It was barely audible. It rose out of the background hubbub and the storm of coughing and wheezing dominating the signal, but oh God I heard it. I know I did.
"Lie him down!" A new voice said. Tinny with distortion and distance, but somehow resonant and deep nonetheless. "Get him down! And switch off that fucking micropho…"
The signal died.
The news programme stopped.
The repeat episode of Only Fools and Horses picked up where it'd left off, with canned laughter roaring out of the box.
Out on the streets of London, a low moaning, building through sobs and cries of horror, was growing all across the steepled skyline.
In my flat, I shot the door six more times, drank half a bottle of vintage single malt, and went out to start a fight.
That night – the night that London tore itself apart – I could take my pick.
Someone tried to rob me. Emphasis on the tried.
Give the little punks their credit: they had a system. Probably been pulling this shit every day for months, and if it weren't for the fact I clocked them as soon as I saw them, it might even have worked.
Somewhere inside the heart of the Con Ed power plant facility, a broad plaza had been cleared. Intestinal pipes and tanks dragged aside, buildings burned and shattered, the whole roughly-square patch razed to a cracked-concrete wilderness.
It heaved.
The weirdest thing was – and I didn't realise this until later – there were no kids. It seemed natural enough to expect them, somewhere amongst it all. At the heart of the colourful crowds, at the source of the excited shouts and squeals, amidst all the bodies squashed together or dashing through scant open spaces as they blossomed and filled. It was pandemonium. It was human convection in a tattered blend of colours and sizes, pushing and jostling and grunting, haggling out loud, or simply standing tall to yell offers at top volume.
But no kids. In all of New York, just like London: no kids.
"Wheels Mart." Nate said, leaning idly against a rusted pipe and lighting another of my cigarettes. "You want transport, you find it here." His eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly. "Where we going anyways?"
I ignored him and let the sensory overload knock me about, letting my instincts adjust, taking stock.
A hundred and one aromas gusted past – not just the usual filth and stink of too many unhygienic people – but the smoky promise of meat and stew, served diligently by a long row of low stalls, to the colossal queues of hungry customers. Prices were written in arcane barter-notes: weighing cigarettes, ammunition, items of clothing, canisters of fuel and recreational narcotics against the value of ratburgers, dog food gumbo, home-grown potatoes and (fuck me, the smell!) freshly baked bread. My senses kept trying to tell me I'd died and gone to heaven.
All around the outer perimeter of this bustling plaza other stalls were erected, bartering all manner of curious products and scraps of salvage. So wide was the square – and so thick with people – that I couldn't even make out what the distant stock was, though a tent near me held nothing but live chickens and shrieking budgerigars in small wicker cages, and something that looked troublingly like a parrot was turning on a spit over a barbecue. There were no weapons visible anywhere, except those clutched by the small groups of black-clad guards lounging about on walls and turrets around the enclosure, keeping half an eye. The distinctive shriek-scream-grunt of pigs rose from a muddy morass behind another section of the crowd, and most audible of all – over the top of everything else – was the growl of engines. Dozens of them. From all quarters of the mart fumes coiled upwards like greasy fingers, and at regular intervals a fresh cavalcade of bikes throttling, cars backfiring and heavier vehicles rumbling to life sounded above the melee.
The crowd was thickest at the centre, where a tall man in a wide-brimmed Stetson dangled uncomfortably from a series of cables and harnesses above their heads, waving arms and shouting out what I first mistook for unintelligible nonsense. The crowd seemed to be responding in kind – hands raised, necks craned, roaring out and waving bits and pieces of tatty scav every time the pendulous showman wobbled overhead.
It took me a while to realise he was running an auction.
"Four an' five!" He was wittering, almost too fast to catch, "four-and-five, pack of burns, pack of burns? Pack of burns! Anna piglet! Raise me? Best scoot inna house, here! Vespa, onlythabest! Raise me? Raise me?"
The crowd hollered – everyone shouting all at once – and the MB ("Master've bids," Nate grunted) dangled about like a string puppet, pointing fingers, taking offers, and promising new barters. A shiny chrome moped sat on a plinth beside the crowd, guarded by four serious-looking guards.
