A week later, I found a present outside the Helix. A heavy pallet rested on a wheeled platform. “Open underground—D” was scrawled on every side. I pushed it inside and brought it all the way to the sixth floor. I levered open the lid and saw tinfoil.
Dante is blocking cell transmissions.
I checked my phone. We were dead to the world this far under the ground. I pulled the cover back.
Helmets, assault weapons and armoured jackets—the spoils of war from the RailTech units. Another note from Dante.
“Thought this might be useful.”
I spent a long afternoon playing with my new toys. The helmets were exquisite, featuring some kind of impact-absorbing gyroscopic frame. That would explain how Eric had shrugged off my head-shot like it was a bad knock. The armour was hardly less impressive: overlapping, flexible metal plates—some kind of titanium alloy—seemed to provide a tiny layer of crumple-space to absorb impact, and were shaped to pull blades away from the vital areas.
The assault weapons were a feat unto their own. Gunfire rang in the lower passageways as I tried them out. Lightweight and accurate: a pleasure to use. I unclipped the ammunition from eight of the rifles and made a neat little stockpile. I tinkered around and dismantled these eight for spare parts and widgets. The scopes held a particular interest—small solar-powered batteries provided a high-contrast sight for night combat. I put one in my pocket. It would be useful to carry around, even if it wasn’t attached to a steel-spitting artefact of death.
This had taken place a week ago. Now, I’d returned to my nest on top of the mall, to think and to watch. I scanned the RailTech building with the scope. The zoom was in the mid-range combat zone; my binoculars were far better at the job. Still, it was nice to see the building lit up in high-contrast green and black. I imagined hosting a rave in its gutted remains.
The thought of dancing curled and morphed into thoughts of Valerie. A scowl contorted my face and my mood soured even further. Despite successfully blowing up another squadron of RailTech agents, there was no real satisfactory rush.
Careful not to dislodge tiles, I made my way down from my nest and back into the inner maze of the mall.
This time I salvaged a rare treat—canned condensed milk. I spied it while levering a shelf onto its side, the tell-tale grey-wink of tin poking through the dust and dirt. I pounced, naturally. Tinned food is gold standard in general. My discovery managed to beat back the encroaching feeling of anger.
Condensed milk was the shit. As with most tinned goods, the shelf life was practically infinite. Unless I was unlucky, the contents would still be good to go. I wrapped my expedition up and skipped down the stairs.
I hadn’t entered this way, instead opting to take a climb up the side, more of a challenge that way. I breathed in tentatively. The smell of faeces hadn’t departed.
“I did warn you.” I muttered, lifting a lighter. “You’re lucky I just found something nice. Otherwise, toasties.”
There was a deep breathing from the depths of the rug-heap. Breathing and loud chewing, but no vocal response. My grim feelings returned.
I held the lighter in front of me, lit it, and stepped into the darkness. The breathing was intense and laboured. I hoped I wasn’t about to stumble onto some post-apocalyptic junkie orgy. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a porn genre already. My other hand tightened around my tinned prize.
I stopped as the silhouette came into view. I lifted my thumb off the lighter as slowly as I could, and waited for my eyes to accustom.
He—or she, it was dark—was hunched over and thrashing to and fro. Something guttural ratcheted through its sinuses into a snarl. The chewing resumed over gasps.
This was not what had stopped me. What had stopped me was the second figure, motionless and sprawled, underneath the snarler.
I picked up more detail.
Dinner is served.
“Oh my.”
I said it louder than I wanted to. A deep, sucking breath and the thrasher lifted its head. Even in the gloom I saw the bits and pieces falling from its chin. The snarl rattled around the parking lot, and I took a step backwards.
The ground writhed beneath my feet as the rugs squirmed and came to life. My grounded foot was lifted in the quake and I fell to the floor. A dreadful, deadly (dreadly?) scream burst from the junkie, and it lunged at me.
It’s within seven metres. No time for the gun.
I tightened my grip and swung, timing my blow perfectly. It passed under one outstretched arm and connected with the jaw. There was a yowl and my attacker was deflected. It wasn’t over. The ground beneath me shook.
A second assailant squirmed out from under my feet and grabbed my leg. I pumped my free foot into its face once, twice, three times, and I felt the teeth give way. The noise shifted to distress and the pressure on my leg was released.
I bolted to my feet as the first attacker returned. I stepped to the side and put my weight into an uppercut. It—long hair, slender features, she—ran straight into my attack, and I felt my knuckles meet the throat. Her screaming cut off and was replaced with a frenzied choking.
More cries sounded in the darkness, too many to fight. The stairs back into the mall were closer, but I would risk getting cornered. I turned and began to run towards the light.
One hundred metres.
I pressed the lighter and flipped a catch before tossing it to my left. Glancing over my shoulder, I watched a rug catch fire. My left hand was still tightly closed over the tin can.
Seventy metres.
I plunged my free hand into my coat and grabbed the pistol. A hiss issued (hissued?) from my left and I fired two rounds, blindly. There was a whimper and a puff of dust as something collapsed into the dark.
Almost there.
