Dan switched Mindy to five per cent slowdown rounds and took aim. If the demon broke free, it might buy them some time. Time to do what, Dan didn’t really know, but he’d cross that bridge if they came to it. With a bit of luck, the nanobots would do their job.
“Come on. Come on. Quit fighting them,” he muttered, shifting the gun from one hand to the other. “Let her go, you piece of shizz. Let her go.”
Ollie’s metal-clad body stumbled, then fell to its knees, the fight seeming to go out of it. The squirming suit of tiny robots conveyed the impression of movement, but the body beneath it now lay perfectly still.
Dan approached slowly, Mindy still raised and ready. He retreated a couple of steps again when the nanobots that had been covering Ollie’s head exploded off her, jerking her into a sitting position and becoming a whirling tornado in the air above.
“Did it work? Is it working? Is that what’s happening now?” Artur asked, as more and more of the nanobots left Ollie and joined the increasingly lengthy metal tube wriggling and squirming above her.
“I don’t know,” Dan admitted.
The rest of the nanobots billowed upwards in one sudden swoosh. Ollie slumped backwards onto the ground, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow.
“Is that good?” Artur asked. “Is that what we wanted to happen? Because I don’t feel like I’m fully up to speed with this plan if I’m being honest with ye.”
Dan was on his knees beside Ollie. He shook her, then slapped her gently on the side of the face a few times. “Ollie? Ollie, wake up.”
Artur crept up behind Dan. “I swear, if her eyes do that big flicking open thing now like ye see in the movies, I will shoite myself,” he whispered.
“Mr Deadman?” said Tressingham over the comm-device. “Mr Deadman, are you there?”
“Here,” said Dan. He glanced up at the snake of nanobots spiraling in the air above them. “I think it worked, but be ready.”
“Yes, but—”
“Ollie!” Dan snapped, slapping her a little harder this time. “Ollie, wake up. You hear me? Wake up!”
A faint whimper of a groan exhaled through Ollie’s lips. Dan spun on his haunches to Artur.
“That was her, right? That sounded like her.”
“What? How should I know? She just went ‘hff.’ I’m not convinced ‘hff’ is enough of a representative sample to be able to form an opinion on whether it’s her or not.”
“It’s her,” Dan said. “I mean, I think it’s her.”
“Mr Deadman, I’d be grateful if—”
“Tressingham, give me a damn minute here,” Dan grunted. He hoisted Ollie onto his shoulder and stood up, ignoring the shakiness that still wobbled his legs, and the assortment of pains that cut into his skull like a fonking hatchet.
“Let’s get her out of here,” he said, setting off towards a row of stores and other commercial buildings that had escaped the recent carnage with only superficial damage. “Before Aranok comes back.”
“Comes back?” said Artur, trotting along behind. “What do ye mean ‘comes back’? Didn’t we kill it?”
Dan shook his head. “I think we drove him out of her.”
Artur looked around. “Then where is the fecker? Where did it go? Is it still around? Shoite, it’s not inside me, is it?”
“Pretty sure you’d have noticed,” Dan told him.
Artur nodded, then punched himself hard in the face, just in case. He didn’t feel any demon-type objecting inside his head. He reckoned that meant he was safe because, frankly, the punch had fecking hurt.
Dan raised the comm-device to his mouth. “Tressingham, keep the nanobots ready. If you see anything that might feasibly be the host for an evil demon creature, try to keep it contained.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Tressingham replied, a note of accusation in his voice. “I’ve lost contact with the cloud.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean it is no longer under my control,” Tressingham said. “It isn’t responding.”
Dan stopped.
Dan turned.
The column of nanobots now stretched more than halfway to the blue glow of the Up There engines high overhead. It still spun like a tornado, but it was rippling and contorting in a few different ways now, as if someone was tentatively trying out a few different tricks.
“Ye alright there, Deadman?” Artur asked. “Sure, ye look like ye’ve seen a ghost. And it was shagging yer ma. What’s the problem this time?”
“Artur, run,” Dan whispered. He began backing away from the nanobot column, picking up speed as he did. “Run. Now!”