"Pack of burns?" I asked, flicking Nate a look.
He shrugged and brandished his cigarette, then scowled and looked me up and down.
"You wanna try lookin' any more like a goddamn tourist?"
I realised I'd been blocking the causeway. Sticking out like a sore thumb with my bulging backpack invitingly obvious, bolt-upright and fascinated where everyone else was either rushing about like their arseholes were on fire or leaning, just like Nate, against whatever item of sturdy ephemera they found. There were two correct states of being inside the Wheels-Mart: involved or not involved, and neither one involved any sense of wonderment.
Paying attention; taking an interest; having a bag full of unknown goodies. These were one-way-tickets to getting noticed by someone.
My 'someones' emerged from the crowd to my left, and I knew what was coming immediately. Two young men – early twenties at a guess, maybe even tithe-dodgers – scrapping and squabbling, rolling in muck, dirtied fingernails clutching at torn rags. They sprang and locked again, snarling like ferrets, tripping each other in their clumsy aggression then scrambling upright for a renewed attack.
It was all very convincing.
Except for the glances.
The tiny sideways squints in my direction.
The subtle eyes that told me everything I needed to know.
One of them drew a knife, circling in suddenly to thrust inwards towards the other, who rolled aside theatrically and yanked his own shimmering little shiv out of the hem of his boot. The pair closed again, their angry wrestles and desperate stabs bringing them – as if by magic – stumbling towards me. Choreographed to perfection. Messy and fast and unpredictable, and as authentic as it gets, but I knew.
The body language.
The stance.
Nate was watching them with some interest, I noticed, completely taken-in; face a slack mixture of disapproval and distance. Even some of the crowd – studiously nonchalant of all other things – were twisting to watch the brewing carnage. Everyone was ignoring me, never considering it might all be for my benefit. One or two punters even started calling out encouragement to the fighters, making wagers and shouting advice, whilst others scanned the crowd for the nearest guards.
"No Klan business!" A woman hissed, trying to break them up. The young men shoved her away and kept circling around each other, knives hooking hilt-to-hilt, then twisting back and forth inside one another's guard. Vicious. Personal.
Always heading right for me.
By the time they dropped the pretence and pounced – both at the same time, unlocking from their fake pugilism like a bear trap in reverse, knives outstretched on each side like scissor blades – I was already moving. Diving beneath the double-stab, rolling awkwardly across the backpack and flicking out one orbital leg: roundhousing the first punk – a freckled beanpole with bright purple hair – off his feet. The other darted-in with a snarl, catching a straight-handed chop to the side of his tattooed neck and – as I vaulted upright from the ground – an angry, unsubtle head butt on the bridge of his much-pierced nose. To be blunt I think he was dead from the neck wound already – he bloody should have been, the way I hit him – but I was angry. Sue me.
He went down without a word.
The purple-haired geek got up slowly, shaking his head to clear the
fuzz, and backhanded his knife into a downward slicer. I picked up his mate's shiv – dropped from one spasming hand – and grinned at him; letting my body tell him how calm I was, how much I wanted him to rush me, how much I was urging him to come take me o…
His eyes flickered, just a millimetre, to one side.
Cold sweat. That sinking feeling.
Third guy behind me.
Two for the diversion, one for the strike.
Clever.
I sidestepped a fraction early. I figured the attack was imminent, but I left the fucker with too much time to angle his swing. Still, if it's a choice between denting my skull with a heavy tyre-iron or missing by inches and instead swiping the fabric along the top of my pack – tipping me over like a sleeping cow – I'll take the latter every time. I slash-stabbed blindly with the shiv as I stumbled, snarling from somewhere deep inside me that wasn't entirely rational; feeling a tug and a tear and a spatter of warmth, rewarded with a scream. The breath exploded out of me as I thumped to the tarmac on my back, crushing the kid with the pierced face for a second time and sending something sharp punching through the top of my pack; digging me in the nape of my neck.