The sounds from behind me were incomprehensible, a kind of broken gibbering peppered with the rasp of raw throats. My feet no longer pounded on fabric and instead slammed against hard concrete. They were keeping up with me. I could swear I felt fingers grab at my nape, trailing through my hair.
Ten metres.
I burst into the open moonlight and swung around as something plunged out behind me. There was a loud report as I pulled the trigger, but the body maintained momentum and slammed into me. I fell backwards, pinned under my attacker. He wasn’t moving.
I kept my barrel trained on the parking lot. The screaming had shifted: it didn’t crusade towards me with purpose. Instead, it seemed to centre around the growing inferno below. Smoke began to trickle out, and was lost to the night sky.
Strange emotions infused the voices. Some seemed angry, some seemed terrified. Some seemed to be howling for the sake of making noise. I cautiously levered the body off and got to my feet.
What the fuck is going on?
I stepped backwards, slowly. My arm remained raised. My finger trembled on the trigger. Horror shook me and I checked my condensed milk. The can was dented, but the seal was intact. I let out a sigh of relief. Burnt flesh mingled with the smoke, and I started to laugh.
I didn’t stop until the Helix doors hissed shut behind me.
***
I extended Quisling’s cell. She now had the shackle length to walk around the entire laboratory. I removed the glassware and anything else potentially dangerous: I’d walked in on her attempting to open her wrists with a broken pen. Naturally she’d botched the entire affair.
Remember kids. Razor goes down the street, not across the road. Amateur.
She had access to a tap and a bathroom now, chain stretched to the fullest. She had struggled and tried to run as I had uncuffed her ankle, but she was weak and fragile. It hadn’t been hard to chase her down.
She had wailed like a banshee: “Let me go let me go get off me you fucking psycho just kill me.” I had brought my knee into her stomach. There was no wailing for a while after that.
She glared at me from across the glass. She seemed determined not to indulge me. I think it was an attempt to bore me s
o I’d go in there and snap her pretty, supple neck. She wasn’t in luck. Her defiance interested me more than anything she could have offered. She simply did not realise it.
I mirrored her pout, then exaggerated it. She kicked her leg petulantly, creating a merry jingle of steel on tiles, and mouthed something obscene. I winked and pushed a box through the door. Her face lit up for a tiny second before she fixed her expression: the box was full of bread and fruit. She dropped her pretence, then fell to her knees and started tearing at a loaf. I left before she looked up again.
***
Vincent had disappeared again. He wasn’t answering calls or responding to texts. I considered the possibility that he’d been called in to take care of me, but I doubted it. He usually sent me a cursory message. I thought about the Seychelles.
Usually.
I had kept an eye on the secret service chatter though one or two contacts. Something about China. Nuclear strike detected in central Africa. Advances in a Red Masque vaccine coming from beleaguered Israel. Nothing about me, or Vincent, or RailTech. Disappointing.
This brought me to the apartment of… I forget his name. He used to work on the force with Vincent. I wanted to use him as Vince-bait.
“See,” I said, making a high-pitched voice, “I’m looking for someone very special. I’ve tried calling. I’ve tried texting. He didn’t even respond to the bat-signal in the sky. It’s all very perplexing. So, I guess, long and short, this is why I’m killing you and painting on a wall in your blood.”
I put down the bloody puppet and got to work. Tiny bubbles of red foam collected around what was left of his lips. He wasn’t in a good state.
“Look, don’t take it too badly,” I continued. “The human body has plenty of unnecessary parts. Take the face, for example. I don’t recall anyone living a long and painful life without one.”
Not a peep. I was fairly certain he was straddling death in a pain-induced coma. I dragged my fingers up and down the wall.
“Call me xoxo”
And, in smaller writing:
“For heavens sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself ha ha ha ha just kidding.”
That ought to grab his attention.
I dialled the emergency number and left the phone off the hook.
***
“You’ve crossed a line.”
Back at the Helix, I reclined in my chair and rotated backwards and forwards in a half-circle. Vincent’s voice wasn’t enraged or furious. It might have been the call quality, but he came across as cold and bitter.
“Have I now?”
“You’ve lost it.”
“Have I, Vincent? Have I really? He was some low-level grunt. Wasn’t doing anything useful with his life.”
“He had a family.”
“A family my heart pumps lumpy heart-custard for. It’s like normal custard, but people die if you take it away from them. I’ve beaten someone to death with the femur of her own son, but this is how I cross the line? Fuck right on.”
I could tell he was really angry, because he wasn’t shouting. His voice carried a cool, chillingly murderous tone to it. It sent a joyful shudder through by body.
“Something is very wrong with you.”
“Hey. Watch it.”
“No, K. I will not ‘watch it’. You wanted me to call you. I am calling you. I can hang up any time I want.”
He didn’t seem to be in the mood for games. His comment sat ill with me and I found myself pouting.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“RailTech, Vincent. Eric Strauch.”
“If you’re planning on killing him, I’ll have no part of it.”
“Strange time to grow a conscience.”
I heard him sucking his teeth.
“This has nothing to do with right and wrong. I just…”
“Just what, Vincent?”