“What? Why?” Artur asked, not moving.
Dan doubled-back, snatched the little man up, and shoved him into a pocket. “Because I just figured out where Aranok is.”
“Great!” said Artur from inside the pocket. “Then let’s go sort the bastard out, once and for…”
Artur’s voice tailed off. There was movement in Dan’s coat, then the little bearded head popped out. “Hold on now. Ye’re not saying what I think ye’re saying, are ye?”
Dan forced his legs to go faster as the column unfurled, becoming a vast monstrous shape in the sky behind him.
“You know what?” he said. “I think I probably am.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Just so we’re clear, are ye saying that yer monster fella has jumped out of Ollie and into a giant swarm of tiny flying robots?” Artur asked. “Because I want to be absolutely sure we’re on the same page here.”
The nanobot shape became a giant spiky ball. It hit the ground like a meteor strike, shattering the windows of buildings all along the street.
“Yeah,” Dan sighed. “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m saying.”
“Or, to put it another way, ye’ve arguably gone and made everything worse?”
“We got Ollie,” Dan said. “We can deal with the nanobots.”
“Can we now? Sure, that’s great,” said Artur. “How are we doing that, then? Taking their batteries out one at a time, maybe?”
“I’ll think of something,” Dan retorted. “Just give me a—”
“In there!”
Dan looked over to his right. A bar stood thirty yards away, the glass frontage shattered. “Seriously? Now is not the right time to go drinking.”
“Just do what I fecking tell ye for once,” Artur snapped. “In the pub, now. Trust me.”
Dan hesitated, then swung towards the bar.
“Good man,” Artur said. “And just for the record, it’s always the right time to go drinking. Don’t ever let me hear you spouting such bollocks again.”
There was a boom from out on the street as the nanobot cloud destroyed something else. Dan didn’t bother looking to find out what it was, and instead clambered over a pile of toppled mag-bikes and into a dimly-lit bar.
Judging by the bikes outside and the discarded leather jackets inside, the place was a biker bar. It was one of the nicer examples Dan had seen, though. Sure, there was blood on the walls, teeth on the floor and a generous helping of graffiti covering every available surface, but that was par for the course with these places.
Unlike most, this one had a few tables and chairs that were still intact, a reasonable selection of drinks behind the bar, and even a poosh table. Granted, the poosh sticks had all been snapped in half so each one now more closely resembled two long wooden stabby things, but still. Compared to some of the other dives he’d been in, this one was practically opulent.
“Get peaches up on the bar,” Artur barked. “What she needs is some of Mammy’s Old-Fashioned Wake-up Juice.”
Dan swept one arm along the bar top, sending several abandoned glasses and bottles crashing to the floor. He rolled the still unconscious Ollie off his shoulder and onto the sticky surface, then scooped Artur out of his pocket and deposited him beside her.
“What do you need?”
Artur turned and regarded the rack of spirits on the wall b
ehind him while Dan ran around behind the bar. “There,” he said, pointing to a bottle filled with glowing green liquid. “Farkaan brandy. Get me that and the biggest glass ye can find.”
Dan snatched the bottle from the shelf and clunked it onto the bar beside Ollie. The pub’s lights flickered as an explosion rocked the street outside.
The was another thunk as Dan placed a tankard-style mug beside the bottle. “What, have they no clean ones, or something?” Artur asked, running a finger down the outside of the glass.
Muttering, Dan swapped the mug for another one. “There. What else?”
Artur’s index finger began to swing across the racks of alcohol. “The Voosh Juice. Both those bottles of Greyx whiskey, the blue label and the white. The vodka.”
“Which one?”
“All of them,” Artur said. He squinted. “Is that a bottle of Nargian Spuk?”
Dan picked up the bottle, read the label, then nodded.
“Fecking marvelous!” Artur exclaimed. “That’s a bonus. This little lot should do nicely.”
He held a hand up to the side of the mug, indicating a spot an inch or so from the bottom. “Right, brandy first, fill it to here,” he instructed.
