by Dave Jeffery
Necropolis Rising
Necropolis
Rising
Kindle Edition.
©Dave Jeffery.
All Rights Reserved.
Dave Jeffery
Necropolis Rising
ISBN: 1453832575
EAN -13: 9781453832479
©2010 Dave Jeffery
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or undead, is entirely coincidental. The moral right of the authors has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Printed in the United States of America.
Preface
This book is a product of passion. Passion for all things dark and sinister and clamouring from thick cold earth, or damp mildewed places that abhor the living yet unleash the dead. Passion for zombie impresarios Romero and Fulci back in the day when make up artist Tom Savini worked the kind of visceral magic that the CGI generation just doesn’t get to see anymore. And finally passion for where it all really starts, in the mind of someone who isn’t – or perhaps really is - afraid to conjure dark things and put them down on paper, or type macabre words onto a computer screen.
But as much as Necropolis Rising is a product of tradition, it is very much a creature of today. The story is grounded in adventure and horror, it seeks to shock and horrify, scare and amuse but above all it serves to entertain. The idea of pitching a group of cyber-thieves against The Risen came by chance. The National Criminal Intelligence DNA Database is located somewhere in Birmingham City, UK. And seeing that Birmingham is a mere stones throw from where I was raised, it made perfect sense to fill its streets with shuffling, shambling zombies. With this city as a backdrop this book contains action set pieces that were a wicked joy to create, and scenarios that were disturbing enough to have the author think twice about keeping them in. But keep them in I did.
Those who know Birmingham City will know that there is no such place as the doomed Hilton Towers, and that I may have taken creative liberty with some of the great city’s geography. To the citizens of Birmingham I can only say it could be worse. The Risen could be real.
If you are reading this now, then the assumption is made that you too are smitten with the kind of passion that has made this tale what it is. And I thank you for being here. Truly. Deeply.
Now it’s time to lock the doors, bar the windows and pull up chair. And try to ignore the groans from beyond the walls. It’s just the wind, after all.
Isn't it?
Dave Jeffery
August 2010
For Thomas and Grace -
My real world.
1
A fist bounced off of the window, rattling the glass in its frame. Beyond the doorway, Dennis Owen, the security guard sitting at the reception desk, looked up and scrutinized the two men standing outside in the rain.
After a moment’s consideration Owen stood, moving his post-retired police gut from behind the oak paneled desk, and tucked his thumbs into his utility belt. With an exaggerated swagger the guard aimed himself at Hilton Towers’ entrance.
Standing in the rain, the two men adjusted their stance slightly. And if Owen hadn’t spent so much of his spare time numbing his thirty five years of police training eating doughnuts and reading trashy celebrity magazines, he would have recognized that the men were getting prepared to move; that they were getting ready to execute something that had been planned for some time.
“What can I do for you, fellas?” Owen said, his voice blunted by the two hundred pound per square meter safety glass.
“I hear that the tenant in the penthouse suite has lost something?” suggested one of the men. He had a scraggy beard to compliment the scrawny body lurking beneath the camouflage combat fatigues and beaten up donkey jacket.
“Oh, yeah?” Owen queried, wearing suspicion like an ill-fitting suit. “And what would that be?”
“This little guy,” the man in the donkey jacket said pulling gently on a leash in his right hand. From behind him a small, short-haired poodle padded into view and sniffed at the doors, before climbing onto his hind legs and planting his front paws on the glass. He barked twice, his tiny tail wagging furiously.
“We heard he’d been stolen and there was a reward,” said scraggy beards’ companion. He was shorter with more meat on his bones; though his face was still gaunt.
“Is that true?”
Gaunt knew it was true since he’d actually been the one who had stolen the poodle two days ago. He’d stolen the dog so that he could stand here in the rain and use it as a ruse to get this lard-ass has-been to open the fucking door so he could use the Taser he had tucked in the waist band of his jeans.
Owen hunkered down and tapped the glass between him and the mutt. “Is that you, Pepper?” he asked with a smile. The dog barked that it was most certainly him.
“Hate to rush you,” said the man in the donkey jacket, but we’re getting a bit wet out here.”
The guard eyed them one more time. Maybe his old instincts were trying to fight their way through retirement fudge, but then he was lifting his access swipe card and the door clicked open.
The two men ambled inside, the dog beside them; its tiny nails clicking against the tiled floor.
“I’ll just buzz Dr. Whittington and let him know Pepper’s back,” Owen said turning back to the reception desk. “Haven’t seen him much today. So maybe I’ll take Pepper up to him.”
“Thanks,” said scraggy beard to Owen. “But we’d like to see the good doctor in person.”
Then Mr. Gaunt coolly removed the Taser from his waist band and fired 50,000 volts into Owen’s fat, inner tube of a neck.
For a few seconds, the guard jittered on the spot, and then collapsed in a heap, Pepper sneezing at the whiff of cordite in the air. The men tethered Pepper to the leg of the reception desk after tying up their immobilized captive with Velcro straps and bundling him into his office.