This Johnny -come -lately sneak -up -behind -a -guy arsehole – an enormous man with a braided beard and a pair of lensless glasses – staggered and moaned, squirting blood from an arterial gash on his thigh. He'd dropped the tyre iron at some stage, but as the purple-haired youth closed in on me with the knife the giant swatted him on the shoulder, held out a bony paw for the blade, and dropped down to finish me himself.
Something small and red appeared between his eyes.
The back of his head came off, and for a second or two he looked startled; as if his brain was still feeding him waves of shock and uncertainty, despite being scattered in a semicircle across the mud. A gunshot echoed across the crowd – like a guest arriving late for a party – and everyone jumped.
"Fffff…" he managed.
The kid with the purple-hair took off.
Without being entirely conscious of it, sitting upright in one long fluid movement, I felt my arm extend, left eye closed, fingers releasing. The shiv – a curled tooth of flat steel, easily palmed beneath gloved fingers – spun off into space; a shuriken that caught the weak light as it whispered.
It hit the punk at the base of his skull, just beside his left ear. It looked like it went deep, and when he sagged to the floor – arms quivering, legs bending back on themselves – he wasn't in any rush to get back up.
There's a lot of blood in a scalp. It clashed with his hair.
It dawned on me slowly that a lot of people were staring. Several of them were wearing black clothes and red bandanas, and were going to great lengths to elbow their way through the crowd in my direction.
A shadow fell across me.
"Stay the fuck there," it said, poking the two dead punks near me with a smoking rifle.
My guardian angel, I guessed. The one who blew off the giant's head.
From below, it looked a lot like a tattered, hunchbacked ogre.
Its voice was actually kind of sexy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Her name was Malice. I figure she was probably 'Alice' – maybe 'Melissa' – at one time, but the whole gung-ho nickname thing worked pretty well for the mercenaries the Wheels-Mart paid to keep the peace, and they were never happier than when striding about, calling out each other's ridiculous handles across the braying crowds.
Spuggsy.
Moto.
Tora.
Nike.
And so on. I pretended to be impressed as they introduced themselves. Pumped up and black-clad in every case, moving with that familiar 'I'm-a-hard-bastard' confidence you see in mercenaries the world over.
They'd propped me up in a canvas shelter off to one side of the auction (still noisily ongoing through the tent's doorway) and now Malice was staring at me, more-or-less-alone, with her arms folded. Nate stood behind me, dabbing at the cut on my neck. I think he was enjoying being part of the attention. Light through the tattered canvas ceiling dappled the interior of the room, making it seem busy and claustrophobic, and it was almost an effort – in amongst the extremes of brightness and shadow – to focus on Malice's eyes.
She was the blackest person I'd ever seen in my life, and she was so beautiful it hurt.
"So," she said, voice guarded. "Guess we owe you one."
"Why's that?"
"Took out the three Goddamn amigos back there. They been causing trouble few weeks now. Coming in off the water, we figured."
"Happy to oblige."
She smirked unconvincingly.
Malice wore the same black threads as all the other guards (though it would be unfair not to mention how the baggier parts of the ensemble crinkled as she moved, hinting at what was going on underneath) and the same red bandana – in her case folded into a bright sweat-band around her crown. Her hair was shaven away to that not-quite-stubble length – like the velvety patch on the tip of a horse's nose – which so few women can pull off, but makes the ones who can look so ball-rupturingly sensational.
Malice looked like she had a hunch on her back. A big one.
Once in a while the hunch – hidden away beneath black veils – gurgled to itself.
The kid, she told me, was a fraction over a year old. Malice never mentioned the father, so I figured he was long gone or dead. It (I never found out a name, or a gender) stayed quieter than any baby I've ever known, and seemed perfectly untroubled by its mother lugging about a high-powered air-rifle and a sweet assortment of other popguns. Once in a while Malice jiggled in a strange sort of way, rocking the wicker harness the baby was huddled inside, as if she knew when the sleepy sprog was on the verge of waking up without even having to look.
Every time she jiggled like that it looked like she was giving me the come-on.
"Who are you?" She blurted, just as the silence was getting uncomfortable.
I shrugged. "Just a customer. Just passing through."