Dan removed the bottle’s lid, then followed Artur’s instructions until the glass was almost completely full. Each pour was accompanied by a soundtrack of explosions, gunfire and screaming from outside. Someone was trying to fight back against the nanobots, but by the sounds of things they weren’t doing a great job of it.
“Tressingham, what’s going on out there?” Dan barked into his wrist-comm.
“I don’t know. I can’t see.” Tressingham was panting heavily, the words jerking from his lips as if…
“You’re running?”
“Well, of course I’m running!” he sobbed, then there came a series of muffled rummaging sounds, followed by a bleep as Tressingham shut his comm-device down.
“Feckin’ coward,” Artur spat.
“Can’t say I blame him,” said Dan. He indicated the mug of alcohol. All the different colors had blended together to form a murky and somewhat ominous-looking brown. “Now what?”
“A straw. I need a straw.”
“A straw? In a place like this?” Dan snorted. “Not a chance.”
“Oh no? Then what’s that then, ye judgmental bastard ye?” Artur asked, pointing to a cardboard container along the bar containing fifty or more flexible drinking straws in an assortment of cheerful neon colors.
“I stand corrected,” Dan said, snatching one from the box and depositing it into the drink. Artur stretched up and bent the top part of the straw down until it was level with his face. With some effort, he wrapped his lips around it and sucked. The level of liquid in the glass dropped by a full inch, then Artur took his mouth away and smacked his lips together a few times.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s good,” he said. “That’s perfect, in fact.”
He took another sip. Dan watched the surface of the liquid drop another two inches or so.
“Well?” he urged.
Artur burped and raised an eyebrow. “Well what?”
“Are you going to give it to Ollie?”
“Ollie? What, this?” Artur said. “Shoite, no, are ye mad? This stuff’d kill her.”
Dan looked from the glass to Artur and back again a number of times. “Wait, what? That’s not for her?”
“Of course it’s not for her. We’re trying to wake her up, not put her in a coma for the rest of her life,” Artur said. “Ye asked me what I needed, and what I needed was a stiff drink. Sure, all this excitement has shot my nerves to pieces.”
The wreckage of a Tribunal truck bounced along the street outside, throwing up sparks as metal skimmed across stone.
“But… what about the wake-up stuff?”
“Mammy’s Old-Fashioned Wake-up Juice?”
“Yes! I thought that’s what you were making?”
“Oh no. I don’t know where ye got that idea,” said Artur, admirably feigning innocence. “Most pubs usually keep that stuff in a bottle under the bar. Ye know, in case they need to sober up some chancer who’s got himself too langered to walk.”
He drained another two inches of the cocktail while Dan squatted and searched under the bar. There, standing worryingly near an assortment of cleaning fluids, was a slim bottle with a drawing of a disapproving-looking old woman on the label. Below her, in stark black on white print, were the words ‘Mammy’s Old-Fashioned Wake-up Juice.’
By the time Dan had unscrewed the lid, Artur’s straw was burbling up the final few dregs of his alcoholic concoction. Cradling Ollie’s neck, Dan brought the bottle to her lips, only for a shout from Artur to stop him.
“Whoa there! Holy shoite, Deadman, what are doing?”
“I’m waking her up.”
“Not like that ye’re not. That stuff’s not for drinking,” Artur explained. “Ye pour it in the eyes.”
“In the eyes? Why the fonk would you pour it in the eyes?”
“Because that’s how it works. Read the label if ye don’t believe me.”
Dan read the label. Outside, four different parts of a Tribunal grunt hit the ground with a succession of splats.
“Fonk,” Dan muttered. “In the eyes.” He looked at the bottle, then at the unconscious Ollie. “Will it hurt?”
“Sure, she’s out for the count, she won’t know a thing about it,” Artur said.
Satisfied, Dan moved the neck of the bottle closer to Ollie’s face.
“Although, once she wakes up, she might be blind. Temporarily.”
Dan’s arm jerked back.
“Blind?!”
“And deaf.”
“Why would she be—?”
“And mad,” Artur added.
“Crazy?”
