and leather desk and explain his failure like an errant school child? God, he hoped not.

  As he watched, one of his squad opened an unlocked door and, just for a moment, Quinn’s spirits were lifted. But as the glare of the torch beam revealed nothing more than an empty shed and the rotting remains of an old bicycle under some moth-eaten wormy blankets, they plummeted to earth once more. Undeterred, his man shut the door and moved on.

  Quinn tried not to think about some of the darker, more outlandish tales he’d heard, stories about those found plotting against Control or speaking to the outside world. Still, his mind returned to them none the less. People removed in the dead of night and never seen again, vanished down the winding stair. That much Quinn knew to be true, dissenters came and went although to what fate he was unsure. But he had heard whispers of what went on in the lowest levels, of experiments carried out and tests endured. He dismissed them, in the main, and was careful never to repeat any of them as the walls all had ears. Still, people did disappear, and the midnight trains rumbled in and out along their abandoned lines.