Their visit wasn’t going to take long. Hell, by the time these members of the Animal Activist League had finished their business with the good Dr. Whittington no-one would be concerned with the lump of flab flapping around in the office.
The men climbed into an elevator made from highly polished, stainless steel and hit the button marked Penthouse. Once the car was in motion, the two men unbridled the rucksacks they carried and placed them carefully at their feet.
In the slow hum marking their ascent, they pulled free several items. The first was a large canister that had started the day as home to six litres of olive oil but now came with a taper attached and swinging like a long, thin pendulum. This was followed by a gas mask each and two Browning automatic pistols.
“You know that once that door opens there’s no going back?” Scraggy beard said to his companion.
“I’m not backing out, Sean,” the other guy said sternly, his eyes reinforcing his resolve. “Whittington is a fuckin’ murderer and he’s being allowed to get away with it.”
“Okay, Sam,” Sean replied. “Let’s get ready.”
The two men donned their masks and the slurping, sucking sound of their breathing filled the tiny car space, drowning out the electric motor overhead.
Sam hoisted the container to his chest, keeping it upright by hugging it to him with one arm; the other tightly clutched the Browning.
“Why can’t we just shoot him?” he asked Sean.
“Because he needs to know fear,” his colleague replied, his eyes cold behind the face plate. “He needs to suffer the way his victims have suffered.”
“Oh, he’ll suffer alright,” Sam scoffed, the noise coming through the mask as a harsh, staccato rasp.
The chime of the bell told them they had arrived on the penthouse level; nineteen floors above Birmingham City Center. The rewards for murder, Sam thought grimly as they exited the confines of the lift.
The men walked carefully down a short hallway with a single door at the end. Either side, the corridor’s walls were lined with rosewood and the burgundy carpet absorbed the footfalls from their heavy boots.
“Inhumanity pays,” Sean said bitterly.
“His times up, Sean,” Sam replied placing the canister by the door, its contents rattling slightly as it settled.
Within its metal innards the container held two compounds: iron oxide and aluminum metal powder. Separately these two composites were innocuous, but together with a lit magnesium taper as a detonator, they created Thermite; a substance that burns at approximately 2500 degrees Celsius. And inside the tin was an outer sleeve containing ordinary tap water. Sam knew that when this beauty was detonated the Thermite reaction would be so intense, you wouldn’t be able to look at it for fear of frying your retinas, and when the molten iron hit the water it would detonate like a small bomb, obliterating the penthouse and the monster that lived there.
“Okay,” Sean said behind him. “You ready?”
“Yes,” Sam said pulling a Zippo from his pocket. “We’ll have ten seconds-”
“I know the drill, Sam,” Sean scolded. “Just light the fucker!”
Sam flipped the Zippo and the flame danced in the air.
Then they heard the yelping; followed shortly by a small terrified whine.
“There’s another dog in there!” Sam said, sharply. Stowing the Zippo he raised his pistol and pressed his ear against the door.
But the door wasn’t locked; in fact: it wasn’t even shut, and Sam fell into the room with cry of surprise. And when he saw what was happening inside the room his surprise turned to absolute horror.
At first the two members of the AAL thought they had stumbled across one of Dr. Whittington’s notorious vivisection experiments; but this wasn’t the case. As their eyes adjusted to the carnage inside the suite, it became apparent that no-one had ever seen anything quite like this.
In one section of the penthouse a mobile laboratory had been established; a glittering ark of stainless steel and glass. Work surfaces glistened under spots in the ceiling and phials and flasks were stowed neatly away in cabinets of opaque glass.
But on the other side of the room Dr. Richard Whittington was eating the still whimpering remains of a golden retriever. It was lying on its side in the middle of an expensive Persian rug, its bowels and lower intestines swinging in the doctor’s mouth, its life’s blood pooling bright and red on the carpet, the ceiling; the walls.
The doctor bit down hard on the offal and the animal squealed pitifully. Still kneeling where he’d fallen, Sam raised his pistol and pumped five bullets into Whittington’s torso, each one leaving a plume of bloody mist as it exited.
The doctor recoiled from the impact, toppling onto his side, his meal slipping from his teeth and slopping onto the rug.
“Jesus God!” Sean snarled at Whittington’s prone body. “What kind of sick fuck are you?”
Whittington answered by sitting up and looking at him, and in the doctor’s eyes the men saw nothing. And while Whittington wasn’t known for compassion, his eyes were now devoid of what little humanity he may have possessed. His eyes were dead; yet his body still moved.
“I shot you!” Sam cried and, to illustrate this, he let off two more shots at the doctor’s body as it began to crawl towards him. But Whittington didn’t stop. Instead, he clambered over the coffee table, launching his gore splattered body at Sam, who was too stunned to raise his weapon.