She shook her head. "Uh-uh. I saw the way you took out them rats. You're ex-mil, pal. Showed in every move. Special forces, maybe. SEALs. Whatever it is you Brits got…"
Not even close, honey.
"Does it matter if I am?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Yeah, it fuckin' matters. Some psycho stalking 'bout in my Mart."
"I didn't start th…"
"And the only ex-mils round these parts're with the Choirboys."
Aha…
I frowned. "Clergy, right?"
She spat on the floor, as if disgusted by the very name. I started to like her even more, and wondered just how highly the universally loved Neo-Clergy were actually regarded…
I held my palms out – like showing her I had nothing to hide – and pointed to the distinct lack of scarlet tattoos on my eye.
"I'm not with the Clergy."
Her eyes darted to Nate. In the cover of the tent he'd flipped-up the pirate eye patch like a pedal-bin lid, making him look like a astonished panda. "But your pet here?"
Nate 'tsk'd through his teeth and waggled a finger. "Ex." He said. "Ex, sugar."
She just glared.
"He's officially retired," I said, flipping Nate's eye patch back down with a quiet slap.
Malice spat again. "No such thing."
The silence stretched out. Malice started pacing a little, left then right, keeping her eyes fixed on us all the time.
I drummed my fingers on the arms of the chair, creating every impression of disdainful boredom, and whistled quietly. My neck felt tight, like Nate had stuck a monstrous plaster across it, and I hadn't had a chance to find out what had caused the wound yet. I was sort of glad I couldn't see.
Outside, the fast-talking MB sold a battered BMW to a man with three piglets of his very own, who'd outbid a guy with a portable power drill and a book of jokes.
Mostly the vehicles were cheap, in 'who-gives-a-shit' money terms, but I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. When 93% of the world shu
ffles off the mortal slinky there are a lot of jalopies left rusting in empty driveways. The way they saw it, the black-clad personnel of the Wheels-Mart were just agents. Middlemen to cut out the tedious business of finding, breaking into, hot-wiring and maintaining vehicles. The klans sent their scavs along to buy the best of the pick, and as long as everyone kept themselves polite, self-serving, and oh-so-very-neutral, the whole system worked.
Until someone who stands out shows up. No one likes a guy who rocks the boat.
I got the impression Malice and the other guards were mighty twitchy. Ready to snap. Ready to kill.
And they didn't like the Clergy.
Hmm.
After long, boring minutes had passed, I cracked my knuckles nastily and said:
"So. You going to let us get on with it, or what?"
Malice made a show of ignoring me, pulling off that same weird rolling motion, hip-twitching as she soothed the baby.
I stood up.
"Or do you guys make a habit of pulling this shit on anyone who does your job for you?"
She smiled, and this time I think there was at least a glimmer of genuine humour in there, no matter how guarded it was.
"You want a job, limey? That it?"
"Fuck no."
"What, then?"
"Want a set of wheels."
"Going somewhere?"
"Yep."
"Want to tell me where?"
"Not really." I shrugged my tattered coat back on over the top of Nate's bandage, and threw Malice an impatient stare. "We able to do business here or not? 'Cos if it's less of a timewaster I'm quite happy to go stand in the crowd and shout at the wanker on the wire."
Her nose wrinkled thoughtfully. "You got currency?"
"Apprehending known villains not good enough?"
"Covers fuel costs, maybe. World don't turn on good deeds, pal."
"Too fucking right."
I picked up the pack the thieves had been after and brandished it for Malice's inspection, oozing all the business-like cool in the world.
"Ten cans Pedigree Chum," I said, letting the bag spin on its straps. "Six packs of cigarettes. Two bottles Jack Daniels, one bottle supermarket-brand vodka. One tin powdered milk. Three cashmere blankets, only the best will doodle-do. Two packs condoms." (Malice's eye met mine, lightning-speed) "Three vials amphetamine, six sachets barbiturate tablets, eyedropper full of acid, an eighth of Moroccan woodbine – if you believe the dealer – and five hypos of some weird mil-shit called 'Bliss'." I smiled sweetly. "Take your pick."
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