“Angry, I mean. Fecking furious,” Artur said. He chuckled. “But, I mean, I’d be pretty upset meself if someone poured that shoite into the old peep holes, ye know what I’m saying’?”
“Right,” Dan said. He gritted his teeth, then pulled open one of Ollie’s eyes and lined the bottle up.
“But also, yes, crazy mad, too,” Artur confirmed. “Ye know, she might not remember who we are, exactly. Or she might think she’s got no legs, or that she’s made of living sound waves, or whatever. I’ll be honest, the side effects vary quite wildly from person to person. First time I was given one of Mammy’s eye-baths, I was six foot five, and just look what happened there.”
Dan blinked, then his eyes became two circles of surprise. Artur snorted.
“Look at ye, ye gullible big bollocks,” he said. “None of that shoite’s true, it’ll just wake her up. I was just having a laugh with ye.”
Outside, several people screamed. A Tribunal helmet, complete with head, rolled past. Artur’s grin didn’t falter. “Sure, if ye can’t have a laugh at times like this, then when can ye?”
Dan said something, but it was too quiet for Artur to hear. He was able to get the gist of it, though, and concluded that Dan hadn’t seen the funny side.
“Ah well, feck off, then,” he said, still grinning.
The liquid sloshed into Ollie’s eyes. It was thin and watery, and so also went in her hair, up her nose, and pooled in at least one of her ears.
Dan watched for any sign of life, but Ollie didn’t move an inch. The floor rumbled as part of a building collapsed along the street.
“It didn’t work,” Dan said, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of falling rubble. “Why didn’t it work?”
“How should I know? Did ye check the use by date?”
Dan held the bottle up and turned it, searching for any sign of—
Ollie sat up.
Ollie screamed.
Each and every one of the bottles on the shelves exploded, spraying the bar with flying glass and a rainbow of alcohols. Dan’s back shielded the others from most of it, despite Artur’s attempts to catch some of the alcohol droplets in his mouth like a kid catching snowflakes.
&nbs
p; A light flickered in Ollie’s eyes, like a spark igniting. Dan snatched Artur and ducked behind the bar as a burst of fiery energy obliterated the shelving, shattered the mirror behind it, and took out part of the wall.
“She’s awake, then,” Artur pointed out.
Ollie momentarily paused in her screaming, then resumed with all new levels of vigor. The lights exploded, and the poosh table went grinding across the floor away from her.
“Although, I’ll be honest, I’m not convinced that’s a positive development right at the moment,” Artur added.
“Ollie. Ollie, it’s us,” Dan said. He raised a head above the bar, then quickly ducked as a crackling shockwave of energy scorched the sticky top.
“Maybe yer monster guy’s still in there,” Artur suggested. “Sure, maybe waking her up wasn’t such a great idea, Deadman.”
“It was your idea!”
“Oh, throw that in me face, will ye?” Artur tutted. “Just shoot her and let’s be done with it.”
“I’m not going to shoot her,” Dan said.
“I don’t mean kill her. Stun her, or slow her down, or whatever. Make her shoite herself, if ye think that’ll work. But we can’t just hide here forever.”
Dan shook his head. “Can’t shoot her. We need her.”
“To do what? Melt our feckin’ faces off?”
“I have a plan,” Dan said. “Do you trust me?”
“No,” said Artur. “No, I do not.”
“Good call,” Dan admitted, then he grabbed Artur and thrust him up above the level of the bar.
Artur’s features all expanded in panic as Ollie spun towards him. “Deadman, ye bastard! Ye ugly, rotten-arsed bastard!”
Dan pulled himself up until he was fully standing behind the bar, putting both himself and Artur directly in the path of anything Ollie might unleash. She had stopped screaming, but now huffed and puffed like a cornered animal. Her dark eyes flicked between Dan and Artur, tiny lightning bolts of power fizzling from her fingertips.
“Ollie, it’s us,” Dan said, holding out a hand in what he hoped was a soothing motion. “Look. It’s me and Artur. Say something, Artur.”
“Please don’t kill us,” Artur said.
Dead Inside: A Space Team Universe Novel (Dan Deadman Space Detective Book 2) Page 20