Whittington landed, knocking Sam flat and the two of them rolled across the heavy mauve shag pile, a tangle of arms and legs, making it impossible for Sean to take a clear shot.
“Get out of the way, Sam!” he yelled in desperation; his hands wrapped around the pistol grip.
Suddenly there was a terrible cry of pain and Sam’s face came into view, his nose was gone; chewed away by the thing that was Whittington and his eyes rolled back into his head as the doctor located his neck and clamped onto it before yanking his mouth away, bringing with it a tattered strip of flesh and a tangled web of veins.
Sean watched as the arms of his dying colleague flailed in the air. Then he noted that Sam still held the Browning. And in that moment the gun went off, the bullet shattered Sean’s shin before striking the home-made Thermite device in the doorway behind him.
The explosion drowned out the screams, ripping into the room, into the flesh of the living and the dead before consuming the mobile lab in a wall of searing flame.
Another huge explosion punched out the windows, showering the city below with powdered glass and flame and debris.
As the oxygen rushed into the room the flames raged, consuming all in its fiery wrath; purging the room of the awful things that it held only a few moments ago.
But for the city nineteen floors below, it was already far too late.
***
2
The room contained four people, three sitting on chairs of chrome and wood, and one standing, facing them. Behind the person at the front, a power point presentation unfolded on the stark white wall, the images an eclectic mix of building schematics and various Google Earth shots of Birmingham City Centre.
The man at the front was Kevin O’Connell, and he was an architect. Not an architect in the true sense of the word; he didn’t sit at a draftsman’s desk and design buildings of glittering steel and glass that earned him industry awards and acclaim. No, he did not do such things, but he did create, he did design and build things that had earned him far more money and international renown from his peers than any member of the Royal Society of Architects could ever imagine.
If O’Connell was considered a criminal, it was only ever in the eyes of those he had wronged. Because O’Connell was good at what he did. And because he was good, he had never been caught or linked to any wrong doing. That was why his services were always sought. That was why he operated a waiting list.
“Now listen up,” O’Connell said in a voice that had resonance. “This is the last briefing before we get this job done. The last chance to make sure it’s nailed. Up until now it’s been need to know, and now we all need to listen.”
He paced backwards and forwards, his steps slow and considered; his well-built frame exhibiting no evidence of anxiety.
But it hadn’t always been this way. Not by a long shot.
“The job is simple enough,” O’Connell said smoothly. “But the timing makes it a bitch.”
“Speakin’ of bitches, where’s Suzie?”
O’Connell eyed the large man sitting slouched in the chair directly in front of him. Stu Kunaka wasn’t slouching because he was disinterested or drunk or just plain slovenly. Stu was sprawled in the chair because it was the only way he could fit his large, muscular frame into it.
“She’ll be here,” O’Connell said, undeterred.
“She don’t need no briefin’, then?” Stu questioned with a smile. “Her bootie’s turnin’ you into a pussy cat, boss.”
“Better that than just a pussy, Stu,” O’Connell said deadpan. Only Stu could get away with the cheap shots. Not because of his size, not because of his special forces background or his ability to hurt people very easily and very effectively. But because these two men went back. Way back to a time where honour had more value to them than money.
“Let’s stay focused, Gentlemen,” O’Connell said blatantly ignoring Stu’s original question. He hit a button on the remote in his hand and the image of a building flashed up on the wall behind him.
“This is the object of our desire for the next twenty four hours. And this is why this whole operation has been organized on a need to know basis.”
“Want to tell us what that is, boss?” The comment came from a slender man of Asian decent. Amir Singh stroked his thick, silken beard as he talked. He was softly spoken which made him appear unassuming. This was part of his trade, the consummate con man; able to talk people into doing things that, in hindsight, they may never do again.
“This, Amir, is the home of the National Criminal Intelligence DNA Database,” O’Connell explained. “It holds the DNA profiles of anyone charged with a crime. In 2006 there were over four million profiles and on average it grows by 30,000 samples per month. So do the math.”
“Okay,” Amir said. “So that’s the building; so what are we stealing? Information?”
“That’s the joy, Amir. We’re not stealing anything,” a young, spotty faced guy sitting on the other side of Stu said. Gaz Clarke had to lift himself out of his seat and peer round Stu’s bulk just so that Amir could see him. His emerald eyes flitted over to O’Connell for sanction. O’Connell gave it with a nod of his head.
“The samples can not only link criminals to the crime scene, they can also indirectly link them to any member of their family,” Clarke explained. “This is not good for some family businesses; especially those who have an interest in maintaining a degree of discretion.”
“So?” Amir asked. “If we’re not stealing anything, what are we doing?”
“We’re going to stir the stew,” Clarke said with a wink. “I’m going to give it the mother of all viruses.”
“So we’re to take it out?” Stu asked not masking his surprise. “Couldn’t we do that by just hacking into their main frame and dumping the virus in the hole?”