“I don’t see an end in sight. You’re an addict, K. Sure, there’s the alcohol and the designers, but your main vice is death. So, let’s say you kill Strauch. What next? The next RailTech top gun who takes his place? And once he’s dead?”
“This isn’t like that.”
“Bullshit it isn’t like that. You’re going to keep killing. I won’t enable you.”
My chest felt hot. My hand squeezed the phone tighter than it should have.
“So that’s that?”
“Almost. If you do go after Strauch, I’ll take you down myself.”
“Like you’re so fucking different. He killed Valerie–” But he had already dropped the line.
I spent a while throwing knives at a board. I had really been hoping for some help from Vincent. He could probably get me into Strauch’s apartment via some form of deception. His reluctance to “enable” me was an infuriating new obstacle.
I went downstairs and electrocuted Quisling until she choked on her own tongue.
#0299
“Trust him, you said. Nothing will go wrong, you said. He’s on your side, you said. You’re an idiot, K, plain and simple. You’re an idiot if you thought that the officer was going to go along with your plan.
“That’s what you get for being a moron. Seriously, how did you not see this coming? Idiot.
“Now you had to leave three witnesses up to their waists in concrete. When they first heard of their fate they seemed relieved, but they’re going to get really dizzy with all the blood rushing to their heads.”
19: Child’s Play
Strauch lived in the penthouse suite of one of the larger apartment blocks in the city. The security was good, and I figured it would be even better in light of my threats.
My first probing investigations led to nothing. I watched Eric’s movement through the days. He would come in to the office in the mornings and head home in the early afternoon. Late at night he would come back at just before midnight. The most logical reason for this was divided time zones. Strauch probably ran point on operations out of the country. He’d want to micromanage them from afar.
I wondered when he slept. He could probably snatch a few hours in the afternoon and a few more between the hours of 02h00 and 08h00. Catching him in the afternoon might be easier than at night, when he’d be expecting an assault.
I browsed the list of residents. Several bachelors lived below him: businessmen. A couple was registered underneath one of the larger flats.
Lots of rooms for only two.
I switched my attention to the Markham couple. A bit of digging, and I corrected myself: the Markham family. The child went to a local school. The father and mother both worked as accountants. Boring as sin, I’m sure. I met the kid after school. If Vincent wanted to paint me as a monster, I’d pose for the portrait.
“Hey, kiddo. Are you Johnny Markham?”
I got a curious glance. I reached out a hand. “Don’t be afraid. Your mommy sent me.”
His face perked up a bit. “She did?”
“Oh yes. She needs you to come get something to eat. She’ll be late to pick you up today.”
Typical stranger danger instinct pushed into the picture.
“Mommy never said anything about you. I’m not to leave with strangers.”
I ruffled his hair and pulled my shot in the dark out of my pocket.
“I’m not a stranger. Would a stranger know to get you your favourite treat ever?”
His eyes shone greedily. “Chocolate peanuts!”
“You betcha, kid. Chocolate peanuts.”
I’d found endless empty packets of them in the garbage dumpster outside the complex. I’d guessed that it was a kid thing. I held my hand out again.
“Let’s roll, kiddo. You like hotdogs?”
***
Thirty minutes later I approached his mother. She was standing by the side of the road, smoking and looking irritable. Some terrible vandal had slashed her tyres, exactly forty-seven minutes ago. I beamed at her, and she looked at me with disdain.
“No change. Not interested in whatever you’re pushing.”
“Ma’am, if I could have a moment of your time.”
“No. Go away.”
I stepped closer. She sized me up.
“All I’m asking is that you react to what I say next calmly and quietly.” I savoured the moment of silence, on the precipice of what I was about to deliver. I showed her a picture on my phone.
“Otherwise, your son is going to die in terrible agony.”
Her eyes widened. The cigarette dropped from her lips.
“I’m glad that got your attention so discreetly.”
She was trying to make word-things with her mouth-organ. I put a finger on her lips and kept talking.
“Shhh. I’m the one who does the talking. I’m also the one who does the skin peeling. Don’t take that away from me. Follow my instructions and I’ll only do the first.”
My smile remained, no longer forced but now sustained through tangible enjoyment. This prim-smug fuck was dying inside. It was beautiful.
“I need two things from you: your access card and your cell phone number. I need to get inside your building and settle a score. Once I’m done, I’ll tell you where your son is. If I hear the authorities in your building before I’m done, I erase this number and leave your son for the rats.”
She numbly gave me two cards: access and business. She looked like she was about to have a stroke. Her misery—controlled only by terror—was palpably arousing.
“Take a seat. I won’t be long. Oh, and for everyone’s sake, I hope that phone of yours is charged. Thanks for being on board with this.”
I winked and skipped off. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know that the tears had started.
***
“And that’s why, if you ever want to see your child alive again, you’re going to follow those instructions to the letter.”
The father was only doing marginally better than his wife. I had cornered him in his lunchroom, around the water cooler.
“I’m aware that this may not be typical water-cooler talk, but if you don’t listen to me I’m going to send you your son’s face.” As icebreakers went, I think I did the trick. I showed him the picture before he could say anything. The words didn’t cross his lips.
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